Cornered

by Rhoda Belleza

  I don’t know what I expected. A moment of silence, maybe? Some remorse? Holly and Monica and their pack of snots to be changed into better people? But there was none of that. Not one word of sorrow. Not an ounce of recognition that one of our students was missing this year.

  That first week of school I waited for it—standing just outside of crowds, lingering in hallways, waiting for something. Anything. Someone to tell me they were sorry my best friend was dead. Someone to tell me they were sorry for what they’d done to her.

  But mostly I’d stand there, unnoticed, remembering Jenna holding on to my sleeve that impossibly hot night in August. Her eyes gleaming, her face eager, hissing through her teeth about how sorry all those bitches would be when they found out what they’d done to her.

  But none of the things she’d hoped for had happened—the big, remorseful crowds at the funeral, the media that would out Holly and Monica and Sydney, the bullies so utterly broken by what they’d caused.

  None of it.

  It was a funeral like every other funeral. The only reporter to show up at Jenna’s house was some intern from the local paper that nobody reads, and Jenna’s brother turned him away anyway. There was no tearful apology from Holly, her mother, or anyone else for that matter. It seemed like the only thing left behind was my sorrow, which was so big it felt like I was drowning in it. One thought repeated in my head: Jenna is gone.

  So I let them moo and make their little comments as I edged around their table. I sat by myself next to the trash cans—staring at but not eating my mashed potatoes—wondering what to do next.

  • • •

  Once upon a time, we were best friends, Holly and me. We lived down the street from one another. We played together, had the same teachers, and took each other on family trips.

  But when we moved up to middle school, everything changed. Holly was thin and cute and an only child who always had expensive toys and clothes. But more importantly, she had confidence to spare. I, on the other hand, was chubby and quiet. My grades were good, but my social scores were off the charts bad. I had zits and boring clothes and a habit of chewing on the ends of my hair, which clung in wet strands against the sides of my chin. Boyfriends were a distant hope for me, but I never actually imagined I’d ever have one. The thought of even talking to a boy scared me to death.

  All of a sudden Holly was royalty, with an entourage of new friends who called me “Duff,” or otherwise ignored me. Holly insisted that we were still BFFs and no new friends would ever change that, but she started hanging around the meanest two, Monica and Sydney. Sleepovers, skating parties, movies. Almost every Friday night I’d call her house to see what she was doing, and almost always she was gone.

  But then I met Jenna in fourth period social studies. Mr. Yackie had us all pair up on a Civil War research assignment, and as always, everyone else was paired in a nanosecond. I sat by myself, turning seven shades of red and wishing teachers would understand: letting the class pair up on their own might sound like a good idea, but it was really just another way for outcasts like me to feel like crap about themselves. As if we needed that.

  And the teachers always made it worse. They’d wait for the shuffling to die down and then yell, “If you don’t have a partner, raise your hand!” As if Sydney or Monica or any of the other normal kids in the class were just idly sitting by without partners. Mr. Yackie might as well have shouted out, “Raise your hand if you’re the fat loser in the class! Chloe, I mean YOU!”

  But this time, I wasn’t the only one raising my hand. So was the new girl, and we were paired.

  Jenna was bigger than me. Her parents were divorced, and she lived with her mom and brother in a tiny basement apartment behind the grocery store. She’d been picked on at her old school for her weight, her red, frizzy hair and probably a multitude of other things that shouldn’t have mattered, but somehow always did.

  I shuffled to her desk and plopped my books on top of it. “Hey,” I said. The kid in the desk next to her moved over by his partner, so I slid into his chair.

  She looked up and smiled. “Hey.”

  We sat there for a few minutes while Mr. Yackie droned on and on about our project. Jenna doodled on the front of her notebook, and I picked bits of paper out of the spiral of mine, sucking on a piece of my hair. When he finally finished, I turned my chair so I was facing her, but she was still doodling. I wasn’t even sure she knew Mr. Yackie was done talking. I smoothed the hair I’d been chewing on between my forefinger and thumb, wiped my wet hand on my jeans, and took a breath.

  “So, um, do you have any ideas?” I asked, feeling awkward and miserable.

  She put down her pencil and shook her head. “I hate history.”

  I took a breath. “Great. I hate it, too. This should be interesting.”

  “We could just take our F’s now and spend our time in the library reading Cosmo.” She grinned, and something about her smile made me instantly like her. “I’m Jenna, by the way.”

  “I’m Chloe.” I smiled back. “And it’s a deal.”

  We didn’t go to the library and read Cosmo, but that first day we met at Jenna’s apartment where we talked about anything and everything other than the Civil War. Eventually we ended up doing our project on famous women of the Civil War, laying out our report magazine-style and surrounding it with photos and illustrations, sort of like our own 1800s-era Cosmo. And even after the project was over, we still hung out together whenever we got a chance.

  Jenna and I had a lot in common, and neither of us was exactly rolling neck-deep in friends. I stopped caring so much about what Holly was doing on the weekends with Monica and Sydney, because I was busy with Jenna anyway.

  Plus, there was the Fight.

  It happened when I found out Holly lied to me about being grounded. It was my birthday, and we’d had the whole night planned for months. We were going to go to dinner with my parents, and even though I didn’t even really like Japanese food, I’d talked them into the Japanese steakhouse that was Holly’s favorite. After dinner, we were going to walk up to the mall, and she’d help me pick out new clothes with my birthday money. Afterward we’d planned to go home and spend the rest of the night trying on outfits, raiding the ice cream selection in her freezer, and watching movies together.

  But the day of, she called and said she was grounded. She even sniffled like she was crying and griped about how unfair her parents were. But that night, while heading to dinner with my parents—at her favorite restaurant, mind you—I saw Holly as we drove by the movie theater, standing out front with Sydney Weaver and the others.

  I slumped against the backseat, my mouth hanging open with disbelief. I turned and did a double take through the back window, sure that I’d made a mistake, sure that my best friend wasn’t betraying me on my birthday. But there she was, head thrown back, laughing.

  Suddenly I was not hungry at all anymore.

  “Can we go back home instead?” I asked, crossing my arms over my stomach.

  My mom turned around and looked at me curiously. “Why?”

  I hoped Mom wouldn’t see Holly out the back window, too. The last thing I needed was for her to pity me. I wasn’t really up for the added humiliation. “I’m just not feeling well.”

  Understatement of the year. I felt I’d just lost my best friend in the world, and it hurt like hell.

  “On your birthday? I’m sorry, honey. Are you sure?” and when I nodded she said, “Of course we’ll go back.”

  Dad turned the car around and instead of raiding the ice cream and trying on clothes and watching movies, I spent the evening sprawled on my bed, crying and wiping my nose on my comforter.

  But after I was done crying, I got pissed. So the next day I confronted Holly. I called her.

  “I know you lied to me about being grounded.”

  “What are you talking about?” She sounded so chipper on the other end. It only made me angrier.

  “I saw you, Holly. I know you went to the movies l
ast night.”

  “Listen,” she sighed. “I meant to tell you that something came up but—”

  “How could you do that to me? It was my birthday!”

  ”You can’t blame me for wanting to bug out on such a lame night.”

  “YOU planned the whole night!” I said into the phone, trying to keep my voice level. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of hearing me cry. “I don’t know what’s happened to you. You’re not even the same person you used to be.”

  “You’re just jealous because I’m hanging out with the popular people now and you’re with Jenna Roooundtree,” she said, exaggerating her last name like Jenna herself was a joke. “You’ve been getting fatter ever since you met her, by the way.”

  I blinked, hardly able to believe that the person saying these things was my best friend. Correction: my ex-best friend. “God, you’re such a snot now.”

  “I’m just trying to be honest with you. I’m trying to help you. Do you even know what ‘Duff’ means?”

  “No, and I don’t want to.”

  “But you should. It stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend.” She paused to let what she’d said sink in. “And hanging out with Jenna isn’t helping you lose that nickname at all. Jenna’s actually your Duff, Chlo. So maybe you should keep her.”

  I couldn’t help the tears then. I tried to sound angry, but I was actually more hurt and embarrassed than anything. “I will keep her. Because she’s a real friend. Not a bitch who thinks life is all about the way people look.”

  “Good. Then stay away from me. Like, forever.”

  “I’ll never forgive you for this.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing I never asked you to.”

  And that’s when the mooing began.

  • • •

  After the lunchtime mooing incident, time crept by. It was a block day and every class seemed to last forever, especially psych class, which I had with Holly. Our teacher had us sit in alphabetical order, and Holly sat right next to me, constantly rolling her eyes and making little sighing noises every time I blinked.

  This was Holly’s sniper method. I knew it well. Act like it was a total tragedy to have to sit next to the grossest person on earth and be all martyr about it. She sighed loudly, and everyone around us kept looking at me with smirks on their faces.

  I checked Holly’s hands, nibbling on a strand of hair. Sure enough she was holding her phone under her desk, her thumb working the keypad. She was undoubtedly complaining to her crew about the misfortune of having to sit next to me once again, and they were probably all falling all over themselves consoling her. Poor Holly.

  She caught me staring and narrowed her eyes at me. I knew this to be Holly’s “vicious look,” the one she gave when she wanted people to be scared of her. I remembered a time in fifth grade when she used it against my older brother’s friend Jake after Jake called us “little girls.” How she’d seethed after he’d done that—gone on and on about how we weren’t little, we were almost in middle school, and how he’d be sorry one day when she was the hottest girl in high school and he wanted her.

  “I mean you look like a little girl, but me? No way. I just look younger because I’m with you. No offense, Chlo,” she’d said.

  “None taken. You’re totally right. You look a lot older,” I’d replied. Her obedient little minion.

  “Right,” she’d said, pointing at me, “because you’re taking so much longer to mature than I am. My mom says you’re underdeveloped, and it’s probably just because of the junk food you eat all day.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not that it’s a bad thing.” She’d laughed, but her eyes had still held that frightening narrowness to them. I came away from the conversation feeling like crap and wishing I didn’t love junk food so much.

  When I thought about those moments, it hit me that Holly had always been a jerk to me, even when we were friends. She was always doing that thing my mom called “backhanded complimenting.” You know, like you tell someone you love their shirt but you couldn’t pull it off because your boobs are so much bigger, and it just wouldn’t look right on you? That kind of thing. She was forever saying, “No offense, Chlo,” and I was always answering, “None taken.” In truth, it hurt all the time, but I told myself I somehow deserved it. Back then, it didn’t occur to me that my so-called best friend always made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. Holly would constantly offer criticism and be sure to tell me her mom agreed with her, which stung even more, because in some ways her mom felt like my own mom. I figured if her mom thought these things, then they must have been true.

  The bell rang, startling me, and I found the ends of my hair a wet, chewed-on mess. I realized I’d just totally spaced out the last twenty minutes of psych, two days before our first big test of the semester. Great. Already this year was starting out bad. I’d probably fail and my parents would blame it on my grief, when really, my grades hadn’t been all that great since Holly and I stopped being friends. It was mostly because I was always scared to go to class—or too sad, nervous, and distracted to do my homework. And nobody would ever notice that the reason I couldn’t concentrate in psych might have something to do with my ex-best friend giving me dirty looks and texting about me right in front of my face.

  “God, stare much?” Holly said as she stood and shouldered her backpack. She spread her arms out and rolled her eyes dramatically, making sure as many people as possible could see and hear her. “Like what you see? I always thought you might be a lesbo.”

  “I wasn’t—,” I started, but she turned and walked away from me. Monica was waiting at the door, and I heard my name as Holly joined her. Then there was laughter as the two of them spilled out into the hallway, their long hair swishing against their backs in tandem.

  I wanted to slink away. And honestly, I wanted Jenna. I wanted to storm to her locker and vent about everything. I wanted to call Holly names behind her back—Jenna was really great at coming up with hilarious ones, my personal favorite being Unshaven Mattressback Gorilla. I wanted my best friend there with me.

  But Jenna was gone.

  • • •

  I thought it was a joke the first time Jenna brought up suicide. I even laughed. But then I saw the tears in her eyes—and Jenna like, never cried—and the way her hands were shaking. I pressed my lips together, my whole body growing cold. She was serious, and it felt really bad and scary.

  “You shouldn’t give Holly the satisfaction,” I said, but Jenna only shook her head, letting a single tear drip down her cheek. “Don’t let her get to you that much. She’s irrelevant.”

  “It’s not just her. My whole family is messed up, you know? I don’t think anyone would even notice I was gone.”

  “I would notice.”

  “Not if you were with me.”

  My eyes got wide. Was she really saying what I thought she was saying? Not just that she was sad and wanted to die, but that we should both do it? Kill myself? Over Holly? I blinked a few times, unsure what to even say to that.

  After a few minutes of me saying nothing, she waved her hand dismissively. “I wasn’t serious,” she said. “Just forget it.” But something about the look in her eyes told me that maybe she was more serious than she was letting on.

  I guess on some level I knew that it was wrong to not say something. Jenna’s life was pretty shitty. Her parents were divorced, and her mom was one of those people my mom called a “Happy Hour Drunk.” She had four drinks every night after work while she “made supper,” but she’d always be too sloshed to finish it, and Jenna would end up preparing the whole thing herself.

  Her dad remarried and was living about an hour away. Ever since he had a new baby with his new wife, he’d only come to visit Jenna and her little brother once. He always said he was “too busy with work,” but we all knew he was really too busy being someone else’s dad. It’s why her mom drank so much; she never really got over the divorce.

  So even though I knew you’re supposed to re
port it when one of your friends threatens suicide, I didn’t do it. Partly because I didn’t think she’d actually go through with it, and partly because I didn’t blame her. I knew how she felt: sometimes I was as sad and hopeless and pissed off as she was. And after she brought up the possibility of doing it together, I found it creeping into my thoughts on really down days.

  “Think about it,” Jenna said one night over a heaping plate of fries which sat between us on her bed. The grease spilled over onto the comforter, and she sucked some salt off of her finger. “They’ll probably have to go through some special program. They’ll have to admit what they did to us. The whole world will know what Holly and Monica and Sydney and all their precious prom queen populars are really like. They won’t be able to charm their way out of it this time, because we’ll be dead and people sit up and notice when kids end up dead.”

  I chewed and swallowed. “Couldn’t we get the same thing done if we just turn them in or something? I mean, we won’t get to see it all go down if we’re dead.”

  Jenna shook her head, shoveled a fry into her mouth. “I’ve tried it. I talked to my science teacher, Mr. Neeson, months ago after Monica purposely messed up my lab. Do you notice any changes?” She paused, chewed, then pointed at me with a fry. “Yeah, me neither. That’s because there are no changes. Those bitches still run the school. They will always run the school.”

  I thought it over. I remembered a day, not long before, when Holly tripped me in the hallway as I was walking past her locker on my way to P.E.

  “Ooops,” she’d said in mock surprise. “Gosh, I didn’t see you there, Chloe. Please don’t tell on me.” And she and her friends had all started giggling, and it hadn’t really made sense to me then. But then, after Jenna’s confession, it became clear.

  And it was right then—with a mouthful of mushed-up french fry and my right leg falling asleep on Jenna’s comforter—that I realized it. There really was no way to beat Holly Abrams.