After the Ink Dries

by Cassie Gustafson

  “Then what? Because Caylee’s furious, and everyone else seems to think something’s so hilarious, which makes me think that whatever it is isn’t funny at all.”

  “Well, what does Caylee say?” I ask, buying time.

  “To ask you. But she’s pissed. Royally.”

  She found out more, then, and she’s furious. I knew she would be, but it still hurts deeply to hear.

  “You can tell me, you know. Anything,” Amber insists.

  Yeah, and have every adult in the land find out. Still, Amber’s guessing too close to the truth. It’s probably only a matter of time till she figures it all out too, but I can’t let that be right now. I need time. Thinking fast, I say, “You’re right. I wasn’t entirely honest with you. Something did happen.”

  Amber’s lips form a perfect O.

  I shrug, faking a calmness I don’t feel. “You know Caylee. Always so jealous when it comes to Zac.” I don’t realize it’s what I planned to say till it’s fallen out of my mouth. Still, the sliver of truth seems to work because Amber’s nodding, absorbing my every word.

  I rush on. “Well, Zac wasn’t paying enough attention to her at the party, so she got mad and accused me of flirting with him. And I was so drunk I didn’t really know what was happening…” My mouth goes dry, sickened by my words—lies and truths smushed together like modeling clay. I’m teetering on an edge I don’t want to fall over. “But nothing happened. No one…” I can’t finish the sentence, so I cover it with another shrug and avoid her gaze. “I’m just”—my voice breaks—“so embarrassed, you know?” The truth of it strangles my throat and stings my eyes. “Being so drunk and stupid.”

  For a second, I think she believes me, that she’ll make some biting remark and drop it. Then she says, “Erica, there’s something you’re not telling me. I can feel it. And I’m sorry, but I’m going to find out what it is. Zac… he did something to you, didn’t he? And Thomas?”

  The plastic smile shatters. “Amber, please,” I choke out. “There’s nothing.”

  Amber’s expression is the softest I’ve ever seen it. “There’s something, Erica. And it’s not okay, whatever it is. But I can help you.”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Erica…”

  “There’s nothing to help!” Whirling, I rush toward the entrance, ignoring Amber’s loud protests. I yank the door open, forgetting for a second about my cut till it burns hot. Fumbling for the marble in my pocket, I clench it, telling myself that, even if Caylee’s mad, she can’t blame me for what happened. Not really. Or, at any rate, she won’t after I get the chance to talk to her. She’ll hear me out. She has to.

  At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. And, as one of Dad’s most-quoted lines from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure reads, “The miserable have no other medicine. But only hope.”

  ERICA

  RUSHING THROUGH THE HALLWAYS, I observe everyone from behind my eye mask and clutch the marble in my pocket. Running my thumb across its smooth surface helps me stand up straight, put on my best face of indifference, all the while telling myself that these people don’t matter. I couldn’t care less what they think. But I’ve never been so acutely aware of everyone around me. Every laugh, every glance, every whisper behind a closed palm feels like a poison-tipped arrow aimed at me. I strain to feel out the air around me, press my finger to the pulse of the passing bodies. They know, my senses tell me. Because of course they do.

  Stay strong, Erica Strange says in my head, so I tell myself I’m invisible, that they aren’t talking about me, can’t see me under my cape, behind my mask. And even though I hate myself for it, my eyes dart around, searching the throng for Thomas, to see if he’s looking for me.

  I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d been able to confide in Caylee at my house when I’d had the chance, if I’d told her everything then. Or even at Juiced before the guys got there. Would today be so much easier or exponentially worse? Would she have barred me from her life or helped me figure out what to do about Thomas, about everything? But if there had ever been a “right” time to tell her, it had slipped out my bedroom door with her yesterday. So, I need to find her and tell her everything right now. Then she can choose to hate me or not.

  I search the hallways, but she’s nowhere, then I shoot her another text and get no reply. I know she’s here because of her car, but where? I don’t want to have to wait till English.

  By the time I make it to my locker, my hypervigilance is exhausted. Busying myself while I try to figure out what to do, where to go, I slip my binder from my backpack and open it to the homework folder. I didn’t do any of it this weekend, and I have a freaking history quiz. Mr. Jenkins will want my head on a spike for missing my lab write-up, and Ms. Adams will be so disappointed when I don’t turn in my vocab sheet. And of course, these are the least of my concerns.

  Then there’s Spanish.

  Staring down at my Spanish folder, I see my unfinished subjunctive worksheet, translating and completing it in my mind.

  Please fill in the blanks and select your answer below:

  Sofía hopes the rain will stop.

  Fernándo wishes that his boss would give him a raise.

  Erica hopes Thomas will/will not attend class today.

  How do you say “false hope” in Spanish? Because what could Thomas possibly have to say that could explain his name on me?

  Stalling for time, I fling open my locker, then recoil. Sticky red consumes my field of vision.

  Oozing through the locker vents and running the length of the door are half-dried rivers of scarlet. The goo seeps down the front of my Edward Gorey poster, over the giant block letters spelling “AMPHIGOREY.” It’s the poster, my favorite poster, that Thomas bought for me on our second date.

  As he’d pulled out each wrinkled bill and smoothed it on the counter to pay, I’d felt a strange urge to cry. No guy I liked had ever bought me anything before simply because he knew I’d love it.

  Now, fighting tears of frustration, I touch the poster, bringing a blob of red to my nose and sniffing.

  Ketchup. Someone squeezed ketchup in my locker. It’s splattered across my textbooks and coffee thermos, my mirror and pack of colored pencils.

  “Ew, gross!”

  I turn slowly to face some girl I don’t know, with bushy hair and braces.

  The girl studies my face. “Is everything all right?”

  “It’s fine,” I say, even though it isn’t.

  “God, who would do something like that? What’s wrong with people?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrug.

  The girl studies my face. “You should report this.”

  I snort. Another Amber. “Yeah,” I say without conviction.

  “Do you…” She searches for words. “Do you want me to?” Clearly, she doesn’t know who I am, or I doubt she’d be caught dead helping the school leper.

  I shake my head. “Naw. I’m just going to…” I set my binder on the floor and slowly peel the poster out of my locker. Ketchup drips onto the bandage on my hand, and I know I’ll have to stare at it all day and remember this moment. Careful not to drip on anything else, I walk to the nearest trash can. People leap out of my path as I throw away the poster and tell myself it’s not a big deal. Because why the hell should I care anymore?

  The girl with braces has disappeared by the time I stoop to pick up my binder. Holding it, I stare into the mess in my locker, feeling strangely numb.

  I’m reaching for the marble in my pocket when my locker door bangs shut. The binder I’m holding hits the floor and paper explodes from it like confetti. I wheel around to see Zac wearing his letterman over his cast and a shark’s grin, flanked by Kevin and Cole.

  Zac stands a foot from me, unpredictable as a live wire. The urge to reach down and pick up my scattered papers is shot dead by his proximity. He’s standing so close, towering over me, that the idea of giving him any more of a physical advantage makes me ill. Fear rises in my stomach as I look awa
y from his bulging chest muscles and the lewd Sharpie drawings on his cast that remind me of my skin.

  “I was looking for you, Mouth.” He places the palm of his good arm across my locker door and leans in, smacking his gum. I’ve never realized how much I hate spearmint until this moment. “You slipped out the other morning without saying good-bye,” he continues. “Didn’t say good-bye online, either.”

  All my senses feel heightened, on overload. I try to hide how much he’s caught me off-guard. “That was so messed up, what you guys did.”

  His smile is a deadly weapon. “You seemed to like it.”

  “I was drunk, Zac. Blackout drunk.” Panic tinges my words.

  “Whatever you say, Mouth.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?”

  “Well, if you don’t remember, then it’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  Breath isn’t reaching my lungs. I need to get the hell away, but I know I need answers more. So, I do the very last thing I want to do. Glancing behind Zac at the others, I ask in a shaky voice, “Can I talk to you? In private?”

  His smirk splits into a wide grin. “We can do anything you want in private.”

  Kevin snorts. Cole looks uncomfortable, but neither leave.

  Because I can’t get any smaller, I try pleading. “Zac, please. Just tell me what I don’t know.” Bodies swirl around us. Lockers slam. People yell to one another. It registers as a hum to my ears, my skin.

  “Don’t worry, sweet tits. Your secrets are safe with me.” He stares purposefully down at my chest, having ignored my request.

  I cross my arms over my sweatshirt.

  “Come on, man,” Cole says. “Bell’s gonna ring.”

  Zac eyes him, says, “In a minute,” then turns back to me. “Oh, I almost forgot. You left something behind in my room.”

  He left my boots in the parking lot, I think.

  But no. Zac pulls a smashed pink object from his back pocket. My bra. The one I couldn’t find before leaving his room. It’s like I’ve stepped into a furnace. I grab for it, but he holds it above his head with his casted arm, just out of reach. I don’t want to get any closer, and the humiliation of having to jump for it would kill me.

  People are starting to stare. Everyone can see.

  “Give it to me,” I demand.

  “What are you gonna give me?” he asks, amused.

  “You’re revolting.”

  “Incoming,” Kevin warns. “Your woman just rounded the corner.”

  Caylee.

  Zac drops his hand. I snatch my bra, brushing against his gross cast as I do, and shove the bra deep in my backpack. I turn in time to see Caylee approach, hands gripping her bag strap, a terrible look on her face.

  “What was that?” she asks, glaring from Zac to me.

  Shame drops my gaze to her ballet flats—the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Tory Burch shoes from Nordstrom’s I’d gone with her to buy last week. I force my eyes up. “Caylee, listen…”

  Zac cuts me off, all pearly whites and veiny arms pulling her in. “Hey, babe. Just catching up with Erica here.”

  Her mouth squishes into a frown. “That’s not what I asked you. What was that thing? In your hand?” Her eyes flash to mine. “Erica, what did he hand you?”

  “Caylee, I tried calling and texting you multiple times. You never responded. I told you I needed to talk to you!”

  But her eyes are only for Zac now. “You told me nothing happened in your room. You told me that everyone else—”

  “Babe, chill,” Zac interrupts, gaze darting around the hallway. “Why are you always freaking out on me?”

  It’s impossibly hard to do in this hallway, in front of these guys. It’s impossibly hard to ask Caylee for what I need most. But I have to, audience or not. “Caylee, please talk to me. I need to talk to you.” I reach out, touching her arm, but she rips away from me like I’ve stung her.

  “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.” Though she says it quietly, addressing the air pocket to the left of my head, it’s a deadly sort of quiet. I reel back from the truth of it, from the sudden certainty that as hard as I’ve tried to avoid telling her, tried to avoid the moment we’d have to have this conversation, all along she’s been trying just as hard not to hear it.

  Zac pulls her away by the arm, hard enough it looks like it hurts, as if suddenly Caylee’s a lit match and I’m a bomb fuse and keeping us apart is the only way to avert disaster. But she lets him lead her away from me, from my plea for her to hear the truth—again—until Zac and a sullen-looking Caylee are swallowed up in the throng of moving bodies. Cole gives me an apologetic glance and takes off with Kevin, both looking awkward as the warning bell rings.

  Every part of me imagined that telling Caylee would be unbelievably difficult, that she’d try to avoid hearing the truth, but no part of me thought she wouldn’t even listen when the time came. At least, no part of me that I’d let fully surface.

  I stand frozen, numb, as somewhere behind me I hear paper ripping. The contents of my binder have launched across the entire hallway, people stepping all over everything. I vaguely notice the shoe print on my empty Spanish worksheet as I stoop to pick up the pages.

  As I flip over an old Spanish homework, my gaze snags on the upper right corner where Thomas had written his name as a joke. I’d had to cross it out and write my own name above it before turning in the sheet. He’d told me he was going to pretend the homework was his so he could finally get a perfect score on an assignment.

  I linger over the name—the way the letters slant, the way the top and base of the T don’t quite meet—as the final bell rings overhead. Without trying to, I’d given Thomas plenty of opportunity to meet me before class like he had all last week and the week before that. Maybe he isn’t even at school today but, more likely, he just doesn’t want to see me. What does it say about me that I wish he had come? What does it say about me that I thought Caylee would at least hear me out? And what does it say about her that she wouldn’t even do that?

  Shoving the paper mess into my backpack, I duck into the science classroom I know will be empty before a hallway monitor can get to me. I’m not about to go to first period and sit near Tina for a whole class, even if they will call Mom about it. I just can’t.

  As I slide into a desk in the back, my eyes catch on the life-size skeleton hanging in the front corner of the room, the one I used to practice my figure drawing on during lunch before I met Caylee. Its jaw hangs loose on its hinges, revealing a gaping mouth lined with less than half its teeth. The skull looks like someone punched it in the mouth, something I wouldn’t put past certain male classmates strutting the halls. I used to think the skeleton looked like it was smiling, and I’d always drawn it that way—like something Edward Gorey would draw inspiration from or like one of artist José Guadalupe Posada’s famous dancing, grinning calaveras. But today it reminds me of a poster covered in dripping ketchup and just looks sad.

  I glance out the window, spotting the tops of the stadium lights. For a fleeting moment, I feel a tinge of the excitement I’d felt on that lacrosse field after Thomas’s game, before the feeling plummets, turning bitter in my stomach. And I wish again with my whole being that I could magically teleport myself back in time and do Saturday all over again—to walk off that field and never return, never go to that fucked-up party.

  Overwhelming grief washes through me. I press the marble in my bandaged hand till it hurts, to stop the tears from leaking out as a plan starts to form in my mind. If Caylee thinks she can ignore me and that I’ll simply go away, she’s wrong. I just need to wait it out till fourth period. I’ll see her in English, without Zac, where she won’t be able to flee. Or if not then, at lunch. I’ll corner her and tell her everything—about the party, about her gross boyfriend. Then she’ll be forced to listen to every single thing she’s been trying so hard not to hear.

  (minutes earlier) THOMAS

  I’M TOO LATE. SHE’S STANDING by her locker, bu
t she’s not alone.

  It’s my first time seeing her since the party, and it knocks the wind out of me. Zac’s standing there with Kevin and Cole, though I’m too far away to hear what he’s saying. But anger flares in me at the way he’s leaning in, practically crushing her as she shrinks against her locker. Why doesn’t she say anything to stop him? She’s in all black—a hoodie with a white cat, tights, and her boots. She’d found the boots, then. It’s the least colorful outfit I’ve seen her wear.

  They all turn in my direction, and I duck reflexively behind the guy in front of me. But their gazes fall short, landing on Caylee, who walks ahead of me. Still, I see what Erica is trying to stuff into her backpack so that no one else’ll see—a pink bra, the one she wore to the party that I couldn’t find the next morning. It wasn’t anywhere, but I couldn’t wake her….

  Erica looks like she’s about to cry, blinking hard, shaking her head.

  I can’t do it, can’t talk to her. How could I explain? Those pictures. And a video?

  Stomach churning, I hurry past Erica’s locker right as Caylee joins them, looking upset. With any luck, none of them saw me, especially Erica.

  I’m such a coward.

  My body feels like a sack of dumbbells as I make for the gym, thinking about how I found her, curled up into herself. There can’t be evidence of that going around. There can’t be. But I know there is. Maybe I could ask any one of these people, and they’d show me everything. What did Zac start?

  As I burst into PE, I curse under my breath, remembering the sport-of-the-week is Ultimate Frisbee. There’s too much shit bouncing around my head to care about flinging Frisbees. I hang back, not helping out my team. Besides, everyone seems to be whispering, and I don’t want to hear any of it. Then a girl sprints past me, dark hair loose around her face. I turn, holding my breath, but no, she’s only a sophomore. She doesn’t even look like…

  Some freshman pounds into me, but I manage not to fall. The Frisbee clatters to the floor, and I pick it up, flinging it as hard as I can, surprised by how good it feels. I don’t even care when it goes out of bounds. Then it’s like I can see the gym around me for the first time today—bright overhead lights, Panther-blue basketball hoops with stiff nets, three dozen students staring after the Frisbee as Coach Lee nods his approval.