Avenged

by E. E. Cooper

  I stared at the words. It was a quote from Beth’s copy of Alice in Wonderland. And somewhere along the way it had become my life.

  Bean Around the World used to be Brit and Beth’s favorite coffee destination. It’s near the community college, and it smells like a mix of coffee and weed, and the windows are perpetually steamed up.

  It was strangely quiet today. The college had exams a week earlier, and summer classes hadn’t started yet. I grabbed my tea and, after some debate, a chocolate croissant. Beth was the one who’d gotten me hooked on them. Bread and chocolate together seemed like a bad combo, but the buttery, flaky pastry with the melty strip of dark chocolate down the center was sublime. I grabbed a seat by the front window and tore chunks off the croissant and dropped them in my mouth. This way I’d be able to see Brit as soon as she arrived.

  I was lucky to be out this afternoon. Once I talked to my parents tonight about the bourbon incident combined with the police showing up to tell them I’d been sending fake stories to the press I’d likely be grounded for life. They weren’t going to believe that I hadn’t sent the email. Brit had made sure it was from my account, and my brother would tell them I thought Brit was guilty. If it weren’t for Brit sticking up for me with her parents, I would likely have some kind of criminal charges. I could just picture my next appointment with Dr. Sherman.

  I took a sip of tea and then put it right back down. It was nuclear hot. I’d been somewhat surprised to get the text from Brit inviting me to meet her here after school. It made me unsettled that I didn’t know what she wanted to discuss.

  I watched out the large front window. Summer had arrived, and we were just waiting for the calendar to catch up. Everyone was out in shorts and barely there skirts. Then I saw her. Brit was standing outside with Melissa. I sat up straighter. I hadn’t known Britney had invited her to join us. The two of them stood outside talking. Then Melissa saw me. She nudged Brit, and they both turned to stare. There was a pause. I felt almost like a creature in the zoo. I made a goofy face, hoping to make them laugh, but Melissa stepped back quickly. She acted as if I’d lunged at the glass and started beating on it.

  Brit gave Melissa a hug and then came in. She waved at me and then went to the counter to get her drink. Melissa stood watching for a second and then hustled off. I started to feel uneasy again. What had Brit told her?

  Brit slopped a bit of her latte into the saucer and then onto the table when she put it down. “Shit. Hang on.” She returned a second later with a wad of napkins and mopped it up. No wonder she’d made such a crap waitress—she couldn’t even carry one cup of coffee without spilling.

  Brit sighed dramatically as she dropped into her seat. “I keep reminding myself we have only one week of classes left. Five days. I can make it that long.”

  “Five days, one hundred twenty hours,” I said. I had my own countdown going. I was well aware of how much time was left.

  “Feels like a lifetime.” Brit stirred her latte, the spoon clanking on the side of the cup. “I can’t wait for school to be over.” She picked up her cup and blew across the top. “How did things go today?”

  “Not great.” Understatement of the year. “I just can’t figure out how people found out what happened at my last school,” I said.

  Brit’s eyes widened. “You’re not hinting that I told people, are you? You know how seriously I take keeping secrets.”

  We stared across the table at each other, the air crackling with tension. She knew I knew she was lying, and she was waiting for me to call her on it.

  Brit looked away first. “I suspect it was Ms. Harding who spilled the beans. Trust me, I see my parents chatting with other people in the field all the time. There’s nothing they like more than spreading stories about the patients they’re working with. Most likely she struck up a conversation with the school counselor over there.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Brit put her cup down in the saucer with a clink. “Listen, this will all blow over. With me as your best friend people will eventually realize that there’s nothing to the story.”

  I felt the implied threat—if she wasn’t by my side then people would believe it. I’d better come to heel or she’d make me sorry. I’d end up with comments on my Facebook page that made the stuff on Sara’s look tame.

  “I wanted to meet to talk to you today about the team and plans since you’ll be captain,” Britney said.

  I blew on my tea. Part of me wanted to remind her that we were done for the year and next season she wasn’t involved. She’d be at Cornell. It had nothing to do with her anymore. “What about them?”

  Brit ripped off a corner of my croissant and popped it into her mouth. A tiny flake of pastry stuck to her lip. “It’s been a hard year for the team. Coming in second, losing Beth.”

  “Thinking they’d lost you,” I added.

  Brit smiled. “True.” She sipped her coffee. “It’s going to be important to start the year off right. Get some new blood on the team.”

  I nodded. “Sure. I think overall we’re in pretty good shape. The freshmen that came on this year are strong. Assuming we work on getting some good defense players at tryouts, we’re going to kick some ass.” I expected Brit to agree, but instead she sighed.

  “See, that’s the thing,” Brit said. “I think you need to be careful of expectations. If you set up everyone to think you guys will go all the way, and then things don’t come together, you can take down a team’s spirit for a few years.”

  I could feel my eyebrows draw together. “You don’t think we’ll do well next year?” I didn’t get what she was playing at. Was she trying to chip away at my confidence? After everything that had happened, did she really think my big worry was the field hockey team?

  “It’s not that I think you guys won’t work hard, but I’ve been looking over the competition. It’s a brutal season.”

  “This year was pretty harsh, and we held our own,” I countered.

  “The thing is, sometimes you’re outmatched. You can’t win. It’s not a matter of effort or heart; it’s just the facts. You’re outgunned.” Brit’s face was calm. “You’ve lost some good people on the team. Your guys aren’t as solid as you think.”

  “But you still try your best,” I said. The milk in my tea started to taste sour, and I put down the cup.

  “If you come up against an opponent that has you beat, you have to know it. If you try to take them down, you could get hurt.” Brit stared across the table at me, and I realized we weren’t talking about field hockey. “No one wants anyone to get hurt.”

  The sounds of the coffee shop drifted into the background, and I felt almost as if she were hypnotizing me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there are games you won’t win. The sooner you know that, the better off you’ll be. If you insist on trying to take out someone who is better than you, you’ll lose.”

  I knew it was only my imagination, but it felt like the temperature around us had dropped. “I don’t give up,” I said.

  Brit made a tsk-ing sound. “That’s where you’re making a mistake.”

  My breath was getting shallow. “Maybe a team that thinks it is unbeatable only comes across that way because no one ever really challenged it before.”

  Brit shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I just thought I should warn you.”

  “I’m not scared of you,” I said softly. My voice shook, making a liar out of me.

  Brit’s lips twitched as if her smile wanted to poke out, jack-in-the-box style. “Kalah, what are you talking about?”

  “You know,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean to make you upset,” Brit said. “It’s this intensity that made me bring it up at all. You don’t want to push the team past what they’re capable of. It’s not always about winning. If you push some of those girls too hard they’ll break.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “You need some perspective, Kalah. It’s high school field hockey. It’s not an Olympic medal,
or war—it’s a game.” Britney pulled her bag out from under her chair and began to fuss with the things inside. “Look, I’m your best friend, so I have to tell you, even if you don’t want to hear it. You’re not doing well. Everyone is talking about it. You have huge black circles under your eyes, you need a haircut, and your nails look like shit.” I glanced down at my hands. She was right. “You’re also acting weird, and with everything going around school, you’re not helping yourself. I want to believe you had nothing to do with that reporter, that you would never do anything to hurt me, but you’re making it hard. I can protect you this year, but next year you’ll be on your own.”

  “I know you told Dr. Sherman that you’re afraid of me.”

  Her lips twitched again. “What I tell her is supposed to be confidential. I only talked to her about you because I’m worried.”

  “Uh-huh.” I thought I had been so clever, sneaking around trying to prove Brit had done something, and the whole time she’d been playing me. Setting me up. Nicole wasn’t going to help me, and I didn’t have proof of anything. Based on all Brit had done, not a soul was going to believe any accusations I made against her.

  “I’m trying to be patient because I know how much Beth meant to you and how hard her loss hit you, but you aren’t the center of the universe.” Brit dabbed her napkin at the corner of her mouth, wiping away a tiny smear of chocolate.

  “I know.” My voice came out small and weak.

  “I’ve been through my own trauma, I’m dealing with Jason, trying to take exams, graduate, and then figure out what the hell I’m going to do next year. I could use some support from my best friend. In case you forgot, Beth had been my friend long before you were in the picture. I’ve had a loss. I’m struggling too.”

  I suddenly felt like crying. “Brit,” I said.

  “You said your parents are worried about you.” Brit stood. “It seems to me maybe you need to worry about yourself.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Beth and I were at the park. It was early spring, just a week or so before she would vanish. She was sitting on the metal merry-go-round and my arms ached from spinning her. Her head was back and she was laughing.

  “Can you picture it?” Dr. Sherman asked.

  I nodded, keeping my eyes closed. I could almost feel the moment. The cold spring air felt like it was burning my cheeks. My hands stung as I slapped the rusted metal bars coated in thick paint as they whipped past, trying to make her go faster. Beth’s laughter gave me a feeling like champagne, bubbles of happiness shooting up through my chest. I wanted to crawl inside the memory and never leave.

  It was as if I could see the past like an observer. My eyes were sparkling, and I was almost bent over from my own laughter. I looked good. I scrambled to figure out what it was exactly, but the best I could come up with was that I was happy. The sense of being content seemed to light something up inside me, changing the structure of my features, how my body moved, my gestures—everything.

  “What are you feeling?” Dr. Sherman asked. I opened my eyes to see her across the desk from me. The time at the park with Beth wasn’t that long ago, but it felt like a different lifetime. As if it were an impossibly long journey from that point and I’d lost my way. I had no idea how to get back to that version of myself. I wasn’t even sure it was possible. I caught a glance of my reflection in the window behind her. My hair looked lank and there were dark circles under my eyes. I looked nothing like the girl in the memory. No wonder my parents had encouraged me to leave school early for today’s appointment. They were willing to do anything, squeeze me into any open slot with Dr. Sherman, to keep me from falling further apart. I could tell they thought I had sent the note to the reporter and they were afraid to dig too deep to find out for sure. That’s why they had Dr. Sherman. They were counting on her to hold me together until they could bustle me off to camp.

  “I was really happy with Beth,” I said. “I know everyone thinks it was just in my head, but it wasn’t.”

  Dr. Sherman’s mouth pressed into a line. “Kalah, I don’t think you should assume from a few comments that everyone thinks your relationship with Beth was imaginary.”

  “Really? Because if you were to take a poll at my school I think you’d discover otherwise. At first people made what we felt for each other into just some physical thing, but now they’ve decided it’s something else, that I stalked her. Hounded her. Just like I supposedly did to Madison.” I realized that I had peeled another sliver of skin away around my nail. I stuck my thumb in my mouth to suck away the blood.

  Walking through the halls at school felt like running a gauntlet, the whispers hitting me like punches on my already bruised flesh. When Brit was around me things quieted down, but when she wasn’t it was worse. “No one believes me,” I mumbled.

  “Your brother helped you, didn’t he?”

  I sighed and nodded. Nadir had found a way to chase down Nicole, but he’d done it because he wanted me to face the truth, not because he thought Nicole would reveal a big secret. On the phone he’d kept telling me that now that I’d talked to Nicole I could move on.

  “I don’t know if Beth would like me anymore,” I said softly, putting into words one of my biggest fears. “I’m nothing like the person I used to be.” My breath caught in my chest, if I let it go I knew I’d start crying.

  “What do you want to happen?” Dr. Sherman asked. “If you could wave a wand and fast-forward time, what is the outcome you’d like to see?”

  “I want my life back. I want everyone to stop whispering about me, twisting everything I say or do into something else. I want everyone to forget what happened at my old school and stop using it as an excuse to ignore what I’m saying now.” The wants spilled out of my mouth faster and faster, an avalanche. “I want to stop feeling bad for disappointing my parents and Zach. I want to think about Beth without it hurting so much. And I really want Brit to be held accountable for what she did.” The last words out of my mouth were almost shouting, and I shut my mouth with a click, surprised at how angry I sounded.

  Dr. Sherman didn’t seem shocked at my outburst. She put down her pen. “Kalah, be honest with me. Are you taking your medication?”

  My arms were wrapped around my chest, as if I could hold myself together. “No. But a bunch of pills aren’t going to help.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I closed my eyes. I hadn’t meant to tell her, but there was no point in keeping it a secret. No doubt Brit had already shared that little detail with her during one of their little chats.

  Dr. Sherman stepped around her desk and sat in the seat next to mine. “Kalah, I believe this is real for you. And I want you to know that there are many of us—me, your mom and dad, your brother—who want to help you get through this. I can tell you feel alone, but you’re not.”

  I felt exhausted. She could dress it up any way she wanted; what she was saying was that she didn’t believe me.

  “I’m concerned that you’ve been lying about your medication.”

  I shifted in the seat. Lying made it sound shifty and wrong. “I don’t feel right when I take the medication.”

  “Part of what we’re trying to do is to take the edge off of your emotions. Think of it as turning down the volume in the room so that you can focus on one particular thing.”

  “I can’t do that. I can’t afford to miss a single thing.”

  Dr. Sherman leaned forward. “Even if it comes at the cost of your health?”

  “What about Beth’s health? She’s dead,” I fired back. “Do you realize that could be my fault? Beth was the only one who was Brit’s equal. If Beth hadn’t been distracted with what was happening between the two of us, then she might have realized how on edge Britney was. She might never have died.” I sat back. I felt light-headed, like I might pass out.

  My fault. This was my fault. That was the thing I hadn’t been willing to face. I’d distracted Beth, and that was why she was dead.

  “I’m going to talk to your parents.
Perhaps it’s not a great idea for you to head off to camp.”

  A ripple of excitement ran down my spine. If I didn’t have to go away to camp, I might have a few more weeks before renos started in Brit’s basement—time to find some other angle that might offer proof. Brit was sure she’d won; it might mean that her guard was lowered. There still had to be a way to make this work. I wasn’t going to give up. I wasn’t a quitter.

  I forced myself to focus on Dr. Sherman. I had to get her to fully embrace her idea that going away for the summer was a bad plan. “I guess going to camp might not be best,” I said. “If I stayed here, we could maybe see each other more frequently.” I hoped she wouldn’t hear the excitement in my voice. It would be better if she and my parents thought I was a bit reluctant.

  “I’m thinking of a residential program.”

  Her words slammed into me like a semitruck. “A what?”

  “A residential program would give you the chance to do some in-depth work on your mental health with a counselor while also trying a medication regime.” She gave me a look. “This way you could be monitored for compliance.”

  “I don’t need to be on drugs.” I had the sudden urge to check the door to the office to make sure it wasn’t locked or someone wasn’t waiting for me in the lobby with a straitjacket.

  “There’s nothing wrong with medication; often people find the right mix of medicine can clear the fog, make it easier to see what the problems are and how to best tackle them. The program I’m thinking of is in upper Michigan. It’s designed for teens and young adults. You may find it comforting to talk to other people struggling with some of the same issues. It has a lot of outdoor activities, a nice mix of group sessions as well as one-on-one. I believe you’d really benefit from a dual-diagnosis approach.”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. “You want to lock me in some psych hospital for mentally ill teens?”