and he stepped away from her again. I glanced at Blake.
“Nobody cares,” shrilled Dana. “Nobody understands what it’s like to care about someone. You’re all so wrapped up in yourselves. I—Just fuck all of you!”
“Dana, we are all just as worried and hopeful as you.” Blake’s voice was steady and calm.
Dana’s face contorted into an unpleasant smile, and she started to laugh. “You’re so wrong about that.” She shifted her gaze to me, and then beside me to Max, who had just stepped up. Her smile turned into a grimace. “You are both disgusting.”
I felt stung as she looked directly at me.
I started to stutter out a response, but she got close to my face and said, “You’re just a little slut from the South. You want everyone, and you can’t have them. They don’t want you.”
Everyone hung on her every word.
“You don’t … you don’t even know me.” My voice was not steady or calm.
“Shut up.” She held a hand up in my direction and looked at Max. “If it wasn’t for you, she’d be here tonight. Do you realize that? And that bitch—” she pointed to me “—would not be.”
Dana stalked over to us, her gaze never leaving Max’s.
“You know,” she said, when she was face-to-face with him. Her voice was low, but everyone was listening hard. “You know. No one else here does, because I kept everyone’s secrets. You know that’s probably what she’s off doing, right? Handling the situation?”
“Stop talking now.” He said it firmly.
The air was thick and she stared at him for a long moment. Finally she walked out of the boathouse without saying another word. Johnny followed her.
The room filled with the immediate buzz of chatter that had been bound to follow her outburst. I felt sick and embarrassed. She so clearly hated and resented me. I didn’t want to go back to that room. I wanted to go home. But I had no choice.
“I’m sorry about that,” Max said. He didn’t look at me, simply followed Johnny and Dana’s lead by walking out of the boathouse. There was no reason for me to stay. After a five-minute search for my coat, I left, too.
I heard the screen door slam, and then footsteps. Johnny shouted after me when I was a few steps up. I turned, and he was coming up the stairs.
“Hey, you want me to walk you up?”
Not really. I was feeling sicker by the second, and really wanted to just dart from here to my room. I could hardly imagine saying very much at all. But I probably wasn’t in a position to say no to people.
“Sure.”
We walked in silence for a moment before he said, “So … did you have some fun at least, before the blowout?”
“Yeah, sure, it was fun.” Though it was hard to think of anything else besides what Dana had said.
“People have been pretty messed up about her.”
“Who, Dana?”
“Becca.”
Obviously. I’m an idiot. “Right, right. Of course.”
“Tensions run a little high when her name comes up.”
“I’m sure. Yeah.”
I didn’t want to talk, and suddenly I didn’t want to listen.
What was it about this girl Becca? Everything I’d heard about her made it seem like she was some kind of goddess who enchanted people just by being around them. I mean, I understand that it’s really awful to have a peer be missing and possibly dead … but it’s like she was friends with everyone. It was like she’d been perfect.
I didn’t want to go to my room, where Dana would inevitably be at some point. I was humiliated. I was sick. And to make matters worse, I felt cold pricks of rain start to fall into my hair.
A wave of sickness washed over me. We were only about fifty yards from the girls’ dorm door. I wanted to run to it, but I couldn’t.
“Well, I’m glad you came. We should, I don’t know, hang out or something.”
“Yeah sure. Um … thanks for walking me. I’ll see you tomorrow or something.” I gave a pitiful attempt at a smile and then flew through the door and up to my room.
When I got there, I took a deep breath. In almost that same instant, I was in the bathroom, getting close with the mouth of another toilet.
chapter 8 me
I WOKE UP BRIGHT AND EARLY AT TWO IN THE afternoon. Dana had made it her business to amble around as loudly as possible until she finally fell asleep. I had lain there for God knows how long with my eyes shut, pretending to sleep and trying not to move.
I was trembling and weak when I awoke, and I felt that putting my head in a vise might be a lot more preferable to the pounding it endured now. My churning stomach needed something in it or it was just going to shrivel into a raisin. But I really didn’t feel like eating was going to go well. Even so, I made it down to the dining hall.
Sandwiches, soup, salad, chicken, pancakes … my stomach had all the options in the world and was rejecting even the thought of any of them. I groaned and turned to leave.
And then there was Max, walking in.
I gave a small smile. God I hope I don’t puke.
“Hi.” He looked uncomfortable.
“Hey.”
“Did you just get here?”
I nodded. “Yes. Trying to decide what to eat.” I looked around again at all the things I couldn’t imagine putting down my throat and keeping there.
“Do you want to sit with me?”
A chill filled my chest. I felt so stupid for letting myself drink so much last night that I was screwing myself over today. “Sure.”
We walked through the line together. I looked around me. I didn’t want him to know how bad I was feeling. I really didn’t want to give him the opportunity to picture me with my face in a toilet.
Potato soup. Nope. Would look the same going down as it would five minutes later.
Sandwich. Entirely too many textures.
Yogurt. Only one texture, but it was a nasty one.
Salad. That nail-polish-remover taste in the lettuce would remind me way too much of the alcohol directly.
Bread of any and all kind seemed out of the question. People always say bread and water is the way to go, but the very thought of either one of those things was absolutely revolting.
Chicken
