Unfriended (21 page)

“I got it for you a while ago,” I explained. “After I knocked you down at Salugi. I was waiting for a good time to . . . but then I saw you leave school early today, and I know all that stupid stuff people posted, so I thought, maybe you could use a present.”

She looked down at the bracelet dangling like a spiderweb from her fingers, then back at me. “Why are you so nice to me?” she whispered.

“I like you,” I admitted.

She shook her head.

“It's true,” I said. “I mean I know I don't know you that well, but I've noticed you for a long time. I liked your bug-poop-in-dust report. Also your gravelly voice and how smart and good a person you are, and—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I'm not good. I'm petty and selfish and I threw my phone in Big Pond just now.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm just wrecked.”

“Wrecked meaning your busted knee?” I asked. “Because that's my fault.”

“No, like, my personality,” she said.

“Your personality seems good to me,” I said.

“It's not,” Truly said.

“Maybe you're just, kind of like that bracelet,” I said, wishing she would please put the bracelet on instead of leaving it dangling limply like that. “Delicate, a little bit. Most of us are, no matter how sturdy we look, I think. So maybe we all have to be, you know, a little gentle with each other. Less rough. But maybe it's also stronger than it seems so don't worry too much about that.”

She blinked a few times. Some teardrops were caught in her eyelashes.

“I don't know a lot about bracelets or girls, though, so I could be wrong,” I admitted.

“Thank you, Jack,” she said.

“So you want help putting it on?”

“Okay,” she said, and held out her hand to me. I managed to open the bracelet's clasp on my third try and stretched the bracelet around her tiny pale wrist. Then it took another few tries to open the clasp again and hook it inside the tiny silver O. But I did it, my thick thumbs managed.

Truly waggled her hand a bunch of times. The bracelet twinkled in the sunlight while she did it. It didn't fall apart in confetti bits on the dirt, luckily, because that would have been really bad for a couple of reasons, including that I had just basically compared her to the bracelet. So, phew on that.

She let her hand hang down by her side. The bracelet looked just like I'd hoped it would, sparkly and pretty on her wrist.

“If you don't like it, you can return it and choose something else,” I said, not taking my eyes off it.

“I like it a lot,” she said.

“It's not too . . . flimsy?”

“The opposite,” she said. “It feels strong as a rope to me, actually.”

“Okay,” I said, hoping she meant it in a good way. I stood up from the swing. “A rope?”

“Yeah.”

“You like rope?”

She smiled a little. She has such a sweet smile. “I've actually been wishing for one to grab on to.”

“Oh. Okay. Good then. Well, I guess that's all. I just, I wanted you to have that. It's not real rope, which, if I'd known you wanted it, I guess I could've . . . and it's no watermelon lollipop but . . .”

She laughed. I hadn't heard her laugh full-out before. It had kind of a bubbling-over quality, like when you're heating milk and it gets all frothy.

“It's perfect,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Phew,” I said. “Well, then, see you tomorrow, bye.”

I live far from Truly, the other side of town, the less fancy area, but a long walk wasn't going to hurt me any. Very little could right then. I'm strong. I got through people saying no to me before this; I could get through a girl wearing a bracelet I bought her and saying it was perfect, thank you. Even if my face might explode from smiling so hard as I walked along. Even if I might have to run partway home because of so much energy booming inside me.

One foot in front of the other, my mom says, that's how you get through stuff—keep going. Keep going, I told myself, smooth and steady; don't jump around or shout
YES!
Not until you're out of sight of Truly's house and then a few blocks more to be safe. I calmed myself down by thinking about what to make for dinner. Maybe something new, something with multiple steps and lots of ingredients. I had enough energy in me to make a ten-course meal. Something delicious, and when she's done Mom would say, “Oh, Jack, thank you. This is so good.”

And it would be.

BROOKE

WHEN I GOT
home from Evangeline's after school, my dad was standing in the kitchen, staring at groceries. He had spread them all over the counters in piles and groups instead of putting them away straight from the bags, the way my mother does. His way drives her nuts. She has to leave the kitchen when he unloads groceries. He gets it done but it takes forever, my mom complains. They have such different styles and speeds it's kind of funny they could work together all those years in the bookstore and also at home, always together. Though, of course, their store was as belly-up as Hazel's dead bird, now, so maybe it wasn't such a successful partnership after all.

“What are you doing, Dad?” I asked him.

“Hmmm?”

I leaned against the fridge with him, crossed my arms like him. “Why are we admiring the groceries?”

He laughed his snort-laugh. “I just spent two hundred dollars in the grocery store,” he said. “I came home with all this but no milk, which is what we needed.”

“Oops,” I said.

“And I was just thinking, I once spent two hundred dollars on a car.”

“Really? Two hundred bucks for a whole car?”

“Yup,” Dad said. “Well, it had no floor. And no brakes.”

“Oh.”

“But I was young,” he said, sighing. “And it was a car. And I had places to go and no need yet for a floor, or milk, or brakes.”

“You miss it?” I asked him. “That car and, that . . . feeling?”

“Nah,” he said. “Other than the lack of milk, I'm the happiest guy I know.”

“Yeah, but, what about . . . you know, all the bad stuff that's happening?”

“Bad stuff's gonna come,” Dad said. “You just have to walk it off and start over, when it does.”

“Sure, but what if you're the one who blew it?”

“Everybody's that one sometimes, darlin',” Dad said. “I figure, you go all out, shoot the moon, every time. Sometimes you get lucky. And meanwhile you work on developing a good second move for when you mess up. If you never fail, you're not trying hard enough. That's my strategy. For what it's worth.”

“Mine, too,” I said. “I think. I'm trying, anyway.”

“Then good luck to you. You're gonna need it. Now help me put all this crap away before your mother gets home and sees what a mess I've made.”

While I was helping I got a Snapchat from Clay. It was a photo of the C stairwell. Over it he'd written,
“Best place on earth.”

I managed to save it, just in time.

NATASHA

I WAS STUCK.

It was a tight squeeze getting into the dress, but I had forced it on. I had told them all I was definitely wearing it tomorrow for the performance, so it had to work. It had to. They were all mad at me enough already, for being harsh to Truly at school and then she went missing. I told them she sometimes gets emotional and not to worry but I don't know if they believed me until we saw she deleted a bunch of stuff and answered Brooke's text. So at least she wasn't dead or anything. They still all seemed mad, though.

Could I really have grown so much since my aunt's wedding? No way. The dress must've shrunk. I somehow worked it down over my body and checked myself out in the mirror. I looked like a cartoon character. Or maybe a sausage. It was horrible. And I hadn't even zipped it yet! This wasn't going to work, obviously. I started peeling it off, from the bottom up. My mother didn't have any dresses I could steal because the woman is way skinnier than I am. As she lets me know, even without saying so, every time she glances at me.

It had already been a long afternoon, when we were supposed to be practicing our play at Evangeline's, but instead we basically spent the whole time online looking for Truly and making sure she was okay. And then deleting or blocking all the mean stuff about her everywhere.

Ugh. Can nothing work for me? Ever?

I was sweating. I was taking the dress off over my head and it was really freaking tight. Maybe Mom washed it, or took it in to prank me. Or somehow when Truly tried it on that afternoon she came over and the two of us hung out laughing so much, maybe the dress had somehow squooshed down to her tiny proportions.

Obviously that was impossible. The dress was cutting off blood flow to my brain. I had gotten it partway off. I had to stop to catch my breath and reassess my strategy.

The dress was inside-out over my chest, head, and arms. It was so freaking dark. I hate overhead lights and I didn't need it bright as an operating room to check myself out in the mirror in a dress I was worried might be a squeeze, thank you. But with the dress inside-out over my head in the lowest dimmed click of lamplight of my room, I couldn't see anything.

Okay, it was time to admit the truth: I was completely trapped in the torture-chamber-tube of dress, and my fingers were starting to prickle, up there in the air like
Hey, throw me the football.

I bent over so my hands touched my rug and tried to step onto the hem of the dress with my toes. It wasn't working. I chased the bottom of the dress (which was almost at my fingertips) around with my feet. Folded in half like that I lost track of where I was and crashed into my night table. So there went my lamp, smashing onto the floor in shards of glass. In case it wasn't dark enough before.

“You okay?” Mom called out in the hall.

“Fine!” I yelled back.

“What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing!

“Did you just throw your lamp against the wall?” she demanded. “Because so help me, Natasha, I have had just about enough of your—”

“No!” I yelled. Oooh, I was fully sweating.

Her phone rang. I could hear it perfectly well. Was she like leaning against my door? What is
wrong
with her?

“Oh, hello, Alicia,” Mom said. Alicia? That's Truly's mom. Why was she calling my mother while I was trapped in my dress?

I'm fine,
Mom was saying.
You? Oh, really? No I didn't know that. Sorry to hear she's . . . Humph, Truly always seemed so even-keeled . . . Uh-huh. I for one try to stay out of . . . uh-huh. Ugh, kids these days, I tell you, the screens! It's constant! And the . . . oh. No, I didn't hear that. I'm not sure why you think I would have anything to do with . . . Uh-huh. I
am
listening, Alicia, but did it occur to you that maybe you're only getting one side of the . . . I know that. Yes. Who said? I don't know anybody named Hazel. Hazel? Oh, that kid. Well, she's obviously a paragon of sanity, that one. She said what? Why do you trust her word over mine, then? What proof? Well, but, uh-huh but maybe Truly posted some nasty stuff about Natasha, too. Did you think of . . . These things have two sides, at least, and you're only . . . Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I don't see why it's Natasha's fault if Truly throws her phone in the . . . was Natasha even there? Right, so how is this . . . Are you suggesting . . . Well, there I agree with you. You bet. And you keep Truly away from . . . Hello? Hello?

“Natasha! Open the door this minute!” Mom yelled, banging on it. “Or so help me I will kick it off the hinges. Natasha, don't test me I will do it!”

I shuffled to the door still trapped inside the dress. On the way I guess I stepped on some glass shards that used to be my lamp. “Ow ow ow,” I was saying as I bent in half to unlock my door. My mother slammed the door open and it swung into my arm-and-head enclosing dress and knocked me over onto my butt. “Ow!”

“What are you
doing
?”
my mother demanded, flicking on the overhead. Great.

I lifted my arms enough so I could see her face through the dress/periscope. “Just hanging,” I said.

“Just . . . have you lost your mind?”

“Are my feet bleeding?”

“Yes! And you are going to rip that dress. Why are you always such a disaster?” She sat down on my bed, cross-legged. “That lamp cost eighty dollars. And unlike Truly's family . . . that was her mother on the phone just now. Do you know what Truly did today?”

“Cut school,” I said. “Could you . . . Mom? I can't. . . .”

“She tossed her phone in Big Pond. And her mother wants me to tell you to stay away. Like it's my kid who's going mental.”

“I'm hemorrhaging from my feet and trapped vertically in a dress,” I said through the tunnel of dress. “Truly's mom could make a pretty strong case, I think.”

“Good point.”

We both started to laugh. A little at first, but then the whole thing just, I don't know. It all seemed so nuts. I rested my hands on my bed so I wouldn't topple over onto the glass again. Mom and I could not stop laughing. I ended up on my knees beside the bed, like a little kid saying her prayers, by the time we got a hold of ourselves. A few aftershocks of laughing shook us as we sighed it out.

“So, what
are
you doing?” Mom asked finally.

“I can't get out of this dress,” I said, laughing a little more. “Can you help me?”

“I don't know how,” she said.

I swallowed hard. The laughs disappeared.
She didn't know how to help me.
“I need you to know how.”

“But . . .”

“Just try something,” I whispered. “Please be able to.”

She tugged and yanked and pulled. She dragged me onto the bed. I stepped on more glass shards and banged my shin on the bed frame, but little by little and then all at once I was out. I blinked in the air.

“Ugh, that was like childbirth,” my mother said, gawking at my nearly naked, sweaty body. “Never planned to birth you a second time at age thirteen.”

“Ew,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Oh, Natasha, look at you.”

“No!” I yelled. “Don't look at me. I'm fat and sweaty and I don't want to hear it, okay?”

“Natasha, I never said you —”

“Yes, you did,” I said. I was shaking, my fists clutched in front of my face. “You always do. You make me hate myself, and then, it's like, all I am is hate. All I have, all I can put out there into the world is hate.” I was thumping my fists into my forehead.

Mom's face looked shocked, maybe hurt, maybe mad. I didn't know and didn't care. “You're gonna blame me for every sorry thing in your life?” she asked.

“Hurt people hurt people you once said,” I yelled at her. “Well, you must be in agony because look what you do to me. And make me do to my friends.”

“Your so-called friends deserve what they—”

“No! Mom. You're not listening! I hurt. I hurt so much.”

“If I'm hard on you, Natasha,” Mom started, “it's because I'm on your side, and I want you to—”

“Ugh! Maybe you could go be on somebody else's side for a little while,” I said. “Go be on Truly's side. I need a break.”

A small laugh escaped Mom's lips. It seemed like she was trying to hold it in like a burp, but it got away from her.

“What?”

“Nothing. You're funny. You don't even try, and you're . . .” She tossed me my old green sweatshirt from the bed. “You're funny. Did you really step on the glass?”

I nodded, slipping into the comfort of that big sweatshirt. It used to be my dad's. At least there was room for me inside it. She really thinks I'm funny? Funny is good. People like funny. Brooke, especially,

“Let me take a look,” Mom said.

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm fine.”

She patted my bed. I rolled my eyes and sighed. She patted the bed again.

I tiptoed over and sat down next to her. Flipped my legs up onto the comforter and let her look at my huge ruined feet.

“Ooooh,” she said. “Stay right here. Don't move. There's a bunch of glass in there. I have to get alcohol, and, I guess, a tweezers, some paper towels, if we have any. Ugh. I think we're out.” She picked up the base of the lamp, its shade hanging at an injured angle, and placed it back onto my night table. “I'll find something.”

“Can't we just leave bad enough alone?” I asked.

“No,” she said, her arms crossed with my dress knotted up around them. “We have to get every last piece out, dodo. Might take some work, and be disgusting, but we can do it. We're tough.”

“Do you even know how to do it?”

She turned her face away and sighed. “I'll try,” she said. “No promises.”

“It's gonna hurt,” I said.

She nodded. “It's not gonna be a picnic for me, either.” She looked out into the hallway, away from me. “I'll be as gentle as I can. And then we'll see about letting out this dress. Okay?”

“I guess.”

“Natasha,” she said, turning around.

“What.”

“I . . . I'll get some ice,” she said. “That might take away some of the pain.”

“Okay,” I said. “Worth a try.”