“Slut,” Gem fake-sneezes as I make my way into English. SN is right, I’m late, and now everyone is here, laptops already open, watching me get serenaded with profanity and germs as I walk to my seat.
“Whore,” she sneezes again, though not sure why she needs the elaborate cover-up. We can all hear her, even, I’m sure, Mrs. Pollack. “Fat ugly bitch.”
Just pretend you’re wearing Theo’s noise-canceling headphones. That you don’t see Crystal or Dri or even Theo watching. No, do not look up, do not see that Ethan is here too, back from wherever he went, his eyes following you, blazing with what looks like pity.
Nothing worse than pity.
Almost there. Just need to pass Gem. I can do this.
But I can’t. Because next thing I know, my nose hits the desk with a loud crack, and I’m splayed on the floor: a belly flop on the linoleum. My head now an inch from Ethan’s Converse.
“Are you okay?” he asks. I don’t answer, because I don’t know. I am on the ground, my face aches, so much worse than when Liam hit me with his guitar case, and the whole class is looking at me. Gem and Crystal are openly laughing—cackling like Disney witches—and I’m too afraid to stand up. I can’t tell if my nose is bleeding, if right now I am lying in a pool of my own blood at Ethan’s feet. I do know that my ass is spread across the floor like a smear of butter, at an angle no one should ever be exposed to, especially someone like Ethan.
Thank God it hurts. It helps keep me from feeling the humiliation.
Gem stuck out her foot. Of course she did. I’m so stupid, I deserve to be here smelling the floor.
Ethan squats down, holds out his hand to help me up. I take a deep breath. The quicker I get up, the quicker this will all be over. I ignore Ethan’s hand—I can think of nothing worse than wiping my blood on him, nothing worse than this being the very first time we touch—and so I steady myself with the reliable floor. Slowly make my way to sitting, then to standing, and like the fatuglybitch I am, I shift my bulk into my seat. Nothing graceful about it.
“Am I bleeding?” I whisper to Dri. She shakes her head, the shocked look on her face telling me that what just happened is as bad, as embarrassing as I imagine. No. Even worse.
“Do you need to go to the nurse?” Mrs. Pollack asks, almost in a whisper, as if she doesn’t want to attract any extra attention to me.
“No,” I say, even though I’d give anything for an ice pack and an Advil. I just can’t imagine standing up again, walking past Gem and then down the hall. Hearing the laughter at my back as soon as the door to the classroom closes. No thank you.
“All right, then, back to Crime and Punishment,” Mrs. Pollack says, and redirects the class. I feel Ethan behind me, though, and I can’t turn, can’t even utter a pathetic thank you, because I’m scared of what my face looks like, and I’m scared I’m going to cry.
So I keep my head down. As if by avoiding eye contact I can render myself invisible. Nothing to see here. I think of SN wanting to be a chameleon, blending into the background. I somehow make it to the end of class, my eyes focused only on the desk in front of me. Someone has carved into the wood Axel loves Fig Newtons. Really, someone took the time to deface the desk to profess their love for a cookie. Unless, of course, there was a student here actually named Fig Newtons, which, considering the fact that we have three Hannibals, four Romeos, and two Apples, is totally possible. As soon as the bell rings, I grab my bag and run for the door. I don’t even wait for Dri.
“Jessie, a word, please,” Mrs. Pollack says just before I make my exit.
“Now?” I ask. I want to leave this room, get as far away from these people as I can, find someplace where I can be alone and cry, preferably with an ice pack on my nose. I try to focus on Axel and his love of Fig—I’ve written their whole tragic love story in my head—but instead, Gem’s words play on repeat: Whore. Slut. Fat ugly bitch. Like song lyrics earworming my brain. They’d sound good set to Auto-Tune: Whore. Slut. Fat ugly bitch. Perhaps I should offer them to Oville.
“Yes. If you don’t mind.” I do mind. I mind very much, but I can’t find the way to say so out loud. Mrs. Pollack motions toward a chair in the front of the room, and I sit and wait for the rest of the class to file out. Theo. Crystal. Gem. Dri. I notice Ethan hovering for a second—deciding whether to say something to me? to Mrs. Pollack?—but then he taps my chair with his book and leaves too, and now it’s just me and her concerned face and all I want in the world is to get through the next five minutes without crying. Please, God, I beg, though my relationship with God is something I have not yet sorted out, please let me get out of here without embarrassing myself any more than I already have.
I can’t stare at Axel’s declaration of love here, so instead, I stare at a poster of Shakespeare, a man in a ruffled collar, with a quote underneath: To be or not to be: that is the question.