“Leave him alone, Brynna,” Darcy said, her voice soft.
“Either someone tells me what happened here, or we’re all going to the principal’s office.” Mr. Fallbrook’s eyes were hard, sharp pinpricks as he looked from Brynna to Lauren and back again.
“It was her,” Lauren said with a low snarl. “Ask her what happened.”
Mr. Fallbrook held one of the hateful flyers in his hand. “Did you make this, Brynna? This goes beyond bullying. This is a hate crime.”
Brynna stepped forward, her cheeks flushed, her palms feeling raw from where they rubbed against the concrete. “I didn’t do it.” She looked toward Lauren. “I didn’t make that. I would never make something like that.”
Lauren looked at her, her face a mask of white-hot rage.
“And you two? Why were you fighting?”
Brynna cleared her throat and took a tiny step forward, glancing back at Lauren, then back to Mr. Fallbrook. “It was a misunderstanding. Please don’t punish Lauren, Mr. Fallbrook. It was my fault.”
Mr. Fallbrook sucked in a long breath as he looked from Brynna to Lauren. “Is this true?”
It looked like it took all of Lauren’s strength but she nodded curtly. “Everything’s fine,” she said, teeth gritted.
The bell rang and Mr. Fallbrook set them loose. Brynna spun on her heel and headed for Evan’s locker. He was there, piling books in his bag. He froze when he saw her, the same hateful look that Lauren had washing over his features.
“What do you want?”
“Evan, please,” Brynna said. “I have no idea what happened. I just walked on campus and Lauren came after me. She attacked me.”
Evan’s lips actually cocked up in a smirk, and Brynna could feel the lump growing in her throat. “Evan?”
He slammed his locker shut and stood in front of her, legs akimbo like he was getting ready to fight as well. “What did you expect, Brynna? That everyone was going to throw me a parade or something?”
“Evan, you can’t believe that I would make these things.” She snatched them off the lockers around them, crumpling them into a ball.
“Yeah, Brynna, you go gather up all the print ones. I’ve still got this one for my scrapbook.” He whipped out his tablet and thrust it at her, the Hawthorne High webpage popping up, boasting a big, grinning picture of Evan. Written across the shot in a jabbing, angry red scrawl were the words “Guess who’s gay?”
“That’s awful. You think I did—?”
“Who else, Brynna? I told you. Just you.”
“It’s not like it wasn’t obvious,” Brynna spat back.
Evan stared at her, his whole face contorted in pain, surprise, and biting anger.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said in a low, even voice. “I told you.”
“Evan, why would I do this to you? What would I have to gain? Seriously.” She reached out for him, but he shrugged her hand off violently.
“I don’t know why you would do this, Brynna. I’m beginning to think I never even really knew you at all.” Evan spun, his back to her.
“I didn’t tell anyone, Ev. And what’s the problem anyway? Being gay is no big deal. It shouldn’t even have been a secret in the first place.”
Now Evan spun back toward Brynna, his every feature alive with fire. Anger rolled off him in waves. “That’s not your decision to make. Being gay might not be a big deal to you, but it is to me. It doesn’t matter if people ‘figured it out’ on their own. I needed to be the one, Brynna. I needed to be the one to tell people, not you!”
He turned and stomped down the hall, but Brynna couldn’t move. She could hear the reverberating sound of his footsteps fading as he walked away from her and finally disappeared around a corner.
She knew she should move, but her feet were rooted to the glossy hallway tiles. Her body felt heavy, and her blood seemed to thrum, to pulse over the ache in the jagged skin of her torn palms, and she could taste it at the corners of her mouth. Faint. Metallic. It made her stomach ache and filled her nostrils with that fresh meat smell.
She swallowed down bile.
She felt the sting of Evan’s words on her cheeks as if he’d slapped her, and for once, she didn’t want to numb the pain. She let Evan’s anger sink into her.
It didn’t take long for the news of Brynna’s betrayal to overtake the news that Evan was gay. Immediately, she was a pariah, and classmates who’d never noticed her before were glaring, staring, studying her, and whispering. They avoided her when she walked. They left the bathroom when she entered. Their malevolence traveled in a thick cloud wherever they went, but Brynna didn’t mind it. It felt better for people to be angry with her than it did for them to avert their gazes only to glance back with pity in their eyes when they thought she wasn’t looking.
There was no follow-up from Erica either.