by Sarah Sutton
“Don’t worry about it.” Her lips pulled into a warm, gushing smile as she looked at him. I noticed that she looked into his eyes, scanning for each emotion there. “If you need a shoulder to lean on, you know where I live.”
And while Edith was looking into Zach’s eyes, he was grinning back at her with a few crinkles by his eyes. The two of them looked like love-struck fools.
Of course, it only made me feel angrier.
“See you later, Sophia,” Zach said to me, edging around my figure with a nervous expression. I moved a little bit to let him pass but didn’t answer.
Neither one of us spoke until the door softly clicked shut behind him.
“Why are you mad?” Edith demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. “And don’t tell me you’re not, because it’s clear on your face.”
“I broke up with Walsh.”
Edith blinked quickly, surprised. “What? You ended your fake relationship? I thought you liked him.”
That made me laugh, dull and hollow. “This entire time, he’s been using me, Edith.” I explained every terrible truth to her, feeling my voice shake. Heck, everything was shaking. My hands, my knees, my breath. “All those dates, those pictures. He wanted to rub it in Scott’s face that he was dating his ex. How messed up is that?”
Edith’s gaze remained steady on me after I fell silent, a small crease taking root between her dark eyebrows. Her quietness seemed to ring through the house, knocking against the walls and my brain. I waited for her mouth to open, for her to come back with an equally enraged response.
I waited, but it never came. “Well?” I demanded, a little more than impatient. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“I’m trying to figure out why you’re mad.”
I flinched back from her, my turn to frown. “Why I’m mad?”
“You’re saying that Walsh used you to make Scott mad, right?” Edith crossed her arms over her chest. “How is that any different than you using him for your article? How is what he did worse, even?”
No way. No way was she taking Walsh’s side. She was my best friend. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I snapped at her, for what felt like the first time ever. I couldn’t remember ever raising my voice at her before. “You don’t get how important this article is. It’s my ticket into writing for the Blade, to jumpstarting my career.”
“I do get it, Sophia. But that’s your dream. What about Walsh’s?” she demanded. “The rest of the team? You’d be tanking their dreams of playing on the county league once this got out.”
“They forfeited that when they started cheating. The school is cutting the newspaper to support them!” I said back, exasperation and hurt making my throat tight and my voice rise. “They’re taking my funding and just handing it to them—I have no choice!”
My loud voice rang through the house, and I held my breath, hoping that Edith’s little brother didn’t come wandering out to see what was going on. Again, I’d mentioned choices. Edith’s words from before came back to me, about how we all have choices. She was right. Walsh made his, and I made mine.
Edith’s lips pinched tight, whitening near the corners. I’d always been able to practically read her thoughts, gauge her emotions. Being her best friend for nearly ten years gave me the upper hand in that department. But right at this moment, with her brown eyes heated and glaring, I couldn’t figure out what she was thinking. “You’re so mad at your parents for being self-centered,” she murmured, the quietness of her voice a stark contrast of mine, “and you’re mad at Walsh for using you to make Scott jealous, but what about you, Sophia?”
Everything in me stilled. “What are you trying to say?”
“When was the last time you asked me about me?” she asked, deadly quiet. “About Zach? I mean, come on, Sophia. You could’ve asked what he needed advice about. I would be curious if the roles were reversed! When was the last time we talked about anything other than Walsh and your article?”
“That’s not fair,” I all but gasped. “You don’t talk about any of those things.”
Edith threw her hands into the air, expression cracking into a look of exasperation. “Gosh, these past few weeks, it’s like I’m my own best friend. You’ve been gone. Off with your fake dating Walsh, and I was happy for you! I was rooting for you! But Sophia—do you seriously think you get to be mad at him when you’re using him to your own advantage?” She let out a sharp breath, an annoyed sigh, but she was not done. “You’re so mad at your parents and Walsh, but in reality, if you want someone to blame, you should look in the mirror.”
I recoiled from her, jerking back, my sandals slipping on the damp floor. A chill worked its way over my skin, raising goosebumps along my arms, tugging the hairs at the back of my neck. My muscles trembled as I stood stock-still, frozen, tensed for another blow of harshness.
But Edith didn’t speak again. Though her eyes softened as our stare-down continued, her lips didn’t part.
I watched my best friend for a moment longer before turning on my heel, simmering and steaming as I tugged the front door open. At the last second, with a nagging thought passing through my mind, I stopped, turning back. “Did you know?”
Edith hugged her arms around her middle, a crease between her eyebrows. “Know what?”
“About Scott and Jewel? Did you know and not tell me?”
I waited and waited for her to deny it. To open her mouth and tell me that I was silly for even considering such a thing. To tell me that no way would she break girl-code like that. To tell me that she had no idea.
I waited and waited for her to deny it, but Edith, with a pinched expression, never opened her mouth.
Rain still plummeted from the sky, and my bike was soaked from where I’d left it in the grass. Left with no other choice, I walked out of the house, chin low, the rain instantly pelting down on me.
First my parents, then Walsh, and now Edith.
This truly was a night from hell.
* * *
I didn’t go to sleep that night. From the time I got home dripping wet until the dawn broke the next morning, I spent the time typing my exposé up on the laptop and read it over one last time.
I’d written about how the teachers favor the baseball players while school was in session, giving them early dismissals as well as good grades on assignments. In Bayview High’s student handbook, it’s said that an athlete must maintain a minimum of a C+ average to play. And even though I knew at least one of the players had failed a class before, I’d never known a baseball player to have to sit out on game day ever.
“At Bayview High School, baseball is more important than grade-point-average. At least honest grade-point-average. Why else would players receive more extensions on assignments and more extra credit opportunities than the average student?”
In the next paragraph, I’d highlighted the Royals’ nefarious methods when it came to cheating.
“Though cheating is a direct violation in the Code of Conduct, during the baseball season, it’s encouraged. Thus, the team takes creative measures to cheat—like paying off opposing team members to throw the game. All to win the beautiful, fifty-dollar trophy.”
And of course, I couldn’t leave out the money involvement. With Walsh’s confession about Ryan’s parents’ donations, it didn’t take me long to decipher the bar graph I’d printed off. After digging a little deeper, I found that the “Fund Modification” that skyrocketed the Bayview High’s athletic fun had come from four individual checks. This last one took time, but after reviewing the handbook, I found the perfect way to highlight it.
“Baseball funding has significantly gone up in the previous years, three times more money factored into the account than given to the football team, the volleyball team, and even the softball team. And while private donations to one specific sport are prohibited—according to section 34.b in Bayview High School’s handbook—four separate deposits were listed on the income sheet in the last school year alone, all with the invoice Baseb
all Fund.”
I stretched my fingers, hesitating to transcribe the ending over onto the computer. I could practically feel the animosity seeping off of the words that were composed, written with such a heavy, exploitive hand that even the letters were slanted.
Though I said I was going to, I couldn’t bring myself to put what happened with Walsh onto paper. From a professional standpoint, I didn’t want to risk using a personal example in fear that it would degrade the piece. But that wasn’t the whole truth. I couldn’t bring myself to write it down because thinking about Walsh’s words, his expression, made everything inside of me tense.
Edith was wrong. I wasn’t the selfish one, using Walsh for my article. In all honesty, he hadn’t even helped that much. Sure, going out with him got me a few little tidbits—especially with the players paying off the other teams—but nothing overly important. No, Walsh was the selfish one, all the way. And Scott. And the freaking baseball team, and the school board that supported the baseball team. It wasn’t me.
Coldness worked its way over my skin. Lots of finger-pointing, huh, Sophia?
No, no finger-pointing. Just being honest.
I set my pen down, reaching up to rub my eyes behind my glasses. For a moment, I just sat there, listening to my breathing, the anger that I’d held slowly morphing into a thick cloud of guilt.
“I’m doing the right thing,” I said aloud, turning to glance at where Shiba sat on the windowsill, her personal spot. “Right?”
She didn’t look at me as I spoke, but watched outside, as if that were more interesting than my mental struggle.
Unable to help myself, I swiped up my cell phone, opening up a social media app. My fingers pressed the buttons almost blindly, opening up a certain profile. Walsh Hunter. All the photos he took of us were still uploaded to his timeline, and the tightness in my chest almost reached an unbearable degree of pain as I scrolled through them. A photo from our time walking dogs, a photo of me sitting in the passenger’s seat of his car, a book open in my hands. A picture of me at the beach volleyball tournament, slushy in hand.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at the captions on the photos, but I moved to the one from the Fourth of July, the only photo Walsh took of the both of us. I gave a wide smile as I looked up into the camera, lips stained from the slushy, but Walsh didn’t look at the lens. No, that watery blue gaze cut to my direction, his own lips tipped up as he looked at me. The caption read, “Who needs fireworks?”
“Sophia?” Mom’s voice came muffled from the other side of my closed door, quiet. I glanced towards my alarm clock, wincing at the time. Just after seven in the morning. “Sophia, are you in there?”
“Yeah,” I called to her, my voice rough from disuse. My shaking fingers caused my cell to slip as I set it against my desk, and it clattered loudly. “You can come in.”
When the door pushed open, I saw that Mom still wore the clothes from last night, her loose-fitted blouse and a pair of leggings. She hadn’t changed out of them into her pajamas. Her hair, still up in its bun, hung a little lopsided. She let out a breath as she saw me, and I half expected her to start yelling.
Instead, though, she wrapped her arms around me, cutting any more words off. “I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” Mom said against my shoulder, voice muffled. “I wanted to give you space, but I’m sorry.”
I patted her arm a little awkwardly, not knowing what to say. My anger had been spent; I just felt so drained now. “It’s okay, Mom.”
“It’s not. It’s really not.” Mom pulled back slightly so she could see into my eyes. Her own were glassy, a sheen of tears over the brown. I had her eyes, but on her, they looked full of life and warmth. I, on the other hand, felt the exact opposite. “I know what you must be thinking, Sophia, but we didn’t plan the baby. And the baby didn’t make us rethink our decision about a separation.”
A wave of pain rushed through me as everything hit me, one by one, like tiny little pinpricks. “Mom—”
“It was you who made us think about it. Your words, as harsh as they might’ve been—and we have to work on your tact—got through. You saved our little family, Sophia.”
Our little family. It sounded strange. A family implied something that felt foreign to me, something foreign to us all. Me, my parents, and a little sibling. The idea made my throat feel tight. Her arms weren’t as constricting as they were before, but I felt even more strangled.
But not by her. If you want someone to blame, you should look in the mirror.
“Sophia?” Mom squeezed my shoulders. “Say something, okay?”
The prospect of talking to her was terrifying, mostly because last night was terrifying. One deviation from my path of push-it-down caused my lungs to seize on whatever oxygen they pulled in. “Why did you and Dad never pay attention to me?” I asked, looking straight up into her dark eyes. For how constricted my throat felt, my voice sounded fairly even.
“Oh.” She passed her fingers over my temple, touch gentle. Her eyes began to water. “Oh, Sophia. We paid attention. We never wanted to be helicopter parents—we just wanted to give you some space. To grow up, to make your own decisions.”
I drew in a shallow breath. “I never asked for space.”
“I know, sweetheart. And I’m so sorry.” She pulled me closer once again, my desk chair squeaking with the movement. “It wasn’t right, and I’m sorry.”
I let her hug me, let her scent embrace my senses. I basked in the rarity of the touch, in the warmth it spread. My mind reeled as details from last night hit me, punched me, almost knocked me to my back. My lips tasting the softness of Walsh’s, his hands slipping gently on my skin.
Those memories instantly warmed me, but the ones after that made me feel cold as a piece of snow falling from the sky. And it hurt. Edith’s harsh words that came after also bit at me, causing me to burrow closer to Mom.
“I remember when I painted those butterflies,” Mom whispered, and I noticed her gaze was turned up to the top of my wall, where there were two butterflies. “Do you know what kind of butterflies those are?”
I sniffed, glancing up at the red and black painted butterfly. “A monarch?”
“A Vanessa atalanta.” Mom pressed her lips to the crown of my head. “A red admiral. My favorite kind of butterfly. I guess you can guess why your middle name is Vanessa, hmm?”
Mom never told me that before. The breath I tried to drag into my lungs clogged in my throat, tears tipping down my cheeks, and there was no holding them back. No holding back the tears, no holding back the emotion that was suffocating me, and no holding back on my words.
“Scott cheated on me,” I told her with a stuffed voice, clinging tighter so she couldn’t pull away. I didn’t want her to see my face, all splotchy swollen from tears, no doubt. “Edith knew. Walsh knew. No one told me until it blew up in my face.”
Her hand moved in circles on my back. “And I bet you’re mad at them.”
“Of course I am!” I pulled back then, forcing her hand to fall. She was blurry as I looked at her. “At Edith especially. It’s girl code. I don’t get how she’d keep that from me. I’d never do that to her.”
A little line formed between Mom’s eyebrows. “Do you think maybe she just didn’t know how to tell you?”
“Even if it was like that, she could’ve found a way.” Heck, anything would’ve been better than pretending it wasn’t happening.
“What would you have done if the roles were reversed?”
It was a fair question, but hearing Mom say it made me want to shrug away from it. To ignore the question. I tried to think about how Edith acted before our breakup. She kept encouraging me to break up with him. Before I thought it was just because she thought I could do better, now I realized. She knew he was a gross cheater and wanted me to get as far away as I could.
My gaze fell to my desk, to the scattered papers. Edith tried to get me to break up with him. She encouraged me to dump him because she knew. And even though she couldn’t
tell me for whatever reason, she’d still been looking out for me. That was her way of telling me without telling me.
I leaned back in my chair, hearing it squeak underneath me. “I’m…selfish,” I all but whispered, my blood icy under my skin.
Mom passed her hand across my hair, voice worried. “What makes you say that?”
Oh, how could I explain the whole situation? I’d been hiding so many things from her that I wasn’t even sure where to start.
“Walsh and I broke up.” It was the closest thing to what happened, even though it wasn’t necessarily the truth. And Edith—were we even friends anymore? The whole “look in the mirror” thing. Was that her way of severing ties? I’d been such a horrible best friend—a horrible person in general. “I’m too self-focused, Mom.”
I deserved this pain, this pinching in my legs and chest and arms and throat, all over my body.
Mom pulled my body to her again, and this time, her arms were cobra-constricting tight, trying to squeeze the pain out of me. I tried to imagine that I was an orange, the juice spilling from my insides from being squeezed.
“You know, it’s always been hard for me to let your father be your father. To not try to control every aspect of our relationship. Down to even him eating my leftover spaghetti. Your grandparents were like that,” she said quietly. “Dr. Lively and I had a session about learned behaviors. She said that my desire to control the situation came from my younger years.” Her hand smoothed up and down my back, a lulling sensation. “It’s hard to let others in when it’s been only you for so long.”
Though the words were promising, tears filled my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve only ever had to focus on you. It’s like you said—you never asked for space. But when you’re only focused on you for so long, it’s hard to switch over when more people come into your life.” Mom framed my cheeks with her warm palms, wiping away any tears that fell. “I always thought that giving you all that space would make you strong. Independent. Not needing to rely on anyone to make you happy. That’s not how you raise your child, though. I know that now.”