—
Ten minutes later, you’ve talked Adrienne down. Her original plan was to turn you in immediately, but you’ve promised to go straight home. Your last lie, you tell yourself.
You pull your hoodie on. “I hate to ask this,” you tell Adrienne. “But can I borrow three dollars?”
BLACK LINES
Backstage, playing spit, Bridge looked at Sherm and thought about his bread smell and how it was a little bit sweet. Lately it reminded Bridge of the cold, frothy antibiotics she took as a little kid. She’d had so many throat infections that the smell of it—“pink drink,” her father called it—became part of her childhood, like music she barely noticed during a scene in a movie. Sherm’s bread smell was the same, except that it was always at the front of her brain, something she urgently did and did not want to talk about. None of it exactly made sense.
Tab’s head appeared through the opening in the curtain. “Em’s officially off the hook. Mr. Ramos says she didn’t do it.”
“Woot!” Bridge high-fived Tab, then Sherm.
“I’m skipping Hindi Club to celebrate,” Tab said, sinking to the floor next to Bridge. “Can I hide out here with you guys?”
“Sure.” Sherm stuffed his sandwich wrapper into his bag. “You can keep Bridge company until the bell rings.”
“You’re leaving?” Bridge said.
He nodded. “I got a note. I have to talk to Mr. Ramos in five minutes.”
“Now you’re a suspect?” Tab said.
He shrugged. “Or maybe they think I’m the official school narc.”
“You’re not a narc,” Tab said seriously. “You’re just a dork. The good kind.”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “I know.”
—
Watching him disappear into the red curtain, Bridge was struck by the knowledge that Sherm was the main thing she looked forward to every day. How had that happened?
Bridge had once believed that state borders were something you could see, actual black lines that you could walk along if you wanted to, one foot in front of the other. Then, when she was seven, she’d demanded the window seat on a plane trip to see her grandparents in California, telling Jamie that she wanted to see exactly when they crossed from one state to the next.
“But how will you know?” Jamie had asked, looking actually interested.
“The black lines!” she told him.
And he had laughed, of course.
There was no black line separating Colorado from Utah. There was no black line between friendship and whatever might come next. And Bridge didn’t know whether she would want to step over that line, if there were one.
Tab had opened a bag of chips and was eating them one at a time, looking weirdly solemn, as if she felt sorry for them.
“How are you supposed to know what you want?” Bridge asked her.
“About Sherm, you mean?”
“Yeah.” Bridge felt herself flush. Tab always picked up on more than she let on. “What do you think the Berperson would say?”
“Well,” Tab said, perking up, “the Berperson says the most important thing is to be true to yourself.”
“But what’s ‘yourself’? That’s the problem. What if I don’t know?”
Tab shrugged. “Then I guess you should just…be true.” She wiped potato-chip salt on her jeans.
“Gee, thanks,” Bridge said. “Super-helpful.”
The bell rang. Tab stood up and put both hands out to pull Bridge to her feet. “You want to know what I think?”
“Yeah. But please don’t tell me to put a pin in it.”
“I think that when you don’t know, you should just wait until you do.”
Bridge smiled. “That actually makes sense.”
“Yeah,” Tab said, feeling for the opening in the curtain. “In other words, put a pin in it.”
SHERM
January 27
Dear Nonno Gio,
No one gets picked up after school in seventh grade. It was pretty easy to spot you out there, scanning the steps with one hand over your eyes like a salute.
I just turned around and went out through the yard gate instead. I guess you thought maybe I’d run right up to you and we’d go get a slice like we used to.
I know it’s only been five months, but you look smaller. I’m not just saying that to be mean. Otherwise you seem the same. It was good to see you, but it also felt good to walk away. Now you know how it feels.
Sherm
P.S. Eighteen days.
THE PITFALLS OF BEING WONDER WOMAN
The next morning, Sherm was on the corner in his down vest and navy-blue thermal shirt, which was Bridge’s favorite. He gave her a funny smile as she walked toward him.
“What?”
He pointed. “Stove Top stuffing? Is that breakfast?”
“Oh.” She realized she was cradling the cardboard canister as if it were a baby. “No, this is for Tab. She has to get some teeth pulled today. She’s leaving at lunchtime.”
“Bleh.”
“Yeah,” Bridge said. “My mom gave me this to give to her—she says it’s the best thing to eat after you’ve had a tooth pulled.”
“They should put that on their ads.” Sherm made his voice low, like a television announcer’s: “Stove Top. Really great for after the dentist!”
They laughed. Then Bridge replayed it in her head and laughed harder. Then she couldn’t stop laughing.
“Are you one of those people who laughs really hard at bad jokes?” Sherm asked. “How did I not know that?”
—
When Bridge powered up her phone after school, it began to ding with voice-mail messages. When it stopped, she had six of them, all from Tab. She didn’t bother listening to them, but texted Tab instead:
Bridge: U OK?
Tab: There U R! Come see me??
Bridge: At home?
Tab: No! Still at bad dentist.
—
Bridge and Tab both went to Dr. Miller, and they’d called him “bad dentist” since they were little kids. He was only eight blocks from school.
Tab: U coming?
Tab: Come now?
Bridge was supposed to be at a Tech Crew meeting in ten minutes. The Talentine show was Friday, and Mr. Partridge had been telling them for days that it was crunch time.
Tab: U there? U coming?
Bridge: Yes! Coming!
Tab: K. Love U.
Bridge: Love U too.
Tab:
—
Ten minutes later, Tab was resting on Bridge’s shoulder in the waiting room, talking and crying through a mouth full of cotton while the receptionist pretended not to look at them.
“And then, thith morning I told her what I did, and she thaid…she thaid I have to tell. That’th part of it, she thaid!”
“Part of what?” Bridge said. “Tab, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You started in the middle.”
“Didn’t you get my voith mailth?”
“I didn’t have time to listen to any of them! I just ran over here.”
“Bridth?”
“What?”
“I like your earth.”
“My earth? Tab, you’re not making sense.”
Her head still resting on Bridge’s shoulder, Tab reached up and felt for Bridge’s cat ears. She patted them awkwardly. “Your eeerth!” she said.
“Oh, my ears.” Bridge removed Tab’s hand from her head. “That’s nice. But I still have no idea what you’re talking about. Who do you have to tell what? And why?”
“I’m talking about thivil dithobedienth! She thaid I have to ‘take rethponthibility’!” Tab sat up and looked urgently at Bridge.
Bridge stared at her. “Who said?”
“The Berperthon! Bridth, I pothted the naked picthur of Patrick.” She pounded her chest with an open hand. “From hith phone, during thoccer practith.” She mimed texting with her thumbs.
“Wait,” Bridge said. “You’re saying—it was you?”
Tab nodded miserably. “I’m going to get thuthpended!” she wailed.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yeth, I am! And I have to tell Em,” Tab said, waving the spitty paper towel she had balled up in one hand.
“Wow. She’s gonna flip.”
Tab nodded and then closed her eyes.
Bridge patted Tab’s face carefully. “It’s going to be okay.”
Tab nodded and said, “You’re the betht.”
“Tab? Where’s your mom?”
“Getting the car. Come over?”
“Your mom won’t mind?”
Tab shook her head. “I need you, Bridth.”
—
An hour later, Bridge and Tab stood in Tab’s small kitchen, eating mini-marshmallows and waiting for the Stove Top to cook.
“Text Emily again.” Tab’s face was smaller without the cotton in her mouth. “Where is she?”
“I texted her four times,” Bridge said.
“Then check your phone.”
“I’ve been checking it, Tab. If I get a text, we’ll hear it.”
Tab stirred her Stove Top slowly. “She’s going to hate me.”
“She’s not going to hate you.”
“How do you know?”
“We have a rule, remember? No fights.”
“That’s true.” Tab looked a little bit hopeful.
“So when’s your mom getting here with your antibiotics?” Bridge glanced at the bag of marshmallows.
“With the hot chocolate, you mean?”
“Yeah. The way you’re plowing through those, there won’t be any left.”
Tab stuffed two more into her mouth and said, “Tough.”
Then Bridge’s phone dinged, and Tab dove for it.
“Too late!” Bridge snatched it. “Ha. Those dentist drugs are slowing you down.”
Em: No WAY I’m coming over—I officially hate Tab.
Bridge: What? Why?????
Em: Guess what? TAB posted that picture of P. Total triator.
Em: *Traitor!
Bridge: Who told you? Please come!
Em: She told me! She was LAUGHING. No way.
“What’s she saying?” Tab said. “Is she coming?”
“Tab. I think you may have called Emily from the dentist’s office.”
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
Tab spent the next ten minutes crying on the kitchen floor while the Stove Top burned. Bridge hadn’t seen Tab cry this much in her whole life. It was awful. Then the doorbell rang.
“It’s freezing out,” Em said, marching past Bridge. “Where is she?”
“You came,” Tab said. She’d managed to get up from the floor and was standing next to the couch, holding the bag of marshmallows.
Em hesitated. “You look terrible,” she said. “Are you okay? Never mind. Sit down. I have a present for you.”
“A present?” Tab looked confused. She sat down on the couch.
“A whole bunch of presents,” Em said. She sat on the coffee table in her coat, pulled her backpack onto her lap, unzipped the smallest front pocket, and pulled out a handful of torn paper. “Hold out your hand.”
They were notes. Em put them into Tab’s hand, one at a time.
Slut.
Rat.
You suck.
“Oh, and here’s my favorite,” Em said. “ ‘Skank.’ That kind of says it all, I think. Don’t you agree?”
Tab looked stunned. “Where did these come from?”
“My locker. I actually prefer this to being hissed at in the hall, if you want to know the truth.”
“But—when did it start?” Tab asked.
“Why? Do you actually care about someone other than the Berperson and her special rules of life?”
Tab looked like she was about to cry again. Bridge couldn’t stand it. “Come on, Em,” she said.
Em sighed and, still wearing her coat, lay back on the coffee table. “I got a couple of them after Sherm got all the boys in trouble—I figure that was David Marcel, mad about getting suspended. But they really started coming after someone posted Patrick’s selfie.”
“Idiots.” Bridge scooped the notes out of Tab’s hand, crunched them up, and dumped them on the table.
Tab sank back into the couch. “I feel—so, so terrible, Em. It was supposed to be civil disobedience. Like we talked about in Human Rights Club.”
Emily laughed. “I think you should reread that chapter or something.”
They heard the key in the door, and Tab’s face changed. “My parents don’t know yet,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything.”
But it was only Celeste. She came into the living room, blinking snow off her eyelashes.
“No way, it’s snowing?” Emily said, without getting up. “Finally! A decent development in this sucky day.”
Celeste looked at Tab’s face, then stared at Em, who was still lying across the coffee table like a sacrifice. She stepped a little closer and squinted at the pile of notes lying next to her. Bridge hadn’t managed to crunch them very well, and they were mostly legible. “What’s going on?” Celeste said. “And what’s that smell?”
“I lost one of my two best friends,” Tab said flatly. “And I’m going to get suspended. Burnt stuffing.”
“No, you didn’t,” Em said. “And you’re not going to get suspended.”
“Tab, what are you talking about?” Celeste said.
Tab stamped her foot on the rug. “Boys are evil.”
“What do you mean, suspended?” Celeste said.
So Tab confessed, for the fourth time that day.
“Okay, you guys, back up,” Celeste said. “Back up all the way to the beginning.”
They started with Patrick’s first text to Emily, and they told Celeste everything. Tab finished by describing her meeting with the Berperson that morning, how the Berperson was “so weirdly upset” and said Tab had “exactly twenty-four hours” to tell Mr. Ramos that she was the person who’d posted the picture of Patrick.
Tab wiped her nose with a wad of paper towel she found in her pocket. “You hate me now, right, Em? We can’t be friends anymore.”
Em looked at Tab. “What’s wrong with you? Of course we’re still going to be friends.”
“You said you hate me.”
“I was mad. It’s called a fight. Jeez.”
“But we don’t have fights,” Tab said. “Ever.”
“Well, maybe we should learn.”
Tab’s eyes got big. “Learn to fight? What about our rule? What about the Twinkie?”
Em carefully tore a marshmallow into two pieces and handed one to Tab. “With this marshmallow, I hereby release you from the Twinkie promise.”
Behind Em, Bridge was mouthing two words to Tab.
Tab sat forward and tilted her head, trying to read her lips. “What? Say what?”
“Say you’re sorry!” Bridge said.
“Oh! Didn’t I say that? Em, I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry.” She popped the half marshmallow into her mouth.
Em laughed. “You guys are a good team.”
“It still isn’t fair,” Tab said. “I just wanted Patrick to know how it felt! How it felt for you, when he sent your picture to everyone.”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Em said. “Patrick didn’t send my picture to anyone!”
Tab rolled her eyes. “Em, please don’t tell me again about how someone grabbed his phone.”
“Someone did grab his phone!” Em said.
“Really? Who?”
“I told you, I don’t know! But I believe him, Tab. Listen, I didn’t know him before. You guys were right about that, okay? But I know him now. Can’t you take my word for it?”
Tab shook her head. “I can’t take your word for it if you’re taking his word for it.”
Celeste had been unusually quiet through the whole story. Even when she heard about the knee-length shorts, her expression didn’t change. Now she said,
“Emily, I think I know who grabbed Patrick’s phone and sent your picture to David Marcel.”
“You do?” All three of them looked at Celeste.
“How well do you guys know Julie Hopper?”
Tab exploded. “Julie Hopper! She’s a—girl! Why would she send Em’s picture to a boy? To David Marcel?”
Celeste laughed. “What? You don’t think girls hurt girls? Tab, you live in a dreamworld.”
“I do not!” Tab looked at Emily and Bridge. “Right, you guys?”
And then Celeste started crying.
The girls pushed close to her, patting Celeste’s snow-damp hair and not asking questions. After a minute, Celeste took the paper towel Tab held out and blotted her face with it. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s been a crap week.”
“Oh my God, you guys,” Em said. “Oh my God. Celeste is right.” She held out her phone. She’d been texting with one hand while patting Celeste’s shoulder with the other.
Emily: Hey
Patrick: Hey U
Emily: Question for U
Patrick: ?
Emily: Did JH send the picture to DM?
Patrick: …
Emily: Is that a yes?
Patrick: …
Emily: ?
Patrick: yeah
Emily: SERIOUSLY?
Patrick:
Emily: ??? WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER?
Patrick: Issues.
Patrick:
Tab clutched the phone, frantically rereading. “Wait. Patrick didn’t send your picture to anyone?” She looked from Em’s face to Bridge’s. “I actually deserve to get suspended.”
“I didn’t believe him either,” Bridge said.
“And for the last time,” Em said, “you are not going to get suspended!”
Celeste pushed her hand into the bag of marshmallows. “Oh yes, she is. She’s totally going to get suspended.”
OUTLAWS
Celeste was right again. When Tab explained everything to Mr. Ramos the next morning, he suspended her for three days.
“Starting Monday,” Tab told Em and Bridge at lunch. “And get this: I’m kicked out of the Talentine show.”
“What?” Bridge said. For some reason she felt tears threatening.
“Yeah, I can’t be in it. I’m still allowed to go, though, because it’s on Friday and I’m not suspended until next week—so, Em, will you be my date?”
Goodbye Stranger Page 16