“You know he’s probably going to get fired, right?” Chloe cuts in. “And we’ll be stuck with some hundred-year-old sub for the rest of the year who’s going to make us read a bunch of boring crap and write, like, detailed sequence-of-events responses, just because you couldn’t drop the rock about some dumb misunderstanding.”
“Holy shit, Chloe.” I feel my throat get tight, my eyes stinging; in the whole entire history of our friendship, she’s never talked to me like this before. “What the hell is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem,” Chloe snaps; then, looking over her shoulder at the hallway, she lowers her voice. “I just don’t understand why you’re being like this, that’s all. Like, why can’t you just admit you made a mistake—”
“I didn’t make a mistake!”
“So what, you think he’s in love with you?” Chloe laughs meanly. “Like he brought you to his apartment as part of some super-secret plan to make you his girlfriend?”
“No, of course not.” My eyes are filling for real now, my vision blurring. I glance up at the overhead light, take a deep breath. “You realize you’re supposed to be my best friend.”
“I am your best friend,” Chloe says immediately. “And part of my job is to tell you when you’re making a total fool of yourself.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“I think you’ve lost all connection with reality, yeah.”
“Well . . .” And I shrug, because what else can you say to that? I stand up and sling my bag over my shoulder, wiping my face with the heel of my hand. “I guess today’s not such a good mall day after all.”
“No,” Chloe says, still clutching her bathrobe in front of her like a shield. “I guess not.”
I head downstairs and let myself out, dodging her mom in the kitchen. The boys are still playing in the living room, their trash talk just audible over the clatter of the Cartoon Network.
“Sunk!” one of them says, gleeful. The sound of them laughing is the last thing I hear before I shut the door.
Twenty-Two
My parents and I meet with Principal DioGuardi and the school board over break, all of us sitting around a folding table on the stage in the auditorium. I wonder if they made Mr. Lyle come in specifically to set it up. I give the board my full statement, feeling weirdly like I’m performing in a play I never auditioned for; they assure us that they’re taking the matter very seriously, that they’ll be talking to Mr. Beckett as well.
The rest of Christmas vacation is achingly quiet. Gray gets back from New Hampshire and takes me to breakfast at Deluxe Town Diner. Gracie and I go see The Nutcracker with my mom. My dad sits through about a million Hallmark Christmas movies without complaining, getting up periodically to get us more homemade marshmallow hot chocolate cookies, which I know is code for I love you and I’m here.
My mom lets me take her car in my first morning back after break, the security blanket of knowing I could make a quick exit if I needed to. I slam the driver’s door shut before dashing across the parking lot, the pavement sleet-slippery under my boots. Icy rain slides underneath the collar of my winter coat, and I almost wipe out hard on the concrete staircase, catching myself on the railing just in time.
I shake my hair out once I make it through the senior entrance and scan the bright, crowded hallway. Harper Russo raises her eyebrows, then whispers something to Kaylin Benedetto. Michael Cyr shoots me a giant, shit-eating grin.
I duck my face and head for my locker, telling myself I’m being dramatic—this is my actual high school, not the establishing shot of a nineties teen movie. Still, I grab my books as quickly as humanly possible, edging past Cara St. John and Aminah Thomas in the bottleneck in the hallway.
“—always hanging out with him in the newspaper office,” Cara is saying, scooping her shoulder-length hair into a stubby blond ponytail. “I don’t know what she thought was going on.”
“I wish Bex would try something with me,” Aminah chimes in with a snort, then happens to glance over her shoulder and spot me right behind her. The embarrassment on her face is nothing compared to the hot, prickly wave of nausea that rolls through my entire body.
So. Everybody really does know, then.
I shuffle dazedly through my first two classes, feeling like my head has been wrapped in gauze and I can’t see or hear or even breathe properly. All morning I try to imagine what I’ll do if Bex is in his classroom at the start of AP English, and all morning I try to imagine what I’ll do if he’s not.
“You ready?” Gray asks, slipping his hand into mine as we head down the hallway, and I nod.
I’ve been telling myself I’ll be fine no matter what happens, but I can’t deny the way my knees go wobbly with relief when I see the sub standing up in front of Bex’s classroom, a nerdy-looking middle-aged guy with a comb-over and a paunch.
“Nice,” Gray murmurs, a smile spreading over his face as we take our seats. “See? Dude’s gone. Nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah.” I muster a small smile of my own. It falls as Chloe comes in, stopping short at the sight of the sub.
“Hey,” I say quietly, as she passes by my desk. “Can we talk?”
Chloe ignores me.
The sub introduces himself as Mr. Haddock—“like the fish,” he clarifies, looking visibly pained when nobody laughs—and launches into this week’s vocab lesson. He’s dry as toast and just as achingly boring as Chloe predicted. But I don’t care at all.
Apparently, I’m the only one.
“This guy suuucks,” Dean Shepherd mutters from the back of the room.
“At least Marin won’t try to screw him,” Michael Cyr cracks in response. “I mean . . . probably.”
I stare fire down at my notes, my face flaming. Gray fixes them both with a look.
“Excuse me?” Chloe pipes up at the front of the room, raising her hand primly. “When will Mr. Beckett be back?”
Mr. Haddock frowns. “He should be here tomorrow, I believe—but I have no intention of wasting the time I’ve got with you folks, so if you’ll open your books—”
I lose the rest of what he says underneath the sudden roar in my head. For a moment I honestly think I’ve heard him wrong.
Tomorrow. He’ll be back . . . tomorrow?
God, I’m such an idiot.
This isn’t finished at all.
Once the bell finally rings I’m out of my seat like a sprinter at the starting gun, ignoring Gray as he heads toward me and stumbling down the hall toward the admin suite, where Ms. Lynch is eating a bag of Famous Amos cookies and hungrily scrolling a gossip site on her computer. “Is Mr. DioGuardi here?” I blurt.
Her eyes narrow. “Excuse you,” she says, quickly minimizing the window; I wouldn’t have pegged her for a Rihanna fan, but I guess we all contain multitudes. I can’t wait to tell Chloe, until I remember Chloe and I aren’t speaking.
“Do you have an appointment?”
You keep his calendar, I think but don’t say. You know I don’t.
“Um, nope,” I manage, aiming for bright and winding up somewhere in the neighborhood of totally deranged. “Just a quick social call.”