Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(39)

Down below, my classmates are dancing or awkwardly milling around in same-sex groups. The guys seem aimless and doofy, trying to love-tap one another in the balls. The girls move with more of a purpose. Natalie Wetta and Liz Lanteri jokingly slow dance together. We’re all going to graduate soon, and go to college, and grow up, and get married, I think, and realize with a start I’ve said we instead of they. Usually the only we is me and Avery, or me and the Were-heads. Or me and Gideon, before he outed himself as Lord of the Douche. I was so delusional to think he was above this popularity stuff.

I’ve tried to look everywhere except at Gideon and Ashley, but I’m a masochist, so I glance around for them. Ashley’s nowhere to be found, and hearing a few thuds of dress shoes on the bleachers, I realize Gideon’s climbing up toward me. I am still mad at him, no matter how cute he looks.

This is the part where I am supposed to be a sparkling, vindictive angel of revenge whose cutting remarks make him feel like shit.

“I like your shoes,” I blurt.

He glances down at them. “Oh. Thanks.” Then he sits next to me, leaning a little bit forward with his hands on his knees, staring straight out at the dance floor like he’s intentionally trying not to look at me.

“So did you get to the Sam Kieth illustrated editions?”

I don’t say anything. I freeze helplessly, torn between wanting to yell at him about his cisgender white male sense of entitlement and whisper to him that he smells like pine needles and dreams.

“It, um, was really stupid, what I did.”

He has now given me permission to go with option one.

“It was pretty spectacularly stupid, yeah.”

“I didn’t know who lived there. Not that that’s better, but if I knew it was, like, an old lady by herself—and that you knew her—then I might not have . . .” He trails off. “I totally forgot you lived in that neighborhood.”

“Well, I do.”

“Can you, um, tell her I’m sorry? For me?”

“I already told her.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, I told her I was sorry I go to school with a bunch of idiots who ruined her garden, and that people do really shitty things to fit in without thinking about it at all. And that I ever thought for a split second that you were cool.”

He looks stunned, which makes me even angrier, because it’s obvious that he chooses to hang out with girls who never tell him off and just let him get away with anything. And I’m so, so annoyed at myself for caring about it.

He turns toward me, his nose crinkled up with irritation, as if I’m being An Emotional Girl? and missing some major piece of information that makes him not an utter ass.

“Scarlett,” he says.

“What?”

He shakes his head, one side of his mouth twisting in kind of an embarrassed smile.

“The only reason I went with them in the first place was because you said I had no friends.”

He sighs. Then he gets up and walks back down to the dance floor.

That’s bullshit, I think. Maybe it was partly what I said, but he loves having baller status at school. It’s so unfair—I put on the dress, came to the dance, and actually tried, and nothing worked out the way I wanted it to. I should have known that coming was a stupid idea.

I track down Avery and tell her I’m gonna go.

“No! Why? Did Gideon say something to you?”

“Yeah, but that’s not why. I’m tired. I’m in a shitty mood. I’ve been sucking in my stomach for, like, two hours. I need to go home.”

“Come dance with us.”

I glance warily at Mike, who nods and smiles in a seemingly genuine way. I really don’t want some bullshit charity third-wheel routine.

“Okay. I’ll need some more punch.”



Three Solo cups later, I’m nice and tipsy enough to non-self-consciously dance with Avery in sort of a performative, faux-dirty way that Mike and some other boys nearby who’ve never looked twice at us seem to appreciate. But we’re totally ignoring them. We don’t usually act like this. Our friendship isn’t really very affectionate or physically silly. Most of the time we sit kind of far away from each other and banter because we’re both weird and trapped in our own heads and uncomfortable with touchy-feely stuff. Like two brains in a jar. But it’s surprisingly fun to just let go.

The Fray comes on, a slow song, and Mike and Avery dance as I go get more punch. Unexpectedly, as I’m ladling punch into my cup, my eyes start swimming with tears. At the Fray. I’m obviously losing it. Or I’m just turning into Dawn, who full-body sobs during Super Bowl commercials about Sprint “framily” plans. It was only a matter of time.

Gideon and Ashley slow dance, but over her shoulder, he’s looking at me. His expression looks studiously blank, like it used to when he was troubled about something, trying to parse out a jumble of thoughts in his head, but who knows what it means now? I wish he’d stop. Yes, I’m standing alone, as usual. Gawk at me all you’d like when I’m dead and stuffed and posed in the Museum of Natural History as Girl Standing by Herself.

Careful what you wish for, though: He stops looking at me when Ashley pulls him down toward her, tangling her fingers in his slightly-too-long dark hair forever brushing his collar, and they kiss. And I die a little.