by Mindi Scott
“Wait.” She put up her hand. “Are you saying you slept together?”
With my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my ears, I nodded.
And just like that, tears were spilling down Rosetta’s cheeks. “I flat-out asked you about her! All you would say was that she wasn’t your girlfriend. You told me she hangs around your house because she’s friends with your mother. How stupid was I to believe that?”
It’s crazy when the truth sounds like lies. I took a few deep breaths to try to force back my panic. “Everything I told you about Kendall is true. And I tried to tell you the rest of it, too, but you asked me not to. All I can say now is that it happened before I knew you, and I was so wasted I don’t remember it anyway. The Kendall thing was a huge mistake, and it doesn’t mean anything to me.”
I waited, hoping I’d said it the right way. Hoping Rosetta understood that no one had ever mattered to me the way she did.
“That’s great,” she said, wiping her eyes. “‘The Kendall thing.’ So I guess being with me was the ‘the Rosetta thing’?”
She hadn’t gotten it.
Rosetta rushed to get away, and, not knowing what else to do, I let her go.
7:45 A.M.
I was on a hunt. For Kendall. For Carr. For anyone who could explain what the hell was going on.
“Is everything all right?” Xander asked, walking fast to catch up with me.
I had the headache from hell, and my stomach was about to explode. Really, I wanted to tell Xander to back off, but instead I just said, “No. Nothing is all right.”
I spotted Kendall coming out of the girls’ bathroom and went after her. Xander came along.
“Kendall, I need to ask you something,” I said.
She stopped short. “Go for it. But just so you know, I’m not having my best week ever.”
“Yeah, neither am I. Rosetta’s pissed. She said you told Carr a bunch of shit about her that came from me. Obviously, I didn’t tell you anything, so can you maybe clue me in on what this is about?”
Kendall made an irritated growling sound in her throat. “That asshole is so dead.”
I don’t know if it’s possible for hair to be aggressive, but that’s how Kendall’s black-and-blue strands looked, swinging behind her as she stomped away.
Xander gave a low whistle. “Yikes. Yesterday, Carr was telling some of the guys in Spanish class that Kendall’s been following him, and he’s going to the police with a bunch of evidence or something.”
I would be the first to admit that Kendall would make an excellent stalker if she wanted to be one, but I didn’t believe this shit. What was Carr’s deal with her, anyway?
“He is such a liar.”
“Oh yeah, I know,” Xander said quickly. “I don’t think anyone was taking him seriously or anything. After seeing her now, though, I’m thinking he’s just given himself a good reason to worry.”
Just then Kendall’s voice rang out from down the hall. “This is going to happen one of two ways. We can go outside. Which, for the record, is my preference. Or we can have it out in front of everyone here. It’s your choice.”
I didn’t want to stand there staring like the other thirty or so people leaning in to watch. But I needed to know what was going on so I headed that way. Kendall was outside the cafeteria with her hands on her hips, glaring at Carr. I hadn’t quite caught his answer, but her reply was loud and clear: “Then right here it will be.”
Carr smirked at his friends and then at her. “Really, Kendall,” he said, raising his voice. “I’m flattered by all this attention, but I’m not interested in you. And, to be honest, it’s getting kind of awkward having to say so all the time.”
For a second, Kendall looked shocked, but she recovered quickly. “As you well know, that is hilarious on many levels,” she said, flashing one of her fake smiles. “I’m kind of flattered that these past few months have meant so much to you that you’re bothering with this smear campaign. But if you don’t stop spreading lies about me, I’ll make sure you regret it. Are we clear?”
I don’t know about Carr, but I was getting clear on something. I’d been wrong about Pete Zimmer all this time.
“I have plenty of evidence of the stuff you’ve been up to,” Carr said, performing for the crowd. “Text messages. Voice mails. E-mails. I’ll go to the police with all of it if you don’t stop this harassment.”
As if it wasn’t bad enough that Carr had been calling Kendall a slut behind her back while he’d been hooking up with her. Now that she’d decided to end things with him, he was trying to get back at her and make himself look like some kind of victim. He’d also made it a point to ruin things between me and Rosetta in the process. Un-fucking-believable.
“Give me a break, Goodwin,” I said, stepping forward. “Kendall has evidence like that against you too. And she has the good stuff. You know, videos and pictures and DNA samples.”
Carr looked back and forth between us, frowning. “No, she doesn’t.”
Kendall didn’t say anything, but she kept her expression bland enough that, for all I could guess, she really did have that shit. The girl could roll with anything you threw at her.
I shrugged. “If you don’t get off her case, you might get to find out the hard way that she does. Maybe she’ll wait until someday in the far-off future when you’re trying to run for governor or whatever to make it really hurt. Or, hell, she might hang on to this stuff to keep you in line for the rest of your life.”
Carr wasn’t even trying to look cool or composed anymore. He was too busy freaking about what kind of videos and DNA Kendall might have, I guess. I didn’t even want to imagine what he was imagining.
Behind Carr, Vicki was watching me. I had a feeling she’d be running off to tell Rosetta about this the first chance she got. Which sucked. But I couldn’t just leave Kendall now. I had to hope that after Rosetta found out the whole story about Carr and Kendall, she’d see that she should have believed me all along.
I gave Kendall a nudge. “It’s about time to head to class.”
She hesitated, but I poked her again, so she started walking. I turned to follow. But before I’d made it three steps, there were hands on my shoulders and I was being flung sideways into a row of lockers. My arm and head crashed against the metal. I stumbled but managed to stay upright. When I spun around, Carr was standing his ground—surprisingly—and watching me with that smirk.
“Come on, Seth,” Kendall said. “Let’s just leave.”
For about half a second, I considered it. Walking away, I mean.
But then I thought about how Carr was a guy who used girls and then told lies about them. He was a guy who would shove you into a swimming pool or against the lockers when your back was turned. A guy who’d screw things up between you and the coolest girl you’d ever known just because he could. When it all came down to it, Carr Goodwin was a waste of space who severely needed to get beaten down.
So, after about three seconds of considering all that, there was no way I could walk away.
Instead, I lunged right at that fucker.
7:49 A.M.
My senses were overloading.
I heard my own hard breathing, people yelling, Kendall shrieking.
I tasted blood.
I felt an ache in my jaw, throbbing under my eye, adrenaline pumping all through my body, the floor under my back, Carr’s fist in my water-filled gut.
I smelled floor detergent, Carr’s deodorant.
I saw fluorescent lights, Carr getting pulled off me by Xander and Pete, and lots of shocked faces looking down.
It was over already.
After years in the making, my big fight with Carr Goodwin had wrapped up in thirty seconds, give or take. And the wrong one of us had been left lying on the floor.
4:48 P.M.
The drizzling was starting again, but I didn’t get up from the boulder by the river I’d been on for almost an hour. Instead, I took another swallow of the Southern Comfort I’d
swiped from home, and winced at the pain in my ribs as I raised and lowered the bottle.
The ass-kicking Carr delivered that morning had given me a bunch of bruises and an immediate five-day suspension from school. Maybe I should have been glad that the vice principal considered Carr the instigator and gave him six days, but it was hard to give a shit. I’d lost the fight without managing to get in even one decent punch. Worse, I’d lost Rosetta because she trusted Carr more than me.
Right then, a girl’s voice rang out over the roar of the river. “A ha! I knew I’d find you here. Of course, your car over at the park gave it away.”
I turned my head toward Kendall, who was making her way down the bank. She wore a long-sleeve T-shirt and baggy exercise pants. I hadn’t even known she owned clothing that covered her legs.
She was watching me the whole time she jumped across the rocks. Then, after she’d settled on mine, she said, “Seth, your eye. Oh my God. That looks awful!”
At that moment, I had a dark red ring around my eye spanning from my eyebrow to my cheekbone—a nasty shiner in the making. “Yeah, well, it’s only going to get worse.”
She reached one of her gummy-bear-scented hands out as if she was going to touch it, but stopped inches short and set her hand on her lap instead. Then she kind of scooted her butt around like she was trying to get comfortable.
“This has been a horrible day,” she said. “I’ve been feeling so guilty.”
“It isn’t your fault, so you can quit with the guilt.”
She chewed one of her fingernails. “Rosetta was pretty upset over that stuff she thinks you said about her, huh?”
I nodded. “I called her a little while ago, after she should have been out of school. She wouldn’t pick up.”
“I am so sorry. I never meant for you to get mixed up in any of this. You know that, right?”
“Like I said, I’m not blaming you. Carr lied to Rosetta about me. And he lied to everyone about you. That shit is all on him.”
“I know. But Carr wouldn’t have said anything to her if it hadn’t been for me. And if he hadn’t said it, she wouldn’t have gotten upset with you, and then you wouldn’t have been trying to brawl with him. Which means that you wouldn’t have been suspended from school, and you wouldn’t be out here drowning your sorrows and looking like a freak right now!”
I couldn’t help smiling at the way Kendall was so hysterical on account of me. “You don’t think I look kind of badass?”
Kendall glanced away, not speaking or smiling back—which was fine with me, really—so we sat there with only the sound of the wind and the river filling the air.
I took a few hard swigs and held the bottle out for her.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said, waving it away. “It’s the reason I’m here, actually. The thing is, I don’t want to tell you at all, but I know you’re going to find out soon enough. I think it will be better if you hear it from me. I’m scared of how you’re going to react, though. I like being your nonenemy, and I don’t want you to start hating me.”
A knot was forming in my stomach as I studied Kendall’s profile. She was gazing at the water, looking like she might start crying at any second.
And then I got the feeling that I knew exactly what she’d come here to say.
I was having a hard time breathing, but I managed to sound only half-crazed as I asked, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
Kendall jerked her head up. “Seth, no. This is about Rosetta.”
“Rosetta’s pregnant?”
“No! Nobody’s pregnant that I know of.”
I was relieved, but then, with Kendall still making that face and not explaining, I started getting worked up all over again. “What then? What about Rosetta?”
“Oh, Jeez.” Kendall shifted on the rock and tucked her legs up pretzel-style. “I don’t want to do this right now if you’re going to be all belligerent.”
“You’d better do it right now. You can’t start a conversation like this and not follow through with it.”
She sighed. “Remember how I told you that I was going to call things off with my so-called secret boyfriend who you now know was Carr?”
I nodded.
“Well, we had the talk the other day. And Carr didn’t take it well. He started saying all this insulting shit to me, and then I snapped. He thinks Rosetta’s an amazing, perfect girl, so I told him that she was probably screwing you at that exact moment. And I also let him know that she’s been lying about her save-the-environment thing to cover up her car phobia.”
I stared at her. “How the hell do you even know that?”
She started chewing on her nails again. “Well, because I was in the living room while you two were drying off on your porch. I heard everything you were saying.”
I wanted to hold on to the hope that she was joking, but I knew she wasn’t. “Jesus fucking Christ!” I yelled. “I can’t believe you did that to her. And to me.”
“I’m sorry! I was just tired of Carr acting like I’m not good enough for him but that Rosetta is. I swear, I had no idea he was going to tell her what I said. And it never even occurred to me that he’d drag you into it and twist everything around like he did.”
I didn’t care about Carr and didn’t want to waste any more time talking about him, but there was no way I could let what Kendall did go ignored. I turned so my back was to her and my feet were dangling a few feet over the water. “Rosetta’s had some shitty things happen to her, and you made it worse. I’m the one person she told that stuff to, and now she thinks I’m some untrustworthy jerk. On top of that, people keep telling her stuff about you and me, and it doesn’t make me sound too cool when I have to say, ‘No, I don’t have anything going on with Kendall, but, yeah, now that you mention it, we did hook up at the end of summer.’”
“Oh, God,” Kendall moaned from behind me. “Please tell me that you didn’t actually say that to her.”
“I had to. She wanted answers, so I gave her the whole truth. Believe me I didn’t want to tell her.”
Kendall was silent for a few seconds, but then in a small voice, she said, “The thing is, it didn’t happen.”
“What didn’t happen?”
“You and me hooking up.”
I whirled my head around. “What are you talking about?”
She was hugging her chest and watching the water again. “You were sloppy drunk that night and no one in your band wanted to deal with you. So I drove you home. And . . . that’s all.”
“What do you mean ‘that’s all’? We were in bed together half-naked the next morning!”
She nodded. “Yes, but only because after you puked in my car, I dragged you inside, where you puked all over me and then on yourself. I stripped us both down and threw everything in the wash. I stayed to take care of you, but nothing happened between us like that. You were passed out cold as soon as I got you to bed.”
I couldn’t believe this. I mean, she had enough details to make it sound like the truth, but it made no sense. “Then what was all that ‘lover’ bullshit about? And why the hell would you have wanted to fool me into thinking something happened in the first place?”
“At first, I was teasing you,” she said, looking into my eyes. “I’d been up all night making sure you didn’t die or anything, and then you were a total prick and wouldn’t even let me explain. I was going to tell you everything after you apologized. Which never did happen. And then I was going to do it when we were in your car before the dance, but you changed the subject in a big hurry. You seemed relieved that I hadn’t known you were a virgin, so I thought maybe it would be better for your confidence if I just let it go.”
I was having an impossible time wrapping my head around this. I’d stressed about whether Kendall was knocked up, felt guilty over getting with Isaac’s girl, and hurt Rosetta by confessing it to her. It was all for nothing.
Kendall and I never even had sex.
“Look, I don’t blame you for be
ing upset,” Kendall said, looking all pouty. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’m really, really sor—”
“Shut up. Shut the fuck up.”
“Seth—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t talk to me. I can’t trust a word that comes out of your mouth. I mean, do you even get how screwed up it is that you did this to me? Do you?”
Her response was to start crying. I wasn’t having any of it.
For more than six weeks, she’d known the truth but hadn’t bothered clueing me in. Because she was waiting for an apology that I hadn’t even known I owed her. Because she thought keeping me in the dark would be better for my confidence? It sucked. Plain and simple. And no matter how I looked at it, everything that had gone wrong with Rosetta led back to Kendall in some way.
I finished the last of the Southern Comfort in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight big gulps, threw the bottle as hard as I could, missed the tree I’d been aiming for, and watched it land in a mess of tall weeds. Not getting to hear the shatter of glass was more frustrating than I could have expected.
5:01 P.M.
Getting away from Kendall was never easy, but right now it was impossible. She’d followed me—off the boulder, up the bank, and down the path—while I stumbled my way to the parking lot and did my best to ignore her.
At the Mustang, I pulled my keys from my pocket and gave my head a hard shake. Big mistake, that shake thing. It made me dizzier.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kendall asked.
My plan was to get my jacket from the backseat. Then maybe I’d return to the river for a while. Or walk to Daniel’s. Or home. Either way, I didn’t need to explain myself. Not to her.
“I’m done with you,” I said, without looking in her direction. “So why don’t you get in your little Rich Bitch car and get the fuck out of my life.”
“Let me just drive you home.”
“No.”
I reached to give the lock a try, but then Kendall was next to me, twisting my arm and ripping the keys out of my hand.
“Ow!” I yelled. “God!”