“Listen, I’m not saying you’re ugly or anything, you’re totally cute enough, but you’re so not the prettiest girl in school,” Willow says, by way of greeting, when I march into the Pizza Palace, and as expected they are all gathered around a laptop reading from David’s notebook. No one seems to care that this is his private journal or diary or whatever. Justin and Gabriel and Jessica-Willow-Abby are here. Annie and Violet too, though they are sitting in a separate booth.
“Shut your piehole. Kit’s beautiful,” Annie says, and I want to high-five her for defending me, for still being on my team, despite the fact that I suck lately. Not that I disagree with Willow. Despite David’s delusions, I am in no way one of the more attractive girls at school. I don’t know who David sees when he looks at me—if he has fun-house-mirror eyes—but it’s certainly not the same me everyone else sees. He’s right about the other stuff, though, and it’s sweet of him to have noticed: I do sit cross-legged on most chairs, and I have a nervous habit of covering my fingers with my sweatshirt sleeves, which annoys my mom because I always stretch them out.
His writing down my license plate number? All right, fine. That’s borderline creepy.
“I think you’re the one who needs to do that,” Willow says to Annie. “Did you read what David Drucker said about your jeans being too tight?”
“Obvi you’re going to stop being friends with him, right?” Jessica asks, and I try to remember what notes David made about her, but the only thing I can come up with is her hair. It is too bright. Hair color should not be viewable from space.
I’m still not sure why he described each member of our class, but the entries read like the shorthand I sometimes use when I’m programming the number of someone whose name I’m not likely to remember into my phone: Eyebrow-piercing boy from Model UN. Redheaded girl from PSAT class. Maybe David has a problem with names?
“Why would I do that?” I ask, but then realize I’m getting distracted. I’m not here to deal with these girls. I don’t want to dip my toes into their smallness. Why do they care what David has to say about them, anyway? They’ve all said so much worse about him over the years.
No, I’m here to see Gabriel and Justin, who have both opened their arms out wide to me for a hug. The cheap feels, Violet calls it, when the boys try to touch us for no good reason. Arms over shoulders. A squeeze of our sides. Even sometimes a yank of a ponytail like we are kindergartners. It’s not sexual. It’s more like how people grab a handful of free mints from a bowl as they’re leaving a restaurant. Greedy.
David doesn’t do any of that. Just holds my hand like it’s something delicate.
“Did you do it?” I ask Justin, trying to look tough. Which is silly, since I have never looked tough, am just too goddamn normal to look tough. David’s list of Notable Encounters with Justin was five pages long, going all the way back to elementary school.
Justin’s plans to humiliate David were ambitious. I’ll give him that. And perfectly tailored to his adversary’s weaknesses. Why would someone want to so utterly destroy someone else? Is Justin a sociopath? And how come we were all so willing to stand next to him and laugh? I had forgotten about the time in middle school he tortured David in the bathroom. What did I say when I heard? Did I laugh too? I hope not, but I can’t be sure. It was a long time ago.
I know I didn’t call him shithead like lots of people did afterward. Not just then too. But for years.
At least I didn’t do that.
Still, small solace.
The truth is David wasn’t a real person to me until he was.
“What are you talking about?” Justin pats the seat next to him, with two fingers, like I’m a puppy who takes directions via pointing. Like Jessica’s hair, how have I never before noticed his cruel streak? How did I ever find him amusing? I’ve been overly impressed by the fact that he’s smart and athletic and occasionally witty, stupid distractions that somehow kept me from realizing he’s actually a big asshole.
“The…The ‘Guide to Mapleview.’ You guys posted it, right?” I hate that I pose it as a question. Give them room to say, No, sorry, didn’t do it.
“Nope,” Justin says, right on cue, though the corners of his mouth lift and betray him. He’s proud of himself. “Wasn’t us.”
“Dude, your boyfriend’s weird,” Gabriel says, and my first instinct is to say, He’s not my boyfriend. But I don’t. Not because David is my boyfriend, but because it feels disloyal. Like I’m embarrassed to be associated with him now. I really don’t care what they think; I’m disgusted by these people, which is perhaps the only upside I can think of to what has happened to me in the past month. My life will be better without Justin and Gabriel and afternoons like this one.
Sure, David is even more awkward than I realized. Okay, not just awkward, but deeply different. So unaware of social norms that he has to keep a notebook to learn them, like an exchange student from Mars.
Who cares?
If someone published the pages of my journal—which I will burn the second I get home, come to think of it—there’d be some weirdo stuff in there too. I think about my dad’s favorite expression: People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
What is my house made of?
Paper, I decide. Like in a pop-up book. Easily collapsible.
“You guys really are such douches,” I say. “I bet you’re enjoying this.”
“It’s kind of funny,” Gabriel says.
“Whatever, it’s, like, so rude that he said all that stuff about us,” Willow says, pouting, though she doesn’t actually look upset. More like she’s posing for a selfie. Do any of them have real human emotions? Why do I suddenly feel like I’m surrounded by actors cast as teenagers? Like I’m the only one with a real and messy life. I realize that can’t be true. I’ve heard that Abby goes to an outpatient eating-disorder clinic, and that Jessica has experimented with cutting, which suggests that despite their shiny exteriors, they’re also fighting their own demons. Willow, I’m not so sure. It’s entirely possible she truly believes she’s starring in her own reality show. “I mean, he’s clearly so not a nice person.”
“I like your elbows,” Jessica says.
“And I like your hair,” Willow says.
“You ladies are all beautiful in my book,” Gabriel says, though he is only looking at Willow, and I wonder if he has always been this patronizing. When did we decide that these people would be our friends? What if we took the time to get to know some of the kids in the other cliques, like the artsy types or the theater dorks? What if we all jumped out of our boxes and chewed up our stupid labels? Who would we discover?
Gabriel’s not going to ask Annie to the prom, I realize with a sick feeling, even though she is ten times cooler than Willow and the rest of them. He’ll be afraid she’ll wear something outrageous. That she’ll be too Annie.
I try a different tactic. I sit down next to Justin. Close. Put a hand on his arm.