Pushing Perfect(71)

“I may be pissed at him, but that doesn’t mean I want him to go to jail.”

“You’re missing the point,” I said. “That’s just one of the things we have. There’s also the texts, and the things we know she made us do, and Alex, you must have something on her whole money thing, right?”

“It’s complicated,” she said. “But I could come up with something.”

“And Alex and I have been doing research, and we have some stuff about her family that she might not want to get out. So together, we kind of have a lot. We can use what we know to make her stop doing this. To us, and to everyone.”

“How?” Isabel asked. “I mean, I’m all for taking her down, you know I am. But I’m not seeing how we do it yet.”

“We do to her what she did to us,” Alex said. “We send her a blocked-sender text with one of the photos we took the other night and tell her we need a favor. Then we have her meet us somewhere. We lay out what we know and we tell her to stop.”

“What if she doesn’t listen?” Raj asked. He was picking at his fingernails, like he had in the coffee shop when we’d talked. Raj was usually so confident, it was weird to see him nervous and unsure.

“She’ll listen,” Becca said. “I’m sure of it.”

“Are we all supposed to go?” Justin asked. “I’m not sure I really need to be part of this confrontation. It might be better to have a smaller group involved.”

“I kind of want to strangle her,” Alex said. “Not sure I’m the best person for the job either.”

I looked across the table at Isabel. “You know her the best out of all of us,” she said. “I remember you were her biggest fan freshman year.”

“Which makes it even harder to think about confronting her now,” I said. “And I’m in her calculus class too.” But she was right that I knew her better than any of the rest of them did. And I wanted to see this through.

“I’ll go with you,” Alex said. “I can restrain myself from violence. And I can scare her with what I know about the money stuff, if it comes to that.”

“Thank you.” I felt a sudden burst of affection for her.

“I’ll come too,” Raj said. “Just to make sure Alex keeps her word.”

Justin sighed. “Am I the bad guy now? Again?”

“No,” I said. “You’re right that we don’t need a big group. Three will do it. You guys are off the hook. We’ll let you know when it’s over.”

“The sooner the better,” Isabel said.

“We’ll make a plan tomorrow,” Alex said. “No sense in waiting.”

“Then our work here is done,” Justin said, getting up. He threw a few dollars on the table. “This should cover the soda and nachos.”

“Dick,” Alex muttered, as he walked away.

Isabel and Becca got up to follow him. “Wait,” I said. “Becca, can I talk to you for a minute?”

She looked over at Isabel. They were doing a kind of silent communication, like my parents had done, with raised eyebrows and little head shakes.

Whatever Isabel didn’t say helped me. “How about you give me a ride home?” Becca asked.

“Sure.”

“Justin will drive me, Isabel, and Alex,” Raj said, though Justin was already in the parking lot.

“No way,” Alex said.

“You’ll be fine,” Raj said. “We’ll sit in the back and you don’t have to talk.”

“So much drama,” Isabel said. “And me and Justin are the theater people. Come on.”

They all left the restaurant, and it was just me and Becca. “There are a lot of nachos left,” she said. “Let’s stay here for a bit.”

“Okay.” At first we both just stayed where we were, but it was kind of awkward trying to have a conversation with someone basically sitting diagonally from you. I was the one who’d asked her to stay and talk, so it only seemed fitting that I be the one to move. Baby steps and all that. I switched to Isabel’s chair, so we were sitting next to each other.

“I’m sorry,” we both said.

“Wait, what?” I asked.

“Isabel told me about what happened at Drew’s house. That you had another panic attack. I was so hard on you that night. I should have figured out something was going on besides you just wanting to go home. I should have been a better friend.”

“You’re kidding me, right? I’d been lying to you guys since the summer before we started high school, ever since I found my first zit. And I was on my third strike.”

“Your what?”

“I’d already screwed up twice before. You’d told me not to let you down again. Three strikes.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Her eyes glassed over with tears. “You were going through something, and I wasn’t there for you.”

“Because I wasn’t honest. And I was pretty miserable, too. I can’t have been much fun to be around.”

“It was never about whether you were fun.” She blinked a couple of times, and I knew she was still trying not to cry.

“But I worried that we didn’t have anything in common anymore. I couldn’t swim because of the whole skin thing, and it made me scared about being with guys.”