I take a deep breath and nod, hard. I sneak a glance at Dom, because I want him to believe me. I want more than anything for him to go back to being mad, just so he’ll leave me alone. But he persists. He leans in again and says, “You sure?” And I just lose it. I slam down the book I’m holding hard enough on my desk that the people around us look at me even more intently than they’ve been staring all morning.
“Jesus! I’m fine. Why are you suddenly acting like you care?”
Dom frowns at me. He doesn’t roll his eyes or change his posture at all. He just keeps looking at me, and eventually he looks away.
“I don’t know,” he says. “My bad.”
As soon as the bell rings, I shoulder my bag and fly from the room. I push my way through the crowded halls thinking about nothing but the irony of that line from Othello when I’m questioning everything.
Men should be what they seem.
I need to find a place to hide so I won’t have to endure everyone’s stares for the rest of the day. So obviously I head straight to the library, to tuck myself away in the stacks. I push my earbuds in and turn the Cover Girls all the way up, and I don’t stop when I think I hear someone calling my name—I just walk even faster. I’m only a few feet away from the library door, inches from freedom, when I feel a hand encircle my wrist.
I turn to see who’s grabbed me and it’s Valeria. Her cheeks are blotchy like she’s hot or upset, the same way Sloane’s get, and her fluffy auburn hair is falling out of its ponytail.
“Valeria?” I ask. I pull my wrist out of her grip and yank out my earbuds. “What are you doing?”
She’s out of breath. She must have seen me as I passed through the senior hall and run after me the whole way from there.
“Hey,” she says. “Gimme a minute.” She bends over, her hands on her knees, her breath coming in quick bursts, and I wonder how she sings the way she does if jogging down a hallway winds her like this.
I say, “Valeria, I gotta go.”
I turn and open the door to the library, but she follows me in. “Wait,” she says.
“What?” I whisper. Ms. White, the librarian, shushes us anyway.
She looks behind her, like she’s making sure no one else hears what she’s about to say. But the library is nearly empty because most people are in class, and the halls are too since first period starts in just a few minutes.
“I’ve been looking for you all morning,” Valeria says. She pulls the ponytail holder out of her hair and twists her giant curls into a messy topknot, roughly securing it like an animal she needs to tame. “I thought you were in Mr. Yoon’s homeroom?”
“I am. I was in the bathroom for most of the period,” I tell her. Sydney and Willa’s concerned faces flash in my mind but I force them away.
“Oh,” she says. “Well.” She smooths the sides of her head and tucks errant strands into the bun.
Valeria has maybe said three words to me since Layla joined chorus, but she’s always seemed nicer than the other girls. I sigh through my nose, because if she ran all the way down the hall to tell me something, the least I can do is listen.
“Don’t freak,” she says, slipping her thumbs behind the yellow straps of her backpack. “But I’m pretty sure my cousin started the rumor about your dad.”
YOU DESERVED TO KNOW
I’ve never been in a fight before.
I’m not really the fighting type. I like books and jazz-age music and hugs. And I’ll admit I like talking shit, but rarely do I do it to anyone’s face.
But Sloane is testing my nonviolent nature for the second time in the span of a few months. She is still changing things about my world that I knew to be true: that Layla and I would be friends forever; that people are basically good. And she is dangerously close to making me into the kind of girl I never thought I’d be: the kind of girl who punches other girls right in the face.
“What,” I say to Valeria, hoping that I heard her wrong, though my what doesn’t sound like a question. My next sentence is punctuated with hard blinks and pauses between my words. “What. Do. You. Mean?”
Valeria is speechless at first. And the longer she doesn’t answer, the more I start putting things together myself.
Sloane swore she would get revenge for letting Todd into her house back in October. She threatened me, if only with a look and an implication, and so for a while I was expecting some kind of retaliation. Once everything happened with Layla, I’d thought it was over. But she waited until my guard was down before she attacked for real because she’s pure evil. Still, I feel like I’m missing something.
“I don’t know how else to say it,” Valeria mutters. “I’m almost positive it was her. She’s had it out for you for months, Cleo. You know that as well as I do. And when she found out you were the person who sent that email about Todd…”
“Wait. How does she know I sent the email?” I realize too late that I’ve just admitted to it; that if there was any question that I hadn’t sent it, that uncertainty is gone. Valeria doesn’t even blink.
“Sloane had this theory for a while that it was you. And then, the other night, she was on Layla’s phone looking through her texts and saw that Layla had texted you basically the whole story the night of the Halloween party. She threw Layla’s phone against the wall, and they were screaming at each other in my room so much that I thought they were going to literally kill each other. It was a mess. But now they seem fine and Sloane’s not mad anymore and today this rumor surfaces? It seems too convenient not to be connected. It seems like Sloane.”
I pace a little and Valeria just stands there as I process everything. That’s what she and Layla were fighting about—my email and all the big truths and tiny lies I told. That Layla had given me the information that became my only weapon against Sloane. And now Sloane was trying to ruin me, just the way I’d ruined her. The only difference is my email only hurt one life, temporarily. Her text could hurt two, for good.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, because Valeria is Sloane’s cousin. She should hate me for sending that email and airing all of her relative’s dirty laundry.
Valeria shrugs. “Sending that email was wrong. But her saying this about your dad is next-level evil. I can’t get with it, and even though Sloane’s my cousin, she’s always been kind of a bitch. Besides, I never spoke up while everything was happening in December. I didn’t, like, contribute, but I didn’t stop it either. My mom always says If you grin, you’re in, and I never got what she meant until now.” Valeria takes a deep breath and fiddles with a tiny stuffed monkey hanging from her backpack strap. “Anyway, I thought you deserved to know,” she says without meeting my eyes.
I nod.
“What are you going to do?” she says. I’m so sick of people asking me that, but I swallow hard and look right at her.
I used to have Layla to fight my battles, but I haven’t had her for a while. I think it’s about time I learn to fight for myself. “Thanks for telling me, but now this is between me and Sloane,” I say. I force myself to smile.
“Since your cousin knows about the email, she should know by now—I’m not a girl to be fucked with.”
then: December, week 3
WHAT’S DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE
Just like I’d hoped, by Monday, everyone in school knew Sloane’s deepest secrets. But I hadn’t predicted how awful people whispering about her would make me feel.
While I was at my locker, I heard someone say that after everything with Todd had happened, Sloane had attempted suicide, which was not something I put in the email. “Who told you that?” I asked the girl I heard say it, but she wouldn’t reveal her source.
In the bathroom, I heard people whispering that Sloane’s father had gotten a restraining order against Todd and that if he violated it, he could be arrested (that part was one of my lies).
By lunch I’d
heard everything—from one version where the cops broke up Sloane’s Halloween party to one in which Sloane’s parents actually pressed charges against Todd and he had to drop out of college because his parents needed his tuition money to pay lawyers’ fees. I was horrified. But as Shakespeare wrote, What’s done cannot be undone, so I just gritted my teeth, waiting for what I knew was coming.
It took longer than I expected. In the hallway, Sloane’s eyes and cheeks were bright red. She was surrounded by the Chorus Girls, and they barely reacted when I walked by. I only glanced at her for a second, but when I did, she glared at me like she knew. But Layla was still standing beside her with one arm tossed over her shoulder. Layla sent daggers my way from her eyes too.
“Shit,” I said once I turned a corner and found myself alone. “Shit, shit, shit.” I ran through the details of the email again, piece by piece. I’d been careful. She couldn’t know it was me, even if she suspected it was.
I was walking by the library, Sarah Vaughan’s “Black Coffee” streaming into my ears, when someone yanked on my arm pretty violently. I spun around and there she was. Layla.
“In,” Layla said through her teeth. And then she shoved open the door of the library. Reluctantly, I followed her.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Layla said the second we were in what used to be “our” corner of the stacks. I didn’t say a word.
“I can’t b-believe this,” Layla said. “I told you not to t-t-tell anyone any of that!”
I crossed my arms and stared at her. I stayed quiet the same way she had when her new friends were torturing me.
She opened her mouth, but she got blocked. I just kept staring, waiting. I had nothing to say to her.
“Seriously, C-C-Cleo. That was so low. For you t-to send that around? I thought you were b-b-better than that.”
“And I thought you were my friend. But I guess we both thought wrong, huh?”
“You know, Sloane already knows you d-did it.”
I felt a little scared, but I didn’t let the fear show. My heart was pounding, but I laughed in her face.
“Prove it,” I whispered.
Layla squinted at me and turned, like she was about to leave. “So I’m guessing Sloane doesn’t know that you’re the one who told me,” I said.
She spun back around. “Keep your voice down,” she hissed.
I grinned. “That’s what I thought. If you don’t want her to find out, I suggest you don’t confirm anything. And tell all your bitchy friends to leave me the hell alone. If they don’t, I’ll send another one naming you as the source.”
Layla’s wide eyes grew even wider. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered. For one absurd moment, Layla looked like a Disney princess, with her silky hair and her eye makeup, her smooth skin and the shocked look on her face. She looked like she wasn’t real, which made it easier for me to stand my ground.
I took a step closer to her. “Try me,” I said through gritted teeth.
Layla really did leave then. And the second I couldn’t see her in the aisle anymore, I fell against the shelves and sank into a crouch. With my face in my hands, I cried, letting all the tension pour out of me like rain.
* * *
—
For the rest of the week, Layla brushed past me in the hallway, so close that our shoulders touched, like she wanted me to know she saw me and she was snubbing me on purpose. Sometimes none of the other Chorus Girls were even around, so I couldn’t tell myself her coldness was for their benefit—it was all just for me. But dealing with her passive nastiness was a small price to pay, because the rest of them had stopped their whispering. I could go to my locker and not worry about being accosted. I could use the bathroom without worrying about being locked inside. I could post a selfie and know that no one would call me hideous or freak in the comments. It was blissful. I went to class and settled back into my life mostly as it had been before…minus Layla. And it was, if not nice, at least better.
On Thursday, when I saw all of them clustered just outside homeroom, though, I got nervous. But as I approached, they didn’t turn to jeer or leer at me. It was like they didn’t see me at all, which was a significant improvement from my life pre-email, so I continued on my way.
As I passed, I couldn’t help but overhear what they were talking about. It was the last day of classes before winter break and they were all aflutter, excited about the musical’s premiere that night. In the midst of everything else that had been happening, I had totally forgotten about it.
I watched Layla closely, but she seemed fine—not the least bit nervous. I watched the way she turned as various girls called out, “L, did you figure out that note in the third song?” and “L, are you free to run lines at lunch?” and “L, your stage makeup at dress rehearsal was lit. Can you do mine tonight?” She nodded and said yes and pulled eyeliner from her bag and waved it in the air and I could tell that they all loved her. I despised them.
Then Sloane noticed me. She suddenly couldn’t stop saying my name. She hoped Cleo didn’t have the nerve to show her face tonight. She hoped Cleo at least had the decency to let Layla make her debut in peace. “You’re going to kill it, and you shouldn’t feel like you have anything to prove to anyone, especially her.”
THE MUSICAL
I hadn’t been planning to go to the musical. But Sloane’s words had been swirling through my head all afternoon, and when last bell rang I decided that I would. Because fuck Sloane. I’d let her dictate how I moved through this school for long enough.
And I was sick of Layla too. I wanted her to fail. She’d stood by for days while her new “friends” made my life hell and didn’t even have the decency to ask them to stop until I blackmailed her into it. The more I thought about it all, the angrier I got, and as time crept closer to curtain, the fierceness in my chest built into fire. By the time Jase and Mase showed up in the balcony, where I had gone to sit alone, I could barely sit still I was so mad, so ready for a fight.
They sat down on either side of me right before the lights dimmed, and when Mason’s elbow touched mine I said, “Watch it.”
“My bad,” Mason said. “Jeez.”
“Cleo Imani Baker,” Jase stage-whispered. “How the hell are ya?”
He wouldn’t want to know the honest answer to that question, so I took a deep breath trying to calm myself. They’re not the enemy, I repeated inside my head. I knew I had a right to be angry, but none of this was their fault.
“You cut it pretty close,” I whispered to them both. I nodded at Mason, apologizing for flipping out about his elbow, and he nodded back and immediately started texting. He had a small bundle of wildflowers tied with twine, and I knew they were for Layla. The sight of them made me feel petty and pissed all over again. I wanted to knock them off his lap and stomp them into the floor.
“Yo, that light is gonna be mad distracting for the actors,” Jase said to Mason.
“Who made you the phone police?” Mason asked him with a grin, but he put his phone away a minute later, before reaching behind me to tug at one of my braids, clearly trying to make me loosen up.
“Ow!” I said, and Jase started laughing. “I’m not in the mood for your crap, Mase. Seriously.”
He put both his hands up like he was under arrest. “My bad, Baker.”
God, boys were so annoying.
Music began to swell and I trained my eyes on the stage. “Shut it. It’s starting.”
In the dark of the auditorium, sandwiched between Mason and Jase, I could easily pretend that everything was fine—that I was just a normal girl at a school play with friends. But seeing Layla up onstage when there was a whole theater between us felt like a sign, or at least a metaphor: there was an impossible distance between us, a tear in the fabric of who we were to each other, a displacement of what and where we used to be. Things would never be as they were again.
When Layla came out onstage, I sat up a little straighter, and for almost an entire act, she was absolutely flawless. She flirted with Trey Parsons, the kid playing George Bailey, slapping him across the chest and fluttering her eyelashes. They sang a song and I could feel how surprised the audience was at the power and clarity of Layla’s voice.
“Damn, she’s good,” Jase whispered, and I didn’t know how to feel. Part of me was enjoying the show, and I couldn’t help but feel happy in the way you always do when you’re wrapped up in a story. Maybe a small part of me was proud of Layla too, despite our ongoing problems. But dark thoughts about the Chorus Girls and all that had happened between us snuck in and hovered over everything like a shadow. I crossed my arms and kept watching.
Layla stepped forward to deliver her next line.
“George Bailey, you are some t-t-t-t—t.”
She stuttered even though she was using her singsong, smooth-speech voice.
“Oh no,” I muttered. Sweat pricked along my spine and my heart picked up speed. She tried again.
“George Bailey, you sure are some ta-t-t-t-t—”
Then people started whispering, and it sounded like a soft wind sweeping through trees.
“Fuck” is what Mason whispered. He shoved his hands into his messy brown hair. “Fuck.”
Then Layla got blocked. “George Bailey, you are some—” she started, but her mouth just flopped open and shut like she was a beached fish. She was trying to talk, but her voice was stuck somewhere deep inside her throat, and when she got like this she had to relax in order to get her voice back.
But how do you relax under hot stage lights, in full makeup, with a hundred classmates and strangers staring at you?
“No,” I said again, and then, “Shit.” I wanted to do something because this was exactly what I’d wished on her. It was exactly what I’d feared. Jase shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
When You Were Everything Page 20
