Unfriended (16 page)

TRULY

I FELL ASLEEP
in front of my computer last night and dreamed that everybody was joking around at the lunch table but I couldn't make any sense of their words. Every time I tried to say anything, even
yeah,
the conversation screeched to a halt and they all stared at me. I knelt down to pretend to tie my shoe so they'd look away. When I stood up, they were gone.

I was alone.

My bag was gone, too, with my phone, my money, my school ID all in it. I had nothing. I wasn't in the cafeteria anymore, then. I don't know where I was.

I felt lost and scared, but also ashamed. They had ditched me on purpose, I realized, and it felt like they were completely justified. Like I had done something similar to somebody.

Hazel.

I had been denying it to myself, all this time, the awfulness of what I'd done. Hazel was odd, I'd been assuring myself. Hazel is awkward and overly dramatic. So how I treated her is pretty much her own fault.

But the truth is I just basically dumped her for a better offer.

For all my acting nice, blameless, yes, as Natasha accused: innocent—I deep down inside had this secret haughty attitude like, well, if you worked your butt off like I do, Hazel, maybe you'd have better grades, and if you tried harder to think about other people's interests and feelings maybe you'd get to sit at the Popular Table too.
I deserve the success I have in this life
, I reminded myself constantly. I studied hard not just the school stuff but the social stuff as well.

I had watched and read and researched and spent a lot of time thinking about how to be cool, how to fit in. Maybe Hazel didn't think that's important or maybe she just couldn't manage to achieve it. And, in the dream, I wasn't thinking
, Oh, how awful; I should be more patient and kind
. I was thinking,
Well, tough
. Hazel always talks about the amazing things she'll achieve, but maybe someday I'll be the one who's famous, not her. I'll write a book about friendship politics where the popular kids aren't libeled as bullies and the weird annoying kids aren't hailed as saints.

Maybe the popular kids are popular because they're nice and fun. So people want to be around them. Did you ever think of that, Hazel? Yeah. Sucks to suck. And it's good to be chosen. So, ha on you and hooray for me.

And then
wham
it got dark and cold, and I realized oh, wait, I am not the strong, right, popular winner anymore. I'm the one who was abandoned. The one the Populars didn't want to be around. Some clowns started chasing me. They were laughing and pointing.

I ran hard, trying to get away. A herd of llamas watched me run past, staring with their huge cold eyes. “It was all a joke,” one of the llamas told me. And I knew it was true, even though it was a llama saying so: it was all a joke.

Those popular kids were never my friends. It was an experiment, a cruel trick. One of them had said to the rest, Hey, do you think we could take some Random and make her think she's in with us? They picked me, and I fell for it.

Everybody knew. They never even liked me. Everybody was laughing at my obvious obliviousness the whole time.

Even the llamas.

Or maybe, I thought, in the dark noisiness of this freaky rodeo/carnival dream place, it was worse than that. I was in some kind of moral experiment, being tested for what kind of person I was.
MORAL
HAZARD
, the sign above a carnival booth said, in bright flashing lights. It was a throw-darts-at-balloons booth called
MORA
L
HAZARD
. It was a test to see how I handled being wanted by people who had shunned me before.

A guy with very few teeth handed me a fistful of darts. I didn't want to but I had to throw them. The first few darts didn't even reach the wall of balloons. I had no chance of getting the big stuffed dog or the blow-up alien. What's the point? Toothless guy wouldn't let me quit.
Throw and miss,
he said. He opened his horrible mouth wide and laughed at me.
Just like you missed every nuance, every inside joke
, Toothless mocked. The next dart I threw hit Toothless in his chest. He started bleeding, gushing blood from his chest—but he kept laughing at me.

I dropped the final dart and started running, searching for an exit or a familiar face, but the lights started swirling and the music got all weird and disharmonic. I was crying and tripping over stuff, bumping into people, but I kept running until I heard my name.

It was coming over the loudspeaker. I stopped. Everybody stopped and listened. I was hoping it was my mom, that she still loved me and was looking for me and would save me, help me find a way out. But no.

The voice, unrecognizable, thundered:
Gabriela Gonzales! You don't deserve to be called Truly anymore, do you? How do you like it when you are the one who can't keep up? Gets dumped? Where's your righteous indignation and social Darwinist cool now, Butterfly?

What? What does that even mean?

That's when I woke up in a cold sweat, terrified. I had slept through my alarm.

Just a dream, I told myself, rushing to get ready for school. But even the quick hot shower and rough apricot scrub Mom had bought me special couldn't clean the clammy sweat and dream residue off me. I had to go to school still reeking of it.

BROOKE

“NATASHA'S MOM IS
tracing the anonymous responses,” Lulu whispered.

“She can do that?” Evangeline asked.

Lulu nodded, leaning in closer. “Natasha was texting me until like two
A
.
M
. Her mom is ninety-nine percent sure it was Truly who posted all those mean things to Natasha.”

“Seriously?” Evangeline asked. “Yikes.” She blew out a mouthful of breath.

“I know it, right? Pretty sick,” Lulu said.

“If it's true,” I said.

“Ninety-nine percent is pretty tight,” Lulu said. “And she's obviously not the only person who thinks so. Did you see the things people were posting about Truly?”

“Yeah,” Evangeline and I both said.

Truly had posted a bunch of stuff like:
Natasha, don't listen to this nonsense—you are a good, kind, loving person and whoever wrote this is the loser not you!

Same as we'd all done.

But under some of Truly's comments, some people we didn't know (probably with fake accounts, I was guessing) wrote:
Nice try Truly
and then:
Yeah, Truly. Nobody's buying your innocent act anymore.

Evangeline nodded. “I saw that stuff. That was harsh. Do you think Natasha wrote that?”

Lulu shook her head. “I was texting with her when it was posted. I told her about it and she didn't believe me at first. I had to tell her where to look.”

“So who posted it?” Evangeline asked. “Those were obviously fake names, plus a lot of anonymous posts.”

“Maybe somebody who knows that Truly really did post those nasty things about Natasha?” Lulu suggested.

I shrugged. “Like who?”

“Maybe Jack,” Lulu said.

“No way,” I said. “He loves her!”

“Maybe he did,” Lulu said. “But she's supposedly been texting with Clay,” Lulu whispered. “A lot.”

“Really?' I asked.

“Natasha said Truly's been bragging about it.”

We all looked over to where Truly had been sitting alone. She wasn't alone anymore. She and Clay were sitting together, completely flirting.

Evangeline and Lulu both tipped their heads at me, squinching up their mouths in sympathy
.

“I don't care!” I said.

“Truly knows you guys like each other,” Evangeline whispered gravely.

Lulu nodded. “She told me she thought you're such a cute couple.”

“Same,” whispered Evangeline.

“You guys were talking about me?”

“She brought it up,” Lulu said.

“To me, too,” Evangeline said. “And now she's after him? After using Jack? Not cool on so many levels.”

We all turned to see Clay leaning closer to Truly, whispering.

“Come on, let's go in,” Evangeline said. “Everybody sucks.”

“Except us,” Lulu said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Because we're so awesome.”

“Aren't we?” Evangeline asked.

“Slut,” Lulu whispered toward Truly as we passed her flirting with Clay, who is fully just a friend and never will be anything more to me ever.

CLAY

WHEN I GOT
to school this morning, all the girls were in a tight huddle, whispering. Including Brooke, who I really wanted to talk to about last night, about what she had said about I should just do my homework and what I did, after, because of it. But she was clearly dealing with some Lulu crisis so I went by. Catch her later, I figured.

Truly Gonzales was sitting by herself off to the side, chewing on her fingers. Huh. Jack and Dave and those guys weren't around, so I went and sat down next to Truly. “I used to bite my nails,” I said.

“Me, too,” she said. I smiled. She pulled her fingers away from her mouth.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Sure.”

“What's wrong?”

She started to shrug but stopped. We sat there not talking for a while. I didn't really know her that well and never actually had a conversation with her before so I wasn't sure what to talk about. I'm the last one to make somebody talk if she doesn't want to, so I figured we'd just sit there until the bell rang. I looked for Jack to say sorry I'd forgotten again to do the History Day thing, but he was nowhere.

The girl clump started walking. I looked up, thinking I'd catch Brooke's attention, maybe walk in with her. But her eyes were straight ahead. She didn't even notice me.

As they passed, Lulu muttered
slut
at me.

Great.

Natasha must've fed them more crap about what a terrible person I am. Funny my dad thinks my problem is that I am
too
charming. #thestruggle. Please. But still I wasn't sure why Brooke would be ignoring me.

I guess Truly heard what Lulu called me because she whispered, “Someone once said, if you want a friend, get a dog.”

“That's a good one,” I said. “At least I have my dog.”

“Harry Truman,” she said.

“Huh?” I was like, does she think my dog's name is Harry Truman?

“Harry Truman,” she repeated. “I was . . . I know who said it, actually. Harry S. Truman. I'm a nerd. Now you know.”

“Okay.”

“He actually said, ‘If you want a friend
in Washington,
get a dog.'”

“Oh,” I said.

“Natasha says nobody likes a know-it-all so I've been trying to . . .”

“Be a know-nothing?”

“I guess.”

“Seems kinda . . . dumb, actually,” I said, to myself as much as to her. “As a goal. Seem stupider than you are. Even if you achieve your goal, you suck.”

“Yeah.” She shook her head, which made her ponytail sway. “Whatever, anyway, obviously that doesn't work either, so I may as well own up. Harry S. Truman. Go ahead and hate me I don't even care anymore.”

“I thought you were doing Benedict Arnold.”

“What?”

“For the, for History Day.”

“I am. We are. I was. I don't know.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I like Harry Truman.”

“Nice.”

“What? You're, what, a big, Roosevelt fan? Or Dewey?”

“Who?”

“Nothing. I just, I don't know . . .” She took a deep breath. “I was just thinking about, you know, friends. I'm sorry. I had a bad dream last night.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Is why I'm in a weird mood.”

I didn't want to say, Yeah, and also your friends were in a tight huddle and they kept looking over here at you, all suspicious. And now they walked into school without you. So instead I said, “We might be doing Harry S. Truman.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Him and his dog. And, maybe, his favorite foods. Jack might cook them. If—What were his favorite foods?”

“You're making this up right now, right?” she asked.

“I have until fifth period,” I protested. “You're pretty good at math, right?”

“I guess,” she said. She sounded kind of disappointed in herself about it. “Of course. You?”

“Did you know that algebra means ‘the reunion of broken parts'?”

“No,” she said, a small smile tipping her lips up. “Does it really?”

“Yeah,” I said. “From the Arabic words meaning ‘reunion' and ‘broken parts.'”

“That's actually awesome,” she said.

“Yeah. Well, that's all I got, algebra-wise. Maybe I'll put that down, see if I get some extra credit. I'll need it.”

The bell rang. She stood up smiling. “‘The reunion of broken parts,'” she said. “I really like that. Ha. I'm a mess of broken parts, feels like. Could use a reunion.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You what?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Just, thanks. Maybe the answer's in the algebra textbook.”

“There's an answer key at the back,” I said. “And I did the homework for once, if you need the answers.”

She laughed. “Yeah right, if only those were the answers I needed. Thanks, Clay.”

“Sure,” I said. “Any time.”