It was just before eighth period when she caught Madison at their lockers. She saw her from the other end of the hallway and ran, fearful that if she waited a half second too long Madison might disappear again, rob her of the chance to say something, anything. To begin to atone. She lost track of her speed and came up behind Madison so suddenly that, when Madison turned, they both flinched. Amanda saw that Madison’s first instinct had been to assume she was under attack.
“I’ve been looking for you all day,” Amanda said. “You would not believe the things people have been saying to me. Not bad things. Just, like, people you’ve never even spoken to are coming up to me like you’re their best friend, like they can’t sleep they’re so worried about you. It’s gross.”
Madison nodded and smiled, as though they were discussing other people far away, people whose pain could not be felt.
“I guess I just wanted to find you. I wanted to know if there’s anything I can do.”
“Oh, no,” Madison said. “I’m late, but no worries—”
She waved one hand in the air like she was the queen on a parade float, and Amanda caught her by the wrist. “Stop it. Don’t pretend.”
Madison stared hard at Amanda’s hand, at its grip on her wrist. She lifted her gaze to meet Amanda’s.
“Oh,” she said, her voice flat. “I’m sorry. I won’t.”
Amanda tried not to wince, tried to push forward. She let go of Madison’s wrist.
“Did your dad come home from the city?”
“No.”
“Is he going to?”
“I have no idea.”
“Okay,” Amanda said, “okay.” She wanted to stall their way to comfort, run out the clock on her own guilt. Be, once more, the one in charge.
It’s not my fault, she told herself for the fortieth time that day. It’s not my fault that this all happened at this particular time. If I had known what was coming, I never would have pushed her away. I’m not a monster.
“How’s Isabel?”
“Haven’t seen her.”
“She went in?”
“No, I just haven’t seen her.”
“Do you think she’s there?”
“She was locked upstairs with Mina when I left.”
“Has anyone else come by?”
“I don’t know, Amanda. I’ve been at school.”
“I just,” Amanda faltered, “I thought maybe you just got here. I’ve been looking for you.”
“We stayed home until, like, ten,” Madison said. “I wanted to let the boys stay home but Lily won.”
Madison was facing the lockers still when Amanda saw the boys moving toward them. Wyatt Welsh was at the front of the group. Other girls thought he was handsome, maybe, but he turned her stomach. He wore his hair spiked straight up from his head, and she was pretty sure that his blond highlights had been woven in skillfully by his mother’s hairdresser, probably to the tune of hundreds of dollars. He always wore Lacoste polos in the most gorgeous, jewel tones, shirts she never saw on anyone else, but he was already developing a training-wheels potbelly and the shirts pulled, slightly, across his chest and stomach. He wore things like tight gym shorts and knee-high argyle socks on game days, when the football players were supposed to wear khakis and ties, because he knew he could. Because everyone would roll their eyes as he approached but start giggling if he pointed at them, smiled, said their names. Even the teachers. His mother, Suzanne, was one of the women Amanda and her own mother referred to as the gaggle: the women who spent most of their days somewhere in Isabel’s vicinity, always taking in her jewelry, her daughter’s clothing, what she’d served at the last dinner party to which only some of them had been invited.
Wyatt was walking slightly ahead of the rest of the group, his eyes moving across the hallway like a bird of prey searching for life, movement, beneath a choppy sea. And Amanda knew, even before his eye snagged them, that he wouldn’t leave it alone.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” she told Madison. She tried to keep her voice neutral and small. “Let’s go talk.”
“Amanda, really. It’s fine.” Maybe the second-best thing was to keep Madison from turning around, just ensure that they wouldn’t make eye contact. He might not feel bold enough unless he felt sure he’d be heard.
“I know it’s fine! I just want to talk to you.” She could feel her voice scaling up, too high.
And then Wyatt was smacking his chest, outsized and excited, casting his voice out across the hallway. He looked like an actual animal, Amanda thought, it wasn’t just a phrase.
“I don’t know,” he was saying. “I’ll tell you what my father said, though. Nice work if you can get it, right? Thirty mil a year to run a company into the fucking ground?”
It was amazing, she thought, how little they all knew themselves. She saw some of the other boys stutter out, their eyes flicking toward Madison, their faces frozen in the last second before they laughed, smacked a locker, shoved one another and stumbled over their own sneakers. They wouldn’t dream of saying it first, she thought, but once he says it, they’ll defend it until they die.
Madison stood, staring at the locker she’d already closed. She held a binder against her chest as though it were the only thing keeping her whole, keeping her from spilling out onto the ground.
“What do you want to bet his mother spent the day camped out in the produce section at Whole Foods,” Madison said, softly, almost to herself.
“What?”
“I’m just saying. I’d bet you money she’s been sitting there all day, pretending to smell the melons, flagging down any other women she recognizes. To tell them how terrible it is and how they mustn’t gossip behind Isabel’s back, not until they have all the facts. That Isabel and her children absolutely should not be blamed, for—”
She cut herself off, chuckled, readjusted the straps of her tote bag where it bit into her shoulder. But her voice was too distant, almost glacial. Something about it didn’t really feel, in the end, like she was insulting Suzanne Welsh.
“Is Lily okay?” Amanda tried.
Madison shook her head, quickly, as if swallowing a pill without water.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Lily’s, like, unmovable. She got mad at me for wallowing. This morning. She slapped me.”
“Wait—like, on the face?”
“I deserved it,” Madison began. But then they were no longer alone, Chip Abbott was standing there. He had his backpack clipped across his chest because he knew he was cool enough to act like a nerd. He might as well put electrical tape on a pair of thick glasses and walk around wearing them, just to prove that nothing could keep the women away.
His blond hair stuck out from his head in soft-looking tufts, and when Madison turned to him he cocked his head to one side, the corner of his mouth twisting.
Amanda fought the impulse to roll her eyes. She knew why Madison was so wrecked by this guy—you’d have to be chiseled from ice not to understand it, a little—but it just seemed so obvious. Like he was the hot guy in a teen movie and they were just female extras, hired to moon around in the crowd scenes and stare at him with their mouths lolling open. Amanda didn’t see where the fun was if he already knew exactly how you’d feel about him from the moment he first said your name.
“Ladies,” he said, his voice low and smooth. “How’s our Monday afternoon treating us?”
“Oh, hi,” Madison said.