Here Lies Bridget (12 page)

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But for neither of them to even
say
anything to me? What fake people.

What

bitches!

Once in the bathroom, I locked myself in a stall and slammed down the top of the seat. I hung my bag on the hook and slumped down onto the seat, my heart beating hard.

I thought of all the rumors I’d spread. They’d all been much worse than a few parent-teacher conferences, and yet this seemed to be such a big deal. And it really wasn’t.

Was

that

really
what this was all about? It seemed strange that so many people would get so opinionated about my behavioral issues, which they had previously been entertained by.

I was just thinking of how much I despised Ezhno and his class when I heard his name called over the P.A. system.

“John Ezhno, please report to the main office, John Ezhno, please
report to the main office.”

Please, God, let him be fired,
I thought to myself.

I looked to my right and read some of the writing on the wall, which I usually ignored.

Maybe this will cheer me up, I mused, thinking that reading smack talk about other people just might be the thing.

Mrs. Templeton’s class is a JOKE her ass needs to lay off the COKE.

Rhyming, nice. Good that Mother Goose had had an impact on the restroom literature.

Nance Le Bloe needs to keep her legs shut.

True. She was a skank.

LIAM IS A SEXY BEAST.

A foul expression, but not untrue.

My eyes scanned the wall, which named a lot of girls as sluts and a lot of guys as hot, as well as a lot of teachers as jerks. I agreed with most all of them.

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

Hell, I could have written some of them.

I thought of writing something about Anna and then reconsidered.

I didn’t have a pen.

There were a lot of words spelled wrong, and pointless things that I couldn’t puzzle out like: judith was here. Why commemorate your bathroom trip that way, or even at all? I considered, amusedly, of adding
long enough to find a pen and
write this.

I looked on the opposite wall and saw even more. But that’s when I saw the truly awful comments.

About

me.

My heart sank as I read. I was a slut, I was a bitch, I was a spoiled brat and I was a lot of other things. I gasped audibly when I saw that someone even called me a cunt, a word I had completely banned from my vocabulary, finding it to be one of the only truly offensive words.

I sat there, in shock, trying to wrap my head around this array of insults. Since when did people think I was
any
of those things? I’d never seen these comments before, and they all looked darker and fresher than the other accusations written there.

My vision turned blurry, and my ears rang as rage coursed through my bloodstream. I hated these girls, suddenly. How
dare
they talk about me that way? And how dare they put it on the walls like this? I didn’t know what to do, whom to yell at, who to confide in about how much this really
hurt—
I didn’t know anything except that I had to get out of here.

I pulled my bag from the hook and behind it found my name in big, bold, shiny letters I couldn’t believe I’d missed before.

BRIDGET DUKE IS A LOSER AND EVERYONE

KNOWS IT.

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I went to my post-lunch class and sat quietly in my seat for a few minutes, fighting back my emotions. I wasn’t sure how they’d come out, whether I was going to uncharacteristically start punching people, or whether I was going to start sobbing.

Not long into the class, I excused myself and went to the health office. I shouldn’t have to sit in class while my life fell apart.

As soon as I walked in, the nurse rolled her eyes at me before sending me into the back. I grimaced. Like it was up to her to judge me for coming in too often.

I chose the last cot, away from the moaning of an
actually
sick girl. I lay down on the faux-leather bed, which was always comfortable merely because it was a bed at school and not a gym exercise, and stared up at the speckled white ceiling tiles.

Earlier, my feelings had been pure anger and contempt for everyone I knew. I felt those feelings grow into desperation as I realized what exactly it was that was upsetting me so much.

Nobody cared about me.

The only person who didn’t seem to be mad at me was my father. But he, I thought, dragging myself deeper into my feeling of anguish, didn’t even care enough to be home. It wasn’t that he wasn’t mad at me; it was that he didn’t care at all. He’d rather follow sports around the country and hotel-hop.

If my mother were here everything would be different. Everything would be better. If she hadn’t died…well, it was just so unfair I couldn’t even stand to think about it. I pushed the thought from my mind, just as I had done when she died.

I was told I wasn’t allowed to go to her funeral. Never seeing her in a casket left me with only the option to do my best to block out the few memories I had of her last weeks.

She’d been quiet and seemed angry in those days, and that’s 1 0 4

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

not how I wanted to remember her. But it had been so many years now since her death, and I’d been so young at the time that I hardly knew what was real anymore.

At the moment, I felt sure that if she hadn’t died, my life would be a hundred times better than it was right now.

I continued to conjure up awful memories and reasons why no one cared about me.

The banana incident in elementary school.

When my father told me my mother wasn’t coming back.

The time I’d had to take the rap for the Outdoor Ed incident even though it wasn’t my fault.

Meredith tattling on me about the incident.

My father always leaving or spending all of his time at home with Meredith or alone, telling me he was too tired to talk to me.

And then the thing that had felt so on-the-surface lately: the five-minute span of time with Liam, in which we went from happily watching one of my favorite movies to being in the past tense.

It was the same thing I did when I cried and looked at myself in the mirror, just to see how pitiful and helpless I could really look.

Once I started thinking about my life in that light, it wasn’t hard to keep going. I analyzed the things people had said to me over the last year or two, things I’d assumed were caused by jealousy.

The bathroom walls.

The

whispering.

And the ignoring.

My face twisted into the expression that unhappy clown face paint is modeled after. I squeezed my eyes shut and wished as hard as I could for an answer. For something that could fix it all.

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A moment later, I sat up, the tears that raced down my cheeks feeling cool on my hot, angry skin. The next thing I knew, I’d left school without signing out.

I practically ran to my car, where I sat for a moment, trying to calm down. I stared at the car’s logo in the center of the steering wheel, thinking only of how angry I was.

My rage repeatedly brought me to the point of action, before I realized again and again that there was nothing I could do. This wasn’t one girl who’d called me a slut who I could get revenge on by getting ahold of the P.A. microphone and announcing that her mother was here with her Ex-Lax.

Because that, I thought with the smallest sensation of pride, I knew how to handle quite easily.

But no, this was different.

My thoughts were too self-pitying and hate-filled for me to calm down. What I needed was to get home.

I turned my key in the ignition and peeled out of my parking space. I knew it was dangerous to drive when I was so upset and barely able to see out of my blurry eyes.
But who
cares,
I thought—if I crashed they’d all realize how much I meant to them.

As the thought f litted through my mind, I realized how petty and small of me it was to think that way. Not just that, but how screwed
up
it was to be that person.

But of course you know what happens next, because that’s where we began. What you don’t know is that I truly thought it would be the answer to all of my problems.

And in a way, it was.

C H A P T E R S E V E N

I woke up with that feeling you get when you’re staying in a hotel room or at a friend’s house as a kid and there’s that moment where you’re not sure where you are. But the more I awoke, the more I realized I didn’t know where I was.

I was lying on my back, trying to open my eyes. It wasn’t too bright in the room, but my eyes kept rolling back and my eyelids f luttered closed involuntarily, as if I was trying to look straight into the sun. I opened them into slits, but all I could see was a dark, wooden ceiling. My eyes closed again.

I was confused, but my exhaustion made me feel passive.

The first thing I felt was relief; at least I was here, wherever I was. I was thinking and breathing. That meant I was alive, right?

The second thing I felt was fear. Maybe I wasn’t alive; I mean, it’s not like anyone knows what happens after you die, anyway. I started to panic as I imagined what might be happening to me.

One option was that I had been in a coma for thirty years.

But, I amended, who would keep me plugged in that long?

Maybe I was in a hospital, the crash only a few hours behind me.

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I tried to pull myself into a sitting position, but my body was too sore. I thought with a cringe of the last moments in my car. What was wrong with me?

More thoughts rushed into my head: the betrayals of my friends, the fact that few (if any) people loved or cared about me, the fact that everyone was too focused on themselves to think a little bit about what they were doing to me.

And Anna. Stupid Anna Judge had to come along and ruin everything. And how, I asked myself furiously,
how
did she do it? Before she came to school a week ago—assuming I wasn’t waking up from a multiple-decade coma—everything was fine. No one hated me, no one was mad at me, no one was stupid enough to talk about me behind my back. Not only that, but they actually liked me. People had thought I was funny, guys checked me out when I walked by and people listened to what I said.

Now everyone was friends with Anna. Everyone thought
she
was so beautiful and impressive. Hell, even at my very own party everyone was only interested in me until she showed up.

How’s that for a walking, talking slap in the face?

I tried to refocus my thoughts back to the more pressing matter—what was happening now.

When I strained to sit up again, my entire body shook the way unused muscles do when used for strenuous work. I finally got myself up, and realized I was lying in the middle of a huge…table? I rubbed my eyes, which were still hard to keep open, and looked toward my feet. Empty chairs surrounded the table. A boardroom?

Of all the scenarios in which I thought I might find myself, a boardroom was not on the list.

Suddenly, someone spoke behind me.

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

“If you’ve finished with your nap, we’d like to get started.”

I gasped and turned quickly to see who it was.

No

way.

“Anna?”

She gave a smug smile and splayed her arms in a gesture that said, “None other.”

Fear ran up and down my spine. The situation kept making less and less sense.

But she wasn’t the only one there. I looked at the group of people sitting at that end of the table. Liam, Michelle, Meredith, Mr. Ezhno and Brett. I breathlessly said each of the names, but no one looked at me except for Anna. They were all f lipping through yellow legal pads.

At least Liam was there. The situation couldn’t be too ter-rifying if Liam was involved.

“What is going on here?” I said, twisting my aching body onto my knees, my eyes on Liam. I lost a bit of the bite to my question during an awkward moment spent cautiously lowering myself to my feet. “And what do you mean, ‘get started?’

Get started with what? I was in my car, and now I’m in a boardroom. I have
no
idea what is happening.”

I was feeling a little hysterical.

“I realize that. Which is why we need to get started.” Anna smiled and sat back a little in her chair, her hands crossed neatly on the table. Her calmness was making me even more uneasy.

I hated not being in control of what was happening to me. It had been my problem even when I was a little girl. If I wasn’t sure where I was, or if I wasn’t fully aware of what was happening around me, I panicked. If I lost track of my mother in a department store, I’d be found in the middle of a clothing rack, weeping. It had happened more than once.

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I looked at the people in front of me. I was breathing hard, watching them. None of them even tossed a glance my way.

“Michelle.” No reply. “Michelle, I’m serious, answer me.”

What the hell was
with
her recently?

She didn’t move.

“Liam? Liam, please.” I begged him to answer me, or at the very least to respond in some way. A blink, anything.

Nothing.

“Meredith?” Even when Meredith was mad at me, she would never ignore me.

I looked to Anna for an explanation.

She just shook her head regretfully.

“I’m sorry, Bridget, it’s not the time for that right now.” I could tell she wasn’t going to say any more on the subject of the others.

I took in the room surrounding me. All of the walls were a deep, rich mahogany. Nothing hung from them and there were no windows. I turned to look behind me.

“No, you won’t find a door,” Anna said, watching me impassively.

I shook my head. “All right, enough. This is a weird and stupid joke. It is not funny now, and it’s not something we’ll all laugh about later, so let’s just stop it before it goes any further.”

“You’re right, Bridget,” Anna said. I took a second to be surprised by how easily she’d given up, and by the fact that this was a joke. But then she continued. “It wouldn’t be a funny joke. And I assure you that no one here thinks this is funny.”