What to Say Next(33)

Rule #1: Do not engage with people on the DNT list.

Rule #2: Do not engage with people on the DNT list.

Rule #3: Do not engage with people on the DNT list.



Miney put it in there three times, rendering it even more important than her latest edict not to talk to a girl about her weight.

Finally, Justin pops up as if he is ready to leave our table. I feel something release in my chest. But I should know better. My Notable Encounters list will tell you that I’ve never left a conversation with Justin unscathed. He leans down to whisper in my ear, his hand firmly planted on my head.

“You may have gotten a haircut, but you’re still weird as hell,” he says, his tongue so close to my ear I can feel his wet, disgusting breath. I clench my fists. I want to turn around and punch him right in the face.

He has no right to touch me.

I know that if I hit him, there will be consequences, as there always are with Justin. Suspension or detention, notes on my permanent record. The kind of stuff that could hurt my chances of getting into a good college. Before Kit joined my lunch table, that’s all I could think about. That one day I would get to leave Mapleview and hopefully go to a school where I could start over. Where no one knew about my mistakes.

And also there is this: If I were to hit Justin, there’s a good chance I’d break his nose, and if I broke his nose, I’d get his blood and skin cells and DNA all over my knuckles. I do not want to have to wash Justin off. Disgusting.

I focus instead on Kit. Ignore my instincts and stare directly into her eyes.

I talk to her without talking: Please tell me you know I’m better than them. Pick me. Pick me.

She stares right back, though I have no idea what she’s saying. I never know what anyone is saying.

It is only later, during AP Physics, that I realize exactly what that eye contact cost me. While I was busy staring at Kit, Justin swiped my notebook.





So now everyone knows: David Drucker is hot. Once you look at him, like really look at him, which I did that first time in the bleachers, it’s so obvious, you are amazed you haven’t noticed it before. Like one of those weird optical illusions that my mom likes to show me on Facebook.

“Is that why you’ve been sitting with him? You knew there was, like, this freakin’ hot guy underneath all that hair?” Annie asks. She and Violet are so excited by the revelation that is David, they are practically vibrating. We are between periods, standing in our usual spot by my locker. Throngs of kids squeeze past us in the halls. I shake my head. “I guess we shouldn’t be so surprised, because Lauren Drucker is so stunning it’s unfair. But still. David?”

To be honest, I’m not sure what I think about David’s transformation. He now feels somehow less mine. As if he has exposed what was once small and private, a secret we shared, to the rest of school. A haircut and now Gabriel and Justin are bothering us at lunch.

All I want is for everyone to leave us alone.

“I just think he’s interesting,” I say. I chose David’s table for his silence and for his refuge. I keep going back because it turns out I like being around him, even though I’m not sure exactly why.

I guess I’m not being fair about his new look. Good for him that other girls will notice him now. That his world will grow bigger. It’s not his fault that I’m desperate to keep mine so small.

“Interesting like the Hemsworth brothers are interesting,” Violet says.

“Whatever, he’s still weird, though,” Annie says.

“Good-weird,” I say, and they both look at me like I’ve lost my mind. And maybe I have, though not about David Drucker. I consider explaining everything to my friends. Finally coming clean. Telling the whole story of this nightmare from beginning to end. But I can’t. There are some words we are not allowed to say out loud. I don’t know how to explain that I spent the weekend in my bedroom because my mother and I are no longer on speaking terms. That my mother betrayed my father, had an affair—a word I hate because it sounds so harmless, like she threw a cocktail party, not like she screwed my dad’s best friend. I don’t know how any of the past five weeks actually happened.

It still doesn’t feel real. I keep repeating it in my mind, as if it will eventually make sense. My mother had sex, probably repeatedly, with Jack. When my father found out, he was devastated and was planning to leave her, or us. I don’t know. Now he is dead. The first two facts are in no way related to the third, and yet they are commingled forever in my brain and playing continually on repeat.

A triple whammy.

Maybe I should just say these words out loud: I no longer have two parents.

That’s the shorthand version.

Until recently I thought I was the exception: I had a happy family. I don’t understand what I have left now.

I get that I’m being melodramatic. After all, I’m pretty sure Annie’s father cheated on her mom, and Annie didn’t have a mental breakdown. Her dad moved in with his assistant the same week he left their house, and though Annie’s still pissed off about the whole thing, she lets him buy her guilt presents and stays at his new place on alternating weekends. She says the whole arrangement isn’t so bad.

Is it different when it’s the mom who does the cheating? It shouldn’t be. And yet I don’t know. I’m so angry at my mother that I found myself punching the wall last night. My knuckles are bruised and red. They don’t hurt as much as I wish they would. That seems to be the paradox of grief: There is so much pain and yet sometimes, when I need to feel it, not nearly enough.