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Authors: Chelsea Pitcher

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BOOK: The S-Word
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Try it.

Just try.

Come on, Angie. Everyone’s doing it.

I pinch my cheeks and slip into the office. Compared to the multicolored hallways, this room is stark. They’ve slapped these cutesy motivational posters onto the bright white walls:

Hang in there!

Math is cool!

Eat an apple!

Nothing useful. Nothing real.

Ms. Carlisle beams when I approach the desk. “Back so soon?”

“Unfortunately.” I cover my self-induced blush with my hand. “I totally screwed up those copies I made for Mrs. Linn last period. I’m such an idiot.”

“Don’t you dare.” She touches my arm. She’s got this long, gray hair that defies old-lady convention and she always offers up little doses of feminist mysticism when I need it. I kind of love her. Which means I’m kind of an asshole for tricking her.

But I can’t stop now.

“Can I use the copier again? You can send me a bill for the extra copies, I swear.”

“Oh, stop.” She chuckles. At least I can entertain her while I lie through my teeth. “Use it all you like.”

“It’ll only take a minute,” I promise. “Oh, I almost forgot. Another one of Mrs. Linn’s freshmen forgot her locker combo. Annabel Leary, I think.” I narrow my eyes like I’m thinking super hard.

Ms. Carlisle nods and sifts around for the student locker list. I head into the copy nook, pulling Mrs. Linn’s study sheet from my bag. In all the diary commotion, I failed to bring her copies back to English class. The copier’s so old it practically jams itself. I hardly have to wrinkle the paper to get it to make that annoying beep.

“Paper’s jammed,” I call to Ms. Carlisle with a laugh. She doesn’t get up. I know she thinks solving my own problems is “empowering.” But she’ll come to my aid if I start to have a meltdown.

All that’s left is to set the alarm on my phone, and then I pretend to fuss with the copier for another minute. Meanwhile, Ms. Carlisle’s getting more and more frustrated in the next room. I don’t have to see her. I can hear her huffing. Pretty soon it gets to
be too much and she calls out, “Honey, are you sure you’ve got that name right?”

“Yes,” I call back. Then, more quietly, “No. Maybe. You don’t see it?”

She looks for another minute. “Are you sure Annabel didn’t transfer? Or maybe I’m thinking of Abigail Lark.”

Actually, they both transferred: Anna because her dad got offered a job out of town, and Abby because she got pregnant. No one would own up to being the father, so my brilliant classmates declared
anyone
could be the father. After the hundredth “Who’s your baby daddy?” joke, fifteen-year-old Abby bailed.

“You’re thinking of Abigail. I can double-check with Mrs. Linn,” I say, smacking the copier loud enough for her to hear. “Damn it.”

“Hey, now.”

“Sorry. This thing is so ancient. Can you help?” A bit of a whine enters my voice. “Please?” I hit copy again, and of course the copier just beeps; I haven’t cleared the jam, after all.

I shake the machine.

“Hey, hey!” Ms. Carlisle sweeps in, her long skirt trailing the floor. “Out of the way.” She starts pushing buttons, lifting levers and all that. I watch her in faux-fascination until my phone starts to ring.

“Shit. I mean—sorry.” I open the phone and stop the alarm. Then I hold it to my ear. “Hello?” Ms. Carlisle just shakes her head. “Hey, slow down,” I say to the dead air. “What do you mean someone wrote something?” Here’s where I start to shake, and Ms. Carlisle can’t help but take notice. She touches my arm but I jerk away. “Kennedy, please tell me what it says. Please. I need to know. I—”

I look up, eyes widened in surprise. “She hung up!”

Ms. Carlisle tilts her head. “Angie?”

“Oh God.” I’m shaking badly now, trying to do that lip-tremble thing that actresses do so well. “Oh God, oh God.”

“Calm down, sweetie.”

I look at her with unblinking eyes. Soon they start to sting and moisture appears. I’ve never been the cry-on-command type, but this is good too. “Someone wrote something on my locker.”

Her eyes darken. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, someone wrote something! Kennedy saw it on my locker and she won’t tell me what it is!”

“Calm down, now, it’s okay.” Her voice is strained but I can tell she’s trying to be soothing. “I’ll just give Jack a call—”

“No!”

“He’s maintenance, Angie. It’s his job.”

“I don’t want anyone else to see it!” I stretch my eyes to their limit. “Please, will you just look and tell me what it says? Please?” A tear forms and drops.

“All right.” She nods, watching me. I’m clearly stricken. Better safe than sorry. “I’ll go take a look.” She yanks my study sheet from the copier and resets it on the tray. Then she presses the big green button. “You just watch over this and I’ll be right back.”

“You’re the best,” I say as copies shoot out the other end.

And she is. She’s gone just long enough for me to copy the locker list and put it back on her desk. When she returns, I’ve got my original copies for Mrs. Linn stacked on top of the copier.

I tuck them under my arm and approach tentatively. “Well? What did it say?”

“Don’t you worry about that.” Her eyes won’t settle on me. Her skin looks blanched. “I’ve gone and taken care of it.”

“Really?” I sniff. There’s a dark blotch on her hand, just below her thumb.

“Sure thing.” She forces a smile and pats my back. “Hurry on to class.”

“I’ll ask Mrs. Linn about the name,” I say, putting on my brave face. “I won’t let you down.” But of course I will. I’m clearly a ditz, too frazzled for my own good. I can’t be expected to remember my own name, let alone someone else’s.

I ought to buy her some major secret-admirer candy to make up for this.

I SPEND THE
next few periods familiarizing myself with the locker list, but nothing interesting happens until fifth-period Math. There, Marvin Higgins—Latin classification
Mathus geekus
—is hunched over in the front of the class, studying some pages that look all too familiar.

Fantastic.

Marvin’s pretty far down on my list, below the Beauty Queen, the Drama Queen, and the boy who broke my heart. Still, he’s on there, so it looks like I’ll have to talk to him next.

Halfway through the period, Mr. Farmington asks us to break up into little groups. I plunk down next to Marvin in the front row—a first in Math class. My place is in the back, where Farmington’s voice is faded and the distance allows for easy texting under my desk. Then again, I’m not all that into gossiping with my friends these days, so it’s not really a major loss.

Marvin looks at me like I’m going to smack him. “Yeah?” he asks. He’s slid the diary pages under his math book, barely hidden.

I snatch them up. “Interesting reading?”

“They were just sticking out of a locker.” He’s blushing up to his ears.

Oh, Marvin. That awful mama’s-boy haircut. That dirty peach-fuzz mustache. Why do you do these things to yourself?

I put the pages in my bag. “
Your
locker?”

He blinks at me behind the same glasses he’s worn since sixth grade. “Could have been.”

“Oh, I forgot. We have communal lockers at this school.” I think of the day the senior guys stuck Polaroids of their junk into Lizzie’s locker. They really did treat her like she belonged to them after prom.

His scowl softens. “She was my friend.”

“She was everyone’s friend, apparently. Now.”

Yet, not too long ago, my classmates tripped over themselves to make her life miserable.

Marvin’s eyes stare back at me, pleading. “You know I cared about her.”

Like you care about your blow-up doll,
I want to say.
If you cared about her at all, you wouldn’t be reading her private thoughts.

But I hold my fire. Truth is, if I got my hands on Lizzie’s entire diary, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reading it.

“Did you even know her that well?” I ask.

Marvin smiles dreamily. “We’ve lived next door to each other since we were kids.”

No shit. Why do you think you’re on my list?
But I don’t tell him that. “I never saw you. Were you hiding behind the curtains?”

He frowns but doesn’t deny my accusation. “I knew her as well as I know myself.”

Eye roll. “So you knew she was going to swap fluids with my boyfriend on prom night? Gee, Marvin, and you didn’t tell me?”

He locks his jaw. I picture him lying in bed at night, grinding his crooked teeth into dust. His answer surprises me. It’s got a little bite. “He’s not your boyfriend anymore.”

I snort, and Mr. Farmington looks up from his desk. Better open my math book for good measure. All around us, people are hunched over their worksheets, but I can tell they’re listening in. They’re just more subtle than I am.

“Not that I blame you for dumping him,” Marvin says. “That asshole deserves what he got.”

“So you’re mad at Drake?”

“I’m mad at everyone.” His fingers curl over the edge of his desk. For a second, I glimpse that possessiveness he always showed around Lizzie. “Everyone who hurt her,” he adds, loosening his grip. “She was perfect, and they made her like everyone else.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

He shrugs.

I soften my voice. “Tell me what you know. Things you heard, things you saw.”

“And?” He nods to my bag.

“And maybe I’ll let you read a little more.”
Yeah. Right.
“Deal?”

Marvin shrugs again and begins working out the first of our study questions. He finishes within seconds. When he looks up, his eyes are guarded. “Just not here.”

February 3rd

I used to sing for you all the time. Remember? At the park, when the three of us played trolls and fairies. In the kitchen, when we learned to make cakes. Your eyes lit up at the sounds I could make.

In those moments, I actually believed you cared about me. In those moments, I felt loved.

But somewhere along the line my voice dried up. Was it middle school, when the shame of unknowing became the shame of desire? Was it high school, when I learned to wear invisibility like protective armor? I was so terrified of you glimpsing my feelings that I closed myself off to you, to everyone.

Now I wonder . . .

What if you could hear me sing again? Would your heart hear what your eyes refuse to see? Would you come running to me? Or even walking?

Walking I would accept, at this point.

Today Jesse Martinez told me the Verity Players are putting on a spring production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
There’s a scene in the play where the Queen’s fairy attendants sing. So I’ll sing at my
audition and if the judges are pleased with the sound of it, they’ll allow me to dance around on clumsy legs in exchange for my voice.

A mermaid-meets-the-sea-witch kind of exchange.

And you’ll come to watch the play. The school’s MVPs always do. Cheerleaders and football stars mingling with the artists. The one time the beautiful people join hands with the freaks and geeks. Then, maybe for one brief moment, you’ll take my hand and feel what I still can’t speak.

So, say it with me:

Lizzie

Break

A

Leg

February 14th

I’M IN! I’M IN THE PLAY. And somehow I’m a lead!!!

I can’t believe it.

How could this have happened? I’m shaking in my boots—HA-HA—the tall black ones passed down to me from you-know-who. I see boys watching me when I wear them. Sometimes, it makes me wish I could want something I’m supposed to want. Something that isn’t forbidden . . .

Listen to me, I’m rambling! My mind literally will not focus on one thing! I auditioned for the play on Wednesday. Feeling bold, I performed Titania’s longest monologue in its entirety—sang it, actually, assuming it was the only way they’d consider me. They didn’t even clap when I finished. Just sat there staring. I thought, at the time, they were so stunned by my stupidity that they didn’t trust themselves to speak. But now I wonder . . .

Do I dare?

Do I dare?

They actually liked me! More than liked, if they
cast me as the lead fairy, right? Fairy Queen. Lord knows, if I were to expect a lead, it might’ve been Helena, crawling on my hands and knees after Demetrius. Dragging myself through life like a stray mutt, begging for love’s scraps.

Pathetic? Indeed.

But I didn’t expect a lead. Honestly, I expected nothing. Not even a fairy attendant to fulfill my twisted dreams of wooing you. Am I wrong for wanting to woo? Am I wrong for trying to be happy?

Am I wrong for taking this chance?

Today, on the feast of Saint Valentine, I feel like the universe is guiding me. For not only am I cast as the Fairy Queen, but Madame Swarsky in her infinite wisdom (and beauty, and strength, and wonder—Oh, how I adore her right now!) has requested the aid of the musically inclined Mrs. Barlow so that I might SING MY LINES!

In fact, all the fairies are to sing periodically, as Madame Swarsky now realizes “the fairies are wont to do”! I have “opened her eyes to the missing element of the play.” Could I be happier?

Surely I could.

(I think you know what I mean.)

But for now, I’m as giddy as a babe walking on clouds, finding that butterflies spring up from her hands. I’m one step closer to revealing my True Self to the world, I’ve succeeded in something I
couldn’t have dreamt of, and I have, according to Verity’s leading drama expert, brought a delightful new twist to a classic play.

Yay, me!

Of course, there is the Slight Complication: I’ve taken the part from its rightful and glorious owner: Miss Shelby McQueen.

Shelby McQueen, president and founder of Verity’s Sisterhood of the Nubian Princess, star of every production since the start of her freshman year, a veritable goddess of the stage, is

Nothing

Short

Of

ENRAGED.

four

S
HELBY MCQUEEN. WHEREVER
will I find Shelby McQueen?

Oh, yes. Lucky for me, Miss Who Am I Going to Play Today happens to share my seventh-period Drama class. This’ll be too easy.

BOOK: The S-Word
5.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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