“Did you send it? That was really you?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“So it’s all true?”
I nod again and she stands there, shocked. If I can’t see this moment on Anna’s face, this is really the next best thing. I watch Chelsea’s mouth quirk as she enjoys this victory for…everyone. Michael divides his gaze between both of us.
“You’re a total bitch,” she says in an admiring tone, and then she hurries into school so she can spread the word: It was Regina, and it’s all true.
“What was that?” Michael asks when she’s gone. I can’t find the words to answer him, so I duck my head and make my way down the hall. I’m immediately stared at, which is nothing new, but this is different. Even he notices. “What’s going on…?”
Bruce slams into Michael then. Hard. Michael manages to stay upright, but his book bag hits the floor and his books go flying. Before I can tell Bruce he’s an asshole, he’s on me, pointing fingers, red-faced. And I can’t help it: I smile. “You’re a fucking bitch, Afton.”
He kicks Michael’s books, sending them into the lockers. A modest crowd witnesses the whole scene, and soon the halls are buzzing, but the buzzing sounds very, very confused.
“Okay, tell me what’s going on,” Michael says, shoving the books back into his bag. He catches sight of something beyond me. I half-turn and spot Liz. “Don’t make me find out secondhand.”
“I did something,” I tell him.. He doesn’t even know what I did, but he gets this look on his face, like it can’t be good even though it’s good, it’s great, it’s the best. I open my mouth to tell him, but then before I can answer some sophomore I don’t know passes us, pointing me out to some freshman I don’t know. ” That’s Regina Afton! Last night—”
This is so awesome.
Five minutes before lunch, I detour into the girls’ room and try to get it together. It used to be I had to prep myself not to look so miserable when I walked through the halls.
Now I have to try not to look so high.
It’s a total high. I stare at my reflection in the mirrors. I haven’t seen myself this happy in ages. I run the water really cold and dab at my face and hands. I’m hot.
One of the stall doors opens and startles me. I bite the inside of my cheek hard to keep the smile off my face. I’d love to smug this out all over school, but I can’t. Not yet. And it’s Liz, so I don’t feel like smiling anymore anyway. She stares at me in the mirror and I turn the water off. I dry my hands and head for the door.
“I can’t believe you had it in you,” she says at my back.
I pause. “Thanks.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“Nothing I do is good enough for you.” I face her. “That’s okay. But they got what they deserved.”
“And what did you deserve?” she asks. “Charie called me and said there was this e-mail in her inbox. Well done, I guess.”
“Is that what everyone thinks?” I ask.
“Oh, they still hate you,” she says. “But they hate Anna more.” I leave her and go to the cafeteria. The center table is devoid of girls. Josh, Henry, and Bruce are there, trying to uphold what’s left of their popularity. Without Anna, they’re nothing. I find Michael at the back, as usual.
“They’ve been dogging me all day,” he says, nodding at the guys. I take my seat across from him. “Every time I turn around, one of them is there.”
I turn, expecting to see some Sinister Group Glare being leveled at us, but the three of them are hunched over their food.
“Have they said anything to you?” I ask. He shakes his head. “They probably just want to tell Anna they weren’t totally useless today.”
And then I look again. I can’t help it. They’re just there, and the table is totally dead, and it’s amazing because I did that and no one’s ever done that before. I turn back to Michael. The bell separated us before I could find out how he felt about it, and the way he’s staring at me, I’m not sure I want to find out.
“Smile,” he says after a minute.
“What?”
“I can tell you want to do it,” he says.
I flush and look away. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” When he doesn’t immediately reply, it gets my back up. “They deserve it, Michael. You can’t tell me they don’t.”
“You’re going to get your ass kicked,” he says.
I can feel eyes on me from every direction, but there’s something different about it. Like, maybe they hate me, but I’m cool. It feels cool. This is mine.
“No, I’m not,” I say, and then I point. “Look at that table, Michael. I have them.”
“But why would you want them?” he asks.
It’s not an accusation; it’s worse. There’s discomfort in his voice and…disappointment. It hurts in a weird way because I don’t know what that means. They didn’t deserve it? He can’t think that. They deserved it. They deserve it. I could do it again and again and again and they’d deserve it each time. For what they did to me.
“Why do you want to make me feel bad about this?”
“I don’t,” he says. “I just don’t get why you have to feel so good about it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “Is this too Anna for you?” He leans forward and says very slowly, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I turn back to the table. Josh is gone. I wonder if he’s gone to see her. She won’t get her reputation back enough to hurt me. She can’t. I ate breakfast today. That has to be a good omen. I smile at the thought, and when I turn back to Michael again, he’s just looking more and more weirded out. Like it is too Anna for him.
The day passes in that odd, tense way a day does when you’re with someone who is mad at you and you don’t fully understand why. It reminds me of Anna, because she used to do that to all of us a lot. Seize up, freeze out. It was always scary.
I’m mad at Michael for reminding me of that.
Still, somehow, we end up in his room.
We end up in his room on his bed.
But not like that.
We are side by side and quiet. He’s on his back, staring at the ceiling, and I’m on my side, staring at him. This is the kind of closeness that comes in at you from all sides, the kind that begs you to move and do something before it traps you and you can’t do anything at all. Are we mad at each other? Is this a fight? I take a look around the room. It’s as sparse as the rest of the house. There’s a photograph of his mother on the wall. It’s really strange and sad. All I have of her is a memory in a chair in an office. In this photo, she is every inch a mother. No doctor showing on her. She’s sitting at a picnic table smiling at a man. Michael’s father, maybe. She looks happy.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
He turns to me. “What?”
“I made things really bad for you.”
“My mom died,” he says. “Things were already bad.”
“I just made them worse.”
It’s quiet for a long time. “Yeah.”
He reaches over and his hand drifts up my side until it reaches my face, and then his palm is on my chin, but he’s hesitant, and I feel bad. I understand it.
But I don’t want to understand it.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I say. “It was the only way it could have happened.”
“Really?” he asks, and before I can say anything, he runs his thumb over my lips and I close my eyes. My eyes are still closed when he kisses me. And then he stops, and when I open my eyes, the same close-distance that was between us before is there again.
I sit up and stare out the window, my back to him. Michael’s bedroom overlooks the street. His house is a strange quiet. There’s no calm in it, just this total emptiness. I watch the wind stir the last of some leaves off a tree across the road.
“Where’s your dad?” I ask. “What does he do? He’s never home….”
“Lawyer.”
“Why didn’t you tell your mom about what we did to you?” I turn to him. “You didn’t know I was seeing her. You could’ve told her.”
“She listened to people for a living.”
“Do you wish you’d told her?”
He shrugs. “I started keeping that journal. It’s—”
He doesn’t finish, but I know what he’s not saying. It makes him feel closer to her. I think of him carrying it everywhere. School. His car. Home. Writing incessantly just to make some kind of connection to a dead woman. His mom.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “But I’m glad I did it to them.”
“Okay,” he says. It’s not enough.
“What do you think?” I ask him. “They deserved it, right?”
“I think…” he trails off. “I think some girls are just…fucked up.”
He eases himself across the bed. He doesn’t say he’s not—that he’s not mad at me or that it’s not weird anymore. He might be. It is. So I reach out and push his hair back from his face, and then he kisses me again, and it’s like he just lets it go, just for this. I think.
He kisses my neck and he kisses my mouth. We curl up on his bed together, a tangle of arms and legs. His hand slides up my shirt, and I kiss him and I kiss him again.
I’m not one of those girls.
The Formerly Fearsome Foursome is still nowhere to be found for the second day in a row. They’re just gone. I’m still dying to see it on their faces, but I’ll settle for this not-insignificant change to the landscape. Michael and I separate at the front doors.
“See you at lunch,” he tells me, heading down the hall.
When I get to my locker, there’s a note tucked in it. I know who it’s from instantly. Anna or Kara. Some small part of me is excited to get it, because no matter what it says, they sent it from a place that is now officially beneath me.