Tease Page 24

  “Yep. Be there in ten,” Noelle replies.

  I wait for them to explain what they’re talking about, but Brielle just raises her eyebrows at me. “Don’t worry about the D Train,” she says. “I don’t think he and Emma were really doing it, so if you really want him back, he’s probably syphilis-free.”

  “Unless you have it,” Noelle says, and they both laugh again.

  I smile as if I think it’s funny too, but like Alison, I’m kind of happy to be getting away from them and going to my own homeroom. For one wild second I wonder what it would be like not to be friends with Brielle anymore—not to get teased like that all the time, not to always be her best punchline. But that’s crazy. Brielle’s been my best friend forever. We have so much fun, we’re so close. I watch her walk away with Noelle and remember it’s not my choice, anyway. If Brielle wants to hang out with you, she does.

  And if she doesn’t, you walk to homeroom alone.

  Nothing really happens for the rest of the day. Right before gym I pass Principal Schoen in the hallway and I remember the meeting my parents are coming in for on Wednesday. Jesus, I keep forgetting about that. My stomach lurches. Why didn’t I think to call in sick today too? I feel sick all the time.

  Emma isn’t in gym class, and I have Brielle to myself, so we spend the whole time trying to avoid playing any basketball. Turns out if you go to the far end of the gym and pretend to play H-O-R-S-E, you can pretty much just stand there and no one cares.

  Emma’s not in history, either. It finally occurs to me that she might be with Dylan. I can’t remember the last time I saw her, or saw them together. The weekend is starting to feel like I dreamed it. That night in Dylan’s car might as well have happened a hundred years ago.

  But it still hurts. That part feels pretty damn fresh in my mind.

  I pick up the boys after school and we go to Taco Bell again, this time with an actual ten-dollar bill I got from my mom that morning. The sun still hasn’t set by the time we get home, but the sky is turning pink, and Tommy actually stops for a minute to look at it when we get out of the car.

  “It’s pretty, right?” I say, leaning against the Honda next to him. Alex has already run inside, excited to have first dibs on the Wii.

  He wrinkles his nose—the boys hate even the word pretty, much less the idea that they might think anything is—but he goes, “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  “I used to think that kind of sunset was good luck,” I tell him. I’d forgotten all about it until the words pop out, but it’s true—when I was little I decided a pink sunset meant, I dunno, that the pony I wanted for Christmas would actually show up, or whatever.

  “Is it? Good luck?” he asks me.

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . I think I just made that up. But maybe.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he says.

  We stand there for a few more minutes, just long enough that the sky starts turning grayer, darker. Without either of us having to say anything, we turn and walk into the house together, where it’s warm and light and smells like the popcorn Alex put in the microwave.

  I find out the next morning.

  Everyone’s standing outside school, not going in. It’s cold and windy and the sun isn’t shining, but it looks like the entire school is huddled together on the sidewalk.

  I drove myself because Brielle didn’t want to shuttle my brothers today, so as soon as I park I pull out my phone and look for a text from her. There’s nothing, which actually worries me more. But who knows, maybe there was just another fake bomb threat. Like the time that weird guy Carmichael supposedly called one in. We got the day off, and nothing actually happened, so I kind of hope that’s it.

  I see Brielle’s SUV pulling in at the other end of the lot, so I wait by my car, assuming she’ll park near me. But she doesn’t—she pulls into the first empty space, kind of crooked. I start walking toward her. She and Noelle both jump out, and they both look kind of panicked—but I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I’m already panicked, so that’s how everyone looks to me.

  When I’m closer I wave, and they definitely see me, but they don’t wave back. We meet about halfway, next to this, like, red Nissan. I think, That’s such an ugly car, and then Brielle says:

  “Emma Putnam killed herself last night.”

  And then there’s just nothing.

  Not nothing. There’s an assembly. They don’t let us into school—the doors are locked, that’s why everyone’s outside—until after eight thirty. They make us sit in the gym because the auditorium isn’t big enough for the entire school to sit down. They use a lot of words like tragedy and counselors and process, like, “We want to help you process this.”

  “What a stupid, stupid bitch,” Brielle says under her breath. No one hears her but me, so no one knows why I’m nodding. But I can’t say anything back. Across the gym, about five rows up on the bleachers, I can see Dylan. He’s got his face in his hands. I can’t tell if he’s crying, but he keeps his head down the whole time.

  The guidance counselor gets up to talk. I’ve only seen him once, at an assembly they made us go to about picking a college, but now he starts talking about supporting each other and getting through this difficult time. I don’t know, I’m not really listening. I’m watching Dylan, so I see when he moves—he finally drops his hands from his eyes and stands up, all in one motion. He shoves his way past everyone in his row and takes the stairs down, two at a time. The bar on the gym door makes this loud squeak when he pushes it open, hard, and everyone in the gym is looking as the door closes behind him. It’s set up so it doesn’t slam, but that almost makes it worse. It takes a long, long time to close. Finally it clicks shut and I think, Dylan must be in his car by now. Or anywhere—wherever he’s going.

  And I think, He’s never going to talk to me again.

  And that’s the saddest I feel all day.

  We get dismissed for the rest of the day. Brielle and Noelle are going to Brielle’s house, so I go too. They smoke weed but I don’t. They call Kyle and Jacob, who come over, and then Marcus is there, and Brielle pulls out a bottle of vodka from her parents’ cabinet. I drink a little, but I’m not used to having vodka in the middle of the day, and when I go upstairs to use Brielle’s bathroom I think, I’ll just lie down for a minute, and then I’m waking up, like, two hours later, which is totally embarrassing. I go downstairs, expecting everyone to make fun of me, but they’re all watching the local news and laughing. It’s all about Emma, of course, and I don’t know what’s so funny, but I hear Jacob say something like “Who doesn’t just take pills?” and Kyle goes, “She was too stupid to figure out what pills to take. She would’ve tried to OD on, like, Advil.”

  It’s two thirty already so I just sneak into the kitchen, grab my bag, and leave. I have to get my brothers, I have to go home. My mom must’ve heard about this by now. Suddenly I remember our meeting at the school tomorrow—that’s cancelled, right? Is my dad still coming out? I guess I didn’t really want to see him, anyway. I didn’t want to go to that meeting, but—shit! That meeting was about Emma, wasn’t it? So . . . so now what?

  There’s a light snow falling when I pull up to Pleasant Hill, and both boys come running out of the school with their arms spread out, trying to catch it. One of Tommy’s friends is with him, yelling, “Snow day! Snow day!”

  They do their usual front-seat shove-match, which Tommy wins, and crash into the car. Alex yells, “We’re gonna have a snow day tomorrow!”

  “It’s March, dummy, there’s no way there’s gonna be enough snow for that,” Tommy says, but he’s grinning and his cheeks are all red from the running and the cold.

  I notice that I’m shivering, even though I’ve been in my warm car this whole time. Suddenly I realize I forgot to eat lunch. The inside of my stomach is cold. I’m used to it being upset, in knots, stressed. Now it’s just . . . empty. I don’t even say anything to the boys. I just drive home, hoping I don’t get us in an accident along the way. My hands are so numb I can’t
really feel the wheel.

  I can’t really feel anything.

  It’s obvious as soon as we’re home that Mom already knows. She sends Tommy and Alex up to their room and tells them we’re going to order pizza. They’re almost as excited by that as they were by the snow, and we hear them thump up the stairs, yelling about what toppings they’re going to get.

  Mom and I just stare at each other for a minute. Finally, she says, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. It feels like I haven’t used my voice at all today, it comes out all scratchy. I guess I haven’t talked much, but of course I’m okay.

  “Is—is everyone okay? Brielle? And—oh, God, what about Dylan?”

  I just shrug.

  “Of course,” she says. “Of course this is hard for all of you. God, I can’t believe this. She was sixteen . . .” Mom sits down heavily on one of the kitchen stools and just stares at the counter for a while. I stand nearby, not sure what to do.

  “I’m just gonna . . .” I have to stop and clear my throat. “I’m gonna go to my room, okay? I don’t care what kind of pizza. I’m not really hungry anyway.”

  She looks up at me, her face stricken and worried and, like, ten years older than it usually looks, but she just nods. So I go.

  The next morning, there are news vans parked outside school. That afternoon they’re outside my house. By the end of the week everyone knows that Emma Putnam stayed home that Monday, she waited until her parents went to work, and she tied a heavy-duty extension cord around her neck. She tied the other end to the exposed beams in her parents’ garage.

  And everyone knows that Emma Putnam didn’t just kill herself. She killed herself for a reason.

  And that reason was Brielle. Dylan. Kyle. Jacob.

  And me.

  A special prosecutor brings charges against us. The Facebook stuff has already been on the news. Emma’s crying parents are on Good Morning America, sitting next to the lawyer, talking about bullying and suicide and Emma’s bright future cut short.

  Megan Corley goes on the Today show and tells them how “some girls” painted the word SLUT on Emma’s locker on Valentine’s Day. I’m watching it on my computer in my room, and when she says that I almost choke. And when the interviewer asks if she means the girls “in the lawsuit” and Megan nods, I scream. I push the laptop off my bed and for a second I think—I hope—it’s broken, but it’s not. The video is just paused, with Megan’s stupid, tearstained face looking up at me from the floor.

  Mom is at the door of my room in two seconds. “I told you to stop watching that stuff,” she says.

  “But they’re all lying about everything—” I yell, but her hand is up, stopping me.

  “That’s it!” she yells, louder. “No more news in this house! Turn it off, Sara, I mean it!”

  I close the laptop, leaving it on the floor. We stare at each other for a minute, and then she turns to leave again. She doesn’t even tell me to get ready for school. We both know I’m not going.

  As soon as I hear her car leave, I go downstairs and turn on the TV. At first I’m just planning to watch cartoons or something, but I put it on MSNBC and there’s Emma’s face again. Mom says the news is national because Emma was pretty and her parents are rich, but I know it’s because there’s a lawsuit, too. It’s a “groundbreaking anti-bullying” lawsuit, one of the toughest ever brought against a group of minors.

  I text Brielle to see if she wants to go to the mall. She’s been skipping a lot too, but now she just writes: can’t talk. lawyerzzzz. :p

  I don’t know what that means. I look back at the TV and see another screenshot of all our posts on Emma’s Facebook wall, the day before she died.

  What’s it like being a skank?

  My profile picture and my name are blurred out, but I know that one was mine. Under the comment you can see there were twenty-two likes, but the people on the show are just talking about me now, about how girls are passive-aggressive or something, I don’t know. There’s a child psychologist on. I’ve never met him and he has no idea what he’s talking about.

  “Shut up!” I yell at the man on the screen. “Leave me alone!”

  But of course, he can’t hear me. No one can.

  October

  “YOU LOOK NICE,” Alex says. He’s got milk on his chin from the oversize spoon of Cheerios he just stuffed in his mouth. It actually sounds like he just said “Ooo ook ice,” but it’s sweet. Probably the sweetest thing I’ll be hearing all day.

  “Thanks, bud.” I look down at my navy skirt and dark-red sweater. I look like I’m running for student council president, but I figure it follows the rules Natalie gave me. The first time we went to court, which was really just a weird conference room with a judge in it, I wore a bright-yellow shirt. I thought Natalie was going to kill me when she saw it. It was hot outside that day, but she made me put on a gray cardigan she had in her car.

  Anyway. It’s cold today. And I think my outfit says I’m taking this seriously.

  I sit down at the table with Alex and Tommy, but I can’t eat. Just watching them inhale their breakfasts makes me feel like throwing up. If I only could just vomit, even half as often as I think I’m going to, I’d probably feel a lot better. Or a lot worse, I guess, I don’t know. Alex slurps the last of the milk straight out of his bowl and I look away.

  “You sure you got it all, little man?”

  Dad’s voice makes me jump—it’s always too loud, too much him. My stomach rolls over again. Across from me, I see Tommy tense up too, but Alex grins at our father, his mouth still white with milk.

  “Hey, Dad!” he says. “Are you gonna pick me up from school today?”

  “I dunno, kid,” Dad says. He throws open the cabinet with the mugs in it, slams one down on the counter, fills it with coffee. Leaves the cabinet open. “This thing might take a while. I think your mom set up a ride for both you guys.”

  This thing. I shrink a little in my sweater. This thing has already taken a while. It’s taken over my entire life. It will be with me forever.

  “Oh,” Alex says, disappointed.

  “I don’t know why we can’t go too,” Tommy grouches.

  I raise my eyebrows at him, but before I can say anything, Dad jumps in again.

  “Nah, you don’t want to go, trust me,” he says. He leans against the counter with his coffee. I’m still not really looking at him, but I can feel his presence, his overwhelming height. He’s in a dark suit. He’s looming. “It’s not going to be any fun.”

  “I know,” Tommy says. His voice is quiet now, but still defiant. “I didn’t think it was going to be fun. I just thought we should be there.” His eyes meet mine for just a moment, and I give him a little smile.

  “Thanks,” I say to him, but I really just mouth it. He shrugs, like, I tried.

  I figure my brothers have just given me the strength to get through this thing. Unfortunately, Dad’s right; they don’t want to actually come with us. Too bad my father’s going to be there instead. And Mom—whatever. When Dad’s around, she gets so distracted, I don’t know. Like, she’s not even down here yet. What is she doing?

  “Where is that mother of yours?” Dad asks, reading my mind. Again, it’s like he wants us to think he’s being light and funny, but he sounds furious.

  “I’ll go find her,” I say, thrilled for the opportunity to get out of here, away from him for another two minutes.

  But I’m barely out of my chair when she walks into the kitchen. She has on a dark-gray suit with a silky lavender shirt underneath. It’s the outfit she wears when she has a meeting she’s especially worried about. I don’t know how I remember that, but I do, and it makes me feel even more nervous.

  “Okay, guys,” she says to my brothers. “Maggie’s waiting for you outside. She’ll pick you up, too.”

  “I thought I was dropping them off?” I say, startled. I’d really been looking forward to the twenty minutes of alone time between Tommy’s school and the courthouse.

&nbs
p; “No, I asked M—”

  Dad cuts Mom’s explanation off with, “There’s no way you’re showing up there by yourself. How would that look? We’re going together.”

  I look back at Mom and she nods.

  Together. Why couldn’t that make me feel supported? The way Dad says it, it sounds like punishment.

  And it is. The drive feels like a lifetime. I sit in the back of my dad’s rental car, holding my statement. It’s folded in half, pressed between my sweaty hands. None of us speak. There’s traffic, but not enough to actually slow us down. So while I feel trapped in the car for eternity, we also get to the court building way too fast.

  There are news vans everywhere, dozens of them. Dad has to slow to a crawl, waiting for the cop who’s directing traffic to guide the cars ahead of us into the parking lot. A reporter from the channel we always watch jogs past our car. For a split second I think, Oh!, like I’ve just seen a celebrity. Then I remember.

  God, I hate those split seconds. I wish I could stop forgetting, even for a moment. Being scared and sad and tired all the time sucks, but it’s so much harder when I think, even for the blink of an eye, that things are okay.

  Even for the brief moment on Saturday night, when Carmichael drove me home and pressed his lips so quickly, so gently, to mine. I close my eyes and remember that, hold on to it. We talked on Sunday and I saw him at school yesterday, of course, and we both acted like nothing happened. But in the dark of his dad’s truck, at the end of such a nice but long night, that instant was perfect. It was relief.

  The car jerks forward and I open my eyes again. There’s a spot right next to the building and Dad pulls in, yanking the gearshift over to park. We all sit there for one more quiet moment, and then, like we’ve choreographed it, my parents and I each open our doors and let the flood of noise hit us.

  I hurry around the car and they stand on either side of me, and we walk, trying not to run, past the screaming reporters and the blinding lights. I’m that girl now. I’m that girl walking into a courtroom, not looking at the cameras. Suddenly Natalie is there, but I don’t even know how I see her, because I keep my eyes down, on the sidewalk. Foot foot foot foot. Don’t trip.