The lunch lady hands me the drinks. I hand her the bill.
“Go away, Michael,” I say.
Anna “rescues” me then. She wraps an arm around me, and I try to act like it’s a welcome move by forcing my third smile of the day. At her.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” I hand her one of the Cokes and shove the change in my pocket. “Come on, let’s take these back.”
“We’re talking,” Michael says. “We’re done.”
“We’re talking.”
“No, we’re not.”
I push past him. Anna is on my heels, her voice in my ear: “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“Does he look like I told him?”
“No,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. “He actually looks pretty devastated.”
At the end of the day, I know Michael’s going to be waiting for me in his car. He’ll trail me home and he’ll try to get me to talk. I’m so desperate to avoid it, I ask Anna for a ride home and she laughs in my face, so I have to detour down the main street and then detour into Ford’s, where I buy three packs of antacids.
Michael calls. It’s the first time he’s ever called. I don’t answer. And then Anna calls and tells me yellow. Tomorrow we’ll be wearing yellow.
I can’t eat my dinner.
I skip breakfast and head to school, because I don’t want to risk run ning into Michael. I stake out a spot at the front door and wait for the rest of the group to show, just like old times. It takes about thirty minutes. Kara’s first to show. She stands next to me, quiet. I just want to kill her.
“Don’t get comfortable,” she says.
I turn to her. “What?”
“Don’t get comfortable,” she repeats slowly. “This was Anna’s idea, but I’d rather see you dead after that e-mail than pretend we’re friends for the rest of the year, no matter how miserable it makes you. I’m not done with you, so don’t get comfortable.”
It never stops.
“Don’t tempt me, Kara.”
“Watch your back, Regina.”
“Go fuck yourself, Kara.”
Jeanette and Marta bound up to us—to Kara—then. I put a little space between us. Waiting for Anna is hell on my stomach, and I’ve taken three antacids by the time she arrives, wearing one of the lowest cut tops I’ve ever seen. Marta whistles.
“I hope you don’t plan on bending over today.”
“Only in front of Josh,” she replies, grinning.
Michael’s car pulls into the parking lot before I can roll my eyes at what she’s said. My stomach twinges. “Let’s go in. Please.”
Anna spots him. “No.”
I watch him make his way toward the school. It doesn’t really hurt yet, seeing him but not being near him. I think I’m still in shock. I hunch my shoulders and edge closer to Anna, like that’ll make me invisible, but she notices and steps away from me.
When Michael reaches us, he keeps walking.
“He cannot have gotten over it that fast,” Anna says, watching him go. “You didn’t tell him, did you? Because if you did—”
“No! I didn’t—I haven’t talked to him at all. He called me last night and I didn’t even pick up. I didn’t tell him, Anna, I swear—”
“I know you didn’t.” She grins. “I just wanted to see you squirm.”
“Bitch.”
Kara, Marta, and Jeanette gasp. We’re all wearing yellow.
I walk away. Anna calls me back. I keep walking. I’m shoving my hands into my pockets, popping two antacids. I stop on the second floor and lean against a row of lockers. They won’t find me here for a couple of minutes. But Liz does. Liz finds me. When she walks into my line of vision, I groan.
“What were they offering?” she asks.
“Liz, go away,” I say.
“Michael asked me if I knew anything,” she says. “He thinks you have a reason. Like he really thinks that what you’re doing right now doesn’t make sense.”
“Anna wanted to be friends again,” I say. “I can spend the rest of my year getting locked in closets or I can be friends with Michael. And you should be happy. You didn’t want me anywhere near him.”
“You’re a bitch,” she says.
“Hey, self-preservation. Don’t blame me because you and Michael were too stupid to figure it out and got hurt.”
“This is so shocking,” she says sarcastically. “But once a coward…”
I can’t wait until I’m too dead inside to feel this. I leave her there. I make my way to my locker. Josh, Anna, and Henry are there, and all of a sudden I can’t see. I can’t see, I can’t breathe. I turn before they see me. I’m halfway down the hall from them when the bell rings and I realize I need my books for class.
I head back to my locker, and they’re still there. I shove Josh aside and fumble with my lock. I don’t say a word. They don’t say a word to me.
Because I just have to be a part of this scene. Not belong to it.
“Come on,” Anna is saying, squeezing Josh’s shoulder, nearly falling out of her top. Josh gets all disappointed when she doesn’t. “One more party.”
“I don’t know. It’s getting kind of cold out.”
“That’s what the bonfire’s for,” Henry says.
Josh punches him in the arm. “You just want to get wasted.”
“I don’t need an excuse,” Henry replies. “But I do like getting wasted in a group setting.” He belches. “I refuse to accept that last monstrosity of a party as the last party of the season.”
“Seriously.” Anna eyes me. “Come on, Josh. This weekend. You said—”
“Can’t,” Josh replies. “My dad’s here this weekend, and I need to get some of his prescriptions and restock first. I mean, if you want it to be a really good party…”
The bell rings. They trail down the hall. When they’re about twenty steps away from me, Anna notices I’m not trailing after them. She stops. Turns. Snaps her fingers. Points to the empty space beside her.
“Regina,” she says. “Here.” My only solace is the weekend.
It comes.
And then it goes.
My YourSpace revenge is dead in the water. Anna’s scheme works better than even she anticipated; the re-formation of the Fearsome Five-some distracts everyone for a second and settles too quickly. Everyone in this school has seen me stand beside Anna before.
It’s new, but it’s old.
Gym.
Nelson is dividing us into teams for basketball when I start feeling not right. I take an antacid before I realize it’s not my stomach— it’s my head. It doesn’t feel attached to my neck, and then it does, and then I’m very aware of a slow-building pressure behind my eyes that threatens to become the kind of headache that will make me vomit—or would, if there was anything in my stomach to vomit up.
I raise my hand. Nelson points at me. “What it is, Afton?”
“Can I be excused?” I ask. “I don’t feel well.”
I wish I could take it back. The whole class hears it. That’s Anna, that’s Michael, that’s Kara, that’s Josh, that’s Donnie. I don’t want them looking at me, and now they are. Nelson studies me, and I must look bad because she doesn’t run me through the usual twenty questions reserved for suspected fakers.
“Hayden,” she says. Michael looks up. “Escort your friend to the nurse’s office.”
It’s like someone dumped a bucket of ice down my shirt. Michael crosses the gym. My eyes meet Anna’s: She gives me a warning look. And a smirk.
“So let’s go,” he says.
Nelson resumes splitting the class, and Michael and I make our way out. The throbbing in my head gets worse. When we hit the hall, I focus on the quiet and pray it stays, but it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. He wants answers.
“What do they have on you?”
I exhale slowly. I don’t know whether to feel really good or bad that he doesn’t believe I’d do that to him. It makes it harder, either way.
“They don’t have anything on me,” I say.
“You look like hell.”
“Thanks.”
He grabs me by the arm. “You were so happy to be rid of them and now you’re friends again? Bullshit. What do they have on you?”
“I said they don’t have anything on me—”
“They have to,” he says, desperate. I can see the hurt building, and my stomach isn’t having it. “You wouldn’t be doing this to me if they didn’t have something on you—”
“I—” I focus on the poster tacked to the wall behind his head. A bedraggled kitten is clinging to a tree branch. Hang in there! I can’t think around my headache. “I told you. Anna found out that it was true about Donnie, that Kara lied, so she’s—she felt terrible about it. So—we’re friends again.”
“You can barely lie,” he says. I start protesting halfheartedly, because I really don’t feel well. It makes it easy for him to talk over me. “If that’s the truth, then what about Kara? Anna wouldn’t let Kara get away with that.”
Goddammit. If he were Jeanette or Marta he would’ve bought it by now. I’m not making friends with people who are smart, from this point on. Ever again.
“Tell me,” he begs.
“I told you. We’re friends again. I told Liz—”
“You didn’t mean what you said to Liz.”
“It doesn’t matter, Michael,” I burst out. “Because whatever it is, even after everything between us, I still weighed it—them or you— and I didn’t choose you. I knew how hard it was for you to choose me, and I still picked them. I mean, that’s basically picking their bullshit over you, right? I didn’t choose you, and I totally wasted your time, so even if they do have something on me, it doesn’t matter.”