Chapter 5
Unsurprisingly, I spent the rest of the day struggling to survive the fallout from the lunchtime disaster. I thought about texting Dad to see if he’d come get me, but he’d want to know what happened and I wasn’t sure I could explain it.
In algebra, I sat on the other side of the room from Mary Heather. In ASL, she pretended she didn’t know me. In every class, whispers stopped the moment I walked in, leaving only a few nervous giggles.
Last period was a class I shared with Kat: English. When she walked in right behind me (accidentally, I assume), someone said, “Tampon!” in a strangled whisper-yell.
Kat stiffened. Then she turned about-face and marched out of the room.
I thought about doing the same, but I didn’t want her to think I was following her. So I took a seat in the back and tried to disappear.
Of course, it didn’t work. I caught Sophia, Taelor, and Christina twisting to look at me every few minutes. Even Grayson—who was also exiled to the back row—glanced at me every now and then, like he wasn’t sure if I was about to infect him with my toxic cloud of social disaster.
“What?” I hissed at my biggest crush in the whole world. Because that was the kind of day I was having.
He cringed and turned away.
I took off my glasses and buried my face in my hands. While the class discussed schoolboys going feral on an island, I wondered if I could get out of here by saying my stomach hurt.
It would have been the truth.
The final bell was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.
I had to walk home, since Mrs. Haber usually drove me, and you couldn’t pay me to get into a car with Mary Heather.
But since it was still late November and still freezing, I pulled my hands inside my jacket sleeves and hugged myself all the way home.
Winter was only nice when I was cozy with my friends.
Which I no longer had.
I wiped away a few tears before they dried on my face and caused frostbite or something, causing me to die of heartbreak and hypothermia. Would my ex-friends even go to my funeral? Probably not.
By the time I stepped through my front door, I was beyond shivering. I vowed to dress warmer tomorrow, since apparently I’d be walking myself to and from school for the rest of my life.
Or I could ask Mom to drive me… .
And have her ask about what happened between Mary Heather and me, and why couldn’t I be more like Victoria?
Ugh. No thanks. I’d rather get hypothermia.
I kicked off my shoes and hurried to my room, where Zooms was sleeping across two sets of my pajamas: the two-day-old ones, and the (formerly fur-free) ones I’d pulled out last night. How did she do it?
I flopped down next to her, earning an annoyed “Meow.”
For a few minutes, I poked around on the internet, following my bad mood to articles about the end of the world. Poor dinosaurs. Poor weird trilobites. Those guys never recovered.
Then I thought about all the things I was supposed to do.
Homework. (AGAIN.) Something for the library’s booth.
(Sooo didn’t feel like that right now.) And I’d meant to text my text-door neighbor.
Well, clearly I was in the market for a new best friend.
A better best friend. A funny, creative, and kind best friend.
That wasn’t so much to ask, was it?
Me:
Hello text-door neighbor!
Did you know the world has ended FIVE times, geologically speaking?
Not that it’s a contest, but my favorite world-ending event is called the GREAT DYING
Its official name is the Permian-Triassic extinction event and you can thank (probably) a scary ton of volcanic activity, which resulted in waaaay too much carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, acidic oceans, and a depleted ozone layer
So your basic world-ending stuff.
Anyway thought you should know
I stared at the phone while the time ticked in the top corner. The screen went dark. Nothing happened. My text-door neighbor didn’t text me back. Maybe my message was too bleak.
So much for my new best friend fantasy.
I did have a few unread messages from people at school, though. I swiped through them, only to find everyone wanted the details about the lunch drama. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Not yet.
Not with humans.
I turned to Zooms, who was washing her outstretched leg, slurping ridiculously loudly.
“So, Zooms,” I started, “do you have a minute to listen?”
She paused mid-lick and stared at me.
“It’s kind of a big deal.”
Then my cat, my only friend left in the whole world, went to the other side of the bed, where she faced away from me and resumed washing.
I considered my options. Victoria wasn’t home until later, so I couldn’t bother her. Maybe the basement crack needed company?
No, that was absurd. I did have some library books to read. But the idea of going on with life—like my entire world hadn’t just blown up—was laughable.
There’d always been pressure and instability in our clique, but we’d made it work … until this one little thing upset the delicate balance. Boom. Natural disaster.
My phone buzzed with a Scrollr notification.
YOU’VE BEEN TAGGED
What? I had my personal account, obviously, but I barely used it. No one tagged me.
I tapped on the notification and waited while Scrollr loaded a post from an account I’d never heard of before: “Deer Hill Dirt.”
Well, that was niche.
The post finished loading. It was a screenshot. Just one text.
Deer Hill Dirt
Virginia:
I want to fix her hair next time she falls asleep in class.
I mean why is Kelsey so tired all the time???
Have you noticed that?
She just falls asleep in the middle of algebra like it’s her private bedroom.
Read Caption
The caption read, “a shovel of dirt may not be enough to bury u, but what about a whole dump truck? more to come!”
My brain felt like it was short-circuiting, like I couldn’t possibly be reading what I was reading. I stared at the screenshot for a whole minute and forced myself to reread it. Just to be sure.
They were my own words.
Typed into my own phone.
Just last night.
I had a weird sensation of falling, even though I was lying down already. A loud whoosh rolled through my ears and my heart was racing. I could hear it echoing in my head.
The post already had four reactions: two omg faces, a zzz emoji, and one eyeroll.
My hand moved like it was disconnected from me as I tapped to the scroll’s main feed. I couldn’t tell who owned the account, but there were only three options.
That was when I realized there were other posts. Just two more. But still. They’d been posted ten minutes ago. While I’d been lying here talking to my cat.
Deer Hill Dirt
Virginia:
Sophia thinks she’s so good at basketball, but she’s just tall
Her extreme confidence is so cringe
Read Caption
Had I said that? Maybe. Probably.
Privately. When everyone else would have been dunking on Sophia, too. It wasn’t like I’d started that.
I read the next one.
Deer Hill Dirt
Virginia:
Lee has some kind of skin condition on his ear
I sit behind him in algebra and it’s so flakeyyy
Sometimes he snows on my desk
Read Caption
Well, it was true. A little lotion wouldn’t hurt him. But …
I was cold. My whole body felt like ice. It was a different kind of freezing than my walk home. That had been because it actually was cold outside. But wrapped up in a blanket, huddled next to Lady Zooms-a-Lot, I should have been warm.
I tapped my phone but nothing happened. Something was wrong with my circulation. Or I was an actual ghost now, thanks to this latest world-ending event. Because that was the thing about disasters: They spawned new ones.
I should have seen this coming.
The roaring in my ears returned. I planted my feet on the floor and bent over, head between my knees as I tried to breathe.
This didn’t feel real.
This couldn’t be real.
On the floor, my phone buzzed and lit up with another notification.
YOU’VE BEEN TAGGED
They’d posted again.