Chapter 17 #2
“So, I told Jenny she fucks dead dogs for cash in Italian,” I say to Jake in as conversational a tone as I can manage. “And then I took my food and went to eat by myself, also as usual. And as I walked across the courtyard, I took a big drink of my milkshake.”
The putrid taste comes back to me. So visceral puke rises in my throat. I choke it down, the way I have a million times since that afternoon.
“Someone had fucked with it, Jake. Do you know what they did?”
“Ada…”
“Someone had put dog shit in my milkshake.”
“What?”
“Dog. Shit,” I stretch each syllable until it screams. “I pulled off the lid, and there was dog shit in my milkshake. Still intact. White. Mouldy.”
Jake slams a fist to his mouth, the colour draining from his face. “Jesus Christ.”
I watch, unmoved. I’ve lived with that memory for so long that my reactions come in waves.
Sometimes I go numb, sometimes I want to puke, but for years, I had nightmares.
When I was twenty-one, it got so bad I stopped sleeping.
I couldn’t eat anything I hadn’t cooked for myself.
I’d stare at plates, second-guessing every ingredient, wondering if I’d missed something.
I’ve spent thousands of dollars on therapy, and I can still barely eat anything that isn’t one colour, visibly untouched, or given to me by someone I trust. Baked potatoes.
Yogurt. Corn chips. Turns out Autism, plus trauma, equals ‘eating disorder.’
“Ada,” Jake rasps. “Ada.”
“Jenny did it. She brought a bag of dog-crap to school, put it in my milkshake and handed it to me in front of everyone.”
Jake’s temples have gone greenish-white, and there’s sweat glossing his forehead, but I’m not done yet. The story’s stayed locked inside me for too long; I’m going to get it all out.
“You know we had a fight, don’t you? That I hit Jenny?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why. I spat out my dog shit milkshake, which made everyone around fucking laugh, ran back to the delivery table, dropped my food and went at her.”
“Fuck,” Jake says hoarsely. “I just heard you…”
“Say it.”
He winces. “Went nuts. Picked a fight with her for no reason.”
I feel myself smile, my lips moving like they’re pulled by strings.
“Well, now you know. It’s the only real fight I’ve ever been in.
I got Jenny a couple of times, but she’s taller than me.
She clipped me right in the eye. It didn’t stop me, though.
I punched her in the stomach and shoved her over.
Once she was down, I climbed on top of her, grabbed her hair and started slamming her head into the ground.
I would’ve killed her, Jake. I wanted to kill her. ”
“You were in shock.” He reaches for my hand, and I yank it away.
“Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to stop. Fletcher Dean and Colin Wintergreen tried to get me off her, and I went for them too.”
“You split Colin’s lip,” Jake says with a shadow of a smile, but nothing about that day is funny to me.
I remember swinging, kicking, scratching, biting, shoving Fletcher over and going for Colin’s throat.
My rage made me as strong as ten men. Like one of those mums who lift cars off babies.
But I was still just a five-foot-two girl who skipped PE to play the flute and eventually, someone got me in a headlock.
Fletcher, I think. Not that I blame him.
“After the guys got me under control, it was all over,” I tell Jake. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I sort of blacked out. Next thing I knew, I was in Principal Friezen’s office, and he was telling me I was suspended and probably going to be expelled.”
“Of course, I believe y—”
“But then Mrs. Hartford came in and said Jenny was telling everyone I attacked her because I’m schizophrenic—”
“Fucking hell.”
“—But Mrs. Hartford found the milkshake with the shit still inside. She put two and two together and asked Jenny if she had anything to do with it.” My brain burns at the memory.
“Of course, Queen Bitch went into full backpedal mode, then. Sobbed her eyes out and said never in a million years would she do that, and someone needed to call the bakery and get them shut down.”
Jake swears under his breath.
“Mrs. Hartford didn’t believe Jenny,” I say dully. “I suppose I’ve got her to thank for getting to Juilliard.”
“But what did Principal Friezen—”
“Say, when he found out Jenny fed me shit? He asked if I thought she had done it, and I told him…”
My voice breaks. I can’t bring myself to keep going because the truth is, I told him everything. How Jenny started picking on me on my very first day of school and never stopped. The names, the rumours, the way she hunted me down, even when I tried to avoid her. Everything.
Principal Friezen listened, but the longer I talked, the more uncomfortable he became.
I read what he was thinking like sheet music.
He believed me, but he didn’t want to deal with the situation.
After all, Jenny was the Head Girl with rich parents, and I was a latecomer Australian, who repeatedly told him she’d top herself before playing the flute at assembly.
So, when I was done wailing about Jenny, Principal Friezen slid me a box of tissues and said, “I can see why you’re so upset, Ada, but there are only a few months until graduation… ”
I pick up my sparkling wine and down it.
“Ada?” Jake urges. “What did you tell him?”
I press a hand to my mouth to suppress another gag. “It doesn’t matter. Jenny said the dog shit milkshake wasn’t her. I said it was, but I’d still beaten the fuck out of her in front of half the school. Friezen split the difference. I didn’t get suspended, and Jenny didn’t get in trouble.”
Jake’s eyes are so full of pity, I have to turn away.
“At least Jenny left me alone after that. She stopped talking about me. Wouldn’t even look at me. The next week, Juilliard sent me an acceptance offer, and it was all over as far as I was concerned.”
“What about your parents?” Jake asks in the tone he uses when he knows I’m lying. “Did they—”
“I didn’t tell them what happened. There was no point.”
“What about Cece?”
I fix him with a glare. “She doesn’t know, and it’s staying that way.”
“But what if Jenny tells—”
I let out a humourless laugh. “No chance. She flew way too close to the sun with that dog-shit caper. You think she wants people knowing what a psychotic bitch she really is?”
Jake’s jaw tightens.
“Still. I have to live with what she did. She made me eat dog shit. She wrecked my sleep, my body, my head. And now I have to sit across from people who want to act like what happened between us was all ‘kid stuff.’”
Jake’s mouth twists. “You think that’s what I’m saying?”
“You did say that.”
“I didn’t know—”
“And now you do. So what’s gonna happen, Jake? I can answer that for you: nothing. You’re just gonna feel bad for ten minutes, then go back to thinking about rugby.”
“No. It’s just… Fucked. All of it. I feel fucking sick.”
“Who cares? I’m just pointed out that Jenny was never just some high school bitch. She’s a sociopath, and you slept with her. And then you met with her for coffee and lied to me. And now, I can’t look at you without seeing her.”
Jake’s head drops. A marionette whose strings have been cut.
The waitress approaches, reaching for my empty prosecco glass. “Would either of you like anything else?”
“Two scotches,” Jake tells the table. “Neat. Doubles. Please?”
The waitress scurries off, leaving us to sit in the thick, buzzing quiet. I don’t have anything left to say. I’m all hollowed out. The scotches arrive, starkly out of place among the iced lattes and Eggs Benedict. Jake and I swig in silence. Our drinks are almost empty when he speaks again. “Ada?”
“Yeah?” I say, through lips like concrete.
“Can you look at me? Please?”
The pain in his voice compels me to raise my eyes. I wish I hadn’t. Even pale, sweating and miserable, he’s still so fucking beautiful.
“What?”
“I know you want to finish things with me, and I know you don’t owe me another chance.
But if you let me, I wanna tell you something good.
About how I felt about you at school. It might not help, but I wanna…
I want you to know how it was for me. Give you something nice from that time to think about, maybe. ”
I feel nothing. I’m so tired. “I’m not going to be your girlfriend again, Jake. No matter what you tell me.”
“That’s okay, but if it really is over…?”
The faint note of hope in his voice makes me want to cry. “It is.”
“Right.” He swallows hard. “You wanna know when I first fell for you? Like, really fell for you?”
My heart flutters sluggishly. It’s painful, but not painful enough to keep me from nodding. “Okay.”
“Right.” Jake looks at me. “It was a few months after you showed up. I was cutting class with Will. We had double history, and we were hungover—”
I snort because, of course, he was.
“—Anyway, we couldn’t deal with Mr. Caffrey banging on about the Tudors for two hours, so Will and I camped out behind the music wing.” A smile touches his lips. “Then I heard music. Most of the music that came out of that place was godawful, but this wasn’t.”
My chest goes hot. ‘Music wing’ was an overly fancy term for what was essentially a glorified shed with a keyboard in it, but my parents only let me go to Pukekohe High because Mrs. Kingston, the music teacher, was a former first chair with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
She hated me and pretty much everyone, but she was a brilliant flautist, and she taught me everything she knew.
“Will and I were supposed to be lying low, but the more I listened, the more I had to know who was playing. So, I risked sticking my head up, looked in the window and…” Jake’s face goes dreamy, his gaze seeming to slide through me and into the past. “It was you.”
I stare into my scotch glass, and as much as I want to blame the heat spreading through me on liquor, I know it’s not responsible.