Tease

by Amanda Maciel

  “Dad likes to play catch with us,” Tommy says.

  I’m not sure what he’s trying to say, but I get that sometimes he just likes to talk about our dad. Even if I don’t. So I go, “Yeah, I know. We have all those gloves in the garage. I bet Dylan will come over again soon, if you want to practice? For the next time Dad comes to visit?”

  “Yeah, cool,” Tommy says.

  We turn our focus back to Dylan and the rest of the team. It’s just a bunch of drills, not a game, but it’s sort of more fun this way. The giant indoor facility is on the university campus, and I like the way the white canopy feels like it’s a mile over our heads. I texted Dylan that we were coming, mostly so he’d know I couldn’t stick around after practice because my brothers would be here. But I don’t mind. I feel so grown-up, driving two kids around a college campus, visiting my varsity boyfriend, watching a bunch of senior guys I didn’t even know three months ago but who now keep waving hello. I feel like this is what college will be like—though hopefully I can at least get into (and pay for) the bigger university, in Lincoln. If I stay here I bet my mom will want me to live at home.

  “They only had Sprite!” Alex is yelling, holding up a plastic bottle to me. The boys aren’t allowed to drink anything with caffeine, so I assume this means that they didn’t have, like, 7-Up or anything. “And I only got two, they were two-fifty!”

  “Ouch,” I say. I’m talking about the price, but he also accidentally smacks me with one of the bottles. Not on purpose or very hard, but still. I take it and pass it over to Tommy, who opens it without looking at us. “Hey,” I say, nudging him.

  “Thanks,” he says automatically, still not looking over. It occurs to me that he’s feeling kind of grown-up, too, and probably doesn’t want his big sister bugging him. Or his little brother.

  I look around the bleachers, wondering if Brielle is gonna be here. She said she might come, but she’s not that into my brothers. I get it. Sometimes it bums me out, of course, but Brielle’s an only child, so it’s not like she could even understand. Still. She’s been hanging out with this guy Marcus a lot, and he’s on the team, so I guess there’s a chance she might show.

  But instead I see Emma. She’s just walking in, with Beth. Ugh, I forgot that Kyle’s on the team, so I’ll probably be seeing even more of her. Whatever.

  I try to look away, but it’s like my head is stuck. She and Beth are talking in low voices, and Emma looks like she’s been crying or something. She always looks that way—when she’s not flirting with some guy or whatever. Or even when she is, sometimes. She’s this permanent bruise, always getting her feelings hurt, always injured. Everyone at school knows she sees a therapist, and I wonder why they haven’t just put her on antidepressants already. Or ones that actually work.

  Beth looks up and sees me and waves. I don’t really like her, but I nod a little. Emma looks over and I glare at her, but I don’t know if she sees it. She has on that pretty coat again, and everything about her looks, I don’t know, vivid. But fragile at the same time. Like when Mom took us to see Finding Nemo in 3-D and the fish looked like they were real, they were so bright—but then you reached out your hand and it would pass right through them.

  Finally I manage to stop staring at stupid Emma Putnam and turn myself back toward the field.

  “Are you friends with them?” Alex asks. “Why aren’t they coming to sit with us?”

  “Probably because you’re such a tool,” Tommy says.

  “Am not!” Alex protests.

  “See, that’s just what a tool would say.”

  “Tommy, how do you even know that word?” I ask, torn between wanting to yell at him to be nicer to Alex and wanting to laugh at him saying tool.

  “Everyone knows it,” he says with a shrug.

  I manage to keep a straight face when I add, “Well, it’s not okay to call your brother.”

  “Yeah,” Alex says, sucking on the lip of his Sprite bottle. He’s chewing it like he’s a puppy or something, and I can’t help but wrinkle my nose.

  “But Alex, come on, you could stop being gross.”

  Then Tommy lets out a burp and I shake my head, wishing I’d thought harder before bringing them here. I’m positive that Emma is staring at us—we’re in the front, so I don’t know where exactly she and Beth are sitting without turning around again. And I am not turning—but I can feel her stupid eyes on us.

  Suddenly Dylan jogs onto the field, up to where the plastic pitcher’s mound is set up. He does a bunch of professional-looking stretches, then looks over toward us and smiles, waving. The boys wave back like their lives depend on it. I smile, lifting my hand. But at the last moment I think, What if he’s actually waving at Emma?

  It’s a crazy thought. Stupid. But it ruins the rest of the afternoon.

  “Oh my God, I’m going to pee my pants!” Brielle squeals, doubling over.

  “Shh, shh, shh . . . ,” I chant, but I’m giggling, too. And shivering, and tiptoeing, and hoping we don’t both face-plant on the icy street between Tyler’s and Emma’s houses. “Come on,” I say as softly as I can, “we have to do this fast!”

  Brielle stops and takes a bunch of deep, fast breaths, biting her lip to stop herself from smiling. She holds up her end of the giant poster-board heart we just got out of her car and says, “Okay, okay. I got this. You got that?”

  I shake my side of the heart—I’m holding the wooden post it’s been staple-gunned to—and a cloud of glitter floats through the night air, shimmering in the glow of the fancy lantern-shaped streetlights. With my other hand I salute Brielle, which is a mistake because then we both start giggling again.

  We’re only one door down from Emma’s house, but we’re never going to make it at this rate. We were studying at Tyler’s, which was really just an excuse to hang out with him, Dylan, and Marcus, who it turns out is taking Brielle to the dance on Friday. The guys don’t know we’re doing this—they think we’re going home, but really we just stopped at the car to get this thing. It’s a secret mission. Secret and freezing. Which I guess is why this all seems so hilarious, when actually it might be incredibly stupid. Like, maybe stupider than the fake Facebook page.

  But Brielle is determined. I think she spent like forty dollars at Michaels getting the supplies for the sign last weekend. And it looks pretty amazing, I have to say. I went over to her house yesterday and we worked on it for at least two hours. If we were boys and this was really a sign asking someone to the Valentine’s dance, the girl would totally say yes, even though the dance is only three days away.

  That girl would be impressed until she actually read the message, I mean. We made a giant, glittery heart that says “Roses are red, violets are blue, Emma’s a slut, and a skanky ho, too.”

  So . . . not exactly romantic. But you have to be kinda close to the sign to read it, even with the puffy glitter paint we did the letters with. Brielle says that’s the best part, that Emma will think it’s a real sign right up until she’s standing in front of it.

  Now that I’m looking at it, though, the word slut is pretty gigantic. It’s bigger than Emma’s name, even. And to me, that’s the best part.

  Finally we get our hysterics under control, enough to scurry across the dark, quiet street. We pause again in front of the wide lawn of the Putnam place. Emma’s parents—or her stepdad, anyway—are pretty loaded, though tonight their yard looks just as sad as everyone else’s, covered in patches of half-melted snow and dirty bits of ice from the last storm. Another fancy lamppost lights up the brick walkway leading to their pillared front door, and a big wreath made of roses hangs there. Totally Martha Stewart.

  “I wonder why she never throws parties here,” I murmur.

  Brielle yanks the heart poster forward and practically pulls me off my feet. “Because she’s a loser, dummy,” she snarls. “Who would come to her parties?”

  Of course she’s right. And suddenly I get this flash of Dylan hanging out here, sitting close to Emma and smiling like he is
in that photo online, and I yank my end of the poster right back.

  “Here,” I say, “lemme stick it in.”

  Brielle lets go of the heart completely and doubles over with giggles. “That’s what he said!” she cackles.

  I’m pushing the pointed wooden stick into the almost-frozen yard and laughing, when suddenly a much brighter light pops on.

  A spotlight, mounted over the Putnams’ garage, floods the yard, the sign, us.

  “Run!” Brielle squeals, and we do, back across the street to her SUV. Of course it’s pointed the wrong way, so even when Brielle starts it up and steps on the gas, we have to drive past Emma’s house. Out of the corner of my eye I think I see someone standing on the big, ornate porch, the rose-wreathed door flung wide. But then we’re gone, down the block, and I don’t look back.

  The sign wasn’t even really stuck in the ground when we ran away, but that’s fine, since Brielle and I have already done something epic that’s going to happen on Wednesday. But the best—or worst, I guess—thing on Wednesday turns out to be something we hadn’t even thought of.

  Someone has written SLUT in huge red lipstick letters down the door of Emma’s locker.

  “Amazing,” Brielle breathes when we spot it. “Maybe everyone at this school isn’t a total moron.”

  My stomach does a little flip. It seems like kind of a scary coincidence, since this is the day that the student council is delivering everyone’s Valentine roses. You can pay a dollar to send a rose to anyone you want, and they attach a little note if you fill one out.

  Brielle and I didn’t write on Emma’s locker, but we did send her some roses.

  Fifty of them.

  We wrote notes for most of the flowers, and some we signed from real guys Emma’s already dated, like Kyle and Jacob and Tyler. A lot more of them are “from,” like, the school janitor, or the creepy guy who works at the gas station closest to school.

  It’s just a prank. Obviously we’re trying to call Emma out for being a boyfriend-stealing skank, but they’re just flowers. The locker thing, though, feels like it’s kicking everything up a notch, defacing school property and everything. I mean, the sign in her yard was public, but this is right there, right where everyone can see it. Suddenly I’m scared again—terrified, really—of getting into serious trouble. Technically, Elmwood has this big anti-bullying policy. None of us have ever seen it in action, but they like to talk about it at assemblies and stuff, and Principal Schoen’s words at our post-Facebook-page meeting ring in my ears again. If anyone figures out that all those roses are from me and Brielle, they’ll definitely assume we’re the ones who wrote on her locker, too.

  Brielle and I keep walking down the hall like we haven’t seen anything, though Brielle is smirking. The first bell hasn’t even rung yet.

  And for the rest of the day, Emma gets roses.

  In every class, a student council member comes in at the beginning with everyone’s delivery. In a regular class, they have maybe a dozen roses total. But if you’re in a classroom with Emma, the student council person comes in with an armload, because she gets almost ten every single time. Deliveries only come to real sit-down classes, not gym or whatever, so Emma’s desks are pretty obviously piled high with flowers. I hear people from her first-period class talking about how popular she is all of a sudden, but by lunch everyone knows that it’s all a big joke. And by lunch, Emma can’t even walk down the hall where her locker is. The SLUT letters must’ve been written in some really serious lipstick, because they’re still on it, and other people have started piling their own roses on the floor in front of it. They’re tossing flowers at her in the hallways, too, when there aren’t any teachers around.

  I only end up really seeing her once, from way down the hall, right after fourth period. She’s throwing an armful of flowers away in the big trashcan outside the cafeteria. Jacob and Tyler walk by her, and I see Jacob clutch his chest over his heart, all fake-dramatic wounded. From all the way at my end of the hall I hear him exclaim, “Don’t you love me anymore?” and then he and Tyler are cracking up, walking away.

  After that, I hear, Emma spends the rest of the day in the nurse’s office. I figure that’s why I don’t see her in History, which is my last class of the day and the only one I have with her besides gym.

  When the last bell rings, Brielle and I walk down the hall past the SLUT locker, almost defiantly. That’s when we see Emma again.

  “God, of course,” Brielle mutters as we spot her sitting down on the floor in front of her locker, huddled in a ball, crying. Megan Corley is kneeling down next to her and holding some tissues. The SLUT letters are all smeared from where Emma or the janitor or whoever has obviously tried to wipe them off. Now it looks like something out of a horror movie, just a bloody red mess. The whole door is obviously going to need to be repainted.

  I hear a snort on my other side and turn to see Beth rolling her eyes and smirking at me and Brielle all confidentially, like we’re the Three Musketeers all of a sudden. Didn’t I just see her hanging out with Emma? I guess they’re already not friends anymore, because Beth goes, “What a freaking drama queen.” The words are barely out of her mouth before Brielle snaps, “You’re one to talk.” Beth’s face freezes. Brielle has already turned away, pulling me down the rest of the hallway, out into the colorless February afternoon.

  “We are not calling your parents—yet. But we are taking this very, very seriously. Girls, I cannot tell you how disappointed I am.”

  Principal Schoen is leaning over her desk, trying to look us in the eye and clearly wishing she could scare us. It’s working on me—I’m staring at the floor and wishing I was dead.

  Brielle, not so much.

  “I wish you would call our parents,” Brielle says evenly. “I think you know that my mother is an attorney and that my father has invested heavily in this school. I’m sure they would both find this all very interesting. I don’t see how you have any evidence that implicates me or Sara.”

  I glance up and see Schoen narrow her eyes at Brielle. Shit. The Greggs family might be rich and powerful and legal-minded, but the Elmwood principal is no fool. Plus she probably knows that Mrs. Greggs is an attorney—for an insurance company. Not, like, the take-you-to-court-for-harassing-my-daughter kind. Though it’s true that Mr. Greggs is crazy rich.

  “Miss Greggs,” Schoen says, her voice just as even as Brielle’s, “this is not the first time you’ve been in my office this semester. Your name seems to be coming up quite a lot these days, and I am not pleased. The Putnams are also not pleased. And no matter what you think, this is not a court of law. I have complete authority to mete out punishment as I see fit. Therefore, you and Miss Wharton here are banned from attending the Valentine’s dance this Friday.”

  “What!” Brielle yelps, bolting forward in her chair like she’s been electrocuted. “That’s ridiculous! We didn’t do anything!”

  Schoen looks over at me, and I scowl. I can’t look her in the face and lie like Brielle can, but I agree that this is completely unfair. Maybe Dylan didn’t make a big fancy sign to ask me to the dance, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have plans—big, after-party hotel room plans—that are now going to be destroyed. My knotty stomach sinks even lower, in an even bigger tangle of knots. Which I didn’t even realize was possible until just now.

  “Ladies,” the principal says sharply. “If I have to speak to either of you again, trust me, things will be much worse. I don’t want to have to suspend you. I don’t want to bring your parents in. I trust that you can correct this destructive behavior and show me that you embody the inclusiveness and open-mindedness that Elmwood prides itself on. I am holding you both to a higher standard. I expect you to live up to it.”

  At the end of this speech Schoen abruptly stands up from her desk, gesturing toward the door.

  “I believe you have classes to return to,” she says.

  Even Brielle doesn’t know what to say. But she makes a loud huffing sound as she grabs her
bag and pushes out of her chair. She’s already throwing open the principal’s office door as I get up and collect my things.

  “Sara,” Schoen says, more quietly. “Think about what I’ve said. You can do better.”

  I look at the floor again. I don’t know what to say to this. So I just leave.

  September

  “SO, WHICH ONE did you pick?”

  “Pick? What do you mean?”

  “You know. To be, or not to be? Wasn’t that the question?”

  We’ve just passed our papers forward to Mr. Rodriguez and Carmichael is giving me this totally serious look. A second ago I was sweating, not sure I’d finished the last essay question very well, not sure why I care about my summer school pass/fail status at all, and now I’m looking at Carmichael’s green eyes. Which have—it has to be said—a twinkle in them.

  “You’re messing with me,” I say, trying to push down the smile at the corners of my mouth. Trying to not look shocked, though I kind of am. “You’re being funny.”

  “I have my moments,” he says.

  For a second we look at each other and we both smile, like we’re having a moment. Together.

  And I guess we did have a moment—a last one. That was our last test. Carmichael is picking up his bag and getting up now, and I feel my stomach drop. We finished watching the movie on Saturday, but we didn’t really talk after the Emma thing, and now he’s going to walk out and bike away and I’ll be alone again. Or I’ll go back to see Dylan, and just end up feeling worse. Something about Carmichael makes me feel . . . not worse.

  “Hey, you want to get, um, a drink?” I blurt, grabbing my own bag and sort of stumbling out of my chair, trying to catch up with him before he’s gone.

  Carmichael turns. He pushes his hair back with one hand and raises an eyebrow, and I realize what I’ve just said. “I don’t really drink,” he says seriously. “Not my thing.”