by Ariel Kaplan
“Mischa.”
“Listen. I quit. Do you need me to put it in writing?” I took the pen off her desk, tore a Post-it note off her pad, and wrote I QUIT in big block letters. Then I stuck the note in the middle of her planner.
* * *
—
Inexplicably, by the time I got to the dining hall, I was crying.
Not crying crying. My face was still normal-looking. It was like my tear ducts had just switched to the on position, and water was running down my face like a faucet. I wiped my eyes on the back of my arm, and then someone stuffed a wad of napkins in my face.
I followed the hand to the arm to the shoulder to Nate, who, when I didn’t take the napkins, wiped my face himself.
“You didn’t answer my text.”
“I left my phone at home,” he said. “That’s not why you’re. Uh.”
“I’m not crying.”
“Of course you aren’t. So that’s not why your face is leaking. Is it?”
I shook my head. “I hate my life,” I said. “Also, I quit SSD.”
“Oh. Good.”
“I’m also quitting the band boosters, the French club, and student government.”
“You’ll have a lot of free time,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I bet it’ll be great.”
He nodded toward the line of students waiting to be fed. “What did you want. A bagel? I’ll get you a bagel.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“You’ll eat a bagel?”
“I’ll eat a bagel,” I said, and then I went and sat down as far away from everyone else as I could. Nate reappeared three minutes later with a pumpernickel bagel and a little thingy of cream cheese.
“Where were you going, by the way?” I asked.
“What?”
“When I saw you. You were leaving.”
“Oh. I was going to look for you,” he said, smearing cream cheese on my bagel because I wasn’t doing it. Watching him do it made me get choked up all over again. “Because you weren’t here.”
“Where were you going to look?”
“I hadn’t decided yet.”
“You weren’t worried,” I said. He finished with the cream cheese and put the two halves of the bagel together. “Were you worried? You were worried.”
“Yeah. I was,” he said, putting the bagel on the plate and pushing it toward me. “Hey. So. I think I overreacted last night.”
“I think I was a jerk,” I said.
“No, I mean, yes, but you were also kind of right. You are smarter than most people. Why shouldn’t you expect more of yourself?”
“I didn’t mean I thought I was smarter than you.”
“Mischa. You are smarter than me.”
“That’s awful. I don’t think that.”
He handed me half the bagel. “Eat,” he said. “Look, it’s the truth. Maybe not in everything, but on the aggregate, you’re smarter. It just is what it is.”
“You’re better at people, though. And you’re more observant. And other things, too. Lots of other things.”
“This is true.”
I wiped cream cheese off my face with my tear-stained napkins. “So does this mean you’re not mad anymore?”
“Not really.”
I sighed. Not really was not exactly the same thing as no, but I’d take it. We ate a few bites of our bagels, and then Nate said, “You know what I hate?”
“Pre-ripped jeans? Pocket squares? Tighty-whities?”
“Not sartorially. I hate how everyone has to rank everything all the time. Like, remember when you were a kid and you had your first best friend, and your second best friend, and your third best friend?”
I suddenly remembered that Jim had told me to call Caroline, and I hadn’t done it. She’d stopped texting when I never wrote back about DOC. “I never had a third best friend. But yeah, I know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s like, somewhere along the way, someone taught us that that was how you put people in boxes. This is the third-smartest person, the second-fastest runner, and the seventh-best dresser.”
“There’s not a lot of room for nuance,” I said.
“Exactly! And the stuff that can’t be ranked doesn’t matter. I hate that.”
I was silent because, up until recently, that ranking system had done a lot for me. I was the smartest. The best at math. The fastest essay writer. The biggest vocabulary haver. I said, “You are my first best friend, though.”
He stopped chewing his bagel and frowned at me, not a real frown, with the downturned mouth, but with his forehead. “Just your friend?”
“Now, that I hate,” I said. “There’s no just about being friends. Why is that a just? There’s no just.”
“Why does it sound like you’re breaking up with me? Didn’t you…” He coughed. “Didn’t you want to be my girlfriend?”
God, I was always making him feel bad lately. “That is what I want. Right now, it’s pretty much the only thing I want. It’s just…I want you to promise you won’t stop being my friend. No matter what happens.”
“Like if we break up.”
I swallowed down my discomfort at how easily he said those words. “Yeah.”
He pulled me into a hug and kissed the side of my face. “I promise,” he said. “I promise. But you have to promise, too.”
I closed my eyes. “I promise. I promise, no matter what.”
The next morning, I was on my way to calculus when I saw Shira coming the other way. “Mischa Ab-ram-AAAAH-veech-us,” she sang, and then spun around to walk next to me. “Good morning.”
“Hey, Shira,” I said.
“Did you know,” she went on, “that you have the same last name as the Ukrainian trade minister?”
“Actually, he’s Abromavicius—”
“But he’s not Ukrainian!”
“Yeah, I—”
“I googled it. Your name.”
“I gathered that.” Then I frowned. “Hang on, why are you so…obviously sober? Now. Here.”
“I’ll show you,” she said. She held up her phone so that I could see the screen. It took me a minute to realize I was looking at a plane ticket.
“Accra?” I asked. “You’re going to Ghana?”
“I’m going with Bebe for three weeks after graduation, to stay with her aunt,” she said. She was kind of vibrating all over like she’d had way too much coffee. “It’s my graduation present from my parents. They just told me last night. I’ve been begging to go with her since sophomore year!”
“Wow,” I said. I wondered if Emily was going, too, but it seemed kind of rude to ask. “That’s amazing.”
“Her aunt’s so great, too. I just can’t believe I’m really going.” She showed me a picture on her phone, of her and Bebe and a woman who must have been Bebe’s aunt in front of the Washington Monument.
“Congratulations,” I said. “Three weeks. That’s incredible.” Then, since the situation seemed to call for it, I gave her a hug. It was a one-armed hug, but still, I think it counted; I never know quite how to hug other girls, because our boobs always seem to get in the way, so I end up doing this thing Caroline calls the Christian side-hug. Shira looked a little surprised, but then she hugged me back with two arms, because I guess she doesn’t care about boobs being in the way. Then she snapped my bra.
“You know,” she said, after I’d extracted myself from her embrace, “you are actually a nice person.”
“Um. Thank you?”
“I don’t think I said it before, but I’m really sorry about what happened to you.”
“Shh,” I said.
We were walking by the office. Mr. Pelletier was giving service hours to Derek Logan for wearing a hat in the building to cover his really unfortunate haircut. Beth Reinhardt wa
s on her phone, shouting, “He is so into me.” And over all this noise, I heard someone saying, “But Dartmouth has the best study abroad programs,” and looked up to see Caroline talking to Jim, who looked distinctly like he wished he was on another planet.
“It’s not too late,” Shira said. “There was totally more we could have done with your transcript.”
“Shira,” I said. “No.”
“See, I was on Blanchard’s server last night—”
“You what?”
“I just wanted to check some things. I feel like we got really close last time, and I thought—”
“Would you be quiet?”
I bumped into someone coming the other way. Unfortunately, it turned out to be Amy Gregston, and on her other side was Meredith Dorsay. “Watch where you’re going, Michelle,” she said. Then, seeing Shira, she added, “What, are you guys going to get high in the bathroom together? Jesus, when you self-destruct, you really go all the way.”
Shira said, rather loudly, “Why don’t you shut up, you overprivileged block of cream cheese.”
I had a coughing fit into my fist.
Meredith said, “What did you call me?”
I was thinking that maybe it was time for Shira to go back in her shell for a while, but she said, “Five words from her and I’m already bored.” She turned to me and said, “I’m gonna go find Bebe. Think about it, okay?” and then she was gone.
Meredith glared. I smiled and said, “She doesn’t like you.” Then: “I don’t like you, either.”
I was in English the next day when Bebe, who was sitting in the row behind me, sent me a text. It said, Holy crap.
What?
When was the last time you checked Instagram?
I barely used it at all anymore. It’d been cool when I’d first gotten my own phone (not until ninth grade, which was about five years later than everyone else I knew). I’d posted pictures of every random thing I could find: the time I accidentally wore two different shoes to school; quotes I’d highlighted in books; the trip Nate and I took to a pumpkin patch on Halloween, when he’d dressed a scarecrow up in his coat and hat and emailed a picture of it to his parents with a ransom note. I hadn’t posted much lately, though. I’d thought about putting the pictures of my skydiving escapades on there, but then it would be obvious I’d skipped school.
She said, Pull it up. Now.
I tried to, but it kept giving me an incorrect password error. I typed it three times, and then told Bebe, My password’s messed up, I have to change it or something.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
What?
Does your mom follow you?
I turned around and looked at Bebe, but she was staring at her screen, so all I could see was the top of her head, like, for her, the Mischa she was talking to existed inside the phone and not three feet in front of her.
Yes. She does.
OK. We have to get out of here. Say you have a paper cut.
What?
Say OW.
When I didn’t respond, she slumped down in her chair and kicked the bottom of my seat, hard.
“OW!” I said out loud, to which Ms. Parker replied, “Mischa?”
“Paper cut,” I said, stuffing my right index finger into my left fist. “Can I run and get a Band-Aid? It’s bleeding.”
“Sure,” she said before going back to whatever she was doing.
As I got up, Bebe’s hand shot into the air. “Can I walk her down? I need a Motrin from the nurse.”
At that Ms. Parker scowled. But she waved Bebe out and said, “Fine.”
I shut the door behind us and said, “What is it?”
Bebe grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall into the bathroom, before flashing me her phone.
“What is this?” I asked, looking at a picture I’d never seen before. It was a selfie of me with my sleeve rolled up and my arm held out, with a party going on in the background. People were drinking out of red Solo cups and dancing. “This isn’t my page.”
“Yeah, only it is your page.”
“I don’t even know these people!”
“Mischa, look at what the people behind you are doing.”
I blew up the screen with my thumb and forefinger. The girl behind me was laughing into the face of the boy opposite her, who was getting ready to inject something into her arm.
“What—” I said. “Is that heroin?”
“Well, he’s not giving her a flu shot,” she said.
My eyes went to the caption next to the picture, where Mischabella16 had written, Waiting my turn ! Don’t wait up, @NDA123!
“Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God.”
“Who is NDA123?” she asked.
“It’s my mom,” I said.
“Her Instagram handle’s NDA? As in non-disclosure agreement?”
“Not that kind of NDA. It’s her initials. Norah Deborah Abramavicius. And she’s tagged. Oh my God.”
“You need to delete it,” she said. “Use my phone. You have to log me out first.”
“Right,” I said. “Right.” I logged off Bebe’s account and then on with my own. Or tried to. “It won’t let me log on,” I said. “It’s not accepting my password.”
“Reset it.”
I clicked on the “forgot password” link and entered my email address.
That email address doesn’t have an associated user account, it said. My eyes went up to meet Bebe’s. “What do I do?”
“Someone must’ve gotten into your account and changed the default email address,” she said. “It’s not just hacked; it’s completely hijacked.”
“Meaning whoever did this can post whatever they want, and there’s nothing I can do.”
“That’s what an account hijack is, yeah.”
I stared at the picture, feeling the panic starting to take over. “Can we call the Instagram people? Get them to reset everything?”
“It’ll take too long,” she said. “There’s no phone number for them, you have to email, and it could take days.”
“So what do we do?”
Bebe shook her head. “This isn’t my area.” She took the phone back and started texting. “We need Emily. I’m sending her the link.”
A few seconds later the phone buzzed. I read Emily’s reply over Bebe’s shoulder: Need my computer. Meet me in the art room in five minutes.
Bebe and I snuck down the hall, past the classrooms, which were full of students going about their normal, boring days and waiting for the bell to ring. I was about to go past Señora Ruiz’s Spanish room when Bebe snagged me by the arm. “Stop,” she hissed. “Mr. Pelletier.”
He was at the other end of the hall, but he was checking his phone and hadn’t seen us yet.
“There’s nowhere to go!” I whispered, because the only doors in the immediate area were all to classrooms, and they were all occupied. But if Mr. Pelletier saw us, he’d ask us what we were doing, and then he’d either give us hours or send us back to class. Either way, that was more time that Instagram post was going to be sitting up there, taunting my mother.
“In here,” Bebe said, and she pulled me into Señora Ruiz’s room.
She must have been teaching Spanish I that period, because sixteen kids who looked almost prepubescent turned their faces toward us. “Beatriz?” Señora Ruiz said. “¿Qué tal?”
“Ummm,” Bebe said.
I glanced at the window in the door behind us; Mr. Pelletier was still coming our way, but he hadn’t passed the classroom yet.
“Hola, estudiantes nuevos,” Bebe said, tugging on her braid and trying to look like she meant to be there. “So as you might know, I’m the president of the Spanish club.”
Silence.
“Right,” she said. “And, um, we have a meeting next Thursday at three, a
nd I wanted to extend my personal invitation to all of the beginning Spanish students. We’re really excited to expand our membership.”
Silence.
“Oookay,” she said. “So if anyone’s interested, maybe I can get your email addresses? Maybe we can pass around a piece of paper?” She edged toward Señora Ruiz. “I forgot to bring paper,” she murmured.
“Muy mal preparada,” Señora Ruiz said, handing her a piece from a drawer of her desk.
“Lo siento,” Bebe said. She passed the piece of paper to a kid in the first row, and it silently went around the room while about three people put their names on it. Bebe glanced at me; I was watching the door, but Pelletier still hadn’t gone by the room. I shook my head.
“Ah,” she said. “So. The other thing. Uh. We’re learning a song! For the meeting. And I’m going to teach it to you. Right now. Yep. I’m going to do that.”
“Cuál canción?” Señora Ruiz asked, clearly amused.
“Right. What song. What. Song. Sorry. Estoy un poco nerviosa.”
She pulled out her phone, went to YouTube, and started playing one of those videos where they show the lyrics on the screen in real time. A second later the strains of a love ballad began to pour forth from the phone’s tiny speaker.
I glanced at the screen. “Seriously?” I whispered.
“It’s all I could think of!” she whispered back. “You’re going to have to sing it with me.”
“What?”
“Why else are they going to think you’re here?”
“But I don’t know Spanish!”
“It’s phonetic! Just read the lyrics!”
“But—”
Then she started to sing. “Bésameeeeee. Bésame muchooooo. Como si fuera esta noche la última vez…”
I had not known, until that moment, that Bebe Tandoh is completely tone-deaf. Unfortunately, I am not much better than that. Particularly when singing in a language I don’t know, to a melody I’m not really 100% sure of. I knew my mom had a cover of this on an old CD, but it was like a jazz remix. Diana Krall, maybe? It hardly mattered.
I gaped at Bebe in silent horror while she really tried to sell it, and what she lacked in tonal accuracy she made up for in volume. One of the freshmen said, “That’s so embarrassing.” Bebe slung an arm around my neck as we sang, “Mirarme en tus ojos…” I put a dramatic hand to my forehead because why not.
