It’s Raj. I feel bad I never noticed him there before, because of keeping my head down, but I can’t miss him now. He bounds to my desk and shows me the photo he took at the concert. “I’ll send you a copy. What’s your email?”
I give it to him and he types it in. Mallory says, “You were there?”
Suddenly everyone is staring at me and I can’t answer. I can only blink at her.
“We both were,” says Raj, chest puffed out. He holds his phone so she can see the photo.
Her eyes light up. “With Tea Bag Gregory?” She snorts and turns away from us. “Sounds like a great time.”
“Actually, it was,” says Raj, sticking his tongue out at the back of her head before returning to his desk.
I want to do more than stick my tongue out. I want to shove her. Or yank her hair. The urge builds all through class, held down (barely) by the ever-present fear of drawing attention to myself. I seethe so hard my jaw starts to ache from clenching my teeth.
I could ruin her. Well, Vicurious could. Expose her to a million people. Call her out as a bully, a snob, a . . .
Wait. No.
I take a deep breath. Vicurious is not about vengeance. Or shaming people. Mallory isn’t the nicest girl I’ve ever met, but maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe her home life is horrible or the boy she likes doesn’t like her back. Maybe if I just talk to her, give her a chance to apologize?
By the time the bell rings I am calm, but pretty terrified over what I’m about to do. I stand and tap Mallory on the shoulder.
She turns, one hip jutting out.
“His name is Lipton,” I say, trembling under her glare. I can feel my sweat starting and my stomach twisting in knots, but I need to say this. Lipton would do it for me. “Lipton Gregory, not Tea Bag.”
“What?” She glances at her friends, laughing nervously.
“In the photo. Lipton Gregory.” My voice is shaking, but I keep going. “You called him ‘Tea Bag.’ That’s not his name.”
“Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s his nickname, then. Everyone calls him that.”
“Not everyone,” I say. “Only people who think it’s funny to make jokes at someone else’s expense. Because that is not his nickname. It’s name-calling. There’s a difference.”
She is briefly stunned, but tosses her backpack over her shoulder and says, “Whatever.”
Her friends follow hesitantly as she stalks out.
I can’t believe I’m still standing. I put a hand to the desk to steady myself and take a deep breath. I’ll just wait here until everyone leaves. But then someone slow claps from the back of the room. It’s Raj, I’m sure. I turn, thinking, No, Raj, don’t make it worse.
But it isn’t Raj. It’s Jeremy Everling. I drop into my chair like someone just yanked the floor out from under me. Jeremy has made more jokes at Lipton’s expense than anyone. He’s probably the reason Lipton’s seeing a therapist to learn how to stand up for himself. He walks toward me, his slow clap getting faster. A few smatterings of applause join his, but mostly everyone’s waiting to see what he does. I brace for the punch line.
Jeremy stops clapping when he reaches my desk. He drops his hand in front of me, palm up. I bring my eyes to his.
“Guilty as charged, Decker.” He shakes his head. “Guilty as charged.”
“Dude,” one of his friends says.
Somebody laughs.
Somebody else says, “Oh my God.”
I stare at Jeremy Everling’s palm. He’s waiting for me . . . to slap it? I tentatively lift my hand.
He says quietly, “Low five, Decker.” So I do it. I slap his hand and then wince, because I’m sure this can’t really be happening. I am probably hallucinating the whole thing.
But he shrugs, says, “Hope there’s no hard feelings,” and leaves.
I stare at my hand. My low-fiving Jeremy Everling hand. It stings a little.
I don’t know how long I sit there contemplating my hand. But when I look up, the class is full of the next period’s students, and the one whose seat I am occupying says, “You’re in my seat.”
“Oh, sorry.” I hop up and hurry out.
My heart is racing, but for once it’s not because of fear or dread or anxiety. It’s because I overcame those things. It’s what I imagine it feels like to pump my fist in the air and shout at the top of my lungs.
Lipton is not entirely thrilled that I defended his honor. Mallory and some of her friends keep exaggerating his name when they say hi to him in the hall.
Now it’s, “Hi, LIP-TON.”
But it’s nothing compared with the gossip and speculation going around about Vicurious, which reaches out to me like grasping tentacles. In the hall. In the locker room before gym. In the bathroom. On the bus. It’s everywhere.
“You think she goes to school here?”
“How else would she know East 48?”
“I can’t believe she’d pick them out of the blue.”
“She could’ve.”
“I bet it’s Marissa. Put a wig on her . . .”
“Doesn’t look like her at all. She looks like . . .”
I kick myself for forgetting to post some background shots from other places this week, which may have thrown people off. I put my head down and let my hair fall around my face, remind myself that my own mother didn’t recognize me in that wig and sunglasses and lipstick. Still, it’s like they’re shouting “Get her!” every time they say “Vicurious.” I can’t stop flinching.
“Are you okay?” Lipton meets me at my locker first thing Tuesday morning. “You seem nervous.”
I force a smile. “I’m always nervous.”
“More than usual.”
“I’m fine,” I chirp.
“I can’t even see you.” He bends down to peek around my hair curtain. “Why are you hiding?”
I jerk away from him. “Sorry, I’m just . . . I have to go to the bathroom.” I spin on my heel and weave away from him, hating myself.
I expected all the fuss to die down by now, but it’s only getting worse. Or better, depending on how you look at it. My classmates are not only speculating about a connection between Vicurious and East 48, they’re doing exactly what I asked them to: finding someone who needs a friend and reaching out. And they’re talking about it: “I wrote to this one girl who wanted to end it all.”
“What did you say?”
“Just that I’m here if she needs me, but she should definitely tell someone.”
“I was on there for, like, an hour yesterday.”
“Me too.”
Laughs. “Yeah, that’s what I kept writing. ‘Me too.’”
“This kid said I was the first person to talk to him in three days. That nobody had even said good morning to him, or hi, or anything. For three days.”
“That’s crazy.”
“So, I followed him. Told him to DM me anytime.”
“Cool.”
I imagined a quiet army of helpers, doing their good deeds amid the relative anonymity of Instagram where I could safely check on them from the privacy of my own home. They would swarm the internet with selfless kindness. Not blab about it all over school every day.
It’s like they’re peppering me with bullets of my own making. Bullets of kindness, but still. I can’t seem to avoid mentions of Vicurious and each one makes me nervous that I’ve been recognized. I duck into the bathroom and retreat to my usual stall, squeezing my head between my hands.
Nobody knows it’s me.
They’ll never guess.
I am nobody.