“Go away, you bitch,” she snaps, choking up. I walk over and stand outside the stall, leaning my ear toward the door. I hear the little crinkly burns from the end of the cigarette as she inhales deeply.
“I wanna talk to you. Come on, let me in.”
“No.”
“Listen. I really didn’t mean for anybody to read that thing.”
“What!” she gasps, then starts sort of laugh-crying. “You didn’t write it in your little freak diary under your bed. You put it on the Internet.”
“Yeah, I did, it’s this website for—stories you can write for people to read, and I have some friends on that site, and it’s just, like, something I do for fun. Please just let me in. I’m really sorry.”
I hear a rusty click, and she kicks the stall door open with her Frye boot, leaving her leg stretched out so it’s hard for me to come in. A neat pile of menthol butts are lined up in a row on top of the toilet paper dispenser.
Her eyes are puffy and red. She looks right up at me. “Why do you think I’m so dumb? And don’t lie. I’ll know.”
“Because you’re mean to me.”
Perplexed, she wrinkles her nose, like I’ve put a rip in the space-time continuum. “You’re mean to me.”
“What? I’ve never said one mean thing to you.”
She holds out the pack of Camels, offering me one with sort of a challenging attitude. I take one, grab the lighter from the top of the toilet bowl, and inhale as she watches me closely. My eyes water, but I refuse to cough.
“You don’t hold it in like weed. Just exhale,” she says, smirking.
I do, making my chest burn like hell, and then I double over coughing.
“I wasn’t dancing on that divider,” I croak.
She rolls her eyes. “What are you even talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. How you always call me ‘Divider’ and treat me like nothing because I’m poor and my mom is single and cleans your house. And for some reason, for the past seven years, you have thought all that’s totally hilarious.”
“Um, yeah,” she sniffles, “because you think I’m a fucking moron.”
“I—”
“And you convinced Avery I am too. She’s my sister! When you’re not around, we’re really close. But whenever you’re there, she acts different. You have your smart, special club, and I’m just a dumb Fembot idiot. Right?” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing her gold shadow.
“Even my parents like you more than me, even though I get straight As and your grades suck. They always talk about how shitty your mom is and how you deserve better, and what a smart, great kid you are. You come over for dinner, and they talk to you about books and stuff more than they ever talk to me about anything. And he likes you more too.”
“Who?”
She lolls her head and gives me this Oh, don’t bullshit me look.
“You mean Gideon?”
“Duh, I mean Gideon. He’s liked you the whole time. Probably because you’re pretty and skinny and have big boobs, and you know it. I’m not a boy; I can see right through your crap. You pretend you don’t know or care, and you wear weird glasses and Chucks and you’ll watch his stupid old stand-up specials with him, so he thinks you’re cooler or smarter than me or some dumb shit like that.” She sniffs fiercely.
“You took my sister away from me, so I wanted to take him away from you. And I thought maybe it would give you a reality check, so you’d stop being delusional about some exclusive club you’re in just for being a snobby asshole to everybody. That’s how it started.”
But not how it ended. That’s when I realize it from behind her words: He hurt her just like he hurt me. She stubs out her butt angrily and tosses it in the toilet bowl.
“But now he hates you. And I didn’t even have to do that; you did it yourself.”
She pushes past me, the stall door slamming closed, and stops by the mirrors. Through a sliver in the joints of the stall walls, I can see her fixing her hair and dabbing the smeared makeup off her cheekbones.
I feel like someone just put hot wax all over who I am, laid a strip down over it, and then ripped everything right off, and now there’s nothing left.
Dazed, my eyes wander to the wall and land on Scarlett Epstein is a slut, still there from when I scrawled it in Sharpie two years ago as a joke that now seems snide and terminally unfunny. I mindlessly fix my eyes on it until the words lose their meaning.
Ashley pulls her hair into a severe, careless ponytail, with those little lumps sticking out that girls with straight hair always get.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“No, you’re not. Honestly, it’s not a big deal. Keep pretending I’m the dumb, mean, hot girl and you’re some weird, ugly outcast nobody likes, if you really need to feel like you’re better than me.”
I hear the door of the girls’ room open and shut, and she’s gone.
I breathe again, sort of, but quick and short, like a fragile reptile in the wrong climate. I slide down the wall. I can barely feel it when I hit the floor.
Chapter 21