How It Ends (2 page)

Three more years. I just have to survive for three more years.

The suburbs suck ass.

This is my mantra as I walk to school. With every step I take, I repeat it to myself.
The suburbs suck ass. The suburbs suck ass.

I hitch up my backpack and glower at the rows of cookie-cutter houses lining the street. If life was fair, I'd be dressed in my kilt and combat boots right now, headed back to Highland Girls Academy to meet up with my friends, the Highland Heretics (or Highland Nonconformists, as we renamed ourselves once the office freaked out. Turns out private Catholic schools are a bit touchy about the word
heretic
). This was supposed to be the year I'd finally get to take the subway to school on my own. I
should
be dodging commuters and homeless people at Union Station on my way to campus instead of trekking halfway across this pathetic excuse for a town.

I get why Madge wanted to move, but I'm still pissed that Dad agreed. According to Madge, there were too many memories at the old place, and we needed a new start as a new family. But those memories are sacred to me. I don't get how Dad could just sell the only house we ever lived in with Mom like it meant nothing, just to make his new wife happy.

And our new place. Fucking Madge. Our house in the city was more than a hundred years old. It had
heart.
Personality. Sure, the basement was full of mice and the fourth stair up from the landing was in danger of cracking open at any moment, but it was a
home.
Our new place is a plastic replica of a house. It's all glossy surfaces with nothing underneath. It doesn't even make noise. That's just messed up. There are no creaks or groans, the pipes don't rattle . . . even the dishwasher is absolutely silent. That's not a house. It's witchcraft.

My old English teacher, Mr. Berg, would appreciate the metaphorical significance of this place. A silent pseudo-house for a silent pseudo-family.

When my alarm went off at six thirty this morning, it was basically mocking me. I was up all night obsessing about what to wear today. It's crazy—I'd been dying to break free from my school uniform for years, but now that the chance was here, I was paralyzed by too many choices. Should I be Preppy Annie, with skinny jeans and ballet flats? Or Studious Annie, with horn-rimmed glasses and cardigans? What about Cool Annie, with band T-shirts and a stack of cuff bracelets up my arm? I tried on outfit after outfit at the mall this summer, but they all felt false. Like I was trying on costumes.

So this morning, fueled by the kind of manic energy that comes with lack of sleep, I settled on being Pissed-off Annie, and I dressed all in black. I even layered on the black eyeliner and mascara in protest.

I was hoping for a reaction. I thought Dad might tell me to get upstairs and scrub off the makeup, or that Madge would disapprove of my angst-ridden appearance. Alas.

When I strolled into the kitchen, Dad greeted me with a kiss and a wink. “Good morning, little raccoon. Have you seen my daughter?”

Ha.

Madge dipped her head to hide a smile, and I fantasized about tipping my plate onto her perfectly pressed suit.

I slumped down into my chair just as Sophie breezed into the room. Her eyes barely touched on me, but that didn't stop her from commenting. “Halloween isn't for more than a month, Annie,” she drawled. She daintily selected an apple from the fruit bowl and then looked pointedly at the stack of pancakes on my plate.

I don't know how and when our roles got assigned, but I don't remember ever agreeing to be the messed-up stepsister while Sophie got to be the perfect one.

It doesn't help that she's so goddamned gorgeous. As if my dad didn't screw me up enough by marrying the Wicked Witch of the West . . . he had to pick a wife with a Barbie doll for a daughter.

I'm almost at the school when a car horn beeps twice and I nearly jump out of my skin. I whip around to see Sophie waving at me, her car packed with shiny-faced girls. How is it that she has a car full of friends already and I'm stuck walking to school alone? She's like some kind of social wunderkind.

I raise my arm in a halfhearted wave, but they've passed me already, tires screeching as Sophie careens into the parking lot. I stand there on the sidewalk for a moment, taking in the sight in front of me. Sir John A. Macdonald is by far the ugliest school I've ever seen. It's like a giant concrete bunker plunked in the middle of this carefully constructed suburbia.

A blight on the landscape.

Kids are swarming around the entrance like bees. My classmates. I feel lightheaded and strange. Like I'm standing on the edge of a precipice. I have the dizzying feeling that once I walk through those doors, I might never be the same again.

I give myself a little shake and pull out my phone to text Gemma, my closest friend from the Nonconformists. I snap a picture of the school and then another of the long street of identical homes.
Held captive in suburbia,
I write.
Send help.

I stare at the screen for a few moments, hoping for a quick reply. She'll be off the subway by now, probably checking in and getting her class schedule. I fight tears as I imagine strutting through the halls at Highland with my friends instead of slinking into this new school by myself.

When no text arrives, I shove my phone into my bag and take a deep breath. There's no escaping today. I square my shoulders and head across the street to be swallowed up by the crowd entering my new school.

I'm sitting in first-period English class when Gemma's reply comes in.
Chin up, Annie-the-brave. We miss you!
She's attached a picture of the whole crew. Minus me. Gemma, Stacy, and Susanna, with their smiling faces smooshed together. Stacy's eyes are closed, like they are in every picture ever taken of her, and a little laugh escapes me before tears fill my eyes. There's this huge pit of emptiness right in the center of my chest that yawns open painfully as I look at their happy faces. I should be there.

I slump down in my seat and check out my classmates. They're all so phony.

Except.

I sit up a little straighter when I catch sight of her. Unlike the rest of our classmates, who wear their coolness like a mask, this girl is beautifully uncool. She's perched on the edge of her seat, so caught up in what Miss Donaghue is saying that she's somehow managed to scratch her cheek with the wrong end of her pen, leaving a line of blue across it. She has frizzy brown hair bursting out of a thick blue elastic, no makeup, and she's wearing a sweater that's at least two sizes too big for her. And yet she's stunning. She has these huge brown eyes and the softest features. She's so painfully real that it almost hurts to look at her.

I take a last look at the picture of my Highland friends and then turn off my phone and stash it in my bag. I have a mission now, and it makes me feel better. Today, somehow, I will get to know this beautifully uncool girl.

When people call you Lezzie, you learn to fear the whole locker-room experience. So when I saw gym on my schedule this morning, I broke out in a cold sweat.

If not for the long line snaking out of the guidance office, I'd have dropped that class faster than you could say
Team sports give me hives
. God bless the inefficiency of our guidance counselors, though, because in the kind of plot twist that just doesn't happen to girls like me, my whole world changed inside the sweaty confines of the girls' locker room.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

At the beginning of class, I was sitting on the gym floor feeling like the answer to one of those which-of-these-things-doesn't-belong puzzles, when the coolest girl to ever walk through the doors of our school actually came and sat next to
me.
The whole school had been talking about Annie Miller all day. She moved here from the city, and she's like some kind of exotic animal plunked into the middle of our boring lives. I'd first noticed her in English. She was dressed all in black, with thick eyeliner rimming her eyes, and I'd pegged her as a stoner before I got a good look at her. She defies categorization. Under all that black, she was luminous. With bright red hair that fell in shiny waves down her back and green eyes so bright they didn't even look real, no one could possibly confuse her with a waste case.

In gym, Annie plopped down next to me and smiled like we were old buddies. “You're in my English class, right?”

Let me just take a moment to marvel over the fact that Annie noticed
me.
I almost checked behind me to make sure she wasn't talking to someone else.

“Y-yes. I think so. Miss Donaghue?”

Annie smiled so wide I could see her back teeth. “Isn't she
great?
” She leaned toward me. “I was thinking we should sit together at lunch.”

I felt like I was going to explode right out of my skin. It was one of those moments that feel so good they're almost painful. Sweat prickled my palms and my heart raced, but not in the bad I-think-I'm-going-to-die way. It was . . .
pleasurable panic.
I guess normal people would call that excitement.

We spent the rest of gym class earning detentions for our poor attitudes, and I didn't even worry about getting into trouble, which is so not like me. It all started with Annie insisting that she was the worst gym student ever. I took one look at her athletic build and called her bluff. Hilarity ensued. We fell over ourselves trying to be the most uncoordinated, and we failed miserably at hiding our laughter from our overzealous teacher, who apparently thinks she's training future Olympians rather than teaching gym to a bunch of apathetic teenagers.

By the time we headed into the locker room after class, I was so recklessly happy that I forgot to keep my head down and not attract attention. It was an oversight that did not go unpunished.

“Looks like Lezzie Longbottom has a girlfriend,” Emily Watson sang.

My heart stopped. I couldn't breathe. Being humiliated was one thing, but having it happen in front of someone like Annie was unbearable.

“What did you say?”

I blinked in confusion. One second Annie was right beside me, and the next she was across the room, bearing down on Emily and her friends.

Emily patted Annie on the head like she was a little kid. “You're new here, so you don't know about our little Lezzie Longbottom yet.”

If I could have tunneled through the floor to escape the scene in front of me, I would have.

“Longbottom?” Annie asked, her hands on her hips. “Like, as in Harry Potter?”

Emily faltered, and Annie looked at me with an eyebrow raised. I nodded haltingly.

“Well,” Annie said with a shrug of her shoulders, “that sounds like a compliment to me.”

The girls burst out laughing.

“Maybe not to a bunch of bleached-blond illiterates like you, but to those of us who
read,
we know that Neville Longbottom was the real hero of Harry Potter.”

“Who are you calling illiterate?” Emily challenged.

“Well, if you'd actually read the book, you'd know that Neville is all about bravery and kindness and loyalty to his friends.” Annie walked over and looped her arm through mine. “I'm pretty proud to have a friend like that.”

“
Girl
friend, you mean,” Emily snarled. “You're obviously a lez just like her.”

Annie tossed her hair and blew Emily a kiss. “You wish, honey. You wish.”

Annie's defense of me in the locker room was like battle armor, and I spent the rest of the morning feeling invincible. That is, right up until the moment when I arrived at the cafeteria doors and found no sign of her.

She'll be here,
I reassured myself as long minutes ticked by. We'd agreed to meet right there, I was sure of it. I peered through the window at the chaos that is our school's cafeteria. What if she already went in without me?

“Oh. My. God.” A familiar voice rang out, turning my insides to ice. “Did you see what she was
wearing?
Some people try way too hard.”