Where the Staircase Ends(53)

I tossed and turned until my joints ached from the movement, and when my mother touched my hot skin in the morning, she agreed that it was best for me to stay home another day.

The text messages started coming that afternoon. Some of them were single words like slut, skank, and other derogatory names, while others were preachy, chiding me for what I’d done to Logan. Someone got creative and made a fake email address, using it to email a picture of a scantily clad woman perching suggestively on the lap of an older man. My face was crudely pasted on top of the woman’s face and the words “Teacher’s Pet” were printed in bold font across the top of the page.

It lacked the finesse of Sunny’s pranks. She would have taken care to center my face over the other woman’s so it looked more realistic, and come up with a cleverer tag line than “Teacher’s Pet.” Knowing it wasn’t Sunny gave me some solace because at least she wasn’t driving the knife any deeper into my back than she already had. But it still stung, and I suddenly found myself on equal footing with Alana James, wondering if the whole charade happened to teach me a lesson for all the years I aided Sunny in her torment.

By Friday I had no fever to support my argument for staying home, and without sharing the sordid details of my reputation’s downfall, I had no ground to stand on. Not that my mother would have let me stay home anyway. She probably would have told me to work things out with Sunny, or worse —taken Sunny’s side.

“Oh my goodness,” my mother said when she pulled out of the driveway and saw the trees in our front yard. “Who would do such a thing on a school night?” I shrugged as I stared at the strands of toilet paper hanging from the branches, reaching their curling fingers toward the car like they wanted to squeeze the hope right out of me. This was my life now.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said when my mom had driven me the five blocks to school. I was able to score a ride by feigning weakness from the previous days’ fevers, but next week I’d have to suffer the walk alone. I wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

I hid behind a car in the teacher’s parking lot until the final bell rang, squatting next to a bumper sticker that read “Pets are people too!” until my thighs quivered. Then I slunk my way inside the school and into one of the lesser-used bathrooms where I wouldn’t have to worry about bumping in to Sunny. I wouldn’t be able to hide long without the school calling my mother to alert her of my truancy, but I at least wanted to miss first period so I could delay my encounter with Justin.

I was coming out of the bathroom just before the second period bell when he found me. It was like he knew I would be there, and my heart squeezed at the sight of his long body leaning against a row of lockers. For a moment he just watched me, his blue eyes wide and his grin-less mouth drawn like it was on the night of the party.

He believes her. The look on his face was so weathered it didn’t seem possible for him to have dismissed Sunny’s propaganda. I waited for him to yell the words that must be coming, for him to echo the awful things my classmates had emailed me and texted me since the news broke a few days before.

Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and pressed his cheek against my hair, rocking me back and forth in a tight hug.

“I’m so sorry, Taylor. I know it’s not true, okay? I’ll tell everyone I know that it’s not true.”

“You do? You will?” The words squeaked their way out of my throat.

“Yes,” he said into my hair. “Brandon told me he was behind the house at The Fields. He told me what you and Logan were really fighting about.”

It felt so good to be in his arms again; it was almost too good to be true.

“When you didn’t text me back, I thought—”

“I know. I’m so sorry. I was processing. I should never have even considered that it was true. I’m so, so sorry.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as a fresh tear slid down my cheek. I was so sure Brandon would never tell. I thought I was stranded on an island. It didn’t even matter that the only person he confessed to was Justin—one person changed everything. Brandon Blakes saved me.

I swallowed the lump that had grown in my throat.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said as the tears I’d held back for the past two days leaked down my cheeks. “It’s too late. People already believe it. Sunny wins, as usual.”

“No, she doesn’t,” he said, pulling me away from him so that I had to look at his face. “She ruined her friendship with you. That’s not winning. You can’t let her get to you, okay?” He pulled up the bottom of his T-shirt and used the corner to wipe the tears from my cheeks, exposing a stripe of tanned, taut skin. Normally the sight of his exposed stomach would send a shiver up my spine, but I was too numb to feel anything at all.

“Come on,” he said, giving my hand an encouraging tug. “I want you to hold your head high and smile, and when I say now, you let out the longest, loudest laugh you can manage, okay?”

I nodded meekly, too defeated to argue or ask what he was up to. He closed his hand around mine and pulled me along the hallway, leaning close to my ear as we walked, whispering, “Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon,” over and over again. It was the same thing Sunny used to do in junior high choir to make it look like she was singing the words to the songs even though she wasn’t. To everyone watching, it looked like Justin was telling me a hilarious story even though he was only repeating the nonsensical name of a fruit over and over again.