The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(6)

In Abigail’s bedroom they closed the blinds and ate until the sugar made them giddy. This was their secret. Only the Red Vines would they ever bring to the baseball field—they would loop the vines around their fingers and tongues and every boy would stop to watch.

“Let’s see if he has a Facebook,” Abigail said.

“Who would friend him?”

“Just his mom.”

“And Ms. Flax.”

“Oh my God, they’re probably doing it!” Abigail screamed, delighted. “She probably takes him into that little room and fucks him all through seventh period.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Cally said, but she was laughing too.

Cally and Abigail sat shoulder to shoulder in front of Abigail’s computer. They found Tristan’s profile in two seconds. “What the fuck is this picture?”

“You can’t even tell it’s him, his face is all blurry.”

“Oh, it’s him,” Abigail said. “Check out those pants.”

Cally laughed again, in a hard way that made her throat hurt. In the photo Tristan wore his trademark yellow sweatpants and white T-shirt. His skin gleamed with sweat, and his nipples pricked under the shirt as he stood in hero pose—leg hitched, chest puffed, arms extended—atop a boulder on Mount Tam. The day was bright, and he squinted into the camera, grinning.

Abigail turned and looked at her, so Cally said, “What a freak.”

“Let’s friend him,” Abigail said.

“You have to do it,” Cally said. “If I do, he’ll think he has a chance. He’ll, like, show up at my house tonight or something.”

“With a wilted little condom”—Abigail was cracking herself up—“that he keeps in his pocket just waiting for the day when the hot, sexy, beautiful Calista Broderick—”

“Shut up, you’re such a bitch.”

“Ha, you love me,” Abigail said. It was true. If not for her, Cally would be alone with the note, rereading it, waiting for its curious horror to fade. She’d have to feel what Tristan’s words opened in her, the shame that became a kind of pleasure, nothing like the anxiousness she felt when Ryan kissed her, or when he flicked his thumb over her nipple like he flicked quarters during the boring parts of algebra. It was a discomfort she’d tried to will to pleasure because it was meant to feel good, she was meant to want it, she was thirteen and pretty and it was the only logical thing to want. If not for Abigail, Cally would’ve kept the note, read the words again, traced them with her fingers: No one sees you but I do. I mean sees you really.

The note was like Ms. Flax’s office, a stifled room where she was trapped with Tristan. It occurred to her that Ms. Flax might know about the note. Maybe she’d even told him to write it. Teachers like her were always encouraging hopeless kids like Tristan to inject themselves into the social scene with ridiculous gestures—declarations of love, blind stabs at friendship—as if middle school were a safe haven in which to conduct these experiments, when in fact it was the most dangerous place on Earth.

“Okay. I’m gonna do it,” Abigail said, and clicked Add Friend. Seconds later, she yelped. Tristan had approved her immediately; he clearly didn’t understand the concept of waiting so as not to seem desperate.

It turned out he did have Facebook friends—not his mother or teachers but kids from their grade who would not have said one word to him at school. There was, incredibly, Emma Fleed. And Elisabeth Avarine, Dave Chu, Nick Brickston, Damon Flintov, and even Ryan Harbinger, approved just twenty minutes before. On Tristan’s Facebook page they read:


Tristan Bloch and Ryan Harbinger are now friends.

Ryan Harbinger: hey yo trisstan wut the FUCK

Tristan Bloch: ?

Ryan Harbinger: yu know wut im talking about

Damon Flintov: ya triSTAIN u no wut hes talking about dont u

Tristan Bloch: I am sorry I don’t.

Ryan Harbinger: CALLIE fuckin BRODRIK mutherfuckr



Cally caught her breath. Her name online, more permanent than ink.


Damon Flintov: hey trisss nice pic u think callies seen it yet?

Ryan Harbinger: ha ha thats sum sexxxy shit

Damon Flintov: callys fuckin wet now bro

Abby Cress: omg lolz



“Abby!” Cally said. “What are you doing?”

“It is fucking funny, Cal,” Abigail said. “You have to admit.”

“Don’t write anything about me, okay?”


Abby Cress: Cally says don’t talk abt her ok?



“What the fuck?” Cally slapped Abigail’s arm. “Now they know I’m here!”

“Fucking chill,” Abigail said.


Ryan Harbinger: tristans the one talking abt her rite TRISS?

Ryan Harbinger: u might not think I watch you but I do

Ryan Harbinger: u have the world’s most beautiful skin

Ryan Harbinger: calista i love u do u think u could love me back?

Damon Flintov: awwwww

Tristan Bloch: Hey guys will you please not.

Ryan Harbinger: u said it trisSTAIN

Ryan Harbinger: i have ur note, callie gave me it

Ryan Harbinger: callie sez tell u ur a fat fuckin loser

Ryan Harbinger: and ur notes fuckin hillarious btw