Lovely Girls(37)

“Jazzy became a threat,” I said.

Taylor nodded. “We could have weathered that. But it didn’t end there.”

Lita took a startlingly loud slurp of her coffee. Taylor and I both turned toward her.

“Sorry,” Lita said. She looked over at the bakery case, where there were rows of cookies, slices of cake, and scones. “You know, I’m kind of hungry. I could get a couple of pastries for us to share.”

Food was the last thing I wanted. My stomach felt acidic. I shook my head.

“No, thank you,” Taylor said.

“Are you sure?” Lita looked disappointed. She glanced at the pastry case again.

“Please feel free to get something,” I said.

“No, I don’t want to miss a word,” Lita said. When she looked from Taylor to me, her eyes bright and expression alert, she reminded me of a bird.

I turned back to Taylor. “What happened after that?”

“Several things happened at once. Jazzy was targeted at school. And by that, I don’t mean casual unkindness. The kind that Jazzy had been guilty of herself. First, Daphne, Shae, and Callie iced her out. They told her she wasn’t welcome to eat lunch with them, and whenever she ran into them, they’d either pretend she wasn’t there or just laugh at her if she tried to speak to them. And then it got even worse.”

“The bullying escalated?”

Taylor nodded. She pursed her lips together, and I could tell from the flash in her eyes that it still made her furious to remember how her daughter had been treated. “One of them, or maybe all three girls, started a rumor that Jazzy had spent the night of the party giving blow jobs to a number of boys in the closet.”

“Oh, my God.” I could only imagine how devastating that would be to a fourteen-year-old girl.

“The boys didn’t deny it, which of course meant the other kids believed it. Then someone left a dildo on Jazzy’s desk, so it was waiting for her when she walked into English class.”

I sucked in my breath. Blow job rumors and dildos? That wasn’t just bullying. It was psychological warfare.

“That was the day Jazzy finally broke down,” Taylor said. “She called me from school, where she’d locked herself in a bathroom stall, because she was half-hysterical. She finally told me what was going on. All of it. I went to the school to pick her up, and while I was there, we spoke to the principal. And then I decided to do what seemed like the normal thing any mother would do in that kind of a situation.”

“You talked to their moms,” I said.

Taylor nodded. Her large brown eyes were solemn.

“And that’s when things got crazy,” Lita said. “Go on. Tell her.”

Taylor glanced at Lita, who was sitting on the edge of her seat, her face flushed with excitement. I thought I saw a flicker of distaste pass over Taylor’s face.

“I sent out a group text and asked Genevieve, Ingrid, and Emma to meet me for lunch. None of them replied. I tried calling each of them. They wouldn’t pick up. By this point, I knew something was going on. We always took a hot yoga class together on Tuesday mornings and then had coffee after, so I thought I’d catch them there. But when I walked into the studio, the three of them completely ignored me. They were sitting on their mats, chatting to one another. They wouldn’t speak or even look up at me.

“I finally stood right in front of them and said, ‘Hey, you guys. What’s going on?’ And then Genevieve finally did look up at me.” Taylor seemed lost in the memory for a moment. She finally shook her head. “And she said, ‘I saw you on the website cheaters.com.’ I literally had no idea what she was talking about. But Genevieve went on to tell me that it was a website where people whose spouses have cheated can post about them. Outing the cheater. I guess it’s a form of revenge?”

I hesitated, not quite sure what to say. It was certainly none of my business whether Taylor had had an extramarital affair.

Taylor sensed my hesitation, and she smiled for the first time. “No, I didn’t cheat on my husband. And he certainly didn’t post the story about me on cheaters.com. But someone did.”

“Did you ever find out who?” I asked.

“It was Genevieve, obviously,” Lita interjected.

I stared at her as I tried to absorb this. It reminded me, of course, of Joe’s story and the anonymous photo he’d received over text that proved his wife was having an affair. It wasn’t exactly the same, but it was similar enough.

“That was my guess, although we weren’t ever able to prove it. I even had to hire an attorney to get the story taken down. Although by that point the damage was done,” Taylor said.

“Why do you think Genevieve was behind it?” I asked.

“Because that day in hot yoga after she told me about the website, she smiled up at me. This big, wide grin. And she said, ‘Maybe you should teach your daughter not to be a tattletale.’ And I knew it was her.”

I could feel my pulse start to thrum and my stomach churn. Who were these women that I thought of as friends? I already knew their daughters were bullies, but if Taylor was right, the mothers were bullies too. Two generations of mean-girl cliques.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Taylor said. “It sounds too crazy to be true.”

That wasn’t what I was thinking. I shook my head. “I didn’t say that. And, no, I don’t think it sounds crazy.”