Want to Go Private?

by Sarah Darer Littman

  I was like, “I’m fine with it, as long as you don’t come to my school. I mean, no offense, but, you know, things are hard enough already.”

  Mom gave me one of her “Shut up, Lily” looks — it feels like I get those practically every time I open my mouth at the moment — but Abby was cool with it.

  “It’s a deal, Lily. I won’t come to your school,” she said. “Anyway, I’m not even sure I’ll live through doing it at my school without passing out. It’s not like I have such a great track record with being onstage.”

  I couldn’t help it. I remembered Abby passing out at the auditions and I giggled. I covered my mouth with my hand, but the more I tried to stop, the more I wanted to laugh. Mom, Dad, and Dr. Binnie were all looking at me like I was some kind of lab specimen, but then it happened … Abby laughed, too. And then the two of us were in that shrink’s office cackling like a pair of hyenas, while the grown-ups looked at us like we were crazy.

  Maybe we are. But we get on better now than we did when we were normal.

  “Breathe, Abby! You have to breathe. Otherwise, you will pass out, I guarantee it!”

  I stick my head into the family room. Abby’s standing in front of the television, holding her speech. Her hands are shaking so much I don’t know how she can read the thing. Faith and Ted are on the sofa, and Abby’s friend Billy, who’s actually kind of cute in a geeky kind of way, is in the armchair. Gracie is directing from the sidelines. I slide onto the sofa next to Faith.

  “How’s she doing?” I whisper.

  Faith sighs.

  “That good, huh?”

  “My hands are shaking so much I can’t even read what I’m supposed to say,” Abby wails. “I’m never going to be able to do this!”

  “You will, Abby,” Grace says. “Think positive!”

  Billy goes and stands next to Abby. He takes her hands in his and steadies them.

  “Here. Just pretend I’m your podium.”

  Abby blushes. She so has a crush on Billy, even if she tells me she’s not ready for any of that stuff and, anyway, who would want to go out with her after what happened? I may only be in seventh grade, but duh, I’m not blind. Billy still wants to go out with her, despite the whole Creepy Freak thing. I guess she’ll figure that out sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

  “Okay, Abby. Take it from the top,” Gracie says.

  Abby starts again, and this time she actually manages to get through the speech. Her voice is shaky and she sounds like she’s going to start crying any minute, but at least she’s still vertical by the end of it.

  I stand up and clap wildly. “Go, Abby! You rock!”

  Faith’s jumping up and down doing a really lame imitation of a cheerleader. I hope she never gets it in her head to try out for the squad, because they’d laugh her off the face of the planet.

  Abby’s got this dopey smile on her face, like she can’t believe she actually pulled this off — managing to read a speech in front of all of, let’s see, five people. None of us have the heart to remind her that the auditorium holds, like, this number times a hundred. But I guess you crawl before you walk or whatever.

  Later that night, after everyone’s left, I walk by Abby’s room and I hear her practicing. It’s so crazy because alone in her room, she’s a different person — she sounds so strong and passionate about what she’s saying, like she really means it and she never, ever, wants anyone to go through what she did. I stand outside her door listening until she’s finished, and then I knock and go in.

  Abby looks at me like I’m some weird space alien.

  “What?”

  “Did I actually just hear you knock before you came in? Who are you and what have you done with my bratty sister, Lily?”

  “Shut up!”

  I plop myself on her bed.

  “You sounded great. Seriously. I was listening just now from outside the door.”

  “Wow. I’m glad I didn’t know. The minute I know I have an audience is when I start losing it.”

  “So … why can’t you … like, pretend that there’s no one there? You know, visualize or whatever?”

  “I know. That’s what Gracie says. But … they are there. I’m not that good at pretending.”

  “There’s got to be a way. Maybe we can look up stage fright on the Internet or something.”

  Abby rolls her eyes.

  “Yeah, in the five minutes a day ‘only for homework and while an adult is watching’ time I get on the computer?”

  “Well, I can look it up then. And an adult is always watching now that Mom and Dad have put that monitoring software on the computer. It’s like totally Big Brother. What happens if I want to complain about them to my friends?”

  “The Internet isn’t a right, it’s a privilege,” we both say together. And then we crack up.

  “Jeez, Abs, you know you’ve totally screwed things up for me. Now, I’m never going to be able to IM my friends that Mom’s the most embarrassing person who ever walked the face of the earth without her knowing.”

  She sighs. “I know. And if I’m ever allowed real computer privileges again, what if a guy — like a guy my age, who I actually know, IM’s me to ask me out or something. Is Dad going to e-mail him back to give my answer?”

  “Maybe we should discuss our feelings about this in family therapy,” I tell her. “Like maybe Dr. Binnie can help us come up with some rules like they can read our stuff but they can’t say anything about it. Seriously, we’ve got to have some privacy, right?”

  “According to Mom and Dad, I forfeited my right to privacy.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “No. And I’m sorry that I’ve messed everything up for you.”

  It feels good to hear her say that. It’s not like I want Abby to go on feeling like crap about what happened, I really don’t. But it does something for me to hear her say she’s sorry.

  “It’s okay. I’ll live. And I’ll make you pay, by stealing your clothes or something. Well, I would if you actually had any clothes worth stealing. But all your clothes are f-u-g-l-y.”

  Abby laughs.

  “Okay, now I know the real Lily’s back.”

  “Seriously, Abby, your speech is great and, you know, it’s going to be way more real to people than the boring Internet talks they give us at school. So I was thinking … like, if you could kick that stupid stage-fright business, maybe you could come and do it at my school, too.”

  She stares at me with wide eyes that are suddenly glistening.

  “For real?”

  I nod.

  “Oh, Lily!” she cries, throwing her arms around me.

  I hug her back, inhaling her Abby smell of shampoo and body lotion. Then I push her away.

  “Okay, jeez, enough with the mushiness! Now read that whole stupid speech while I’m sitting here. You can do it. I know you can.”

  CHAPTER 40

  BILLY MAY

  I catch a lot of crap from guys who wonder how I could still crush on a girl who voluntarily got in a car with a perv. People tell me she must be royally screwed up, that I must be some kind of masochist, that I’m just asking for trouble by even hanging around with her.

  My parents are some of those people. They hate that I’m over at the Johnstons’ so much, trying to help Abby with her speech, after one date with the girl got me an interview with the police, like I could have been a suspect or something. I keep trying to tell them that she’s not that girl. Well, okay, she is that girl, but that’s not all she’s about.

  I want to kill that guy Schmidt. Every time I think about him touching Abby it makes me want to puke and punch things at the same time.

  Did it almost send me postal when those pictures of her started circulating around school? Hell, yeah! I wanted to beat the crap out of the kids who were passing them around. And the ones who were looking at them. And especially the assholes who were sniggering and making comments to Abby when she walked down the hall. No one dares to do it when I’m with her, because they
know my fist would end up in their face. The suspension would be worth it. My parents might not think so, but I do.

  I get so angry that people can’t look past all this stuff with Schmidt to how Abby’s an honor student, one of the smartest girls I’ve ever met. They don’t understand how good these perverts are at manipulating people, and how easily it could have been their girlfriend or their sister or the girl next door who was sucked in by that dude’s lies. And nobody seems to appreciate how incredibly freaking brave Abby is — how she has to put up with all this crap from the other kids at school day after day, but she’s still going ahead with the idea of doing this talk. Even though the one time she tried to get up on stage to audition she passed out.

  I wish everyone could see how hard she is working at overcoming everything she’s been through and facing this stage-fright thing. We’re over at her house again, Grace, Faith, and me. Even Abby’s sister, Lily, is helping out these days. But Abby’s still shaking, even just speaking to the four of us.

  “So, Abby, how come when you answer a question in science class you don’t get all freaked out like this?” I ask her. “Because, like, there’s at least thirty kids in that class and you answer the question just fine.”

  Abby stares at me. So do all the others.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I never thought of that.”

  “Neither did I,” says Faith. “That’s a really good question. It’s true, Abs. You answer questions in class just fine. It’s only when you have to stand up in front of everyone to do a presentation that you freak.”

  “So what’s the difference?” asks Lily.

  Abby sinks onto the sofa.

  “I don’t know … I guess … well, when I answer a question it’s like … I don’t have all the scary thoughts because … I know I’ve studied … and I know the answer.”

  We let that sink in and then Grace pipes up.

  “Well, think about it, Abby. No one knows this subject better than you. Because it happened to you. You can’t have a wrong answer because it’s your story.”

  “That’s so true!” Faith exclaims. “It’s the Abby Johnston story. No one else’s.”

  Abby doesn’t look entirely convinced. She’s still shaking her head, like she can’t do this.

  “I did some research about stage fright,” I tell her. “Online. And one person who had it really bad said it got better when he started thinking about it as talking to just one person. Like, instead of thinking about the whole auditorium, just pick one person in the audience and imagine you’re talking to them. You can switch people — like, move from one person to another. But you should just keep thinking of it as a one-on-one talk between friends.”

  “You did research?” Lily says. She gives me this look like maybe I’m not so bad after all. “Well, I’ve been doing some, too. One thing said you have to believe in the value of your message. Which you so totally do, Abs, right? And we all do or else we wouldn’t be wasting so much time helping you instead of chillaxing and watching Degrassi, which is what we’d rather be doing. Or at least I would anyway.”

  “Yeah, speak for yourself, Lily. I can think of a lot of things I’d rather be doing than watching that garbage for drama llamas,” I tell her.

  “Who are you calling a drama llama?” she retorts.

  “Okay, guys, I get it,” Abby says, intervening before Lily and I get into a full-fledged drama llama debate. “I’ll try again. Let’s see…. Think I know my stuff. Value of my message. One-on-one.”

  “You got it,” Grace says.

  “Go, Abby!” Faith tells her.

  Abby takes her place in front of the TV. Then she notices her mom standing in the doorway.

  “Mom, do you have to listen?”

  “Abby, think one-on-one,” Lily says. “Just ignore her. I always do.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Mrs. Johnston sighs.

  “Okay, here goes,” Abby says.

  She takes a deep breath and she focuses on one person in the room. And that person is me. She looks me straight in the eye and tells me the whole story, as I gaze straight back at her, hardly able to breathe because she’s just so freaking … incredible. She nails that sucker. Even though I’ve heard this speech, like, fifty-something times before, I’ve got goose bumps on my arms when she talks about getting in the car with that asshole creep. I’d like to kill that mofo loser if I ever get my hands on him.

  By the time she’s done, all the girls are wiping their eyes, and I’m so proud of her I want to throw my arms around her, pick her up, and kiss her. Except I can’t do that. Abby’s freaked out about all the physical stuff since … IT all happened, and she’s asked me to take things slow this time. Which isn’t easy, but I’m trying. So I just give her a really big smile and say, “Abby, you sure aced that one.”

  She looks like she just won the lottery.

  “You know, guys, for the first time, I think maybe I can really do this,” she says.

  “Are you telling me we’ve been sitting around here for weeks helping you and you were thinking of bailing on the idea?” Lily’s looking like she’s ready to commit fratricide, or sistercide, or whatever.

  “No … I was always going to do it. It’s just that I never believed I really could. But now …”

  She goes to Lily and hugs her, and then she hugs Faith and Grace. I’m holding my breath, wondering if this is a girl-only thing, but then she comes over to me. She hesitates for a moment and then she puts her arms around me and hugs me. And it feels good. Her hair smells like fruit shampoo and I breathe it in quickly before she lets go.

  “Thanks, Billy,” she says, giving me a shy smile that threatens to push the needle off the Cuteness Scale.

  “Anything to help, Abby. Seriously.”

  “So … can you sit in the front row when I talk at school? It kind of helped to feel like I was talking to you.”

  “Done deal.”

  She goes to talk to Faith and Grace. It’s been so frustrating because I wanted to help Abby deal with all this stuff she’s been through, but I didn’t know how. But now I feel ten feet tall because she needs me, even if it’s just to sit there like a dummy while she talks to an auditorium full of people.

  Lily sidles over to me.

  “You so have a crush on her.”

  How does Abby live with this kid?

  “Yeah, so? What’s it to you, drama llama?”

  “So, she totally crushes on you, too.”

  Sometimes I kind of get that impression, but it feels good to have it confirmed.

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me. Little sisters know. We have ways.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know those ways.”

  “No. You totally don’t.”

  “So you really think I’m not wasting my time … I mean, that Abby might, you know, be okay with this again soon?”

  Lily glances over at Abby, who’s over with Grace and Faith, all laughing and animated, so pumped from having kicked that speech’s butt.

  “Dude, how am I s’posed to know if it’s going to be soon? But she’s doing a lot better. Dr. Binnie — that’s the shrink lady we see — she says that Abby’s being remarkably resilient.”

  “That sounds pretty good.”

  “Yeah. But she also said it can be like ten steps forward and five steps back.”

  “So I should just be patient, is what you’re telling me?”

  “If you think Abby’s worth it, yeah.”

  I look over at Abby. She catches my eye and smiles at me.

  “Yup, she’s worth it,” I tell Lily. “A thousand times worth it.”

  “Now if we could convince Abby of that,” Lily says, sighing.

  CHAPTER 41

  ABBY JUNE

  I’m standing backstage listening to the hum of voices as students file into the auditorium for the Internet Safety talk that Agent Saunders is going to give them. That after months of practicing in front of my friends and my family and Dr. Binnie, I’m actual
ly supposed to be giving with her. Mom is in the audience and Dad even took off from work so he could be here to see me. They wanted to be backstage in case I freak out, but I told them I’d be okay, even though I’m totally not.

  The audience sounds like a swarm of bees. Angry killer bees. Deadly, angry killer bees that can deliver fatal stings.

  “How am I supposed to get up and speak about this in front of all these kids when the last time I was onstage and the place was almost empty I passed out?” I feel my heart start to race, and my breathing is getting fast and shallow. “I must have been crazy to think I could do this!”

  Faith puts her arm around me and gives me a hug.

  “You can do it, Abby. Seriously, after all the stuff you’ve been through, you can do anything.”

  “You know what I do if I’m nervous?” Grace says. “I just imagine everyone in the audience naked.”

  Luke naked in the motel room, holding a camera. His thing sticking straight up like a hockey stick, even bigger and redder and scarier in real life. I close my eyes again.

  “Touch yourself, baby. Like you do on the webcam.”

  I shudder. Faith glares at Grace.

  “OMG! I’m soooo sorry, Abby, that was just … crazy dumb of me. How about … you imagine everyone in the audience wearing … I don’t know, Dora the Explorer underwear?”

  “What, even the guys?”

  Grace nods, smiling. “Especially the guys. Especially the guys on the football team.”

  The thought makes me giggle, and once Faith sees that I’m over my posttraumatic blast from the past, she relaxes and starts laughing, too.

  “Okay. I’ll think Dora the Explorer underwear….” I say.

  “And Mickey Mouse ears!” Faith suggests.

  “Yes! I love it!” Grace says. “And what about fluffy bunny slippers!”

  “Stop, you guys! Otherwise I’m going to be laughing so hard at the image of these ridiculously dressed football players, I’m not going to be able to talk.”