didn’t see my finger quotes, or my self-impressed smile, because she was back to messing with her shorts.
My smile faded and I decided to finish my story, because obviously she was incapable of paying attention.
“I just complained about how she and Mr. Ezhno were always meeting and stuff, and how he was like in love with her, and how everything he does is because of that.” I looked at her. Was nothing I said going to get her attention? “And how they’re totally doing it,” I added, just to get a reaction.
“Wait, what?” She looked up.
I glared at her, and a whistle blew to indicate the beginning of gym. Oblivious to the ball I’d just set rolling, I flounced off to class.
CHAPTER TWO
The next day, I showed up to Mr. Ezhno’s class on time. Frankly, it wasn’t in reaction to his threat of suspension, but more just needing to escape my house and Meredith’s sobbing. If I didn’t hate her so much, I might have asked her what was wrong. I couldn’t stand it when other people cried around me. I always felt guilty, even when I hadn’t done anything wrong.
But seriously, who wakes up at seven o’clock in the morning to cry?
As soon as I sat down, Jillian, my other, more gossip-appreciating best friend, passed me a neatly folded note (she’d been the first one in fourth grade to be able to make origami and paper footballs).
I looked up at her.
“You can’t just say it? We have to pass notes?”
It sounded kind of mean, but come on, everyone was talking and class hadn’t even started yet.
Jillian made a face and mouthed, “Just read it.”
I opened the note and started to read the rounded, funky handwriting I’d never been able to copy. Instead, I had total boy handwriting.
Michelle told me about everything that you told her about Mr. Ezhno. Is it true?
I nodded and made a gagging face. Her eyes widened, along with her mouth. Finally someone appreciated how irritating the situation was. I felt a wave of fondness for Jillian, as I saw how commiserative she was.
As class started, I wrote back, asking her what else had been going on in school. She had some decent gossip, as usual. It was really the main reason I kept her around. Jillian had an amazing ability to remember just about everything. She didn’t use her memory to score high on tests and do well in Spanish class—obviously, if she was talking to me all through class, she couldn’t hear that information to memorize it. She used her memory exclusively to collect and archive everything about everyone we went to school with.
Jillian was going on about the colleges everyone was interested in applying to, and the boy who’d just gotten kicked off the soccer team for having a 1.9 GPA. I had just been about to say something about “getting to the good stuff” when she mentioned that there was a new girl.
“… 1.9 GPA, which is so sad, because it’s only like point-one away from being acceptable. Oh! And that new girl is in my gym class, speaking of soccer. She was actually really good.”
I thought of Liam and the girl I hadn’t recognized the day before.
“So, wait, did you talk to her?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s so nice. Her name is Anna Judge, and she moved here from Maine. It’s actually kind of funny, I kept running into her and Liam yesterday. Seriously, like, all day.”
My opportunity.
“Liam?”
I spoke too quickly. Super casual. But thankfully, Jillian never noticed that kind of thing and simply answered my question.
“Oh, right, he was showing her around yesterday. You know how the office, like, assigns you a buddy or whatever on your first day when you’re new?”
“Yeah, go on.”
SPIT. IT. OUT.
“Well, Liam was her buddy. I mean, he was assigned to do it, but I heard he volunteered. He was apparently in the office picking up some form for football when she came in. He dropped her off at each class, picked her up, ate lunch with her, all that normal stuff that the buddy guides do—”
Or all that stuff that he used to do with me every single day.
“—except he drove her home, too, which they don’t always do.”
No, they didn’t.
They never did that.
I spent the rest of the period prodding her for information about Liam and Anna. She spoke delicately, in accordance to my sensitivity on the subject of him. My best friends knew it was a hot button for me. But once she told me she didn’t know anything else, I knew she was telling the truth. Jillian was honest, always. Which was the reason she was the wrong person to tell a secret to, but an excellent person to leak them from.
She did keep talking about how super-nice Anna had been.
Not so delicate.
When the bell finally rang, I was more than ready to leave. I was the first one out the door, tossing an “Oh, bye!” back to Jillian. I had thought that getting out of the classroom and away from Jillian would be enough to relieve me of having to think about the new girl and her friendship (or whatever it might become) with Liam. But as I walked down the hallway, it seemed like her name was on everyone’s lips. Maybe it was all in my head, but even if it was, it was pissing me off.
I ducked into the bathroom, hoping to renew my self-confidence with the reapplication of lipgloss. And there she was.
Miss Anna Judge, the Super-Nice, Surprisingly-Good-Soccer-Player from Maine. Washing what looked like ink from her fingers.
What could be more awkward for me than to stand elbow to elbow with the girl who I had only seen from a hundred yards away but had already devoted so much thought to? Not awkward for her, of course; she didn’t even know who I was.
Oh, my God, she didn’t even know who I was.
I felt the petty, obsessive, desperate-to-be-liked feeling that had been living in my stomach since I was in elementary school. That was always ready to jump out and whine, But what about me? Whenever I felt it, I’d usually try to say or do something to draw the attention to myself.
And keep it there.
I walked to the other sink, next to her, and started to dig through my bag for my NARS lipgloss.
There was no one at the school who didn’t know who I was. I’d worked hard to make it that way. At this point, half the guys were trying to get with me, and half the girls were jealous of that fact or trying just as hard to be part of my inner circle.
I had parties all the time, and everyone knew I only invited the people I wanted to. It didn’t hurt that I had the best pool in Potomac Falls.
Though
