“Ended my football career before it even started.”
Brynna smiled, and Lauren stood up, linking arms with her and pulling her up too. “Before you and Teddy go all touchy-feely on each other, how about I show you around a little bit? I’m pretty sure my sweet twinsie over there did a fab job but probably missed the important spots, like the girls’ bathroom.”
Brynna said some hasty good-byes and let Lauren lead her out of the cafeteria. Lauren was nearly a head taller than Brynna, with wide, muscular shoulders that Brynna knew must be from swimming. She fluffed her red hair around her shoulders and narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing Brynna.
Brynna waited for the sinking feeling to start, the trickling guilt that always shadowed her, that held her tight like a second skin. As she and Lauren walked down the deserted halls, Lauren pointing out landmarks like the administration building and the bathrooms to avoid, Brynna began to let her guard down. It only took a millisecond of easing into a comfortable space for Erica’s memory to breathe down her neck and for Brynna to feel like there were a hundred eyes watching her. She zipped up her hoodie and shrugged off a chill.
???
It had been six weeks since Brynna’s first day at Hawthorne High. People knew her now. They waved to her, asked her opinion, invited her out with “the gang.” Teddy squeezed in beside her at lunch, and Evan came over almost every day. Lauren and Darcy dragged her into the girls’ room for major discussions, and Meatball gave her a wide berth, whether or not Teddy was around. She was happy to be just Brynna and happy that at Hawthorne High, her secret—her guilt—could stay buried.
When her parents first moved here, Brynna had wanted to be anonymous, disregarded—a shell of a girl, trying to get through her junior year only because she had no other choice. She figured she would dutifully attend her once-weekly therapy sessions and sit through the AA for Teens (she still had to go as a condition of her parole), where all the other vacant-eyed kids tried not to look at each other. She had self-medicated her way through Erica’s memorial and dealing with life after that night. She had also self-medicated herself into a DUI arrest and a habit she couldn’t stop on her own.
But she had actually begun enjoying her life in Crescent City, was even on her way to having a boyfriend. For as much as Brynna tried to stay guarded, Teddy tried to break in. He waited for her after class but still gave her her space; he texted her stupid jokes and googly faces but didn’t force her to talk. Her walls were breaking down, and Brynna felt something for him, a tiny spark on its way to becoming a flame.
Pep rallies, football games, school plays—it was all kind of stupid, she admitted, but still it felt good to be normal again, with a social circle, party invitations, and even a green-and-white Hawthorne High ribbon in her hair. She was staring in her bedroom mirror, trying to get the bow to sit straight on her ponytail, when her tablet pinged, signifying a new tweet.
Brynna swiped her finger across the screen, ready to tell Evan that he could never pull off a cheerleader’s sweater, even if it did fit him perfectly.
But the smile dropped from her lips.
Fear, like a heavy black stone, settled in her gut.
The tweet was from @EricaNShaw.
Brynna touched the screen, her finger shaking, her heart thundering. She touched the little animated icon, and Erica’s message popped up: Remember me?
TWO
Brynna snatched her hand back as if she’d been burned. The words swam in front of her eyes: Remember me?
Heat crawled up her spine, swallowing one vertebra after another as blood pulsed in her ears.
“What the—?”
She was reaching for the screen as she spoke, ready to delete the tweet, but the little birdie icon blinked again.
@EricaNShaw has a new tweet for you!
Every fiber of her being seemed to pull in opposite directions. Her skin felt tight, her bones like they were about to explode. Everything told her to move, to run, to flee. Her stomach turned in on itself, but Brynna had to click. It couldn’t be Erica—it just couldn’t.
The second tweet popped up with a gleeful little jingle that made Brynna’s heart drop a little lower in her chest.
Remember me?
The bird chirped again, but there was no new tweet—just Brynna’s tablet screen filling with little blue rectangles, each with the same two words: Remember me? Remember me? Remember me?
She mashed her fingers against the screen, her fingerprints blurring the tweets but unable to make them go away.
Remember me?
The screen kept pinging with new tweets, each note a drop of water slipping into an ocean, each word congealing into a sea of blame. Brynna was crying now, pressing her whole palm against the screen, swiping, clawing, screaming—anything to get the tweets to stop.