The Herd(72)
“They are.” He leaned against the sofa’s back and rubbed his beard. “They’re, like, the only people you can take your stress out on. And we’re all pretty upset right now. Cameron was just yelling at me about me not paying off a parking ticket in person for him or something.”
“A parking ticket? Definitely not your problem. Anyway, this is different. Hana’s right—I did something pretty shitty. Oh, here it is.” Finally I spotted the screen’s glossy blackness on the hardwood floor. I called her, then dropped the phone back onto my lap. “Straight to voicemail. I hope she’s okay.” I gazed out the window, where old-fashioned streetlamps cast golden, bell jar–shaped glows. “I wonder why she’s going to see Cameron. She probably wasn’t getting any attention here.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Getting any attention?”
“You saw how Gary and Karen were being.”
He nodded. “What were you two fighting about?”
I took a deep breath. “Like I said, it was my fault, she wasn’t being…overbearing, or anything.” And then I told him, how I’d been grabbing furiously for something else to write about. I recounted how panicked I’d felt, how I would’ve said anything to make the nightmare end—the furious agent, the advance I couldn’t repay—and it was only after the words had left my lips that I realized what I’d done. How a book was all I’d ever wanted, ever since I was a little girl in Michigan, filling notebooks with stories and using markers to make fake picture books, writing “author” on every line that asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. And how it’d all fallen apart now—how my idiotic agent had told the wrong person, turned Eleanor’s death into a public spectacle. I stared at my hands as I spoke, methodically dragging my thumbnail across each cuticle, and when I finished speaking and looked up, Ted had uncrossed his legs. Subtly, like a wilting flower, he was leaning away now.
“Why couldn’t you just write the book about the fake-news people?”
It was the same question Erin had asked a couple weeks ago, and even she had sounded less judgmental, more curious. What a mess I’d made.
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
He frowned, nodded slowly. “But, like…was it worth it? Selling out your friend so you could keep the book deal?”
My whole face contorted around my eyebrows: “I just said it was shitty. I feel awful.”
“Right. I just…Eleanor was probably going through a lot and didn’t need her friend sticking her under a microscope. I bet she could tell, and that it sucked.”
I stared at him, my eyes and mouth both o’s. He looked around the room, anywhere but at me, and shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
Tears surged down my cheeks. “Are you saying it’s my fault she tried to leave? That she got killed?”
He reared away from me, like I was an unexploded grenade. “No. Shit, don’t cry. I’m just, I dunno. I feel bad for Eleanor. She was my friend. Hey.” He pulled me into a hug and I cried on his shoulder for a moment. “We’re all tense. Let’s breathe.”
“I’m gonna try calling Hana again,” I announced, turning away. I accidentally opened my phone’s photos app, and it gave me an idea. “Hey, have you seen this before?”
He grabbed it and looked close, the image I’d copied from the Antiherd, tween Eleanor in her low-slung jeans and corset top. “Ha, where did you find this?” He grinned. “It’s in one of our photo albums at home. Cameron used to tease her about it.”
Cameron. The air in the room felt different, quivering, a sudden drop in cabin pressure. I fished around for a red herring: “It showed up on a memorial site today. I’ve been seeing what fans are posting online.”
“Yeah, that was probably him.” A wistful chuckle. “She was a firecracker.”
I grabbed my phone back and gazed at it. This little Eleanor—Ted had known her as a tiny thing, had probably biked around the neighborhood with her, played night games in the dark. I’d met her when she was just a teenager and she’d awed me then, brilliance blazing like a blast of heat. And if Ted was right, I’d played a part in snuffing it out. I’d made her feel like she was in a fishbowl, turned the Herd into a crucible. Suddenly I was crying again, wet lines streaming from my eyes and nose.
“I think I wanna be alone,” I managed.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He pulled the door closed behind him and it didn’t latch, swung open a second later, so I could hear him clomp down the hallway, rustle for his bag and coat, and slip out into the night. I lay still for a while, humiliation and fury beating around me like a huge heart. Because he was right: I’d tried to sell out Eleanor, one of my best friends, to save my own ass. Chasing wildly after prestige, after my Big Fancy Publishing Deal, somehow caring more about impressing my agent than about my actual friends. All because I was a fucking unethical moron during my year in Michigan.
For a moment, it’d all seemed too good to be true: After a few weeks of playing nurse to Mom, feeling lonely and useless, I’d spun my sad move to Kalamazoo into gold. My article on nearby Northern Sky Labs, pitched on a whim after someone from high school mentioned she knew the CEO, had gone viral; Erin wanted to represent me, a bona fide publisher wanted to make me an author. Now, finally, I had something new to focus on, something to give my life structure and meaning, something solid and impressive to tell my former high school classmates when I bumped into them at the drugstore. It would be great, because it had to be.