He glanced down at his feet and scuffed his toe along the brown and black flecked carpet of the hallway. When he looked back at me, his cheeks and neck were pink and blotchy.
“I was behind the house that night at The Fields, when you and Logan were fighting,” he admitted, releasing his hand from my arm so he could wipe the sweat from his hairline. “I heard what he said to you, and I saw him … knocking you around.”
“What were you doing back there?” I tried to picture the black, empty shadows behind the half-finished house where Logan and I were arguing. It was dark and hard to see, but then again I was too focused on Logan to notice anything else. Someone could easily have hidden back there and I wouldn’t have seen them.
“I was using the restroom.” His eyes once again darted down to the carpet. I thought about the way Brandon had stood off to the side of the keg by himself, staring into his cup of beer like he didn’t know what to do with it. That night was probably his first time at The Fields. He wouldn’t have known that The Boys Room was on the other side of the open party space, half a block from where Logan and I were fighting.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice fractured. “I should have said something, or done something when I saw the way he shook you around. I was just … I was scared. And then Justin and Sunny came, and Justin punched Logan—”
“Justin punched Logan?” I asked, remembering the cut above Logan’s eye when I had seen him back at Sunny’s. Of course Justin had punched Logan, it all made sense now. Justin knew exactly what was going on between me and Logan; he had seen him shaking me up and was furious.
“Anyway, I wanted you to know that I know it’s not true,” he said, taking a deep breath, straightening his shoulders, and looking suddenly lighter now that he no longer had to carry the weight of his secret around. He started to turn around, but I grabbed his arm and stopped him.
“But you can tell people, Brandon. You can tell them what you saw, tell them it’s not true—”
“Tell them what, Taylor? That I watched Logan shove you and twist your arm behind your back and I didn’t do anything about it?” He shook his head. “Do you know how many times a day people call me a fag? How many times a day I walk down the hall and someone yells douche-fag or homo?”
It was my turn to swallow thickly. Of course I knew. Douche-fag was one of Sunny’s creations. I’d even stood next to people in the hallway when they yelled it at him.
“If people knew that I watched you get beat up by Logan and was too scared to do anything about it, God only knows what other horrible things they would add to that list. I’m just trying to keep my head down and make it out of this place alive.” He sighed and backed away from me a few steps. “I’m sorry, Taylor. I really am. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry, that’s all.”
He quickly backed away from me, blending into the swelling crowd of students as they made their way to and from lockers on the way to first period.
There were still ten minutes before the first bell rang. I had ten minutes to find Sunny and fix the mess she’d made.
I plowed through the mass of bodies, shoving people aside without looking. I felt the way I did the night of The Fields, absently jabbing people away with my pointy elbows as I barreled toward Sunny’s locker. My feet drummed hard against the carpeted corridor, pounding in time to the words that repeated over and over again in my head: how could she, how could she, how could she?
Sunny leaned against a row of lockers at the far end of the hallway talking animatedly to Jenny and Amber. For a moment I watched her coppery head bob up and down as she talked, her eyes glittering and widening the way they always did when she told a story and tried to be all dramatic. Then someone shoved me from behind and I stumbled toward her. Her eyes locked with mine.
It was now or never.
“Hey Sunny!” I called, plastering on my bitchiest grin. “I just heard the craziest rumor. Know anything about it?”
She said something to Jenny and Amber, who nodded and watched curiously as she made her way across the hallway toward me, anxious whispers passing between them.
I planned to yell, to shout the word liar down the crowded hallway so everyone would hear. I wanted to dive at her head and grab a fistful of her fiery hair and drag her to the ground until she squealed for forgiveness. But as I watched her walk toward me, I lost all of my resolve. All of the anger that had welled up inside of me oozed out of my cracking fa?ade until all I could do was stare at Sunny with my arms hanging limply at my sides.
We’d been friends since second grade. We knew everything you could possibly know about someone. She hated mushrooms, she was deathly allergic to fire ants, her face was always covered in red crease marks when she woke up, she was ticklish only under her right knee. I was with her the night her mother left, the same night her father left her on our porch with nothing but her overnight bag and Miss Violet Beauregard tucked under her arm. I was there the day he came back for her, a ghost of the man he once was, and I watched him disappear more and more from her life as we grew up together. I was there through boyfriends and ex-boyfriends, good days and bad. She’d slept over at my house so many times she was practically part of the family. My family. Our friendship had lasted longer than marriages. I wasn’t ready to let it go just yet.
“Sunny, how could you?” I said in a whisper, unexpected tears brimming at the edges of my lashes so her face blurred.
She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes wet and shiny in a way that gave me hope. We can fix it. She can take it all back, tell everyone the things she said weren’t true, and we can fix this cracking friendship.
She opened her mouth and for a moment I thought she was going to apologize, but instead I watched in horror as her gum swelled into a pink bubble and quickly disappeared back into her mouth with a loud snap.