The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(76)

“At least we know where I get my overactive imagination from,” I’d told her. For a second, I really thought she might slap me.

At breakfast, after my mom cooled down, she said I needed to have my car towed to the mechanic’s after school. That meant I’d have to go to Enzo’s apartment, which didn’t exactly thrill me. Maybe I could just leave the car there forever, buy a new car.

Which was what I was actually thinking about in math instead of math problems. To stay awake, I started doodling in my notebook. Spirals and squiggles and stars. A crescent moon. A heart. A broken heart. A sad face.

My eyes were stinging, and there was an uncomfortable pressure in my head, and every part of my body ached. I didn’t feel like I could possibly make it through the day. And it was only first period.

“Hawthorn?” Mr. Bennett said. “Why don’t you do the next one?”

“Huh? The next what?”

People laughed. Of course they did. It’s easy to laugh when your car isn’t stranded at the home of the person you just lost your virginity to, you’ve had enough sleep, you didn’t spend the whole night walking, and you don’t have a teacher and a whole classroom of people staring at you as if you were a gigantic idiot.

I wished that every single person who laughed at me had to say the numbers out loud whenever they were doing math, even if it was just figuring out how much to tip at a restaurant. I wished their favorite clothes would shrink in the dryer. I wished they’d always get stuck behind drivers going five miles under the speed limit.

“The next problem.” Mr. Bennett gestured to the whiteboard. A row of problems were written there, all of them completed by a different hand, except for the last one, which wasn’t solved yet.

“Oh. Right.”

Everyone stared at me. My face burned. I would have struggled with this even on a good day.

“Can I pass?”

Snickers surrounded me. Mr. Bennett frowned. So I sighed and made my way up to the board.

Being called to the front of the class makes me panic. I was sweaty and flustered, and my throat went dry. The whole class watched me, waiting for me to fail. What if I tried to do the math and forgot everything I’d ever known? What if I’d started my period, and that’s what all the whispers were about? What if, on cue, everyone pulled out their lunch bags and started launching apples and peanut butter sandwiches at me while Mr. Bennett laughed manically?

I picked up the marker and took a deep breath. Suddenly, it was way too quiet. I closed my eyes for a second and pretended I was in a room by myself, no one watching me, just working on a math problem. An easy math problem.

Then I opened my eyes and got started. It actually was OK. There were some parts I was unsure of, but pretty much everything Mr. Bennett taught us came back to me, and my fear was replaced by the euphoria you can only get when you’ve slept for less than two hours.

I finished right as the bell rang. The classroom filled with noise while kids gathered their textbooks and started conversations.

“Good job, Hawthorn,” Mr. Bennett said.

“Thanks.”

I grabbed my backpack and made my way to the next class, relieved and happy at my accomplishment, even if it was one of the day’s minor challenges compared to dealing with my car and Enzo.

? ? ?

Most of the day passed without me paying attention. I sleepwalked through school. At lunch, I dozed off on the steps behind the gym, where I now ate alone. I woke up when the bell rang and scrambled to gather my stuff and get to fourth period.

I was about to walk into the classroom when someone called my name.

“Hey, Hawthorn?”

Mychelle Adler. She’d been off my radar for the last couple weeks, blending into the regular annoyances of school. But her standing there in the hall with such a smug look on her face brought back all of my hatred.

“What?”

Mychelle waved a spiral notebook in the air. “Recognize this?”

“It’s a notebook. That was easy. Give me another question.”

“Not just a notebook. Your notebook. You left it on your desk in first period.”

I thought back to how I’d run out of the room. “How nice of you to return it.”

I grabbed for the notebook, but Mychelle pulled it back, out of my reach. “You should be more careful where you leave your personal things.”

“Personal?” I laughed. “It’s math homework.”

“Oh, is that all?” Mychelle smiled at me, baring shark teeth behind lips that were stretched too wide. She had gossip. Or at least she thought she did. Something I wouldn’t like. But it was just a math notebook.

Then I got it.

I pictured myself, less then twenty-four hours before, sitting on my front porch, writing down my feelings about Enzo. Then Connor showed up, and the notebook got shoved in my backpack. Until I took it out in algebra.

It wasn’t a mistake I normally would have made, leaving those pages in my notebook and bringing it to school. But going over to a guy’s house to confront him about how the picture he painted for you was an insult, having sex for the first time, and spending most of the night walking home could really mess with your head.

“OK,” I said. “What do you want?”

“I want to congratulate you, Hawthorn. Your first kiss with Lizzie Lovett’s boyfriend. I believe you called it passionate. That sort of thing never happens to lonely, pathetic girls like you, does it?”