How to Break a Boy

by Laurie Devore

  The caption says “Yeah, Coxie, she’s totally straight.” Because this is all about him.

  When I look up, Michaela’s still crying.

  My heart is pounding. “Where did this come from?”

  “I don’t know,” the minion says. “We left all two hundred copies in here after seventh period yesterday”—she indicates the library—“and we dropped them all off in homerooms this morning. They were fine yesterday!” She sounds frantic.

  “They’re out?”

  “Everyone has them,” Michaela manages to say. “I’m going to lose my editor job. It means everything to me.” I believe her.

  I stuff the paper back in the minion’s hand and go back down the hall, a ringing in my ears. This is it. Adrienne can’t sink any lower. Nothing I have done or will ever do can match this. This is Claire. This is us, our secret, our hands wrapped together on a cold football field. The one line we weren’t supposed to cross. Claire was supposed to be off-limits.

  The exceptions have to stop. Screw the bullshit rationalizing. There’s no more greater good to be gained, only the destruction left in our path. I have to tell Claire. I have to tell Claire everything. I have to tell everyone everything. I’m afraid they might be together, but I go after the person I know best. I look for Adrienne.

  I look at her locker first. She’s not there. Not in the quad commanding the center table. Not even at her desk in first period, hiding. It’s usually a relief not to see her, but today her absence can’t mean anything good.

  It’s bad. I know it. I bump into someone holding the paper. The person next to them has it, too. And next to them, and next to them.

  A boy with sloppy blond hair nudges me when I walk by. “So is Claire a dyke or what?”

  I punch him in the face.

  I get sent to the principal’s office.

  My hand swells and, my God, it hurts. This hand has seen some serious damage lately—it’s still healing where I cut my finger. I sit in the uncomfortable wooden chair outside the office, focusing on the pain. I spread my fingers apart and try to make a fist out of them. It almost brings tears to my eyes. There’s no way I’ll be able to hold a pom-pom tonight.

  Whatever.

  I roll my shoulders, the fabric of my cheer top going up and down. Up and down.

  I’m counting to a thousand when Mom comes in. She is prim and petite in business casual. Her hair is down around her shoulders, out of its usual bun. She had to turn around on the way to Atlanta. She must’ve had to cancel. She’ll hate that.

  She stands directly in front of me, my eyes reflected in her own. Her hand waits for mine. “Let me see it.”

  I gingerly lay my purpling hand in hers. She surveys it with a critical gaze. “What did you do to him?”

  “Black eye,” I mutter back. If I’m lucky. Punching people looks way cooler on TV.

  Mom turns to the secretary. “Why doesn’t she have any ice?” she asks, venom in her words.

  The secretary gets up to get me ice. At least I know where I get it from.

  We sit silently next to each other. Time goes by. When the secretary comes back, Mom holds the ice against my hand. It’s too cold to feel at first, then so cold it hurts, and after a while my hand is finally, blissfully too numb to feel anything. I watch people pass by the window. Normal, non-dangerous people.

  Dr. Rickards comes out of his office and gestures the two of us inside. For a public school principal, he cuts quite a figure. Tall and regal with slightly graying brown hair.

  We sit down across from his mahogany desk. His big bookshelf towers over us, there so we know how important and educated he is. Mom would school him.

  He cuts right to the chase. “We’re worried about your daughter, Mrs. Clayton.”

  “I understand,” she replies. Of course she does. I’m a walking fucking time bomb as far as they’re concerned. Light the fuse and watch it explode—all I’ll leave is pretty colors and cheerleading uniform debris.

  Dr. Rickards gestures at me as he talks. “Olivia says the boy was making a derogatory comment.”

  “I think it’s called hate speech,” I tell him.

  “Either way,” Dr. Rickards goes on, “we can’t tolerate violence in response.”

  “Understandable,” Mom says. “Olivia’s had a very hard time since her brother’s death.” Her voice is cold, like Ryan’s just another fact.

  “I understand,” Dr. Rickards says like he actually does. “And obviously we’ve tried addressing that by having her work with Mr. Doolittle. But the fact of the matter is, Olivia has a history of bullying even before this particular incident.” He folds his fingers together. “We’re very intolerant of bullying here at Buckley.”

  Mom glances at me like she already knows everything he could say about me.

  I hang my head. She hates me, she hates me, she hates me.

  “We have reason to believe Olivia may have put out school newspapers with inappropriate and quite hateful content included.”

  “What?” I barely manage to spit out.

  “Olivia.” Mom puts her cold hand on me, holding me down.

  “We found more copies of the—ahem—flyers in your locker, Miss Clayton. And the havoc you’ve wreaked with your actions this year—”

  “It was Adrienne!” I shout over him. “Michaela.” I shoot out of my seat, frantic. “Ask Michaela; she saw me when I found out! M-my locker? Why would I punch him if I did it?” I demand.

  Mom stands up next to me. “Olivia, sit down,” she says, so clearly embarrassed it hurts. Unshed tears well up in my eyes. Mom turns to the principal. “You’re telling me someone snuck into the library, stuffed two hundred newspapers, and distributed them to the student body, but they couldn’t possibly have broken into Olivia’s locker? So besides that unlikely coincidence, exactly what proof is there that Olivia had anything to do with this? Why doesn’t your school have cameras to monitor this kind of thing?”

  Dr. Rickards shifts uncomfortably. “I understand that based on the circumstances, there’s no proof. But I can’t have this nonsense going on anymore. The student body is on edge.” He looks down. I can spot that sign of weakness a mile away—Mom has the upper hand here. “Based on today’s events, I think it best we suspend Olivia for three days, starting today.” Pause. “And I think it’s best, with the circumstances, if Olivia is no longer a member of the cheerleading squad.”

  I curl up the fingers of my numb fist. “You can’t do that,” I hear myself say.

  “Olivia,” Mom begins.

  “Don’t talk to me,” I bite back at her. She won’t fight for me.

  “I think it might be best if you look into getting your daughter a therapist outside of school, Miss Clayton.”

  “Dr. Rickards, it’s not that I don’t agree with you on some points, but do you really think this punishment fits the crime?” Mom asks evenly. “For defending her friend?”

  “We don’t have the facts,” Dr. Rickards says. He might as well say he knows I did it. That it’s exactly the kind of thing I’d do.

  “I believe my daughter,” Mom tells him. “Let’s go, Olivia.” She stands up, putting her arm around me. “You’ll be getting a call from me once I’ve gone over some things. Thank you for your time.” And she shakes his hand and whisks me out. She guides me through the halls, click-clacks through the parking lot in her sensible heels, and sits me down in the passenger’s seat of her car. Closing the door and walking around the car, she sits down beside me.

  A moment passes. Then two. Finally, I manage to get out: “Thanks.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she says, though it sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself.

  I shake my head. “No. Things have been better lately. With Whit. I think I was wrong about him,” I say. Then I remember that Whit doesn’t even know the real me. If he knew what I’d done, he’d know I was just as bad as Adrienne. I really am pathetic. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “I miss him, too, you know.”
r />   I didn’t, actually.

  “And I’m trying. But this self-destructiveness. Olivia, this is what killed your brother,” she tells me. I shiver.

  I’ve wondered, more than once, if she’s the one who broke him and when that happened. When Dad died or when she lost it or when she got it back and shut down. I wonder if I did it when I became enamored with Adrienne. I wonder if it was Buckley or Michigan or the whole damn world and if I’d answered the phone, none of this would have happened. “If he’d just stayed—”

  “He hated it here,” she tells me.

  I know. I know. “So do I.”

  After a moment, she says, “It’s funny,” like it’s not at all. “When we moved here, I looked so hard for the perfect place. We had to move, you know? Kate was finally able to go live in Europe like she’d wanted to, and God knows she deserved a respite from me. I had been stable for four years, and part of that was that I was working less. Then the recession hit and I couldn’t afford to keep our house on my salary and, even after ten years, there were too many memories everywhere. Of your dad,” she clarifies. “But Buckley had it all—good school, small town. I thought you’d be part of the community. I thought if I did a bad job as a single parent, there’d be so many people around for you to look up to. I thought it would be a welcome break for all of us—a little solace after all that and normalcy for you and Ryan. We needed something different.” She shakes her head. “Maybe I idealized what a small town would be like. I know Ryan never liked it, and I’ve always had trouble fitting in, but, Olivia, I always thought you were the happiest of all of us with all this. Ethan and Adrienne and cheerleading and popularity.”

  I sit back in my seat, not sure what to say, feeling all over again like she doesn’t know me at all. But Mom doesn’t tell me these kinds of things—these honest things—she doesn’t tell me anything. She is closed off and quiet. I think of one of my SAT words. Impenetrable.

  I know she won’t allow herself to feel too much, but I just want her to feel something. “You know what happened when Ryan died? I figured out what’s wrong with me. I realized Ryan was the only real relationship I’ve had in my entire life. He’s the only person who knew everything about me and loved me unconditionally.” I lean my head against the window, the honesty making my throat raw. “Maybe I’d be better off if I just accepted that Buckley is it for me and go curl up in the graveyard with him.” I stare out at the trucks in the parking lot, out beyond that to all the dull colors that paint this town, and imagine fading completely into them.

  Mom cranks the engine on that note and doesn’t speak for the whole drive home. When we pull into the driveway, and I finally glance at her, she’s crying.

  Silently.

  52

  I’m staring at a practice test Whit printed out for me, tracing my pencil over his handwriting, incapable of concentrating. I have to do something else—something that doesn’t involve geometry. I have to figure out how to make things right.

  I jump out of my window because Mom won’t let me leave the house. Apparently I’m suspended and grounded. Ryan’s old bicycle is in the backyard. I brush some sticks and leaves off it and wiggle it free of the chain-link fence.

  It’s a long bicycle ride. And it’s cold, too. The wind whips my hair and my sweatpants.

  I hear the sounds from the stadium a half mile out. The band playing, fans screaming. Girls cheering.

  Bright lights. Everyone in town.

  I don’t go into the stadium; hell, I don’t think I’m even allowed. Instead, I go around the back of the school. I lean my bike up against the brick wall outside the locker room and slide down it, letting the bricks dig into my back.

  I’ll wait. I’ll wait right here for Claire to come out, and I’ll tell her everything.

  Even if she won’t answer my text messages. Even if Adrienne got to her first.

  After about ten minutes, I start shivering. The thin fabric of my shirt catches on the jagged edges of the wall and pulls at the loose threads. I get out my cell phone and dial. I hope Adrienne hasn’t gotten to him, too.

  Whit picks up on the last ring. “Hello?”

  I can barely hear him over the sounds of the game. The announcer’s voice rings out first through the receiver and then echoes over campus where I sit. “Come by the locker room!” I yell into the mouthpiece. “Please,” I add.

  “Liv?” he answers.

  “Locker room!” I yell, and hang up the phone.

  A little while later, I see him, walking through the darkness, squinting into the distance. When he sees me, blending into the wall, he speeds up. “Olivia, what’s going on?” he asks, approaching me, squatting down in front of me. His hand reaches toward me, but he stops himself.

  “I didn’t do it,” I tell him. “Sit.” I gesture next to me, He twists around and sits. Our knees are touching.

  “I know you didn’t do it,” he says. “You kind of saved me, honestly. Coach told me I couldn’t miss the game because it’s the damn honor-your-state-championship-golf-team night, like anyone cares. I barely convinced my parents not to come, but Coach said it looked worse if I didn’t show up.” He huddles his shoulders up as a blast of wind hits us. “Anyway, I was just trying to hide next to the ticket booth until the buzzer sounded, but this is better. We’re a couple of social pariahs, huh?”

  I sigh, relieved. Nothing has changed between us. “I have to tell Claire.”

  Whit doesn’t say anything for a minute. The silence builds ominously the more it lingers. “It might be a little too late for that.”

  “What do you know about it?” I ask him, knowing I sound like a dick.

  “I know in the court of public opinion, you’ve already been crucified.”

  I stick out my bottom lip. “I don’t care. It’s just Adrienne. Claire will understand.” Then a sigh escapes me. “You know the stupid thing about it? I keep trying to figure out how she could’ve done it—how I would’ve done it. Like, do you think she saw them making out and just had to get a picture? Just in case she ever needed it?”

  Whit snorts. “Probably.”

  “The thing is,” I say, and I still can’t believe I’m shocked at the idea, “I always knew she did that to everyone else. Gathered up real and imagined intel for safekeeping. But it never occurred to me she did it to us. Claire and me.”

  Whit watches me like that is the least surprising thing he’s ever heard, but he has the decency not to say so.

  “So okay, she sent the pictures to Michaela from Coxie’s phone. Played me like a drum with that little frame job. Then the distribution.” You almost had to admire the lengths she went to. “We used to prop open one of the windows in the library sometimes to sneak in if we wanted to fuck with someone’s locker, so it would have been easy for her to print out two hundred color copies and stuff them in the papers after cheer practice. I just wonder if she did it by herself. Maybe Anna?”

  Whit is still staring at me, confusion mingled with disgust. “Why would she go to that much trouble?”

  I laugh, even though it’s not funny. “It’s all about maximum drama. You, of all people, should understand not half assing things.”

  He’s sizing me up. Thinking. “Would you have done that last year?” he asks. “Helped her with some grand plan to humiliate someone?”

  “She probably would’ve made me do it alone,” I say, and I shouldn’t be bitter, but I am.

  Whit leans his head back against the wall, looking tired. Everything about him looks tired.

  “Only twelve more days,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “You only have to pretend you like me for twelve more days. Hang in there, DuRant.” I nudge his shoulder.

  “You rode a bicycle here? Really?”

  I shiver. He puts an arm around me, and I lay my head against his shoulder. I can’t believe he’d touch me after what I told him. “I’ll take you home,” he tells me.

  His side is so warm. “Who says chivalry is dead?”

&nbs
p; He snickers.

  “How was your day?” I ask. “Did you talk to any of the coaches?”

  “We don’t have to talk about it,” he says, and I can tell he doesn’t want to. “It sucks. Like, they can’t officially yank my scholarship if I slept with a teacher—which I didn’t—but they can use any bullshit character issue excuse they find. Florida said they aren’t even interested anymore.”

  I can’t meet his eyes. All the pain I caused everyone is pressing in on me.

  “Everyone thinks you snapped because of me. They think that’s why you did it.” He shakes his head. “How were you ever friends with her? My life, yours, Claire’s? Nothing is sacred to her. I want to talk to Mrs. Baker and tell her how sorry I am about what’s happening, but I can’t. It would make things worse for her. What’s wrong with Adrienne, Liv?”

  There are no words available to me for a second. He’s so easily accepted that there’s this line between who I am now and who I was. He believes me. “I—I don’t know.” I wipe away a tear.

  “Were you okay? After yesterday?” I have no idea what he’s talking about for a minute, and then I realize.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I was. I mean, it was fun. Not that—it’s just, what you said. About how I should know this isn’t real. I just don’t want you to think that I think—”

  “I know you don’t,” he says quickly. “It was just a thing.” He shrugs, smiles. “It was weird.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I answer, trying not to let it sting.

  “I don’t mean—you know what I mean. For me. It was weird for me. Because, you know…”

  I turn to him, a realization hanging in the back of my brain. “No,” I say. “What?”

  He is definitely embarrassed. “Do I really have to say it?” He groans.

  Oh my God. “Were you a virgin, Whit?” I ask, incredulous.

  He won’t meet my eye.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I demand. “I thought you had that girlfriend before?”

  He snorts. “Marilee? Yeah, right. Don’t overreact,” he says. “It’s not a big deal.”