Breaking Bailey

by AnonYMous

  I asked him why he was still going to yoga, and he said he really liked it. And he said I should come.

  I’m not sure why I did, really. I guess I was just bored last summer. But now we go to yoga together. It’s this really great studio a block off the Promenade, and they run it on donations. You just pay what you can or what you think the class is worth. I didn’t think I’d like it at first. It was hard, and I got sweaty and slipped on my mat and couldn’t do any of the poses. But I sorta like spending time with Cam.

  Who am I writing that to? It’s not like anyone is reading this but me. This is exactly how it feels when Grams asks me to pray over dinner. I feel like I’m saying all this stuff that is bouncing back at me off the ceiling and landing in the spinach salad.

  Cam probably didn’t have to read my mind about wanting a journal at all. He’s really smart. His early acceptance letter to this great college up north came last week. He’s going to be a biochem major, which just makes me want to lie down on the floor and curl up in a ball. He’s a brainiac. And on top of it he’s nice and enthusiastic—which has a tendency to be dangerous.

  Last semester Mom was always telling me to ask Cam for help with my geometry homework. I did, but instead of telling me what to do, Cam always talks and talks and talks. It’s like he knows so much about stuff and likes math so much that he has to say it all instead of just the answer.

  I stopped asking questions. It sort of annoyed me. Just did it myself, and didn’t really understand it. I got a C in geometry. You’d have thought I’d flown a plane into a building. (That’s bad to say, I guess. I mean, I know people died and everything, but it was a really long time ago.)

  Dad came unglued. He’s the chairman of the music department at the college where he works. He made me sign up for tutoring this summer with a student that his friend in the math department recommended. Our session starts in a few minutes. I was relieved when Nathan showed up the first time. I was afraid I’d get stuck with some weird math girl.

  Nathan is a freshman. He’s from Nebraska and has brown hair that’s cut short. He works out a lot, and he wears these polo shirts with sleeves that are tight right around his biceps. I just stare at his arms a lot instead of listening when he’s trying to help me find the answer.

  I wish somebody would just tell me the answer.

  Nathan’s here. Gotta go.

  Later …

  OMG.

  I TOTALLY JUST INVITED NATHAN TO MY BIRTHDAY DINNER.

  OMG OMG OMG OMG

  And

  He

  Said

  YES!

  This is totally crazy. I can’t believe I actually said the words out loud. I didn’t mean to. We were just sitting at the dining room table and he was talking about the hypotenuse of a right angle, and while he was looking at the protractor he was using to draw lines, I was staring at the lines of his jaw and noticed that they were almost a right angle, and the hypotenuse of the right angle of his jaw was this line in his cheek with a dimple in the middle that he gets when he smiles, and then I heard myself saying, You should come to my birthday dinner on Saturday, and then I realized that Mom was looking RIGHT AT ME like my hair was on fire, and I realized that I’d just invited an 18-year-old over for dinner in FRONT OF MY MOTHER. OMG. I just wanted to CRAWL UNDER THE TABLE.

  But he stopped with his pencil stuck into the protractor and looked up, and then glanced over at Mom like he was looking to see if she’d heard, and she smiled at him, sort of weakly. I guess he took that to mean that it was okay with her ’cause he looked me right in the eye and said, Sure. That’d be fun. Now look at this triangle.

  I tried to look at the triangle for the rest of the half hour, but I have no idea what he was saying. When he left, I walked him to the door, and Mom said, Nathan, come by around 7:30. He said, Sure thing, and you can call me Nate. He waved at me before he got in his pickup truck and said, See you this weekend. Then, he drove away. Just like that.

  I went running back up to my bedroom and buried my head in my pillow and did one of those silent screams where you just breathe out really hard, but with no sound; it’s sort of a soft roar, but the excitement on the inside of me made it feel like my head would explode.

  I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, and I took a couple of deep breaths and then I remembered what Marty said in yoga this morning about trying to meditate and how to focus on the breath, so I sat down on the floor and crossed my legs like Marty does in front of class, and I closed my eyes and took really deep breaths and tried not to think about Nate. I could do it for about 5 breaths at a time, but then I’d see that line with the dimple in it behind my eyelids, and then the rest of his right-angle jaw would appear and I’d see a triangle fill in the space on his face.

  I mean, it’s really no big deal. My dad is two years older than my mom. Nate’s only 18, and I’m 16, and it’s not like he would be robbing the cradle or anything.

  I think I really like him.

  OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT NATE IS COMING TO DINNER ON SATURDAY.

  July 8

  I was just standing in my mirror trying on a couple of different options for tonight. I passed my driver’s test and got my license yesterday (YAY! OMG. Finally!), then Dad and I went shopping on the Promenade. I’m a really good bargain shopper. Cam worked at the Gap last summer and taught me to never EVER pay full-price for anything ’cause they just mark it down every two weeks. Primary, secondary, clearance. Primary, secondary, clearance. Every week on Tuesday night the markdowns would come through from the home office, and we’d all run around with those price-tag guns the next morning, marking down tops that some poor dope had paid $20 more for 12 hours ago. So, anyway, I got a lot of great stuff. Even Dad was surprised with how many items I got for $100. Well, then I splurged a little and added $40 from my savings to get these supercute sandals that I’d been wanting.

  Anyway, I have all this stuff to try on, and I felt myself doing that thing I do where I put on, like, 12 different outfits and stand there and pick every single one of them apart, and I end up standing in front of the mirror in my underwear with this pile of really cute clothes with the tags still on them lying on the floor. I had just put on the second skirt I bought and could tell I was about to find something wrong with it, and then I just stopped, looked at myself, and thought: Don’t be that girl.

  I just don’t want to be that chick who is always staring at herself in the mirror whining about how she looks and having a meltdown in the fitting room. I mean, I’m not a model or anything, but I think I look okay. I have already showered and straightened my hair. It’s not frizzy or even curly really—just has some waves, and when you live this close to the waves it can get wavy. (God. Stupid joke.) Whatever, I stepped away from the mirror and saw my journal sitting on my desk, and I thought I’d write about it. I mean, this is a feeling. I’m not sure what kinds of feelings I’m supposed to be writing about in here, but maybe this is what crazy Marty the bird lady was talking about.

  I’m SO EXCITED about Nate coming over and I want to look really hot, but the excitement also feels like nervousness, like I’m going to barf or something. Mom is downstairs putting a marinade on some shrimp that she’s going to have Dad grill, and the smell when I walked through the kitchen made me feel like I was going to hurl up my toenails—and I LOVE shrimp.

  I know I look good in this skirt. Dad told me it looked “far out” when I came out of the dressing room to check it out in the mirror. He said this in his I’m-being-a-little-too-loud-so-the-other-people-present-will-hear-me-and-think-I’m-hilarious-when-really-I’m-just-torturing-my-daughter voice. I told him to please be quiet and offer his opinions only regarding possible escape routes in the case of a fire, or a random stampede of wild bison. In all other matters, I respectfully asked him to please refrain from speaking to me until we had reached the cash wrap.

  I looked in the mirror again just now. This skirt totally works.

  Weird how excited and scared feel like the same thing.<
br />
  July 8—11:30 p.m.

  I shoulda known.

  I shoulda known when he walked up the front steps with flowers and handed them to Mom.

  But he brought me a card with a joke about having pi on my birthday instead of cake (guh-rooooan) and it had a $25 gift card for iTunes in it. Which was cool and so sweet of him, but he just signed his name. Shoulda known when he didn’t write anything personal. Just “Happy B-Day! Nate.”

  But he was really funny and sweet at dinner. He sat across from me and told us all this hilarious story about when he was growing up in Nebraska and he and his brother raised sheep for the county fair. (Yes. Apparently people still raise animals and take them to fairs where they win ribbons and titles and scholarships. Thank you, CHARLOTTE’S WEB.)

  One morning he and his brother went out to scoop food out of these big 25-pound sacks of feed for the sheep, and there was a mouse in one of the bags that ran up his little brother’s jacket sleeve. He was telling us about how he thought his brother had been possessed by a demon because he kept screaming and shaking his arms and beating at his chest and running around in a circle while the mouse wriggled around inside his shirt. We were all crying, we were laughing so hard, and Cam almost inhaled a bite of shrimp, which sent him on a coughing fit that made the rest of us laugh even harder.

  He jumped up and helped me clear the table when Mom asked who wanted dessert. When Mom told him he didn’t need to do that, he smiled at me and said, Oh yes, ma’am, I do. My mama’d fly in from Grand Island and smack me if I didn’t.

  When we were in the kitchen, I started rinsing plates and he loaded them into the dishwasher like he lived here. We were laughing and joking around and no one mentioned geometry. He was so easy to talk to, easy to be near. I didn’t feel nervous even once. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like if we were married and this was our house and we were loading the dishwasher together. That’s probably stupid, but it made me feel hopeful inside, like maybe something like that was possible.

  When Nate bent over to put the final plate in the dishwasher, a necklace fell out of his shirt. It had a tiny key on it, and I was about to ask him where he got it, but Mom came into the kitchen to get some coffee mugs and the French press. Nate tucked the necklace back into his polo before I could ask him about it, but I shoulda known.

  There’s a long porch on the back of our house that looks over the bottom of the canyon out to the water. We ate dessert out there. Dad lit the candles in the big lanterns on the table outside. Cam sat next to Nate and they talked soccer. The flicker made their skin glow like they were on the beach at sunset. Nate looked all sun-kissed and happy. I felt a foot nudge mine just for a second under the table and my heart started racing. I was glad that it was just the candles outside in the dark ’cause I started to blush like crazy. I thought maybe Nate had touched my foot, and I kept sliding mine a little bit closer toward him under the table, but his foot never touched mine again.

  It was almost 10 when he pulled out his phone and checked it, then said, Whoa. I gotta go.

  I felt really bummed all of a sudden, and then silly. What was I hoping? That he’d stay and walk me down to the beach? He stood up and shook my dad’s hand, then gave Cam one of those weird hugs that guys give each other where they grab hands like they’re gonna shake and then lean in and hug with their arms caught in between them. He kissed my mom on the cheek and told her what a good cook she was.

  Then he looked right at me and said, Will you walk me to my truck?

  I got so many butterflies in my stomach, I thought they might start flying out of my ears. I said SURE, and realized that nobody had really heard him ask that because Mom was pouring more wine and Dad was pouring more coffee and Cam was texting somebody. So I slipped into the house and out the front door.

  He’d parked on the street, and when he got to the door of his pickup, he leaned against it and looked up at the sky and said, Huh.

  I said, What?

  He told me that in Nebraska at this time of night you could see lots of stars. I followed his gaze up to the sky, but I knew there wouldn’t be any stars. Out here, the sky just glows this weird purply color even on the darkest night here. It’s the light pollution bouncing off of the marine layer, I said. It’s what happens at night when 8 million people get jammed up against the ocean. I turned around and stood next to him with my back up against the truck.

  He said it was funny how you always hear about all the stars in Los Angeles, but at night in Nebraska, it’s like the sky is covered with diamonds. Then he looked over at me, and I don’t know what happened, but I just knew that I had to feel his lips on mine. So I leaned in and kissed him.

  Nate jumped like I’d shot him with a taser. He said, WHOA, what are you doing? OMG! I was SO EMBARRASSED I couldn’t even LOOK at him. It was like we were having this PERFECT night, and then BLAM-O: I broke the spell. I was blushing and stammering and then I felt the tears come to my eyes, and I didn’t wait. I just sprinted back across the street toward the house. I was not going to let him see me cry.

  As my foot hit the curb on the other side of the street, he said WAIT!

  There was something in the way he said it that made me turn around. And then he shook his head and smacked his forehead, and he walked over to me, and just looked at me. He pushed my hair over my shoulder and said, No. I’m sorry.

  He told me that I had come along two years too late. And that I was beautiful. And that he has a girlfriend.

  Continue Reading…

  Lucy in the Sky

  Anonymous

  Other Anonymous Diaries

  Lucy in the Sky

  Letting Ana Go

  Calling Maggie May

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  First Simon Pulse hardcover edition June 2019

  Text copyright © 2019 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Title: Breaking Bailey / by Anonymous.

  Description: First Simon Pulse paperback edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2019. | Summary: Sent to a fancy boarding school by her stepmother, a prominent attorney, Bailey keeps a journal chronicling her involvement in a “Science Club” that makes and sells crystal meth.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018039720 (print) | LCCN 2018046846 (eBook)
| ISBN 9781534433083 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534433090 (pbk) | ISBN 9781534433106 (eBook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Drug traffic—Fiction. | Substance abuse—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Diaries—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.1 .B751547 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018039720