by Kara Thomas
“Susan wouldn’t do that to Jen. She wouldn’t just make up some bullshit story about her helping Ethan write a hit list.”
“Well, maybe she didn’t make it up.” Carly holds my gaze and takes another pull from her vape. Lets the smoke out her nose. “You can’t believe everything you hear, though. Girls are always whittling little weapons to stab each other with.”
The last part is the only thing she’s said that makes sense. “Right.” I bite back the dozens of nasty words I have for this girl. This stupid, lying, awful girl who implied my sister had something to do with Ethan McCready’s hit list. “I have to go. Sorry I kept you from studying.”
“No prob.” Carly tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, revealing a cascade of silver studs. Then, as if an afterthought: “Sorry about your sister. She really did seem nice.”
“Thanks,” I say, anger still swelling in me. I step off the curb, heading for the parking lot as quickly as I can, desperate to escape Carly and the sickly sweet vanilla smell of her smoke.
* * *
—
As I approach Ginny’s car, I see her and Petey in an animated conversation. She turns her head to the driver’s side window. Her face falls when she spots me. It must be obvious how my conversation with Carly went; I wish I had done a lap around the library to compose myself.
I slip into the passenger seat, Petey’s hands already on my headrest, his voice and peanut butter breath in my ear. “Do they make slime at that library?” He turns to Ginny. “At our library, they make slime.”
“No, this is a college library,” I say. My voice is trembling.
Ginny lifts her eyes to meet Petey’s in the mirror. “I saw a recipe for color-changing slime,” she says. “You should look it up.”
Petey chirps, “Cool!” and immerses himself in my phone. I close my eyes.
Ginny’s voice is soft beside me. “Are you okay?”
I nod, my throat tight. “Carly says she wasn’t friends with any of them.”
When I inhale and open my eyes, Ginny is watching me expectantly.
I can’t bring myself to tell her what Carly Amato said about the paper Jen slipped into Ethan’s locker. It’s complete bullshit—there’s no way that paper was a hit list. Her friends were on it. Friends whose deaths completely broke her, she loved them so much.
Mrs. Ruiz’s voice knifes its way through my brain. Jen and Susan weren’t speaking. Susan went to the principal when she saw Ethan McCready’s hit list. According to Carly, Susan saw Jen slip something into Ethan’s locker…
The note. I’m not okay.
A misunderstanding. It explains everything. Jen was simply replying to Ethan’s message: Do you want to talk about it? Susan saw Jen putting the note in Ethan’s locker, the same day she saw Ethan writing the list, and instead of talking to Jen about it, she went to Principal Heinz. Of course Jen would be pissed enough at Susan to stop speaking to her.
“Hey, we should get McFlurries!” Petey yells from the backseat, breaking my train of thought.
My hand moves to my empty pocket with a flutter of panic. I think about my wallet on the kitchen island. Right where I left it after I gave Petey his bribe money. “I forgot my wallet.”
“That’s okay,” Petey says. “I have twenty dollars now. I got you.”
I don’t say anything. My reflex is to tell him no, but I can’t handle the thought of going home right now.
“I would enjoy a McFlurry,” Ginny says.
Can she sense it, how I’m not ready to go home? I let myself breathe. “I would enjoy one too.”
Ginny and I don’t bring up Carly Amato again on the drive back into town. McDonald’s is only a block away from the playhouse, but I don’t have the presence of mind to be worried about my mom catching us out right now. When Ginny parks, Petey tumbles out of the backseat and darts ahead.
“Wait for us,” I say, still too dazed to be irritated with him.
Petey stops at the entrance and holds the door open for Ginny and me.
At the counter, I order vanilla ice cream with Oreo pieces, and Ginny gets Butterfinger.
“That’s what Jen always got,” Petey says, matter-of-fact, before asking the cashier for vanilla ice cream with M&M’s. I don’t have the heart to tell him that he’s confusing Jen with me; that Butterfinger McFlurries used to be my favorite.
“Go get us a table.” I nudge Petey once he’s paid the cashier. I watch him wind his way through the restaurant and plop himself in a booth nearby. He takes out my phone and holds it sideways, which means Clan Wars. I forgot he still has my phone. My head is thrumming with so many questions.
“Are you okay?” Ginny’s voice is soft, but it brings me back.
“I don’t know. Carly told me Susan saw Jen put something in Ethan’s locker the day before he got expelled. It had to be the note they were passing back and forth. But Susan must have thought it had something to do with the hit list and told Principal Heinz.”
“Do you really think Susan would do that?” Ginny whispers.
“I don’t know.”
Ginny is watching me as if she can sense there’s more. I swallow. “Carly was talking like Jen was involved somehow and that she wasn’t the only one who thought that way.”
Ginny is quiet. The cashier sets her McFlurry on the counter, but she doesn’t move to collect it.
“That’s crap,” she finally says.
It’s the first I’ve heard Ginny curse and it’s like a jolt to my brain, waking me up. “Right?” I look her in the eyes. “It makes no sense.”
The cashier sets my McFlurry down. Ginny and I grab our order and join Petey at the booth. I sit next to him, and Ginny slides into the seat across from us.
I let Ginny eat a spoonful of her ice cream before I catch her eye and speak again. “There’s something else. Carly says Jen was the only cheerleader who wasn’t on the hit list.”
Ginny glances at Petey and drops her voice to a whisper. “Are you sure you want to talk about this in front of him?”
“Don’t worry about him,” I say. “Look.”
I say Petey’s name at normal volume. Once, twice, three times before shouting: “PETER THOMAS CARLINO.”
“What?” He doesn’t look up from my phone. With one finger he’s building a new settlement. With the other hand, he’s spooning ice cream into his mouth.
I turn back to Ginny. “See? We’re good.”
Ginny swirls the tip of her spoon through her ice cream, nudging at a piece of Butterfinger. “Jen not being on the list doesn’t mean anything. Just that Ethan liked her.”
“The last thing she wrote to him was yes.”
Petey’s voice finally breaks the silence. He points to my untouched McFlurry. “Are you gonna eat that?”
FIVE YEARS AGO
OCTOBER
I don’t know. If Jen was being honest, that was how she would answer Ethan McCready’s question.
Do you want to talk about it?
Jen didn’t know. She did want to talk about how shitty she felt, but she didn’t want to talk about it with Ethan McCready. And it wasn’t because people thought he was a loser and a creep. She couldn’t look at him without thinking about that kiss all those years ago.
She wondered if she would like it if he kissed her again; she wondered if he even wanted to.
The day after he gave her the note, Jen had slipped it through a slit in his locker with trembling fingers. Yes.
Immediately, she wanted to take it back. Becoming friends with Ethan McCready again was not the most rational response to whatever weirdness was going on with her and Jules and Susan.
But he kept invading her head. Every thought she had over the past few days seemed infused with Ethan.
Even now, as she observed herself in the mirror of the dressing room at Addie’s Closet, she i
magined Ethan seeing her in her prospective homecoming dress.
Everyone wore short dresses to homecoming, which made Jen anxious. Tall girls and short dresses were a recipe for disaster. She’d picked a dress that seemed like it would look the least vulgar on her. It was covered in rose-gold sequins, with a keyhole halter top.
She knew the boys at school thought she was hot. Hot was their word: Jen Rayburn is the hottest girl in our grade. Jen never knew how to feel about it, though. She had done things with boys; just last year she’d made out with Chase Kenney at the movie theater, eventually having to shrug away from him when he guided her hand into his pants. All she felt afterward was disgust with guys and how they only wanted one thing from girls.
And now here she was, imagining Ethan McCready’s gaze running up her legs, to the place where the hem of her skirt met her thigh—
The curtain sectioning off the dressing room opened. Jen jumped back, her face warm, as if she’d been caught doing something gross. “Jesus, Jules.”
“Sorry.” Juliana stepped into the dressing room with Jen. She was wearing a lacy black-and-gold crop top and a long tulle skirt. It was the type of outfit only Jules could pull off.
“You look frigging awesome.” Jules stepped around Jen, tugging at the hem of her dress like a seamstress. “You’re getting it, right?”
“I don’t know.”
Addie’s Closet was the only boutique in town. Most girls drove forty minutes to the outlets in Ithaca, but cheer practice had been sucking up most of Jen’s weekends, and between Monica’s ballet classes and Petey’s playdates, her mother didn’t have time to take her.
Mrs. Berry had dropped the girls off at Addie’s and said she’d be back in an hour. Susan was still dillydallying by the sale rack. She was the most indecisive person—Jen knew she’d wind up coming back to Addie’s with her mother tomorrow. She watched Susan hold a black sheath dress up to herself and then put it back on the rack.
Juliana finished up at the register and joined Jen at the door. “Suz! Ready to go?”
Susan sighed. “I guess.”
The girls filed out of the store and across the lot, waiting until the sign across the street flashed to WALK. The Sunnybrook McDonald’s was unnecessarily nice—the façade looked like an old farmhouse, with a giant gold foil M over the doorway instead of those tacky arches. Above, the sky was turning the color of sherbet.
McFlurries and fries obtained, Susan slid into a booth by the window. Juliana and Jen followed, setting their Addie’s Closet shopping bags on their laps.
Susan swirled her straw through the top of her ice cream. “I’m not going to find anything.”
“Maybe if you weren’t so anal,” Juliana said.
Susan threw a French fry at Jules. Jen stole one from the packet on Susan’s tray while she wasn’t looking. Suz could be absurdly territorial when it came to her food.
“So,” Susan said. “Anything you want to tell us?”
Jen’s insides frosted over. She didn’t like the way Susan’s voice had cooled. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw you put something in Ethan McCready’s locker this morning.”
Juliana, who had just had her hand on Susan’s tray, froze with a fistful of fries. “McCreepy?”
Jen felt a flare of annoyance. “Don’t call him that. You guys can be so mean.”
“And you can be too nice,” Juliana said. “There’s something wrong with that kid.”
Jen poked her spoon through her ice cream, even though she didn’t want it anymore. “It was nothing. I left my book in Mr. Ward’s room. He brought it to me. The end.”
“Suuuuuuure.” Now Juliana sounded as frosty as Susan had earlier—even accusatory, as if she thought Jen was hiding something.
“Why are you guys doing this?” Jen asked. “Teasing me about a boy like we’re in middle school?”
Suz smacked Jules’s hand as she reached to steal more fries. Suz’s eyes were on Jen. “Ethan’s always staring at you. It makes me worried.”
“Worried that what?” Jen asked.
“That you’re going to go missing and wind up stuffed in an oil drum.”
“Seriously,” Jen snapped. “Stop.”
“Jesus. It’s not that big of a deal.” Juliana eyed Jen like she was a cobra poised to strike. Her eyebrows knit together like Jen was being totally ridiculous, and they hadn’t been taunting her just moments ago.
Jen put down her McFlurry. “Whatever. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Whatever. The word hung between her and Juliana. It felt like it had become a weapon for them to use on each other.
* * *
—
Ethan wasn’t in school Monday; by third period, the whole building was in hysteria.
Jen caught pieces of the story in the halls, whispered between people in class: “Some sophomore was going to shoot up the school.”
“Yeah, he was going to kill all the cheerleaders and football players.”
The knot in Jen’s stomach grew when she heard her name over the loudspeaker. She was being called to the principal’s office.
Mr. Demarco, her guidance counselor, was there, sitting across from Principal Heinz. Leaning against the bookshelf was her stepfather.
“Jen,” Tom said. “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Why don’t you sit?” Mr. Heinz tugged on his tie. His collar was spotted with sweat.
“Ethan McCready was expelled this morning,” Mr. Heinz said.
Jen’s stomach shot up to her throat. Some sophomore was going to shoot up the school. He was going to kill all the cheerleaders.
She met Mr. Demarco’s eyes. His usually crisp polo was uneven, as if he’d gotten ready in a rush this morning. “You’re not in trouble, Jen. Why don’t you have a seat?”
Jen lowered herself into the empty chair next to Mr. Demarco’s. She noticed he was holding something—a sheet of lined paper torn from a notebook. He handed it to her. “Have you seen this?”
She felt her eyes racing across the page. In Ethan’s handwriting were the names of all the sophomore and junior cheerleaders: Juliana Ruiz, Susan Berry, Colleen Coughlin, Bethany Steiger. Stephanie Kazmark, Ariella Lopes, Chloe Munro.
All except hers.
“I’m not on here,” she said, to herself more than to anyone else.
“That’s what we wanted to talk about.” Mr. Heinz’s gaze flitted to her stepfather.
Tom held up a hand. “Jennifer, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”
Jen looked down at the list. “I don’t even know anything about this.”
Mr. Demarco’s voice was gentle, goading. “It’s okay if you do. We just want to figure out what happened.”
“Isn’t it obvious what happened? Ethan wrote this, and for some reason he left me off. Or forgot me.”
Mr. Demarco and Principal Heinz exchanged a look. Next to her, Jen noticed Tom’s grip on the edge of the bookshelf tighten. “I think Jen has told us all there is to say.”
“Are you and Ethan friendly?”
Jen glanced at Tom. “He lives in my neighborhood. We’re not friends.”
“Okay. Thank you, Jennifer.” Principal Heinz rubbed his eyes.
Once they were in the hallway, Tom pulled Jen aside. “You know you can tell me the truth.”
Jen blinked. Was he serious? “I already did.”
Tom’s pained smile made her heart shatter into a million pieces. “I know, kiddo,” he said. “I’ll walk you back to class.”
* * *
—
Something was wrong. By lunch, Jen was positive that there was more to everyone’s bizarre reaction in Principal Heinz’s office than they were letting on.
She didn’t think she could bear going
to lunch; they would all be talking about Ethan and how he looked mad enough to kill them all after Mark Zhang had knocked his lunch tray out of his hands and ruined his sneakers. Bethany would be especially hysterical—she was the one who had joined in and thrown the quarters at Ethan.
But Colleen wasn’t involved—she had laughed, sure, but Jen had sat there and done nothing. Why hadn’t Ethan put her on the list?
Jen knew why, but thinking about it, and what people would say about her if they knew, sent spasms through her chest.
The bell for sixth period rang, and Jen was still at her locker, dodging glances from the people congregating in the hall outside the cafeteria. Stephanie Kazmark had called her mom to pick her up; someone in Jen’s math class this morning swore he saw a police officer bring a bomb-sniffing dog to Ethan’s locker that morning.
The air around her was charged; it was almost as if everyone was more excited by everything going on than they were scared.
She had to talk to Ethan. There had to be some way—
“Out of the hall,” Mrs. Brown bellowed, sending a shot of panic through Jen. If she lingered too long, security would make her go to the cafeteria, where Bethany and Colleen and Mark were.
Band room. Jen took off for the auditorium, hurrying through the side door. Onstage, her band teacher, Mr. Garner, was conducting a lesson for the saxophone section. No one noticed Jen as she snuck up the side of the stage and went through the wings.
The door to Mr. Garner’s room, which the wind ensemble was allowed to use for practice, was open. Jen shut herself inside, grateful all of the chairs were empty. She tucked herself into the corner and took out her phone. Would someone like Ethan, who wasn’t swimming in friends, even have a Facebook page?
Ethan McCready did have a Facebook page. In the profile photo, his face was turned away from the camera, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head, but she knew it was him. Her finger hovered over the Add Friend button; she definitely couldn’t do that. People would see it, and they’d talk even more.