When I looked up, whoever was filming us was gone. A click later, in that person’s place huffed a Y staff member.
“Girls,” she said, “what are you doing lying on the floor like that? Come on now. Y’s closing early today. I suggest you hurry up, get on with your exercise, and then go have yourselves a happy holiday. Some of us would like to do the same.”
Ellie was breathing heavily. Pushing away from me, she sat against the lockers with her head in her hands. Her shoulders shook like she was sobbing. When she looked up, she was laughing so hard she was barely able to breathe. The employee tsked, muttered something about missing Christmas Eve drinks for this nonsense, and plodded off.
“Oh my God,” Ellie wheezed, wiping tears from her eyes. “I’ve never gotten in a fight before. Wait till the girls hear. Your cheek is all red.”
“Because you slapped me,” I said, which made Ellie laugh harder.
Ellie got to her feet, inspected her arms and legs for damage, then adjusted her ponytail. Stray bobby pins littered the floor around her like fallen leaves.
“You deserve a lot more than that, Kyle. Though it looks like you’re getting it. Give my best to Mr. E. Hope you two have a happy holiday.”
Fawn lived in the biggest brownstone of any of us. It had been willed to her mom by her grandparents, and ever since her parents’ divorce when Fawn was a toddler, to make ends meet her associate-professor-of-women’s-studies mom rented out every room in the building to an ever-changing flow of foreign graduate students and professionals. It was a lively, liberal household that was full of heady conversations but low on toilet paper. It was also the closest in proximity to the Y, and since I’d just gotten beaten up, I needed closest proximity. The last thing I wanted was to get caught in someone’s Woofer sporting a puffy eye.
A tacky animatronic Santa took up half the stoop and ho-ho-hoed when I rang the doorbell. A few seconds later, an equally jolly Fawn answered the door.
“Kyle.” Her laughter stopped midtwinkle. “What’re you doing here? You can’t be here.”
“I just had this awful confrontation with Ellie at the Y….” The curtains in the front window separated and then fell back into place. “Wait, Fawnie, why can’t I be here? Are the other girls inside?”
“No, uh…it’s, um…” She nervously chewed on the inside of her cheek like it was free-range jerky; then her face lit up. “It’s a boy!”
A few weeks back, Audra had plugged us all into her period-predicting app. Blue dots were what you marked on your calendar to mean “had sex.” And Fawn had tons of blue dots. When I’d teased her about it, she’d said, “It’s no big deal, Kyle. My body needs to poop. My body needs to sleep. And lately my body feels like it needs to have sex.” And that had cured me of ever wanting to mention her dots again.
So it was entirely possible she was telling the truth, but the Fawn I knew would have dragged the boy outside and, like, made him do a pirouette so I could admire how cute his butt was. Instead she stepped out onto the stoop and pulled the door shut after her.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Oh, nobody you know. I didn’t want to tell any of you about him because, uh, it didn’t seem appropriate if I was all daydreamy, especially with what’s going on with you and Audra.”
“Wait, what’s going on with me and Audra?”
“Oh my gawd, Fawn,” she squealed, and slapped a hand across her mouth and then giggled. “Nothing. I meant with you and your video and Audra just being crabby all the time.”
That wasn’t what she meant. Fawn wouldn’t meet my eyes, and normally Fawn all-caps DUG my eye contact. The curtains flickered again. Fawn squealed and rocked on her heels.
“What are you on?”
“Endorphins?”
I tilted her head back and stared into her eyes. They weren’t bloodshot.
“Breathe,” I said.
She puffed into my face. Her breath smelled like tater tots and ketchup. She giggled again, looked back nervously over her shoulder.
“Kyle, I gotta pee. Too much kombucha. Oh, gosh, and Merry Christmas Eeeve. My dad’s coming by to pick me up in, like, an hour, but txt me laters.”
The door shut in my face. I tried not to feel upset. Fawn was Fawn. This was not a friend conspiracy against me. It wasn’t. I swiped on my Doc. My finger hovered over the WhereYouAt app. There was one way to know for sure where all the girls were.
Sighing, I swiped off my Doc. Animatronic Santa beamed his approval, like I was a prime candidate for the Nice list.
“Oh, stick a pipe in it, old man.”
The truth was, if the girls were all on the other side of Fawn’s door?
I didn’t want to know.
Mac txted as I walked home.
mac Saw the fight.
The warm front continued. As dusk came on, Christmas lights blinked on with it. It all felt a little surreal. Like Christmas in July. I didn’t bother asking how he already knew about the fight. I’d been getting pinged like crazy. @JessieRosenthal had posted it on ConnectBook. It had been her in the locker room. She’d titled it “Valedictorian?” Guess she suddenly wasn’t too good for the Internet anymore.
Viewed alongside the sex vid—as it now forever would be, considering they were already grouped together in an If you liked this, then watch…—it looked like my life was in a tailspin. (Looked like? Ha!) More than being creepy, knowing she’d been there listening to us the whole time, it was supremely frustrating. There I was, wasting my time wrassling with Ellie, when Jessie was only steps away. I finally could have confronted her.
mac What happened?
moi I honestly don’t know. I told Ellie I knew she shot the original footage of me that was used in the Mr. E vid…
mac Nice!
moi Next second we’re tumbling over benches.
mac Kind of an aggressive reaction.
I touched my cheek. Winced.
moi Yeah, tell me about it. What do you think it means?
mac I guess that Ellie needs to be added to the list of possible haters.
Didn’t it seem strange that all my possible haters were in the same friend group? Ailey. Ellie. Jessie. I sighed. I felt like I was too narrowly focused, like I was missing something. For starters, Ailey and Ellie had both adamantly denied making the video, and as aggravating as it was, I believed them. So that left Jessie, who couldn’t even be bothered to post things under a fake name. Like she wanted me to know she was enacting my takedown. But why would she so blatantly post the fight and the flash-mob video in the foyer, but not the Mr. E. vid?
How many haters did I have?
mac Want some company? We haven’t had after-school time all week.
He sent me some quick pics of the world exploding, a mad scientist pulling at his hair, and Godzilla ravaging NYC.
Or maybe the fight video was totally innocent. Maybe Jessie had simply gone to pick up Ellie and stumbled on us fighting. Who wouldn’t record a fight?
mac I can come over early. Hang before we all go for ramen.
Earlier in the week I’d invited Mac to come to Christmas Eve dinner with us.