You'd Be Home Now (69)

“Ms. Ward,” says Mr. Hoolihan. “Earth science waits for no one. You’re lucky I didn’t mark you absent.”

    Every single kid in class is staring at me as I make my way to my seat in the back. I slide onto my chair and put my backpack on the floor.

Then I see it.

Whore.

Scrawled on my desk in black marker. The letters are big enough to be seen, but just small enough for a teacher not to notice right away.

I freeze, my blood running cold. Mr. Hoolihan starts talking at the front of the room. I rub the sleeve of my hoodie across the word, but it doesn’t budge. I lick my fingers and wipe them on the desk, but that doesn’t work, either. This wasn’t on my desk last Friday and I always sit here. It’s assigned in Hoolihan’s class.

Kids are snickering. When I look up, they quickly look away, hands over their mouths.

I pull my copy of The Portrait of a Lady out of my bag and lay it horizontally over the word so I don’t have to see it.

My phone vibrates in my lap.

“Ms. Ward, would you please turn your phone off?” Mr. Hoolihan is exasperated.

“Sorry,” I mutter. I grab my phone and jam it off, put it back in my backpack.

The whole class period, I can feel that word crawling up at me through the pages of the book.

It can’t be meant for me. It can’t.



* * *



—

Hallway.

More stares and snickers.

I think: this will pass. No one knows. It’s just Gage and his broken arm. Or maybe they heard Joey got high.

    Think of ocean fish, like Joey once told me, so I do. Dottyback. Barracuda. Seahorse.

I make it through my other classes, but it’s weird, the stares I’m getting. I don’t think I can make it through lunch, so I hide in a bathroom stall until it’s time for Lit.



* * *



—

In Watson’s class, there’s a piece of paper on my desk when I sit down. There have been stares and whispers all day. I hid in the bathroom during lunch. I turn the paper over, stomach clenching.

Let me know when you reopen the pool house for business The paper is snatched out of my hands by Daniel Wankel.

Daniel glances at it and then tears it up. “You jerks!” he shouts. “You think this is funny? Huh? You proud of yourselves? Look at yourselves. I see you, Mary Mitford. I know stories about you, you want me to share them with everybody?”

Mary Mitford flushes bright red. She turns back around in her seat.

“I thought so,” Daniel says. He lets the pieces of paper flutter to the floor.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

My face is frozen. I can only nod, even though I’m not. I just don’t get who would even care about me and Gage and the pool house, in the real scheme of things. Why should it matter? People hook up all the time.

Liza rushes into the room, worry creasing her face. She shakes her head.

I’m so sorry. I texted you, she mouths.

Mr. Watson rushes in, coffee cup in hand. “My apologies for being late.” He laughs and looks around at all of us.

    No one joins in.

When the bell pings to signal the end of class, Mary Mitford turns around.

“You can run, but you can’t hide. Slut.”

“Shut your mouth, Mary Mitford, or I’ll shut it for you.” Liza is standing with her fists balled.

Mary Mitford scuttles away.

“I texted you,” Liza says. “I’m so sorry.”

“We should leave,” Daniel says. “I’ll get my car, meet you by the side door. That’s the quickest way out.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, my voice trembling. “I can’t just leave.”

“It’s just going to get worse,” Daniel says. “You should go home. Come back in a few days, when it dies down.”

“Actually, I don’t think she should go home,” Liza says.

“Are you crazy?” Daniel says. “Look what people are doing!”

They give each other a look I don’t understand.

Kids are starting to file into Watson’s room for the next class. Liza grabs my arm and hustles me out the door. Daniel follows.

In the hallway, she pulls me into an alcove. “I don’t get it,” I say. “What’s going on? Who the hell cares if I hooked up with Gage in the pool house? We didn’t…it was hardly anything. No worse than what other people have done. I’m a no one.”

Liza bites her lip. “Listen, Emmy, remember when I told you you were going to have to get a spine if you wanted to survive the year? Well, now is the time.”

She turns to Daniel. “She shouldn’t have to leave. She didn’t do anything wrong. She hooked up with a guy. Are you telling me she should be ashamed and driven out of school for that?”

Daniel says, “Well, no, but the—”

    “There isn’t any ‘but,’ Daniel. If she leaves, it’ll get ten times worse when she comes back.”

She turns back to me. “Emmy, if you want to go home, go home. But you if you want to stay, I’m with you.”

The warning bell for next period blurts through the hallway, making me jump.