Tease(19)

“First she comes to this school and acts like a total spaz skank, steals everyone’s boyfriends, cries like a baby when people tell her to back off, flirts with your boyfriend, shows up at my party totally and completely uninvited, and then tattles to the principal about a stupid joke that she totally deserved?”

Brielle doesn’t stop moving while she talks, and her face is all pink from anger. It’s all the stuff about Emma that I hate too, but I just let her talk. I lean against a locker with my arms crossed, remembering how I hung out with Dylan a little bit last night and I feel like we’re even closer now—added to being close-close at Brielle’s party—but the whole Emma text thing still bothers me. It bothers me more, actually. Every time I think of being with Dylan, I get this feeling in my chest, cold and hot at the same time. Like I’m going to explode, literally. And when I think of someone else being with Dylan . . . just the idea makes me want to throw up. The cold and the hot and the exploding all mix together, and it’s like I can’t breathe. It’s really intense. It kind of scares me, actually.

Girls start coming into the locker room and there’s suddenly lots of noise. When Brielle sees Emma walking in, alone, she stops pacing and comes to stand next to me. We wait quietly while Emma walks over to her locker, and just as she passes by us, Brielle goes, “Nice shirt.”

Emma’s just wearing a pink tank top, nothing special, though it is a little tight, I guess. Whatever, everyone knows what Brielle means. Just the way she says the word shirt somehow says everything.

But just in case it wasn’t already clear, Brielle adds, “Was the slut store having a sale? Oh, wait, I guess everything there is already cheap.”

Emma has made it to her locker, but she’s gone all stiff, and she won’t look at Brielle. Everyone else is looking, though.

“Hey, Emma, I’m talking to you,” Brielle says. She puts her arm around me and goes on. “Done anything fun on Facebook lately? Or, wait, you’re too busy banging other people’s boyfriends, aren’t you?”

Emma’s head jerks around, finally, and she looks genuinely confused. Or maybe it’s just a scared look.

I feel a weird rush of power. The opposite of eighth grade speech, the opposite of sitting in Principal Schoen’s office. More like that night in the Taco Bell parking lot. I tilt my chin up at Emma and say, “Yeah, what is it with you? You know Dylan just laughs at you, right?”

“I mean,” Brielle adds, “who would want to be getting stupid texts from a bitch like you when they already had a girlfriend like Sara?”

Emma’s eyebrows are kind of furrowed, and for a second it looks like she’s going to cry. But she then looks away from Brielle right at me and says, “Wow, you keep track of who your boyfriend texts? Sounds like a nice relationship.”

In a flash I find myself in front of Emma, too close, the hot-cold-vomit feeling rising up in my throat. I don’t even know what I’m about to do until it’s already done and I’ve pushed her. It’s just a few inches, but the lockers make a loud banging noise, and I hear every girl behind me gasp.

“Listen, slut,” I hiss, right in her face, “just stay the hell out of my life, got it?” It’s like my voice is coming from someone else.

But I’m the one who sees Emma’s eyes up close. At first she shrinks, doing that poor-little-girl thing she practically has down to a science. Then I see her narrow her eyes at me, just for a second. She gives me this look that clearly says, Yeah, we’ll see.

And then out loud, softly but loud enough for everyone to hear, she whines, “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay?”

Her eyes are big again, and tears are coming down her face, and she raises her hands up a little, like she’s giving up, like I won. I wonder if I really saw that look she gave me a second ago. I can still feel it, like a punch to the gut, but she looks so sad now, anyone looking at her would swear I was crazy. . . .

Brielle grabs my arm again, pulling me away.

“Whatever, Sara, like she’s even a problem,” she says. “Dylan doesn’t want any of that.”

And then Coach Jenks walks in and blows her whistle, and everyone scrambles to finish getting dressed for badminton. Except Emma, of course. She sneaks out with her bag and no one sees her for the rest of the day.

And I finally get some peace. If you don’t count the part where everyone else goes into the gym and I go into the last locker room bathroom stall and burst out crying for five solid minutes. My whole body shakes and snot runs down my face and even in the middle of it I know I’m going to have a hell of a time redoing my makeup, but when it’s over I do—I put myself back together and go to the gym.

But except for that part, the rest of the day is fine.





August


“AND THIS OTHER guy? Henry? Not Henry Cable but Henry Lehman?”

“Um . . . yeah?”

“He got a home run! Off of Owen!”

“Wait, which one is Owen?”

“Owen Beehner! My best friend!”

I hold up my hands defensively. I’ve been trying to follow Alex’s baseball camp stories, but sheesh, the kid must’ve met fifty new friends, and his stories are both endless and endlessly complicated. His eleventh birthday is in two weeks and when he’s not describing some ridiculously intricate game they played, he’s trying to convince my mom that all fifty boys should be invited to the party she’s throwing him at the batting cages.