All the Rage(42)

I put my hand to the screen, covering hers.

We’re wearing the same color nail polish.





i sit at my desk with everything I need for my nails and every application of polish ends up feeling the same, ends up feeling like it’s leading me back to the water. Over and over, I paint the color on and each time I finish, it’s still too close. I have to take it off, try again until it’s right, because I can’t give up the red. It’s mine. It makes me.

“Romy, you’re going to be late.”

I press the brush heavily against my nails, letting my hand shake the color on. Something I never do. It doesn’t make for the best manicure, but the weight of the polish feels differently than it normally does and then I’m ready.

At school, I stand in the entranceway, and I think the heat outside would be better than choking on the same breathed air of the people who crowded around me, saw me with my shirt open. My eyes skim their faces, their hands—hands on my shoulders. Whose hands? Who was holding my phone, taking photos with it to send to the school? I close my eyes and hear a muddle of voices and try to imagine which one said they should, because that’s how it started, didn’t it? No. First it’s a thought, a thought in someone’s head and then said aloud, and then me, on the ground, with my shirt open.

“Jesus, Grey. When aren’t you in the way?”

Brock is behind me and Alek lags behind him. They’re both carrying two hefty baskets full of bright yellow T-shirts with bold black lettering across the front. FIND PENNY YOUNG. And underneath that in tinier, but still visible letters, GREBE AUTO SUPPLIES. I move and they shuffle past before they’re waylaid by some underclassmen who ask about the shirts as an excuse to get a closer look at Alek’s haggard face.

“They’re for anyone who wants ’em,” Brock says. He nods at Alek. “Mrs. Turner had them made. They’re free. If you take one, make sure you wear it for the search on Monday. The news is probably going to be there. This’ll be a chance to—”

“Get Grebe Auto Supplies some free publicity?” I ask.

Alek turns awkwardly, weighed down by his basket.

“Don’t you f*cking dare,” he says and the underclassmen look at me like I’m scum, like I disappeared her myself. But they already think that.

“Yeah, because the last goddamn thing a national brand needs is free publicity,” Brock snaps. It probably doesn’t hurt, though. He grabs a T-shirt off the top and whips it at my chest. It drops from there to the ground. The letters get mangled into the folds and the only word still visible is PENNY.

“Pick it up,” Alek says but he’s not talking to me.

Brock turns to him. “What?”

“Don’t leave it on the f*cking ground.”

There’s a hint of panic in Alek’s voice, enough for one of the freshmen to snatch it from the dirty floor and put it back in Brock’s pile.

“Man, I didn’t—”

But Alek is already walking away.

By midday, the halls are a sea of yellow, making Penny a part of every single moment, a relentless reminder for everyone of what they think I took from her search.

I get so tired of the constant glares that at lunch, I hide in the bathroom, in the stall farthest from the door and become a tableau of a girl crouched stupidly on a toilet seat, so she won’t be seen. Over the hour, girls come in and out, in and out. I can’t stand every boring, worthless piece of conversation I overhear because they make me wish I could be a part of them, be some nobody girl with nothing to say.

After a while, Sarah Trainer and Norah Landers come in.

“This shirt looks awful on me. They should have different colors to pick from,” Norah says. Sarah makes a sympathetic sound. I peer through the crack in the door. “You think if I asked him, Brock would get me more Georgia Home Boy?”

Norah smirks, makes air quotes when she says Georgia Home Boy.

“He said that was just a Wake Lake thing.”

“But I’m having Trey over this weekend.”

Sarah laughs. “What, you planning to wine, dine, and date-rape him?”

“Fuck off. Wake Lake was amazing and if you hadn’t been too chicken shit to try it, you’d know it. All in the dosage.”

“That still didn’t answer my question.”

“Shut up. I’m going to ask him.”

“He’ll probably make you blow him for it.”

Norah considers it. “There are worse things.”

They inspect their reflections in the mirror and then they leave. I take my phone out of my pocket and search Georgia Home Boy.

Georgia Home Boy

Slang for Gamma Hydroxybutyrate (GHB) *

leon texts while I’m getting ready for work, lets me know he swapped shifts with Brent Walker and won’t be in tonight. I text BUT I’M OFF FOR THE WEEKEND like he doesn’t know after all the time we’ve worked together, I get the weekends off. & MONDAY FOR THE SEARCH PARTY.

It upsets me in a way I’m not proud of, but I don’t know why. Is it weak to want to see him? It can’t be wrong to want to see someone because you like the person you are when you’re around them. That’s probably one of the best reasons you could have.

At Swan’s, the air-conditioning plays tricks again, on and off, on and off. Every time we pass Tracey’s office, we hear her swearing about it through the door.