New Girl

by Paige Harbison

  She sounded so sure that I would do well here. I made sure not to delete the message and listened to the second one. It was from Leah, my best friend. The first few seconds was just a bunch of screaming, talking and laughing. Then finally:

  “…give me the phone, Michael! Jeez! Okay, finally! It’s all of us here—” she was interrupted by a bunch of people yelling their hellos into the phone “—and we just miss you so much! The senior cookout was at the A-Street Pier this year, and it’s so freaking awesome! Rita’s is giving out free desserts, and Mango Mangos is catering—I know you love their French fries and we just— Shut up! I’m trying to leave a message!” More laughing, and then my friend Emma took over the phone.

  “Hey! Oh, my gosh, we miss you so much, seriously, it is not the same without you. Plus I don’t think the guys know who to lust after now that you’re gone—”

  The phone exchanged hands again. My throat was tight, and there were chills going up and down my back. “It’s totally true—” I recognized Jake’s voice “—you were the hottest thing to ever happen to SAHS.”

  “Anyway,” Leah said, taking the phone back, “we miss you, and you would have loved this cookout it’s so much fun. Not as much as if you were here though. Call me back! Or write to me on Facebook or something—jeez—I can’t believe I haven’t heard from you yet! Must be too busy with all your— Stop it! Okay, love you, bye!”

  More laughing until they got the call to end. There was one more voice mail from home, left only an hour ago. It started with barking I recognized. Then I heard the small barely-familiar-with-a-phone voice of my little sister Lily.

  “That was Jasper saying hello. He misses you lots, I can tell, and he’s always sleeping in your bed! I think he’s really sad every time someone comes to the door because it’s not you. You have to come home soon so you can pet him and hug him, because he’s really sad and missing you. He got a new collar and leash! I lost the other ones…but that’s okay, because these are pink! Daddy let me pick them out, and Mommy thought it was silly because Jasper is a boy, but I think they look good with his black fur. He’s really cute. Also another doggie moved in next door and Jasper is always talking to it. It’s making Mommy irritated though, she says, because now they’re always barking. But I said it’s cute because it’s like 101 Dalmatians and they’re doing the twilight bark. You know, when all the dogs talk before they go inside for bed? Anyway, Daddy is doing that thing with his finger that means ‘wrap it up’ so I have to go. Oh—wait, here’s Daddy, he wants to talk, too. Bye!”

  My eyes were burning now. “I just walked in, I’m not sure how long she’s been talking or if it cut her off.” I heard Lily in the background saying she had just called me. “Anyway, we miss you and can’t wait until you come home. Love you, talk to you soon.”

  And that was it. I used to hear every one of those voices every day, and took them completely for granted. I couldn’t even mentally utter the old saying about “knowing what you’ve got.” I just missed them, even after this short period of time. I was so incredibly nostalgic for a life I knew I’d never, ever have again. But at this moment, I wanted nothing more than to give up on this stupid place and go back home. I looked at the weather app on my phone. It had been eighty-three degrees back home. The next two days were sunny, and the third had thunderstorms. I loved thunderstorms.

  As for Manderley, the weather was anticipated to be overall gloomy, with a temperature of sixty the next day, with cold rains and a low of forty-three. Cold rains are really, really different than warm thunderstorms.

  I tried home once more. When there was no answer, I left my own voice mail. “Hey, everyone, um…” Here it was. My opportunity. If I told my parents I hated it, they would let me come home. I could be home in forty-eight hours, sitting in the living room with my mom. She’d listen to my woes sympathetically and without judgment. I could be back at my high school in time for Homecoming. “I miss you all so, so much. I— It’s…”

  If I left, everyone would know why. If people talked about me, they’d say, Remember that new girl? No, not Becca, the short one with the stupid freckles.

  Becca left here, alive or not, and left behind a legacy. I wasn’t as good as her, only because she was so…whatever she was. If I walked out now, I’d be telling everyone they were right. If I left now, I’d be a coward who runs scared from the ghost of a girl who haunts the halls.

  “Manderley is amazing. I can’t wait until you can see it in person. The classes are pretty hard, but not worse than I thought they’d be. Love you all. Lily, give Jasper a paw-shake and a hug for me, okay?” I briefly envisioned how good it would feel just to scratch his ears and give him a squeeze. “Love you. Miss you. I have to go turn my phone back in now. I still love it by the way, thanks so much for getting it for me.” I was rambling. “Okay, bye now.”

  I texted each of my friends, giving them a brief and respectively varied miss you, wish I was home, xoxo, and then turned the phone off. It felt like saying goodbye to my visitors and returning to my jail cell.

  The only way I could think of to extend the visit would be to go to the library, to the one computer equipped with the ability to do anything but look up journal articles and other scholarly things, and log on to Facebook for the first time since I’d left home.

  I really shouldn’t have. It was just more of the same torturous happiness from my old life. My friends wrote to say they missed me. It was really flattering and nice, but it just hurt. It hadn’t been long since I’d left, but it felt like it had been so much longer. Leah wrote, Already forgotten about us, huh? Ugh! Fine, go make your new friends…what do I care? Haha, just kidding. Miss you, come visit!

  I looked at the pictures from the cookout, and everything else my friends had been up to lately. It was like digging into my own flesh to find a bullet. I couldn’t even get through the whole album of all of my friends wearing sweatshirts with shorts and flip-flops, still sporting sunburns at the cookout. Leah had tagged me in one picture as an extra marshmallow on a stick and her and Emma pouting.

  I glanced at the other albums, of them just two days before, swimming in Lucy’s aunt’s pool in the afternoon and then in the hot tub at night.

  Then I thought of something. I hesitantly typed her name into the search box. And then there she was.

  Rebecca Normandy. Her profile was restricted so that I couldn’t see anything but her profile pictures and the comments on her wall. It was really kind of disturbing. She’d been missing for almost five months, and there were still comments from the past few days, from people whose names I didn’t recognize.

  Miss you, beautiful.

  I love you and miss you every day. Please come back soon.

  XOXOOXO

  Hey, remember that one time with the shoelaces and the Barbie? Oh, my God, the look on his face… Bahahaha come back, slut, I miss you!

  They were all writing to her like she was checking her Facebook regularly. I wondered, with a pang, if she was. What had Dana suggested the other night? That she was off “handling” something.

  I kept scrolling, and found Dana’s most recent post: I know you’re not gone. I know it. So stop. Come back. Or at least contact me.

  There were tons more comments like those and like Dana’s. It was creepy. Spooky.

  And it made me really wonder what had happened. Maybe she wasn’t even missing. Maybe everyone knew where she was, and she was just…hiding for some reason. That would be crazy…but maybe that’s what it was.

  But if she wasn’t…what had happened? Blake had said something about a boat that went missing that night in the storm. Had Becca taken it out? She couldn’t have. It was pitch-black down there at night, and in a storm? She could have just called a cab, like Blake had said, on the payphone in the lobby and…left.

  To make my brain strain more, I clicked on her pictures. I could only see a few, but they were enough. In the one she had set as her default, Max was kissing her on the cheek, and she was smiling. In the next fe
w, she just looked pretty. She looked like she was trying to look pretty, but she was undeniably succeeding. All the comments on her pictures confirmed it.

  A sudden jab of uncharacteristic jealousy struck me. She’d been new at Manderley last year. How had she managed to make so many friends here, made such an impact, while I was greeted with only hesitance quickly followed by disinterest? Madison and Julia made some kind of an effort with me, and Johnny was nice. Max was…something. Blake was nice, too, I guessed. But Dana…

  There was only a handful of people I’d even talked to, and all of them—except maybe for Cam, who rarely spoke—seemed morbidly and irreversibly affected by Becca. They all knew her. It’s not like each of them talked only about her, but somehow that seemed more significant.

  I don’t know what happened to me, then. I was depressed about being away from home and jealous of Becca one moment, and then the next, something shifted in me. It was as if my skeleton turned to iron—I was strong, and I would not have my happiness and fate decided by some popular girl who had reigned before I got there.

  It wasn’t up to Becca or Dana how I lived my life.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BECCA LEANED ON MAX, WITH HER DRINK IN hand. His arm was around her, tightened a little to keep her steady. He laughed at something Johnny said. Becca wasn’t really paying attention. She was watching the way Johnny’s muscles flexed when he moved his arms. He was too hot. But she couldn’t go for him. She’d already gotten the ungettable.

  Well. Almost gotten him. Tonight was the night to seal the deal. Madison and Julia had given her sympathy and said “not to feel too badly about him not wanting to get together officially, because really he just never does that.”

  Fuck that.

  Becca’s eyes slid involuntarily up Johnny’s body and she flinched when she realized he was looking at her, too. She smiled and bit her bottom lip. Quickly she glanced up at Max, who had been taking a swig of his drink and didn’t notice.

  “Max,” she said, readjusting her attention to him. “Let’s go outside.”

  “Okay.”

  Johnny had already turned away when Becca looked back.

  She grabbed his hand. “Lead the way.”

  Max guided her through the crowd, smiling and shaking his head at all of the “ooh’s” and “get it, Holloway!” as they passed by.

  Once they were outside, she gave him the look that always made boys kiss her.

  It worked. He laid a hand on her jawbone and pulled her toward him. He was a good kisser. She should want this. But she felt like something was missing with him. She kissed him harder, hoping she could forget the thoughts in her mind.

  She pulled away and smiled slyly. Then she yanked his arm and guided him away from the door and into the darkness behind the boathouse.

  He silently allowed her to take him there. Then, in the darkness where she could pretend he was anyone, she kissed him hard. He kissed her back. So he was capable of not kissing just like a Nice Guy. She scratched his back, and all the way around the waistband of his boxers, which were a little higher than his slightly loose pants. She unbuttoned his top button. She could feel that he wanted it. And she was going to give it.

  His grip on her waist tightened. She bit his lip and unzipped his pants, slowly dropping to her knees. She ran her hands up and down his legs, and kissed the sharp muscles of his hip. Then she did it.

  A few minutes later, her lips were pink and so were Max’s cheeks. She’d finished and then zipped and buttoned him back up.

  “Becca…” Max said. He pulled her in toward him, and kissed her from her raw lips to her collarbone. Then he saw the look on her face. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, as unconvincingly as she could.

  “You’re obviously not…what’s wrong?”

  She sighed, a tad theatrically. “Nothing…”

  He looked her in the eyes and silently demanded an answer.

  “I just…never do that sort of thing. And—” she intentionally let her breath quiver “—I just don’t want you to think I’m a slut.”

  She’d used her sex appeal to get her anywhere she’d ever been in life so far. And this was not the first time she’d had this conversation.

  “I don’t.”

  “How could you not? I mean I’m not even your girlfriend…”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  She was worried about exactly that. She wanted him to spread around how fantastically talented she was at…stuff.

  “I appreciate that. But I don’t care about what other people think. I care about what you think. And I want you to think I’m respectable. God…first we did it on my first night here, and now this? I’m so stupid.”

  Becca ran a hand through her long hair, swooping it to one side.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Why would you like me?” She put on her cute voice.

  He shrugged. “I just do.”

  That was not a good answer. She was used to guys falling at her feet and giving her laundry lists of reasons why they loved her.

  She paused, and then tried to look sullen. “We just can’t do this again. We can’t do this until—I mean, unless we’re official. I just can’t live with myself.”

  Becca watched him decide what his next move was.

  “If that’s how you feel about it, I understand.”

  She nodded. Dammit. He wasn’t going in for this.

  Later that night, after Max had been too understanding and left her alone the rest of the night, Becca went up to her room to stumble out of her clothes and into a slip.

  “You okay?” Dana asked from her bed.

  Shut. Up. That was all Becca wanted to say. But instead she held up a hand and gave thumbs-up, her other hand putting pressure on her throbbing head.

  “Should I get you some water? I have some Excedrin.”

  “Two.” She held out a hand again, without looking. She heard Dana scrambling up and out of her bed to get the bottle.

  “Here,” said Dana, handing her a bottle of water and the pills.

  “You don’t have any cold water?”

  “No, sorry.”

  Becca took the Excedrin. “Gimme another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Pill.”

  “You’re really only supposed to take two, I think.”

  “Just give it to me, Jesus. You’re not my mother, so don’t baby me.”

  “Fine, I’m sorry.” She put another pill in Becca’s extended palm.

  Becca downed that one, too. “What are you, mad now?”

  “No…?”

  “Okay, then.”

  “When was the last time you ate?” Dana asked sheepishly.

  “Like…five hours ago.”

  “What did you have?”

  “A salad. Why are you—?”

  “Because you’re not supposed to take that stuff on an empty stomach.”

  That was probably true. She didn’t need to feel even sicker in the morning than she was already bound to.

  “Fine.”

  Becca threw on a sweatshirt and then walked down to the always-open dining hall in bare feet and no bra. She looked like hell, and really hoped she wouldn’t see anyone.