Senior homecoming. My dress is covered in sequins and incredibly short. My shoes are five-inch stilettos and I was going to paint my nails red. I was going to be beautiful—devastatingly, truly, madly. I’m returning all of it tomorrow morning.
Micah is going with Maggie Morgenstern, who isn’t even close to good enough for him even though he won’t believe me. She’s a sophomore and I guess she’s cute enough. He asked if I wanted to go with them, but he doesn’t really want me there. Still, I guess it’s sweet. He comes by my locker to make sure I’ll be okay working on the wings here alone. Stupid, silly, lovely Micah, who is still oblivious. The rumors are out there, if he’d care to listen. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he says sometimes, so quietly that it’s almost not out loud at all. He doesn’t really want to know. That’s the truth. If he really wanted to know he would press a little, ask again when I said I didn’t want to talk about it. But he doesn’t.
So after he and everyone else leaves, I swing my backpack full of lollipops over my shoulder and head to the art studio. I’d already put twelve dozen eggs in Mr. Markus’s minifridge and told him it was for my project. He didn’t even blink twice.
Originally, I had wanted to smash one in every single locker in the senior hallway, but I guess that isn’t fair. The ninjas are nothing if not fair. Egging Waldo High’s seniors isn’t exactly an effective fuck you to society. So instead I go straight to Ander’s locker, where I used to wait for him every day after French. I know his combination by heart.
I don’t light a match because luck isn’t real and I’m not one of the lucky ones, anyway. I just twist the lock and open the door and dump all twelve dozen eggs inside.
I start out one by one, holding them high and dropping them on his textbooks and reveling a little in the way the eggs break in layers—shell, white, yolk. But it’s an awful lot of eggs, and by the third dozen, I’m just opening the cartons and pouring them in, waterfalling, everywhere.
I blow it all a kiss, and I’m about to walk away when I see that he still has my picture taped to his locker door. It’s the classic senior portrait pose: hair twirl, bright bright smile, oversaturated eyes. At the bottom, in my handwriting, it says, I’ll like you forever, I’ll love you for always, xoxo <3.
Well. That just isn’t true.
I rip it off and set it on the eggs. I slam the door. I go back down the hall and close myself in the art room. The janitors cleaned up after I left on Monday. My mess is gone, but there’s lots of dust left. It’s everywhere.
I sit on the ground and pull the candygrams out of my backpack, along with my journal. I copy them down in Journal Twelve, one per page, to investigate further and figure out a ninja hit list. The Skarpie bleeds everywhere.
Roses are red, violets are blue, Janie’s a whore, and a little bitch too.
Slut.
Whore.
Bitch.
Just wanted to get laid. Nice ass, though. I’d be down. You can dump me right afterward and I won’t say a word. Not even to Cameron. HMU.
Liar.
Liar.
Liar.
I guess I can’t really argue with that.
Once everything is copied down, I smooth out the candygrams. I pull the wings closer and find my scissors and glue, and I start making feathers again. And for a little while, it’s okay. It’s okay again. It’s just me in my closet of a studio with wings that just barely fit, and feathers.
I glue these new ones at the very top of the unfinished left wing, in all directions. They stick up, ugly and messy and uneven, with glue oozing out of the sides, and they don’t really cover the bamboo and wire frame, which is already loose.
One wing is perfect, covered with fairy tales. The other unravels. It collapses.
It’s dark when I finally leave. Not dark enough to mean that the football game is starting soon, but dark enough that little girls really shouldn’t be wandering around alone. Why, that’s just asking for it. Duh.
“Janie?”
I think we’ve established by now that Ander Cameron is a very good wrestler. But on that night, I don’t think it mattered so much. I don’t think it was that he was strong. I think it was that I was completely paralyzed. I can’t breathe. I can’t, I can’t do it.
I thought it was the vodka, but I’m sober right now, and my bones and blood and marrow are still too heavy to react. My lungs are still broken.
Run? Hide? Fight? What do I do what do I do what do I do? I can’t run, because I can’t move. There’s nothing to hide behind in this hall. Fight? Ha ha. I could curl up and tie myself in knots until he leaves. Turn and kick his balls off his body. Walk, keep walking, and maybe he’ll think he’s wrong, that it’s not me at all, and why not? Who is Janie Vivian?
“Aw, Janie, come on. Wait. Wait, let’s talk, okay? Can we please talk?”
His hand. It’s on my shoulder. He’s touching me.
He pulls me around so we can look at each other. So I can see his pretty, pretty face.
“Hey,” says Ander.
Hey, he says.