Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(53)

“Who?”

She lolls her head and gives me this Oh, don’t bullshit me look.

“You mean Gideon?”

“Duh, I mean Gideon. He’s liked you the whole time. Probably because you’re pretty and skinny and have big boobs, and you know it. I’m not a boy; I can see right through your crap. You pretend you don’t know or care, and you wear weird glasses and Chucks and you’ll watch his stupid old stand-up specials with him, so he thinks you’re cooler or smarter than me or some dumb shit like that.” She sniffs fiercely.

“You took my sister away from me, so I wanted to take him away from you. And I thought maybe it would give you a reality check, so you’d stop being delusional about some exclusive club you’re in just for being a snobby * to everybody. That’s how it started.”

But not how it ended. That’s when I realize it from behind her words: He hurt her just like he hurt me. She stubs out her butt angrily and tosses it in the toilet bowl.

“But now he hates you. And I didn’t even have to do that; you did it yourself.”

She pushes past me, the stall door slamming closed, and stops by the mirrors. Through a sliver in the joints of the stall walls, I can see her fixing her hair and dabbing the smeared makeup off her cheekbones.

I feel like someone just put hot wax all over who I am, laid a strip down over it, and then ripped everything right off, and now there’s nothing left.

Dazed, my eyes wander to the wall and land on Scarlett Epstein is a slut, still there from when I scrawled it in Sharpie two years ago as a joke that now seems snide and terminally unfunny. I mindlessly fix my eyes on it until the words lose their meaning.

Ashley pulls her hair into a severe, careless ponytail, with those little lumps sticking out that girls with straight hair always get.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“No, you’re not. Honestly, it’s not a big deal. Keep pretending I’m the dumb, mean, hot girl and you’re some weird, ugly outcast nobody likes, if you really need to feel like you’re better than me.”

I hear the door of the girls’ room open and shut, and she’s gone.

I breathe again, sort of, but quick and short, like a fragile reptile in the wrong climate. I slide down the wall. I can barely feel it when I hit the floor.





Chapter 21


He thrust into her a bunch of times. “I love you,” he whispered into her ear. She moaned because it felt so good, and replied breathlessly: “I suck.”

I suck. “A bunch of times”? Even if that’s technically how sexual intercourse works, you’d think I could do a little better than that. The forum is pretty desperate for a sex scene, so I’m trying to give them what they want, but it isn’t happening. Normally I don’t even have to delete a sentence and try again. To be honest, I don’t feel like writing—I haven’t for a while now, actually—but they’re kind of my only friends besides Ruth and Avery now. Both of whom have called a few times, but I put a kibosh on my phone after my dad left a few apologetic messages. I don’t feel ready to pick up and talk to anybody just yet.

Okay, let’s go.


He thrust into her hard, but not so hard that it seemed like he had an anger problem or anything, just the normal amount of hard. It felt good. It felt great, actually!

He thrust into her a few times, and it felt like how that feels for people who have had sex.

He thrust(ed?)

Forget “thrust”; it’s gross. And “into her” used to confuse me in the fourth grade when I was sneaking Dawn’s Jodi Picoult novels, because it kind of seems like a weird metaphor. Right? “He is inside her” doesn’t sound literal; it sounds like some kind of strange aphorism for “He lives inside of her heart, forever” or something.


He climbed on top of her and moved around, like one does.

Maybe I’m not good at writing anymore. Wouldn’t that be funny? Yes and no!


“That feels really great,” she said.

“I’m so glad, thanks,” he said.

“No, thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome?”

Wait, why am I—why is she, I mean—thanking him? He’s not helping her build an IKEA cabinet. You don’t thank people for having sex with you, I don’t think, unless maybe you’re disfigured or seven hundred years old or something.


“This feels really good!” she said.

“For me, also!”

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, this is bad.

Delete all.

I trudge toward Ruth’s house with a copy of my dad’s book. I’m giving her mine—something tells me it deserves about as much valuable real estate on the bookshelf in my room as Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s A Shore Thing. I wonder what she’ll say about it. Probably something like, “The literary world needs another white male perspective like I need these shingles on my ass,” or some other perfect withering quip.

I knock on her door, and nobody answers. I glance back at the garden, checking to see if she’s crouched in the sunflower patch, lighting up. She’s not. I knock again harder, and the door creaks open by itself.

“Ruth?” I yell, tentatively stepping inside. “Are you home?”

I walk through the foyer, following that never-ending shelf of feminist literature that winds all the way into the bedroom. I’ve never been in there before; our relationship has always been contained to the garden, the porch, the foyer, and the kitchen. (And, on one memorable occasion, the bathroom. I walked in on her puking. “Schnapps,” she explained as she choked over the toilet, before I ran to get her a glass of water.)