“It’s separate, and it’s not separate. Some of the people messing with me are her friends, I guess. They’re all in a club together.”
“Ah, a club,” Dr. Lipton said. “Let me guess, the Magpies?”
“Yeah, I was in it for a while,” I said. It was a relief to tell someone finally.
“This is largely the point of the club, to make outsiders feel badly and to constantly threaten insiders with losing their special status. These dynamics are always fraught with danger. I’m not surprised to hear it has gotten out of hand again.”
I shook my head as my eyes filled with tears. “But what they’re doing—it’s so much worse than I ever thought it would be.”
“Harassment is prohibited by the code of conduct, you know.” Dr. Lipton said. “If what these girls are doing rises to that level and they’re doing it on school grounds, they could be expelled. In fact, I’d be obligated to report it to the headmaster.”
I thought about the pictures and the texts and my field hockey uniform covered in blood-soaked waste. I thought about the whispers and the crickets. How the word dyke kept popping up everywhere. But did I want them all thrown out of school, if “them all” ended up including Dylan? And what about Sylvia? How would she survive what they’d do to her?
I looked at Dr. Lipton, my heart beating fast. “But you said this was all confidential.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “It is.” She held up a finger. “Provided no one is in danger.”
She looked at me hard. Danger. She was worried I was going to kill myself or something. The thought had never occurred to me.
“I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you mean. I just wouldn’t—that’s not the kind of thing I’d ever do,” I said. “But if that changes, I’ll for sure let you know.”
“Have you told your parents?”
“It’s just my mom,” I said. It was a reflex. “But no, I haven’t told her.”
I hated that I’d turned into such a teenage cliché. I would have sworn six weeks earlier that I would definitely have told my mom everything. That I would have told her at the beginning. But six weeks ago, my life had been a whole lot less complicated.
“You should tell her,” Dr. Lipton said firmly. “Your mom loves you. She’s there to help you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. My mom trying to help and making a bigger mess out of everything.”
“At a minimum, you need to confide in someone,” Dr. Lipton said. “Bullies thrive on shame and alienation. You need to reach out to at least one friend, tell her about what’s going on. You need a support network,” Dr. Lipton said. “Can you do that?”
I nodded, even though I was beyond dreading it. Sylvia was, of course, that friend I’d have to go to, and she was going to be seriously pissed off when she found out about the Maggies. Not to mention that I was totally embarrassed. This was exactly why she—and I—had thought that the clubs sucked in the first place. Their whole purpose was to make people’s lives hell.
“Then I want you to write this girl a letter, an e-mail, with all the questions you want to ask her,” Dr. Lipton went on. “Everything you want to know about what happened. Everything you’re afraid to know. But do not send it. I want you to imagine the answers.”
“Imagine them?” That sounded so totally dumb.
“Yes, imagine them. Do not send it,” she repeated firmly. “This exercise is designed to give you control over the situation and your feelings. I think you will find that you already have all the answers you need.”
“Okay,” I said, even though the whole thing still sounded stupid.
“Agreed?” Dr. Lipton asked. She was staring at me, waiting for an answer.
“Oh yeah, okay. Sure.”
“Good then.” She walked over and opened her office door. “Then make an appointment to come back to see me next week. I’ll want an update. We can talk more then about your confiding in your mother.”
When I finally found Sylvia at lunchtime, she was in the courtyard with Ian. They were sitting at a table, knees touching as they talked. A few days earlier they’d been practically broken up. They hadn’t, but things between them still didn’t look good. Ian kept looking around, then pulling back like he was searching for a pocket of air or a place to hide.
Poor Sylvia. Her heart on the verge of being broken again. But there was a little part of me that was glad she was about to need me as much as I needed her. Brokenhearted Sylvia was a lot more generous than in-love Sylvia. At the moment, though, she was so wrapped up in Ian that she didn’t even notice me until I was standing right next to her.
“Oh hi,” she said, finally looking up. She looked kind of pissed that I was interrupting. “What’s up?”
Ian looked thrilled that I’d arrived.
“Oh here,” he said, jumping up. “Take my seat. I need to be going anyway.”
“Going where?” Sylvia asked him. “We didn’t even talk about this weekend. The concert?”
“Oh right, at the Living Room.” Ian rubbed a hand across his forehead and sucked some air in through his teeth. “About that. Turns out I won’t be able to make it after all. But you should go on, have a great time, luv. We can catch up later in the weekend.”
My stomach tightened as I watched Sylvia’s face falling. Telling her about my crap would have to wait. I had to help her salvage this conversation. She needed to see it through, for better or worse. I was actually kind of hoping for worse, that she’d put some more pressure on Ian and he’d end up breaking up with her once and for all. Because these half measures were like watching some mostly squashed squirrel trying to drag himself out of the middle of the road.
“No, you should stay, Ian,” I said, stepping back. “I just wanted to say hi. I’ll catch you later, Sylvia.”
I spun around before Ian could stop me and rushed back across the courtyard. When I looked back, Ian and Sylvia were still there together, still not talking. Ian was kicking at the ground with one fashionable European sneaker. Sylvia was watching him, waiting.
The whole rest of the day went by without anything else bad happening—nothing was taken from my locker, nothing written on it. I could hardly believe it. I didn’t even get any more texts. By the time I was back home that night, e-mailing the final version of my Virginia Woolf paper to Liv, I was almost feeling relaxed. I figured Zadie had gotten bored with making my life a living hell.
I’d just managed to get myself to fall asleep when the first text came. And when my phone pinged with that first message—SKANK—it scared the shit out of me. My heart was pounding as I sat up in bed, staring at my phone. It had been smart of them to hold off all day. Thinking it was over made it so much worse when it started up again.
After the first one, the messages came—over and over and over. Each more sick than the last, each with the same picture attached, one that I had never seen. It was me kissing Dylan. Except you couldn’t tell that it was Dylan. Only that it was me—definitely me, definitely kissing some girl.
“Can we bag first period?” I asked Sylvia when I met her at the corner the next morning. We were still four blocks away from school. Far enough that we could duck out of the flow without anyone asking questions. “We could go get a muffin or something.”
“Did Amelia Baron seriously just suggest that we skip school?” Sylvia batted her eyes, pressed a hand to her chest, and pretended to choke. “What’s next, the stripper pole?”
“I’m serious, Sylvia. I just—” I turned to look at the school. “I can’t deal right now. Besides, I’ll only be missing art. That doesn’t even count as skipping school.”
“I’d be missing Spanish, but considering the fact that I can’t understand a goddamn thing anyone is saying in that stupid class, I don’t think that counts as skipping either.” She linked her arm through mine. “Now, this isn’t some ploy to get me alone so you can try to make out with me, is it?” She rolled her eyes as we ducked back down the street, heading for Seventh Avenue. “Consid
ering you are a lesbian and all.”
“You seriously still don’t believe me?” I asked when we were halfway down the block.
Sylvia had texted me a couple of times after I’d told her I was gay with a WTF!! But I’d been avoiding getting into it with her. It wasn’t hard. She was so obsessed with Ian that she kept forgetting to ask me about it when we were actually together.
“I believe that you believe it,” Sylvia said, checking over her shoulder to see if anyone was following us. There were truant officers in the neighborhood, but they tended to be a little racist. They probably wouldn’t bother two young white girls whose parents might be more pissed that their kids had been hassled than about their skipping school. “Just because you can’t be normal around guys doesn’t mean you don’t like them. Maybe you’re not gay, you’re just a freak.”
“Wow, thanks.”
Without talking about it, we both headed in the same direction, toward the Connecticut Muffin across the street from PS 321. We always went there whenever we were out of school and the public schools weren’t. We liked sitting there, watching all those little public-school kids floating by in that huge nutso sea of people. There was something nice about how big and messy it all was. By comparison, it made the morning insanity at our school seem like nothing.
“So what is up with Ian?” I asked once we’d each gotten a muffin—lemon poppy for me, blueberry for Sylvia—and were sitting on the high stools facing the window. I’d get to Dylan and the Maggies, but I needed to warm up first.
“I don’t know.” Sylvia shrugged. “I finally accept that Susan Dolan has a boyfriend. I saw her kissing him, and she seemed really into him. Ian says everything is fine between us, but he’s still acting weird. There’s somebody else—not Susan, but somebody.”
I didn’t doubt anymore that she was right.
“Any idea who?”
Sylvia shrugged. “I’m starting to think it doesn’t even matter.” Finally, she swiveled in my direction. “But what about you? Supposedly playing for the other team is way more interesting than Ian.”
I held my breath for a second. This was my chance. I needed to come clean, about everything. I needed an ally, like Dr. Lipton had said, and Sylvia was my best option, my only option, really. She was going to be mad about the Maggies, and my lies, for sure. The only way to find out how mad was to tell her.
“I did something stupid,” I started finally. “And you’re going to be mad at me.”
“I don’t care if you really are a lesbo, you know,” she said. “It’s just less competition for me.”
I laughed, hard. A real laugh, too. Only Sylvia could have made me laugh at a moment like that. Because only she would have seen me liking girls as a chance for her to get more boys. She was a lot of things, but judgmental had never been one of them. This was going to be okay. All of it. I took another deep breath and sank down on my stool, leaning against the thin strip of counter that ran along Connecticut Muffin’s window. Getting the worst part out of the way first was the only way to go.
“I got tapped by a club.”
“What?” Sylvia blinked at me.
“I got tapped.”
“What?” She asked again, louder this time. Her eyes were even wider. “What club?”
“The Maggies.”
“Holy— And you didn’t tell me?” she asked, looking more floored than mad. “I bet no one has ever told them no. The Maggies, man, they must have been pissed. You have to tell me the whole story.”
I took a deep breath and stared down at my half-eaten muffin.
“I didn’t tell them no.”
Sylvia’s face froze for a second, then crunched up into seriously pissed off.
“You joined the Maggies? When?”
I sucked in a breath.
“At the beginning of the year,” I said quietly.
“You’re lying!” Sylvia shouted, jumping off her stool. “There’s no way you would have been in a club this whole time and never told me!” I could feel the guy behind the counter watching us, trying to decide whether to throw us out. “And what about our pact? You decided to forget all about that?”
Sylvia was right. I was a complete asshole.
“I don’t know what happened.” It was a beyond-lame excuse, but it was totally the truth for a change. “They invited me to join, and I guess—you always have a boyfriend and my mom’s never around or whatever. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have anyone.”
“Oh please.” Sylvia’s voice was cold. “Cry me a fucking river.”
When I looked up at her, her face was still all pinched up, but her eyes had filled with tears.
“I’m sorry, Sylvia,” I said. She was right, it had been a totally selfish, disloyal, mean thing to do. “And I know sorry’s not enough, but I don’t know what else to say.”
Sylvia moved her jaw back and forth, and with each slide of it some of her anger seemed to leak out. Finally, she pulled a hand up to her face, halfway covering her mouth.
“God, I am so fucking stupid,” she said, her voice a little muffled. “Here I was, feeling bad because I was spending so much time with Ian, and the whole time you were out with all your new secret friends. I have to hand it to you, Baron, you are one good fucking liar.”
She was right. I had told so many lies. They were piled up, smothering me.
“It just kind of happened, and then I didn’t know how to get out,” I said. When I glanced over in Sylvia’s direction, she was still glaring at me. But at least she hadn’t stormed out; that had to count for something. “And then I, like, fell for somebody in the club, too, and I was worried I would lose her if I dropped out. You know what that’s like, doing something because of someone you like. It’s not always so well thought out.”
“Is that like a reverse gay panic defense or something?” she snapped. “You get to lie to your best friend and be a total dickhead because you’re gay?” Putting it that way, it did sound really stupid. I hung my head and shrugged. “I do a lot of crappy stuff, Amelia. Maybe I’m all about me sometimes and kind of slutty and I make bad choice for guys I like. But I have never, ever lied, not to you.”
And it was true. Sylvia was always honest, even when it would be easier on both of us if she wasn’t.
I was out of excuses. I turned to look at her. Sylvia was staring out the windows now, face a little less angry, a lot more hurt. I sat there, staring at this girl who had been my best friend for almost ten years, who’d stuck by me through third-grade teasing, and a sometimes MIA mom, and a broken ankle in the middle of the summer, and bad haircuts, and ugly sweaters. This friend who had never, ever judged me or asked for me to be anything other than who I was. And all I could do was hate myself. How could I have picked anyone over being honest with her?
“I’m sorry, Sylvia. I really, really am.”
I’d expected her to tell me to go to hell then. To say she never wanted to talk to me again. But she just kept on looking out the window. Finally, she took a huffy breath and climbed back up onto her stool.
“Okay, so spill it,” she said, still not looking at me. “Because now you definitely owe me every disgusting triple-X detail. First off, who is she?”
I was so relieved, I almost started to cry.
“Dylan Crosby,” I said, praying that nothing I said now would make Sylvia turn on me again.
“Seriously?” Sylvia whipped her head in my direction. “I thought she was sleeping with Woodhouse.”
I shook my head. “I’m pretty sure she was just sleeping with me.”
“Wow, I did not see that one coming.” Sylvia nodded then. “She is hot, I’ll give you that. If you were going to pick some other chick over me, I’m glad she was at least good-looking. But the Maggies?” She stuck a finger down her throat and made a gagging sound. “I mean, I seriously can’t be your friend anymore if you turn into one of those bobbleheaded bitches.”
“You don’t have to worry,” I said. “They already kicked me out. And Dylan dumped me, too
.”
“Ew, bitches.” Sylvia looked offended on my behalf. “What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “Zadie hates me, and she has this weird possessive thing with Dylan.”
“Ooh, Zadie, yikes.” Sylvia said. “She’s gay, too?”
“No,” I said. “Which makes the whole thing even weirder.”
Sylvia blew out some air. “That chick is seriously coco loco. You should steer way clear of her.”
“It’s way too late for that,” I said. “Anyway, I decided last night that I want to send Dylan an e-mail. I was hoping you could help me.”
I had heard what Dr. Lipton had said about not sending it. But I was going to have to agree to disagree on that point. It wasn’t like I’d made up what Dylan and I had had together. And I needed her to tell me how she could just throw that away. Besides, maybe she was just waiting for me to change her mind.
“An e-mail? Um, you sure that’s such a good idea?” Sylvia asked. “Because it sounds like a seriously shit plan to me. If Dylan won’t talk to you it’s because she doesn’t want to. At least not bad enough. Take it from me, it’s good to listen to people when they tell you something like that.”
As if Sylvia had not sent literally hundreds of the exact same e-mail, in the face of much worse rejection. I stared at her for a long time, waiting for the same thing to occur to her. Finally, she shrugged.
“Okay, fair enough,” she said, holding up her hands. “I’ll come over after school, and we can write it together. But just because I’ve sent a whole lot of e-mails like that doesn’t mean any of them ever worked. At least, not in the way I wanted them to.”
“Well,” I said, smiling, “there’s always a first time for everything.”
gRaCeFULLY
OCTOBER 24TH
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Because there are 176 definitions for the word loser on urbandictionary.com.
Reconstructing Amelia Page 27
