Felix Ever After(41)

“He’s not that bad,” Hazel says.

Marisol breathes out a puff of smoke, drops the cigarette to the ground, and puts it out with the twist of her foot. “You can do better,” she tells Hazel.

Hazel sneers. “Who?” she says. “You?”

Marisol shrugs, but the obvious answer is yes.

“He says, like, the most ignorant shit sometimes, and then pretends that he’s joking, but I get the feeling he isn’t really joking, you know?” Leah says.

Hazel shrugs. “He’s hot.”

Leah shakes her head. “I don’t know. Somehow, when someone is a jerk, their hotness level drops by at least fifty percent.”

“Really? I guess I can look past that to focus on the physical.”

“Don’t you think their personality kind of affects the physical?” Leah asks. “When a girl is super smart and knows a bunch of random facts and has poetry memorized and stuff, I think she’s really attractive, no matter what she looks like.”

“Isn’t that just, I don’t know, too hard to find? Too long to wait for?”

“I’m assuming it’d be worth it,” Leah says. “Better than waiting for someone like James, anyway.”

James is disgusting, we all know that he is. He’s the kind of guy who says inappropriate shit and tells anyone who gets mad that they’re being too sensitive. I glance across the parking lot, at Declan standing alone under the tree’s shade. How lonely must Declan be, to hang out with someone as fucking horrible as James?

And it hits me. James. I’d been so focused on Declan being the one behind the gallery that I hadn’t thought to consider anyone else. The sorts of messages that grandequeen69’s been sending—they’re exactly the sort of thing James would say. Even the name grandequeen69, whatever the hell that means, sounds like something immature he would come up with.

I feel like I can’t look at anyone without thinking that they might be grandequeen69. It could’ve been Marisol, keeping up with her ignorant, transphobic shit, but what if it was James, making a “joke” only he would think was funny? It could’ve been anyone, and the longer I go without knowing who it was, the more the pressure grows in my chest.





Twelve


THE BELL RINGS, AND JILL AMBLES IN AFTER THE REST OF the class to give us her usual morning speech (today is on trying something new, continuing to expand and grow). I look around at everyone in the class. I never paid much attention to any of the other students before, not when it came to the gallery and which of them could be a suspect—I’d been so focused on Declan—but now I stare at each and every single one of them. Leah, when she smiles at me. Harper, who sits at the front of the class, taking notes on everything Jill says. Nasira, whispering to Tyler. Elliott, sketching in his notepad. James, who catches me looking and rolls his eyes before staring forward again.

When Jill releases us to our regular workstations, Ezra is quiet, still pissed about everything James said. He glances at me over and over again, like he’s waiting for permission to ask if I’m all right. Neither of us speaks for a few minutes, but the truth is building inside me, and even if I don’t want to admit it, I know I have to.

I glance around, even though it’s just the two of us in this corner, and lean in to whisper. “It wasn’t Declan.”

He narrows his eyes in confusion for a second, before the realization makes them widen. “What? How do you know?”

“He told me himself. We were texting. He was going on about how he’d never do something like that, and he feels sorry for me.”

Ezra’s eyes soften. “Really?”

When I look around the edge of the wall I’m working on, I can see Declan in the far corner, his back to the classroom. “Yes. But then he went on to say that he also hates me, so he’s still an asshole.”

Ezra sighs. “Oh.” We each have our globs of acrylic, paintbrushes poised and ready. “What’re you going to do?” he whispers.

“I don’t know. Try to find out who actually did it, I guess. I mean, I have no idea how.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “I could ask Marisol if she knows anything. She might’ve heard a rumor or something.”

I don’t want Marisol anywhere near this, not when she’s done her own damage. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Ezra frowns at me. “What’s wrong with asking Marisol?”

I don’t want to get into it now, but Ezra’s watching me, waiting for an answer. I shrug. “Nothing. I just wonder if . . .” I glance around the corner again, eyes scanning the room. Leah is toward the front, painting a rose on her canvas.

“How likely do you think it is that the person who did the gallery is a photography student?” I ask Ezra.

He thinks about it for a second. “Pretty likely, I guess.”

I hesitate. “Maybe we should talk to Leah.”

“You think it was Leah?”

“No—I mean, I guess it’s impossible to know for sure, but I don’t think it was her. But maybe she has an idea of who it could’ve been. She might’ve noticed someone in her class talking shit about me or something.”

He nods. “Okay, yeah. Let’s grab her after class.”