Chapter 4
In the cold light of morning, I could see that I’d overreacted last night. I’d been too sensitive about the picture thing and the Grayson thing. Mary Heather, Kat, and Jess were all just being themselves.
It wasn’t the end of the world or anything.
After breakfast (and dashing through first-period homework), I ran outside and jumped into Mrs. Haber’s car.
Since I was on the way to school, she picked me up every morning, which was nice but also didn’t seem to be a choice.
Even on days I’d have liked to walk (not today—it was freezing), she and Mary Heather were here, with frosting-slathered cardboard—uh, I mean pastries—from a chain shop.
“Hey,” Mary Heather said from the passenger seat. She twisted around and handed me the anticipated rock-hard treat.
“Thanks.” I dropped it into the cupholder, where it landed with an ominous thud. Yikes! This one promised to have the texture of a brick.
“Good morning, Virginia.” Mrs. Haber smiled at me in the rearview mirror. “I heard your sister sent out a few internship applications for the summer already.”
“She did.” Were Mom and Dad calling Mrs. Haber to gossip about us? Of course they’d talk about Victoria, the one Mrs. Haber barely knew.
“She’s so smart,” Mrs. Haber said admiringly. “I know she’ll find something good.”
I took a huge bite of sugar-smothered cardboard to punish myself for getting in the car.
“If Victoria needs me to pull any strings for her at the firm, you’ll let me know, right? Or your mom will?” Mrs. Haber paused for a second. “Not that she’d need it. Any office would be lucky to get her.”
The pastry turned into dry mush in my mouth. I couldn’t swallow it. I couldn’t speak. “Mhmm,” I grunted, desperately fishing my emotional-support water bottle out of my bag. A few sips later, I managed to swallow the huge lump.
Mary Heather glanced back at me before tapping her phone. A text arrived—just her and me, not the group.
Mary Heather:
i swear she’d adopt your sister if your parents ever didn’t want her anymore
I snorted.
Me:
Then I could be the only child and you could try being the younger sister of the most perfect person to ever walk the earth!
Mary Heather:
absolutely not
i’d move into victoria’s old room and be your twin instead
That was sweet. She did like me—and had for years! I needed to stop worrying.
“Are you two texting each other from the same car?” Mrs. Haber asked.
“Uh, no.” Mary Heather put her phone in her purse. “I was just checking the stats on our review. It went up this morning.”
“Hmm.” Mrs. Haber smiled. “Because it looked like you were texting each other.”
“Mom! I’m not a liar!”
I was not getting involved in that. So, while they teased/argued about Mary Heather’s reputation as an honest person, I sank back into the heated leather seat, nibbling the frosting off my pastry. It was the only part that actually seemed intended for human consumption.
Finally, Mary Heather’s mom let us out near the school’s entrance.
“Uuuugh, I hate her sometimes.” Mary Heather hiked up her backpack. “She’s so annoying. And she doesn’t know about anything on-trend.”
I nodded sympathetically, even though Mrs. Haber seemed pretty good to me. She drove Mary Heather everywhere. She didn’t ask a ton of probing questions—at least in front of me. And if Mary Heather wanted something, she generally got it. Brand new.
My mom wasn’t bad, either, but she was really busy with work and she said no more often than she said yes. She said boundaries and limitations were good for me.
“Well, time to face the day. At least it’s a short week.” Mary Heather tossed the remainder of her pastry in the trash and marched into the building. I followed. “Honestly,” she added, “Kat better control her mouth today. The way she was badgering you last night—that wasn’t okay.”
The knot in my chest loosened a little. “Thank you! I couldn’t believe how aggressive she was being. Like, it was a single picture. It’s not that serious.” I wasn’t going to bring Grayson up. Mary Heather would absolutely remind me that he wasn’t cool enough to even know our names.
“I think Aunt Flo is visiting her,” Mary Heather said, wrinkling her nose. “She asked me how to use a tampon. Because the first time she tried, she didn’t realize the applicator was supposed to come out.”
I paused. “So, wait. She—”
“Yeah. She left it in.”
My jaw dropped. “And she gives me crap?”
“Mm-hmm.” Mary Heather mimed zipping her lips. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”
I nodded very seriously as we stared at each other for a second. Then I giggled.
Mary Heather giggled, too.
Which just made my giggles worse, until they became full-on belly laughs. I could picture Kat’s face, stiff with discomfort. And every time I thought of her texting Mary Heather to ask for help—
Mary Heather was screeching and gasping, too, her cheeks bright red.
“Okay,” I breathed, “be—be calm.”
“I’m so calm,” Mary Heather panted.
Then we were laughing again, this close to collapsing onto the floor. My side was burning.
A nearby teacher cleared her throat. Mrs. Lopez. “Is something funny, girls?”
I sucked in a breath and wiped my watering eyes. “We’re fine. Nothing’s funny.”
She didn’t look like she believed me. Which was fair, considering. But Mary Heather and I managed to keep it together long enough to skitter past Mrs. Lopez’s classroom.
“I’m good now.” I wiped the tear spots off my glasses with the bottom of my shirt. “Man, leaving the applicator in is enough to make anyone cranky. But Kat shouldn’t take it out on her friends.”
“Right? It’s not like she even has other friends. She can’t afford to lose us.” Mary Heather tilted her head toward a classroom door. “This is my stop. See you at lunch!”
I waved and went on my way. It was criminal that we barely had any classes together. Only algebra and ASL in the afternoon. Better than nothing, I supposed.
I couldn’t imagine having to go the whole day without my friends. Talk about fighting for survival.
Somehow, I endured until lunchtime. I was last to the table, like always, because I had to hike from the whole other side of the building, go through the line, and wait for the jocks ahead of me to stop goofing around long enough to swipe their lunch cards.
But finally, I took my spot beside Mary Heather, across from Kat and Jess.
“Our stats are looking great,” Mary Heather said the moment I dropped my bag between our chairs. “The latest review is blowing up. Virginia, you were right to get the orange cocoa. Everyone is saying they want to try it now. Kat, you’ve inspired a few weirdos who also want to breathe fire.”
“There’s always someone,” Kat said, nodding sagely.
“No love for the gingerbread?” Jess asked. “I knew I should have gone with the classic.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Mary Heather shrugged. “Maybe that should be a rule from now on: Someone always tries the basic offering.”
Kat tore open a bag of chips. “That should be you, then. The most basic of them all.”
Mary Heather sniffed. “My taste is refined, thank you.”
Kat shoved a whole chip into her mouth and chomped down, the entire time maintaining eye contact with Mary Heather.
Calling Mary Heather basic was low. Sure, it was kind of true, but it wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe if Kat didn’t spend so much time worrying how not to be basic, she’d understand that some things were popular for a reason. Including classic hot chocolate.
Mary Heather had already moved on, though. “They love your photos, Jess. All the comments are saying how good the photography is getting. So you’re doing that right.”
Jessica smiled down at her sandwich.
“Speaking of your photos,” Mary Heather added, “last night, I ordered prints of the one with all our hands on the cups. Four, so we can all have one.”
Jess’s smile dropped, then reappeared, but somewhat more forced than before. “That’s great.”
“I’ll hang it up on my ceiling,” Kat declared. “So I can look at all of your fake fingernails every night right before I go to sleep.”
“It’s creepy when you say it like that.” Mary Heather flashed her perfectly manicured nails. “Anyway, mine are real.”
My fingernails were real, too, and so were Jess’s. So Kat was just being herself again.
Kat took a huge bite of her pizza, swallowing maybe half of it before she asked, “So now that Virginia is taking pictures, too, are we getting prints of hers? I’m not hanging up pictures of random losers on my wall.”
“Holy crap, Kat! Let it go.” Just like that, I was angry again. “Everyone takes photos. You have dozens of pictures of crumbling walls on your phone because they ‘speak to your crumbling soul’ or whatever.”
“That’s different. I don’t need approval like you do. And I also don’t take pictures of people without their permission. That’s weird.”
She had a point, but … “It doesn’t even matter. I deleted the picture. I didn’t like it.”
“Really?” Jessica frowned, like somehow she was the victim here.
Kat snatched my phone and—before I could take it back—she had it unlocked. Of course she knew my passcode. She’d watched me open my phone a thousand times.
“Give it back!” I reached, but she was on the other side of the table. She twisted away and swiped through my apps.
“Oh ho!” she crowed. “It’s not deleted. Not even a little bit.” She slammed my phone (seriously??) onto the table, screen open to the photo of Grayson and the books. “Look at that.”
I grabbed my phone back, locking it as I shoved it into my pocket. “You’re such a bully, Kat. You can’t just take people’s stuff like that. Apologize to me.”
Kat rolled her eyes. “You just can’t take a joke. Grow up.”
Oh, I was so sick of Kat and her “it’s a joke” defense. It was never a joke. Not with her.
“Yeah.” Mary Heather turned to me. “It’s not a big deal. Kat teases everyone.”
“What?” I gaped at her. “That is not what you said this morning.”
Mary Heather shrugged. “I was annoyed this morning. I’m over it now. You should be, too. You’re too sensitive.”
“Are you kidding?” My head felt ready to explode with fury. “God, you’re so—you’re so fake, Mary Heather.”
She straightened. “Excuse me?”
Normally, I would back down now. Laugh it off. Pretend it was okay that Kat was a bully and Mary Heather was two-faced. But not today.
“You heard me,” I hissed. “You pretended to be on my side this morning, but you weren’t. You don’t care about me. You’re a fake, spoiled rich girl who complains about having everything. And if you don’t have it, you take it. Like, did you even ask Jess if you could make prints of her photo?”
Jessica’s eyes were round, her sandwich crushed in her white-knuckled grip. “I’d have said yes,” she whispered. “It would have been nice if you’d asked, though.”
“But I knew you would say yes. So I didn’t have to ask.” Mary Heather turned on me again. “You’re such a baby. Seriously, get over it.”
I laughed bitterly. Get over it. Of course that was what she wanted. “Sure, I’ll get over it and go back to being your quiet little proofreader. That sounds fun.”
Kat snorted. “It’s not our fault you don’t have a personality. I’ve known cans of tuna more interesting than you.”
Everything felt hot. Out of control.
“So we’re all going to pretend it’s okay she talks to me like that?” I swung toward Jess. “Speak up!”
Jess’s sandwich was completely pulped now. She tucked the remains into a reusable container and snapped on the lid. “I have to go.”
“Oh, come on! Don’t act like you haven’t complained about both of them before.”
But Jessica was already standing up and gathering her bags. Evacuation in progress.
“Aww, now you’ve upset sensitive little baby number two.” Kat sneered at me. “You both really need a sense of humor.”
The words blasted out of me before I could stop them. “Like I’m going to take advice from someone who doesn’t even know how to use a tampon!”
Just then, I realized the cafeteria was silent. And the word tampon had been very loud.
It had hit like a massive meteor on an unsuspecting world.
On the other side of the room, a boy snickered. Then another one.
Kat’s face was red. Firetruck red. She looked like she wanted to bury me in a deep hole somewhere in the frozen wilderness.
Mary Heather, too, looked dangerously close to committing homicide. And since she was sitting right next to me, she might succeed.
I scooted away.
When Mary Heather spoke, her voice was cool and menacing. “Leave.”
“What?”
Her tone didn’t change. “You heard me. Leave.”
“Yeah,” Kat said. “You’re not our friend. You never were.”
I glanced around, looking for help. Nearby, I saw Derrick and Michael smirking.
And Taelor and Christina, both in the school band.
We’d always been friendly, but neither of them looked like they were ready to help me now.
And there was Grayson in the back, observing the complete annihilation of my social life. Like this wasn’t half his fault.
As the laughter spread, a few of the football players gave a low Ooooo. Basically, everyone was watching us. And the teachers? Where the heck were they?
My eyes were hot with tears, but I didn’t let them fall. Not yet. I slid back, chair scraping tile, and grabbed my bag.
“Go on, Virginia,” Kat said.
I glanced at Mary Heather again. Just to be sure. But her glare was hard and her jaw was set. She hated me now.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and marched toward the door, trying to keep my head high. But as I stepped into the hall, the enormity of that fight shifted into focus. I’d blown up at my friends. I’d actually told them what I thought.
And there was no coming back from this.