Chapter 14
I fell asleep waiting for a reply. Fearing a reply. Yes or no. Either response seemed like it could destroy this safe little shelter Knight and I had built together.
I wondered what Kat and Mary Heather had made up about me—and whether everyone at school would believe it.
And I wondered if Knight would see my request for a call—like, a voice call—and decide I was too much.
And I wondered what I’d thought I was doing when I asked if he would let me call him.
Surely, I hadn’t been ready to tell him all about “Deer Hill Dirt.”
That could never happen. Ever.
I’d need to wait at least a year (or fifteen) before I even told him my name.
Eventually, I drifted off, and only my alarm pulled me out of restless sleep. I zombie-shuffled through my morning routine, then zombie-shuffled out the door.
Just as I was shambling toward the main street, deep in my worries, my phone buzzed.
Knight Errant:
I’m sorry Cardinal!!!
I was asleep
And now I’m going to school
Are you okay? What do you need?
Still a call?? I can try later if you want, but … my phone is kind of broken and audio is weird. But we could try
It would have to be later though
He’d been sleeping! Well, that made sense. It had been late. We’d said goodnight. It hadn’t been some snub against me.
Me:
Yeah I’m okay I guess
I was just freaking out last night
Now I’m tired
Knight Errant:
What happened??
Me:
I’ll tell you later. I’m walking to school now and I don’t want to wander into traffic while texting
Knight Errant:
Good plan.
Hope things get better… .
Also, happy future best friendship week-a-versary!
Me:
Happy FBFWAV!
Okay, that bought me some time to figure out how to explain my panic texts without explaining.
I didn’t want to lie to him, but I couldn’t give him the whole truth.
And since it sounded like he was open to a voice call—maybe?
?—and possibly even expecting it now … I had to figure out how to talk about my problems out loud.
Without, like, breaking down into desperate sobbing.
Just as I was passing under the maple tree—the last of its red leaves had fallen now—I spotted Grayson ahead of me, as usual. He was looking at me, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
“Is it okay if we walk together?” he asked when I approached. “We could talk about the Jolly-Days booth.”
“If you want.” I bit my lip. “I mean … Yes. I’d like to walk with you.”
He smiled and fell into step with me.
I glanced up at him, noting the lines of his profile against the gray morning light. Hooow was he so cute? He wasn’t even doing anything—just existing.
“I should warn you,” I said. “It’s about the ‘Deer Hill Dirt’ thing.
I got a message last night saying the scrollmasters are going to post something I didn’t actually say.
I don’t know what it is. But I know it’s going to be bad.
And I’m sure you know the scrollmasters are my ex-friends.
So if you need me to not sit at your table or whatever, that’s fine.
I packed a sandwich this morning. I can eat in the library. ”
Grayson stopped walking and looked at me. “Are you okay? Seriously, what happened with them?” He shook his head. “Last week you said something about how it was my fault—”
“It wasn’t.” I clutched at my scarf. “I’m sorry. That was dumb. I was upset. Of course it wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
“It’s fine. I snapped at you, too, and that was wrong. You were clearly going through something.” He gazed down at me, frowning. “Go back to the Scrollr thing. They’re making up stuff now? How did it get this far?”
“Yeah, they need new content, I guess.”
“Virginia, how did this start? Tell me. Please.”
I hesitated, but he looked so earnest—and he deserved the truth. “Okay, you know when Mrs. Haber gave you a ride and we talked for, like, half a second?”
He nodded.
“Kat acted like it was this huge deal. Huge. She refused to let it go. She kept going on about how you were a loser and I was a loser for talking to you. She was saying the worst things. She is really, really mean, honestly. She always has been. And Mary Heather wanted to both-sides it, as usual, pretending I was being too sensitive when she fully knows how nasty Kat is. And I’d just …
had enough. I blew up. I guess you heard at lunch. ”
“Everybody heard.”
Of course. I closed my eyes. “The scroll is their revenge. I mean, they’re clearly trying to disguise who owns it, since they’re posting submissions, but it’s definitely Kat and Mary Heather.”
“I don’t have Scrollr.” He hesitated. “But I’ve seen it. Brian showed me.”
So he’d read at least a few posts. Ugh. “Wait, who’s Brian?”
“He sits by you at lunch.”
“Oh.” I cleared my throat. “Well. Yeah. All the texts already on there are real. Unfortunately.”
“That sucks.” A faint line appeared between his eyebrows. “Especially since they’re not … nice.”
“I know,” I whispered. Cold wind stung my cheeks.
Ugh, was I going to cry again? I blinked back tears.
“I wish I hadn’t said those things. But …
I got caught up in the group. Being mean made me feel”—I hated to admit it—“kind of superior. Like the four of us were better than other people. Other people had problems, but we didn’t.
No one else was ever, ever, ever supposed to see any of it, though. ”
Grayson looked thoughtful. “I’m guessing you weren’t the only one saying things like that.”
I snorted. “No. I still have the whole group chat on my phone, of course, but my sister thinks it would be a bad idea for me to post their vicious stuff. She thinks things would get even more out of control.”
“She’s probably right.”
I sighed a very long sigh. “She usually is. But now I just have to let Kat and Mary Heather say whatever they want about me, and hope they eventually get bored.”
“How do you know they’re going to post something fake?”
“Jess told me last night. I haven’t been talking to her, but she texted.”
“Do you trust her?”
“The only person I trust is my cat.” I hugged myself and started walking again. It was too cold to stand around like this. “But I don’t think Jess was lying.”
“Hmm.” Grayson kept up. “Well, you don’t have to eat in the library. Whatever happens, you can stay at our table. It’s fine.”
“You aren’t worried about guilt by association?”
He shrugged. “I’m already at the bottom of the food chain after quitting football.”
Oh. Yeah. He was. He really had nothing left to lose by letting me hang out with him. “Do you miss it?”
Another shrug. “Football was fine. My brothers did it, so I did, too. Mostly I miss having a group.”
“What about Brian and … I don’t know the other boy’s name. At your lunch table.”
“Peter. And we’re not really friends. We just kind of exist together. It’s like camouflage.”
Oh boy, did I understand that. “Thanks for not kicking me out.” At the light, we crossed the street and walked along the retaining wall, where other kids were sitting and gossiping before the bell.
“I mean, I can’t say I was happy to see what I saw on Scrollr.” Grayson hiked up his backpack. “It surprised me. I never thought you were like that.”
Shame burned up my throat and cheeks. My words came out raspy. “I wish I’d stood up to them. I wish I’d told them we shouldn’t be like that.”
That line between his eyebrows came back. “Why didn’t you?”
Ugh. That was a good question. I had to think about it while we walked up the stairs and through the double doors. “Camouflage,” I said finally. “I didn’t want them to talk about me, so I made myself like them instead.”
“Ah,” he said as we squeezed through the door together. His arm brushed mine. “I get that.”
We walked through the main hall, thankfully ignored by the rest of the students. Which meant the fake texts hadn’t been posted yet.
“I’m up here,” Grayson said as we approached Mrs. Lopez’s room. “I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah.” I flashed a tight smile. “Thanks for talking to me about all this. It helped.”
His return smile was heart-meltingly warm. “Any time, Virginia.”
The fake text was posted by lunchtime. I knew this because of the sudden drop in volume when I walked into the cafeteria. It wasn’t silent, but at least half the eighth grade stopped what they were doing to look at me.
Act natural, I told myself as I went through the line. Then, fully aware of all the eyes on me, I went to the back of the cafeteria and sat across from Grayson, who gave a quick nod. Brian and Peter didn’t look up from their trays.
“How bad is it?”
Peter—the boy sitting next to Grayson—unlocked his phone and slid it to the center of the table. The “Deer Hill Dirt” banner had been updated with a black line over my eyes, like a redacted mark. Like I wasn’t even a person anymore.
Deer Hill Dirt
Virginia:
i swear mary heather is the patheticest and most BASIC and BORING rich girl
she has everything but still wines. like wow your life is soooo hard with the pool and the clothes and the makeup and the fancy summer camp, soooo hard, im crying for u. am i supposd to be happy she has all that crap?
SPOILED
also she is like rly RLY dumb, ig it’s the blonde hair lmao
worst of allllll like she’s so pretty but she says she’s a HAG like a literal WENCH and it rly trulyyyy makes me wander if she is looking down on everyone else
actually ik she is … lets be honest
Read Caption
The caption read, “u know someone’s toxic when they talk about friends this way. knife to the heart—through the BACK.”
I clenched my jaw and stared at the text until the screen went dark. Then I slid the phone back to Peter. “Thanks. I guess.”
“Is it the fake one?” Grayson asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t write that.” I’d probably thought it, but I wouldn’t have texted it. Who would I even have texted it to?
They’d gone too far. Way too far. If I let them get away with this, what would they do next?
This ended now.
I stood up and faced Mary Heather, Kat, and everyone else clustered around their table. The cafeteria went absolutely silent. A few people whipped out their phones to take videos.
My pulse was thunder in my ears. “I didn’t say those things. You want proof? I don’t turn off auto-capitalization on my phone, so the first letter of every sentence should be capitalized. Not to mention Mary Heather’s name. Check the other posted texts if you don’t believe me. I did write those.”
Mary Heather and Kat suddenly seemed to be shrinking in their seats, their faces flushed.
“Also, I wouldn’t have said patheticest because that’s not a word.
I’d have used the correct ‘whine’ and ‘wonder,’ too.
One guess who proofread all the reviews for ‘Four Takes.’” I laughed a little.
“If you’re going to make up fake texts and post them to your barely anonymous dirt account, at least try to accurately imitate me. Not this lazy hack job.”
Absolute silence.
“And by the way,” I continued, looking around at the crowd now, “the mean texts I did write? Who do you think I was writing them to? Who do you think laughed at them? Who do you think wrote the exact same kind of trash?” I gestured toward the Four Takes’ table.
“They’re from our group chat. I regret how we behaved there.
That’s not the person I want to be. And that’s all I have to say. ”
Then, like I wasn’t totally freaking out about having just addressed an entire cafeteria full of people who thought I was a monster, I sank back into my seat and ate a fry.
“They’re all still staring,” Grayson said under his breath.
“Let them stare,” I said at a normal volume.
Grayson’s mouth pulled into a strange, surprised smile.
After several freakishly long minutes—my physics book would probably have something to say about time being relative—the cafeteria volume rose as people went back to what they’d been doing before. The lasers-on-the-back-of-my-head feeling fell away.
“That was really cool,” Brain murmured. “I mean, I think your days are numbered. But that was still cool.”
“Great.” I closed my eyes and exhaled. Hopefully, my heart rate would return to normal one day. “I had to say something.”
During extinction events, creatures had to adapt to the new world they were living in. Maybe I would spontaneously develop the ability to become invisible. Or go back in time and undo all this. Or turn certain people’s phones into fancy bricks.
That kind of evolution probably took longer than a week, though. How awful to be a regular human living with the consequences of her actions.
“Just get through today,” Grayson said softly. “And if that seems too big, get through lunch.”
I pressed my palms to the tabletop. Now that I wasn’t facing down a horde of eighth graders hungry for blood and drama, I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. “Why are you being so kind? When I … haven’t been.”
“You have been lately.” He shrugged. “Besides, everyone deserves a second chance—especially if they’re trying. And honestly, sharing screenshots from your group chat doesn’t reflect well on them, either. They betrayed your trust, and that says a lot about them.”
“Yeah,” I said softly, glad I hadn’t posted their side of the texts after all. “That’s a really good point.”
He smiled a little. “I like to make good points. It’s better than making bad points.”
My stomach flipped. How was he so cute? And sweet? And how was I still having all these feelings when there were basically burning meteors raining down on my whole life right now?
Something tapped the side of my shoe under the table.
I looked up, startled. But then, Grayson met my eyes. He smiled.
And my stomach performed an entire gymnastics routine because he’d bumped my foot on purpose.
Without saying another word, I opened my phone and deleted the group chat. Poof. Gone.
Just like Victoria had expected, they’d told on themselves.