The note. I’m not okay.
A misunderstanding. It explains everything. Jen was simply replying to Ethan’s message: Do you want to talk about it? Susan saw Jen putting the note in Ethan’s locker, the same day she saw Ethan writing the list, and instead of talking to Jen about it, she went to Principal Heinz. Of course Jen would be pissed enough at Susan to stop speaking to her.
“Hey, we should get McFlurries!” Petey yells from the backseat, breaking my train of thought.
My hand moves to my empty pocket with a flutter of panic. I think about my wallet on the kitchen island. Right where I left it after I gave Petey his bribe money. “I forgot my wallet.”
“That’s okay,” Petey says. “I have twenty dollars now. I got you.”
I don’t say anything. My reflex is to tell him no, but I can’t handle the thought of going home right now.
“I would enjoy a McFlurry,” Ginny says.
Can she sense it, how I’m not ready to go home? I let myself breathe. “I would enjoy one too.”
Ginny and I don’t bring up Carly Amato again on the drive back into town. McDonald’s is only a block away from the playhouse, but I don’t have the presence of mind to be worried about my mom catching us out right now. When Ginny parks, Petey tumbles out of the backseat and darts ahead.
“Wait for us,” I say, still too dazed to be irritated with him.
Petey stops at the entrance and holds the door open for Ginny and me.
At the counter, I order vanilla ice cream with Oreo pieces, and Ginny gets Butterfinger.
“That’s what Jen always got,” Petey says, matter-of-fact, before asking the cashier for vanilla ice cream with M&M’s. I don’t have the heart to tell him that he’s confusing Jen with me; that Butterfinger McFlurries used to be my favorite.
“Go get us a table.” I nudge Petey once he’s paid the cashier. I watch him wind his way through the restaurant and plop himself in a booth nearby. He takes out my phone and holds it sideways, which means Clan Wars. I forgot he still has my phone. My head is thrumming with so many questions.
“Are you okay?” Ginny’s voice is soft, but it brings me back.
“I don’t know. Carly told me Susan saw Jen put something in Ethan’s locker the day before he got expelled. It had to be the note they were passing back and forth. But Susan must have thought it had something to do with the hit list and told Principal Heinz.”
“Do you really think Susan would do that?” Ginny whispers.
“I don’t know.”
Ginny is watching me as if she can sense there’s more. I swallow. “Carly was talking like Jen was involved somehow and that she wasn’t the only one who thought that way.”
Ginny is quiet. The cashier sets her McFlurry on the counter, but she doesn’t move to collect it.
“That’s crap,” she finally says.
It’s the first I’ve heard Ginny curse and it’s like a jolt to my brain, waking me up. “Right?” I look her in the eyes. “It makes no sense.”
The cashier sets my McFlurry down. Ginny and I grab our order and join Petey at the booth. I sit next to him, and Ginny slides into the seat across from us.
I let Ginny eat a spoonful of her ice cream before I catch her eye and speak again. “There’s something else. Carly says Jen was the only cheerleader who wasn’t on the hit list.”
Ginny glances at Petey and drops her voice to a whisper. “Are you sure you want to talk about this in front of him?”
“Don’t worry about him,” I say. “Look.”
I say Petey’s name at normal volume. Once, twice, three times before shouting: “PETER THOMAS CARLINO.”
“What?” He doesn’t look up from my phone. With one finger he’s building a new settlement. With the other hand, he’s spooning ice cream into his mouth.
I turn back to Ginny. “See? We’re good.”
Ginny swirls the tip of her spoon through her ice cream, nudging at a piece of Butterfinger. “Jen not being on the list doesn’t mean anything. Just that Ethan liked her.”
“The last thing she wrote to him was yes.”
Petey’s voice finally breaks the silence. He points to my untouched McFlurry. “Are you gonna eat that?”
FIVE YEARS AGO
OCTOBER
I don’t know. If Jen was being honest, that was how she would answer Ethan McCready’s question.
Do you want to talk about it?
Jen didn’t know. She did want to talk about how shitty she felt, but she didn’t want to talk about it with Ethan McCready. And it wasn’t because people thought he was a loser and a creep. She couldn’t look at him without thinking about that kiss all those years ago.
She wondered if she would like it if he kissed her again; she wondered if he even wanted to.
The day after he gave her the note, Jen had slipped it through a slit in his locker with trembling fingers. Yes.
Immediately, she wanted to take it back. Becoming friends with Ethan McCready again was not the most rational response to whatever weirdness was going on with her and Jules and Susan.
But he kept invading her head. Every thought she had over the past few days seemed infused with Ethan.
Even now, as she observed herself in the mirror of the dressing room at Addie’s Closet, she imagined Ethan seeing her in her prospective homecoming dress.
Everyone wore short dresses to homecoming, which made Jen anxious. Tall girls and short dresses were a recipe for disaster. She’d picked a dress that seemed like it would look the least vulgar on her. It was covered in rose-gold sequins, with a keyhole halter top.
She knew the boys at school thought she was hot. Hot was their word: Jen Rayburn is the hottest girl in our grade. Jen never knew how to feel about it, though. She had done things with boys; just last year she’d made out with Chase Kenney at the movie theater, eventually having to shrug away from him when he guided her hand into his pants. All she felt afterward was disgust with guys and how they only wanted one thing from girls.
And now here she was, imagining Ethan McCready’s gaze running up her legs, to the place where the hem of her skirt met her thigh—
The curtain sectioning off the dressing room opened. Jen jumped back, her face warm, as if she’d been caught doing something gross. “Jesus, Jules.”
“Sorry.” Juliana stepped into the dressing room with Jen. She was wearing a lacy black-and-gold crop top and a long tulle skirt. It was the type of outfit only Jules could pull off.
“You look frigging awesome.” Jules stepped around Jen, tugging at the hem of her dress like a seamstress. “You’re getting it, right?”
“I don’t know.”
Addie’s Closet was the only boutique in town. Most girls drove forty minutes to the outlets in Ithaca, but cheer practice had been sucking up most of Jen’s weekends, and between Monica’s ballet classes and Petey’s playdates, her mother didn’t have time to take her.
Mrs. Berry had dropped the girls off at Addie’s and said she’d be back in an hour. Susan was still dillydallying by the sale rack. She was the most indecisive person—Jen knew she’d wind up coming back to Addie’s with her mother tomorrow. She watched Susan hold a black sheath dress up to herself and then put it back on the rack.
Juliana finished up at the register and joined Jen at the door. “Suz! Ready to go?”
Susan sighed. “I guess.”
The girls filed out of the store and across the lot, waiting until the sign across the street flashed to WALK. The Sunnybrook McDonald’s was unnecessarily nice—the fa?ade looked like an old farmhouse, with a giant gold foil M over the doorway instead of those tacky arches. Above, the sky was turning the color of sherbet.
McFlurries and fries obtained, Susan slid into a booth by the window. Juliana and Jen followed, setting their Addie’s Closet shopping bags on their laps.
Susan swirled her straw through the top of her ice cream. “I’m not going to find anything.”
“Maybe if you weren’t so anal,” Juliana said.
Susan threw a French fry at Jules. Jen stole one from the packet on Susan’s tray while she wasn’t looking. Suz could be absurdly territorial when it came to her food.