Tease(2)

I take a deep breath. “Okay, yeah, so it was a Tuesday. Emma was getting changed. I mean, we were all changing clothes; it was the locker room, we had to get ready for gym.”

Everyone has started scribbling again. I feel itchy, like my skin is too tight. I throw my weight to one side, trying to make the cheap office chair I’ve been sitting in for all this time more comfortable. No dice. I wonder if the intern thinks I’m pretty, but then I remember that no one does, not anymore. He thinks I’m a monster, just like everyone else. Besides, I’m sure I don’t look pretty—in my dumb cutoffs, with my hair pulled back messily, wearing a smidge of mascara. It’s been hard to eat much lately so I feel sort of thin, but not in a good way.

I glance at Natalie and go on. “Brielle asked Emma why she, you know—why she was talking to Dylan so much.”

“Mr. Howe?”

I carefully don’t roll my eyes. “Yeah, Dylan Howe. My boyfriend. At the time.”

And now, my ex-boyfriend. Mostly. Or something.

“And what did Miss Putnam say?”

I shift to the other side of the chair. “She didn’t say anything. I mean, by that point she knew Brielle was mad at her.”

“And why do you say that?” The lawyer I don’t really know isn’t even looking up while she talks to me. I scowl at her hair; it’s that shade of blonde that older women think is young-looking but actually just makes them look even older and more out of date than being, like, gray-haired would.

“Everyone was mad at her. Everyone knew she was texting all these boys all the time and that she was totally obsessed with Dylan. Brielle thought she was a psycho, and so did everyone else.”

My voice goes up and Hot Intern is looking at me kind of sharply. It’s been a long time since I talked to new people about all this, and I kind of forgot how much people hate me. Even Natalie gives this little sigh, like she’s sick of my crap.

But it’s not crap. Everyone thought Emma Putnam was a pain in the ass. We didn’t kill her, but I’m sorry, that doesn’t mean we liked her. And now that everyone’s decided we did kill her, or at least sort of, I think I like her even less than I did when she was alive.

“And what did you and Miss Greggs do?”

I don’t answer right away, but she still doesn’t look at me. “Brielle called her a bitch,” I say. “And I guess I sort of shoved her. A little.”

“You pushed her up against the lockers, is that right?”

“I guess.”

“And what did Miss Putnam do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I mean, I guess she was crying.” She was always crying, I want to add, but Natalie told me not to “embellish,” to just answer the questions as simply as possible.

“You guess?”

“She was crying, okay?”

“And what did you say to her?”

Sigh. “I told her to stay away from my boyfriend.”

“Did you say anything else?”

“What?”

“We have testimony that you . . .” The crappy-shade-of-blonde head turns toward Hot Intern and he hands her a piece of paper with a bunch of writing on it. “Yes, here. You called her a slut?”

“Okay.”

“Did you call Miss Putnam a slut?”

“Um, I guess so.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I mean, I don’t remember calling her a slut that day.” I do remember pushing Emma against the lockers. Her dark-red hair wasn’t pulled back yet and it settled in those annoyingly pretty curls around her shoulders as she sort of scrunched up defensively, wincing and crying in that helpless-little-girl way that just made me angrier. She whimpered a little, I remember that. She held up her hands slightly, either like she was surrendering or finally starting to protect herself—I don’t know which. Or maybe I do. I guess it was surrender.

This would all be embellishing, though, so I don’t say it.

“Do you mean you called her a slut on another occasion?”

“I mean, I thought she was a slut. I’m sure I called her a slut. I don’t know if I called her a slut on January the twenty-third.”

Everyone stops writing and looks at me, stunned and silent. My heart is pounding. I can’t meet anyone’s eye. I just stare at the table, wishing I could disappear.

“We need a break,” Natalie says. The first helpful thing she’s said all morning. “Let’s take ten.”

The blonde lawyer nods, looking like she’d love to be anywhere but stuck in an ugly conference room with me. Maybe she won’t come back—maybe I’ll be able to go home.

Instead, I walk stiffly into the slightly less cold hallway, waiting for the feeling to come back to my toes. There are chairs out here, set up in a waiting area, but no one is waiting for me. I drove myself.

“Sara,” Natalie hisses. “You need to calm down in there. It’s just a few more questions, and it’s important.”

I nod automatically and pace over to the window. It overlooks the office park parking lot. The sun glares off the windshields of row after row of nondescript four-doors. You can tell how hot it is just by looking, but I have gooseflesh on my arms.

I start silently counting all the white cars while my lawyer keeps talking at me. There are a ton, including mine, which I can’t see from here because I parked on the other side. I see a silver Mercedes just like Brielle’s and remember how her tires got slashed, back when we were all first on the news. Maybe she has a new car now. I shove my hands into my shorts pockets. There’s a gum wrapper on the right side and I knead it into a little ball.