The New Husband(18)

Up until midway through last year, my friend group was made up mainly of the lacrosse team, a mix of boys and girls who played the game (club in the fall, school team in the spring) and hung out together all year round. We went to each other’s houses for parties, swimming, goofing off on trampolines, that kind of stuff. Since this was my friend group, naturally we ate lunch together, or at least that’s what we did until I got the boot, and no, I don’t mean the kind you walk in.

I won’t bother naming all the names, because they don’t matter anymore. All except for two: Justin D’Abbraccio and Laura Abel. Justin is the cliché cute boy in school—star lacrosse player, drummer in the jazz band, alpine ski racer, floppy hair and dreamy green eyes. Laura Abel is the girl at the center of it all. She is an expert dresser, the gorgeous, all-American-blonde type, with a nose for sniffing out gossip the same way Daisy can locate a morsel of dropped food. She is the queen of conflict, starting fights or resolving them whenever she wants, and has a crucial opinion when it comes to picking sides. Basically, she is the person other kids turn to when they aren’t sure how to think or feel.

It’s Laura who gets invited to all the “cool” parties, Laura who wins the class elections, Laura who gets the most attention from the boys. Her social media posts are mandatory reads, always with an avalanche of comments decorated with colorful emojis. To get a comment back feels like being anointed with special powers, to be one of the chosen, even if your moment in the spotlight was as fleeting as a shooting star.

It’s not as if people don’t have a voice of their own, or they can’t make something happen without Laura’s involvement.

They just don’t want to.

Everything between Laura and me turned sour in June of last year, near the end of seventh grade. By that point, the police had put out word they were looking for Teresa Mitchell in connection to my dad’s disappearance, so everyone knew or at least suspected that he’d had an affair. They also knew (because Connor had said something to his friends and word travels fast in Seabury) that my mom and Mr. Fitch were going out to dinner together, meaning I had more than enough strikes to make me a social outcast. But to my ex-friends’ credit, they didn’t seem to care about my father’s secrets or my mom and a teacher at school who might or might not be becoming an item.

But Laura cared a whole heck of a lot that Justin D’Abbraccio was being extra nice to me on account of everything I’d gone through that year. You see, Laura and Justin were dating. Dating in middle school meant eating lunch together, texting each other constantly, and sending pictures and messages over whatever social media thingy was in fashion at the moment. It was basically a meaningless label that had tons of meaning, if that makes any sense.

Now imagine this—Justin started texting me and liking my posts. He also started hanging out by my locker, waiting for me to show up. It’s not like we were dating or anything. But his parents had split up the year before while Laura’s were still married, so maybe he felt compassion for me. Maybe he understood I was suffering, and, God forbid, wanted to ease my pain a little.

Laura didn’t care one tiny bit about Justin’s motives. She cared about competition and nothing more. I wasn’t as pretty or as well dressed as Laura Abel, but I was a heck of a lot better lacrosse player. Now, if I had Justin on my arm, it was easy to see how damaging that could have been to her social status. Which was why Laura went on the offensive. She started a campaign against me, backbiting, spreading rumors (“You won’t believe what Maggie Garrity said about you!”) and making sure people knew that if they hung out with me, they weren’t welcome in Laura’s circle anymore.

Well, it didn’t take long for bad to go to worse. One day I was poor Maggie Garrity, the girl whose world had been turned upside down, and the next I was a rat-fink bitch of the highest order. All of my lacrosse friends turned into frenemies. I started getting tagged in social media posts of parties I wasn’t invited to. Someone flagged me on Facebook for being inappropriate (FYI, I wasn’t, and I don’t use Facebook anymore).

There was other bullying going on—like posts that went up on social media implying my father was a pedophile and may have abused me; a website listing that basically advertised a young girl looking for hot guys and included my mobile phone number. (FYI, I got a new phone number.)

None of this, not one of the attacks against me, got pinned on Laura, but trust me, she was behind it all. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Laura could be suspended or not; I could do all of the self-esteem-building stuff the guidance counselor recommended, read all of her pamphlets on how to deal with bullying—I’d still eat lunch alone.

It wasn’t like I could go clique jumping (really, that’s not a thing), and the other activities I was involved in (student council and newspaper club) I had picked because that’s what the lacrosse kids were doing, so those were now off-limits. I could have made waves with the principal, because bullying is such a big deal these days, but instead I played it down. The only thing I’d get by calling out my bullies would have been more bullying.

Justin quickly realized that his allegiance was with Laura, and just like that he acted like I didn’t exist. Which brought us to this point: me eating lunch alone with a stupid boot on my foot, my dad gone, and terrible Simon in my house.

There were two chairs between me and Jackson and Addie, or Jaddy as they were better known, a new school couple who were so in love I could have sat on Jackson’s lap and he wouldn’t have noticed me. I was stabbing a grape with my fork, imagining it was Simon on the receiving end, when a boy came over to my table.