Chapter Ten
Are we ever gonna talk about why she dresses like that?
Who? Lowry?
Obviously. Who else in here is dressed like someone’s weird aunt?
Maybe she IS someone’s weird aunt.
We don’t know.
Notes exchanged on the printout of “Success is counted sweetest” by Emily Dickinson
“Esha,” I whisper-hiss as she walks across the cafeteria.
“What?” she calls over her shoulder. Her white sneakered feet don’t stop moving toward Piper’s table, and I don’t know why I assumed they would.
“Leave her alone,” I hiss again, less of a whisper and more of a plea.
Esha rolls her eyes and keeps walking, right up to where Piper sits alone. Piper has her nose in a book and her AirPods in. This is classic I want to be left alone body language, and somehow, we’re still here. Although—like before—I sense loneliness from her.
For one intense moment, I think Esha is going to say something dramatic. Like, This is an intervention, or a more direct, Why haven’t you dumped him yet?
“Hey,” she says instead. Her smile is soft and gentle.
She seems warm, not unhinged. I’ll never know how she pulls that off.
It must be in those eyes. They’re fathomless, and she could rule the world with just a look.
Almost a shame she wants to use them for saving puppies and kittens instead of running for president.
“What’s up?” Piper asks, like we must have come over here for a reason. Like we wouldn’t just come by to talk. She closes her book and neatly tucks her AirPods away. All of her stuff matches: backpack, pencil pouch, wallet, AirPods case. All in the same dusty lavender.
“Well …,” Esha starts, letting her voice trail off and looking over at me.
At that moment, I realize what this is: an ambush. We’re not ambushing Piper. Esha is ambushing me. She does this sometimes. Opens doors for me. Metaphorical ones. Social doors. They’re doors that barely ever close for her and never, ever open for me.
“We just …,” I start, because the door’s open, but the first step is always the hardest. “We just wanted to check in.”
Piper’s eyebrows draw up, and I feel my mind starting to whir again. If Esha is Simone Ashley, Piper is a younger, more Southern Phoebe Dynevor. A classic blond beauty who expresses all of her emotion in her forehead and lips.
“I know you’ve been through a lot lately.” I massively understate the obvious because I don’t want to point out what a mess this all is. “And we just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Oh.” Piper’s face falls, and my stomach drops with it. She picks at a fraying edge of a notebook page. I start to think I’ve made a huge mistake.
Then, she laughs. This laugh isn’t light and free, like a joy she can’t contain. It’s heavy and dark, like a despair that’s containing her.
“I didn’t think anyone cared.” Once her laugh drops off, her face crinkles up in a way that seems uncomfortable. “I mean, I know that’s pathetic, but I’ve just been counting down the days until high school is over.”
I don’t know what to do with that. It worries me beyond belief.
“But … I’ve been thinking.” Piper shrugs, and her shoulders stay set high near her ears. “About what you said.”
“About what I said? What did I say?” I ask. A long moment passes.
“You said it was okay if it didn’t work out.” Her posture finally relaxes, and she rests her forearms on the table.
“Oh. Yeah. I did say that.” I can’t figure out her expression. “I’m sorry. Was I not supposed to say that?”
“No, I appreciate the honesty, actually. No one’s ever told me that. That I could be okay without him.”
“What do you mean?” Esha asks, completely investing herself in this situation just because I also sort of have. “Why wouldn’t you be okay without him?”
Piper’s somber eyes turn to the center of the room, watching her former friends falling all over one another laughing without her. She looks so desperately sad. It’s a hopeless look I recognize, but I’ve never seen it on her.
“You’ve seen them.” Piper meets my eyes first, then Esha’s. “Some of them got so frustrated, they gave up on me. The others just like being popular. The laughing ones. If I’m without him, I’m without them too.”
I know the ones who’ve drifted from Piper did it because they can’t stand to see her hurting herself with this awful boy.
Maybe that was wrong of them; I can’t really say.
The others, though? The ones who have chosen Bryce, because of his social caché?
Knowing I might be about to make a huge social misstep, I continue anyway: “You’re without them now, aren’t you? ”
Piper reels back like she’s been mortally wounded, and Esha widens her eyes at me in a way that lets me know I did indeed fuck this conversation up.
“I just mean, like, literally. Physically. They’re over there. You’re over here.”
Esha rolls her eyes. I don’t usually use “literally.” I always mean what I say literally.
“That wasn’t really the best way to say it,” Esha murmurs. “But she’s right. They’re taking his side in a breakup that hasn’t happened yet.”
We all three look at one another for a heartbeat as that thought settles in.
There’s a moment of the slightest uncomfortable silence.
Then Piper sobs. It’s a wet, aching sound from the middle of her chest. I don’t know what to do with most tense social conventions, and I don’t know what to do with Piper’s deflated heart, but I can absolutely handle her tears.
“Okay, come with me.” I pull Piper off her high-rise chair. She sniffles, and her every breath sounds snotty. “Stay here and watch her stuff, please,” I tell Esha. She nods, knowing exactly where I’m headed. Toward the best place to cry.
Hayes quirks one eyebrow up at me as we rush past him. I always thought that look was the derision leaking out of him. A sneer. I still don’t know exactly what that eyebrow means, but maybe it’s not meant to be as harsh as I assumed.
Piper sniffles, and I hold open the heavy bathroom door with basically my entire body.
She leans against a sink that has to be freezing, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.
All the stall doors are open, so we’re thankfully alone.
There’s nothing worse than a crowded bathroom when all you want is a place to sob in peace.
“Do you want a makeup wipe?” I ask, meeting my own eyes in the mirror instead of looking at her. “I know they’re terrible for the environment, but I have an emergency stash.”
Instead of responding, Piper grabs two handfuls of paper towels from the dispenser and runs them under the tap. She looks gaunt in a way that’s kind of scary.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she says. The water’s still running over her fists. The paper towels are starting to dissolve into gross brown pulp.
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” I turn off the water and scoop the melted paper remains out of the sink. It’s a sensory nightmare. She grabs another dry paper towel and scrapes at her undereyes. She’s wiping at her skin so hard, I can hear the scratching.
“I don’t belong here.” Her arms cross at her chest, one mascara-stained ball of paper towel still in her hand.
As she looks at my reflection in the mirror, I tense. Now that the tears have stopped, I’m lost again. “Here? In the bathroom?” I look around us, like there’s something in the mint-green subway tile lining the walls that’ll tell me what to do in this situation.
“No. Well, yeah? I don’t belong at this school. And the bathroom is a part of that, I guess.” She runs her fingers through long, white-blond hair, smoothing flyaways and parting it into three strands she starts to braid.
“Why wouldn’t you belong here?” I lean against the sink next to hers, facing away from the mirror. This way, I can look at my shoes and not feel bad about it.
“I’m not like you. I’m not smart. I wasn’t built for this. I’m failing most of my classes and barely passing the rest. Y’all like living in a pressure cooker. You thrive, and I barely survive.”
I laugh, and her face crumbles. Shit. No. That’s not what I meant. I was just thinking of how off base she was, to assume I’m actually having a good time. That I’m thriving. That’s what’s laughable.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …” My voice trails off as tears pool in her eyes again. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I promise. I would never do that. I’m not good at comforting people, but I’m not, like, mean either.”
Piper’s face pinches up in confusion.
I take a deep breath and try to explain myself. Not for the first time, I wonder why I’m always having to explain myself. “I’m not thriving. I literally brought you in here because it’s the best place to cry. I have a list.”
She giggles, a wet squeak of a laugh. We’ve never been all that close, but I suddenly feel like that laugh has been missing around here. She brightens up this pressure cooker. Lessens the intensity just a little.
“I’m serious,” I say, even though I’m almost always serious.
“I know,” she replies. Her voice has come back some.
She both looks and sounds stronger than when I pulled her in here.
“Thanks.” With a smile that seems almost shy, she stands up straight, rolls her shoulders back, and pulls open the bathroom door with a strength I don’t think I have ever possessed.
I stand up too, taking one last look at my reflection before I follow her.
Hayes is sitting on the floor in the hallway. I would’ve tripped over him if I wasn’t looking at my feet like always. He’s sipping the energy drink he’s just bought from a vending machine. I’d almost bet his physician parents treat those things like an illicit substance.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Maybe don’t just hang out right outside the bathroom. I think that’s how you end up on some kind of list.”
“I saw you take off for your crying spot.” He shrugs, like that’s supposed to explain why he also took off for my crying spot. I’ve had boys say and do things that send me running away crying, him included. I’ve never had one follow me.
Through the open cafeteria doors, my eyes drift to where Piper sits, back at her table with Esha. They’re not talking; they’re just sitting together with their notebooks open. Piper’s dusty lavender and Esha’s puppy folders and cat binders.
“I loaned it to a friend.” I shrug too. This is weird.
Standing here right outside the bathroom.
Looking down at him on the floor. Him gazing up at me like I’m some fascinating specimen in Lab.
I wonder if that fascination is like, Wow, this cell-wall structure looks like a piece of art or if it’s Wow, mold took over the entire petri dish.
“Everyone in this school is kinda emotionally fucked up, huh?” He shakes his head.
“Everyone?” I ask, thinking he misspoke. “Even you?”
He drains the last sip of his orange gasoline (okay, his energy drink) and extends a hand in my direction. He’s asking me to help him up, even though I’m extremely weak and he’s extremely strong. That doesn’t make any sense. But I grab his hand, pulling him toward me through mostly his own power.
“You have no idea, Novella,” he says once I’m looking up at him again.
I really don’t. No clue.