Confessions of a Hater

by Caprice Crane

  Dead silence. That’s not exactly what anyone was expecting.

  “I mean, it sounds like it’s only the good graces of your enemies that kept a few of you from getting expelled over that STD announcement. Car theft? That’s a great way to end up in juvenile detention and maybe even end up with a felony or two if they try you as an adult. And the BitchBook thing—very creative. But how none of you ended up having to repeat your sophomore year after that one I’ll never figure out.”

  We all looked at each other, guilty as charged, but Noel kept talking.

  “Hey, at least none of those girls you pictured swallowing dog shit decided to swallow a bottle of Xanax after being publicly humiliated in front of the whole school, huh? Dodged another bullet there.”

  “But,” Xandra said, “we didn’t start it—”

  “Well, kid, that’s all the reason you need right there,” Noel said. “‘We didn’t start it,’ so if someone drops out of school or goes to jail or kills herself, it’s not your fault. ‘Because you didn’t start it.’”

  “Noel,” I said, “come on, ease up. I get what you’re saying, and, yeah, we took things a little too far and we got a little lucky—”

  “Hailey, the minute you turn eighteen, you should play the lottery every chance you get,” Noel said. “Because you got way beyond lucky. You don’t have any clue how lucky you got.”

  She sighed, picked up her diary. The diary we had combed through, memorized passages from, treated like it was our bible.

  “Did anyone notice anything weird about this diary?” Noel asked.

  Nobody said anything.

  “Like, that it just … stops?” she went on. “Nobody noticed how it just ends abruptly?”

  “We were wondering,” Dahlia said. “But, you know, people abandon journals all the time. Sometimes they just get tired of them, or maybe they move on to another one.”

  “Fair enough,” Noel said. “Well, that’s not what happened here. I abandoned it for a reason. Apparently the only mistake I made was not burning the thing.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. We’d been living our lives by this journal, and its creator was before us—blaspheming it.

  “Noel, what the hell?” I said. “Did you come here just to ridicule me?”

  “No, Hailey,” she said. “Not at all. I love you, sweetie. And I totally understand how you could get caught up in all this crap I wrote. Hey, I got caught up in it; that’s why I wrote it. But here’s the thing: Everything you read, that’s only half of the story. And the half you read? Well, a lot of that turned out to be bullshit.”

  Leave it to Anya to appreciate the no-shit approach: “Okay. So what’s the deal? What are we missing?”

  “Well,” she said, “Hailey’s told me all about this Skyler—enough to leave me pretty concerned, since I’m going to have to get to know this bitch too. But that’s another story.”

  A few raised eyebrows—I hadn’t shared that with the group yet.

  “Anyway, I was probably what you’d call a ‘Skyler’ when I was in school. Maybe not quite as bad, but close. All of that stuff in the diary, I didn’t just use it to be self-confident. I used it to knock people down. I used it to get my way and get ahead. And now, whenever I think about it, I feel sick to my stomach.”

  I looked around at the other girls. They were hanging on every word. So was I.

  “There was a girl in our grade named Lisa Gregory, and quite simply, she smelled bad. Like really, really bad, like she didn’t bathe at all, and she almost always wore the same clothes. Her hair was a mess, like filthy, greasy, oily—disgusting. So, you can imagine we all tried to steer clear, make sure she didn’t touch us or get too close or, heaven forbid, talk to us.”

  The girls all nodded in agreement, leaning forward waiting for whatever was coming next.

  “And of course we made fun of her. Because that’s what you do when you’re in high school. You’re mean.” She stopped and looked around at all of us. “In high school, we say and do the most hurtful things we can think of, because that somehow makes us feel better about ourselves. But does it really? Do you really feel good about yourself when you’ve hurt another person?”

  More girls were looking down now, noticing seemingly fascinating things about their shoes, their shirts, anything to avoid Noel’s gaze.

  “So like I said, I was the Skyler. I was the ‘leader of the band.’ So I went up to Lisa one day when she was standing by her locker, and I pretended to be nice to her. It didn’t even take any effort. I was nice to this girl just long enough to watch her open her locker and get her lock combination. The next day, before school started, my friends and I filled her locker with everything we decided she must not have access to: shampoo, soap, deodorant, hairbrush, toothbrush, toothpaste, douche and—as a lovely coup de grâce—a note that read: ‘Take a hint, or better yet, take a shower!’”

  Everyone was silent. This obviously wasn’t going to be a happy story.

  “The next day, everyone knew what we’d done, so there were lots of kids gathered to watch as she opened her locker. She took a few items out and examined them as half of the school laughed at her humiliation. We thought it was so funny. Well, until the next day.”

  “What happened?” Dahlia asked.

  “Lisa was in critical condition in the hospital. She’d tried to kill herself and damn near succeeded.”

  “How?” I asked. I’d somehow never heard about this before.

  “She drank a bunch of her stepfather’s bourbon and took some pills she found in his nightstand, got in a warm tub and slit her wrists with a razor blade. Well, not her wrists, really. Everyone says ‘wrists,’ but really, when you do it right, it’s pretty much right up your entire forearms.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, a sentiment echoed by the other girls.

  “Yeah,” she said. “She survived, but she had these horrible scars that ran up both arms, which you could only see at PE, because she wore long-sleeved shirts all the rest of the time, even on the hottest days. She’d be sweating in the middle of summer, wearing her long-sleeved shirt.”

  “God,” Anya said. “At least she lived.”

  “Yes,” Noel said. “That was lucky. But things almost got worse for her. You think people pointed and stared and talked behind her back before? Now she wasn’t just the girl who smelled bad; she was the girl who tried to kill herself. It was a whole new level of hell for her after that.”

  Complete silence. Nobody touched their dessert.

  “So yeah. I was devastated. Obviously she had issues, she had problems, but—what we did, what I did, that was what pushed her over the edge. And that’s when I stopped writing in my diary. I realized you don’t have to tear down others to build yourself up. Once you understand that your success doesn’t depend upon the failure of others, well, that’s when you really grow up. And you become a whole lot less of an asshole.”

  There wasn’t much more discussion after that. Noel had said all she needed to say. No one even wanted to look at each other. I didn’t know what the future held for the Invisibles—if there even was any future—but the pranks, the retaliation, all of that, obviously was over for good.

  Noel and I had just left Sweet Lady Jane when I stopped, realizing there was a situation happening right in front of me that I could maybe help, or try to help, and I knew I had to do something. I told Noel I’d meet her back at the house and doubled back to find Kura. We had barely just dispersed but Kura was nowhere to be found. I walked back into the café and asked the lady behind the counter.

  “Did my friend, the pretty Asian one … did you happen to see her leave?”

  “I think she’s in the bathroom,” she said, and my heart started to speed up, much like I assumed hers probably was.

  I knocked on the bathroom door.

  Sniff. “Just a second,” she said. Sniff.

  “Kura, it’s me,” I said. “Open up.”

  There was no movement and the door didn’t open. So I banged on
it. Hard. I finally heard the latch unlock, and the door cracked open. She looked so fragile, I didn’t say a word. I just took her arm as we left the restaurant. I guided Kura to a shaded bus bench where we could talk. This probably sounds weird and terrible, because I absolutely wanted Kura to feel better, but there was something strangely soothing about worrying about something other than my own disintegrating life for a change.

  Kura took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were sunken.

  “Kura,” I said, but her name caught in my throat. “You look really bad.”

  “I’m stopping,” she said. At least she knew immediately what had me so concerned, for whatever that’s worth. “I’m really stopping, I swear.”

  I’d heard that too many times to believe it. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t,” she said. Her eyes darted around—she was looking anywhere but at me. She stood up, jittery. “I really have to go. If I’m late getting home, my parents will flip. You have no idea what Asian parents are like. It’s like Godzilla was actually a metaphor for angry Asian parents whose kids were fuck-ups.”

  I laughed, admiring her ability to be entertaining even in this situation, but I felt frustrated by how helpless I was. She just didn’t realize the seriousness of her situation.

  “Kura, please, just know that I’m here and that I want to help you, okay?”

  “Okaaay,” she replied in a mocking tone, rolling her eyes for effect. It was an unnecessary gesture, but it only took a moment for me to realize that was the drug talking, not her.

  In a flash, she was up off the bench, striding away. “I gotta run,” she said, not even turning back to me.

  Part of me wanted to follow her, but what more could I do? I’d given it a shot. And it’s not like I didn’t have enough problems of my own right now.

  I could only hope Kura would get help before things got worse.

  * * *

  That night, I went for a walk while Noel talked with Mom. While Noel was being more open with me about how traumatic everything was for her, the two of them seemed to be forming a bond that I couldn’t really recall them having before. That’s probably because Noel always seemed so headstrong and independent, which isn’t exactly Mom’s style. But Noel turned out to have just as much insecurity as anyone—she’d just gotten used to hiding it well. And Mom turned out to be a lot stronger than I ever expected. Noel said her talks with Mom were really helping her get it together. She was even feeling at home here in this strange house.

  When I got back from the walk, Noel and I had some ice cream. We talked a lot that night. Even though I felt I’d let her down terribly, she was understanding. She told me I shouldn’t have read the diary in the first place, but she hoped I’d learn from her mistakes and the reason she stopped writing it.

  “The whole hater thing was going really well for me too,” she said. “Well, in a lot of ways. I was already aware that it was causing problems, but I chose to ignore them. And then after the Lisa thing, I was devastated. And I was dating this incredibly wonderful guy, and he dropped me on the spot.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Was he that really tall guy with the two-toned hair who always wore the V-necks? He picked you up on that red motorcycle?”

  Noel laughed, but it was the saddest laugh you’ve ever heard, totally heartbreaking. “Yeah, Tristan. You remember him, huh? He was really sweet. Just an amazing guy. He’d been telling me I was changing, and I wouldn’t listen. I thought I knew it all. And then the Lisa thing—he was disgusted, of course. And I was a wreck after that.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I never knew.”

  Noel shook her head. “Hailey, you remember when I started taking piano lessons after school a couple of days a week?”

  I hadn’t thought about that in years. “Um, yeah, now I do. I asked Mom why I couldn’t come with and she said you needed to focus or something.”

  “Right. And have you ever in your life seen me play a piano?”

  Holy shit. “No.”

  “Ever seen me show any interest in a piano? Or any kind of musical instrument ever?”

  “No. So, where were you?”

  “I was seeing a therapist,” Noel said. “I was shattered over what happened with Lisa. I felt such horrible guilt, I was having a hard time dealing with it. And I was heartbroken over Tristan too, but more than anything else, I just had no idea who I was anymore. I’d thought I had everything figured out, and all that hard work I’d put into being a ‘hater’ made me hate myself most of all.”

  I let that all sink in. It was like she was telling my story, all the mistakes, what happened with Chris, everything. Everything except an attempted suicide, thank goodness.

  “Did the therapy help?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it did,” she said. “I had a lot bottled up I had to let out. Heck, I haven’t even scratched the surface telling you all the awful things I did, or the whole story of Lisa.”

  “Like what?”

  Noel sighed, seeming to weigh whether she wanted to get into it.

  “Well, you can imagine how I felt when I found out about the near-suicide. It actually got worse. A lot more information came out after Lisa was interviewed at the hospital. Detectives ended up arresting Lisa’s stepdad because he was abusing her. Sexually. From what we heard, the reason Lisa didn’t change her clothes or bathe was because that was her way of coping—or not coping or trying to keep him away or who knows what—just expressing a general state of misery, I guess. But whatever it was—there was a damn good reason why she wasn’t taking care of herself. And we used that reason to humiliate her and make her even more suicidal than she probably was in the first place.”

  “If there’s any possible silver lining … I guess it’s that people found out she was being abused though, right?”

  “We weren’t trying to help her. We were trying to hurt her. It’s great that she got help but what we did was inexcusable. We pushed her over the edge. I pushed her over the edge. I was cruel. And I will never get over the terrible feeling of knowing how badly I added to her pain … humiliated her.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said, and for a brief moment wondered why we feel the need to say “I don’t know what to say” when we don’t know what to say. Why don’t we just stay quiet?

  “There’s nothing you can say,” she said. “Just … don’t do that shit, Hailey. Be better than that. That girl will never be the same because of what we did. She will remember that forever. And I’ll have to live with that forever.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said to Noel, who had tears streaming down her face now. I wanted to cry too. “I won’t. I won’t do any of that.”

  She pushed up her sleeve and showed me the tattoo on her wrist with the “Shine brighter” lyric. “That’s also when I got this, remember? Well, it was really a message to myself. To be better.”

  She dabbed away tears. “It’s good to be confident—it’s great to be confident—but don’t ever be a hater. I lost so much that I’ll never get back. But you, you might still have a chance to change things.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Just be you,” she said.

  This is my chance to fly.

  —VAN HALEN

  “Unchained”

  CHAPTER

  20

  It’s funny the things you think about when your whole world has come crashing down on top of you. When everything you thought you knew—who your parents were, who your sister was, who you actually are deep down inside—turns out to be a lie. To some degree, a lie you’ve been busy telling yourself. So, yeah, your mind goes to some pretty weird places.

  My mind went to … security cameras.

  More specifically, an editorial in the school newspaper about security cameras. West Hollywood had them running 24/7 in most of the major hallways and student areas as a deterrent against crime, mischief and … well, pretty much all the shit the Invisibles had been up to the last few months and Skyler & Co. had been up to ever since getting to the scho
ol.

  However, the cameras hadn’t been much of a deterrent, seeing as how all that shit went down. And here’s why: They weren’t actually hooked up to any kind of recording media. No hard drive, no recordable DVD, not even old freaking VHS tapes. Nothing. That was all a victim of budget cuts, thanks to California going basically bankrupt in recent years. There were monitors in the main office that the administrators could glance at throughout the day, but they basically never did, because they had jobs to do too, and thanks to a freeze on faculty raises, they weren’t exactly dying to go above and beyond the call.

  The fact that the cameras didn’t actually record was one of the ways the Invisibles had, as Noel noted in no uncertain terms, gotten incredibly lucky. Principal Dash could have torn Anya’s alibi over the STD announcement to shreds with video from the hallways … but no such evidence existed. Of course, the same thing could have nailed Skyler et al. for fish-bombing my locker, and all the other stuff, so it sort of went both ways. But the point was this: When no one’s at the school to look at the monitors, you can pretty much get away with anything at West Hollywood High.

  That wasn’t the only thing that had been running through my mind of late, of course. This had been the most intense week of the most intense month of the most intense semester of the most intense year of my freaking lifetime—which is to say, it was pretty intense. It had been a roller coaster of achievements and disappointments, and lately the disappointments had come fast and furious.

  And despite that, I felt a little kernel of hope, thanks to Noel. Sure, in one fell swoop, she’d shattered virtually everything the Invisibles and I had been doing all this time, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all she shattered was the illusion that being a hater somehow made us stronger. It didn’t. Our friendships made us stronger. Our care for each other made us stronger. Our determination to stand up to powerful people and to challenge our own perceptions of ourselves made us stronger. And we did do all that.