“What was I supposed to do?” I ask, anger pushing the words past my enamel-capped teeth. “How was I supposed to make everything better?”
She turns back to me, eyes wet.
“You were supposed to tell the truth.”
The truth . . . a slippery element stuck somewhere between what I witnessed but wasn’t there for, something I saw but can’t remember. “Tress.” I lick my lips, gloss coming off on my tongue.
It’s gone, along with my makeup, which has mixed with tears and blood and has dried on my cleavage. All my armor is melting away, but my tits are still high, almost to my chin because of the push-up bra I’m wearing under my costume. I came to this party prepared . . . but not for this. Not for Tress Montor.
I remember what I looked like before I left, the last glance at the mirror that showed me Felicity Turnado—bold, confident, sexy. A girl who takes beers from boys and they’re thankful for it, because maybe our fingers brushed. A girl who other girls mimic, dress like, act like, follow around. I’ve cut more than one of them with my tongue, knocked them down a few pegs when they climbed too close, putting them back where they belong. Beneath me.
Fuck Tress Montor, and fuck her pride.
I toss my head and straighten my shoulders. “Those jeans you’re wearing are mine,” I say. “Seven for All Mankind, boot cut, size 6. The pullover you had on at school Monday was mine, too, Collina Strada, crew neck, medium. So don’t stand there and talk to me about not taking my charity. You are, even if you don’t know it.”
I said something similar to a girl from Prospero at the football game last week. She wanted to knock me back by telling me she screwed Hugh. It’s more than likely the truth, but I covered the drop in my gut by saying it was my shirt he ripped off her, and that’s probably what turned him on in the first place, that she was almost me . . . but not quite. She ran away from me crying, the sequins on the Parker Isaac top that used to hang in my closet flashing as she went.
But Tress doesn’t even blink. She comes closer, leaning in to give me a hard look. I’m the first one to flinch. Content, she pulls back.
“These may be your jeans,” she says. “But it’s also your blood on them. So don’t get too cocky.”
I can’t argue with that. I want to, I want to kick and scream and call her names. But when she motions at me to be silent, I stop talking. Because while I might have made my point, Tress follows it up by making one of her own. Not with words, but brick and mortar. She lays the fourth row, calmly, steadily, with no outward sign that I upset her at all.
That’s the fourth of twenty-two rows, I think. Fourth of twenty-two. It sounds kind of like football, but we’re not playing a game down here. I’ve got eighteen rows left to convince Tress not to bury me alive. Eighteen rows to convince her that I deserve to live. Problem is, I don’t know if I can. Another problem is, I’m not entirely sure that I do.
“Okay,” she says, pushing her hair out of her face. “Now we need to talk about junior year.”
Chapter 28
Tress
Junior Year
I’m staring at a college application, wondering if wrestling alligators is something I should put under special skills or not. There certainly is a trick to it, and I’ve got it down . . . plus some nasty scars on my legs to show for it. There’s a general rustle behind me in the library. Brynn and Gretchen are whispering about something; David Evans comes in and informs the librarian his summer reading report is due tomorrow so she should give him the shortest thing on the required reading list. She hands him T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land with a small smile.
“Good luck,” she says, keeping her face professional. But inside, I’m sure she’s laughing like Rue did the one time Cecil tripped and fell into her septic drainage.
I turn back to my computer screen, angling it so that nobody can see what I’m doing. I don’t need everybody talking about the fact that Tress Montor was looking at colleges, trying to translate the language on the FAFSA website. I can’t just walk up to a college admissions office and tell them I’ve got both Allan and Usher blood in me but no money. That might matter in Amontillado, but once I leave here, I’m just a poor kid with a crappy résumé, all my money in dirty, wadded bills that I slip off the pile before handing it over to Cecil, who is sometimes sober enough to double-check the count, sometimes not.
“Jesus Christ,” I say, leaning back in my chair and looking at the tuition prices. Even the cheaper ones feel astronomical. It doesn’t help that I have no idea what to claim for our income. Whenever I ask Cecil about it all he does is shake his head, or say, “Not good and not getting any better.”
“What’s up?”
Hugh flops into the seat next to me, his knees scraping against mine. They’re darkly tanned from the summer, and even hairier than Rue’s. I quickly minimize my window but not before he catches the movement.
“Looking at porn?” he asks too loudly.
“No,” I harsh whisper at him. “And we’re in a library.”
“Huh.” He looks around him like he’s surprised. “Weird.”
“For you,” I agree. “Why are you even here?”
Then I see Brynn looking at him over a book, glancing down quickly when he notices her.
“Ohhhhh,” I say. Hugh blushes a little bit, and I smack his leg. “You could try talking to her, not just following her around, creep.”
He moves in closer to me, lowering his voice as well. “Okay, so I tried that, but here’s the thing—she’s like . . . nice.”
“Oh, that’s new and different for you, huh?”
“No, I mean . . .” He glances around, drops his voice to a whisper. “So, like, everybody thinks I’m with Felicity, you know?”
“If by with you mean hooking up at parties, then yes, people think that.”
“Right!” Hugh says, apparently thrilled I understand. “But it’s not like that.”
I’m pulled in despite myself, still hungry after all these years for any inside information about my former best friend. “Not like that how?”
“We’re not, like, a thing. We’re not together. It’s . . .” He leans back in his chair, and sighs. “It’s complicated.”
“Genitals make life hard,” I say, and it’s his turn to smack me.
“Seriously?” he asks. “Genitals?”
“That’s what they’re called.”
“Whatever.” Hugh shakes his head. “Point is—Brynn’s a nice girl, and she’s friends with Felicity.”
“And if she thinks Felicity is into you, she’s not going to cross her friend,” I finish for him. “So just tell Brynn that you’re not doing genital stuff with Felicity.”
“It’s not that simple,” he says, suddenly choosing his words more carefully. “Felicity needs me for . . . things.”
I’m quiet, searching his face. I know Hugh pretty well—well enough to know that he doesn’t do drugs. And I know my market well enough to know that he’s not selling, either, because I haven’t seen my sales go down—I don’t have a competitor. So Felicity doesn’t need him for the same thing she needs me for.