The Accidental Bad Girl

by Maxine Kaplan

  “Would you like some privacy?”

  I didn’t open my eyes right away. It was easier to pretend that this wasn’t happening if I couldn’t actually see him lounging in the bed opposite me in the narrow room.

  Michael Gilbert, commonly known as Gilly, was sprawled on the opposite bed, twirling a thermometer between his thumb and forefinger. His wiry limbs stuck out at their customary awkward angles. He was looking at me with a bemused half grin spreading across his face. A half grin was the only kind Gilly had, as far as I could tell. Normally, he was scowling.

  I was hanging on to my composure by a toenail, and I did not want to break down in front of Gilly. I gritted my teeth.

  “That would be great, thanks. See you later.”

  Gilly stuck the thermometer into his mouth. “But I’m sick,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah, no doubt.”

  He laughed with his mouth closed, so it came out a snort.

  Nurse Keckler came back into the room. “Kendall, I got a hold of your dad. He’s going to call your mother, and they’re going to meet you at the hospital, OK?”

  Oh god, this is actually happening. I nodded miserably.

  “Do you want me to get one of your friends excused from class to go with you in the ambulance? It should be here any second.”

  I opened my mouth automatically to ask for Audrey but then remembered and shut it.

  “No,” I said. “Nobody.” She went back into her office.

  Gilly took the thermometer out of his mouth. “Well. Awkward.”

  The pain in my head increased. “Please, stop talking.”

  His mouth twisted meanly as he began whistling the theme from Jeopardy.

  “Stop.”

  Gilly paused. “Just trying to be helpful.” He was silent for a moment and then began whistling “All by Myself.”

  “Goddamn it, Gilly,” I snapped, sitting up.

  He sat up, too, and looked at me, eyebrows lowering. He started humming again, this time a minor chord melody I couldn’t place at first. Then he added the lyrics.

  “I’ve been a bad, bad girl . . .”

  Fiona Apple. “Criminal.”

  That toenail slipped. Without my brain keeping track of what my limbs were doing, my arm swung back, and I slapped him hard across the face.

  Gilly fell against the wall, and I fell back on the bed, dizzy from the sudden movement. Maybe I did have a concussion. What was I thinking, hitting someone like that?

  I looked over at Gilly. He appeared surprised but not angry. Slowly rubbing his jaw, he cocked his head to the side and looked at me with focused, inquisitive eyes, like he was peering through a microscope at something he couldn’t quite identify.

  “What?” I said. “What?”

  “There’s really none of your friends who would go with you to the hospital?”

  I hesitated and then, for no reason other than it seemed easier, decided to be honest. “I don’t think so, no.”

  Gilly’s foot began to jiggle up and down. I had noticed that before: He always seemed to be in motion.

  Something occurred to me. “Do you know why . . . ?”

  He pulled a duh face.

  “Right,” I sighed. Stage crew guys were practically their own ecosystem, autonomous and unconcerned. If Gilly had heard the details, my disgrace was complete.

  “I’ll go to the hospital with you, if you want.”

  I looked at him, surprised. He had stopped jiggling his foot and was looking at me weirdly seriously. I met his eyes and wondered if I’d ever actually made direct contact with them before. They were unusual: layered flecks of gray and silver and very, very clear.

  Gilly blinked and looked away. I quickly did the same.

  “You just want to get out of class,” I said. “I’ll go by myself.”

  He shrugged and lay back down, still not looking at me. “Worth a shot, right?”

  Nurse Keckler came in. “OK, Kendall, let’s go.”

  I gathered up my bag and my body and headed for the door.

  “Hey, Kendall?”

  “What?” I turned around.

  Gilly caught my eye for a microsecond. Half grinning again, he turned around and sprawled across the bed. “You look really pretty.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “That asshole.” It was later that night, and I was examining my reflection in the full-length mirror hanging on my bedroom door. I was not happy.

  There was a gash on my forehead, still lurid, barely scabbed over. My cheekbone was rosy and swollen. And, on top of that, the Long Girl had given me a black eye, which was swiftly turning green. I flopped onto my bed in disgust.

  The Long Girl. Every time I ran through the scene in the girls’ bathroom, she got longer and longer, looming over me, all lips and lashes and legs.

  I felt bad for whomever the Long Girl was really looking for, because I was pretty goddamn sure it wasn’t me. To my knowledge, I had never pissed anyone off until recently, and though someone at Howell might have been tempted to attack me in an effort to impress her, it didn’t seem likely that Audrey would conscript a total stranger to beat me up. I had considered it in the van on the way to the hospital but concluded that it wasn’t her style. Violence was too vulgar for Audrey, too obvious; even calling me “slut” was a little raw for her.

  And it wasn’t Grant. Grant had no reason to care. He wasn’t the one in trouble. On the contrary, Grant had been forgiven. Nobody even remembered that Audrey and Grant had in fact been broken up when our “affair” happened. Before I had put the moratorium on social media, I saw the unofficial Facebook album announcing their reconciliation. It was called “The Night Audrey and Grant’s Relationship Became Officially Inappropriate” and contained a collection of portraits of her and Grant at the graduation party. The nine pictures told a story, but I only needed to see the first one: Grant kissing her high up on the cheekbone, arm slung around her waist; her leaning toward him, dark auburn hair hanging over his chest, smiling at the camera with an eyebrow raised.

  That was also the night I saw the picture of me in my underwear. I had logged out and hadn’t been back.

  I frowned. The Long Girl had called me Kendall. She recognized me. Something wasn’t right.

  I reached for my laptop, went to the Facebook log-in page, and hit enter, since my log-in username and password were set to automatic—and reached an error screen.

  Please reenter your password. The password you entered is incorrect. Please try again (make sure your caps lock is off).

  “What the hell?” I went back to the log-in screen and entered my e-mail address and password manually.

  Please reenter your password. The password you entered is incorrect. Please try again (make sure your caps lock is off).

  I entered my username again and typed the password into Word first, then copied and pasted it into the entry box, making sure I got it right.

  Please reenter your password. The password you entered is incorrect. Please try again (make sure your caps lock is off).

  I sat back, stunned. I was locked out of my profile. Someone had hacked it.

  Swallowing the bile that had suddenly risen in my throat, I typed my name into Google and clicked on my public Facebook profile. All that was available to me, not being signed into Facebook, was my profile picture. And I stared at it for a long time.

  There was no doubt that the girl in the profile picture was me. The room I was in was dark, but a light was shining on me, creating a golden halo around my face. I was looking off to the side of the camera, smiling at something. My eyes looked like embers, shining black against skin made glossy in the glow. My mouth was red and tilted upward in a slightly feral grin. My neck arched to the left, my hair all flipped to the other side in one thick stream.

  The girl in the photograph was me, but I had never seen myself look so . . . lit up. So alive. I had no idea where or when this picture had been taken. Or who took it. But, for just a moment, I loved my hacker.

  There was a kno
ck at the door, and I snapped my laptop shut. “Come in,” I said, and my dad opened it. He leaned against the doorframe and looked at me thoughtfully.

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I sighed. “What’s up, Dad?” My father had this habit of starting a conversation and then stopping midstream, mid-thought, until you brought him back to the present. Living with him, I got used to repeating myself as needed. Or just handling whatever needed answering myself.

  He started and entered the room, sitting at my desk chair.

  “How are you feeling? Your head hurt?”

  “A little, but I’m fine.”

  “Did you take the aspirin? Do you want any tea?” Tea was my dad’s remedy for everything. My mom’s was to ask if I was getting my period.

  “I’ll make some in a bit.”

  “I’ll bring you some,” he said, crossing his arms. He scratched his bald head. “Rough first day back, huh?”

  “You think?”

  He chuckled. “Well, your mom and I were talking . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “About the incident at graduation.”

  He paused again.

  “For god’s sake, Greg.” My mom appeared in the doorway. Without skipping a beat, she pushed past him until she was standing in front of me, arms crossed in front of her, hip cocked, in full-on lawyer mode. “Ken Doll, did that snotty she-who-shall-not-be-named take a shot at you today?”

  “The accident had nothing to do with Audrey. I swear, you guys. That was a completely unrelated mishap.”

  My mom leaned forward and examined my face closely. Greg and Judith Evans were not disciplinarians in any sense of the word, but if she was in the room with them, my mother could always tell when someone was lying. This had bothered me at the beginning of adolescence, until I realized that, short of intravenous drug use or fucking with their stereo, I could do basically whatever I wanted without getting in trouble.

  “OK,” my mom said, sounding cautiously satisfied. “Please be more careful, Kendall. You scared us today. I mean”—she added, sounding mystified—“I was actually scared.”

  “I promise, Mom. I’m fine.”

  “Good.” Then she smiled broadly. “We have something that might cheer you up.” She nodded to my dad, who grinned and handed me a thick, padded manila envelope.

  The return address said, YOUNG ASTRONOMERS TALENT SEARCH.

  I looked down at the package in my lap, my brain fizzing. “It’s heavy,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

  “Open it,” ordered my mom.

  I ripped open the seal and dumped three brochures and a folded letter, on fancy, textured stationery, into my lap.

  My shoulders cramped with anticipation as I picked up the letter.

  Dear Kendall Evans,

  We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected by the Young Astronomers Talent Search to participate in next year’s Accelerated Astrophysics Senior Semester, to be held on the campus of Rice University in Houston, TX, in conjunction with NASA, starting January 10. Information about housing is enclosed . . .

  I dropped the letter. “I got in,” I whispered.

  “What? What does it say?”

  “I got in.” I started shrieking. “I got in!”

  My mom’s eyes got wide. “You’re going? You’re going to Texas?”

  My father smiled passively. “Of course you got in. Why are you two surprised?” He wrapped his arms around me. “Congratulations, Kenny!”

  My mother joined him, hugging me around the neck. “We’re proud, Kendall. You earned this.”

  I sat there, pinned down in their arms, feeling like my brain was in suspended animation. I had known about the YATS program since they came to our Academic Enrichment Fair last year. The moment I saw the NASA logo at their booth, something lodged deep in my heart said: Oh. Oh, I want that. But I would never have thought to give up my senior year of high school for it. Until this summer, that is.

  My father let go first. “Honey, you look like you need a minute. I’ll go make tea.” He shuffled out of my room, placid as ever.

  My mother looked like she was going to protest and opened her mouth, but, for the first time I could remember, she didn’t seem to have anything to say. She smiled a little too widely at me and hurried after my father.

  A sudden roar of sheer relief flooded over me, and I reopened my laptop to e-mail Facebook, as I knew I should. I wasn’t exactly sure of the procedure, but I assumed some measures would be taken to restore my name to me. But as I looked at the girl in the photograph—me—something in my brain sputtered and stalled. I didn’t want to take her down yet. It was entirely irrational.

  I shut the laptop. Tomorrow, I decided. I’ll take her down tomorrow.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The good news was that no one was ignoring me anymore. It’s kind of hard to look away from a girl whose face looks like it got run over by a bicycle.

  “Damn, girl,” whistled Dennis as I opened my locker that morning. “You fucked yourself up. You OK?”

  I had to hold myself back from leaping on top of him, throwing my arms around his shoulders, and wrapping my legs around his waist out of sheer gratitude for any attention at all. Instead I smiled and said, “I’m fine. It’s just a few bruises.”

  Dennis took off his Knicks hat and dropped it onto my head, a gesture of great honor. “That’s our fighter. Toughen you up for volleyball season.”

  Lucia slammed her locker shut and cracked a grim smile in my direction. “Off to some year, huh, K?” She walked past me before I could respond.

  Dennis shrugged at me, plucked his hat off my head, and trotted after her.

  The good news was that my friends were no longer pretending I was invisible. The bad news was that they still considered it a bad idea to stand next to me for too long.

  Gilly didn’t seem to have that problem.

  All of a sudden, he was everywhere. Every class I went to, Gilly plunked himself down in the desk next to mine. When I tucked myself into a corner near my locker for my free period, Gilly and his friends colonized the opposite wall. And I thought I saw Gilly staring at me. Never at my face but at my shoe or my elbow or my ear.

  His scrutiny bothered me. I didn’t know what was behind it. I liked knowing what I was dealing with, and I didn’t get Gilly. I was used to getting people.

  I don’t like not knowing things. This thought ran through my head all day like a mantra, and my mind naturally drifted toward my hacked Facebook profile, now inaccessible to me.

  I had used my Howell e-mail address to send a notification to Facebook, but I hadn’t gotten a response. I still couldn’t see my own profile. It was like an itch I couldn’t reach.

  While grabbing my books for last period, I snuck a look at Gilly—he quickly looked away. He frowned at the wall as he slammed his locker shut and bolted up the stairs. I watched him go and thought back to our moment in the nurse’s office. He had been a dick, and I had slapped him. But then . . .

  I couldn’t see what the hacker had done to my profile without someone signing into Facebook and showing me. Last year I could have asked any number of people. This year the only person who had offered to do me a favor was Gilly.

  So I steeled myself and followed him to the auditorium.

  The fall play was still a few weeks away from auditions: The amphibian population would be in hibernation, and I would have to seek them out in their own environs.

  I had never been backstage before, but I found Gilly burrowed as far away from the door as possible, sitting in a nest of cables. He, Lemon, Drew, and Dave were snickering at some video on a laptop.

  “Um . . . hi.”

  The crew looked up at me in unison. Lemon politely asked, “Can I help you with something?” Dave, an abrasive dork with a crew cut and a hideous ball chain necklace, snorted and snatched the laptop out of Gilly’s hands.

  Gilly himself was quiet, looking at me
with raised eyebrows.

  I felt like a telemarketer. “I was hoping to speak with Gilly?”

  He cocked his head to the side, as if he was suspicious of my intentions. “Here I am.”

  “OK.” My palms felt sweaty, and I wiped them on my jeans. “I could use a favor.”

  Dave was drinking out of a silver thermos. He choked on his laughter, and a little bit of liquid dribbled out of the side of his mouth.

  I ignored him and sat down. “Someone hacked into my Facebook and changed the password.”

  “And you just assume I’m a hacker and can fix it.”

  Smart-ass. “No, I didn’t assume that,” I said, keeping my tone light. “I just thought I could look at Facebook with your log-in, see if anything in my profile got messed up. So I can do damage control.”

  “You want his log-in?” squeaked Drew. From his horrified expression, you’d think I’d asked for his firstborn child.

  “No,” I said patiently. “I thought I could just sit here and look at it on Gilly’s laptop.”

  I tried to catch Gilly’s eye, but he was too fast for me. He grabbed the laptop out of Dave’s grasp. “Sorry, the computer’s not available,” he said. “We’re watching Peep Show.”

  He pressed the space bar, and that was that. All four boys snapped their heads back toward the screen, away from me.

  I gathered myself off of the floor and made my way to the exit. I thought I heard Gilly say my name, but I didn’t look back. My instincts in the nurse’s office had been right: When he makes eye contact, look away. Beware of techies bearing gifts.

  I pushed open the heavy door and collided with Simone Moody, knocking her shoulder bag to the floor.

  “Fuck! Watch it!” she said in her distinctively soft, flat voice as she bent down to pick up her bag. She stood and pushed dark bangs out of her eyes. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “It’s me,” I said cautiously. “Hi, Simone.”

  Simone rearranged her shoulder bag, pulling her neckline down with a practiced hand. Simone Moody’s body was legendary and, if accounts were true, widely and thoroughly appreciated.