I was probably going to need someone to taste all my food from now on. Tizzy came to mind.
“Hi,” I said, and I sat next to her only because someone else was in my normal seat.
“So. Tell me everything.” She rested her chin in her hands and waited for story time.
“About what?”
“About what? About your fabulous weekend making out with Simon! What else is there?”
“Oh, that,” I said, and laughed a little. “It was just this … thing.”
“Thing?” she repeated. “C’mon, details—details, please.”
Okay, now that pissed me off. Like Sharon Eggleston was my own personal diary or something. Like she hadn’t spent months ogling my now ex-boyfriend from a distance and sending me creepy glances at me every chance she got. Like she wouldn’t spread the details about Simon Lolita all over the entire campus within fifteen minutes without even leaving her seat. Like I needed to give her another reason to hate me. Like we were even friends. “Well, I … I don’t really like giving out details, Sharon. I mean, it’s not a big deal.”
Her eyes narrowed. The queen was not used to being refused by serfs. “Not a big deal?”
“No.” I tried to smile a little. “You know, things happen, they pass. We’re not dating, it was just one time. It’s totally nothing.”
“Nothing.”
There was something in the way she said it that made goose bumps pop up on my arm. Somewhere, an executioner was sharpening his blade.
“That’s right,” I said, smiling wider. “Totally nothing. It’s all good.”
And then Mrs. Willis was yelling at us to turn around in our seats and pay attention for just once in our lives, and I became the most obedient student over. Sharon Eggleston’s eyes, however, burned two hot holes into the side of my head for the rest of class.
By the end of the day, I was exhausted from not talking to people. Aside from Tizzy, with her verbal explosion, and Sharon, with her “friendly” conversation, the only people who actually talked to me were Victoria and Jonah. Actually, Jonah just wanted to know if I had a dollar for Del Taco, but still. It counts as talking.
And not that I was paying attention or anything, but James was not at school.
On Tuesday, Sharon and Natasha managed to corner me on my way past the library. “Oh, hi,” I said, like I was greeting some really old relative who had tissues shoved up her sweater sleeves. “What’s up?”
“Are you ignoring us?” Sharon said. She had her arms crossed in front of her, the way she always did to shove her boobs up and make them look bigger. Like she needed help with that.
“Ignoring you?” I repeated. “What are you talking about?” I knew exactly what she was talking about, though. And if I lived in Honesty Land, I would’ve been screaming, Yes, I’m ignoring you, you twit! Get it through your impossibly shiny hair-covered head! But that wasn’t an option.
Yet.
She recrossed her arms and boosted her boobs even higher. “You know, Audrey,” she began, “my friends and I have been really nice to you.”
“Nice?”
“Yes, fucking nice. We invite you to lunch with us. When I first saw the pictures of you with Simon Lolita, I was worried about you. And then yesterday in history class, I tried to be a friend to you.”
Victoria brought coffee and a hammer, I thought. You just dug for details. I really wished Victoria was here right now, too, because she would’ve said that without blinking. “Look, Sharon, things have just been really crazy lately and it’s just that I haven’t—”
“Is this how you treat friends, Audrey? By ignoring them?”
“Friends?” I said. “Sharon, you and I haven’t been fr—”
But she wasn’t even listening. “You know, Audrey, I could ruin you at this school.”
I don’t respond well to threats. (No surprise there.) “Oh, really?” I said in my fake friendly voice.
By now, she was so in my face that I could smell her vanilla lip gloss. “You always get everything you want, don’t you? Or everyone. Evan, Simon fucking Lolita, and now James.” Her teeth were clenched so tight that it hurt to look at her. “What makes you so fucking special?”
“James?” I sputtered. “Wait, wha—?”
“Hey, what are they doing over there?” Natasha, aka Darth Vader, was peering past Sharon and me, and we all turned to look at four girls who were standing about ten feet away, their camera phones flipped open, giggling excitedly as they took pictures of me and Sharon.
“Um, excuse me!” I yelled. “Could you maybe not do that right now? Or ever?”
“New friends of yours, Audrey?” Sharon sneered. “Are those the ones you do call back?”
But the girls kept clicking away, and then Natasha proved to be mildly useful when she said, “Do they go to this school?”
Because no sirree, they most certainly did not.
From across the campus, I could see Victoria and Jonah walking together, their arms touching—hand-holding was one of the many things banned at our school, like guns and drugs and small animals—and Victoria saw me and her face changed when she saw the girls and their camera phones. I saw her mutter a string of expletives and then she untangled her arm from Jonah’s and stormed over.
By the time she got to my side, I was already confronting the girls. “What are you fucking doing?” I demanded.