by Sara Wolf
I round on Kieran. “What did you give her?”
“What?” Kieran holds his hands up. “Wait a second—”
“Tell me.” I stride toward him, and Kieran, a good seventy pounds heavier than me, suddenly looks nervous. “Now.”
“Nothing! Shit, nothing! Livy gave us some molly! That’s all, I swear.”
“And you took it, too?” I shout. “You let her take it and took it yourself? What kind of idiot are you? What if she had a worse reaction? How could you help her if you’re doped up, too?”
“She’s fine!” he yells. “We were all okay before you guys came along!”
“Fine?” I roar. “Look at her arm! Look at it!” Kieran flinches. “She bit herself, you moron! She’s far from fine, but you ignored that so you could slip your tongue in her!”
Kieran’s eyes spark, and I see his muscles twitch before his fist flies toward me. Gregory’s training is all but automatic—I sidestep him and hook my ankle under his, pulling back. He eats cement hard, groaning as he rolls over.
“Enough!” Isis’s shout rings out. I turn and look at her, and her glare is a bonfire on the coldest winter’s day. “He didn’t ‘let’ me take anything. I decided to take it. So lay off him.”
I still my heavy breathing. Kieran glowers from the ground, nursing his nose, but it’s a muted, ashamed glower now. I dare him with my eyes to make a move, but he just sits up and swears. I pivot back to Isis.
“You have to get that looked at. Come on, there’s bandages in my car—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she says evenly. “I’ll get it looked at on my own.”
“Isis—you’re injured. You have to—”
“Don’t pretend to care about me now, Jackoff.” She laughs.
“This isn’t pretending. I do care about you.”
“Well, cut it the hell out, okay? I’m not your girlfriend. I’m not even your friend anymore. You shouldn’t waste your energy on me. I’m nobody important to you—” She shudders, hugging herself and laughing harder. “I’m nobody important.”
You are the sun, I try to say. You are the most important. You are the only light that’s ever truly pierced my armor. You are the happiness and the spark and the one girl who never ran, who never cowered, who saw through my facade. I will never meet another girl like you; I will never want anyone as much as I want you.
But all that comes out is self-censoring silence. Kieran gets up and puts his arm around her shoulders.
“We should go,” he murmurs. They pass me, Isis refusing to meet my eyes as they turn the corner and go back into the club. Her smell lingers around me for a brief second, and I try to hold on to it as long as possible with shaking fingers as the clear, volatile truth wells up in me, past the walls of lies I’ve built around it (you’re not good enough for her, she never really wanted you), past the excuses I use to deny myself happiness (you’ll hurt her, you’ve hurt her, all you do is hurt her), past my own self-loathing (you should’ve died instead of Sophia). The realization shines bright, quietly exploding, blowing them all away and leaving a single truth behind.
“I miss you,” I whisper to the empty curb.
Chapter Eleven
3 Years, 51 Weeks, 6 Days
In my imaginary but still very real Book of Things That Aren’t Okay with Me, I’ve bumped drugs up to the number five slot, right between applesauce and jorts. In all my years of being an idiot, which is nearly two decades—as we all know, two decades is practically decrepit—I’ve never done anything worse to hurt myself than that molly. Except, you know, develop a mild case of an eating disorder for a few months.
All right, fine, so in my imaginary but still very real Book of Things That Aren’t Okay with Me, developing an eating disorder is number one, and doing drugs is number two. Number three is seeing Jack Hunter’s gorgeous yet infuriating face looking hurt, like I’ve wounded him, when it’s clearly the opposite.
After straightening all this out for a whopping two days in which I sleep and skip class and visit the infirmary and Jemma, one of the main nurses, for bandages and antibiotics, I decide to reenter polite society.
Taking one step into English class, however, makes me want to take three steps out.
I arrived early, so it’s not weird to see an empty auditorium, but it’s super weird to see an empty auditorium and the testing room door closed. It’s a tiny room only for people who’ve gotta do makeups, and it’s never closed unless it’s being used.
So, like the proper, not-nosy lady I am, I peek into the slit of a window on the door. And I immediately regret it.
There, on the other side, is Professor Summers. He sits on the desk, his floppy hair and sweater vest slightly rumpled. He’s talking to someone, and when I tilt my head I can see them—his hand is around a girl’s waist, and he’s pulling her into his lap. Or trying to. She’s fighting it, and the pleasant smile on his face makes my stomach turn. The girl in question clearly isn’t happy; her expression is all screwed up. I know that look—it’s utter disgust and helplessness.
I fling open the door and Professor Summers quickly stands up. The girl takes advantage of his moment of slack grip and ducks around me, dashing out of the classroom. That’s all the confirmation I need that she wasn’t into it. Also, she’s his student! He’s like, nearly forty and she’s a freshman! I quash the urge to yell you’re nasty!!! and stutter instead.
“Oh crap—I’m sorry, Professor. I didn’t know anyone was in here, I just—”
He smooths his vest and coughs. “It’s fine, Ms. Blake. Anabel and I were—looking for her missing pen. Very expensive. Her father gave it to her.”
“Oh.” I let him hang, the nervous gleam in his eyes somehow satisfying. I have to play dumb. I smile again. “Okay. Did you guys find it?”
“No.” He sweeps past me and returns to his desk. “But I’m sure it’ll turn up eventually.”
Yeah, in your pocket. Which you’ll ask her to reach into, you sicko.
But I don’t say any of that. I make an excuse for the bathroom and look around wildly for the girl. I spot her in a courtyard, hiding behind a pillar and texting madly on her phone. Her eyes are a little red, but they widen when she sees me.
“I wasn’t doing anything—” She chokes. “It was nothing, okay?”
“Hey, it’s okay.” I use my softest voice. “I’m not blaming you. That guy’s a creep.”
She gnaws her lip. “I should’ve listened. My friend told me all these rumors about him, and I just ignored it. I thought I could talk to him about my grades, try to get some advice for writing the essays he assigns, since I suck so bad at them, but then he—”
She shudders, shoving her phone in her pocket and looking at me. “You saved me.”
“Naw. I was just in the right place at the right time.”
She hugs herself. “He wanted me to—to blow him. So he’d give me a better grade. And I hated myself because for a second, a split second, I considered doing it. I need that grade. My mom worked so hard to send me here, and I can’t let her down, and now he’s going to flunk me—”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “He’s not. If he does, I’ll go to the office and tell them what I saw. He can’t do that. It isn’t fair.”
“Haven’t you heard?” She wipes at her eyes. “All the rumors say people have told on him before, but no one’s done anything! This school doesn’t give a shit, or he must be connected somehow, or—or they just don’t believe what we say.”
“It’s probably all of those,” I say. “Look, you don’t have to go to him. Here, let me give you the tutoring center’s number. They’ve got great people there. My roommate is one of them, and she’s super smart in English.”
“Thanks,” she says once I’ve entered the number on her phone. “You’re really nice. I’m Anabel, by the way.”
“Isis.” I smile. “I put my number in there, too. You ever need anything, or if he’s creeping on you again, just throw me a text. I’ve got ways to de
al with tools like him.”
She waves and starts toward her dorm, and I inch back to Summers’s classroom, listening to his lecture while stabbing a pencil into my notebook.
It’s not fair.
It’s not fair that people with power get away with abusing it. Someone has to stop them. If the school won’t listen, then someone will just have to scream too loudly to ignore and not stop ever.
My mind begins ticking away like it used to, plots and plans forming like angry frozen ghosts in my head. My old plans used to be playful, not-serious. But now I’m angry.
Now, I’m older.
Yvette is not impressed with my new diet.
“Are you eating…Doritos with ice cream?” she asks.
“My mind is strong, but my flesh is weak,” I mutter through a spoonful.
“Well, at least you’re eating something.” She throws her hands up. “What happened to the Isis who could put away a pizza on her own?”
“She got bored,” I say. Yvette looks appropriately scandalized. “Of eating! Not of pizza. God no. The only people who get bored of pizza are evil at their very core.”
“How’s the war wound holding up?” Yvette collapses on her bed. I pull my sleeve up and inspect the bandage on my forearm with a shrug.
“The nurse gave me antibiotics that taste like butt, and I have to change the bandage every two days, but so far it’s like a walk in the park. If said park was covered in infectious zombies and land mines. Kieran got the worst end of the deal—broken noses hurt like a bitch.”
I told Diana and Yvette my wounds were from a bar fight that broke out in the club. The last thing I want is for cool-ass people to think I take party drugs on the reg.
“Yeah, but they’re quicker to fix,” Yvette says. “Only hurts for a second.”
“Oh yeah? How do you know that?”
“I got in a fistfight,” she says proudly. “At a concert.”
“What concert?”
“Does it really matter? I think you are missing the point here, the point being that I have also broken my nose.” I stare at her until she mumbles, “Taylor Swift.”
“You went to a Taylor Swift concert?” I screech.
“I was taking my little sister!” she shrills defensively.
“Why does it sound like a cage of birds in here?” Diana winces as she walks in.
“Di, she’s making fun of me,” Yvette whines. I courteously flip her off.
“If you met me at the pizza place, like I asked,” Diana sniffs, “you wouldn’t be here, getting made fun of.”
Yvette groans and rolls off the bed, riffling through her closet for a jacket to wear. Diana sits on the bed beside me, all smiles.
“Hey you.”
“Don’t look at me, I’m hideous,” I whisper, shoveling more soggy Doritos into my mouth. She laughs and smooths her low-cut shirt that makes her impressive rack all the more bouncy.
“And what are you doing on this lovely Friday night?”
“Eating. Sleeping. Sacrificing a goat to Mantorok, the god of corpses.”
She looks over at the stack of fake blood packets on my desk and raises an eyebrow. “Riiiight.”
“Those are for a sociology experiment!” I defend. “Called ‘see how many people run away from me when I squirt fake blood at them.’ Prediction: many.”
“Okay but…just don’t get punched out, all right? Getting a new injury every weekend is sort of a new thing with you, and I’d like for it to kindly stop forever.”
“You and me both.”
Yvette flaunts her army surplus jacket; Diana and I applaud. They’re gone before I can blink, Yvette crowing about pepperoni and jalapeños. My stomach makes a disagreeing noise, and I put the ice cream bowl aside and bring out my laptop. I get on Skype, looking for Kayla’s photo, but she’s offline, the little gray “inactive” dot taunting me.
It’s nice Diana’s worried. It’s only been two months, but she and Yvette treat me like they’ve known me for years. Sometimes it makes me feel better, but right now it only makes everything feel worse. It makes me miss Kayla more. I hadn’t gotten to tell her about what happened that night at Eternity, but part of me doesn’t want to. Part of me hesitates to blab everything like I usually do. What would she think of the fact that I took molly? She’s already seen me get in a fight. I didn’t tell Diana or Yvette the truth. I haven’t told anybody.
Would Kayla be disappointed? Would she hate me? I’m still disappointed in myself that I took it. And she wouldn’t be happy to hear about Jack and how we’re still strangers. And I know for a fact she’d hate my stories of drinking at frat parties. She wouldn’t understand it. I’d just disappoint her. My life isn’t exciting and romantic like hers, all neat and organized. My life is just a series of fuckups and sadness.
There it is again. Jealousy. I swallow it whole and try to convert it into exactly what it is—poop.
I get up and stretch, tracing the bandage on my arm lightly. Jack touched me there, and it’s stupid to think about, but sometimes in the quiet moments I touch the same place and wish things were different. But tonight is not the night for self-pity. I pull on jeans and a loose T-shirt and stuff a side bag full of the fake blood packets, some gum, forceps, and a credit card.
Tonight is the night for revenge.
Granted, as I walk through the sunset-washed campus with happy couples clinging to each other and excited, dolled-up girls on their way to parties, I have the minor revelation that I probably shouldn’t be doing this. I brush off the nonsense—of course I should be doing this. Doing possibly illegal things that would get me kicked out, such as breaking into Professor Summers’s office and sending him a message, is going to be hells more fun than sitting around another frat party waiting to die. People stare. But then again, people have always stared. I smile and wave.
I’ve done my own independent study on Professor Summers—asking around parties didn’t exactly make it hard to find the girls he’d previously harassed. He’d do it quietly—dropping reflective pens, coming up behind them after class and pinning them to whiteboards, asking them to come in on Saturdays and offering A’s for a hand job. He’s 100 percent scum. And the worst part? He doesn’t look like scum. He’s almost cute—mousy hair, a thin beard, blue eyes. But the worst people rarely look like the worst people. I learned that from Avery.
Professor Summers’s office is in the Denney building, which is about as ironically fitting as we can get for a Friday night in a Midwestern college town. Denney closes at seven, but I manage to sneak in at six fifty and hide in a bathroom. The janitor comes around checking the stalls, and when she asks me to leave I groan and empty a blood packet into the toilet. It makes a satisfying plop noise, and she sighs and tells me to get out when I can.
I hiss in victory as she shuffles with her cleaning cart down the hall. I pack everything up and flush the evidence before tiptoeing out of the bathroom. I pass Ferguson’s office, and then Vacroix’s, and as I turn the corner—
My ringing phone scares my intestines out of my anus.
“You scared my intestines out of my anus!” I say when I pick up.
“Where are you?” Kieran asks on the other end, the distinct muffled boom of bass in the background. “You said you were coming to Rho Alpha Alpha tonight, but I can’t find you.”
“I am currently engaged elsewhere. Minus a ring. And a bachelorette party.”
Kieran’s quiet, then his voice lowers. “Isis, you aren’t doing what I think you’re doing.”
“I’m not, don’t worry!” I chirp.
He groans. “You are. You totally are. You’re gonna get busted and thrown out. Just forget about Summers and come to the party!”
I check my phone. “Oh my, is it that time already? Shut up o’clock? I must go, farewell, sweet prince.”
“Isis—!”
I hang up and slither down the corridor with the grace of an oiled sidewinder. Summers’s office is the last on the right, and I crouch and immediately beg
in assessing my foe. It takes me three minutes of strenuous lock-jiggling to find out these locks are much, much sturdier than anything I picked during high school. There’s no way I’m getting in.
This is where most people would paste a giant Game Over in their heads.
Thankfully, Isis Blake is not most people.
I pull as many blood packets as I can out of my pack and start decorating. I’m halfway through when the janitor calls into the same bathroom for me. My heart jackrabbits around in my throat and I squeeze out the last few words as quick as I can. I hear her footsteps about to turn the corner just as I jam everything into my pack and skid around the opposite one.
She squints, her eyesight obviously bad, but she can’t see the wall I defaced—parallel to the windows—from that angle. She sighs and trudges back the way she came, and I jam on the gas full blast and beat her to the front door, taking the steps two at a time as cool twilight air washes over my victorious face.
If she sees it, she’ll get rid of it, and it’ll have been a glorious adventure all for naught. But if she skips it over, then tomorrow—
I smother a laugh and reinstate myself as best in the world at everything. The high is so familiar, so enthralling, that all I can think about is it—just it. Just my victory, just my near-busted status, just the retribution a pervy scumsucker like Summers will get if anyone other than him sees what I did. It might not be proof, and it might not convince anyone fully, but it’ll breed doubt in their minds, and doubt’s the most insidious thing there is.
Tonight, I don’t need any parties to keep away the yawning chasm of silent pain. Tonight I’m high on my own brand of drug—pure, stupid recklessness. I wash fake blood off my hands and head to the nurse’s office for my bandage change, laughing under my breath.
I’m crazy and going crazier, and I don’t know how to stop it.
I don’t know how to stop this horrible darkness from eating me alive, and no one in the world is going to help me.
I’m alone.
Tonight I don’t need any parties, but I go to the Rho Alpha Alpha party anyway, because it’s become habit. Because it’s who I am now, who I always was. Who I used to be. Because once upon a time I was a stupid fourteen-year-old who drank and smoke and spat with the best of them in a desperate attempt to look cool, and I did anything to look cool back then, because when you’re big like I used to be, people only see how huge you are and forget you’re a person with feelings, but if you’re huge and you party, you’re a little cooler than not cool at all. Letting them make fun of how big you are (whale, fatso, piggy) makes you a little cooler than not cool at all.