They Wish They Were Us(50)

When the bell rings, I want to run to her table and pretend like everything is okay. I want to describe the look on Henry’s face when I broke his heart and ask her why the fuck did I not feel any single sliver of remorse? I want my best friend. But instead I’m sluggish to pack up my bag, terrified of an encounter here in the lab. She is gone by the time I look up.

I can’t bring myself to enter the caf for lunch, to see my empty seat at the Players’ Table, now home to five. Instead, I find a carrel in the back of the library and rest my head on the wooden desk. I’m hidden here and I finally close my eyes, letting the tears fall in silence. The lunch period ticks by, but it’s excruciating to sit without purpose. I pull my phone from my pocket and tap on the nondescript app, the one that holds the keys to everything, the one that will save me from Mr. Beaumont’s English test this afternoon.

“It’ll only be true or false, guys,” he’d said last week. “Gotta prepare you for the AP exam.”

The screen loads and I type in the password from muscle memory. A spinning wheel turns and then turns again and a message I’ve never seen appears.

Wrong password. Try again. A sad face blinks below the cursor and stares back at me.

There’s nothing to do but laugh. Of course. I should have expected this. I don’t deserve this massive, bullshit database. None of us do. All the time and effort and dignity I sacrificed to get access . . . it all means nothing.

Then it dawns on me who made this choice. The only person who could change the password. Nikki.

My hands shake and my vision blurs. I try to picture her lying on her canopy bed with her laptop sitting on her chest, making the decision, loading the page, clicking Confirm. Smiling with glee at my presumed failure. She had become a monster.

For the first time since Road Rally, I wonder, Was it all worth it?

I try to stop myself. I really do. But my fingers fly over my phone screen faster than I can stop them.

Henry and I broke up. I hit send before giving myself time to reconsider.

Shit, Adam types back almost immediately. My breathing steadies. U ok?

I will be. It was my choice.

Never liked that kid anyway.

I laugh into my sleeve and avoid a nasty look from Mrs. Deckler. I type the words that are scarier to say out loud. I quit the Players, too.

Double shit.

I want to say I’m sorry, to say he didn’t make a mistake when he chose me three years ago. That I’m still on his side. But another text comes in, churning my insides into a jammy, gooey mess.

You’re still my favorite. That’ll never change.





* * *



—

I straight-up fail the English test. I bomb it like I’ve never bombed anything in my life, earning a 65, a number I’ve never even seen written in red. Mr. Beaumont drops the marked-up exam on my desk with a note, also in red. SEE ME. I stuff the piece of paper, along with my pride, into a ball and shove it deep inside my backpack.

When class is dismissed, I try to sneak out behind the others and escape. But I have to wait a beat for Nikki to leave first. The awkward dance leaves me vulnerable and Mr. Beaumont seizes the opportunity.

“Jill,” he says. “Wait up.” He stands with his arms crossed, like a disappointed big brother, and walks toward me to close the door. “Take a seat.”

“I’m gonna be late for next period,” I mumble.

“Jill, you’re one of my most promising students. You just failed. I think we need to have a little chat.”

“A little chat?” I scoff. But when I look at him, he’s not joking. His eyes are wide with concern and his hands are clasped in a little steeple in front of him. His cardigan is done up wrong so one button sticks out at the bottom, and another, shiny and round, pokes out at the top, knocking his collar askew just slightly. Dark circles sag under his eyes, like he had one too many whiskeys the night before, and the middle of his brow needs a good tweezing. He looks so different than he did that night at the gas station three years ago. So much more worn down. Back then he was tickled, amused that he had caught his “firstborns” doing something so outrageous.

Now he just looks rumpled. There’s no way he was a Player, no way they would have let him in. Maybe under all this, at some point, he had something, but the man in front of me isn’t special. Maybe I’m not either.

“What happened?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Forgot to study, I guess.” I cross my arms, defiant and childish. It feels wrong to talk to authority like this, but after years of sucking up to teachers to throw them off our scent, it also feels like a victory.

Mr. Beaumont sighs and leans back in his chair so the front legs lift off the ground. I wonder if he’ll fall backward. “Look, Jill, I’m not an idiot. You know I went here, right?”

“I’ve seen the yearbooks.” I picture him then, strong and lean, with thicker hair and a varsity jersey. It was only ten years ago. He and Adam would have missed each other only by a few years.

“Listen, Jill. I know what goes on.”

Now I wonder if this is an admission, an acknowledgment of that moment at the gas station and all the other little ones in between. What else has he seen from afar? How much does he know about what we’ve done? For a second, hope creeps into my chest. At least that would mean someone else understands.