by Rachel Vail
“I’m hundred percent not,” I said.
“You can admit it to me, if you like somebody,” Britney whispered. “I’m really good at this kind of thing. I can help if you want to ask one of them out or whatever. But if you were just trying to act cool? You shouldn’t disrespect yourself like that.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But that is not even close to what happened.”
“So what happened? You just, like, made out with him randomly?” Britney asked. “Just really into making out with people? You never really seemed like that, before.”
“He grabbed me and kissed me. I pushed him away.”
Britney stopped, her big eyes wide open. “Wait. No. Is that the truth?”
“Hundred percent,” I said.
“She told me the whole story,” Holly said, behind me. “If Chase is saying something different, he’s lying.”
“I’m telling the truth, Britney,” I said. “It was horrible. He grabbed me, kissed me, and wouldn’t stop when I was pushing him away. That’s why I threw up.”
“That. Is horrible,” Britney said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wanted to get away, to safety, you know? And, to, like, erase it, make it never have happened.”
“Niki.” Britney reached out her green-nail-polished hand and touched my arm. “That’s awful. You poor thing. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay. Thank you.”
“Hang on. So why did Ava say—”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Britney blew a bubble. It popped. She sucked it back into her mouth and chewed a couple of times, thoughtfully. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’m pretty conflict averse, and Britney, for all her adorableness, is fierce and fast. Her jaw was working hard on the gum chewing, and her arms were crossed, but her normally merry eyes were cool, scanning my face.
The sky outside the window in the atrium was darkening, as if night had decided to come in a hurry, like Britney’s suddenly dark mood.
She turned around and started sprinting in the other direction, back toward the lockers.
“Oh . . . kay,” I said to Holly. “Guess she was finished discussing that.”
“That was interesting,” Holly agreed.
Down the hall, Britney stopped, having caught Isabel by the arm. She made Isabel lean down toward her, and whispered something into her ear. They both swiveled their heads toward us. Holly and I still hadn’t glanced at each other but we were standing shoulder to shoulder in the atrium, watching the Squad assemble.
Madeleine danced up between Isabel and Britney, who whispered to her, and now the three of them whispered, then looked at us again.
“Did we just doom ourselves?” I whispered to Holly. “Why does this feel like we’re about to have a battle?”
“With those doorknobs?” she asked. “Who cares what they think? Let’s go.”
I smiled. If only it were that easy, to not care what they think. What magical world would you have to live in, to think it didn’t matter what the Squad thinks of you? To think it wouldn’t affect your day every day for the rest of eighth grade and high school?
“Yeah,” I tried. “Those doorknobs.”
We were just turning away, to continue on to English, when Ava reached the Squad. “Hey!” I heard her say. “I just saw Milo and Robby, and you would not—”
I don’t think they answered her. Madeleine, Isabel, and Britney turned and walked away from Ava, toward us.
Holly and I stopped. Were they coming to fight us? Should I pull my hair back in a ponytail or something? I’d never gotten in a fight, a real fight, but I’ve seen girls do that in videos. I braced myself. Lightning lit the hallway through all the windows, right on cue.
Madeleine, Isabel, and Britney walked with their long strides right between me and Holly. As they passed us, thunder boomed, but I heard Isabel’s voice perfectly well, under it.
“We believe you,” Isabel said to me as they passed. Her hand squeezed my arm.
Nothing much happened in English. We were all kind of subdued and quiet, while the sky went from dark to a strangely bright greenish and the rain started lashing the windows. Ms. Carozi was going on and on about how to write a five-paragraph essay, but I was listening more to the rain than her words, and feeling the electricity in the air that I suspected was from more than just the lightning.
None of us were chatting or making faces at one another.
When the bell rang, we all got up silently and filed out.
The wind had started to really howl by the time I was trying to get my stuff out of my locker. I was dreading the bike ride home, wondering if it would be okay to just leave my bike and walk instead. I swung my backpack over my shoulder, still contemplating that, when I saw Chase, there, looming over me. My stomach clenched and I smooshed my left leg and hip practically into my locker, holding tight to the locker door that I pulled a bit more shut, between us.
“Yo,” Chase said.
Leave me alone, I thought. I don’t want you, I DON’T WANT YOU.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“What?” I managed.
“Sorry,” he said. “If you’re upset, or . . .”
“No,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Uh-uh.” My hands were clenching the straps of my backpack and I was scared, but come on. I was feeling that weird empty feeling again, like I’d felt when Ava dissed my whole family, only this time I knew the name of it. Not emptiness. Rage.
“What’s ‘uh-uh’?” Chase imitated.
“That’s not an apology.”
“If you want an engraved—”
“If you’re sorry, be sorry,” I said, surprising myself. A tiny voice in my head was urging me to shut up, be cool, shrug it off—but a louder voice was yelling NO, and that’s the one I decided to listen to for once. I don’t know. That non-apology apology just boiled me right up. “Own it. Say it. Are you sorry?”
“I just said it. Sorry if you’re upset,” Chase mumbled. “Ugh.”
“No,” I said. “You know you grabbed me, you know you kissed me and kept kissing me when I was trying to push you away, you know you did a wrong thing. Be sorry for what you did. Not if I’m upset. I am upset! You know I am—I’m more than upset. I threw up! You know that. You were the one person there who knew why I was puking. You knew exactly why I left. And you knew it was because of what YOU did. To me. But did you care? No. You kissed me because you wanted to, without even a thought of what I wanted.”
“How am I supposed to know what you want?” Chase grunted.
Body language, I thought, but what I said was, “You could ASK!”
“Ask?”
“Yeah! And then listen to the ANSWER! You don’t have to guess!”
“I thought you wanted to. You were, like, you seemed . . .”
“I was pushing you away,” I said.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“You held on to my arms while I was pushing you away.”
“Look, I said I’m sorry, okay?”
“You said you’re sorry if I’m upset! Well, I am upset! But that is not enough of an apology.”
I looked around. Everybody was staring at me. Chase’s skull-face was bright red.
“Okay,” he mumbled. “Sorry. Okay?”
I waited. I had never made a scene at school before. Now what?
“And you promise never to touch me again.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“And from now on, if you want to kiss somebody—ask first!”
“I thought you liked me,” he mumbled, suddenly bashful. “I like you. So I . . .”
“You should still ask,” I said, quieter. “It’s super romantic, and if the person likes you back, it’ll be great, I promise you. But if she doe
sn’t, it won’t be a disaster. You can accept it and be friends. But you both get to choose, you know?”
He nodded without lifting his eyes. “Okay. We okay?”
“I guess so,” I said.
He turned around and dashed toward the stairwell. He’s really fast.
Holly smiled at me. “That was awesome. You good?”
“Yeah, really good,” I said. “Not pukey at all! Wanna come over?”
“Ayuh,” Holly said.
41
ON OUR WAY out, Ava came dashing over to me. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, great, thanks,” I said, and kept walking.
“I know you hate confrontation,” she whispered to me. “We all think that was totally brave of you, how you handled that, with Chase, just now. We’re the ones who made him apologize to you.”
“Thanks,” I said, slightly confused, slightly intrigued I admit, slightly wondering: Is this the beginning of her apology to me? “I appreciate that.”
“Listen,” Ava whispered, pulling me closer. “Do you want a ride home? My mom’s picking us up. You know how she is about weather! You don’t want to scoot home in this.”
“I rode my bike.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. But I think I’ll leave it here.”
“So you want a ride?” Ava asked.
I glanced at Holly. She shrugged, like whatever, maybe better than walking home in a hurricane, though, barely.
“You don’t think she’d mind taking me and Holly to my house?”
“Holly?” Ava asked, as if she had no idea who I was talking about.
“Yeah,” I said.
Ava leaned closer, her face in my hair. “I’m just not sure there’ll be room. You know, with the Squad in there, and honestly, they like you but . . .”
“Okay,” I said.
“Great,” Ava said, and smiled apologetically at Holly. “Sorry, Holly.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, we’re okay, then, walking home. It’ll be fun.”
Ava raised one eyebrow, the look that sends icicles through my forehead. “Suit yourself.”
“Good advice,” I said.
She sped up down the stairs, calling to Britney up ahead.
“You okay?” Holly said.
I let my breath out. I wanted to say, Are you kidding? I’m awesome! But in fact there was a pit in my stomach, watching the strawberry-blonde ponytail of my (I guess ex) best friend get farther away. Though: no icicles. So maybe that’s progress?
“It’s not as easy as with Chase,” Holly said. “You were best friends a long time.”
I nodded.
We pushed out the door. It was hard to see, with the rain coming at us sideways and sticks blowing past. Holly flipped the hood of her sweatshirt up. I yanked my hair back in a ponytail. Like for a fight?
“Wow, this storm is not kidding!” Holly yelled over the roar of the rain.
“We’ll be fine!” I hollered.
“Is the universe telling us to get a ride?” she asked.
“The universe is daring us to be brave!”
“HAVE AT US, UNIVERSE!” Holly agreed.
“YOU CAN’T SCARE US, UNIVERSE!” I yelled, and then added, “PERSPECTIVE!”
“YEAH!” Holly shouted, then turned to me. “Perspective?”
“YEAH!”
“YEAH!”
We had gotten almost down the hill, still on school property, clinging to each other and laughing, when we caught up with Nadine and Beth.
“Yikes!” Beth yelled. “This is utterly bonkers! We’re gonna die!”
“Not today,” I told her.
Holly laughed. “Good plan!”
We were all soaked through, squinting in the teeming rain and raging wind. “Hey, do you guys want to come over?” I asked. “I live pretty close.”
They couldn’t hear me so I had to yell it a few more times. They both said yes, though Beth said she’d have to check in with her dad when we got there. Her phone had already died and the rest of us agreed it didn’t make any sense to take out our phones. We’d just push on through and get to my house, and then call all the parents to let them know we were safe.
A stick whipped a few inches from my face. I jumped. They all shrieked and asked if I was okay. “I’m great,” I said, and I meant it. I was completely soaked and a little scared of getting struck by lightning and killed, but I wasn’t worried about being weird or how awful my hair looked, so, on balance, I was actually great.
“Let’s hang on to one another’s backpacks,” I suggested. “We won’t lose anybody, that way. Okay?”
They all agreed, and the four of us made a train, hands on backpacks, leaning forward into the storm. “Okay, okay,” I started shout-singing. My friends, behind me, joined in.
A car was beeping beside us.
“Who’s that?” Beth asked.
I don’t think I’ve ever been that wet even in the shower. My glasses were in my backpack and everything looked like an impressionist painting to me.
But then I heard Ava’s mom Samantha’s voice yelling, “Get in! Girls! Hurry up!”
The back door of their SUV opened. We glanced at one another, but when the lightning lit us all up and the thunder boomed, we piled into the empty back seat of the truck.
“Thanks!” I said to Samantha.
“It’s crazytown out! What were you thinking, you ba-nanas!”
“Where’s the Squad?” Holly asked Ava, who was in the front seat, staring straight ahead.
“Meeting me at my house,” she said.
“Are we having a hurricane party?” Samantha asked. “What a great idea. Do you girls want to come over too? We have a generator, so even if the power goes out, you can still watch your movies or whatever you want to do. Niki, you haven’t seen Ava’s room since we finished painting and redecorating it!”
“Oh, thank you so much,” Holly said. “But we have plans to go to Niki’s already. Is that okay?”
“Oh,” Samantha said, glancing at Ava, whose face was turned away.
“Do you mind dropping us at my house, Samantha?” I asked.
“Don’t mind at all,” she said. “This is why we have this beast. You kids have no idea how much your parents are probably going nuts right now with worry about where you are. It’s not safe out.”
The rain pounded so hard on the windshield as Samantha drove, I could see a flash of the road, then just wet, as the windshield wipers metronomed not safe not safe not safe. I sat back and closed my eyes.
“Yikes!” Samantha yelled. “Somebody build an ark!”
She was trying to sound cheery, but for once she had both hands on the wheel and was gripping it, hard.
An ark.
I looked over at Holly. “An ark,” I whispered. “That is what we need.”
She grabbed my hand, and, with her other hand, grabbed Nadine’s. Nadine grabbed Beth’s just as we skidded a little on the road. “Whoa,” Sam said, recovering.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” Sam said. “It’s just so flooded already!”
She took a deep breath and kept going, even slower.
The dirt road to my house was basically a mud puddle. Their street, Ocean Way, is fully paved. “You can just leave us off here,” I said.
“Don’t be silly,” Sam said. “The beast can get through any weather.”
She drove slowly, leaning forward.
As we pulled into the driveway, I saw Mom’s bright blue car with the lights on, in the flashes of clear as the wipers swiped uselessly at the windshield.
42
MOM JUMPED OUT of her car. “Niki! I was texting and calling you!” she yelled.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot I had turned my phone off and then we—”
“I was so scared you were in a ditch on the side of the road or hit by lightning on that stupid bike, or . . .”
“Mom!” She was soaked and yelling our family business in front of everyone, and maybe crying, I don’t know. Her mascara was running down her cheeks.
“And my stupid car won’t start and, oh, Niki, I’m so glad you’re okay.”
She grabbed me into a hug.
“I mean, it’s okay if you’re not okay,” she whispered through my wet hair. “I just want you to be a little okay, sorry.”
“Mom, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
She held my wet face for a second with her strong, wet hands, then let go and waved at Samantha.
Samantha opened her window, despite the teeming rain, and Mom ran over to her, saying thank you and sorry. Samantha, her hair and mascara ruined too, was answering, no and of course and you were completely right, I’m so sorry, I never meant . . .
And then they were hugging, awkwardly, through the open window.
Ava was still looking out the opposite way, away from me.
Mom waved as Sam backed out of our driveway and pulled away, then turned to look at bedraggled us, standing dripping on our porch. I looked at us too. We were definitely not a fashionable crew. I turned back to Mom, steeling myself for the forced smile to hide judgment on them, on me.
Instead, when she got up onto the porch, she sniffled, pushed her stringy hair off her face, and said, “Hi, girls,” with a giggle in her voice. “Nice weather, huh?”
“Smiles, sunshine, and a quick cleanup make everything better,” Holly said.
“Wow,” Mom said. “That’s what my mom always said! I don’t know. I’m starting to find that expression kind of annoying and fake, you know? Maybe you also need a few towels, to make things better.”
“Sounds good to me!” Nadine said.
“Good, better, best,” I said as we all walked in.
“Ugh,” Mom said. “Let’s let it rest!”
“Okay,” I said. “Rest sounds good.”
“Doesn’t it?” Mom asked. “Niki, come help me get towels for everybody.”
