“We thought we were doing what you wanted,” Mom said, leaning back into the sofa. Almost like she was giving up. “We thought we were pushing you to do the things you wanted for yourself. If that wasn’t true, I wish you’d said something. We would have stopped. I hope you know that.”
It was all so confusing. They weren’t wrong—I did want to be valedictorian, and I did want to work hard and excel and go to a great college. Everything they wanted for me, I wanted too. But I’d thought they’d wanted it first, and they’d thought I had. Did it matter, ultimately? “It was true. It is true,” I said, finally. “I think maybe I didn’t see that before. Can we talk more about this later? I’m really, really tired. I swear I didn’t mean to stay out this late.”
“We were just worried,” Dad said.
“Are you going to give me a curfew?”
They exchanged a glance. Mom raised an eyebrow; Dad gave a little head tilt. It was fascinating—they were totally communicating and I had no idea what they were saying.
“No curfew,” Mom said. “But we want a better idea of where you are, so we want texts or notes when you’re out at night, and if you’re not going to be home by midnight, you need to check in. Fair enough?”
“Totally.” I went over to the couch and kissed them both good night, then went upstairs. I couldn’t believe I had to get up for school in just a few hours. I was going to be exhausted. School would be horrible.
But sitting through math class would be worse.
26.
Math class was at least as awful as I’d imagined it would be. At first I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. I kept my head down, staring at my desk, sure that if I made eye contact with Ms. Davenport, she’d instantly know that I knew, and something terrible would happen. I couldn’t even imagine what, but it would be bad.
But today’s class was all about prepping for winter finals, and Ms. Davenport spent most of the time writing equations on the board, equations I had to look up to see so I could write them down in my notebook. She wasn’t paying any attention to me, which meant I could pay attention to her.
She wore her usual funky outfit, a vintage checkered dress with red cowboy boots that matched her lipstick, and I thought about how hard she tried to act young and cool like a teenager, even though as I studied her face more carefully than I ever had, I could see the beginnings of lines forming. She wasn’t quite as young as I’d always assumed she was, and now her outfit looked more like a costume. Or camouflage. She was dressed to attract the outsiders, the kids with problems, the ones who were most likely to be doing things they didn’t want other people to know about.
I’d thought she was hip; now I wondered if she was just manipulative. She used her look and her position to convince kids like me she was someone we could trust, and then took that knowledge and destroyed us with it. I got angrier and angrier as I thought about what a betrayal that was. I wanted to hurt her as bad as she was hurting me. I just didn’t know how.
I glanced over at Alex, sitting on the other side of the room. She, too, was staring at the board and frowning, like I knew I was. I bet she was thinking some of the same things, though she and Ms. Davenport didn’t have the same relationship we did. She felt betrayed too, though not on the same level.
It’s not like we both hadn’t been hurt by people before; despite the fact that what had happened with Becca and Isabel was mostly my fault, I still wished things had gone differently, that they’d somehow understood me better and stuck around even as I’d made things difficult. And Alex had to deal with Justin ditching her for a guy, and then sharing all her secrets with him, even if he hadn’t known how badly that would turn out.
But neither of those things was nearly as horrible as what was happening now.
“Ugh, the whole class I just wanted to go up and punch her in her stupid face,” Alex said after class, when we were a safe distance away.
“I know. I was like two seconds from going to the bathroom and never coming back.”
“It’s killing me to just sit here and do nothing,” she said.
“There has to be more we can do,” I said. “You know, we haven’t actually researched her yet. Maybe we can find some dirt.”
“Totally,” Alex said. “There must be something we can use. Then we can get some leverage.”
“That would be helpful.” I still wasn’t convinced going to the police was a bad idea, but if we could make this go away quietly, everyone would be happy.
“We should go now,” she said, pausing outside the door to our econ class.
“Now? We have two more classes left.”
“So we’ll ditch,” she said, like it was nothing.