Here Lies Bridget (11 page)

Tears built in my throat. I wanted to cry for the loss of him, the loss of myself and the loss of innocence.

“’K.” I didn’t want him to see what I was feeling. I tried to sound in control of everything, but ended up over-pronouncing all of my words. “I’ll see you on Monday then.”

“Monday,” he agreed. “You’ll be okay ’til then?”

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P A I G E H A R B I S O N

“I’m fine,” I lied. How could anyone believe me, the way I garbled it?

But he did.

Maybe he just wanted to.

He left, and for the few minutes that I spent conscious, I imagined where he was going. I hoped against hope that he’d go straight home, without Anna. I pictured her approaching him, like the easy girl in movies, and him holding up a hand to say “Halt, harlot!”

I fell asleep, slipping into the kind of dreams that aren’t dreams at all—just memories with all the details you never thought you’d remember and couldn’t believe you’d forgotten.

C H A P T E R S I X

I woke up the next morning with a palpitating heartbeat and an overall feeling of fragility. It seemed like anything could tip me over the edge and make me throw up. I stayed in bed with the TV on until 6:00 p.m., drifting in and out of consciousness.

The room might have spun all day, and my head might have pounded, but nothing could have been worse than going into the kitchen for graham crackers and Coke and seeing—

through unfocused eyes—Anna and Meredith sitting at my table. Together. In my kitchen.

Please tell me this was me drifting out of consciousness, and into a nightmare.

I was wearing my scruffy terry cloth robe and mismatched socks, which went well with my bird’s nest of a hairdo and face streaked with mascara from sideways tears I’d apparently cried in my sleep. So to stumble around the corner and see the perfectly styled heads of the two of
them…
I thought I might just need to find a gun. I wasn’t sure yet which of us to use it on.

“What are you—” I started to ask why Anna was there, 9 4

P A I G E H A R B I S O N

but realized Meredith wasn’t supposed to be home yet, either.

“Why is either of you here?”

Meredith looked at me. My heart stopped as I remembered the mess I hadn’t thought to clean up the night before.

“I came home early because your father was too busy.”

Something f lickered in her face that I was too confused to wonder about. “But I can’t believe you!” she exclaimed.

My heart stopped. I scrambled to think of an excuse for all the bottles and cans that must be strewn all over the porch.

“I didn’t think you’d be home yet, I just—”

Anna coughed, and pushed a stray hair from her face.

“It’s no big deal, Mrs. Duke. Honestly, I only waited a few minutes.”

What the hell was she talking about? I squinted my eyes at Anna.

“Oh, Anna, that’s nice of you to say, but it was completely inconsiderate of her to sleep through her plans with you.”

I looked at Anna, who was smiling. Yes, the gun was to be used on her.

“Well, I probably should head out anyway.” She looked at me. “You don’t look like you’re feeling all that well, so we’ll just hang out another time, okay?”

I watched in a daze as Anna told Meredith how nice it was to meet her, as Meredith agreed, and as they kissed the air next to each other’s cheeks.

Well, that’s just sarcastic.

I chased Anna out to her car to ask her what the
hell
was going on. My robe billowed in the wind like some kind of ridiculous cape, and my slippers f lapped around on the driveway.

“What

was

that
all about?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, coolly. “I came back after driving some of your friends home and cleaned up the mess 9 5

from last night. I assumed you didn’t want her to know about the drinking, and I was right in assuming you’d be in no condition to clean it all up. I’m just lucky I got here before she did.”

I stared angrily at her before spitting out, “Well, then.

Thanks.”

I started up the front stairs and ignored her advice to take a cold shower.

For the rest of the evening, I worked myself into a depression. Anna was here, taking over. She was undoing all the work I’d done. She was moving in on my territory, and suddenly I wasn’t the person I was at least
comfortable
being anymore. My power was failing.

It wasn’t my imagination. That much I knew. People listened to me and did what I asked, things worked out for me whether the reason was luck or f lirting, and I’d been perfectly content with that for a long time. Sure, sometimes it felt like I had only fans and no friends…but that’d been fine for a long time.

My life had changed somehow, and very abruptly. But maybe things would be back to normal soon.

When I woke up on Monday morning, I was wearing the same pajamas I’d worn the whole day before. And when I headed to the bathroom to put on my makeup, I felt tired of my ref lection.

Once I’d finished putting on the same makeup I put on every day, I glared at myself. Something was different about me. Something had changed to make the makeup seem empty and mask-like.

I got to school early (a first) and when I walked into Mr.

Ezhno’s classroom, I saw that almost everyone was gathered around Jillian. She had her lips tightened, the way she did 9 6

P A I G E H A R B I S O N

when she was pretending to zip her lips so she wouldn’t tell a secret.

“…and

her

stepmom?
” asked one of the girls in the crowd, incredulously. I didn’t remember her name.

Another girl I didn’t know spotted me and said, “Shh” to the rest of them.
Shh
might as well have meant
she’s here!

They all went back to their seats, tossing glances at me.

Each of them seemed to think they were being subtle.

So then the answer to my question would be, No, things are not going to go back to normal.

“What?” I said, feeling stupid and awkward. It seemed so obvious that they’d been talking about me, but for some reason I still didn’t feel the complete vindication I should have felt by confronting them. It seemed presumptuous to assume the gossip was about me.

“Nothing, we just thought you were Mr. Ezhno.” It was Logan who spoke this time. Logan, who used to sit in the back and talk about how hot I was, but now apparently had taken up lying badly.

“How could any of you possibly think I was Mr. Ezhno?

That doesn’t even make—”

I was stopped short by Mr. Ezhno himself walking through the door and knocking into me.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Duke.” He bent to pick up the pile of papers he’d dropped during our collision. “It’s just so weird to see you
in
the classroom, I suppose.”

There was a swell of whispers and snickering in the room.

I headed to my seat, observing more “subtle” looks that were shot my way.

I felt the familiar shame f low through my bloodstream.

I hadn’t felt this way since middle school. I couldn’t control what was happening around me.

Matt Churchill raised his hand as soon as attendance had been called.

9 7

“So what did
you
do this weekend, Mr. Ezhno?”

Mr. Ezhno narrowed his eyes, and I knew he was just as curious as I about the reason for the giggles that were still filling the classroom.

“I worked on progress reports, which I have here, actually…” He waved the pile of papers he’d just cleaned up and started handing them out.

“Yeah, what else did you do?” said Logan, clearly speaking for Matt, who was laughing too hard to speak.

What the hell was so funny? It seemed like the only two people left in the dark were Mr. Ezhno and myself. Since when was I a) in a category with
him
or b) left in the dark about anything?

Mr. Ezhno hesitated before looking irritatedly at the ceiling.

“I had a parent-teacher meeting, and then I took my son to the—”

The laughing became uproarious upon the mention of the meeting. I stared at him in disbelief, shocked that he would do such a thing as to bring it up.

He was talking about me, and it was really obvious. He was blatantly referencing my insubordination and the resulting steps taken to amend my “behavior.”

I thought of the last time I’d been present at one of the conferences. Meredith had been all “John—I mean, Mr. Ezhno and I only want the best for you…” and every time
he
said anything, she’d nod silently and solemnly. It was enough to make anyone sick.

I looked at Mr. Ezhno. What a sight he was with his ugly plaid shirt and pleated pants. My lip curled in disgust as I watched him try fruitlessly to regain control over his class.

Everyone was going to
know
whose parent he was talking about because I was, as Meredith had put it, the biggest “nui-sance.”

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P A I G E H A R B I S O N

My fury grew as I realized that this must have been why everyone was talking about me. That’s what the muttering about my stepmother was all about.

I sat there, mortified, for the rest of the class period, not knowing what my next move should be. Who was I supposed to take action against? What should I say?

I knew I was mad at Jillian for letting anything slip, I was mad at Mr. Ezhno for the same and I was mad at the class for laughing. But how do you tell thirty people at once to stop making fun of you?

Furthermore, how do you do that without sounding like one of the misfit toys from that old Christmas movie?

I decided that the best I could do was ignore Jillian. Which was hard, because she seemed to be ignoring me.

When class ended I dashed out of the classroom, the same way I’d done for years.

When I got to gym class, Michelle was acting much the same as Jillian had been, a discovery that really upset me. She’d been my last real hope of solidarity. I tried to talk to her, but all I got were obviously irritated, tight-lipped responses.

It was like there was something in the air. Something that made me some kind of leper. I walked through the hallways, feeling like a character in a movie where everyone is talking about you and pointing. And for most of the day, that’s how it was.

But after a while it wasn’t even that; I wasn’t even getting
that
much attention. Some people were pointing or talking, but the rest of them just ignored me. I even had to move out of the way of some of them, I realized with a small shock. In the game of hallway chicken, I
always
won. Not something I’d really been doing on purpose, but certainly something I was noticing now.

I felt like a ghost. Not even a ghost—at least people were scared of or interested in ghosts. And if I were dead, the only 9 9

difference would be that they’d be talking about me in full voices instead of whispers.

For the next few days, my life swirled downward more and more. In high school, the classes and days are like dog years.

If you have a bad class, it’s like having a bad week. And I may as well have been drudging through the mud of anonymity for months.

Suddenly it seemed that it wasn’t just
me
who didn’t recognize me anymore. It was everyone.

No texts, no calls, no guys asking me out, no one even
acknowledging
me at school, it seemed, no one asking me to play board games at their house. Eventually, no one was even talking
about
me, as far as I could tell.

My friends were all busy, and at lunch they talked only to each other, making me feel like a third wheel at my own table.

It felt like every day I woke up, went to school and then just waited to fall asleep again. No days had any value.

And it was pissing me off.

It’s not even like I had some kind of strong family unit to depend on. Meredith was obviously no use, and my dad hadn’t been home in forever. And really, what kind of consoling was he even capable of ?

I spent those days working myself into an angry frenzy, thinking of everything that had happened. Everything that had happened to me.

One of my greatest abilities was to shove any blame entirely from myself, until ultimately I’d ridded myself of any guilt or responsibility.

So that’s what I did. Whether I was conscious of it or not at the time. Everything became what
they
had done to
me.

Mr. Ezhno had sent me to the office because he was too big a pansy to handle me on his own.

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P A I G E H A R B I S O N

Brett shouldn’t have ripped the paper—it was the
reason
we got caught. It was his own damn fault he was getting in trouble.

As for Jillian and Michelle? They were being awful, catty girls. Who needed them?

So when the next Thursday rolled around, I thought I’d set my plan into action. I was going to be myself again.

For the first half of the day I looked forward to lunch, hoping to get a chance to talk to Jillian and Michelle and figure out exactly what the deal was. I was halfway through the entrance to the cafeteria when I saw that Michelle, Jillian, Liam and Anna were sitting together. There was an empty seat, but it couldn’t have been clearer that I was not welcome at the table. It was exactly as if Anna had replaced me.

Maybe not even that. The scene I was looking at could have existed if I had never gone to the school, if I wasn’t there yet, if I’d come and gone, or as it was now—as if I just wasn’t part of it.

And yet, in some way, it couldn’t have existed without me.

They were all in each other’s realms because of me.

Then my self-pity and embarrassment transformed into absolute wrath.

I pounded off to the nearest bathroom, loathing the people at school. How
dare
they, I thought, how dare they whisper about me, cast me out, or ignore me?

I thought bitterly of Michelle and Jillian. Michelle had gotten all mad at me for no reason at my house on Saturday, and Jillian—well, Jillian was just willing to be friends with whoever told her what to do. I realized with a start that they, too, had known about the meeting between Meredith and Mr. Ezhno. Between my two best friends and my least favorite teacher, they were ruining my reputation.