Because I still feel it—in the months she’s been cold and we’ve drifted apart. I still miss her so much. I miss me so much. I miss us.
“Right,” I agree. And her shoulders slump as she breathes out, the relief palpable on her face.
“I need help,” she tells me as her phone buzzes again. “I need someone who can do damage control like you can. You’re literally the only person in this school I can trust right now.”
I think of Claire but don’t mention it. I feel as if my brain has rebelled and I’ve turned on autopilot. Instead, I say, “Okay.”
She breathes in a shaky breath. “I knew. I knew you were mad, but not that mad, right? Everything is hard right now, but we’ll find our way back. Now we have to deal with this.” She pushes down her hair and looks at herself in the mirror, fixing her makeup. I hear the way she keeps using the word we. As if we are two parts of something whole.
“Maybe you should say the texts weren’t you,” I suggest, trying to fit back in the place I’m supposed to belong.
She glares up at me. “Don’t be an idiot, O. That would never work.”
Idiot. It hits me like a brick all over again.
Things don’t change, not on Adrienne’s watch. Of course I’m just an idiot to her. Still.
Meredith Rogers bangs through the bathroom door right then, screaming, “Fuck you, Adrienne Maynard,” and Adrienne goes straight into flattering mode, all “Chill, Meredith,” and not even completely knowing why, I chime in, “Calm down, pull yourself together,” and instantly it’s two on one.
As Adrienne soothes Meredith, all cool crisis-situation charm, she whispers to me, “Damage control, O? Can you call a team meeting?”
I nod like the good girl I am, backing out of the door, not knowing why exactly, even in that moment. I’m walking down the hall with my arms crossed over my chest, wondering if I can do it—really just pretend all this never happened. Rewind back into what it was like before Ryan was dead and when Ethan was mine. Find that girl again. Be that girl again.
At least that girl felt control over something.
Alone, I exit the old building and cross the sidewalk to the new.
Inside it’s chaos.
A large group of students is gathered around a locker. It’s Claire’s—one of the prime lockers in school. The janitor scrubs away at the door of the locker—uselessly, from the bit of paint I see—and Dr. Rickards is screaming at him to “Go faster, dammit” and trying to clear students away from the scene. The janitor ducks the cloth for a moment, and that’s when I’m able to make out the word on the locker.
The locker says DYKE.
14
People rush in from both sides of the hall. In a panic, I open a classroom door to escape. A trash can is just inside the door, so I kick it over. “Shit!” I bang my fist against the hard wall, my other hand still clasped around my cell phone. I instantly realize I’ve made a huge mistake because that was outlandishly painful. “What. Is. Wrong. With. You?” I demand of myself, turning around and hurling the phone across the room like I’m trying out for a spot with the Atlanta Braves. It hits a glass beaker sitting on the counter. The beaker falls to the ground and shatters, and my phone bounces sadly away from the crash.
I take ragged breaths in and out, bathing in the destruction. Nothing has ever hurt as bad as my hand does right now and felt as good at the same time. Until it hits me, in the silence, that someone is watching me.
I look up. Whit DuRant is sitting in a desk across the room by the window, his pencil hovering loosely over a paper. We stare at each other. I push a piece of hair behind my ear with my good hand. “What?” I ask.
Turning away from him, I walk to the broken beaker, bend down, and carefully collect the remnants of glass in my hand. I carry them over to the trash can, picking it up and letting the glass pieces fall into it.
I go back over and kneel next to the counter again to swipe up the last few shards of glass, watching Whit scribble away through the desks. That is a dumb move. One of the pieces slices into my ring finger, creating a crimson smile across the skin. “Shit.” I drop the glass, my eyes watering. My knuckle is already throbbing, and blood oozes from the cut. I slide my monogrammed ring—the one that matches Adrienne’s—off my finger. The blood leaves a streak all down my hand.
“Well, that was something,” Whit tells his paper, as if my tantrum was so dull, he just now noticed it. When I stand to face him, he stops, glancing at me right as a tear spills down my cheek. He jumps up from his desk, coming toward me. “Jesus!” he says when he catches sight of my bleeding finger, his face breaking out into genuine worry. “You need to go to the nurse.”
“Fuck the nurse,” I say, defiant through tears. “Fuck this whole place. How can I be so goddamn reckless? I had her. I had Adrienne!”
I smack the ring down on a table. “But somehow I got sucked right back in, and it’s Claire they’re going after. How do they even know? I am so stupid.” I look right at him. “Who forwards texts without reading them? I’m actually as stupid as you all think I am.”
Whit’s eyes search mine for a second. Finally, he says, “I have some Band-Aids in my bag. Hang on.” He turns away and goes to his book bag, lying against the desk. I squeeze the forearm of my injured hand as hard as I can, as if that will help. Like a Boy Scout, he returns to me with the Band-Aids.
I hold out my hand to him.
“You need to clean this,” he says, wincing as he turns my palm faceup in his own hand. “It’s bleeding a lot, but I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks.” He unexpectedly reaches around me, tearing a paper towel from a roll on the lab counter and wiping off the blood as best he can. His callused fingers smooth the Band-Aid over my cut, and then he trails a finger over my skinned knuckle. I try not to make any sound and instead focus on the sight of his thick brown hair swept to the side like he’s some sort of junior senator. When I look down at my finger, the Band-Aid is soaking up the blood, growing darker as it stems the flow. He was as gentle as possible, but it still hurts. It hurts like hell.
“You sent out those texts,” he tells me as he finishes. It isn’t a question. “About all the cheerleaders.”
My blood goes cold. Under the haze of pain, I realize everything I just told him. “What do you know about it?”
He shrugs. “Only what everyone else does. Ethan Masters?”
I pull my hand back. “Don’t say that name to me.”
He shrugs again.
“Don’t say anything about this,” I command, using my most authoritative voice.
Something blazes into place behind his eyes. A challenge. “Why not?”
“Because you know what’s good for you.”
He snorts. “Are you going to thank me?”
A moment or a second or an hour passes where he’s looking at me, all expectant.
“I changed my mind. Do whatever you want. No one cares what you say.” Then I turn and walk out.
15
LAST YEAR
I dipped a fry in ketchup and held it up over the cardboard carton, watching as the ketchup dripped like blood spatter back onto the table. In my peripheral vision, Savannah Harrison was drinking a water bottle full of toilet water.
I’m the one who replaced her old water bottle.
Claire wasn’t eating. She was running her fingers over the screen of her phone, texting God-knows-who. She finally looked up from her screen. “Are you okay?”
I bit off the end of my fry, watching Savannah drink. “Do you think there’s, like, karma for every bad thing you do?” I looked away because it was too disgusting. “Ethan thinks there is.”
Claire set down her phone in one of her Serious Claire Moves. “He did not say that.”
I sighed. “He must have been talking to his mom again. He thinks I latch on to Adrienne because of some kind of psychological trauma. Like, I let her control me to fill a gap in my life.”
“He doesn’t know Adrienne,” Claire replied. “If anyone’
s psychologically traumatized, it’s her.”
“He hates her,” I said. “Like for no reason. And he’ll tell me I’m not her and to stop acting like her. He’s such a jerk about it.”
“Does he say that about me?” Claire asked, her eyes a little wider.
“Of course not.” I got up from the table, sliding past Savannah as I did. With my right hand, I knocked the bottle to the floor, letting the contents spill everywhere.
“Bitch,” she called out behind me.
I closed my eyes, absorbing the blow.
16
Claire is in her car.
Her tiny little Oldsmobile, a laughable hunk of junk her grandfather handed off to her when she turned fifteen, is parked on the far end of the senior lot, doors locked. I knock on the window and she lets me in. Glancing around, I toss my bag onto the floorboard and slide into the seat beside her. “This should get them talking,” she mutters. Her eyes are bloodshot, a bottle of cheap vodka resting between her thighs.
“I don’t care what they think,” I say. It’s almost true. I get a better look at her then. “Are you drunk?”
“A dyke actually. Haven’t you seen?” She wraps both hands around the bottle and tilts her head back to gulp the clear liquid. I cringe as a droplet escapes her mouth. Her cheeks are blotchy. Tears follow the vodka down.
“Claire,” I demand, ripping the bottle out of her hands. “Stop.”
“Ellie won’t even talk to me anymore. She ignores me while we work every day like she never cared about me at all. Because of Coxie.” She puts a hand up to her cheek. “Who would do this?” She turns to me. “Did Ethan really sleep with Adrienne?”
I take a heavy sip of the drink as a yes.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asks, letting the question sit in the silence. It’s so easy to let her say that—what’s wrong with Adrienne—because it’s the right question.
But what’s wrong with us if we’re her best friends?
“What’s wrong with us?” she asks then, as if she read my mind.
I lean my head against the window. Just tell her. “I don’t know.”
“What did she say to you?”
I think about that for a minute. “That she’s sorry.”
“Did you forgive her?” Claire asks. She drinks again.
I shrug.
“She probably is sorry. That’s what she told me. That you two didn’t mean anything by those texts you sent about Ellie. Not that anyone even knew it was Ellie, so thanks for that. At least I get to weather this storm alone.”
I swallow. We two. Wait, I forwarded texts from Adrienne to me? Shit.
“She said she could make it go away.” Claire twists her fingers up in her hair. “That’s like her, isn’t it? To create the problem, fix it, and then wait for thanks.”
“I’m so sorry, Claire,” I say then, though I’m not even honestly sure what the texts said. It was so incredibly idiotic to send those screenshots without reading them all. Adrienne would’ve never done anything that stupid.
Claire looks over at me, and I see the accusation there. “At least she offered to fix it.”
“Claire, I—”
She shrugs. “I mean, it’s fine. It was an accident, right? Coxie will do what I tell him to.” She finishes this sadly, leaning against the window. “Would you mind leaving me be, O? I’m really sorry; I need to be alone right now. I need to think.”
I want to point out that she won’t do much thinking once she’s fucked up. To remind her she weighs ninety pounds and is a notorious lightweight. To tell her that I can fix it, too.
But I’m not sure how.
I grab the door handle and then stop. “Just please don’t—”
“I’m not going to drive,” she answers automatically.
I get out.
17
LAST YEAR
Adrienne threw her head back laughing, the moonlight glinting off her dark hair. I always loved the sound of her laughter, like a reassurance that I had done or said the right thing. Crickets called in the distance as we sat on the stone bleachers, the stairs leading down into the empty football field. The lights were out, the stars shining as they can only do in the middle of nowhere. I grabbed up the bottle of vodka that Adrienne had talked our twenty-four-year-old cheer coach into buying for us. Coach Evans would be fired for it later that year. She went to the admin about some hazing Adrienne was doing to the JV girls, and Adrienne got her fired.
But for now, it was the three of us—Claire, Adrienne, and me—in the darkness, with waves of alcohol and freedom rolling off us.
“Fine, fine,” Adrienne said, letting me have the bottle. “It’s yours. Truth or dare.”
I licked my lips. “What should I do, Claire?”
Claire grinned conspiratorially. “Truth.”
“Truth,” I said.
Adrienne’s eyes flashed as wind blew her black hair around her face. “Were you really scared to have sex with Connor from Central? Is that why you backed out?”
I turned red. She’d been so cool about it at the time. All I totally get it and if you’re not ready, you’re not ready, after she’d spent over a month hooking me up with him once she’d noticed me drooling over all his social media accounts. But then we’d met in real life, and he was so dull and small-town simple, and there was no way I was going to have sex with him, no matter how much Ade insisted it was time for me to get it over with.
I’d thought she was cool with it. I should’ve known better.
“He sucked,” I told her defiantly.
She laughed in a mean way. “Who cares? He was hot. I didn’t tell you to marry him! God, since when are you so fucking puritanical, O?”
I looked down, fiddling with the cap of the vodka. “That’s not how I wanted it, okay?”
She grinned. “O-kay, then. Shit answer. Drink!”
I did, alcohol coursing like anger through my veins.
“My turn!” Claire called, reaching across me and holding the bottle aloft triumphantly, cutting through the tension. She stood up on the bleacher in front of us, letting the alcohol fall into her mouth until we were both laughing again. She stopped and finally called out, “Truth!”
I looked over at Adrienne to see her watching me, ready to judge whatever my question would be. I wanted her to like it.
“Do you really never get tired of Coxie?” I asked. Coxie and Claire had been dating since they were toddlers, basically. Claire was sassy and athletic and adorable. Coxie was bleach blond and simple and usually high. Accordingly, he orbited around her like she was the earth and he the moon.
Claire stared at me thoughtfully. I could see her eyes shifting between Adrienne and me, and then she said, “I never get tired of Coxie.” It was a total shit answer until she said, “But it helps that I’m not in love with him.”
Adrienne and I looked at Claire and then at each other. I was the first one to speak. “What the hell, Claire?”
She shrugged and sat down on the other side of Adrienne with a sneaky smile.
“So you like someone else, then?” Adrienne said.
Claire smiled bigger. Of course Adrienne was right. Of course she knew what Claire was trying to tell us before I’d been able to figure it out.
“I just…,” Claire started. Then said, “You can’t tell anybody, all right? I’m serious.”
Adrienne put her hand out in front of us. “Just the three of us, right? Get in here.”
I put my hand on top of hers, and Claire’s hand went over mine. Adrienne squeezed. “Promise,” I said.
“Okay,” Claire said, staring down at our intertwined hands. “Her name’s Ellie.” I felt Adrienne’s hand clench harder. “She works with me at the Rough House.” Then she looked up at the two of us, waiting to hear what we’d say. I wanted to ask her a hundred questions. If she liked girls and if she always knew, and how had she hooked up with Coxie if she liked girls, and if she would tell people.
“Do you think she likes you back?” Ad
rienne asked the perfect question instead of all the idiotic things on the tip of my tongue.
Claire laughed, taking a swig of vodka. “She kissed me when we finished cleaning up last week. Back behind the building. You two better not tell anybody, because she wants it on the down low, too. But how could she not like me, right?” Her voice went kind of high, as if masking nerves.
“Right,” Adrienne agreed. “Oh my God, this is such a relief! I thought you were going to marry Coxie.”
I leaned over Adrienne, taking her cue. “Tell us everything.”
I’d never seen Claire look so happy.
18
The bleachers are hard and hot. Cement bleachers—another reminder of a bygone Buckley era—burn up the backs of my legs.
I decide I don’t care.
I braved the quad during lunch, but it was a hellscape of cheerleaders who counted me as an Adrienne substitute for their hatred, people asking whether Claire Barber was really into girls, and Ethan watching me steadily. Before, it would’ve been so easy to smooth over the cheerleaders, to talk to them about context, about not believing everything you read, about how this is totally someone else’s fault anyway so go attack them.
But I realized I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to do any of it.
So I’m going to read every message instead.
I scroll through them in my phone. Every goddamn message Adrienne had typed up, all perfect, perfect Adrienne messages. She tears people down perfectly. She builds people up perfectly. She tells the best jokes and quotes the best movies and insults you in the most unexpected way.
You want to tell her your secrets.
I scroll through our conversation about Claire.
Adrienne: She MIA again??
Me: El must do it right. Maybe we should hook up with girls?
Adrienne: Ha-ha. She was so much more fun when she was pretending to be straight
Me: Limited shelf life. They fight all the time. I call them Coxie probs
Adrienne: Omg, I just snorted. Call me xo
It’s a singular feeling to realize how much you can hate yourself. There it is in writing—me mocking my best friend’s relationship problems with glee. We were the only two people in the world Claire told about Ellie, and it was another joke to us. We didn’t deserve her trust.
How to Break a Boy Page 5