#famous(43)

She turned and started down the stairs, not looking back even when I called out, “Wait, Rachel, what’s going on?” It was like she was fleeing the scene of a crime. It did sort of feel like one.

I guess that made me the villain.

Rachel didn’t make it far, though. Before she hit the landing, Jessie squared off at her, so she couldn’t get past.

“Who said you could leave?” She sneered at Rachel exaggeratedly.

Willow was climbing up to join her friends, looking confused about what was unfolding a few feet above her. Willow always looked a little confused.

“Listen, I’m going. There’s nothing to—”

“I didn’t tell you to talk either.” Jessie took a step forward, pushing Rachel lightly on the shoulders.

Oh jeez. I was never going to get invited to Beau Anderson’s house again.





chapter twenty-nine


RACHEL

FRIDAY, 9:03 P.M.

Jesus Christ, when did I get dropped into somebody else’s clichéd soap opera? I wanted to spit back, “Seriously? Should I take out my earrings so we can go outside and claw each other with our acrylic nails?” But Jessie looked drunk. Mean and drunk. She’d probably have punched me if I said that. And she actually had acrylic nails.

Plus, I only had the guts to say something like that to anyone—especially Jessie, who actually knew me once—in my mind.

I had totally underestimated how many drinks I needed.

“So what, you think you’ll take some pathetic fangirl picture and suddenly Kyle’s your friend?” Jessie cackled. “No one likes you. No one even knows you.”

You do, Jessie. Something I also failed to say out loud.

“Jessie, you don’t have to do this,” Emma murmured, tugging at her arm.

Jessie wriggled it free without looking back.

“Why not? It’s the truth. This reject stalks someone else’s boyfriend and expects everyone to like her for it? Hell no.”

I could see Emma shaking her head insistently at Erin Rothstein. She mumbled something like “not about her . . . not doing it for me,” then ran down the stairs, leaving Erin looking undecided about whether she should go after Emma or stay for the annihilate-Rachel fest.

I thought Jessie had gotten this out of her system by posting that picture, and “decorating” my locker . . . and car. Apparently hiding out since Tuesday night wasn’t enough to make this—her—go away. How long would be enough? The thought made my stomach curdle.

“What did you think was going to happen, anyway?” Jessie arched an eyebrow. Her eyes looked filmy, glass marbles smudged with fingerprints.

“Why are you doing this, Jessie? What did I do to you?”

Her eyes narrowed. Apparently acting as though we were allowed to exist in the same sentence was already a step too far.

“Did you really think he was going to fall for you?” She laughed harshly.

“Jessie, back off.” Kyle’s voice behind me was calm, but I could hear a threat of something underneath it. I don’t think Jessie could, though, or she didn’t care; she rolled her eyes and snapped, “Stay out of it, Kyle.”

I swallowed, trying to keep control of myself. She was just a mean drunk girl trying to prove a point, prove that she’d moved past me, that she was fully secure in the realms of Apple Prairie’s popular elite. This wasn’t really about me; what she was saying wasn’t true. The fact that it sounded like a slurrier, louder version of the refrain running through my head since the picture blew up didn’t make it true.

“I didn’t mean to get in the middle of anything. I’ll just go downstairs and—”

“I asked you a question,” Jessie spat. “Did you think that? Did you think you’d be in a fairy tale?” She singsonged the last words, batting her eyelashes, clumpy with mascara, at the ceiling.

I could feel my body tensing all over with embarrassment. And something else: anger. What the hell was her problem? Didn’t she know she—and all the popular girls she’d apparently appointed herself representative of—had already won? I was folding. I hadn’t even played a single card and I was folding.

I fought to keep my voice calm.

“I didn’t think anything. It was a stupid mistake.”

“Stupid is right,” Jessie laughed manically. “God, it’s just sad.” She pulled a blurry, mock-sad face and flailed a hand at me. “To be that unfortunate and not even be smart.” She turned to Erin, who looked cornered on the landing.

Kyle put a hand on my shoulder. Even with Jessie saying all the things I was afraid he already believed, he was still here. And even with the vat of verbal acid she was hurling at me, I could still feel my skin going electric under his fingers. If only there were a way to get that—his touch, his nearness—without getting the rest of this. But there wasn’t. I’d accepted that . . . or I would eventually.

“You should go, Jessie, you’re drunk,” he said. Now the edge in his voice was unmissable.

“Not until I hear what Dumptruck thought was so important that she had to crash our party to tell you.” She looked at me, face suddenly open, like a deeply tipsy preschool teacher waiting for the kids to answer. “What was so important, honey?”

I wanted to smack the faux-sweet look off her sharp little face. I wanted to give in to the tears and run away and bury myself in my comforter until everyone had forgotten I existed. I wanted more than anything to have never taken that picture.