Because what matters to me above all else? The people I love. And there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. If people cared more about being kind than being successful, the world would be a much better place. That’s why I need to mend things with Ajita. That’s why I need to protect Betty, no matter what I have to give up to do so.
I don’t think I would ever have had this epiphany if it weren’t for Carson. A sharp pang needles in my chest when I think of him; of the night we spent playing at the basketball courts, meeting his mom and walking home together. Of the way he made me feel warm and fluttery and safe. Of his beautiful, painful art.
Could that boy really have betrayed me? As time goes on, I doubt it more and more.
8.19 a.m.
By the time I finally see Ajita rounding the corner toward school, I’m so jittery that I’ve splashed coffee all over my jeans. I’m just mopping the worst of it off with my roadkill scarf when I see her, all wrapped up in a duffel coat and carrying a stack of textbooks, which is incredibly alarming on account of the fact she’s never voluntarily opened a textbook in her life. She looks like something out of Gilmore Girls.
It takes her a split second to see me, but when she does she stops in her tracks and stares at me vacantly. As if she has no idea who I am.
I edge toward her as though approaching a rabid wolf with morning breath.
“Ajita . . .”
Her massive brown eyes shine dangerously. She looks like she’s about to burst into tears, and I hate myself so much for causing it. She bites her lip and stares at the ground, clutching those books so tightly her knuckles go white. It’s so cold I can see her breath.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My voice wobbles as I talk. “They say you’re not supposed to ruin an apology with an excuse, which is a relief, because I don’t have an excuse. Not a single one. That text message was just . . . wrong.”
A cold silence stretches out between us. Then: “That’s the thing, though,” she whispers. “You weren’t wrong.”
There it is.
I hug her. I can’t help myself. She looks so cold and sad standing in the middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by dead leaves and empty chip packets and cigarette butts.
“I wasn’t ready, Izzy,” she mumbles into my shoulder. “I’m still not.”
“I know,” I say, unleashing her from my bear grip. She’s crying a little. I am too.
“Everything’s just so . . . uncertain. I don’t know who I am; who I want to be. ?What I want to be. And this . . . it’s just so confusing. It’s like this gray cloud over my future. Everything my family want for me – to be a wealthy doctor, to marry a successful man from our community, to provide 2.4 grandchildren – I just don’t know if I can give it to them. Or if I even want to.” She scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “I hated you, you know. When I first saw it. I hated you so much.”
“That’s fair. I hated me too.”
“I still do, a little.”
“Again. Fair.”
Pressing her lips together, she finally looks up at me. Her eyes are still glistening and red-rimmed. “I need you, though. You’re my best friend. And I’m kind of going through a thing that I need a best friend for.” A frown. “And you are too, right? So I’m guessing you feel the same. About needing me, and all.”
“Yes. It’s quite gross, isn’t it? Admitting we need each other.”
A smile, albeit smaller than her usual Cheshire Cat beamer. “So gross. Just like your face.”
“I would retaliate with ‘just like your mom’, but I think she has several snipers pointed at me right at this very second. One wrong word and she’ll give the command.”
Ajita sniffs back a snot bubble. Neither of us are particularly attractive criers, but her nose takes on a life of its own when faced with a tear-inducing situation like this one. “I also have the authority to sanction your murder, so I’d tread carefully, Izzy O’Neill. Very carefully indeed.”
“Noted. Do you have the authority over other killings? I have a hit list I’d like to start working through.”
“Sure. Who’s first? Carson?”
“Nah,” I say, draining the dregs of my coffee. “Carlie, please.”
Ajita smiles properly now. “I heard what you did. Thank you for sticking up for me. I can’t believe Schumer didn’t suspend you.”
I nod. “Yeah, I was kind of hoping he would, to be fair. I could do with a week off. But I think he knew that’s what I wanted, and the bastard didn’t give it to me. So rude.”
“I never did like him.” She sniffs against the cold wind. “Okay, Carlie first. Who next?”
“Danny. I found out he started the World Class Whore website.”
Ajita’s eyes flash wildly. “Wait, he did what?”
“Yep. Sucks, huh?”
All her sadness evaporates in lieu of world-ending rage. She splutters everywhere, stomping a Doc Marten angrily. “That little son of a . . . how dare he! And to think . . . to think! He’s been playing the victim all this time, manipulating the crap out of me, out of both of us, and . . . he’s the one who’s to blame for all this! He ruined his best friend’s life out of jealousy??! OH MY GOD, WHERE’S MY MOM’S ASSAULT RIFLE WHEN YOU NEED IT?”
10.02 a.m.
As Ajita and I leave math class we notice Carson lingering on the opposite side of the hall – the first time I’ve seen his face since he spoke to the press, although he’s been texting me at regular intervals to promise me it wasn’t him. I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him.
Before he spots me, Ajita grabs my arm and hauls me back into the classroom, nearly knocking out Sharon the deadpan queen with her backpack. Which wouldn’t have been terrible on account of her horrid Twitter rant about my displeasing body shape.
We hunch behind the door and tactfully avoid Mr Cheung’s glares by pretending to rummage in our purses for tampons, which we all know is a surefire way to get male faculty members off your case.
“Shit, Ajita, what am I going to do? Should I confront him?” I mutter as I slip quietly into cardiac arrest. “Carson, not Mr Cheung.”
She considers this for a moment while dangling a paper-wrapped supersize emphatically in front of her face, like she’s trying to hypnotize me on behalf of the period goddesses. “Look, Izzy, boys are like buses.”
“They all come at once?”
“No, they’re cheap, unreliable and smell like day-old dick cheese. Point is, you’re awesome, and none of these pricks deserve you. Not Danny, not Vaughan, and not Carson.” Something deep in my chest rebels at the idea Carson doesn’t deserve me. If he’s the man I think he is, he absolutely does. “Just go and give him a piece of your mind. You’ve got nothing to lose.”
I frown. “What about my last remaining strand of dignity?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You lost that last summer when you touched your foofer after chopping chilies and had to squat in a bowl of Greek yoghurt.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you remember the moving funeral service I held for said dignity? Betty said a few words; Dumbledore peed on the casket?”
By now I am just so desperate for this conversation to be over that when she shoves me back out the door I’m beyond caring what happens in the next few minutes of my life.
Carson’s eyes meet mine and sheer terror flits across his face. I attempt to fix some semblance of fury onto my own features and stride up to him, trying to forget Ajita’s profoundly disturbing observations about dick cheese.
“Izzy, I –”
“What the fucking shit, Carson? Selling your story? Are you actually kidding me?”
Literally everyone on the planet is looking at us. Drivers on the highway have abandoned their vehicles to get a better look. Every drone in the world is pointed in our direction. Extraterrestrial life forms have finally breached the earth’s atmosphere and nobody has noticed on account of the fact everyone is focusing on this pathetic sex scandal in small-town America.
“You don’t under–”
Red-hot anger bubbles through me. “I don’t understand? I don’t understand needing some extra cash? Really? You’re really saying those words to me right now? For fucking, shitting sake, why –”
He looks genuinely devastated that I’m cursing so fluidly at him. “I can explain. Please. Let me explain.”
“Okay. Go.”