“You’re asking me to turn my back on mine!”
I charged down the stairs. “You’ve been friends for less than a school year. You stopped talking to Mike Shepherd without any remorse. All he did was tear down your campaign posters and tell everyone that your mom left.”
His footsteps stopped. I paused and turned on my heel, grasping the railing to keep from tumbling down into the bark. Ben was frozen at the top of the stairs, his mouth set into a hard line.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was too far.”
“Yes,” he said tightly. “It was. I know that you’ve been friends with Meg and Harper since forever and that’s great. But I don’t have that, Trixie. You can’t ask me to give up my only fucking friends for you.”
“I’m not!” In a small voice I added, “You can keep Peter.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and took the stairs slowly, closing the distance between us. “I don’t agree with what Cornell did. That’s established. And I will help you and Harper and Meg and whomever else to make this right. But I will not humiliate my best friend. We will leave him out of this.”
“I…” I could feel a fresh wave of tears starting. I clenched my teeth. It took a lot of effort to talk, but I forced myself to try. “I’ve never seen her like that, Ben. I’ve never seen her crumble. She’s so strong and she tries so hard. Even when her mom died, she didn’t…”
He stepped down to share my stair. “We’ll make it right.”
We. A plural possessive pronoun. Beatrice Watson and Ben West. We.
He nudged the hem of my skirt away with the toe of his shoe. “No Machiavelli, no Shan Yu, no Spanish Inquisition. No war or torture of any kind. Cool?”
I pressed my lips together and nodded. Shame was already welling up inside of me. I couldn’t hurt Cornell out of spite. Ben was right. It wouldn’t help Harper and she’d never forgive me if she knew that I’d suggested it.
“It’s a bad sign when you’re the voice of reason,” I whispered.
“Don’t make me do it again. It makes my head hurt.” Eyes sparkling, he reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “Can I walk you home? You could try to ride on my handlebars if you want. Dateishly.”
I smiled at him, feeling a flutter in my chest that could have been happiness or stress-induced aortic arrhythmia. It was probably closer to the former than the latter. “I think I’ll walk, if it’s all the same to you. I’d rather not break my arm again. It’d be hell to have to explain on Monday.”
He laughed. “Do you want your soda now?”
“Sure. But…”
“But?”
My lungs were starting to go into overdrive again and I struggled to take one deep breath. It took a couple of tries, but I managed.
“When I get home, I’m going to have to explain everything to my parents,” I said. “I kind of don’t want to add anything else to the list of big things that happened tonight. And if you walk me to my front porch, the natural conclusion for an evening of this nature, especially with the heightened response relating to stress and—”
“Trix,” he interrupted. “That got beyond convoluted.”
“Will you kiss me again?” I blurted. “Here? Before we get to a place where people—”
He covered my lips with his. It was nice to stop talking.
[9:44 PM]
Me
My parents are already freaking out. Harper’s dad called before I got home.
[9:45 PM]
Ben
Frak. What’d he say?
[9:47 PM]
Me
He wanted them to “be aware” in case any more “evidence” presents itself. He called Meg’s folks, too. They’re having an emergency counseling session to see if Meg is also “overworked.”
[9:52 PM]
Ben
We’re ALL overworked. Did they not read the welcome packet?
[9:52 PM]
Me
Apparently not.
[10:15 PM]
Me
Did you see the email? “Class ranking will be reevaluated before posting”?
[10:27 PM]
Ben
Yes. Now my dad is also freaking the frak out. He called my mom and everything.
[10:30 PM]
Me
He called your mom? (Where is your mom?)
[10:32 PM]
Ben
Yes. They’re both worried that Berkeley will throw out my application. (She’s in DC. Cornell and I stayed with her last summer.)
[10:35 PM]
Me
Why would Berkeley throw out your app?
[10:37 PM]
Ben
The Mess’s security has been compromised? Maybe we’re all cheaters? The singularity is approaching? I don’t know.
[11:18 PM]
Me
Harper won’t answer her phone.
[11:22 PM]
Me
I hate this.
[1:17 AM]
Ben
Goodnight.
[1:17 AM]
Me
You already said that.
[1:18 AM]
Ben
But I’m still awake.
[1:19 AM]
Me
Goodnight, Ben.
[1:20 AM]
Ben
Goodnight, mutant.
[1:21 AM]
Me
Goodnight, Greythorn.
[1:21 AM]
Ben
NO. Dislike.
[1:22 AM]
Me
You called me a mutant.
[1:23 AM]
Ben
The intention was nice.
[1:23 AM]
Me
Try again.
[1:24 AM]
Ben
Night, Trix.
[1: 25 AM]
Me
Night, Ben.
[1:40 AM]
Me
I still can’t sleep. Do you want to watch an episode of Who at the same time?
[1:41 AM]
Ben
Yes.
[1:42 AM]
Me
I don’t think I can keep typing.
* * *
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
“What episode do you want to watch?”
“Something happy.”
“‘The Lodger’? Matt Smith plays football for no reason. James Corden is brilliant.”
“You get very British when you talk about Doctor Who.”
“Maybe I’m just British on the phone. You don’t know.”
“I know now.”
22
“This is easily the most reckless plan you’ve ever come up with,” Meg said, stepping out of the coffee shop’s bathroom in a fuzzy sweater and jeans. Her backpack was bulging. The edge of her Mess polo stuck out from the zipper. I hadn’t been a hundred percent behind her idea to change out of our uniforms, but I had to admit that we were a lot less conspicuous in regular clothes.
“I told you that you didn’t have to come,” I said, slinging the strap of my messenger bag across my chest. “In fact, I told you that under no circumstances should you come with me. Your mother will murder me if she finds out this was my idea.”
“Ditching school is a societal norm. I’ll explain that the mental stress of Harper’s expulsion made me do it,” she said, leading the way to the parking lot. The sky was a misty white, a blank page where the sun should have been. “Being sneaky is a worthy addition to my thought experiment. My research on boys has been wildly inconclusive.”
“Has it?” I patted down the pockets of my jeans, hunting for the key to my bike lock. My fingers were starting to go numb. “I thought you and Peter had a good time at the winter ball.”
“We did. It went exactly as hypothesized, until the end.” She set her backpack on the ground next to the bike rack and started rummaging around inside. A thousand pens clicked together. “But Cornell and Harper were my control
group. From the depth of their affection, stress should have solidified them, but they cracked. I don’t understand why.”
“Because they aren’t semicrystalline polymers,” I said. “You can’t heat them up and hope they turn into a milk jug.”
She stuck her key into her bike lock and gave it a firm twist. “There are more similarities between people and plastics than you think.”
“Please don’t say that to Harper.”
“Duh. We’re supposed to make her feel better, not worse. No one wants to hear that they failed at crystallization.”
We walked our bikes down to the intersection before climbing onto the seats. Gripping my handlebars hard, I glanced over at Meg, who had scrunched her nose in mute distaste as the wind whipped her hair around her cheeks. Her front tire was low. Since Harper had become the first licensed driver of the three of us—and the only one to own a car—we hadn’t had much of a reason to take our bikes anywhere. I’d had to scrape a year’s worth of cobwebs off mine before I could ride it to school.
I had decided—and Meg had agreed—to make an appearance at the Mess. But it had been next to impossible to focus in American Immigrant. Cornell had sat behind Harper’s empty seat, pretending not to notice the whispers that kicked up around him. Any hope I’d had of him offering some kind of apology or explanation for what had happened on Friday night had gone out the window when the bell rang and he’d rushed out of the classroom without a backward glance.
Ben had walked with me to second period. When I’d warned him that Meg and I would be missing from the cafeteria, he’d squeezed my hand and said, “Don’t get caught.”
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t considered pushing him into a closet and kissing him senseless just then. It’d been three days since winter ball and kissing Ben was starting to feel a bit like a half-remembered dream.
But reason won out and I’d decided not to be late to Third World Econ. I’d waited until fifteen minutes into the lecture before asking to be sent to the office. After inventing a breakfast that could have led to extreme food poisoning—a sketchy container of yogurt and runny scrambled eggs—and doing my best to look pained, the nurse excused me for the rest of the day.
After ten minutes of riding, my fingers started to thaw and my stomach clenched. I appreciated that Meg was keeping on a brave face, but I really should have calculated food into my truancy plans. I hadn’t even eaten a granola bar on my way out of the house because I’d been so focused on fitting my regular clothes into my school bag and double-checking the route I’d chosen to get us away from the Mess unseen. At this point, I would have accepted the poison breakfast I’d told the nurse about.
We skirted around the main streets, cruising through neighborhoods I hadn’t seen since we’d stopped trick-or-treating. We pedaled faster, following the curve in the road until we were under a familiar thicket of maple trees. In the middle of the block, Harper’s cheerfully red car sat alone in the driveway. Meg and I hid our bikes behind the hedges next to the garage. I checked twice to make sure that the glint of a handlebar or spoke wouldn’t give us away before following Meg to the front door.
The doorbell boomed inside, the sound bouncing off the high ceilings and picture windows. There was a scuffling of feet, the clatter of a deadbolt being thrown, and Harper stood in the doorway. She was in flannel pajamas, her hair pulled back in a long yellow braid.
“This is easily the dumbest thing you’ve ever done,” she clucked, stepping back into the foyer. “Come on in. I was just about to make lunch.”
* * *
With three bowls of tomato soup and three grilled cheese sandwiches fresh off the panini press, we congregated around the round table in the breakfast nook.
“What else were we supposed to do?” Meg asked, blowing delicately across the seam of her sandwich. “You didn’t respond to any of our texts or emails.”
“Yes, and getting yourselves suspended will help,” Harper said with a sigh, settling cross-legged onto her chair and reaching for her mug of tea—Earl Grey; hot. She held it under her nose. Steam collected at the base of her lenses. “I’m on lockdown. Daddy even got rid of the Wi-Fi. He’s doing all his work at the office now, just in case I decide to hack into something else.”
“Harper,” I said. “We know you didn’t do it.”
She took a long sip of tea and set her mug down with a clatter. “That doesn’t mean I’m not expelled. I have an interview at Marist High on Friday.”
“The Catholic school?” I asked.
“You don’t even go to church for Christmas,” Meg gasped.
Harper’s face was impassive as she went back to folding her soup with her spoon. She seemed hypnotized by the bits of basil disappearing under the tide of tomato. “I’ve been brushing up on my biblical apocrypha all weekend. I think I can make a decent go of it. Maybe they’ll let me in if I do enough Hail Marys to account for being a cheater.”
“You can’t go to Marist,” I said. “You need to come back to the Mess. It’s where you belong.”
“Someone made sure that I couldn’t ever go back to the Mess,” she shot back, pointing her red-stained spoon at me. “You guys don’t understand. When Dr. Mendoza laid out the switched tests, the HTML code, the tracking software with my IP address imbedded in it—it was so clearly my fault.” She stabbed her spoon back into the bowl and swirled it aggressively. “It’s like Hermione Granger seeing a failed test as her Boggart. Smart girls clearly can’t care about anything other than being smart. If I’d wanted to break into the homework portal, I would have been able to figure out how. It’s easier for everyone to believe it and move on.”
“Not everyone believes that it was you,” Meg said. “We know that it’s a lie. And Ben and Peter…”
She trailed off and we all resumed our lunch. The clink of spoons on ceramic and the crunch of perfectly toasted bread only underscored the rising discomfort in the room. Harper kept her eyes on her food as she whispered, “It’s really not Cornell’s fault. Have either of you heard from him?”
I wanted to tell her to forget about Cornell entirely, that he had proved turncoat and wasn’t worth the breath it’d take to discuss him. But it wasn’t my place to make her decisions.
“He was in class this morning,” I said begrudgingly. “I didn’t say anything to him and he didn’t try to talk to me either.”
“I haven’t heard from him since Peter and I went looking for Trixie on Friday,” Meg added.
Harper frowned, looking from me to Meg. “You guys left the dance?”
“Of course we did,” I said, tossing my sandwich down on the plate. “What were we going to do? Hang out and drink punch and pretend nothing happened? If it’d been one of us, would you have stayed?”
“I guess not,” she murmured. “What a waste. You looked so pretty, Trix. And I didn’t even get to see your dress, Meg. Did you take pictures?”
“We’ll show them to you later,” Meg said. “First, we need to talk about what we’re going to do now.”
“Do?” Harper echoed. “I can’t even leave the house. My dad took my car keys and I don’t own a bike anymore.”
“We aren’t going anywhere,” I said. “We need to figure out who put your IP address into that code.”
The dry glare she gave me was magnified through her lenses. “You know that you guys have finals next week, right?”
“We’re aware,” Meg said. She waved her spoon over her head with a flourish. “But first, we have a case to crack!”
Harper put her face in her hands. “I love you both, but you are completely insane.”
[1:47 PM]
Ben
Study Room C.
23
Meg and I parted ways at one of the major intersections. Neither of us had liked leaving Harper, but she’d shooed us out to make sure that her dad didn’t come home and find us. She also made us promise not to ditch more school.
My body ached from pedaling and the weight of my messenger bag as I chained
up my bike in front of the public library. There was no avoiding my sweaty, windblown reflection in the many opaque windows that broke up the building’s brick face. I tried to smooth my ponytail as I made my way through the doors and into the familiar aisles that smelled like dust jackets and book glue and worn paper. It smelled like answers. Every knowable thing in the Western world was here.
Ben sat alone at the long conference table in the farthest study room, half-hidden behind a copy of Lady Audley’s Secret. The woman’s face on the cover was turned away, as though she was examining Ben as his eyes scanned the pages.
“Well,” I said, tossing my messenger bag down on the chair across from him, “at least one of us got some studying done today. Unless you just had a hankering for a Victorian potboiler.”
He smiled up at me and set the book down on the table, its pages splayed. “It’s for Gender Roles. This is the study room. I figured I’d give it its due. I’ve got today’s notes for Meg, too.” He drummed his fingertips against the edge of the table. “How’s Harper?”
“She’s Harper. She lectured us about finals for a while and looked through the pictures we had from the dance,” I said, gripping the back of the nearest chair. “But she’s not actually okay. She’s locked up in the house all day, studying for an interview at the Catholic school. Her dad’s so convinced that she did this that he threw out their Wi-Fi router. He didn’t change the password or unplug it. He literally threw it in the trash.”
Saying it all out loud swayed me a little. It was too much. It was an unsolvable problem. I held onto the chair harder and bit the inside of my cheek. I didn’t have time to panic now.
Ben got to his feet, sweeping around the table in two long strides. He didn’t wait for my permission before he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I pressed my face to his cheek and closed my eyes. As much as I felt silly accepting a hug when Harper was the one in trouble, I could almost block that out by focusing on the Fuji apple smell of him. It had to be part of the potion that made his hair stand up. Or pheromones.
The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You Page 20