The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You

by Lily Anderson

  There was another thump and Harper’s voice was closer, too. “No, I get it. Cornell is amazing, but Ben … Ben is geeky and smart and funny and considerate.”

  Ben?! I mouthed the name, trying to make it sink in. There was no way to confuse Ben with Peter. But the idea of Benedict West being in love with me was so ludicrous I almost laughed. Remembering that I was eavesdropping, I slapped my comic to my face. Obviously, someone had their wires crossed. There was absolutely no chance that Ben was in love with me. He couldn’t even be in the same room with me without verbal bloodshed.

  “Do you know what he did when he heard that Kenneth Pollack was trying to frame his frosh?” Harper continued. “He wrote an affidavit. He even had it notarized before he brought it to Dr. Mendoza. He said that if Brandon Calistero went on academic probation, then he would strip himself of his ranking in protest. Who else would do that? I mean, Trixie’s been really nice to Brandon, but Ben went above and beyond.”

  “He’s more mature than any other guy on campus,” Meg mused. “And when he showed up today with that haircut and his mustache shaved, I almost fainted. He’s legitimately hot.”

  I tried to picture Ben West’s face, sans silly mustache. The haircut was definitely an improvement. And he did have a strong jaw, there was no denying that. The problem was the mouth attached to it.

  “Did he cry?” Meg asked suddenly. “After the harvest festival? I couldn’t even believe how awful she was to him.”

  I started to shout at them that I had no way of knowing that West was lurking under that stupid clown mask. I’d been fighting off a panic attack. I couldn’t control the nonsense coming out of my mouth when I was surrounded by zombies, even if they were just the sophomores caked in makeup.

  “He’s devastated,” Harper said. “Cornell and Peter are so worried about him. Because even after what she said—”

  “The idiot savant thing or the part where all of his old friends ditched him?”

  “Both. Even after that, he’s still completely and utterly in love with her. I guess he always has been. Have you noticed that he’s never even looked at another girl on campus? He’s only ever loved Trixie. Since the first grade when the thing with the monkey bars happened.”

  “Is that why he pushed her?” Meg asked.

  “That’s the worst part,” Harper wailed. “He didn’t mean to. He told Cornell that he’d been trying to hold her hand and she slipped. He’s been trying to make up for it for years and she’s so—”

  “Blind,” Meg simpered.

  “Exactly. She’ll always hate him.”

  “You’re right. We can’t tell her,” Meg said softly. “If she knew that he wasn’t really fighting back because he loved her, she would eviscerate him. He deserves better than that. Can’t Cornell or Peter talk him out of it?”

  “They’ve tried,” Harper said. “But it hasn’t done any good. And he’s been trying so hard this year. Like when he recited that Oscar Wilde poem at lunch? And she just ignored him.”

  Because he was trying to steal B’s spotlight. But that didn’t seem right. Why would he try to stomp on B’s moment if he’d risked having his ranking stripped so B could walk free? Ben had been looking at me while he quoted the poem. He hadn’t even noticed when the rest of the table around him had gone back to planning.

  Dear God. Were they right? Was this real? Did this really span all the way back to the monkey bars?

  “The boys keep trying to tell him to stop talking to her,” Harper continued. “But he insists that it’s better to let her tear into him because at least she’s paying attention to him.”

  “We should tell him to stay away from her. Who knows what she’ll say to him next? One wrong word and—I don’t even want to say it. He’ll—he’ll—”

  Harper’s voice was barely loud enough for me to hear. “He’ll kill himself.”

  I was starting to feel the walls of the cubby closing in. My skull felt like it was packed with fiberglass. I was trapped in this alternate universe where up was down and black was white and I was some kind of horrible demon who had never noticed that Ben West was in love with me.

  Ben West was in love with me. Like telling-his-friends-and-possibly-on-the-brink-of-suicide-if-I-kept-making-fun-of-him in love with me.

  Oh my God. I puffed out my cheeks to keep from hyperventilating. The mustache. He shaved off the mustache. Because I went too far. I hurt him and I didn’t even know. I thought it was all the same game.

  But it’d never been a game. Ben had been trying to silently communicate his love for me since we were six years old on top of the monkey bars. And I had been trying to make him shut up—or cry—for just as long. Every time I made a dig about his intelligence or mentioned his mother moving across the country to start a new family or anything else in my arsenal.…

  I was a bully.

  I was a monster.

  Even my best friends knew that I couldn’t be trusted. I was the Hulk and they were the Illuminati deciding to ship me off to a planet where I couldn’t hurt anyone.

  What could I do about it? I couldn’t run across town and bang on his doorstep, the way that Meg would have if it had been her. First of all, I didn’t even have my bike with me. Second of all, I had no idea what I would say. I was in no way prepared to deal with this.

  “I need to get home,” Harper said. “I still have to start my American Immigrant paper. But after lunch today, I couldn’t study with Cornell. Ben looked so depressed when he realized she wasn’t coming.”

  “But what about Monday?” Meg asked. “What do we do?”

  “I’ll try to get to Ben before Trixie can. I’ll tell him that he should stay away from her as much as possible. Maybe he can switch to different classes next term. I bet Peter could pull some strings in the office to make sure they aren’t taking anything together. That might help. Cornell said that Ben was having a hard time focusing with her in American Immigrant. He’s already dropped in the ranking. You know he almost beat me for second last year.”

  “We have to do what’s right for him,” Meg said firmly. “He’s such a catch. He’s brilliant and funny and handsome and—”

  “In love with the wrong girl,” Harper finished sadly.

  The structure creaked again and I felt each of the girls’ retreating steps vibrating against the walls of the cubby. And then I was alone with a destroyed copy of the newest issue of Daredevil, shivering and close to tears.

  * * *

  “Trixie?”

  “Beatrice Lea?”

  My head snapped up and I stared at my parents, who were watching me in mirrored concern. The bowl of vegetarian chili steaming in front of me sent sleepy spirals of steam into my face.

  “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

  “Oh, lots of things,” said Dad. “We contemplated changing the curtains in the living room and then moved on to discussing buying a DeLorean and then we decided it would be best if we skipped dessert and played a rousing game of beer pong.”

  “What?” I asked on the wrong side of shrill. My brain had been the consistency of pudding for close to two hours. I felt it attempting to create thoughts through the sludge. “Beer pong?”

  “We asked how your Programming Languages quiz went,” Mom said. “And then Sherry ate the biscuit you dropped on the floor.”

  “Oh.”

  I glanced down and saw that Sherry’s nose was covered in crumbs. Normally, I would have pointed a threatening finger at him for stealing portions of my dinner, but I wasn’t hungry. There was too much hummus and anxiety pushing around inside of me, fighting each other for dominance.

  “Rough day at the salt mines?” Dad asked me.

  “Kind of,” I said.

  I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of laying the Ben West situation out for my parents. I was sure they were full of the usual roundabout adult wisdom about unrequited love, things like Let him down gently and Treat others the way you want to be treated. But I was incapable of thinking of anything else a
t the moment. I kept replaying snippets of Harper and Meg’s conversation.

  You know how she is.

  He’s in love with the wrong girl.

  “I think I’m having lady problems,” I grumbled, pushing my bowl away.

  Mom immediately sprung to attention, her face setting into its official Doctor Watson lines. Pursed lips, narrowed eyes. “Do you need a heating pad or some anti-inflammatory—”

  Dad gargled his chili in discomfort. My hands twitched the universal sign of No, stop now, please.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll take Sherry and lie down for a bit.”

  I stood and snapped my fingers lightly until Sherry jumped up and followed me, probably thinking that I had a stash of biscuits for him somewhere. I grabbed a bag of his treats from the top of the fridge and retreated to my bedroom. I stuffed a Milk-Bone into his mouth before sprawling onto my bed. I curled myself around my Iron Man pillow while Sherry crunched happily on the floor.

  Seventeen years of life had prepared me for a lot of things. I was a fine cricket player and I could sew a dress in two hours and I could strip down any literary text until it was just metaphor and authorial intention. But I was utterly lost when it came to this newfound issue of boys. Or boy, I guess.

  On the one hand, I was horrified. Not just that the first person to fall in love with me had been Ben West, but that it’d happened a decade ago and I’d never noticed.

  On the other hand, it was almost nice. I’d always assumed that I wasn’t the kind of girl that anyone would stay up late thinking about. And here I was with a boy who was thinking about me. It just happened to be a boy whom I spent hours torturing.

  And what did that say about Ben that he’d accept that kind of punishment from me without losing interest? Was that a sign of psychological damage?

  I decided that wasn’t fair. Because the constant dueling was fun. Even West wouldn’t have been able to deny that. Some people played Sudoku or chess to flex their intellect. Ben and I used words. Not only with each other, but with everyone. If I changed tactics to avoid continuing to crush his soul, it wouldn’t necessarily be all that different. Meg had pointed out that West and I were similar. We read the same comics and watched the same TV shows. There had to be a way to converse with him that wouldn’t end in further destruction.

  Somehow.

  I frowned and glanced over at my phone, sitting silent on top of my covered sewing machine. The thought of undertaking this change of heart without the help of Meg and Harper was disconcerting. I wanted to call them over and have them reassure me that I wasn’t the monster I thought I was. Stubborn, sure, and maybe even a little too dogmatic and crass, but not entirely without hope.

  But I couldn’t tell them I’d overheard their conversation. There were too many things I wasn’t ready to talk to them about. I didn’t have a plan of action and they had already decided to keep me away from Ben. Which wasn’t the worst idea ever. If they could talk him out of his feelings for me, then I’d never have to tell anyone that I knew about it.

  The idea needled at me. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. I couldn’t lie—to myself or anyone else—and say that I’d ever had a similar inclination toward Ben. Except in the haunted house.

  The haunted house. Why hadn’t I seen it the second I realized that Ben and the clown were the same person? He’d leapt in to rescue me, offered me his arm, made me laugh. I’d felt more in five minutes with him than I had in an hour alone with Peter. I’d come home and obsessed about it and made plans to track him down.

  He’d been there the entire time, hidden behind a ghastly piece of facial hair and ten years’ worth of rivalry.

  If I was being honest with myself—and I was, far beyond my comfort zone—I did look forward to seeing him. Not exchanging words with Ben during the day was as disappointing as not talking to Harper or Meg. Attempting to say something nice to him would be like sparring with a foiled blade. That made it a sport instead of a bloodbath.

  Monday morning, Harper and Meg intended to corner him and tell him to stay away from me. I couldn’t let that happen before I had the chance to talk to him for myself. At the very least, I needed to apologize.

  But more than that, I wouldn’t know how I really felt about this until I was standing in front of him.

  [6:22 PM]

  Harper

  Cornell told me he loves me.

  [6:23 PM]

  Me

  Whoa! Already?

  [6:24 PM]

  Meg

  OMG OMG OMG. Yay! Tell us everything!

  [6:25 PM]

  Harper

  He had dinner with me and my dad at that new Indian place. And then he drove me home and said it. And I almost forgot to say it back; I was so surprised. But I did and we are and it’s amazing. Chicken tikka masala is the food of nerd love!

  [6:27 PM]

  Me

  Congrats! (Is that antifeminist? I mean: congrats that your feelings are reciprocated not that a man has proven your worth?)

  [6:29 PM]

  Meg

  Please email me all details that you’re comfortable with. I need the notes for my thought experiment.

  [6:30 PM]

  Harper

  *Pylean dance of joy*

  13

  It rained for the rest of the weekend and into Monday morning. With a Spider-Man umbrella held high over my head, I splashed to school. My plain black rubber rain boots protected my legs from most of the bigger puddles, but water soaked into my khakis, plastering them to my knees.

  As I pushed through the front doors of the Mess, I closed my umbrella. A few stray raindrops splattered onto the top of my head. The hall was thick with the dusty smell of the heating vents and wet nylon taffeta from hundreds of discarded umbrellas. Stepping lightly to avoid my Wellies sending me sprawling, I made way to the American Immigrant classroom. I tugged at the hem of my cardigan, which, I realized too late, was slightly smaller than the last time I’d worn it. I never should have entrusted my laundry to my mother. Apparently, an M.D. did not qualify one to tell the difference between hot and cold wash cycles.

  Most of the desks were already occupied. Harper was turned around in her seat, chatting with Cornell. Ben was staring out the window. There were drops of rain trapped in the artfully arranged spiky bits of his hair. I swallowed thickly as I walked down the aisle.

  “Hey,” Harper said, beaming at me.

  I hadn’t considered how I would feel seeing her or Meg after Friday afternoon. But something traitorous and injured reared up in me, something that wanted to scream at her for keeping secrets from me, even if they weren’t her secrets to spill. She and Meg thought they were helping. I couldn’t deny that they’d made a valid argument for not letting me in on their covenant.

  That didn’t make it suck less.

  I forced a smile as I sat down.

  “Hi,” I said. “How was your weekend?”

  “It was okay. I finished my first draft of the final. You?”

  “It was all right. Watched some Red Dwarf, read some Gogol. The usual.”

  I turned away from her, setting my umbrella on the floor beside me and looping the strap of my bag over the back of my chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ben lean a fraction into the aisle.

  “Nice umbrella, Trix.”

  I found myself holding my breath as I glanced up at him, trying to take in his appearance without considering the past. He had a perfectly serviceable nose, straight and thin. His mouth, curved into a sleepy smile, had a heavy lower lip. His eyes were large and dark brown, edged with oddly long eyelashes. They blinked at me expectantly and I realized that I hadn’t spoken yet. I wet my lips self-consciously.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Are you keeping up with the new Spider-Man run? The last issue was pretty great.”

  He tilted his head at me, his expression quietly surprised. “Uh, yeah. Miles Morales is awesome.”

  I nodded in agreement and turned back around, s
atisfied with a decent start. It may not have been a heartfelt apology, but it was definitely better than nothing at all. I avoided acknowledging Harper’s eyes boring into the side of my head and busied myself with retrieving my binder.

  * * *

  I ran out of Russian Literature the second the bell interrupted Mrs. Gronski talking about The Overcoat. It was even bleaker outside than it had been when I’d arrived on campus. The sky was progressively turning a more ominous shade of charcoal and leaked fat blobs of water onto the kids speeding through the quad.

  Hastily closing my umbrella, I squeezed into the cafeteria. The sound of my boots against the linoleum was drowned out by the cacophony of a full house. Everyone who normally took their lunch in the shade of the trees in the quad or pressed against the side of the gym was now trapped in the same room, smooshed together on long plastic bench seats.

  Balancing a bowl of vegetable soup and a handful of oyster crackers on my tray, I shoved my way across the room to the student council table. While the Mess generally avoided the high school movie trope of having the “jock” or “weirdo” tables assigned in the cafeteria, no one ever seemed to accidentally sit down on the bench where the senior class officers ate. It remained empty, awaiting Peter and Cornell’s arrival.

  The sophomore and junior officers were crowded together at the other end, their trays pushed aside to make room for piles of poster board. I could just make out the outline of the words WINTER BALL under the ten hands that were all shaking glitter and pouring glue. Mary-Anne France was watching them with the resignation of a foreman overseeing a troop of monkeys as she idly nibbled spinach off the end of her plastic fork.

  Froshling B was hunched over a plate of meatloaf and an open graphing notebook, which he made notes in between bites. As he was a much more welcoming sight than the crafters, I set my tray down next to him and his head shot up, a piece of ground meat spilling out the side of his mouth.

  “Hey, Trixie,” he said, clawing under his notebook for a napkin. As he cleaned the grease from his chin, I peeked at his notebook and found a handwritten spreadsheet. Tiny cramped pencil-written numbers were squeezed between painstakingly straight black lines. There was even a small bar chart crammed into the bottom-right corner.