“I don’t wanna make this all about me or anything, but you attacked me this morning,” Jeremy began. “You said it was all my fault, and I don’t understand.”
Regan turned her face toward the window. Jeremy watched the light play on her cheek, shooting reflective sparks where her trail of tears had dried.
“It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have said it,” she replied.
“But why did you? Why did you believe it was my fault? What did I do?”
“It’s not important,” she muttered.
“It is to me. You hit me. You told Mr. Armstrong you wanted to kill me,” Jeremy said.
Regan buried her face in her hands. “Please don’t remind me.” Her words were muffled against her palms.
“You have to help me understand,” Jeremy persisted. He would not leave this house until she explained herself.
Regan breathed deeply and then looked at Jeremy once more.
“I was angry and looking for someone to take it out on. I thought about middle school and how you rejected me—how you didn’t want to be my friend when I asked you—and I guess I just wanted to use that incident as a way of making sense of my hurt.”
He froze in shock. What in God’s name was she talking about?
Regan grew slightly impatient when Jeremy didn’t respond.
“You didn’t want to be my friend. It hurt my feelings. I thought about how my life could have been so different had you just said yes. I know it sounds stupid, but maybe I would have never dated Brandon. I would have never been initiated into that disgusting group. I would have never turned my back on defending people, you know? Sticking up for the little guy? I would have stayed strong, stayed me. My whole life could have been different if I were your friend. But you said no. And I know, okay? I know it’s ridiculous to blame you for my choices, but I was angry this morning. I was angry and out of my mind and scared and alone. I needed someone to blame.”
Regan turned away once more and looked out the window.
“Regan?” Jeremy croaked, then tried again. “Regan?”
She didn’t move.
“I never rejected you.”
She shook her head.
“I mean it,” he said. “I never rejected you in middle school. I have no idea what you’re talking about. You never asked me to be your friend.”
She whipped her head around and glared at him. “I wrote you a note!”
He was helplessly confused.
“I know it’s stupid, all right? A seventh grader writing a fu—” She glimpsed the doorway to the kitchen. “—freaking note! But I was embarrassed to ask you face-to-face!”
“I don’t understand.”
Regan sighed patiently. “I wrote you a note and gave it to Casey to give to you. She came back and told me you threw it away and said no.”
“Casey never gave me a note.”
“Are you seriously sitting there trying to tell me that you never had a conversation with Casey about being my friend? She told me the whole thing! You read the note and then tore it up and said to her that you didn’t ‘do friends,’” Regan explained, putting air quotes around her last words.
Jeremy burst out laughing.
“You think this is funny?” Regan demanded. She jumped up from the couch.
“Uh, yeah, considering I’d never use that phrase,” Jeremy replied.
“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly that you said you didn’t do friends, but it was something like that.”
“I would have killed to have a friend!” he cried. Perhaps not the best choice of words, but whatever.
“You’re just all about killing people, aren’t you?” Regan hissed.
He wouldn’t dignify the question with a response.
“Your best friend never came to me with any note. If she had, you and I would have been friends,” he said bluntly.
“So what? You’re saying Casey’s a liar?” Regan challenged.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying because I never received any note from her. I had no idea you wanted to be my friend. I would have gladly been your friend and changed the course of your life’s history!”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
Jeremy exhaled slowly. He brought his finger to his scar and traced it absently as he thought.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was mean.”
“Why would Casey lie about something like that?”
“I guess she didn’t want you to be friends with me.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know, Regan. Look at her. She’s a popular girl now. Maybe she was already making plans back in seventh grade to become one.”
“That’s hard to believe. Those kids were awful to her,” Regan said.
“Easiest way to stop being harassed is to become one of them,” Jeremy explained.
Regan furrowed her brows, then shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not easy to become one of them. You have to sacrifice a lot.”
“Well, apparently she was willing to do that.”
“But what’s that got to do with me?”
“She wanted to take you along for the ride. I suppose she thought I’d get in the way.”
Regan thought a moment. “You realize you just absolved me of everything, right?”
“Huh?”
“You said she wanted to take me along.” Regan threw up her hands. “I was forced! Not responsible!” she cried, trying for a joke.
Jeremy snorted. “Oh, you’re plenty responsible for the poor choices you’ve made.”
Regan bristled even as she conceded his point with a nod.
“Why didn’t you just come to me and ask? God, this all makes sense now! The dirty looks you gave me in middle school until high school when you completely ignored my existence.”
“I was embarrassed! I was rejected!”
“You threw yourself between me and a bunch of assholes to keep them from hitting me! How do you go from that to being too scared or humiliated to talk to me? The Regan I remember would have gotten all up in my face and been like, ‘You little jerkface! What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you wanna be my friend, huh? I’m amazing! I’m Regan Walters!’”
They stared at each other. And then Regan burst out laughing. Jeremy followed suit.
“People’s impressions of me are the worst!” she wheezed.
“Oh, I’m not the only one?”
“Not lately,” she said, thinking back to Hannah’s “Hello world! Hello losers!” impersonation.