Be the Girl(90)

I know what she’s searching for—any reason why she shouldn’t trust me around her daughter.

I can’t blame her.

All I can do is prove her wrong.

“That girl could talk an ear off a goat.” Uncle Merv chuckles and hands me the staple gun “You know how to use one of these?”

“I think I can figure it out.”

“Just aim and point. Down there. Not at me.”

I hide my eye roll and begin punching staples through the burlap to secure it.

“Yeah … I still remember this boy named Buckey O’Donnell, back when I was in school. Gosh, that would have been”—he scratches his forehead—“sixty-five, almost seventy years ago. He was a strange kid. A giant. Six feet by the time he was twelve, could barely read, couldn’t add pennies to make four cents for the longest time. But he was a gentle giant. Everyone had a good time pokin’ fun at that kid, myself included. Even the teachers told him he was stupid.”

I cringe. “That’s horrible.” Suddenly Ms. Forester doesn’t sound so bad.

“People didn’t understand ‘different’ back then. And Buckey, he was different.” Uncle Merv tugs on a corner of the burlap and then points to where he wants me to secure it.

“What happened to him?”

“Don’t know. But of all the people I’ve met in my life, Buckey O’Donnell is a name that sits heavy on my soul ever since Cassie came along. She’s made me regret how I treated him. Not that she’s like he was but, you know, she’s different, too.” His jowls lift with his smile. “She has a way of lighting up a room just by walking into it. I pity the person who doesn’t see it.”

“Yeah, I know. I see it.” I can’t help the tone of accusation. Why is he saying this? And why is Uncle Merv telling me stories about Buckey O’Donnell?

Cloudy eyes turn to me. “I know you do. Which is why I know you’re going to be okay, Aria.” He hobbles around to inspect my stapling job. “Now it’s your job to help other people see it.”

“How?”

“Probably by setting a good example and not breaking a girl’s nose,” he mutters, heading up the porch steps.





“Next is”—my heart pounds as McNair shifts her reading glasses to scan her list—“Aria and Emmett. Their topic is bullying.” She gives me a small nod. I’m sure she’s heard my story. Or at least one version of it. Who knows how many versions are floating around within these walls by now, weeks after Holly’s vengeful stunt put me under the school’s microscope.

Someone in the class coughs as I stand, and I catch the muffled “ironic” beneath it.

I ignore that taunt, much as I’ve ignored all the comments and looks I’ve caught in the hallways over the last few weeks, and make my way to the front of the class, suddenly lightheaded.

Emmett unfolds from his seat on the opposite side of the class, where he has taken to sitting since we broke up, and that now-constant ache in my chest swells. I feel it every time I think about him, every time I see him. I’ve tried my best to keep my head high, to smile at Cassie like nothing’s wrong on our morning rides, to hide my flinches whenever she mentions his name.

Thank God he hasn’t started dating anyone yet. The day I see him with his arms around another girl will be the day that finally breaks me.

Aside from a body shifting in a chair and a few low whispers, there isn’t a sound in the room as we meet at the front of the class. Everyone knows what happened between us.

He peers down at me with those dark-brown eyes that I could stare into for hours. “You have the file, right?” he asks, for the second time since we left his driveway. Aside from our morning rides into school, we don’t talk anymore.

We might as well be strangers.

A reality that hurts more, not less, with each passing day, as my regret bubbles every time I see him, every time my fingers itch to reach for him.

I hold the flash drive up by way of answer and then plug it in to the port, my stomach churning with nerves. I pull up the presentation I consolidated last night, after he emailed me his five slides.

Emmett turns to face the class. He takes a deep breath and rubs his hands down the sides of his jeans, and then says, “We’re here to talk about causes and effects of bullying on today’s teenagers. I’m gonna cover the first five slides, and then Aria will jump in to do hers.”

He begins to speak, and his words and voice pull me back to those days in his bedroom, sprawled out on the floor, planning this very presentation that I dreaded—that he had no idea I was dreading because he didn’t know me. He didn’t know the girl I used to be.

I only let him know the one I’ve been so desperate to become.

“In this day and age, cyberbullying has become one of the most prevalent avenues for spreading gossip. Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter and text-messaging apps allow people to target their victims from behind a screen, sometimes anonymously.”

My eye catches Holly’s at the same time that hers shift to mine.

She has the decency to avert her gaze to her desk.

If there is any good that came from the war between us, it’s that Holly can’t hide her vicious mean streak behind a sweet voice and fluttering lashes anymore. People know better now. She earned herself two days’ suspension for the prom-date joke and was kicked off the cross-country team, too. Add that punishment to losing Emmett and my banged-up knee for her broken nose, and we’re about even, I guess.