I hang up.
It takes me ten breaths—almost a whole minute—before I’m ready to look at my phone again. To do what I have to. Finally I go into my texts and find Palmer’s name—buried pretty far down there now—and begin my thumb scroll of death.
There are literally thousands of texts back and forth between us over the course of three months. The most recent ones, obviously, are distant. Sad. The last embers of our dying fall fling. All now infused with the taint of Was my boyfriend “juicing” when we were together? Only right now, Palmer’s the least of my problems.
As I scroll back, the texts get lighter. Playful. I’m not that bad at banter. For the last couple of months of my relationship with Palmer—all of November and most of December—there’s hardly anything I can’t live with. Maybe I’d already written my friends off and things with Palmer had already begun to fray. But when I scroll further back to the texts from October, a torrent of little comments that I can never have anyone see begins. A shit storm of cruelty that could soak through every friendship I have until they’re covered in mold and have to be thrown out like a forgotten beach towel.
I keep scrolling. By late September, my bitchiness is coming in like Vin Diesel: fast and furious. There’s plenty popping up on my screen that the boys could hang me with, but it’s the girls I saved my deadliest venom for. Take Nikki:
Really annoying me with all her ?s
Shitty taste in music, don’t want to go with her to some crappy show
Scarfed down two ice cream sandwiches, then bitched abt weight 1 hr
Always needs to be peacemaker, she’d hate if rad and I got along again, because then what role would she play?
Nikki’s mom is a disaster, total alkie. Boxed chardonnay. Her stepdad is some wall st. creep.
Why do I have to go see the play? She’s only on stage crew.
Least flattering profile pic, what do I say?
And peppered everywhere, of course, Rad:
Honestly I think rad’s just jealous of us
She is a total c u next tuesday sometimes
Don’t care if we never talk again
Sleeps with so many cuz no self-respect
Seriously pissing me off
We’re just not the same kind of people
Been to India once, thinks she’s miss Bollywood
Doesn’t even speak Hindi
So bitchy. Fuck her.
More notches on her bed than likes.
You don’t think Rad’s hot, do you?
Making our other friends choose. Such a bitch.
Not everything I wrote to Palmer about my friends makes me seem like the worst person alive. Just almost everything. I scream as loud as I can, half expecting the windows to shatter. It’s a piercing Walking Dead–level scream.
How could I write these things?
Was I trying to impress a boyfriend who was out of my league? Lashing out to Palmer because I needed to blame someone else for ditching my friendships? Both? Does that excuse me saying Nikki’s mother is an alcoholic—mocking her for the thing she is most unhappy about in the world?
Then there’s Rad.
I scroll up and down the screen, searching for more horrible things. More betrayals. The bitchy comments, Rad could deal with, I know. She’d probably like them. Even the slutty stuff. She’s said worse to my face. She might lash out, but that stuff’ll pass. The stuff about her Indian-ness, that’ll be a little harder to swallow.
As I scroll, my eye falls on the worst of them:
Rad’s the most over the top writer on the paper, how is she editor?
Thinks she’s gonna run the Washington Post someday. Only thing she can run is all her stupid sentences together.
Not half as smart as she thinks she is. Kinda dumb, actually.
Rad’s always been worried that she’s a fake when it comes to writing; one time she told me her deepest fear was that when you stripped away the cursing and the I don’t give a flying attitude, people would eventually realize she’s not that smart or that funny on the page or in person. Or, worse—that people already know. My off-the-cuff texts will be all the proof she needs. And she’ll never forgive me or speak to me again. Never mind that Rad’s one of the funniest, smartest people I’ve ever known. Just in case there was any hope left of Rad forgiving me, ever, now I’m reading an old message to Palmer detailing all the reasons why all throughout my ten-year friendship with Rad, I should’ve realized we were never supposed to be friends. I literally listed them as bullet points! And the award for Jerk of the Century goes to Anna Soler for:
You have no idea how much rad uses SAT words she doesn’t know to try to seem smart. The college board knows all, though. 560 on the verbal. Yikes.
What the hell did I think—that Palmer and I were going to be together forever and I would never need friends again? The insanity of it is so obvious now—even Palmer was telling me it couldn’t have been all bad if we were friends for so long. But I needed to vent. I needed to be so, so witty and so much better than my friends, who would never in a million years write that to a boy about me. I mean, probably not.
I drop my head onto the steering wheel. A sad, tiny beep comes from the horn.
And to think I was worried that Rad would find out about Jethro.
My phone vibrates.
Palmer.
I blink, reading it over and over again.
Done. Deleted. And I’m sorry. For everything. —P
When I walk in the door of my house, my mom is sitting at the dining room table, paying bills over a glass of white wine.
“Come talk to me, Anna,” she says as I try gliding by.
I yawn for effect. “Mom, I’m really tired. Can we talk in the morning?”
“Headmaster Nichols called, sweetheart.”
The concern in her eyes pierces my insides. I sit down next to her. I don’t know if it’s her maternal-instinct magic or if I just really need someone who loves me unconditionally, but next thing I know, I’m tearing up and telling her everything that happened—about Wallace and Palmer and Nikki. I skip the part about Jethro, though. I don’t even want to think about it myself, let alone share it.
Mom takes it all in, and I can tell she’s trying to contain her outrage. At the school and their stupid app. At Mattie Eizenberg. At whoever the hacker is.
When she finally speaks, she says, “Anna, honey…I’m sorry I have to ask….Is there anything about you on there? If there is…we’d figure it out together. We wouldn’t have to tell your dad.”
It. What Southern lady could even get those words out? Naked selfie? Sexting?
“I’m safe,” I tell her, blushing.
Only now do I realize Mom’s been holding her breath since she posed the question. “Yes. Of course you are.”
As I start for the stairs, she adds, “I can schedule an extra session with Dr. Bechdel this week…if you want. You could go tomorrow. Take the morning off?”
I muster a smile. The idea of not going to school tomorrow morning is so delicious, I can taste it. But it feels important to be there for Nikki and for Rad. To finally show up when my friends need me.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say. “I’m okay, though. Really.”
When I’m upstairs, I think about calling Jethro. Just to check in. To hear his voice. But upset, middle-of-the-night calls send messages. Mixed messages.
Better not.
—
The first thing I see when I pull off Route 50, onto the main drag where Prep sits, are the vans. It’s 7:45 a.m., and three or four local news vans are lined up at some kind of obviously enforced distance from school. I crack my windows and catch snippets of makeup-caked reporters rattling off words like Sony and Ashley Madison. It’s cold out, and I don’t want to hear more, so I roll them back up.
Prep has enough kids with parents who work inside the Beltway to make this actual news, and Mom and Dad and I already watched some of it this morning over pancakes they made to cheer me up. I try to breathe steadily a
nd keep my heart rate down—rows of cameras are exactly what I don’t need after last night.
Kids are milling outside their cars, gathered in clusters, sitting on one another’s bumpers, waiting for something else to happen.
I park my car as far out as possible. I’m second-guessing my decision to turn down my mom’s offer and push through it. The idea of seeing my friends’ faces and having to pretend like I’m not the horrible person I seem to be in my texts and DMs is making my stomach churn. But I have to pretend. I can’t abandon Nikki and Rad now.
Rad’s car—surprise, surprise—is at the front of the lot, and she’s perched on the hood. She’s in full-on journalist mode, pen behind her ear, alternating between taking pictures and jotting down notes on her cell. Anybody who wants to enter any of Prep’s major buildings will have to pass her 1996 Volvo to do so. Andrew is sprawled out in the passenger seat, drool pooling on his Prep varsity lacrosse jacket.
It’s a relief to see a familiar face in the sea of paparazzi. “Hey. Did you talk to Nik this morning?”
Rad twirls the pen, then sticks it behind her ear. A good night’s sleep has brought some of her mojo back. “Stopped by on the way. She’s eighty-sixing herself for the day.”
“Haven?”
“No way. Everyone still thinks he did it, and they’ve already got things he actually did earlier in the year that Nichols could get him on. Dude’s a ghost, at least till his dad comes home.”
From the Reddit threads, I know Haven’s a split decision. A lot of people are furious, obviously. But many of those who haven’t been hurt LOVE Haven because they think he knocked the little princes and princesses off their thrones.
I bump Rad’s hip, and she scooches over to make room for me on the car hood. “How long have you been here?”
“I was out of my house by six-fifteen, picked up that bozo”—she indicates Andrew with her thumb—“and was here by six-forty-five.”
I nod at Andrew and whisper, “He must really like you if he skipped his wake ’n’ bake to come with you at six a.m.”
“He didn’t skip it,” Rad says. “He squeezed it in on the ride over. I think he should cool it on the weed, though. You should’ve heard the conspiracy theories.”
“And Jethro didn’t want a front-row seat with you guys?”
“Think he’s helping Haven figure out who’s doing it.”
“You know what?” Andrew pipes up from the passenger seat. “I bet Eizenberg doesn’t even show his face today. His parents prolly filed transfer papers already. It’s really too bad, because I was planning on kicking his ass next time I see him. My current thinking is, he needs the word rapist carved into his forehead.”
Suddenly a voice, booming yet faraway-sounding, comes from inside Rad’s Volvo. “Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for!”
I peer back at Andrew through the windshield. He’s not talking. Confused, I crane my neck to look in the backseat. Did I miss someone? Nope, empty.
Then I spot the iPad on Andrew’s lap, which has a cable running to the car stereo. “Drum roll, please,” the voice says through the speakers. To my surprise, kids all around me start slapping their palms against their thighs, their stomachs, their notebooks, the roofs and dashboards of their cars. Cars have their doors open, and the same voice is coming from every stereo. The effect is eerie, unsettling.
“Who’s talking?” I ask Rad.
She holds up a palm. “Just listen.”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” says the voice, cornpone Elvis-style. Then, in a normal voice, “This is Timmy Tepper, reporting to you live from somewhere very very close by Alexandria Preparatory Academy. Live, I repeat, live. This is a live stream, not taped. I have eyes and ears in the Prep parking lot, and their mouths—well, mostly fingers—are telling me what is going down. And right now I’m hearing that the first of the Instagram Six has arrived! Joshy Klein!”
Rad hops off the hood, onto the ground, to get a closer look.
There are stray claps and hoots throughout the parking lot as the door to a Jetta pops open on the north side. Josh Klein—of AP-exam cheating fame—steps out and tries to pretend he isn’t being watched. Josh rides the bench on the baseball team, and this morning he has his white baseball cap pulled extremely low.
Tepper’s voice booms through again as Josh hurries toward the front door. “Josh, tell us, where can the rest of us buy a hat that can be pulled so low? It’s not so great for going incognito, like you were desperately hoping to do, but it is the perfect hat for cheating your way through just about any class!”
“Who is Timmy Tepper?” I ask.
Rad says, “Remember that scrawny redhead dude Wallace was torturing in the dining hall the day after winter break? That’s Timmy. Guess he does some nerdy Prep sports podcast, so he had everything in place already, the lucky little shit. He had the stream up and running before sundown last night. Admin won’t let him broadcast on campus, but they can’t stop him either. He has free speech on his side—his dad is some kinda constitutional lawyer.”
Josh opens the front door and finally disappears into the temporary sanctuary of the school lobby. The mood in the parking lot is gleeful. Everyone loves watching these Instas fall so hard.
While he waits for the next arrival, Timmy goes into marketing mode. “Welcome to the twenty-teens, people. Those of you who missed yesterday’s live stream, where we covered every inch of every playing card in Mattie Eizenberg’s deck, can now download it on iTunes and Audible.”
I shudder to think about Nikki listening to that podcast, and I turn to Rad. “We’ll get Haven or Jethro to find a way to take it down.”
Rad shakes her head, a hint of sadness spreading across her face amid all the excitement. “What’s the point?”
“So Nik doesn’t have to hear herself ridiculed?”
“Someone already made a collage and put up everyone who’s over eighteen on RedTube. Like, a million hits already.” I can hear the anger in Rad’s voice.
“Oh my, loyal listeners,” Timmy roars. “Do we have a treat for you. Let’s call it…two studs, one car.”
I turn my head in the same direction as everybody else’s. And there, as promised, is Dylan, stepping out of the driver’s seat of his black Jeep Cherokee. Immediate laughter and snickering and catcalls rise up from all sides of the parking lot.
Timmy: “For the first, hold the u! That spells STD, for those of you who flubbed the verbal section. Mr. Dylan Johnson, ladies and gentlemen!”
Someone offers up one of those wolf whistles people do to catch a taxi, and people laugh. But soon it becomes clear that Dylan and his johnson are just the appetizer for this hungry crowd. The Jeep’s passenger door swings open, and Palmer steps to the ground. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the basketball game. He still hasn’t texted anything more after our one exchange.
“And now,” Timmy announces, “stud number deux. Stud indeed, people. Do you know they make racehorses piss before the Triple Crown to make sure they haven’t been doped? Has the recently single Palmer Meade, who already looks like he belongs on a Wheaties box, been taking more than just Wheaties to recover from his injury?”
Palmer reaches into the car and pulls his green canvas bag onto his back using both straps, as always. I told him once that when he combines his bag with his aviator glasses, like he has today, he looks like he’s headed to Fallujah.
“Every day of high school is a battle, soldier,” he’d replied.
Something tightens in my chest, thinking about it now. Despite everything, I feel terrible for him. I can’t read his face, but I know he doesn’t deserve this.
As Palmer begins his walk of whatever he’s feeling right now beneath those glasses, Timmy comes booming back in. “For those playing along at home, we took a SurveyMonkey late last night to find out what you all believe, and the results are in: ninety-two percent of you think that the balls of our favorite corn-fed dribbler are the size of kernels!”
/> I could assure everyone this isn’t true, but it doesn’t seem like the time. Especially since Palmer is walking right by Rad’s Volvo. His first post-juicing-story appearance.
As he passes by us, he takes off his sunglasses and looks right in my direction. His eyes are dry. But it’s the closest I’ve ever come to seeing Palmer tear up, and I freeze dead still. And suddenly I’m very afraid for him: 92 percent of Prep may be too quick to believe rumors they read in a text exchange, but this time I think they may be right. I can only imagine what he’s feeling right now: he must be in danger of being kicked off the team or of being suspended, the NCAA is probably hot on his heels, and he could lose his chance at Duke.
Hey, Palmer mouths without any sound.
I wonder if he’s been able to sleep at all. His hands are in his pockets, but I bet his fingernails are chewed raw, which happened when things got bad before.
I’m about to respond with my own Hey when Rad tells him, “Get lost, ’roid head. Anna’s closed for business.”
“Rad…”
But Rad shoots me back a look of death. Conversation over. I’m caught between a best friend I’m walking on eggshells around and the ex-boyfriend I’m starting to feel real sorry for, God knows why. It’s lose-lose for this loser.
Palmer puts his sunglasses back on and makes his way into the building.
I don’t want to get into it with Rad, and for the first time, Timmy Tepper’s voice feels like a welcome distraction: “And, speak of the devil who wears Prada,” he narrates, “the ace of spades in the deck: it’s Prep’s own Vanessa Euuuubanks!”
A hush falls over the crowd as Vanessa makes her way across the parking lot. She’s in a white knit dress that ends midthigh, black high heels, and enormous sunglasses, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. It’s an outfit that screams HONEY BADGER DON’T GIVE A DAMN. She’s not doing a perp walk, like Josh and her ex Dylan did.
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