Boring Girls(24)

After working for quite a while in silence, she finally said, “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s wrong?”

I straightened up and looked at her. “Yeah, of course. Are you okay?”

“Well, not really,” she said, clearing her throat. “I mean, you took off from that party, and it made me feel like you didn’t want to hang out with me.”

Gee, don’t hold anything back. “That isn’t true,” I said.

“Yes it is. I was really excited for you to meet Heather and Erica, and you didn’t even spend any time with me at all, or give a shit about my friends. All you did all night was hang out with Fern.”

“Girls,” Mr. Lee said from the front of the class. “Down a few notches.”

Josephine continued in a whisper. “I’m really pissed off about it, Rachel. You made me feel like crap.”

“How do you think you’re making me feel?” I whispered back. “You know I was scared to go to the party. And when I make a new friend, it’s like you’re jealous or something!”

“I am not jealous!”

“Yes, you are. You’re not my boss, you know. You can’t tell me what to do, at all. Just because you wanted me to hang out with your friends doesn’t mean I’m going to like them. It doesn’t mean they’re going to be the type of people I’d get along with.”

“No, but you didn’t even give them a chance.” Josephine’s face was turning red.

“Sometimes you don’t have to give people a chance,” I said, scowling. “If you’re going to be pissed off at me for the simple fact of me talking to someone at a party who isn’t you, fine then. I think you’re jealous, and it’s really pathetic.”

I turned back to my work and realized my face was probably just as red as hers was. I can’t really explain the emotions I felt. One part of me was glad I had hurt Josephine, but I couldn’t really figure out what she had done to me. The other was really damn upset and wanted to apologize. But I knew I wasn’t going to. It really bothered me that I wanted Josephine to be upset. I was not a callous person. She was my friend. My first real friend. Why did I want to turn this on her?

After a while she spoke again. “Listen, I’m sorry,” she said softly, keeping her eyes on her work. “I just felt hurt, that’s all. It was stupid of me. Of course I’m totally fine with you making new friends.”

She paused, and I knew that it was my turn to apologize. “I’m sorry too, Josephine. I guess I just got caught up talking to that girl, because we like a lot of the same bands.”

We worked quietly for a while, and Josephine suddenly said, “You should be careful with Fern.”

“Why’s that?”

“She’s weird.”

“Oh, we’re all weird,” I said.

“No, I mean really weird.” Josephine lowered her voice conspiratorially. “When I went to Our Lady, I knew her. She was in a bunch of my classes. Everyone used to say stuff about her.”

“What stuff?”

“Like, she’s into Satanism and shit like that. Do you re-mem-ber in the newspapers a year ago, last winter, about those peacocks in the petting zoo at Bingeman Park? How someone broke in there at night and killed a bunch of them?”

“Yeah, my dad was talking about that.”

“Yeah, well they say Fern was one of the people who killed them. That it was like a sacrifice to the devil, something like that. And it gets worse.”

I stared at her, waiting.

“I guess her family had a dog and she killed the dog too. Sacrificed him to the devil. And she has an older brother. They say she has sex with him, that he’s a devil worshipper too, and they have, like, orgies with the other devil worshippers in their coven, or whatever.”

“Witches have covens, not devil worshippers,” I said.

“Whatever. It’s all the same shit.”

“Josephine, I don’t believe any of that. It’s just stupid gossip.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But I know Fern better than you do, and I know she’s weird.”

“People just like to pick on people who are different,” I said. “Fern listens to music and dresses different from most of the people at school. So they have to go make up rumours about her. This is exactly the same kind of stuff an * like Brandi would start about me. I mean, how would anyone know what happened to her dog?”