Confessions of a Hater

by Caprice Crane

  “Hey, what’s the deal with you and Andy?”

  “The deal? Why? What did he say? Wait: Let me guess. He said I was a nutjob and to keep your distance.”

  “Pretty close.”

  “How close?”

  “I think the word ‘psycho’ might have popped up.”

  Anya actually laughed a little, but it was the saddest, most bitter laugh I’d ever heard. Suddenly I wished we were listening to Bill and Mitch again.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “That’s alright,” she said. “Do you like Andy?”

  “You mean, like, like like?” I said. “I don’t know … he’s cute, sure, but really I’m just glad to meet a guy who’s friendly and who’s introduced me to people. It’s tough being new, you know. I’ve made a bunch of new friends through him.”

  “Like Skyler and Jericha and that bunch. I’ve seen you hanging out with them.”

  “Yeah, them.”

  “They’re all assholes. Andy too. Trust me, if anyone knows, I do. I’m sorry. I know you’re new, but—you’ll see.”

  “Okay…,” I said, unsure exactly how to process this. I really liked Anya, and I already felt like I could trust her, which left an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d worked hard to get in with a popular crew and wasn’t keen on choosing sides.

  Anya was silent, looking out the window.

  I dove in: “So what do you mean that if anyone knows, you do?”

  She took a deep breath and twisted her mouth a little as she thought about her answer. She looked at me for a few seconds, and I felt like she was trying to gauge whether she could confide in me.

  Then she just went for it.

  “I was a cheerleader all through middle school, and freshman year too. Skyler was my best friend. Jericha, Cassidy—all her ‘minions’—we were all tight. That was the clique. Which means, as you’ve figured out, that was the clique.”

  I looked at her blankly. Was this a joke?

  “Hailey, you should probably be thanking me. That seat you’re enjoying on the quad at lunch, that used to be mine.”

  Nothing about Anya, other than her natural beauty, suggested that she used to be a cheerleader. Everything in her room and her wardrobe screamed counterculture, right down to the Converse sneakers with the not-so-carefully-drawn anarchy symbol emblazoned in ballpoint. This girl did not scream “cheerleader” at first glance. Or fourteenth.

  “You seem surprised,” Anya said. “What, the group doesn’t spend lunch period reminiscing about all the great times we had together?”

  I cleared my throat. “They’ve never even mentioned you.”

  “Could be worse,” she said. “They could be running around telling all the new kids I’m a psycho.”

  I cringed a little at her jab at Andy but let it pass. And before I could say anything else, Anya dropped the bombshell.

  “I got pregnant,” she said. “I was stupid and careless and it was awful.”

  Stunned, all I could respond with was, “Wow. I’m sorry.”

  It also occurred to me that there was nothing about Anya’s room, or her house, to indicate that she was a mother. No crib, or a bronze shoe, a cute onesie with a clever saying—something like “iPooped” or “This is what happens when you forget the condom” or “I lived in a belly for nine months and all I got was this stupid onesie.”

  I’d never been in a conversation like this and didn’t know what to say, what was appropriate. What fell out of my mouth was a generic, “What happened?”

  “I didn’t want to have an abortion. I also knew I couldn’t see myself being a mom at fifteen—just one episode of that Teen Mom show was enough to convince me of that. I talked with my parents, they were upset but understanding. We decided I’d keep her and put her up for adoption.”

  “Wow,” I said again, noting the word “her.” “When…”

  “Last year,” she said. “I found out early freshman year. I had to drop out of cheerleading. I didn’t want anyone to know—other than the father, I only told one person. I said I had a chronic hamstring problem, which also helped me get out of PE, and thus having to undress in the locker room. I covered up the baby bulge with a carefully coordinated ensemble, as all good undercover teen moms should, until I really started to show. Then I left. I told everyone my dad was sick and I was doing homeschooling for a few months to take care of him.”

  Information overload. So many questions and thoughts popped up in my mind: What’s the baby’s name? Was her dad actually sick? Speaking of dads, who’s the father of the baby? Is it that really handsome Mediterranean-looking guy in my biology class, because he looks way too old to be a sophomore, like he’s a seventeen-year-old exchange student or something. I bet he can grow a full beard. Wow, this was heavy stuff. Poor Anya. The worst thing I’ve ever experienced was my DVR not recording the season finale of Pretty Little Liars.

  “So, the baby…,” I said, prodding just a little.

  “Yeah,” she said, her eyes misting the tiniest bit. “She was fine. The delivery went great. She’s … she’s with a very nice family.”

  She stopped there. I waited.

  “So … everything went according to plan, as much as you can plan something that was completely freaking unplanned. I wanted to get back to school for the last few weeks of freshman year. I’ve always been in good shape, so I had just a little extra baby weight, nothing too obvious. So I went back in May.”

  “Sounds … okay,” I said.

  “You’d think. After going through all that in your personal life, you might think school doesn’t matter so much anymore. But it’s not true. My life, the baby, my parents, the adoption, all of that—my whole world was turned upside down. I was looking forward to school, to—you know, pretentious as it sounds, the whole social structure there. It was familiar. It was comfortable. It was … safe.”

  It was dawning on me. “But the one person you told … or the father…”

  “Not the father,” Anya said. “He kept his trap shut. I’ll give him that.”

  “But the one person you told … Skyler.”

  “Ding ding ding!” Anya said. “The news was everywhere. And it wasn’t just the pregnancy—I’m not the first teenager to get knocked up, I won’t be the last—but she’d made up all this horrible stuff, that I’d been sleeping around, I didn’t know who the father was, all this bullshit. I wasn’t just a teen mom, I was the biggest slut in the history of the school.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I mean, are you sure that all came from her? Why would she do something like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Anya said. “That’s the thing. She wouldn’t tell me. After I found out I was pregnant, she just acted like everything was fine, ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do,’ all that stuff. As soon as I went on leave she didn’t come around, wouldn’t take my phone calls or messages, so I thought something was weird. It hurt. I thought everything would be better when I got back to school. Then I found out she’d betrayed me, called me all sorts of horrible things, you name it. It was devastating.”

  “I can’t even imagine.”

  “Yeah. The whispers, the stares—I couldn’t take it. After everything I’d been through, I just needed—here I go with the shrink talk, I know, but I needed a support system. And a few people I know came up to me and tried to be supportive, but I was already dealing with the emotions from the adoption and—I just left. I finished out the last few weeks in homeschool.”

  I figured I should try to come up with something more constructive than “Wow.” I didn’t want to pry too much about the baby and the father, so …

  “Look, obviously I don’t know Skyler very well,” I said. “And I get that she can be kinda vain and self-serving and all, but that’s your average popular sophomore right there. I didn’t get the vibe that she’d do whatever she could to destroy her best friend’s life for no apparent reason.”

  “She’s complicated,” A
nya said. “I wouldn’t have expected that either, but on the other hand … well, she’s complicated. Hang around her long enough and you’ll see.”

  “You expect me to keep hanging out with her after what you told me?”

  Anya shook her head softly. “I’m not stupid, Hailey. You have a lot going on. You’re pretty, you dress well, you’re smart and funny, and you have the good fortune of catching on very quickly with the school’s most popular clique. You’re a very lucky girl. You’d be an idiot to just throw all that away.”

  That was a lot to digest, even as Anya’s compliments warmed my heart. No one would have ever said that about Old Hailey. Had I really transformed so much, so quickly? Noel’s diary really did have amazing powers.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If Skyler treated you—her best friend—like that … I can’t imagine…”

  “What she’d do to someone she hardly knows?” Anya said. “Exactly. So be careful, Hailey.”

  “I will. I’m so sorry to hear about what happened. Do you want to tell me more about—”

  “No, not right now,” she said, offering a tiny smile. “No point in bumming us both out any further. Maybe sometime later, cool?”

  “Cool,” I said, a crazy mix of conflicting emotions bouncing around inside me. “Thanks for turning me on to Mitch Hedberg. He’s awesome.” And that time, Miss Hoyt, I meant it.

  “‘Dogs are forever in the push-up position,’” Anya said, doing her damnedest to break the mood.

  I played along: “‘I am wearing a vest. If I had no arms, it would be a jacket.’”

  We laughed, and it was a good, cleansing laugh, reciting a few more Mitch Hedberg lines. I wished it could go on forever, because I had no idea how I was going to handle school tomorrow.

  * * *

  The next day was going surprisingly okay. I mean, if you can separate out the anxiety of having to get into a bathing suit in front of the whole PE class—the class, once again, that happened to include a certain super-sexy slab of studly hotness named Chris Roberts, a guy so intimidatingly handsome he could make Miss Teen USA feel like Miss Teen Wolf. Oh, and also take out that moment when I thought he was waving “hello” to me on my way to the Swim Gym and I waved back and it turned out he was waving to Tyler Colgan—not embarrassing at all. (Kill me.)

  But once we got to the pool and I looked around, I noticed something—or maybe I noticed a lack of something: my requisite humiliation and self-loathing (which was usually accompanied by tears and much cupcake eating later in the day). I actually felt almost comfortable in my own skin, and that was a first. My newfound confidence allowed me to focus more on swimming and less on finding the best angle to hide my problem areas … which is not to say I didn’t still take issue with certain zones. (Pizza, why can’t I quit you?)

  I was on fire—or whatever the equivalent of “on fire” is when you’re “in water.” (En fuego sounds awesome. En agua, not so much. No offense, Michael Phelps. Or Aquaman. Or Nemo.) I was practically flying back and forth in laps, and people were noticing—even Coach Dalton. He was even trying to get my attention, so I raced to the shallow end of the pool and stood up … noticing a breeze as I did. The terminal velocity or whatever physics equation applies when you’re in hell had caused the fabric of my bathing suit to somehow rebel against me. Somehow, without my noticing, either the material crept down or my left boob crawled out—or the two conspired against me in a moment of bathing suit/boob mutiny.

  Long story short: My boob was out! Can you say most embarrassing moment of your life?

  So much for feeling confident. That was why Coach Dalton had been trying to get my attention—not because my speed was so mighty (though it was impressive). He only had to clear his throat before I felt the draft, looked down and realized what had happened. I was pretty sure I was going to die from mortification. If I’d still been in the deep end I would have just sunk to the bottom and stayed there.

  Seriously, God? Was it not bad enough that I did the mistake-wave? Not humiliating enough? Had to whip out a boob just to make sure I didn’t get too confident? Well, mission accomplished.

  Luckily, not too many people saw. Less luckily?

  I was pretty sure Chris Roberts did.

  “Hey!” I heard, as I turned slightly to see who was shouting. Yep, of course. It was Chris.

  Chris Roberts.

  Chris oh-my-God-it’s-Chris-Roberts Roberts.

  Nope. Not gonna fall for that one again. I’d turn around and say, “Hey!” and then I’d see and hear whoever he was actually talking to say “hey” at the same time and then I’d want to crawl under a rock and do a tiny high five with a snail over how much of a loser I was.

  Not this time. Not again.

  I sped up, repeating one of Noel’s rules over and over in my head:

  When in doubt, do nothing and say nothing.

  “Hey,” he called again, even as I attempted to flee at breakneck walking speed. “Hailey, wait up!”

  He knows my name?!

  I stopped, kinda thrilled, kinda terrified, running my hand quickly over my chest to make sure the girls were tucked all safe and snug in their beds. Then I took a deep breath and turned.

  “Oh, hey,” I said. I tried to remain cool, calm and collected, a virtually impossible task, but one I tried to make easier by completely avoiding eye contact. No way could I look him in the eyes. His piercing blue eyes. His beautiful blue eyes that had just witnessed the dastardly escape of my renegade boob. Damn you, boob!

  “Relax,” he said. “Nobody saw. Don’t be embarrassed.”

  “Kinda impossible to not be.”

  He shook his head gently and flashed a soft smile. “Don’t sweat it. These things happen. Jeez, play enough sports and you’ll see stuff flopping out all over the place. It was just a couple of seconds, and honestly, we’ve all had worse things happen.”

  Wow, he’s actually kind of sweet!

  “Um, thanks,” I said.

  “Besides,” Chris said, now flashing a much wider smile. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  Whoa! Was he flirting with me? Did he like my boob? Did he want to see the other one?

  I was stunned. He saw that I was stunned. And he took it the wrong way.

  “Oh God, I’m sorry!” he said. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean you had nothing—you have something. You have a really nice something! You … you have a couple of nice some—”

  “No, no,” I found myself saying, laughing as I did. “I got it, Chris. I got what you meant the first time.”

  “Oh, good,” he said, wiping pretend sweat off his brow.

  Suddenly the embarrassment was melting away, replaced by all sorts of warm fuzzies.

  “So,” I said, “stuff flopping out all over the place?”

  He laughed. “Well, sorta. Sports, the gym, PE—like Mark Montero, his shorts split when he was climbing the rope last year. Turns out he wasn’t wearing underwear. Full-on b-hole exposed to everyone below.”

  “Gross,” I said, laughing.

  “I’ll say,” he agreed. “Or like your buddy, Cassidy.”

  “Cassidy?” I asked. “What about her?”

  “Well, she had a … I guess what you girls call a ‘chicken cutlet’? One day at basketball, hers fell right out of her bra. Splat. Flat on the court. And … just as flat on her chest.”

  (Chris was talking about the clear silicone implants you can stuff your bra with. Luckily, I didn’t need them, but most of my friends had them.)

  “Oh God,” I said. “Poor Cassidy.”

  “Exactly. And then there’s all the people who have gotten pantsed—”

  “Okay, okay,” I interrupted. “I get it.”

  “So, don’t be embarrassed.”

  “Fine,” I said begrudgingly.

  “Fine,” he said back with an air of cockiness/adorableness.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Not presently,” he said.

  “Okay, then,�
� I said.

  “Okay, then,” he said, flashing that gorgeous smile one more time. Then he was off to his next class.

  I was in an oh-my-God-Chris-Roberts-just-spoke-to-me haze when I passed by Skyler and Cassidy on my way to Room 251 to do my new free period. I gave them a quick wave and was almost inside when …

  “Where are you going?” Skyler asked.

  “I transferred out of art. I’m working at the school paper. I think it’s this way.”

  “Really?” Skyler asked, her face scrunched up in the most unattractive way. “Hailey, are you a nerd?” she asked. “I hate to break this to you, but nerds work at the school paper.”

  “A nerd? Last time I checked, no,” I said, standing my ground. “Wait, hang on—let me make sure.”

  I gave myself a once-over, even did a little spin, making a show of my fashionable clothes and my sharp look. I sure as hell don’t look like a nerd, I thought. At least not anymore.

  I smiled. “Nope. Definitely not a nerd.”

  That at least got a chuckle out of Skyler. Cassidy laughed too, following Skyler’s lead once she knew it was okay.

  “Then why on earth are you working for the paper?” Skyler asked. “Are you taking pity on the freaks? Were chess club and the role-playing-games society already full?”

  I flashed her a confident smile, gears turning in my head. How do I spin this one?

  “Really, Skyler? I’m surprised this move never occurred to you.” That’s it, put her on the defensive.

  Skyler looked confused. “Um, what never occurred to me?”

  Yeah, Hailey, what?

  Shut up, inner voice! I’m working on it!

  “Newspaper staff takes all the pictures and chooses what goes in the paper,” I said, a mountain climber scrambling for a toehold. “How else do we make sure that they use good pictures of us? Plus, they put together the yearbook. You do not want to leave that to the losers.”

  Skyler paused for a second, then a smile spread across her face. She approved.

  “Taking one for the team,” she said. “I like your style. Can’t say I’d ever do that … but hey—it’ll be good to have someone on the inside of Dork Central. Just try not to catch anything.”