Four-Letter Word

by Christa Desir

  It had only been maybe fifteen minutes, but my finger lingered over Mateo’s contact information on my phone. I could call him. He’d make me feel better about all of this. He’d remind me why we had to play. But then I thought better of it. I didn’t want to risk it. He might be with Chloe Donnelly—God, I hoped not—and it wasn’t worth ruining his plan. I’d wait until he reached out to me for my letter.

  23

  Holly and Eve were sitting outside the JRC when I walked up. They must have gone directly there through the middle of campus instead of taking the long periphery way like I had. They were both dressed less scantily this week—Holly in a longish jersey dress, cheaper looking than the one from Tillys, and Eve in a tank and skinny jeans. At least they didn’t look alike, except for their charm bracelets.

  The inside of the JRC was definitely less active than it had been last Friday, at least from what I could see through the glass windows. I approached Eve and Holly on the bench outside with sure steps, that calm still soothing me as if I had nothing to lose—maybe pure BS, but I went with it.

  “Are you talking to me now?” I asked, which was a bit hostile, but it had been a very hard week.

  Eve looked guilty for about five seconds before she shrugged and said, “As long as you’re playing the game.”

  “What the hell? You guys told me you were going to quit last week. What happened? You totally choked and left me hanging out to dry. And then you blew me off all week.”

  Holly sneered, “Well, Other Chloe, not all of us are as squeaky clean as you. Some of us don’t really have a choice about the way our lives play out.”

  What did that mean?

  I took a deep breath and considered walking away from them, texting Mateo my letter, and washing my hands of the whole thing, but then I saw Holly’s mask drop. For a few seconds she let everything she was feeling show on her face, the same way she had in the bathroom that day. And finally I understood that she was really scared. As scared as everyone else.

  “What does she know about you?” I asked, my voice going soft the way Mateo’s did when he’d asked me to play the game again.

  The silence between us was deafening. The stubborn way Holly held her head made me sure that whatever it was fell in the category of “not my business.” But then Eve nudged her and after a second Holly’s shoulders slumped. “Okay. You need to swear not to say anything. The only reason I’m telling you is so you get how important the game is. How essential it is for the guys to win and go through with Mateo’s plan so we can end it.”

  “Okay, I swear.”

  Holly tipped her head back and stared at the sky for a second before zeroing in on me. “My dad is in prison for possession of narcotics.”

  I blinked twice. “Holy shit. Are you serious?”

  “No, Other Chloe, I’d joke about something like that. Jeez. Of course I’m serious. And I don’t really want to go into details, so don’t ask.”

  Except I couldn’t stop myself from blurting, “Must have been a lot of narcotics for him to end up in prison on a first offense.”

  Too many episodes in junior high of Law & Order seemed to have stockpiled all these dumb facts in my brain that I blurted out when I was feeling vulnerable. I knew it was a nasty and horrible thing to say considering Holly had just told me this big thing, but I was apparently still bleeding a lot of hurt from the crappy silent-treatment week—and frankly mediocre year—she was partly responsible for.

  She skewered me with a look. “Excuse me?”

  I took a deep breath and mumbled, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  “It was,” she said, and glared at me, not saying anything else.

  My mind flipped through the right thing to say, but I was still processing. Chloe Donnelly knew Holly’s dad was in jail, when it had managed to stay under everyone else’s radar. Did she manipulate Holly’s mom too, in order to find out? No, I couldn’t buy that; she was seventeen and there was no way. Maybe his arrest was in some public record somewhere? “How long is his sentence?” I asked Holly.

  “What part of don’t ask is hard for you to understand? God. Money has been tight, okay? Not that it’s any of your business.”

  My brain was spinning spinning spinning with questions. What did money has been tight mean? Was money tight because he was in jail? Or had money gotten tight so he took to dealing? What were the narcotics he was arrested with? Around here, I’d guess either meth or some sort of dirty heroin mix. I opened my mouth, but Holly narrowed her eyes into arrow points of rage so I shut up.

  “Anyway,” she said, after I’d blinked out of our staring contest, “Chloe knows about my dad and threatened to tell everyone. And that’s not exactly information I want getting around school.”

  I shook my head. “God, I’m sorry. She’s horrible. Seriously, she’s the worst person. I can’t believe you all can stomach sitting with her at lunch. And how does she know this stuff about everyone?”

  Holly raised an eyebrow. “What stuff?”

  Crap. Crap, crap, crap. I waved vaguely. “Everyone’s secrets. I mean, that’s why the guys want to win, right? To protect their secrets?”

  “Mateo said it was to protect our secrets. That their platinum favors would stop her from using anything against us. What secrets do the guys have?”

  My heart sped up and sweat started to gather in my armpits. I wanted to maintain my calm, but it leeched out of me when I realized I couldn’t spin knowing the guys had secrets in any way that didn’t make me look really bad. And suddenly, all the stuff Eve had said about me watching seemed even worse than just being creepy. It seemed pathetic. As if I had no life so I had to go around spying on other people’s.

  No.

  No no no. I was trying to get a life. The thing with Mateo was real and he needed me to help him. I felt a little bad that Holly thought the guys would use a platinum favor to protect her secret, but maybe Cam would. Maybe the Cam that hated to see Holly cry was willing to demand Chloe Donnelly’s silence.

  I cleared my throat and deflected. “Why do you think she still wants to play the game so badly? She’s got to know all of us hate her because of it, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Holly answered, slouching enough from her usual dancer grace that I knew she was really messed up about the game too.

  “She told me sometimes she feels really lonely because her parents aren’t around much,” Eve offered.

  “So she forces people to hang out with her by manipulating them with a game? That seems . . . weird,” I said.

  “Maybe we’re all on some reality TV show none of us but Chloe knows about?” Holly said.

  I tried not to roll my eyes. “I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be legal to film us without our permission.”

  Eve’s eyes got wide. “Maybe she’s planning on turning Gestapo into some sort of online video game that someone like my brother would play obsessively, and she wants to see if it works in real life first?”

  My mouth turned down. “So she’s a tech genius playing a live-action role-playing game? That seems really far-fetched.”

  We were silent for a while, all trying to figure out just what the game bought Chloe Donnelly. A breeze kicked up and Eve rubbed her bare shoulders. I sighed. “Look, let’s just find the guys and stick with the plan to end this thing.”

  Holly pulled out her phone. “I’ll text Cam.”

  “No!”

  Holly looked at me and arched her penciled-in eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “He might be with Chloe. We can’t risk her seeing a text or knowing about Mateo’s plan.”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “Paranoid much?”

  I probably was, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Chloe Donnelly seemed to have eyes everywhere.

  “Just search for him. Find him and give him your letter face-to-face.”

  “Fine,” Holly said, then started to leave. When she saw Eve wasn’t following her, she stopped and turned back. “Are you coming?”

  Eve sho
ok her head. “I’m going to look for Aiden. It’ll seem more realistic if different guys get our letters.”

  Holly narrowed her eyes for a second, but then said, “Whatever,” and flounced away, all dancer huffy, her perfect posture back again.

  I waited for Eve to take off too, but she lingered.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t back you up last week,” she said, after the silence between us had gotten heavy and awkward. She sounded a little sad, and the apology felt genuine, like the Eve I used to know before Chloe Donnelly or even Holly came into our sphere.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I got freaked out. Chloe knows something about everyone and . . .”

  “And?”

  She stared at her feet. “Look, I know you think I’m hooking up with Cam, but I’m not. I really didn’t know it was him that night.”

  “I know you didn’t, but then after school that day . . . I mean, you got in his car. I saw you.”

  She looked back up at me, eyes blinking with tears. “You have no idea the pressure I’m under. It’s worse than it’s ever been. My dad is always on me, always bugging me about school and homework and starting to think about college and making sure I’m living up to my potential. It’s like he’s got nothing better to do than give me a hard time. And he’s got my mom involved too. She makes me sit at the kitchen table every day after school doing homework, but I hate it. It’s like too much of the semester has passed and I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t focus.”

  My heart squeezed a little. The last time I’d seen Eve like this was when she’d pushed her brother, Jamie, on the sidewalk too hard and he’d fallen and broken his arm. She’d felt horrible and deeply ashamed.

  “I didn’t realize it was that bad with your mom. I know she’s very involved with school stuff, but she used to write you notes to excuse you if you were overworked.”

  “My dad put an end to that. Now they’re all over me because junior year is so important grade-wise on college applications. You don’t get it because your parents aren’t even here. They’re not hovering or constantly on you.”

  No. They weren’t, but Eve had no idea what she was talking about. For as much as her mom was a hoverer, she’d chosen to be here. When Eve got mono last year, her mom pulled all these strings to get her homework waived and extra time to finish her projects. My parents couldn’t do that from Burkina Faso, and they wouldn’t waste their time on it if they could. Instead, they’d tell me again to come live with them and be unschooled.

  “You’re right,” I said, my voice as emotionless as I could make it. “My parents aren’t here.”

  Eve sighed. “I mean, I know it sucks for you only to see them at Christmas and during the summer, but, overall, you’re really the lucky one.”

  That was how Eve saw me—as the lucky one? I wanted to smack the stupidity out of her. “I don’t get why you’re saying all of this to me. What does this have to do with not quitting the game, or whatever you were doing in Cam’s car?”

  Eve shifted from foot to foot. “It’s just, I was getting behind in English, all my classes really. My mom keeps checking to see if I’ve turned in my homework. Every day online. And she’s always hovering over me to make sure I’m not cheating or plagiarizing or whatever. I have so much work to do still. I thought Cam might have something to help me pull a few all-nighters to catch up.”

  I blinked for a second, then the pieces clicked into place. “Drugs? You were buying drugs from Cam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he get them from Holly’s dad?” I asked, my random brain deciding to skip over the more obvious questions.

  “What? No. Holly doesn’t even know he sold them to me.”

  I wondered how Holly was going to rationalize the drug-dealing part of Cam, considering the situation with her dad. Maybe she’d cry and make him promise to stop, but what did Cam’s promises really mean? As far as I could tell, he only cared about himself.

  “I can’t believe you,” I said, blinking at this girl in front of me who I didn’t even know anymore.

  “God, Chloe. Stop being so judgy. I needed them.”

  Freshman year in health class, Eve and I had sat across the room from each other. We’d rolled our eyes through the ragingly unhelpful sex ed unit, and we’d both cried during the unit about suicide and self-injury—though we’d never known anyone who’d killed themselves and hadn’t yet met the kids who were cutters. But during the drugs and alcohol unit, we’d texted each other throughout each class.

  I don’t get how our school thinks this will stop anyone from drinking. As if there’s anything else to do in Grinnell.

  I hadn’t been drunk yet at that point, but I wanted to impress Eve, even though I was certain she hadn’t been drunk either.

  Totally. This is so worthless.

  A minute later she’d texted again.

  Drugs are stupid, though. I mean, not pot, obviously. But the rest of them? Who wants to be some tweaked-out freak who doesn’t care about anything but themselves?

  It was strangely prudish of Eve, who even then was immensely curious about so many things. But I’d agreed with her about drugs, which I had to admit was another thing that had always scared me a little. There were so many unknowns, too many things that could go wrong.

  “So you went with Cam to buy drugs from him?” I said. “Even knowing about Holly’s dad being in prison for them?”

  “Well, I didn’t know then. And anyway, this is totally different. It’s Ritalin, not heroin. And it’s not like I’m a user and Cam is my dealer. He just had some extra. It was one time, but Chloe saw us, and later she showed up at my house asking questions. I thought she was being cool about it, giving me advice and stuff. I didn’t think she was digging. And it was only a bottle of Ritalin!”

  “Ritalin that you’re probably snorting and hasn’t been prescribed to you,” I snapped back.

  I sounded prudish and judgmental, like the churchy girls who took “purity pictures” with their dads in this slightly gross way and then posted them online. But Eve had become someone I didn’t really like anymore. Someone who bought Ritalin to snort so she could pull all-nighters. And standing there in front of the mostly deserted JRC, it occurred to me that we wouldn’t be able to get past this. Not just because of the drugs, but because she had turned into a person I could never respect.

  In a way, it was almost a relief knowing this would probably be the last night we’d ever hang out. We’d veered off each other’s courses a while ago, but I’d kept hoping we’d come back together. Now I was no longer interested in all of that. Mom was right, an empty house was better than one filled with toxic people.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, sounding calm and resigned.

  “I . . . I wanted you to understand. Maybe Chloe wouldn’t use it against me. But with what she’s done to everyone else? I couldn’t quit the game. You have to understand. . . .” But then she faltered as if she, too, realized we’d never be friends again.

  I lifted a shoulder. “Maybe Chloe will tell your parents about the Ritalin and maybe she won’t. I get that you don’t want your mom finding out, but it seems like the best way to prevent that is not to do it anymore and get rid of the bottle. Then she’ll have no real proof.”

  She got angry then. Eve angry, which had always come on hard and fast and with little warning. “You’re such a self-righteous bitch. I can’t believe we were ever friends. No wonder your parents let you come back here without them. They were probably grateful to be rid of you.”

  Ouch.

  Then she stomped toward the other side of Eighth Avenue, screaming every swear she could think of.

  Her words about my parents stung, not only because I’d secretly thought them myself, but also because Eve had thought them too. Did everyone think my parents were better off in Burkina Faso without me?

  My parents missed me. I knew they missed me. But were things easier for them in Burkina Faso when I wasn’t there? I thought about th
ose first two months, how difficult it’d been for my parents to juggle establishing the school and managing me. I’d been a brat and couldn’t adjust to our new life. And even though I knew they didn’t want me to go back home, I also knew they couldn’t have done all they’d done with me there. I was too much to handle.

  My body felt as if it were being pummeled from the inside. A sob caught in my throat and escaped, and then another, and then another. I choked them all back. I pulled my phone out of my pocket with shaky hands. I let my bitten-down thumb hover over Melissa’s name and then finally pressed call.

  “Melissa,” I said when she answered, my voice raw and scratchy.

  “Chloe? What’s wrong?”

  I wanted to ask her if she thought I was too much as well. If she thought parents would give up on their kids because they were disappointed with what they’d become. If parents thought sometimes it was easier not being around their kids. But then I remembered her dad and how he’d barely been around for most of her life and I stopped myself.

  “Chloe?” she said again.

  I pressed end and powered my phone down, then sat on the steps outside the JRC and finally let myself cry for real, not holding anything back. Letting pain swamp me until I couldn’t see and could barely breathe.

  24

  I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, it seemed like hours, but crying always felt like that. Every time I thought I was pulling myself together, a new wave of loneliness and grief overwhelmed me.

  A hand on my shoulder startled me from my crying jag. Melissa. And behind her a guy with close-shaved hair who looked at me as if I were an animal at the zoo he’d never seen before. Not repulsed by me, just wide-eyed and curious. This must’ve been Seth, her boyfriend. He looked vaguely familiar from the first time I’d seen her with him forever ago, but I’d lived a hundred lives since then.

  “I figured I’d find you on campus. I thought you weren’t playing that game,” Melissa said.