Then she leaned in so that only I could hear.
“What do you care, Taylor?” Her voice was a block of ice. “I thought you were too good for me and better than all of this. I’m just an interrupting fly, remember?”
I gaped at her, her words not quite connecting on their trip from my ears to my brain. My first instinct was to correct her and tell her it was an interposing fly. But how could she have known that? She wasn’t in honors English, and I never told her about having to analyze that poem. There was no way she would even know what an interposing fly was.
I started to ask her what she meant, but I paused one second too long. In that one second she backed away from me so she stood in the center of the hallway, clearly visible to everyone watching.
She raised her voice so she could be heard above the din of the morning hallway chatter. “Everyone knows you did it, Taylor, so stop trying to act all innocent. And stop calling me. It’s pathetic. I don’t want to be friends with someone like you.”
She turned and walked back toward her locker, where Amber and Jenny greeted her with triumphant hugs. Like she’d done something brave.
The hallway released a collective breath as everyone who had paused to eavesdrop slowly started to move again. Murmurs of excitement and awe passed between everyone who had witnessed the event. The only thing more thrilling would be if one of us had thrown a punch.
And that was that. It didn’t matter that the rumor wasn’t true. It didn’t matter that I was still a card-carrying member of the V-club or that Sunny was the one who had gotten herself in trouble. Nothing mattered except for the words Sunny had yelled across the hallway for all to hear, the words that would quickly spread in whispers, notes, and text messages across the population of my high school until everyone stated them as fact. Because words don’t sink, they swim. And rumors have legs and run sprints through the hallways, diving into ears and out of mouths with Olympic speed. There was no pushing the words back inside once they hit the high school airwaves. In a single moment, I became the new Tracey Allen, only worse because my friends had completely abandoned me.
I stumbled into the nearest bathroom, my legs folding under me as I collapsed into one of the open stalls. The whispered words of my classmates followed behind me, jabbing into me like pins into a cushion.
Did you hear? Yes, of course it’s true. Sunny said …
Is that her? The one who had the …
I heard she was sleeping with ten different guys and a teacher the same time as Logan. Isn’t that gross?
Do you think he knows?
What a skank. I never really liked her anyways.
Poor Sunny. Can you imagine?
Poor Logan. Can you imagine?
Poor Justin. Can you imagine?
I pressed my cheek against the metal of the restroom stall door. The cold felt good against my hot skin, anchoring me to the floor so my vision stopped spinning. Normally my mind would’ve raced with the grossness of leaning my face against a public restroom wall, but my brain could barely process the exchange with Sunny; there was no room in my head to debate the pros and cons of my cheek against the germ-infested bathroom surface.
Someone had written “Tracey Allen is a SKANK!” in black permanent marker on the opposite wall, the letters large and block-like so they were clearly visible to anyone who entered the stall. I stared at them so long and hard that they swam in and out of focus, until finally Tracey’s name disappeared and all I could see was the all-caps adjective they had used to describe her. Why did we think Tracey was a skank? In that moment I couldn’t even remember. Someone had said it to me once and I believed it. Someone had written it across the stall of a bathroom and that made it true. How long would it take for my name to make it onto the bathroom walls?
I leaned over the toilet and threw up, the contents of my stomach easily emptying into the white porcelain bowl. After I finished, I managed to fish my phone out of my pocket, my shaking fingers barely making contact with the screen.
“Mom?” I said, my voice breaking at the sound of her hello. “Can you come get me? Please?”
There must have been something heavy in the way I spoke, because my mother didn’t even question my request. I was in her car with my forehead pressed against the passenger side window fifteen minutes later, watching the school as it disappeared from my view and knowing with sad certainty that it would never be the safe haven it once was.
*
“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” my mother asked later that evening after I’d politely declined her dinner offer for the third time. Her eyes were thick with worry, her mouth pressed into a frown as she leaned against the doorframe of my bedroom. She looked like she wanted to come in, but she hovered outside the threshold.
I shook my head and looked up at the ceiling, counting the cracks over and over again so I wouldn’t have to meet her eyes and tell her what had happened. I wanted to tell her. I wanted her to put her arms around me the way she had when I was younger. I wanted her to rock me back and forth and tell me that everything would be okay, but I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I was too afraid of what she might say. Would she think it was my fault? Would she tell me I deserved it? I could only guess, and something in the pit of my stomach wasn’t entirely sure she would take my side.