“It is—” I begin to say, but am interrupted by the final buzzer going off. My head whips around in the direction of the stadium, where people are beginning to exit, and I feel queasy. Now it’s not just Whit, now I have to face Claire, and who knows what Adrienne’s said to her. I slide back up the wall, pushing my palms against the bricks until it’s painful. Whit gets up beside me.
“You should’ve said something,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says. “But I didn’t want you to think I was some church boy. Like you do. I’m going to go, okay? So you can talk to Claire.”
I nod, the gnawing in the pit of my stomach growing.
So he leaves me alone with the darkness and loneliness, and it’s a lot colder without his arm around me.
The cheerleaders start filing in past me, not saying anything. One by one, I learn and relearn the meaning of if looks could kill. They’ve always hated me, but it’s okay now that Adrienne has spoken from on high.
I see Claire off in the distance, overshadowed by the massive form of Coxie, who almost shields her completely. I leave the wall, sliding my tennis shoes loudly over the sidewalk. Claire shrugs Coxie off at the boys’ locker room and starts my way. She sees me and stops.
I take one step forward. “Adrienne—”
She puts one hand up. One tiny, pale, bony hand with five fingers, all making a sign to stop. Stop what, I can’t even begin to make out—stop talking, stop living, stop breathing, stop being so goddamn wrong about everything.
Just stop.
“Leave me alone,” she says after sixteen whole seconds pass by.
I bite my lip. Hard.
“Move,” she says.
“You’re not—not listening.”
“I’m gay, okay. Gay gaygaygaygay! Are you fucking happy now?” she yells, and if people weren’t staring before, they sure are now. “You can stop finding new and creative ways to humiliate me. Can you please leave me alone now, because thanks to you, no one else will.”
And for some reason, I’m yelling, “It’s not like that. I want to—” and she shoves me right out of the way and goes into the locker room.
Fuck.
“Claire!” I call. Tears cloud my vision.
There’s a buzz in my ears, but underneath it is the sound of someone clapping, getting louder until it drowns out the ringing in my head. I look up.
Adrienne leans against the wall, shoulders pressed casually into the brick. Smiling. Applauding. I am on her in the time it takes to cross the twenty feet between us. She laughs harder.
“What is wrong with you?” I hiss at her. I didn’t want her to see me cry—I don’t. But what else can I do?
“You keep asking me that but, like, O, you truly suck at this,” she snaps back. She can’t hide her anger through all the fake laughter and giggles and bullshit. You can’t hide that much ugliness, no matter how pretty you are. “This is why I run the show.”
“I did everything you said. I lied to Dr. Rickards. I hurt everyone I cared about and I still stood by you.”
“Fuck that. The deal. You were faking.”
I want to break something. “What the fuck difference does it make? Everyone who smiles at you is faking. Open your eyes, Adrienne! They’re all faking. They hate us.”
“Wrong. They hate you.” She brushes her fingers through her black hair slowly. Satisfied.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
She’s still not looking at me. Twisting her hair, scuffing her shoes. Trying so hard to look untouchable, unruffled. “Because I can,” she finally says. “Because you used to run around hiding in my shadow when bad things happened like you had nothing to do with them and getting all this love from Claire and Ethan. You almost killed Anna Talbert and, somehow, it was my fault.”
“So that’s what you want? Claire and Ethan?” I ask. “Love? Open your eyes. They don’t love you because I’m not around. That’s not how it works. Do you want me to say I’m sorry, that I always knew the shit we were doing was wrong?”
She shakes her head. “It’s always that, isn’t it? What about what you did to me?”
“You?” I demand.
“Ethan. You picked him.”
My mouth drops. “What?”
“After Ryan died.” She swipes her hand under her eyes, smudging her eyeliner. “I was there for you, I was the one you told about Ryan’s voice mail, and you went running straight to Ethan. Like Ethan was more important than me. Like he knew you better than I did.” I know she’s a false prophet, and yet I’m hanging on to every word, ready to follow her to the holy land. This can’t be real. This has to be another play. “You were my best friend, O, remember? Some asshole guy counted for more than that? You were supposed to be my best friend, and you picked Ethan.”
“Are you joking?” She can’t think that was about her.
“I had to take him,” she says defiantly. “I was supposed to be the one you needed.” An actual tear rolls down her cheek. “Only then you just went right to Whit without a second thought. After everything I’ve done for you.”
I have to get away from this and her before she sucks me right back into her whirlwind. “Do you hear yourself?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. I’ve seen Adrienne go over the edge before, but this is new. This is more than I was ever prepared for.
“I can’t do this anymore.” She yanks at her black hair, just like when she was younger. Her mom had her in therapy for two years to stop her. Even seeing the motion instinctively pulls me forward. Without thinking, I touch her hand, and she recoils so hard she hits the wall. “Don’t touch me!” she shouts.
I speak to her slowly, as if approaching a dangerous wounded animal. “Ade, after Ryan died, I was using Ethan. I was using whatever I had. I was hanging on by a thread.
“Then you did that to me,” I tell her. “And even after I caught you with Ethan, I wanted revenge, yeah, but I didn’t want to lose you. Only I’ve realized, after it all, that I’ve never been anything to you. No more than another person you can control, and you’ve proved it again. You told Claire after you promised you wouldn’t. It was another lie.”
Finally, finally she meets my eyes. Her face clears until she’s back to laughing and everything goes dark again. “Don’t you see? I kept my promise. I didn’t tell Claire anything about the texts or your brother. I wanted to end this at the Rough House weeks ago, but it’s all a game to you. You’re so fucked up, O.”
My heart is pounding, hitting harder and harder against my rib cage, demanding penance. There’s nothing I can say. I twist away toward the parking lot. Adrienne latches on to my wrist. The damaged one. “You’re worse than me, Olivia. You’re the worst of all. I tried to help you, but you didn’t want it.”
I go to open my mouth, but she cuts me off again.
“And you know what’s worse than what you did to Claire? What you did to Whit. At least Claire was an accident.”
“You made me,” I say.
Everything about her is hard and soft; black and white; cold and hot. She’s everything familiar to me and everything that keeps ruining me. “Again with this I-made-you shit! You know why you did it? Because Whit has everything you want. He has a good life and a good future and you’re stuck. People like you, O”—she shakes her head— “people like you are just a stepping-stone to people like Whit and me, on our way out of this town. You can’t stand it. And that is why you do what you do. You want us all to be on your level. You say you want to change, but I know you. You still want to be who you were before. I just happened to be the one you turned on this time, and I wasn’t willing to roll over dead.
“But go ahead, if you think you’re so different now, admit what you did. He loves his new Liv, right? Tell him what you did to him so I can see him forgive you.”
It’s there in her eyes. So sincere. She really believes it. Somehow there’s a scale in her head, and it’s tipped in her favor. I’m everything wrong and mean and ugly.
I think she might be r
ight.
For a whole minute, I don’t breathe. When I can move again, I take off away from her, out to the parking lot. Whit waits by a trash can, his hands in his pockets. He’s another reminder of how wrong I am. I reach out and kick the trash can over, spill out garbage onto the paved sidewalk. I thought I had this under control. I actually thought it was possible for me to have this under control.
It didn’t make any difference, I realize. None of it made a difference.
“Olivia?” Whit says cautiously.
I look back at him. It’s as if everything were moving in slow motion. The trees behind the school blowing, leaves ruffling against one another; the hair whipping at my cold, cold face.
“Olivia,” he tries again.
Blood pulses through my body, white-hot, melting every good feeling in its path. I pick up a rock and hurl it at the school. It falls short. I’ve done nothing. I’m just one useless, irrelevant person who keeps falling apart.
I turn back to Whit and hold out my hand. “Let me drive your car.”
“Liv—” Again. Again, my name turning into something else in his mouth. That girl I’m not, because I’m Olivia Clayton, I’m O, who ruins everything I touch. I rip the keys out of his hand and walk around the car. No amount of destruction, no pain I can cause someone will ever be enough.
“Olivia!” Whit is calling louder now, but I slam the door in his face. He races around the car and jumps into the passenger’s seat as I tear off through the Buckley parking lot.
“Calm down,” I hear Whit say through my haze. “Slow down. I like this car. I like my face. I’d like to keep them both intact.”
I guess he’s trying to be funny. I don’t know.
The moon and stars are so bright tonight that everything is alive with an eerie glow. Shadows jump from behind trees; ghosts of dead brothers dart through the night as I speed past. I always thought if I pushed hard enough, I could put my foot straight through the floorboard.
I can’t. But the car sure does go fast.
“Are you going to talk to me? Say anything at all?” Whit asks.
I can’t tell him because I can’t talk. I’m too hot. It’s too hot. We pass the Woodhaven Country Club, pass the shady bar on the outskirts of town. Over a quiet country road, silence stretching between us all the while.
“Olivia, where are we?” he finally asks. He keeps saying it again and again. My name, like if he calls it enough, I’ll come back.
I slam on the brakes at the front of her driveway. Whit throws his hand out against the dash to keep from flying headfirst into it. I whip the Jeep into the long driveway, lined with trees. Just give me one chain saw, and they’d be gone by the end of the night.
Unfortunately, all I have are golf clubs.
The lights are all on, but nobody’s home. The neighbors are supposed to check on Adrienne when her parents aren’t home. They make sure the lights are on and the car is parked in the driveway. So they’re always on and Adrienne’s car never leaves.
“Whatever you’re going to do, don’t,” Whit tells me. I can barely hear the words through the cliché.
I rip a driver from the backseat and step back out into the cold. This time, I’m numb to it.
Holding the driver like a bat, I swing it at the windshield of Adrienne’s car, the glass shattering with a crack, the reverberations echoing up the shaft and into my forearms. I feel Whit’s hand on my back, trying to stop me. I run away and swing, hitting the car again, and I hear him repeating the same things behind me. My name so many times that it loses its meaning. Olivia. Olivia. Olivia, stop. Olivia!
With one final swing at the driver-side window, the head of the club goes flying off into the front yard and I start sobbing. Whit catches up to me and holds my arms back.
“Stop saying that!” I scream at him through my tears. Whit tries to touch me, and I push him off again and again. Trying to remind him he doesn’t want me, either. Not really.
“What should I do?” he asks, the picture of desperation.
“Forget me.” I sit there, on the pavement, among all the glass. “Which looks more broken?” I ask, knowing how dramatic I sound. Sometimes when you get your voice back, you have to say the most ridiculous thing that comes into your head.
“Let me take you home.” He crunches across the broken glass toward me and reaches his hand out.
I stare up at him. “Would you take it all back if you could?” My face is still wet, and the chill finally begins to hit me. Shivers run up and down my spine.
He crouches down in front of me. He runs his calloused thumb across my cheek. A smear of blood comes away on the pad of his finger. “I can’t,” he says.
That’s not what I wanted to hear.
I grab the back of his head and pull him toward me. Toward a kiss.
He pulls back and his eyes do that searching thing, from one side of my face to the other. I don’t know why I did it except he’s right here and he’s so nice and so cruel all at the same time.
“It’s dumb that people actually believe we’re dating, isn’t it? You could never love someone like me.” The look in his eyes is so far away and so confused. I did this to him.
“We have to go, Liv,” Whit says, and I feel the whole weight of the day come crashing down on me. Heavy enough to pull me down to the bottom of the ocean if I let it.
“I don’t want to.” I say it like a child. “Not now.”
“We can drive around first. We’ll go listen to Mike at Night for a while. Okay?”
He’s so sincere and patient with me. Like I am a problem he can solve. Something cataclysmic hits me then, shakes the ground beneath my feet. I imagine this scene from someone else’s perspective. Him holding a hand out to me, me on the ground, surrounded by broken glass. Adrienne’s house in the background, looming over us like she’s here, even now stealing every last thing from me. Me letting her.
Everything is so fragile. I see it now—the car and Ryan’s life and Whit looking at me like that. Asking me to go with him. Any moment might be the last time his brow furrows as he stares at me—the girl he can’t figure out and won’t walk away from.
So I nod and let him pull me up.
53
Ellie is furiously wiping off the counter when I come in on Sunday. Some small part of me is hoping tradition might be a powerful-enough force for Claire to show up. The bell jingles above my head, a bright sound in the dark bar. “Leave,” she tells me, her eyes blazing. “Claire’s not here, and if she was, I wouldn’t let you near her.”
I don’t. I keep walking. She’s just Ellie. Whatever. “You’re so full of shit, you know that?” I sit at the counter in front of her, even though she’s watching me with murder in her eyes. If anyone could kill you with a look, it’d be Ellie.
She leans into her hands. “Me?” She glances around at the empty bar. “You have a lot of nerve to even show up here right now.” Then she looks me over. “What happened to your face?”
I reach up and feel it. There’s a long cut in my neck that will probably scar. “I busted out Adrienne’s car windows with my fake boyfriend’s golf club.”
“Adrienne is going to fuck you up,” she says, no longer murderous, just matter-of-fact. “And she’s going to have the whole school backing her up now. Using Claire like a pawn in the middle of whatever medieval shit the two of you are up to? You crossed a line.”
I could argue with her, try to tell her the truth, but what’s the point now? “Were you ever mad at Claire? For being friends with Adrienne?”
Ellie shrugs. She’s already over being mad at me. “Adrienne’s a bitch. It’s not like it’s a secret to anyone who meets her. So I don’t feel bad for anyone who gets involved with her.”
“What about you?”
“I’m a straightforward bitch. There’s a difference.” Ellie swings her hair over her shoulder. “When it looks like I’m about to fuck you up on the volleyball court, I’m about to fuck you up on the volleyball court.”
It
strikes me, maybe for the first time, that Ellie is no cooler, no less insecure than I am. She just plays it off better. I thought I could do that. But everyone knew. Everyone saw through me.
“What about me?” I ask her.
“You’re a secondary bitch. Not even the one people bother to get pissed about.” She smiles then: The chance to hurt me is all she wants. Even though she’s calmed down, I’ve hurt Claire. I can’t avoid her wrath. “You know, people probably have I-hate-Adrienne-Maynard clubs, but you’re just some second-stringer. You do the dirty work. How does it feel?”
“Like maybe it’s not so surprising I’d finally take my turn.”
“Maybe not.” She thinks for a second, wiping away at the glass mugs with an already dirty rag. “Really, Adrienne’s done you a favor, I guess, because congratu-fucking-lations. You’re public enemy number one and all alone. Finally, right?”
“I don’t care what anyone in this town thinks of me,” I hear myself saying, willing it to be true. “I’m going to own the SATs and leave all of this behind.”
She nods. “Right, Liv. And I’m going to the moon.”
“I don’t need anyone, Adrienne least of all,” I promise her. “Like Claire doesn’t need you to fight her battles. Like she can’t count on you.”
“But she can count on you?” Even though Ellie never gives away much, her eyes show a tiny break in her façade. It’s enough.
I leave.
Don’t look back.
54
SIX MONTHS AGO
“Claire!” I called, stepping through the Rough House door and onto the barely cleaned floor. “C’mon, I’ve been outside for fifteen minutes. Adrienne is going to freak!”
“Of course she is!” someone answered. I looked toward the back of the bar where Ellie had one arm propped up against it, her other hand on her hip. “Claire, quick, run off and do whatever Adrienne wants.”
Claire was standing against the back wall of the bar, both arms crossed over her chest. “Don’t talk to me that way,” she said, her voice sharp edges.
“O, thank God you’ve come to call and take Claire away from all this. I know she can’t wait to get back to her perfectly constructed Buckley social life.”
How to Break a Boy Page 21