Here Lies Bridget

by Paige Harbison

  “I didn’t think you’d be home yet, I just—”

  Anna coughed, and pushed a stray hair from her face.

  “It’s no big deal, Mrs. Duke. Honestly, I only waited a few minutes.”

  What the hell was she talking about? I squinted my eyes at Anna.

  “Oh, Anna, that’s nice of you to say, but it was completely inconsiderate of her to sleep through her plans with you.”

  I looked at Anna, who was smiling. Yes, the gun was to be used on her.

  “Well, I probably should head out anyway.” She looked at me. “You don’t look like you’re feeling all that well, so we’ll just hang out another time, okay?”

  I watched in a daze as Anna told Meredith how nice it was to meet her, as Meredith agreed, and as they kissed the air next to each other’s cheeks.

  Well, that’s just sarcastic.

  I chased Anna out to her car to ask her what the hell was going on. My robe billowed in the wind like some kind of ridiculous cape, and my slippers f lapped around on the driveway.

  “What

  was

  that all about?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, coolly. “I came back after driving some of your friends home and cleaned up the mess 9 5

  from last night. I assumed you didn’t want her to know about the drinking, and I was right in assuming you’d be in no condition to clean it all up. I’m just lucky I got here before she did.”

  I stared angrily at her before spitting out, “Well, then.

  Thanks.”

  I started up the front stairs and ignored her advice to take a cold shower.

  For the rest of the evening, I worked myself into a depression. Anna was here, taking over. She was undoing all the work I’d done. She was moving in on my territory, and suddenly I wasn’t the person I was at least comfortable being anymore. My power was failing.

  It wasn’t my imagination. That much I knew. People listened to me and did what I asked, things worked out for me whether the reason was luck or f lirting, and I’d been perfectly content with that for a long time. Sure, sometimes it felt like I had only fans and no friends…but that’d been fine for a long time.

  My life had changed somehow, and very abruptly. But maybe things would be back to normal soon.

  When I woke up on Monday morning, I was wearing the same pajamas I’d worn the whole day before. And when I headed to the bathroom to put on my makeup, I felt tired of my ref lection.

  Once I’d finished putting on the same makeup I put on every day, I glared at myself. Something was different about me. Something had changed to make the makeup seem empty and mask-like.

  I got to school early (a first) and when I walked into Mr.

  Ezhno’s classroom, I saw that almost everyone was gathered around Jillian. She had her lips tightened, the way she did 9 6

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  when she was pretending to zip her lips so she wouldn’t tell a secret.

  “…and

  her

  stepmom? ” asked one of the girls in the crowd, incredulously. I didn’t remember her name.

  Another girl I didn’t know spotted me and said, “Shh” to the rest of them. Shh might as well have meant she’s here!

  They all went back to their seats, tossing glances at me.

  Each of them seemed to think they were being subtle.

  So then the answer to my question would be, No, things are not going to go back to normal.

  “What?” I said, feeling stupid and awkward. It seemed so obvious that they’d been talking about me, but for some reason I still didn’t feel the complete vindication I should have felt by confronting them. It seemed presumptuous to assume the gossip was about me.

  “Nothing, we just thought you were Mr. Ezhno.” It was Logan who spoke this time. Logan, who used to sit in the back and talk about how hot I was, but now apparently had taken up lying badly.

  “How could any of you possibly think I was Mr. Ezhno?

  That doesn’t even make—”

  I was stopped short by Mr. Ezhno himself walking through the door and knocking into me.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Duke.” He bent to pick up the pile of papers he’d dropped during our collision. “It’s just so weird to see you in the classroom, I suppose.”

  There was a swell of whispers and snickering in the room.

  I headed to my seat, observing more “subtle” looks that were shot my way.

  I felt the familiar shame f low through my bloodstream.

  I hadn’t felt this way since middle school. I couldn’t control what was happening around me.

  Matt Churchill raised his hand as soon as attendance had been called.

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  “So what did you do this weekend, Mr. Ezhno?”

  Mr. Ezhno narrowed his eyes, and I knew he was just as curious as I about the reason for the giggles that were still filling the classroom.

  “I worked on progress reports, which I have here, actually…” He waved the pile of papers he’d just cleaned up and started handing them out.

  “Yeah, what else did you do?” said Logan, clearly speaking for Matt, who was laughing too hard to speak.

  What the hell was so funny? It seemed like the only two people left in the dark were Mr. Ezhno and myself. Since when was I a) in a category with him or b) left in the dark about anything?

  Mr. Ezhno hesitated before looking irritatedly at the ceiling.

  “I had a parent-teacher meeting, and then I took my son to the—”

  The laughing became uproarious upon the mention of the meeting. I stared at him in disbelief, shocked that he would do such a thing as to bring it up.

  He was talking about me, and it was really obvious. He was blatantly referencing my insubordination and the resulting steps taken to amend my “behavior.”

  I thought of the last time I’d been present at one of the conferences. Meredith had been all “John—I mean, Mr. Ezhno and I only want the best for you…” and every time he said anything, she’d nod silently and solemnly. It was enough to make anyone sick.

  I looked at Mr. Ezhno. What a sight he was with his ugly plaid shirt and pleated pants. My lip curled in disgust as I watched him try fruitlessly to regain control over his class.

  Everyone was going to know whose parent he was talking about because I was, as Meredith had put it, the biggest “nui-sance.”

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  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  My fury grew as I realized that this must have been why everyone was talking about me. That’s what the muttering about my stepmother was all about.

  I sat there, mortified, for the rest of the class period, not knowing what my next move should be. Who was I supposed to take action against? What should I say?

  I knew I was mad at Jillian for letting anything slip, I was mad at Mr. Ezhno for the same and I was mad at the class for laughing. But how do you tell thirty people at once to stop making fun of you?

  Furthermore, how do you do that without sounding like one of the misfit toys from that old Christmas movie?

  I decided that the best I could do was ignore Jillian. Which was hard, because she seemed to be ignoring me.

  When class ended I dashed out of the classroom, the same way I’d done for years.

  When I got to gym class, Michelle was acting much the same as Jillian had been, a discovery that really upset me. She’d been my last real hope of solidarity. I tried to talk to her, but all I got were obviously irritated, tight-lipped responses.

  It was like there was something in the air. Something that made me some kind of leper. I walked through the hallways, feeling like a character in a movie where everyone is talking about you and pointing. And for most of the day, that’s how it was.

  But after a while it wasn’t even that; I wasn’t even getting that much attention. Some people were pointing or talking, but the rest of them just ignored me. I even had to move out of the way of some of them, I realized with a small shock. In the game of h
allway chicken, I always won. Not something I’d really been doing on purpose, but certainly something I was noticing now.

  I felt like a ghost. Not even a ghost—at least people were scared of or interested in ghosts. And if I were dead, the only 9 9

  difference would be that they’d be talking about me in full voices instead of whispers.

  For the next few days, my life swirled downward more and more. In high school, the classes and days are like dog years.

  If you have a bad class, it’s like having a bad week. And I may as well have been drudging through the mud of anonymity for months.

  Suddenly it seemed that it wasn’t just me who didn’t recognize me anymore. It was everyone.

  No texts, no calls, no guys asking me out, no one even acknowledging me at school, it seemed, no one asking me to play board games at their house. Eventually, no one was even talking about me, as far as I could tell.

  My friends were all busy, and at lunch they talked only to each other, making me feel like a third wheel at my own table.

  It felt like every day I woke up, went to school and then just waited to fall asleep again. No days had any value.

  And it was pissing me off.

  It’s not even like I had some kind of strong family unit to depend on. Meredith was obviously no use, and my dad hadn’t been home in forever. And really, what kind of consoling was he even capable of ?

  I spent those days working myself into an angry frenzy, thinking of everything that had happened. Everything that had happened to me.

  One of my greatest abilities was to shove any blame entirely from myself, until ultimately I’d ridded myself of any guilt or responsibility.

  So that’s what I did. Whether I was conscious of it or not at the time. Everything became what they had done to me.

  Mr. Ezhno had sent me to the office because he was too big a pansy to handle me on his own.

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  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  Brett shouldn’t have ripped the paper—it was the reason we got caught. It was his own damn fault he was getting in trouble.

  As for Jillian and Michelle? They were being awful, catty girls. Who needed them?

  So when the next Thursday rolled around, I thought I’d set my plan into action. I was going to be myself again.

  For the first half of the day I looked forward to lunch, hoping to get a chance to talk to Jillian and Michelle and figure out exactly what the deal was. I was halfway through the entrance to the cafeteria when I saw that Michelle, Jillian, Liam and Anna were sitting together. There was an empty seat, but it couldn’t have been clearer that I was not welcome at the table. It was exactly as if Anna had replaced me.

  Maybe not even that. The scene I was looking at could have existed if I had never gone to the school, if I wasn’t there yet, if I’d come and gone, or as it was now—as if I just wasn’t part of it.

  And yet, in some way, it couldn’t have existed without me.

  They were all in each other’s realms because of me.

  Then my self-pity and embarrassment transformed into absolute wrath.

  I pounded off to the nearest bathroom, loathing the people at school. How dare they, I thought, how dare they whisper about me, cast me out, or ignore me?

  I thought bitterly of Michelle and Jillian. Michelle had gotten all mad at me for no reason at my house on Saturday, and Jillian—well, Jillian was just willing to be friends with whoever told her what to do. I realized with a start that they, too, had known about the meeting between Meredith and Mr. Ezhno. Between my two best friends and my least favorite teacher, they were ruining my reputation.

  1 0 1

  But for neither of them to even say anything to me? What fake people.

  What

  bitches!

  Once in the bathroom, I locked myself in a stall and slammed down the top of the seat. I hung my bag on the hook and slumped down onto the seat, my heart beating hard.

  I thought of all the rumors I’d spread. They’d all been much worse than a few parent-teacher conferences, and yet this seemed to be such a big deal. And it really wasn’t.

  Was

  that

  really what this was all about? It seemed strange that so many people would get so opinionated about my behavioral issues, which they had previously been entertained by.

  I was just thinking of how much I despised Ezhno and his class when I heard his name called over the P.A. system.

  “John Ezhno, please report to the main office, John Ezhno, please report to the main office.”

  Please, God, let him be fired, I thought to myself.

  I looked to my right and read some of the writing on the wall, which I usually ignored.

  Maybe this will cheer me up, I mused, thinking that reading smack talk about other people just might be the thing.

  Mrs. Templeton’s class is a JOKE her ass needs to lay off the COKE.

  Rhyming, nice. Good that Mother Goose had had an impact on the restroom literature.

  Nance Le Bloe needs to keep her legs shut.

  True. She was a skank.

  LIAM IS A SEXY BEAST.

  A foul expression, but not untrue.

  My eyes scanned the wall, which named a lot of girls as sluts and a lot of guys as hot, as well as a lot of teachers as jerks. I agreed with most all of them.

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  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  Hell, I could have written some of them.

  I thought of writing something about Anna and then reconsidered.

  I didn’t have a pen.

  There were a lot of words spelled wrong, and pointless things that I couldn’t puzzle out like: judith was here. Why commemorate your bathroom trip that way, or even at all? I considered, amusedly, of adding long enough to find a pen and write this.

  I looked on the opposite wall and saw even more. But that’s when I saw the truly awful comments.

  About

  me.

  My heart sank as I read. I was a slut, I was a bitch, I was a spoiled brat and I was a lot of other things. I gasped audibly when I saw that someone even called me a cunt, a word I had completely banned from my vocabulary, finding it to be one of the only truly offensive words.

  I sat there, in shock, trying to wrap my head around this array of insults. Since when did people think I was any of those things? I’d never seen these comments before, and they all looked darker and fresher than the other accusations written there.

  My vision turned blurry, and my ears rang as rage coursed through my bloodstream. I hated these girls, suddenly. How dare they talk about me that way? And how dare they put it on the walls like this? I didn’t know what to do, whom to yell at, who to confide in about how much this really hurt— I didn’t know anything except that I had to get out of here.

  I pulled my bag from the hook and behind it found my name in big, bold, shiny letters I couldn’t believe I’d missed before.

  BRIDGET DUKE IS A LOSER AND EVERYONE

  KNOWS IT.

  1 0 3

  I went to my post-lunch class and sat quietly in my seat for a few minutes, fighting back my emotions. I wasn’t sure how they’d come out, whether I was going to uncharacteristically start punching people, or whether I was going to start sobbing.

  Not long into the class, I excused myself and went to the health office. I shouldn’t have to sit in class while my life fell apart.

  As soon as I walked in, the nurse rolled her eyes at me before sending me into the back. I grimaced. Like it was up to her to judge me for coming in too often.

  I chose the last cot, away from the moaning of an actually sick girl. I lay down on the faux-leather bed, which was always comfortable merely because it was a bed at school and not a gym exercise, and stared up at the speckled white ceiling tiles.

  Earlier, my feelings had been pure anger and contempt for everyone I knew. I felt those feelings grow into desperation as I realized what exactly it was that was upsetting me so much.

  Nobody cared ab
out me.

  The only person who didn’t seem to be mad at me was my father. But he, I thought, dragging myself deeper into my feeling of anguish, didn’t even care enough to be home. It wasn’t that he wasn’t mad at me; it was that he didn’t care at all. He’d rather follow sports around the country and hotel-hop.

  If my mother were here everything would be different. Everything would be better. If she hadn’t died…well, it was just so unfair I couldn’t even stand to think about it. I pushed the thought from my mind, just as I had done when she died.

  I was told I wasn’t allowed to go to her funeral. Never seeing her in a casket left me with only the option to do my best to block out the few memories I had of her last weeks.

  She’d been quiet and seemed angry in those days, and that’s 1 0 4

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  not how I wanted to remember her. But it had been so many years now since her death, and I’d been so young at the time that I hardly knew what was real anymore.

  At the moment, I felt sure that if she hadn’t died, my life would be a hundred times better than it was right now.

  I continued to conjure up awful memories and reasons why no one cared about me.

  The banana incident in elementary school.

  When my father told me my mother wasn’t coming back.

  The time I’d had to take the rap for the Outdoor Ed incident even though it wasn’t my fault.

  Meredith tattling on me about the incident.

  My father always leaving or spending all of his time at home with Meredith or alone, telling me he was too tired to talk to me.

  And then the thing that had felt so on-the-surface lately: the five-minute span of time with Liam, in which we went from happily watching one of my favorite movies to being in the past tense.

  It was the same thing I did when I cried and looked at myself in the mirror, just to see how pitiful and helpless I could really look.

  Once I started thinking about my life in that light, it wasn’t hard to keep going. I analyzed the things people had said to me over the last year or two, things I’d assumed were caused by jealousy.

  The bathroom walls.

  The