The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You

by Lily Anderson

“Did you guys make the list?” he asked in my ear.

  I nodded. “I don’t know if it’ll help.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” he said, tilting his head to look me in the eye. The little cut above his upper lip was almost completely gone. There was a shadow of a scar there now, a shade off from the rest of the curve of his cupid’s bow. It wiggled as he spoke. “The list?”

  I took a deep breath and pulled the list we’d made at Harper’s out of my back pocket. I set it on the table and sat down. Ben hesitated before sitting next to me. His leg bounced idly next to mine as I smoothed the lined paper against the table.

  Meg’s neatly rounded letters covered the page, which she’d succinctly titled: SUSPECTS.

  “There are about three hundred and seventy students currently enrolled at the Mess,” I stated, matter-of-factly. “First, we divided the school into groups. Student council, drama club, cricket, basketball, et cetera. Whoever framed Harper didn’t do it by accident. It wasn’t a random outlier picking her name off the list. They went to the trouble of accessing her IP address and—” His leg brushed against mine and paused there before his foot snaked around my ankle and drew my leg under his chair. “Ben, this is important.”

  “I’m a genius. I can multitask. Can’t you?”

  “Fine,” I grumbled, turning back to the list. “As I was saying, we dismissed anyone who Harper hadn’t had a class with and, cross-referencing the list of probation students—”

  “Say ‘cross-referencing’ again.”

  “Hush it, you.”

  “You could make me.”

  Heat spread across my cheeks and my brain spluttered to a stop. Sitting down, we were almost the same height, but the playing field didn’t feel quite even. I checked over my shoulder at the open door. “We can’t start necking in a study room.”

  He gestured around at the bare walls. “I don’t see a ‘no necking’ sign, do you? I’m sure if we pulled up the official rules of our reservation, we could argue that we were not informed. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to focus now that necking is on the table. We’ve made out, but there weren’t necks involved before.”

  I reached out tentatively and patted his arm. “You’re right.”

  He brightened, his eyes wide and sparkly. “I am? I mean, I am, but you know that I am?”

  “We were never going to be able to focus if there was the prospect of…” I faltered as my brain filled with images of Ben kissing me in the park and the vertigo-inducing excitement that went along with it. “Being alone. I arranged for a hormonal bulwark.”

  The light went out of his eyes. “What kind of bulwark?”

  * * *

  B. Calistero seemed very perplexed to be sitting between us, but he flipped open his laptop anyway. Ben shot me a disgruntled look.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” B said for the third time, his hands shaking slightly as he connected to the library’s Wi-Fi. “I forgot to pack my laptop, so my dad had to drive me home first. I told him that I shouldn’t be more than an hour. Is that okay?”

  “That’s perfectly fine,” I said, setting my school binder on the table. With B in the study room, there seemed to be more air to breathe. “So, what did you find out at lunch today?”

  “Well,” B said, smoothing the hair out of his face. It fell back into his eyes like two black curtains. “I don’t think the basketball team is involved—”

  “Wait a minute,” Ben interrupted, holding up a hand. He leaned forward to look at me from around B’s open computer. “You had my frosh spy for you?”

  “He’s a free agent,” I said, making a check mark next to the names under the BASKETBALL header on Meg’s list. “It’s not like I had him doing sneaky treasurer stuff. That’s your special thing together. I’d never infringe.”

  Ben narrowed his eyes at B. “So, you didn’t actually lose your calculator?”

  B shifted in his seat, avoiding eye contact with either of us. “She told me not to tell anyone what I was doing. I was supposed to tell people that Harper had borrowed my calculator and then see what they said.”

  “If you’d been involved,” I added, with a conciliatory smile at Ben, “everyone would have known that B knew she’d been expelled.”

  Ben folded his arms and sat back in his chair, his mouth twisted downward. “Go ahead, Double-Oh Seven.”

  B drew my list closer to his computer, scanning it carefully. “The drama club seemed like they were actually upset about Harper. The girl with the blue wig did a monologue about it.”

  “Which one?” Ben asked.

  “Winter’s Tale?”

  “Patricia.” I laughed as Ben opened his mouth to clarify. I made a check next to her name on the list. “Good, I was hoping it wasn’t any of them. Harper helped make their props last year.”

  “I have a question,” B said. “You’re both presupposing that the motive for framing Harper was personal, right? You made the list of suspects from the perspective of her friend.” He planted a finger on the top of the SUSPECTS page. “But that means that the data is emotionally skewed. Statistically, Harper is well liked. But most people I talked to today also knew that she was highly ranked. When I was studying the effect of the academic probations on the profit margins of winter ball, rank was the biggest influence. Kenneth had the support of more people—”

  “Even though he’s a douchebag,” Ben said.

  B went on. “But Ishaan Singh affected more decisions. More people were staying home to study because there was an open slot in the top ten.”

  He minimized the list on his screen and pulled open a folder, double-clicking on an image. A photo of the senior ranking list filled the screen, today’s date printed across the top. The quality was grainy, but the top ten was discernable.

  1. Aaron, Cornell

  2. Watson, Beatrice

  3. West, Benedict

  4. Donnelly, John

  5. Donnelly, Peter

  6. France, Mary-Anne

  7. Royama, Margaret

  8. Hertz, Bradley

  9. Conrad, Nicholas

  10. Singh, Ishaan

  “Mathematically speaking,” B said. “If I were looking for a motive, I’d start here. Cornell maintained his position, not gaining or losing anything numerically. But the rest of the list…”

  Goose bumps trailed down my arms. “The rest of the list are our friends.”

  “But if they weren’t,” Ben said quietly. “They’d be people who leapt up in rank. Wasn’t Meg stuck in the three point nine slump before?”

  Harper and Cornell were my control group.

  No, I thought. That wasn’t reasonable. Meg would never risk Harper’s future for the sake of the Great Thought Experiment.

  Would she?

  What had she said about adding sneakiness to her list of risks?

  “Jack gained the most,” B said. “He went from the brink of expulsion to fourth place.”

  “He got extra credit in Programming Languages for finding the IP address,” Ben said. “Peter mentioned it at lunch.”

  I nodded dazedly, trying to push Meg out of my head. “He’s been avoiding the cafeteria for weeks. It just seems so obvious.”

  “That doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” Ben said. “He is a ‘watch the world burn’ kind of guy. He could have done it just to enjoy the chaos.”

  I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t have the constitution for private detecting. The idea of anyone framing Harper made me feel sick. Putting faces to the villainy made it worse. But someone had gone out of their way to do this and letting them get away with it wouldn’t get Harper back. I tried to focus on the end result. Harper with her computer and cell phone returned, going with us to Busby on Wednesday, drinking a hot cocoa as she drove. Harper smiling again and having it reach all the way to her glasses.

  I needed it to not be Meg.

  “There’s also Mary-Anne. She’s been pretty vocal about how this was destined to happen. She disappeared for a while after her meltdown. She
could have been breaking into the system.” I expelled a long breath. “We’ll start with her and Jack. B, email me the whole list at my regular address, not through the school. I’ll have Meg and Peter talk to the rest of the suspects.”

  I need it to not be Peter either.

  Our belongings were shoved into backpacks and messenger bags. Coats were put on. I thanked B for his superior espionage skills before he dashed out to meet his dad in the parking lot, his computer hugged to his chest.

  “It’s going to be okay, right?” I asked Ben, wringing my hands as B disappeared into the stacks.

  He sat on the edge of the table. “Sure.”

  I looked at him over my shoulder. “That didn’t sound very convincing.”

  “Sorry.” He smiled, opening his arms wide to embrace the emptiness of the room. “Distracted again.”

  As it turned out, there was a “no necking” policy at the public library. We were hustled out of the room by an appalled librarian. It was worth it, although it would be difficult to explain to Meg and Harper that I was banned from reserving study rooms. That, I decided, was a problem for another day.

  Missed call from: Dad, Work

  Missed call from: Mom, Cell

  Missed call from: Dad, Cell

  Missed call from: Home

  Missed call from: Home

  Missed call from: Home

  24

  Even with the curtains open, it was dark in the living room with the TV off. Both of my parents were sitting on the couch. Their cell phones were side by side on the coffee table next to a half-eaten bowl of dry cereal. Mom always started snacking when dinner was running behind schedule. She must have ruined whatever was in the crockpot again. I hoped that we weren’t waiting for another delivery from the vegan pizzeria. I would have preferred continuing to inch toward starvation rather than muscle through faux cheese and nutritional yeast. Meat was murder but nutritional yeast was torture.

  My muscles burned in protest as I unwound the strap of my messenger bag from my shoulders and let it fall to the ground next to the front door. When I’d left the house that morning, I hadn’t expected to come home feeling worse. Ben had ridden with me as far as the coffee shop, but even our long-winded and wordless goodbye hadn’t been able to stop the day from catching up with me. The inside of my head went muggy as I’d tugged my school uniform back on in the espresso-scented bathroom.

  I had to get the review notes for Econ and Programming Languages. I had to study for finals.

  I had to find out who had plugged Harper’s IP address into that tracking software.

  “Where have you been?” Dad asked.

  I unzipped my sweater and pried it off my arms. I blotted the sweat off my face with one of the sleeves before tossing it on top of my bag. “I texted you guys that I was going to the library after school.”

  “After school,” Dad rumbled, gripping the arm of the couch. “Not in the middle of the day. I got a call at work that the nurse sent you home early with food poisoning. Your mother raced home to check on you.”

  “Lo and behold,” Mom said unsteadily. “No Trixie. No bicycle. No returned phone calls.”

  “I had my phone on silent,” I said, moving toward the kitchen. There had to be a granola bar or something to scavenge out of the pantry. “I was in the library. It’s common courtesy.”

  “Don’t walk away when we are talking to you, Beatrice.”

  My Mary Janes squeaked against the floor as I pivoted toward Mom’s shout. I couldn’t remember the last time either of them had raised their voice at me. They didn’t even yell at Sherry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, carefully enunciating each word to cover for the lack of sincerity. “Next time, I will make sure that I check my phone consistently when I’m studying.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” Dad said. “You are not allowed to go gallivanting around town whenever you want.”

  “What is on your neck?” Mom asked.

  My hand itched, wanting to fly up and cover the side of my neck, even though I knew there wasn’t anything there. I’d checked thoroughly in the bathroom at the coffee shop.

  “I singed myself with a curling iron before winter ball. You guys took ten thousand pictures of me on Friday night. You can check the evidence.” I hooked my thumbs in the pockets of my khakis. “Can I go get a drink of water now? It’s a long ride from the library and I’m tired.”

  “Save it,” Dad said. “When we couldn’t find you, we called the Royamas. Meg was honest with her parents. Sit down.”

  Impotent rebellion welled up inside of me. I’d never refused a direct order from my parents before. There hadn’t been many to disobey. Meg’s dad had once told me that I had “pathologically permissive parents.” Despite the poppy alliteration, it hadn’t been a compliment.

  I sat delicately on the edge of the loveseat. If we were going to do this, I would face them like an adult, not a sulking child. And then I would go back to my bedroom and ask Meg why she’d tattled on me.

  Tags jingling, Sherry padded in from the kitchen. He lay down on my feet and mockingly crunched on a dehydrated pig’s ear. My stomach contracted. The Internet had been telling me for years that bacon was the perfect food. I’d never been curious about it before now.

  “What were you thinking?” Mom asked, pulling my attention away from Sherry and his porcine treat. “Leaving campus in the middle of the day, riding across town—”

  “My best friend got expelled. I needed to see her.”

  Dad leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees. There was glitter on his knuckles. “We know that you’re upset. But that’s no reason to start shirking your responsibilities. This situation that Harper has put herself in is—”

  “She didn’t put herself in to anything!” I protested. “You know Harper. She wouldn’t do something like this. Someone framed her.”

  “Trixie,” Mom said. I recognized the bait and switch tone she used to trick toddlers into calming down before she stabbed them with a hypodermic needle. “It isn’t unusual for children who’ve survived a traumatic loss to act out against their surviving parent. You know that Greg has been very hard on Harper over the years. If she thought that this was her only way out…”

  “You’re all still young,” Dad added, twiddling his thumbs. Years of teaching kindergarten meant that he couldn’t help but give everything a bit of sign language. This is the church, this is the steeple, open it up and see your parents’ lack of faith in you. “Your brains are still developing.”

  “Don’t try to tell me about how my brain is developing,” I snapped. “I took three years of advanced psychology and you majored in art history.”

  Mom leapt to her feet, scaring Sherry, who dropped his pig’s ear.

  “Apologize. Now,” she demanded.

  “No,” I said, nudging Sherry off my feet so I could stand, too. Why did the Mess even bother issuing the welcome packets every year if no one was going to read them? There was a whole section called YOU AND YOUR GIFTED TEEN that clearly outlined how to have a reasonable conversation without resorting to infantilizing. “I’m tired of this. You and Mr. Leonard and the Doctors Royama all sent your kids to the Messina. You wanted us to get the most out of our education and we got it. We’ve all worked so hard for so many years. And the first time that anything goes wrong, we’re just kids. So, which is it? Are we geniuses who are allowed to interact with the adult world or are we children to be kept in our place?”

  “No one is questioning your intellect,” Mom said curtly. “It’s your choices that we’re taking exception to.”

  “I didn’t get drunk or go swimming without a buddy,” I exclaimed. “I went to see Harper because she needed me. Because she’s alone. When her mom was alone in the hospital, you went to see her, didn’t you? You didn’t say that she’d put herself into a coma. You went to hold her hand, even though she didn’t even know you were there.” The color drained out of Mom’s face, but I couldn’t slow down now. Hunger and fu
ry burned through the fog that had collected in my head. “Harper didn’t ask me to go to her, but I went because that’s what I needed to do. She didn’t hack into anyone’s account to spite her dad because that doesn’t make any sense. Any one of us could just go to the public high school and test out.”

  Then why hack into four accounts? my brain asked. Why frame Harper?

  Mathematical reactions to a personal issue. It’s not one or the other. It has to be statistically and emotionally reasonable.

  “I’m sorry that I abused your trust,” I continued, keeping my feet planted and my head up. “I’m sorry that I was a jerk. But I won’t apologize for trying to help Harper. She doesn’t deserve having another person give up on her. Her dad locked her up. Her boyfriend dumped her. If it were me, wouldn’t you want someone trying to find out who set me up? Nine people moved up in the top ten when Harper got expelled. I took her spot as salutatorian. If this is about statistics, then, logically, I would be the next target.”

  My parents exchanged a glance. Mom sat down again and Sherry came sniffing around her slippers.

  “You’re suggesting there’s a mass conspiracy at your school?” she asked scornfully.

  I threw up my hands. “It’s a school for geniuses. It only takes one Mess student to run a conspiracy.”

  “You’re tilting at windmills,” Dad said. “It’s not that we don’t understand that this is a difficult time for you. The Royamas said that Meg has been deeply affected, too. But you can’t let one bad situation ruin your future.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “One bad situation is ruining Harper’s.”

  He pretended not to hear me. “Your mother and I agreed that it would be best if you took a week or two to calm down. No distractions. No cell phone. You need to focus on your finals. Starting now.” He held out his hand. “Your phone will be returned to you at the beginning of winter break. We won’t go digging through your search history. You can even keep your SIM card, if you’re storing state secrets on it.”

  I stared at his open palm. An errant piece of glitter winked at me. “You’re not serious. You’re mad that I didn’t call you back, so you’re going to take the one way I have to contact you?”