by Dahlia Adler
She turns a full shade whiter, and I don’t give her a chance to respond before grabbing Tyler by his arm and yanking him out of the school. “What the hell happened today?” I demand as I hustle him toward my car; I’ve got Byzantine History in half an hour and after yesterday, it’s pretty clear I can’t be late.
Ty is stone silent as he shoves himself in the front seat.
Ugh, fuck it. I don’t have the time or patience for this shit right now. I get into the driver’s seat and start the car, just as Ty says, “It smells like an ashtray in here.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome for picking you up,” I snap, inhaling deeply because I know my parents would kill me if I smoked in front of Tyler. Hell, they would’ve killed me if they knew I smoked at all. Lord knows it isn’t a habit I picked up in Pomona.
It isn’t until we’re stopped a red light two minutes later that Tyler speaks up. “It wasn’t my fault,” he mutters.
“I’m not assuming it is. I just wanna know what happened. It’s not like you to fight.”
“Alex was being a dick.”
“Tyler! Language.”
He snorts. “Oh please. You said ‘fuck’ like a thousand times during the move.”
“We’re not the same age,” I say with a sigh, but the truth is, I don’t give a shit. Trying to be my mother is exhausting. The light turns green and I press down on the accelerator. “Okay, whatever, just not in front of Max. Now tell me what happened.”
“He was making fun of me that I didn’t have a parent to sign my permission slip for our class trip next week, so I punched him.”
“He what?” I slam on the brakes so hard that the cacophony of horns in response is deafening. And then, the inevitable.
Crunch.
And that’s it. I’ve hit my limit. As the driver of the car that just crashed into my bumper stomps over to yell at me, I just barely manage to make sure Tyler’s okay before dropping my head into my hands and screaming loud enough to wake the dead.
“You look like shit,” Cait declares as I settle into our favorite booth at the campus coffee shop, one day, a whole insurance mess, a permission slip signature, and yet another pathetic e-mail to Connor later. “And what is that godawful smell?”
“Well, you’re either referring to the nicotine gum I’m chewing, which is absolutely disgusting, or the fact that I haven’t showered in two days, because I can barely find time to breathe in between dealing with my car insurance and Tyler’s principal.” I snap the gum a couple of times before spitting it into a napkin. It really is gross, but I need something to settle my nerves—they’ve been shot ever since the fender bender. Turns out, getting into a car accident less than two weeks after your parents died in one will do that to you. “Where’s Frankie?”
“Flirting with some guy with a guitar over by the teas. And speaking of the tease….” Frankie bounds over just then, drops a kiss on my cheek, wrinkles her nose, and then slides into the booth next to Cait.
“You smell gross, Lizzie B.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“How’s your car?”
“Looks as shitty as I do. They gave me a rental in the meantime, so if you see a snazzy Chevy Malibu outside, you’re looking at its temporary owner.”
“Sucks, Boo,” Cait says with a sympathetic tilt of her blond head.
I open my mouth to respond when a burst of laughter from the entrance attracts all three of our attention. At the sight of Sophie Springer, standing there with two of her bitchy Epsilon Rho sisters, blatantly pointing at me as they whisper, my appetite for a grilled cheese and fries dissipates completely.
“Guess she’s not so thrilled with me about the whole Trevor thing,” I mumble, reaching for the salt and pepper and pushing them around each other. “Did they do a whole messy public breakup thing after the cops took me away?”
Cait and Frankie exchange a glance. “What?” I demand.
Cait sighs. “They didn’t actually break up.”
“Seriously?” I bang the shakers against each other, enjoying the little crash of sound. “How stupid is she?”
“He said you were just some random guest hiding in his room at the party, that he didn’t even know you were there.” Frankie glances at Cait again, and Cait shrugs.
I narrow my eyes. “What is with the looks? If you guys hide anything more from me, I’ll kill you.” There’s another burst of laughter from Sophie, and I cringe at the sheer volume.
“He’s telling people you’re mentally unstable, and the only reason he’s not reporting you to the cops for trespassing is because he feels bad for you about your parents. Word’s…kinda spreading around campus.” Frankie’s voice drops to a whisper as she says this last bit. As if I’m more concerned about my worsening reputation than that the guy I’ve been hooking up with since last spring wishes he could’ve had me arrested.
Cait squeezes my hand. “He’s a fucking asshole.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t really wavering on that fact,” I bite out.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Frankie asks.
“Definitely not.” I yank a menu from behind the napkin dispenser with as much defiance as one can muster for such an act and smack it loudly on the table, even though I haven’t looked at a menu here since probably my first semester. “If some naive sorority bimbo wants to invade my space, that’s her problem.”
Cait drops her head into her hands with a groan at the volume of my voice. Not that she cares what those bitches think any more than I do, but Caitlin Johannssen is not one for conflict. Or “stupid girly shit”—her words, not mine. When most of your life revolves around charging other girls on a field while using a stick to throw a ball into a net, I guess who banged whom at a party isn’t all that interesting.
“I don’t think a restraining order is too severe either.” Undoubtedly in response to mine, Sophie’s voice rises and carries across the coffee shop. “I mean, I understand that sometimes, people do crazy things in reaction to trauma”—the emphasis on “crazy” is so strong, it’s like she’s trying to teach its meaning to a non-native speaker—“but there’s a desperation limit, you know? Like, you have to keep yourself safe when you’re around someone so delusional.”
“Let’s just get out of here,” Cait says quietly.
“No,” I reply firmly, just as our waitress shows up, a sulky goth chick who looks like she’d rather be dead than serving fellow Radleigh students. “Hi there!” I greet her.
The death glare she gives me in response could grill my cheese any day.
I ignore it. “I’ll have the steak and eggs, please. And an espresso.” Caffeine and protein—battle fuel of champions.
“Maybe you should get a salad,” Sophie suggests, sidling up to the table, minions in tow. “You really don’t need all that with your figure already what it is, do you?” She clucks her tongue with what I’m sure is very genuine concern for my health and well-being.
“And can you get this girl something with a laxative effect?” I add to the waitress, refusing to spare Sophie a glance as I slide my menu back into place. “My treat. I just can’t stand to see someone so full of shit, you know? Especially when her boyfriend keeps feeding her more of it.”
“Lordy,” mutters Cait.
“You don’t know a damn thing about my boyfriend, you nutcase,” Sophie snaps.
“Oh, right, I forgot,” I say coolly, pushing my glasses further up on my nose. “He and I had never met before that night. He definitely wasn’t fucking me six ways from Sunday last spring during your mixer when he pretended to get sick and left early. And it was probably someone else moaning that I give ‘the world’s fucking greatest head’ in the backseat of a black BMW, license plate SigPsi69.”
“Lizzie,” Cait groans, but I ignore her, because I can’t stop, couldn’t if I wanted to. Every memory with the guy I was literally having sex with when the cops came and fucked up my world is fighting its way to the surface, forcing itself to be heard as if to combat how completel
y he’s ignored me since I entered that police car.
And Sophie’s eyes, shooting sparks, are only spurring me on.
“That couldn’t have been your boyfriend who sent two frat boy underlings to build your furniture a month ago instead of doing it himself, so he could go for another round with me in my dorm room. And how could I confuse Trevor for someone who might’ve said, ‘Christ, I wish Sophie had tits like yours’? I mean, how does that even make sense? Who the fuck is—ohhh, shit. This is so awkward.”
“Lizzie, stop!” Cait hisses. Frankie’s trying to smother her laughter behind her hands. The waitress looks the most delighted I’ve seen her all afternoon.
Sophie…not so much.
I know Cait’s right, and I’ve gone too far already, but I need to tap a nail in this. I’m already the pathetic girl who lost her parents; I can’t have Trevor’s rumor about my mental health pervading the campus too.
I stand up, bracing my hands on the table, and return her murderous glare with one of my own. “Freckle near his right nipple, dick hangs slightly to the left—which isn’t as unpleasant as it sounds—and he screams ‘Bonzai!’ when he comes extra hard. Tell me who the fuck is delusional now.”
Frankie applauds. Cait shakes her head. I’m pretty sure the waitress just came in her uniform.
I expect Sophie to storm out, but she doesn’t. Instead, she narrows her eyes into slits, though I can see her entire body is shaking, and spits, “Your parents deserved to die for raising a slut like you.”
And just like that, even as she stalks out of the café, she wins.
Because all she’s lost is someone she never really had.
And I’ve lost everything.
• • •
I stay for lunch with Cait and Frankie, but I can barely eat after that encounter with Sophie. They suggest going to a movie, but I decide to cut them a break from baby-sitting the crazy orphan and tell them I have to go to the library.
Now that I know what Trevor and Sophie have been saying about me, I’m conscious of the stares and whispers everywhere I go. I’d noticed some sympathetic ones every now and again since my return, but I’d assumed it was because I’d lost my parents. Now I don’t know if it’s that, or fear because they think I’m an insane stalker.
Awesome.
I suck in a deep sigh of early-autumn air and keep my head down as I walk through campus, dead leaves crunching under my riding boots. There seems to be no limit to the amount of trouble I can get into these days.
It’s weird to think about the day I came to Radleigh. I was such a completely different person then. I didn’t look all that different—same black hair my parents were sure I’d dye pink; same complexion no one makes a foundation to match (what my old friend Ellen Hsu and I used to call “the Biracial Girl’s Lament”)—but I was so…bright-eyed. Bushy-tailed. I was Kendall High’s valedictorian, its great hope, and I was going to kick some ass.
That lasted all of three seconds, and all it took was my first B, followed by my first panic attack, followed by my freshman year roommate suggesting I tag along with her to a frat party to take my mind off things. Turns out, it is easy to ignore how much you’re tanking after a few drinks. Even easier when a random hot guy who happens to have a single helps you forget your own name.
The trick to not letting your high expectations of your own success bury you when you fail to meet them?
Lower them to practically nothing.
I pause in my walk to duck behind a tree and pull out a cigarette, though the sight of it between my fingers makes me pause for a moment before I can lift my lighter to it. I didn’t smoke back when I started here, either. Never had. My mother hated cigarettes. She would’ve sent me to a convent in Manila if she’d seen me with them.
It was a habit I picked up from Frankie, though she promptly stopped after a month, the same way she does with all of her phases. I kept it up, partly because I enjoy it and partly because Trevor found it to be the world’s biggest turn-on.
Trevor. What a stupid fucking mistake. That first night we hooked up, I believed him that Sophie was just some clingy ex who couldn’t let go. The second time, too. It wouldn’t have been hard to find out he was lying, but truth be told, I wanted to let ignorance be bliss. I’d never had a real boyfriend, and I was flailing at school, and this guy who was actually doing life right wanted me. I guess I thought it’d rub off, or something. By the time it became clear he was just a lying, cheating bastard, I was too spoiled to quit—by the power of the distraction, the access to parties, the insider info he had on teachers and classes…. God, just thinking about it now, I could drown in a vat of self-loathing.
I drop the cigarette in the trash without having lit it and pull out of a piece of that noxious gum instead.
When I resume walking, I realize I don’t really have anywhere to go. Normally on a Friday afternoon, I’d either be sleeping off a hangover from the night before, or taking a post-lunch nap in order to prepare for whatever party I’d be going to that night. Since I’d spent the night before watching a Pixar movie with the boys on TV and then doing the reading for my English class, and my plans for tonight look pretty much the same, I’m not exactly drowning in my usual Friday haze.
Really, the only place to go is exactly where I’d told Cait and Frankie I was going. It’d been a long time since I’d been inside the Radleigh library—not since first semester freshman year, when I had myself a charming little panic attack in the stacks. I snap my gum and crunch loudly through the leaves as I head in the library’s direction. At least I’m no longer the same fucking idiot who had to wheeze into a paper bag when she got her first B.
Now a B would be pretty damn awesome.
The sad thing about all my freakouts over the fact that I couldn’t keep up with college is that my parents wouldn’t have given a shit. Well, they would’ve cared that I was upset, but not that I wasn’t bringing home A’s or whatever. They were really damn good parents that way. They probably would’ve been proud of anything I’d decided I wanted to do. Anyone I’d become.
Except for the pathetic asshole I am now.
It’s a fucking miracle I finished last year with the 3.5 I needed to keep my scholarship, and I’m woman enough to grudgingly admit that for all the ways he sucks, Trevor—and his frat’s access to old tests—played no small part in why I’m still here. Which is embarrassing on so many levels.
The huge brick library looms large across the street, and it takes a few deep breaths before I can force myself to enter. Once I do, though, I’m not even sure where to go. I don’t really want to wander aimlessly through the stacks, so I just walk straight ahead in the table-filled study room.
I spot a cluster of familiar faces almost immediately, a study group from my Russian class I didn’t even know existed. I don’t know all of their names, certainly not their real ones—I know the redhead goes by Dasha in class, the blond guy by Boris, the black guy by Misha—but I walk over anyway. “Privyet,” I say, wincing inwardly at how shy I sound. “Can I study with you guys?”
They look at me blankly. The little brunette I think goes by Xana looks almost afraid of me. Dasha just looks pissed. I know they know who I am; even though my attendance record hasn’t always been awesome, I skip Russian the least, because I actually like it. Plus, after the little scene I got stuck creating because of Ty’s school, there’s no way anyone missed me.
So why isn’t anyone saying anything? Have the rumors about my insanity actually spread this far, this fast?
“Let me try that again,” I say, because I can’t turn around now. It would just be too pathetic. I’ve had enough pathetic for one day. “Mozhno zanimatsya c vami?” Can I study with you?
It’s not perfect, I’m sure—instrumental case still trips me up—but it’s enough to make Misha smile. “Konechno,” he says, pulling his backpack off the chair next to him. The familiar “Of course” lifts a weight off my chest, and I see that everyone else looks a little more chilled out too.
Apparently they just assumed I wouldn’t know how to say shit in Russian.
Can’t say I blame them, after this week’s brilliant display of ineptitude.
As I take a seat and dive into the homework with the rest of them, I inwardly pat myself on the back. I know I still have a long way to go, but I have my first session with Connor in the morning and the entire weekend to work on my English paper. For the first time in a long time, I actually hope my parents are watching.
Connor’s door is open when I arrive at his office for our first session, but I resist waltzing in and instead rap lightly on the door. He looks up from whatever he’d been attacking with a blood-red pen and gestures to the seat across the desk.
“Good morning to you too,” I greet him as I drop into the chair just gracefully enough to avoid spilling my coffee everywhere. “Whose work are you ripping apart?”
“Yours,” he says bluntly, turning the paper around and sliding it across the table so I can see the massacre. “Constantine VI is best known for being the son of Constantine V? Really?”
“‘Best’ is subjective,” I offer, taking a sip.
“Facts aren’t. They weren’t even father and son.”
“Oh.”
“Not even part of the same dynasty.”
“Whoops.”
“Yeah, whoops. Elizabeth—”
“Lizzie.”
“If I’m going to spend hours tutoring you, I need to know that you’re going to put in more effort than this.”
“I will,” I say immediately.
He raises his eyebrows.
“I wouldn’t have come to you otherwise.” This part is actually true. “Please, Mr. Lawson.”
“Mr. Lawson? When have you ever called me that?”
“Professor Ozgur calls you that.”
“Connor is fine,” he says on a sigh. “But—”