The Accidental Bad Girl

by Maxine Kaplan

  “I was looking for you today,” she said huskily. “I had a question.”

  I didn’t really know much about Simone other than she didn’t give a fuck—and she liked to party. But she made me nervous. She made most people nervous, because a quarter of the way through sophomore year, she’d completely lost her mind.

  It started with her slamming her fists into her locker. No one paid it that much attention—at first. It was midterms; people were frazzled. The real action started when she abandoned her fists and started using a chair. When she had demolished the locker and moved on to a window, the teachers called the cops.

  She was out of school for a month.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, super casual.

  “That girl you were talking to yesterday.”

  I froze. “What girl?”

  Simone folded her arms. “The one I saw follow you into the bathroom. The tall girl. How do you know her?”

  “I don’t.”

  She looked at me hard. “No, really, I don’t know her.”

  Simone licked her lips and stuck her tongue through her teeth. She seemed to be thinking.

  “What?” I asked. “Do you know her?”

  She shrugged. “Not really.” She sounded as calm as always. “But I do see her around my building most days. Every afternoon this week, actually. I think she goes to Columbia.”

  “She hit me,” I blurted out.

  Simone raised her eyebrows.

  “I don’t know why, but she hit me.”

  Simone was quiet for a while. I watched as she seemed to process the information. Her face was beautiful but a little confusing: unreadable and ethnically ambiguous. I was staring, trying to parse whether she was part Asian—maybe Vietnamese?—when she said matter-of-factly, “She’s kind of scary. I think you should stay away from her if you can. Just my opinion.”

  We stood there, surveying each other for another moment, not talking.

  “I’m going to get going,” she said eventually, turning around. “But I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

  “Yeah,” I said, distracted. “See you tomorrow.”

  Simone opened the door and then turned around abruptly, smiling a rare, wry smile. “Hey, Kendall? It’s going to be fine.”

  “Huh?”

  She shrugged a little. “I’ve been where you are. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

  She started to leave when, to my surprise, I stopped her. “Simone?” She turned around. “Could you log in to Facebook and show me my profile?”

  Simone’s brow crinkled, but she pulled her phone out of her bag, flicked her fingers over it, and held it out to me.

  I stepped toward her and took it. “Thanks.”

  Surprisingly, my hacker hadn’t touched most of my profile. There were no new likes of any creepy alt-right pages or links to pyramid schemes. The only items Kendall Evans had contributed to the News Feed in three months were pictures. There was the profile picture of course, but there was also a whole new album called, “My New BFFs.”

  I clicked on the first picture. It was a squat stone building somewhere by the water, with colorful posters partially obscuring the one wide window. As far as I could tell, there was nothing special about it. It looked like one of the faux-dive bars in Red Hook.

  The second picture was of a shiny green Prius, illegally parked next to a fire hydrant. A medal hung in the window; I couldn’t make out what it said.

  The third was hard to figure out. There was a slick, red leather sofa and a decrepit, scratched-up wooden coffee table. The dingy white walls looked like they were made of cinder block.

  The fourth, and last, was that same coffee table, only this one had a single white capsule on it. Someone was also tagged in this picture, somewhere in the vicinity of the coffee table: Mason Frye.

  Mason. I clicked on his name. It was a private profile. No profile picture. But at least I had a last name. Mason Frye.

  I turned toward Simone and handed her the phone. “Thanks.”

  Simone hesitated a moment before taking it back. “It’s not a problem.”

  We stood there silently until Simone seemed to lose patience with the awkwardness. “Anything else?” she asked, crossing her arms.

  I studied her carefully. It was as direct an offer of help as I could imagine receiving, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Whether it was because I had never needed help before or because it was coming from Simone, I wasn’t sure.

  “You said you think the Long Girl—I mean the tall girl—” I took a deep breath and re-collected myself. “You said that you think she’s scary.”

  “I said that, yeah.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  Simone tossed her hair out of her face. “She plays with pocket-knives while glaring at everyone and hanging out with the sketchiest people on the Upper West Side,” she said mildly. “That’s why.”

  “Huh. That’ll do,” I agreed.

  “So you’re going to stay away from her, then?”

  Gingerly, I brushed the skin around my eye socket. It still stung. “I don’t know. I’d like to know why she hit me. I’ve never been hit before.”

  Simone sighed and walked away.

  I watched her leave. I still didn’t know what to make of Simone, but I knew I liked having a clue. When she was out of sight, I went to the office and looked up her address in the school directory.

  After school let out, I rode the subway to the Upper West Side. Simone’s building—apparently, the Long Girl’s lair—was a freestanding structure of gray stone, with classically coiled moldings, a slate blue awning, and a doorman.

  I studied it from across the wide, clean street, not entirely sure how to proceed. It occurred to me that in movies, stakeouts usually involved cars. I had to settle for huddling under the lowest rung of a fire escape partially hidden behind a wall across the street, keeping my hoodie up, and praying that no one looked out the window and started yelling at the vagrant on the wall.

  You need information, I told myself sternly, trying to get comfortable. Information is armor. I was already being crucified for something I had actually done. I couldn’t handle being beaten up for some mystery offense on top of that.

  But after an hour and fifty-six minutes had passed uneventfully, I started to stop feeling stern and just felt stupid. Stupid and sad. What was I doing? I was not a spy; I was not a detective. I was no kind of threat to the kind of guy who would plan an assault on a seventeen-year-old girl or to his scary henchwoman. I was no kind of threat to anybody.

  I stood up glumly and accepted the truth: This was a distraction. I would e-mail Facebook again that night, I’d wipe the fake profile, and I’d start building a new one. I’d build a new profile saying that I was going to be leaving soon anyway, to study astrophysics in Texas. I can confirm what people probably always thought: I’m just a harmless nerd. I’m not even a popular girl fallen from grace, just a fraud and a nerd.

  I owed the Long Girl and Mason a thank you for helping me to forget for even twenty-four hours the voice Audrey had used when she called me a slut.

  Just then, as if my anger at myself had conjured her out of thin air, the Long Girl stepped out of a cab.

  Dressed in all black, with sunglasses and silver jewelry, she seemed older than she had at Howell, when I had mistaken her for a high school student. But that might have just been the way she was walking—her slinky, straight-ahead stride toward the doorman, who let her in without a second look.

  Ten minutes later, she came out and headed to the side of the building, unlocking a gated entrance to what was probably the boiler room. And then she was gone.

  I crossed the street and circled the block, hoping to find an unlocked back entrance to the building. There was a narrow alleyway between Simone’s apartment and the one on the other side of the street, but the gate there was as high and locked as the one in front. Dead end.

  I grabbed the bars and swung back on my ankles, shaking the railings, f
rustrated at being so close, and my elbow slipped through the bars.

  Easily.

  My heart starting to beat fast, I pushed my whole arm through the gap and then, my shoulder. I moved slowly, finally getting stuck on my lower rib cage.

  I extricated myself and took a closer look at the gate. The bars were all uniform, and they would all stymie my rib cage. Except, I noticed, moving closer, where the building met its neighbor. There, the middle of a bar had become slightly warped. The warped area was only about a foot high, but it might be just wide enough to get my torso through. If I got that far, I could easily wriggle the rest of my body across. Just like taking a dive for the volleyball.

  I turned around and moved my back over the gap in the bars, trying to gauge my chances. My torso would fit.

  I waited for a car or two to pass by, and then, when the street was quiet, I launched myself through the gate.

  It was not graceful.

  I got the top half of my body through right away, but the momentum from my leap sent it plummeting to the ground while my ass got jammed in the narrower part of the bars. The unwieldy gravity of the situation telegraphed the inevitable to the part of my brain not thudding with adrenaline, but there was nothing I could do. I toppled to the cement on my back and, for the second time that week, knocked my head.

  But I had made it.

  I struggled to a sitting position. It was awkward to do while still wearing my backpack, but I was grateful to it for cushioning my head somewhat, and, anyway, I couldn’t have just left it on the street. Overall, it was a vast improvement on the last time I had been knocked off my feet. I wasn’t bleeding, for one thing.

  I also felt sort of . . . giddy. Excited. As I got to my feet, I couldn’t help but congratulate myself on my perseverance and resourcefulness.

  Then someone grabbed my hoodie and yanked backward.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I was half dragged, half thrown through a doorway. The door slammed shut with a bang, and the light was gone.

  “Oh god, it’s girl detective,” said a familiar, smoky voice behind me. The Long Girl. “Great. What do you think? Do we, like, blindfold her?”

  There was a deep sigh, and then a pair of quick hands tied something silky and narrow tightly around my eyes. The extra fabric flapped against my nose and mouth, and light appeared at the top and bottom of my vision as someone flicked on the overheads.

  “Well, what do we do with her now?” said a new, exasperated, male voice.

  “We wait for Mason.”

  The hands pulled me to my feet by my elbows and, after a second, dusted me off lightly, grazing my back and butt. I stiffened, but he moved backward a second later.

  “He’s supposed to drop by in about fifteen minutes,” said the Long Girl. “Might as well bring her back.”

  The guy grabbed my hand and started to pull me forward. I couldn’t seem to make my mouth work, but I planted my feet and strained in the opposite direction. He stopped, and for a second I thought I’d won. But then he asked, not speaking to me, “Wait, you’re not coming?”

  The Long Girl said, “No, I have to make a phone call outside. I’ll head in when Mason gets here.”

  “What? I’m babysitting?”

  “Don’t whine. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I heard the door open and shut again. There was another deep sigh, and I was pulled down a hallway.

  “This is honestly a really big misunderstanding,” I bleated, grimacing when my voice rang out as a shrill, anxious echo of its former self. I rolled my eyes under the blindfold and tried again. “I—”

  He cut me off. “Chill out for a minute. OK? I need to find my keys.” Again, there was a sigh. “This is such a waste of my time,” he muttered. “So not what I signed up for.”

  My guard led me into a bright room and sat me down on a chair. My makeshift blindfold’s extra flap tickled my nose, and I tried to twist it to the back.

  “You can just take it off. It was a stupid idea. Girl’s nuts. Here, let me. I tied it pretty tight, and it’s in the back.” Arms reached around my head, little hairs tickling my ears. He smelled like smoke.

  Little by little the silk loosened around my face until it dropped to my collarbone in a loop. I opened my eyes. It was a red plaid tie, presumably taken directly from my jailor’s neck, judging by the popped collar on his preppy white button-down.

  He struck a match, and I looked up. He was ripped, with heavy, bulging shoulders, but his face looked young. He lit a cigarette and looked me up and down.

  To my surprise, I realized that I wasn’t actually scared anymore. I might find the Long Girl terrifying, but this fed-up guy with the creased forehead and the curious gaze wasn’t terrifying. Just big.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter.

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth with long, well-groomed fingers and jerked his head back toward the door. “I don’t think the sergeant would like us fraternizing.” He smiled wryly and a little grimly.

  He didn’t like the Long Girl. That was clear. I might be able to press him for some information. Usually, I was good at getting people to tell me things.

  I considered and unzipped my sweatshirt. I knew that the glimpse of the fierce, illuminated girl in that photograph was a fluke, an illusion. But I kept her wolfish expression in my mind as I looked him in the eye and bared my teeth in a smile.

  “Well, of course, I can see that,” I said, pitching my voice low and amused. “She wants you to follow her sterling example. After all, she’s so careful, I was able to track her down less than two days after she was seen by at least a dozen people stalking me at my school. Is she as stealthy as that when she’s climbing up Mason’s ass?”

  He choked on his cigarette smoke, laughing. I got nervous as he continued, not sure if he was laughing at my fake bravado or my joke. But then he shook out a cigarette from his pack and offered it to me.

  “I’m Jerry,” he said. “And you’re funny.”

  I didn’t smoke, but I accepted it and stuck it behind my ear, as if for later. “I’m Kendall,” I said. “And I appreciate you taking off the blindfold.”

  He shrugged. “You knew where you were. What was the point?”

  Actually, looking around, I did: I was in the cinderblock room from the Facebook picture. I answered in as nonchalant a tone as I could manage. “Got me. I was just visiting a friend who lives in the building. Any reason you guys threw me in here?”

  Jerry slid his eyes away and shrugged.

  “Hey,” I said, impulsively leaning forward and grabbing his sleeve, using my real voice. “You seem nice. You can help me.”

  “I don’t see that,” he said, removing my hand gently. Jerry put my hands back on my lap, and then, very quickly, so quickly that I almost missed it, he glanced downward.

  Out of habit, I glanced down myself, frowning at the pale skin visible at the top of my shirt. I was in a constant battle with my larger-than-average boobs. Show any cleavage at all and I looked slutty. Cover it up and I looked dumpy.

  The first time I was catcalled, I was thirteen years old. My dad had sent me to the corner bodega for a liter of Diet Coke. I was slouching down the street in beat-up Reeboks and a SpongeBob T-shirt, hands in my pockets, thinking about whether I was too scared to get my ears pierced, when a laughing voice called out, “Hey, girl, turn around!” Not knowing why I shouldn’t, I obliged.

  It was a skinny boy, barely older than me but tall, standing in front of a trio of smirking comrades. He cupped his hands in front of his chest and pursed his lips in a kiss.

  “That’s our dear little slut. First day of school and she still can’t keep her tits to herself.”

  I zipped up my sweatshirt.

  The Long Girl slammed the door open and strode back into the room.

  Jerry sighed. “Well?”

  “He’s just finishing a phone call.”

  A heavy door slammed in the hallway. I could hear keys jangling and a raw,
tenor voice humming. And then Mason stepped into the room.

  He was tall, thin, and pale and had a dark blue tattoo of looping, interlocking lines snaking up his arm. There was something squirrelly and mischievous about his face with its hooked nose, high, uneven cheekbones, and sharp chin. He didn’t look like he could be older than twenty or twenty-one, and he was wearing jeans and a plain gray T-shirt.

  Mason quirked a blond eyebrow in my direction and leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed. He smiled at me. His teeth were slightly crooked and very white.

  He uncrossed his arms, lifting one hand up, palm out. “Hi,” he said.

  I found myself copying the odd gesture. “Hi.”

  He closed his mouth, pursing his lips.

  “Jerry, Jo, could you guys give us a minute alone?”

  At the sound of her name, the Long Girl snapped into a straight posture. She shot me a dirty look but said, “Sure,” in a pleasant tone of voice and headed out. Jerry looked from Mason to me. I locked eyes with him for a second. He shrugged as he looked away, like he was physically shaking me off, and followed Jo out of the room. A few seconds later, the door slammed once again.

  Mason walked into the room and stood in front of me. He bent to the side and, grabbing the chair in one tapered hand, deftly flipped it over so it faced me. He sat down.

  “So,” he said, pushing his heavy, straw-colored hair back and then forward, so it fell around his face in pieces. “You’re Kendall. The Kendall.”

  I couldn’t help laughing, but I was nervous, so it came out as a snort. “You would think so, wouldn’t you? There seem to be a few of us floating around.”

  He gestured around his cheek, and my hand flew to mine—I had forgotten I was still bruised. “Was that all Jo?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I looked him in the eye. “Thanks for getting me out of school early.”

  He grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen. She’s got anger management issues.”

  “She should take up knitting.”

  Mason grunted out a brief chuckle.

  It was quiet in that room. I started to count the seconds, trying to look anywhere but at Mason as he unabashedly studied me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, his gaze flickering over my face, my arms, even my backpack. What does this guy want from me? I thought. Please just tell me, so I can get out of here.