All the Rage

I want to hurt her until I feel finished.

“What is going on here?” Diaz demands, her voice echoing ferociously around the room but before anyone can say anything—and Tina’s mouth is open enough to do it—she takes a look my face and changes tack. “Ortiz, get dressed and go to my office.” She shakes her head. “Disgraceful. This is—” She casts around for another word, finds none. “Disgraceful. I expect better from all of my students, but you two—”

“Grey started it,” Tina says. Did I?

“I said get dressed, Ortiz,” Diaz snaps. “Grey, follow me.”

She leads me out of the locker room, the sound of her heels clacking on the floor. I bring my hand to my head again. The cut is above my right eyebrow and the bleeding hasn’t stopped yet. Diaz glances at me. “It’s all over you.”

I look down. She’s right. My collar … everywhere.

“Where are we going?” I ask, a little thickly. Blood doesn’t make me woozy at all but the adrenaline from the fight is fading and this is so strange.

It’s strange, feeling it all come out of me like this.

“I’m taking you to the nurse’s office to get that cleaned up,” Diaz says. “I don’t know what possessed you. That was an awful display.” Awful, I think, and then I laugh, just a little. Diaz rounds on me. “You think this is funny?”

I press my lips together and look away. I think it’s hilarious. There’s a girl out there everyone thinks is dead and maybe she is because you know all the ways there are to kill a girl? I do. But I’m supposed to worry about whatever trouble this stupid little fight at school is going to bring me beyond the satisfaction I felt while I was in it.

In the nurse’s office, DeWitt looks me over. I wait for him to tell me I’m old enough to take care of myself, but instead he inspects my forehead with gentle hands and says it’s beyond any of us.





the stitches seem so unnecessary once most of the blood is cleaned away and I can see the cut, but Dr. Aarons numbs my forehead and says it’s deep enough and hold still.

I’ve never gotten stitches before and there’s something about the odd pressure of the needle as it goes in and the pull of my skin as it’s brought together. Mom can’t handle the sight and waits for me in the waiting room. She’s been having a hard time looking me in the eyes since she picked me up from school.

“Explain it to me,” she says on the drive home. I lean back in my seat and close my eyes. “Romy, explain it to me. What was going through your mind that you would do something like that to another girl?”

“No,” I say. “Nothing.”

She pulls into the driveway. I’m out of the New Yorker before the engine is off.

“Romy, wait—”

I cut a straight line for my room because I figure I’ll get sent there anyway, but Todd is in the way and he stops me at the steps. He stares at my forehead like he can’t make the connection that what happened to me is something I made happen because if I made anything clear before I left school, it was that I was nobody’s victim.

“Jesus, kid,” he says softly.

He steps aside and I let myself into the house. By now, my head is starting to feel like it met the sharp edge of an open locker. I hear Mom throw her purse on the floor. I’m halfway up the stairs before she says, “Romy, you stop. Stop right now.”

I do, but I stay pointed in the direction of my bedroom until she tells me to turn around and look at her. I turn around and look at her, them. Because Todd is still there and for once, I wish he was as absent as the man he replaced.

“Explain it to me,” Mom says again. “Because I don’t want to hear about it for the first time in your principal’s office tomorrow when we’re finding out if you’re still welcome at school. You will not do that to me.”

She sounds like someone who’s already lost the war, but just won’t stop fighting in spite of it. And she’s right; I won’t do that to her. I wouldn’t and couldn’t do that to her. Every day, she’s got to be my mother in this town. I don’t need to make that harder than it already is.

“Tina ran her mouth, so I shoved her and the whole thing went from there.”

“Really.” Mom crosses her arms. “That’s all?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not telling me something. This isn’t like you,” she says. I think she’s wrong. It has to be like me, if I did it, otherwise I wouldn’t have. “What did she say to you?”

“Doesn’t matter what she said.”

“Yes, it does. If you don’t tell me, how can I help you?”

“What could you do to help me?”

She looks like I’ve slapped her. The truth is, I don’t really know if she could help me, but I know she really wants to believe she could and I know she wants me to come to her believing it too. My love should be knowing this about her and being able to pretend, but I can’t. I go to my room. No one tells me to. I just go.





a week’s suspension.

I thought there’d be more trouble than that, but since Tina’s the one who left me on the road and the Ortizes know I know it, they don’t demand answers from me, for what I did to their daughter. I wouldn’t have said it anyway, not in front of my mom. I just stare at Tina’s father and I hate him. I wonder if he’s already told the sheriff about this, or if he’s waiting for their next round of golf. Because Tina and I have never conducted ourselves in such an unladylike manner before, Diaz says we’re getting off easier than we would have otherwise. I want to ask her what unladylike means.