Elaine
Brandon and I were never, uh, boyfriend and girlfriend. Like official, we-celebrate-monthly-anniversaries, I-have-a-framed-picture-of-him-in-my-bedroom kind of boyfriend. I mean, I’ve had boyfriends like that. When I was younger, they were usually upperclassmen, and they were always popular. I started dating guys when I was in seventh grade. Other girls couldn’t go out that young, but my mom was okay with it. I mean, my dad wasn’t. But my mom sort of talked him into it as long as the guy came over to our house first and shook his hand and blah blah blah.
But the thing is, as I’ve grown up, there’ve just been fewer and fewer available guys around here who are older than me and who are my type. Which leaves Brandon. I know this is going to sound totally conceited, but, like, as the most popular girl and guy in our class, we naturally ended up together sometimes. And by that I mean we went to sophomore Homecoming together and we made out at parties pretty regularly and when I was bored or he was bored, we would go over to each other’s houses and yes, okay, fine, I did sleep with him a few times last year. (Oh my God, if my dad knew he would just have a stroke and die. Even if Brandon was the best quarterback Healy ever had.)
Anyway, I’m not saying he was like my property or whatever, but there was this unspoken thing that everyone knew, which was that Brandon Fitzsimmons and I were sort of with each other when we weren’t busy figuring out who else we could be with. It was, um, the natural order of things. We were on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, wash, rinse, repeat.
Until that Sunday when he got in his truck with Josh Waverly and they headed to Seller Brothers.
The news that Brandon died spread faster than the news about Alice at my party. I heard about it from Maggie, one of my best friends, who heard about it almost right away because her father is a Healy police officer.
She called me the afternoon that it happened, totally sobbing—she couldn’t even breathe.
“Elaine, I’m so so so totally sorry, but Brandon Fitzsimmons is dead,” she said.
I just sat there on my bed, holding my phone, and I cried for him. And for me. For us.
I thought about how gorgeous he was. How you could stare at him all day long, even when he was being kind of an asshole, and you could just appreciate his face for what it was. Which was perfect.
And I thought about junior high, when he used to snap my bra strap and wink at me in the cafeteria and squeeze my butt in the hall. It was the first time I’d started to realize I was cute to boys, even if my mom was already making me go to Weight Watchers and I was already worried that my butt was kind of big.
And I thought about that weird, totally embarrassing thing that happened between us the night of my infamous party—him pinning me down on my bed the night of my party, his eyes looking at nothing, his breath stinking of beer.
And I thought about him doing it with Alice Franklin later on at that very same party in my guest bedroom, the two of them laughing about me before Tommy Cray took his turn.
Alice.
I knew I could never trust that girl.
On the day I found out about Brandon, I also thought about the eighth grade dance—when Brandon and I were absolutely and totally on again, but later Alice swore to me up and down she didn’t know, she thought nothing was going on between us, and she hadn’t really wanted to kiss Brandon that much to begin with even though she had. I mean, okay, I get that it was eighth grade and Brandon’s voice had barely changed and none of us could even drive yet or whatever, but still. It just goes to show you what Alice Franklin is like. At the dance—which I had arrived at with Brandon, I will have you know—Alice ended up making out with him in the coat closet. A few of my girlfriends found them and ran and told me, and after walking in on them and screaming at them both, I ended up spending half the dance in the bathroom crying and asking everyone if my mascara was running.
Brandon apologized a bajillion times, and then we were off again until we were on again. Again. But I never forgot what Alice Franklin did to me, and neither did anyone else. Which makes it very easy to believe the rumor about her at my party. It’s just the kind of thing a girl like Alice would do.
And it makes it even easier to believe the rumor about her and the car accident and those texts.
She’s just a skank.
I honestly don’t see how Alice Franklin is going to recover from all this. I really don’t think she will. After the party she tried so hard to act like nothing ever happened, even coming up and trying to sit with us and everything in the cafeteria. It was kind of pathetic. Even her best friend, Kelsie, doesn’t want anything to do with her anymore, and that was before Brandon died. But since the accident … well, I guess it’s not possible since not going to school is against the law, but it would’ve almost been better for Alice Franklin if she never even came back to Healy High.