New Girl

by Paige Harbison

  Cheers immediately broke out. Max was still and silent, as was I. Professor Crawley made a movement toward Dana, but then allowed her to go on when she gave him a scathing look.

  “Make it quick,” he said, his voice carrying just enough to get to the microphone.

  “As some of you know, Becca updated her Facebook with the following—I am alive, and I will be back to Manderley soon. Love you, Max.” I felt him stiffen next to me. She went on. “I don’t know when she’ll be back, but obviously she will be. Because of this update, her parents have funded advertising in newspapers and magazines nationwide. She has become an icon in news stories practically overnight, and I’m sure it’ll be no time until she’s back. So what I’m saying is, tell your friends and family to keep an eye out for her. All of the money from the T-shirts is going to the cause.”

  She stepped down, to applause. Professor Crawley took the podium over again. “Actually, in line with that, there is no way to know if this posting was really by Becca or not. The police are searching, but please, I implore you not to get your hopes—”

  But Professor Crawley could hardly be heard. Everyone in the auditorium was talking noisily.

  It stayed like that through dinner. I sat at a table with Cam, Blake, Max and some others I barely knew. Most of them were talking about Becca. I was poking at my spaghetti and meatballs, and Max was staring at his meat loaf.

  I tried to formulate a million different questions and things to say before landing on, “What do you think?”

  We couldn’t be heard over everyone else.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Where would she have been all this time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t, I took a deep breath. “Max, you must be able to guess. You have no idea if this is something she might do?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “It’s definitely something she would do.”

  “It is?” My heart fell a little. Then guilt squeezed it.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Attention probably. Or something else. I don’t know.”

  I took a small bite of my spaghetti. A moment later, I got up the nerve to ask him what I had been thinking. “Max, do you think she might have been pregnant?”

  He froze. “I don’t know.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I have no idea.” His tone had sharpened.

  I stared at him for a moment. “I’m not very hungry. And I’m tired. The plane, you know.” I waved my hand, as if to say, Oh, planes, they put me right to sleep. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He said nothing, and let me walk away. I said good-night to everyone else. Blake gave me a kind smile and waved.

  I ran into Johnny on the steps.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Johnny.” I breezed past him, not stopping until I got to the rotunda. I slumped down in one of the seats with itchy fabric.

  “What’s wrong?” Johnny had followed me.

  I shook my head. “Do you think Becca might come back?”

  “It’s something she’d do.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like the trait of a very lovable person, does it?” The question flew from my lips before I could stop it. “I mean…I mean…”

  Johnny sat down across from me. “She wasn’t all simple charm. She had more to her. Yeah, this is something she’d do, but…I don’t know.” He looked thoughtfully down at his own fingers. “If she did, there’s more to it than just attention. I’m sure of that.”

  “I asked Max if he thought she was pregnant.”

  He looked stony. “Yeah, I’ve wondered that, too. Most everyone has.”

  We were silent for a moment. “Was he…really that in love with her?”

  “I don’t know what it was. It was something…different.”

  My heart sank. “Okay.”

  “He just couldn’t tear himself away from her. I don’t know why. But I mean, he wasn’t the only one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean that…everyone was fascinated by her. She looked like a movie star, but partied like a rock star. I don’t know. She was just endearing in that way.”

  I bit my lip and stared down at the floor. I’d never felt more drab in my life. I was like the gray, rainy skies outside, only less threatening and full of no mystery at all. Before coming to Manderley, I’d always thought I was worth knowing—certainly not worth admiring or obsessing over like Becca clearly was—but now I just felt like a mess. I bet Becca never had a hole in her socks, or a bad face day. I bet she never had puffy eyes in the morning or got hungover. She probably looked good in glasses—not that she’d have to wear them because she’d surely have perfect vision—and still look gorgeous without makeup. Probably had sexy, messy, bed hair instead of just ratty, messy hair.

  She was the kind of beautiful we’ve all been comforted into thinking was just airbrushing in magazines. I was the “real” girl they always show before the airbrushing with a caption like, “But here’s what the average real girl looks like! Can you even believe it? She was walking around like that!”

  “I can’t compete with that.” My face was getting hot. “Everyone looks at me like they think that I think that I’m as good as her, and I’m not even saying that I am. And yet, why should it be just so obvious that I’m not?”

  I couldn’t figure out what exactly was driving my jealousy. I didn’t want to be fawned over and obsessed over. But I envied that she was.

  “Look. Look at me.” He waited for me to look at him. “Call Becca the most beautiful and charming girl in the world, and it has nothing to do with who you are. You hardly pale in comparison. Everyone here, they’re just shallow. Becca wasn’t a bad person on the inside, but no one here got to know her, either. They all liked her because she was unique. She was a new toy they never really got to play with. And now that she’s gone, they just want her more than ever.”

  I looked up at him, not noticing my eyes were filled with tears until some fell from my eyelashes. It was nice of him trying to console me. But I knew what he was saying was just that. Consoling.

  Johnny smiled a little, furrowing his eyebrows. “Don’t. You have no reason to cry. You’re bigger than this whole school and everything anyone might think about you inside of it.”

  “I never worry about this kind of thing. I’ve never been this person.”

  “You’re still not, you’re just being massacred by a popular girl’s posse. It makes sense.”

  I took a deep breath and laughed. “Thank you.”

  Johnny looked over my shoulder and I turned to see Max.

  “Are you fucking joking?” Max asked, looking at Johnny.

  “Max, stop before your imagination goes crazy. I wasn’t—” Johnny began.

  Max clenched his jaw, and stared straight at Johnny. “I’m not going through this whole thing again, especially not with her.” He threw a finger at me.

  Johnny shook his head. “Max you gotta—”

  “Fuck it, do what you want.” He walked through the dorm door, and was gone.

  Johnny and I both sat silently for a moment in the now very still air.

  I didn’t know what had just happened. I wanted to cry all over again.

  He put a hand on my shoulder when he saw the expression on my face. “It’s okay, you haven’t done anything.”

  “I have to go to sleep. Thank you so much, Johnny.”

  I stood and went back to my room. I got under my covers and tried to sleep. Before I knew it, hours had passed and I was still not asleep. Finally my desire to talk to Max outweighed my desire to try sleeping.

  I ran to the boys’ dorm and then through it. I knew his room number. It had been a small, embarrassing fantasy of mine to sneak into his room for months.

  He opened it after a few seconds. He was in shorts and no shirt. I collected myself and then said, “What’s wrong with you? Why were
you so mad earlier?”

  “I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have acted like that.”

  “But why did you? I was just talking to him.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. So was Becca.”

  “What do you—what?”

  He opened the door he stood in front of. “Come with me.

  “Becca and Johnny were hooking up for…I guess most of my relationship with her.”

  I practically did a double take. “What? Johnny?”

  “Yeah. So that’s why he and I aren’t friends anymore.”

  “Weren’t you two friends for a long time? I can’t believe he would just do that to you.”

  “He wouldn’t usually. It was just Becca. Just how she was.”

  I nodded. I was barely even aware of how cold it was outside.

  “So when I saw you two,” he went on, “it just felt like déjà vu.”

  “Well, I’m not… I don’t have any interest in Johnny at all. I hardly even know him.”

  “You don’t have to say that. We’re not together.”

  He may as well have slapped me. “I know.” My words were hard and restrained.

  He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about that. I really am.”

  “I never said—”

  “No, I know you didn’t. I’m sorry. I’m just…” He looked at me. “I like you. And I want to be with you. But I just can’t.”

  “Max, I never said I wanted that. What makes you think you’re the one deciding you and I aren’t more than we are?”

  He looked surprised, and that only made me madder.

  “Seriously,” I went on, my voice rising a little. “When do you imagine I said anything about feelings for you?”

  His face fell a little but I had to ignore it. I opened the door and said, “I’m going.”

  A couple of guys were coming down the hallway. I felt my cheeks go red, and I closed the door behind me. They stayed silent, but I heard them start to laugh once I was past them. I flew out of the boys’ dorm door, and heard a lot of noise coming from the hall below. I leaned over the balcony.

  “Miss Tobias!”

  Professor Crawley, in khakis and a Harvard sweatshirt, was standing and breathing hard at the bottom of the stairs. Susan turned around when he called her name. “Stop running, I’ve already seen you—all of you—so just stop running.”

  Susan Tobias was trembling and white as a sheet. “P-please, Mr. Crawley, I—I… My p-parents will kill me!”

  “Come with me, and we might be able to work something out.” He ushered her with his hand. “There are only, what, five hundred students at this school? I know who you all are.”

  He looked up and caught eyes with me. He crooked his finger to beckon me downstairs.

  “We might have been out of bed after curfew, but she just snuck out of the boys’ dorms!” Susan was saying as I descended the stairs.

  My heart was pounding. I hated getting caught doing anything. It always mortified me.

  “You come with me, too,” he said, once I was next to them.

  He led us through two heavy wooden doors and down a hallway. He switched on the lights and opened his office door with a key. “Sit.”

  He indicated the seats across from his own, where he sat.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  Professor Crawley cut me off. “I’ll talk to you in a second.” He turned toward Susan. “Miss Tobias. You’ve had a lot of detentions lately, haven’t you?” He turned on his computer and typed her name into a search box. “Yes, you have. Six in the past three months. I’m not going to ask you what’s going on. I just need you to stop messing up. You’re going to interfere with your own chances of getting into Northwestern. Also, I hate being dragged out of bed.”

  “Yes, Professor Crawley. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me, apologize to your future if you screw it up.”

  “Yes, Professor Crawley.”

  He gave a nod. “Go on to bed now.”

  “Thank you, Professor Crawley,” she said quietly, before walking out the door and leaving us alone.

  “So what happened with you? The boys’ dorms, really? This surprises me.”

  “I wasn’t doing anything—I just had to talk to Max. Holloway. Max Holloway. I had to talk to him about something.”

  “Couldn’t wait until the morning?”

  I shook my head. My eyes suddenly started to burn, and I surprised myself by getting the urge to cry.

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  I shook my head and fought back the tears. “I don’t even know. I’m just so frustrated. I feel like all he thinks about is Her, and everyone’s always talking about it—Becca this, and Becca that—and I’m just not trying to be her—I don’t want what she had. Well, I mean, I do, I want him but that’s just a coincidence, it wasn’t on purpose. And everyone thinks it is, I feel like. And I went home and even Michael knew. Michael! He doesn’t know anything, and yet he knew about Her. And then we got in that big fight, and it’s just like even if I wanted to, I can’t even go home, and I don’t want to go to school with Leah anymore, because she’s just…ugh sometimes, you know? Plus then every time I go up to my room here, there’s Dana, just waitin’ to be weird as hell. Blake’s nice and everything, so that’s cool, and I mean, you know, sometimes it really does feel like Max likes me. But why does Dana care so much? It’s like I get sticking up for your friend, but… And what if she really comes back? Not that I don’t want her to be okay or anything.” I took a deep breath. I’d been staring at a spot on the desk, my words getting faster and more high-pitched as I spoke. I looked up at Professor Crawley and shook my head again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Quite all right,” he said.

  “I’m okay. Really. Like…all that stuff is just pissing me off. It’s not like I’m troubled or anything.”

  “No, I understand perfectly well what you’re saying. I don’t know that I understood half of what you said, but I get that you’re frustrated. But you’re okay, you say?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded, and then opened his mouth to say something before closing it again. He leaned in on his desk and looked at me. “Listen. Kids your age love to obsess. Half of them didn’t even know Becca. But once she was missing, they all appropriated the pain and suffering. It’s just what people do. Also, they’ve idolized her. They took her from being a normal human being, and turned her into some kind of deity of popularity. I’m not saying anything negative about Miss Normandy. But you just have to remember that no one is perfect. Not even her.”

  “Right. I’ll remember that.”

  “All right. Feel better.”

  “Thanks.” I stood to leave.