None of the Above(27)

“You have some nerve, calling me names, after what they’ve been calling you,” she said hotly.

“Oh sure, turn it back on me,” I said. My jaw hurt from gritting my teeth. “It’s always my fault, isn’t it? I’m the one who always has to apologize? Well, I’m sick of it, Vee. The world does not revolve around you. When you say things, people get hurt.”

“I told you that I didn’t tell him.”

“You told your mother. Isn’t she in Junior League with Sam’s mom? How else could he have found out?”

“Beats me. Do you really think my mom would go out of her way to tell him? She thinks you’re a f*cking saint. Which clearly you aren’t.”

“Maybe she only thinks I’m a saint compared to you.”

Vee rolled her eyes, and in that one gesture—so careless, so familiar—I saw the fault line in our friendship, saw the crack develop. Then Vee asked, “Why are you getting so bent out of shape, anyway?” and made it into a chasm.

I stared at her, this horrible, clueless person I considered to be my best friend in the whole world, and my simmering hurt boiled over into anger. I screwed my face into a smile and did the one thing I knew could hurt her:

I laughed.

“They’re right,” I said, in my best imitation of her ruthlessness. “You really are evil. No wonder no one voted for you.”

Vee flushed. The side of her mouth quivered. As her eyes hardened, I stepped back involuntarily.

“And look what they got,” Vee said, her voice pure venom. “The Homecoming Hermaphrodite. Well, they can have you. I wouldn’t be caught dead with such a freak. Excuse me, I have to get to my next class.”

She clunked down the hall.

The bell rang.

And after I stopped shaking, I ran.





CHAPTER 15


I ran the three miles home, hearing Vee’s voice in my head. I wouldn’t be caught dead with such a freak. The bitter late-autumn air stung my face and slicked my tears into the wind. Half of the time I could barely see the ground in front of me. Thank God it was a workday and the streets were empty.

When I got home, I went straight to the bathroom and puked, knocking over half the stuff on the counter on the way to the toilet. After I washed myself with Listerine I knelt down to clean up the mess: A couple of hair clips. Some lipstick. The claddagh ring Sam had given me Homecoming night. When I had shown it off to Aunt Carla she’d gotten all excited, saying that in the old days it was practically an engagement ring. The heart was for love, the two hands were for friendship, and the little crown over the heart meant loyalty.

What a load of crap.

I turned the ring around and around between my fingers, and thought about flushing it down the toilet too, but that seemed spiteful and wasteful. So I stuffed it into my travel bag to get it out of my sight. Maybe, just maybe, after Sam calmed down he wouldn’t be so mad, and he’d realize what an * he’d been and apologize and everything would be okay.

All I wanted was for everything to be okay again.

I went to my room, and lay on my bed. I looked around at my track trophies and the posterboard collages of my friends. Nothing in my room had changed. Yet everything was different. I’d only ever felt that way one time before: the day after Mom died.

I ignored the first three text messages I got. After the fourth one, I turned my ringer off, and stared up at the ceiling, a prisoner in my bed. I couldn’t run because of the people outside. I couldn’t check my email or my phone for fear of another Photoshop masterpiece. So this was how shut-ins were made.

My thoughts didn’t so much swirl as swarm as I rehashed the conversations with Vee and Sam over and over again in a masochistic loop.

Later, when I heard my dad’s car door slam, I knew I should get up to go down and greet him, but my legs felt like they were made of Play-Doh.

Instead, he came to me. “Krissy, you in there?” he asked after knocking on my door.

“Yeah, just getting back from a run.” Not exactly a lie.

“I’ll put something on, maybe the lasagna in the freezer?” I listened to his heavy tread down the stairs, then my thoughts swarmed again. I relived the pain, the humiliation and the fear, and then one thing that Sam had said made me sit up straight in bed, my hand to my chest as if I’d just been stabbed.

I thought I loved you. . . .

Past tense.

My whole life, I’d only told four people that I loved them. One of them was dead. Now another one of them hated me. I went a little crazy. That’s the only way I can explain why I opened up my phone, trying to ignore the other texts, and typed a message to Sam:



I am a girl. Please talk to me so I can tell you the truth. You know I love you, and would never, ever try to hurt you.



Maybe I was a glutton for punishment. But this I believed: it shouldn’t be possible to stop loving someone so quickly.

As my dad and I ate, I kept my phone on my lap. It didn’t ring, but our doorbell did just as I rose to clear my plate.

It was Faith, with an anxious-smiley mash-up on her face.

“Hey. You haven’t been answering my texts. I was just coming by to see if you were okay.”

My dad hovered in the foyer. “Is something wrong, Krissy?”

Faith looked back and forth between me and my father, her smile faltering.