MALLORY
As soon as I turned on my phone the next morning, it started dinging repeatedly with missed texts.
Drunk Vic and Al had bombarded me with calls and messages the night before, wanting me to pick up their drunk asses from who knows where. So I’d turned off my phone.
I would feel their wrath today, I knew. But maybe it was worth it. If not, they were going away to college at the end of the summer, and I was being left behind anyway.
Alysha: HELLO?????
Alysha: FOR FUCKS SAKE AAAANSWEEEEER!!!!!!
Then Vic followed with her texts. There was so much fury in all those capital letters. I wish I could’ve witnessed it. But I was petrified, too. I knew what those two could do to the others when things didn’t work out the way they wanted.
But among all the threats, one message that made my heart sing.
Unknown: really?
I knew it was Derek. It had to be. I assigned his name to the number right away, smiling like a fool.
Then the phone lit up with the call. Derek.
“Hello?” I almost whispered when I picked up. I didn’t mean to sound scared or apologetic. That was a habit.
“What the hell did you do, Mal?” His voice was smooth and a little edgy. At nine in the morning. On my phone. I’d expect him to fly off the handle, but that wasn’t Derek, I learned later.
I cleared my throat, summoning all my courage. “Who is this?” I asked all businesslike.
“Who is this?” A chuckle followed, not so friendly. “Why, you have many guys call your mobile?”
“Only the ones who have one. Not many around here.”
Another chuckle. “You are a clever little thing, aren’t you? The fuck did you do to my tire?”
“Pardon me?”
There was silence. I held my breath. I was a bundle of nerves, but I kept my mouth shut. It was a power play. When confronted, you didn’t apologize, didn’t ask questions, didn’t blabber nonsense that made you look pathetic. I should know. I’d done that my entire life.
With Derek, I needed to play smart. He didn’t know me, didn’t know my pathetic family, or my reputation. He hadn’t seen me around Al and Vic long enough to see them humiliate or jab me with their stupid jokes.
So I waited for his answer, whatever it was. That he needed that damn ride after all. That he wanted to see me again. That he liked last night.
All I got was his soft breathing that finally broke my patience.
“Did you need something?” I asked.
“No.” He hung up.
Wrong answer.
I don’t know if that was the desperation of the last summer with my high school friends, or the fact that most of them would move on, go elsewhere, travel, go to college, while I was stuck in this goddamn town.
Or the fact that Al and Vic were already hung up on him, which made me want him even more.
Or because he called me “Mal,” so personal, and kept using my name and not the nickname usually spat out by others with dismissal like I was less than them.
Don’t know. But what I do know is that I’d had enough of everyone’s bullshit. And I wasn’t going to take it from him either.
I heard a car door slam outside, the doorbell ring.
My brother, Jake, banged on my bedroom door, opened without asking, his smug face all hostile. “Those sluts are here for you.”
Then they were in my room, Al and Vic. They’d never set foot in my house before. Driving past the junkyard just to get to the front porch had always been below them.
Yet here they were, looking around my room with their upper lips curled like they were about to contract a disease.
Vic perched herself on my study desk. Al crossed her arms across her chest, her chin jutting at me, her foot impatiently tapping the floor.
“What happened last night? Did you go deaf?” she asked.
“Forgot to charge my phone,” I explained apologetically.
“Oh, yeah? I called you when your phone still worked.”
“Well, it died right after I left Derek’s house.”
I had to make an effort not to smile. That could cost me.
Al puckered her lips. That was her tell—she was irritated. “What were you doing at Derek’s house?” she asked, her stare drilling into me.
I stiffened, looked down, studying my hands. I hated moments like this. When I was scolded. These two always had a reason to bitch about something.
“We had a thing,” I said barely audibly.
“A thing? What thing, Birdie?” Al spat out words like bullets. “A drink? A talk? What?”
She didn’t give me enough options, because she didn’t think I had any.
“We had sex,” I said quietly and raised my eyes.
Al exchanged an is-she-fucking-serious look with Vic. A snort escaped her. She turned her eyes, like saucers, at me.
But then, Vic said, “You are joking, right?”
And they exploded in laughter.
Al relaxed and shook her head. “Wow, Birdie, this time you really upped your bullshit.”
I laughed nervously, which those two took as a cue that I almost got them.
“Charge your fucking phone,” Al ordered, and the two stormed out of my room.
As soon as I was alone, my smile was gone. I had an urge to do something mean, get a payback. Like the time when I used gloves to collect poison ivy, then rubbed it on Vic’s jacket she left in Al’s car. Blistered skin was the least of her worries.
I was right. They were wrong. They just didn’t know it yet. They wanted bullshit? Here it was.
I dialed Derek, hoping he picked up. And he did, with a curt “Yes.”
“I just had an interesting conversation with Alysha and Victoria,” I said without preamble, not wanting to be interrupted.
“Alysha said that she talked to you last night. Maybe she did, except they were out of town, and I was at your place. Anyway, she said that you sounded like you were desperate to get in her pants. But she’s sure you are all talk and no walk.
Her words. I’d tell her different, but you and I are none of anyone’s business.
I told you, this town is all rumors and immatures. Talk to you later.”
I hung up, my heart beating so fast that I thought I’d pass out.
I knew what I told him would annoy him. If it did, I was hoping that would drive a wedge between him and those two. If I didn’t have a chance with him, at least neither would they.
Just then, my phone pinged with a message.
Derek: pick me up at my house
I scrambled off the bed and got dressed.
I was upping my bullshit, sure. What I needed, though, was to up my game.