Who Do You Love (14 page)

“Bethie, do you have it?” I asked. My voice cracked. “Or do you know where it is?”

“Oh, she knows,” said Marissa. A coolness was slipping over her face, making her look very adult and very frightening. “Bethie,” said Marissa. “Beth-eeee. Come out, come out, wherever you are, and give Rachel her necklace.”

Bethie didn't answer, but her greasy moon-face looked flushed. Her knees were propped up under the covers, and she started to move her thighs back and forth, in, then out. In a single swift motion, Marissa grabbed the top of her blanket and yanked it toward the bottom of the bed, exposing Bethie's unicorn nightshirt and powder-blue sweatpants. The pants had no pockets that I could see.

“Leave me alone!” squeaked Bethie. She was cringing, pulling her legs toward her chest, and all I could think of was a worm whose rock had just been kicked over, squirming away from the sun.

“I'll leave you alone when you give Rachel her necklace back, you fucking thief.”

I held my breath. I'd never heard Marissa say the word
fucking
to someone's face.

“It's just a stupid paper clip!” Bethie said, in her high, babyish voice. “Maybe it got lost.”

“It did not just get lost, Jabba the Hutt. What'd you do, ea
t
it?”

“Marissa,” I murmured. It was one thing to call Bethie Jabba the Hutt in private. Saying it out loud was taking things to a place where I didn't think I wanted to go.

“Give it back,” Marissa said. She grabbed the shoulders of Bethie's nightshirt and pulled her upright.

Bethie scowled at Marissa. “Let me go or I'll tell Mrs
.
Nasser.”

“
I'll tell Mrs. Nasser,
” Marissa repeated, in a savage falsetto. “What are you, in kindergarten, you fucking tattletale? Give it back!” She punctuated her words by giving Bethie a hard shake. Bethie jerked away and glared at me.

“Probably you just lost it,” she said. “No big deal. Your parents will just buy you a new one.”

“It was a present,” I said. “And it was handmade. My parents can't buy me a new one.” My face was flaming, and I was close to going to her bed and shaking her myself. I knew that she'd taken it. I was positive. Seeing me this happy was more than miserable Bethie Botts could stand. “I didn't lose it. It was right there,” I said, pointing to the dresser. “If you know where it is, please just tell me.”

She gave me that same smug look and opened her book again. I walked over to her bed and looked down at the top of her head, her greasy hair, the strip of white skin where she'd parted it.

“Did you throw it out? Did you flush it? Did you eat it?” I had never talked to anyone that way, but I was furious. That heart meant more to me than anything else I had, even the diamond earrings my parents had given me as a bat mitzvah gift, or the afghan that Nana had knitted that I'd taken to the hospital for every operation.

Bethie didn't say a word. Marissa stalked over to the corner where Bethie had put her plastic bags and grabbed them both.

“Hey,” Bethie whined, “hey, don't!”

Ignoring her, Marissa tore the bags open and dumped them out on Bethie's bed. Two giant pairs of white cotton briefs. A pair of stretchy black leggings with a hole in the knee. Tiny sample-sized bottles, clearly swiped from a hotel, of shampoo and mouthwash. A sliver of something—soap, I guessed—wrapped in toilet paper. A raggedy gray stuffed elephant that was missing one eye. Marissa picked it up.

“Is this, like, your spirit animal?” Marissa asked.

“Put it down,” said Bethie, who was starting to look scared. “I didn't take your stupid heart, so don't you touch my stuff!”

“Like I want to be touching it,” said Marissa. “I'm going to need to disinfect my hands after going through your mess.” She gave the sad little pile a derisive poke.

“Tell me where my heart is.” I snatched the stuffed toy from Marissa. “Give it back or I'm flushing this.”

“Don't!” Bethie said. “He's special!”

I used my thumbnail to pop out the elephant's remaining eye. It pinged against the floor, and lay there, a brown glass circle that seemed to gaze at me accusingly. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel my chest heaving, and I was shaking all over, from fury and shame and from a strange kind of excitement, the thrill of going all the way over to the dark side, where my worst, most hurtful impulses reigned.

“Cut it out!” Bethie cried. “Don't hurt him!”

“Give it back,” I said.

“I don't know where your heart is!” Bethie shrieked at me.

The words
neither do I
zipped across my consciousness, and were gone in an instant.

“Give him back,” Bethie said, and held out her hand.

“Why do you care?” I asked. “Your parents'll buy you a ne
w
one.”

“I don't live with my parents,” said Bethie. “I'm in a foster home.”

“Boohoo, poor you,” said Marissa. Her eyes were shining; her color was high. Was she enjoying this like I was? She certainly seemed to be having some strange kind of fun. “Did your parents kick you out because you stole their stuff, too?”

Bethie bent her head so that her chin touched her chest. She was crying now, big, gaspy, unlovely sobs. I threw the elephant at her, as hard as I could. “Next time, steal some deodorant,” I said. “Steal some clothes that don't look like they came from the clearance aisle at Goodwill.” I was going to go on, to tell her to steal some shampoo, steal some Clearasil, when a voice behind me said my name.

I turned. Andy was standing in doorway of our dorm room. He had my necklace dangling from one hand. “It was in the hall,” he said.

I slumped against the wall, trying to calm down, wondering how much he'd heard, feeling my face flame as I remembered. “Oh, thank God,” I said.

Bethie was still crying. I felt dizzy, almost sick with shame, worse than the time my dad had caught me sneaking a look at the
Penthouse
I'd found under his mattress, worse than when I was six and my mom had refused to buy me a candy bar at the grocery store, so I'd slipped one in my pocket, and the cashier had seen. I picked the stuffed elephant's eye off the floor and walked to Bethie's bed. “I can fix it for you,” I said.

“You can't,” she said. She had her knees pulled up tight against her chest. One hand was yanking her hair, hard enough that it had to hurt. “You can't, you can't, you can't,” she said, pulling her hair with each repetition.

“Sure I can,” I said, and made myself touch her shoulder. Her flesh felt hot and loose under the nightshirt. “And I can give you some other ones, too. I've got a million Beanie Babies, from when I was in the hospital.”

Bethie kept rocking and pulling. “You don't even get it,” she said. “I don't want new ones. I want Tyler. He's the only thing left.”

Left from what?
I wondered. Left from her parents, probably. I felt so small then, as small and low as I'd ever felt. The happiness that had filled me when I was in the shower was gone, along with that odd, savage joy that had animated me when I was calling Bethie names and hurting her things. I wanted to climb under my covers or shut my eyes like a little kid.

“Bethie,” I said, keeping my voice soft. “I'm sorry I was mean.”

“Everyone's mean to me,” she snarled. “You're not special. You think you're special but you're not.”

“I'm sorry,” I said again. She flung my hand off and turned her face toward the wall.

Andy was still in the doorway. I looked at him, and he looked down, his face expressionless. Without a word, he put the heart back on my dresser, then turned and walked away. The three of us were silent until the door had closed behin
d
him.

“Good work, Bethie,” said Marissa. “Way to ruin other people's love lives.”

Bethie didn't answer, didn't even turn her head to look at us.

Slowly, feeling stunned and embarrassed and completely miserable, I took off my cute outfit and put on my pajamas. Without a word to Marissa, without even brushing my teeth, I climbed into my sleeping bag and turned toward the wall. I was shivering, with an ache in the pit of my stomach, too sad to cry. Whatever Andy and I had had, whatever had started between us, it was dead now. I wasn't the girl he wanted . . . and I didn't have anyone to blame but myself.

•••

I got to breakfast early the next morning and left my duffel bag by the door in the pile labeled “Beth Am.” Rabbi Silver had told us we needed to get everything out by nine, to make room for the incoming volleyball players. In the dining hall, Andy was sitting with his classmates, with his eyes on his plate, not looking at me, not looking at anyone. I sat between Marissa and Sarah Ackerman, not eating a bite, not saying a word. I'd put my hair up into a bun, the way I did around the house when no one I cared about would see me. My face was scrubbed, and I was wearing cuffed jeans and my single remaining clean T-shirt, a plain white one. That morning, when Bethie was i
n
the bathroom, I'd taken my Walkman and my tapes and left them
on her bed with a note that said, “I'm sorry.” I had no idea if she liked the kind of music I did, but they were all I had, and it was all that I could think to do.

When breakfast was over, we filed into the auditorium for the farewell session. There were speeches from various rabbis and priests and teachers about how we'd done great work, how giving back was important, and how we'd formed friendships that could last a lifetime. After the final “goodbye and Godspeed,” Andy was one of the first people to leave the auditorium. I jumped out of my seat, stepped over a few of my friends, and ran to catch him.

“Hey!”

He was walking toward the buses, moving fast, with his hands in his pockets and his head down. “Andy!” I reached for his hand, and he let me take it, but his fingers were cool and limp, and when I squeezed, he didn't squeeze back.

“Can I . . .” I swallowed hard. “Will you talk to me?”

He let go of my hand and picked up the pace. “We're supposed to be on our buses.”

“Please.” He kept walking. “Andy.” I grabbed his sleeve, like a little kid.

“Lovers' quarrel?” Marni Marmelstein singsonged as she walked by. I pulled Andy around a corner where no one could see us.

His face was serious; his dark eyes were sad. “I should get on my bus.”

“I need to say something.” I was desperate to defend myself, to not have him look at me that way, with disappointment, with disdain, like he didn't want to know me anymore. “You don't know Bethie. She's awful. She walks around with that dumb smile on her face, and she smells bad, and she's mean. She's rude if you try to talk to her. It's not like people haven't tried to be nice to her, to be her friend. I've tried,” I said, which was technically true, even if the real truth was that the last time I'd extended any kindness to Bethie had been at my bat mitzvah, when my parents had insisted I invite
her.

“What happened to her? What happened to make her tha
t
way?”

“I don't know.” The truth was, I'd barely spared Bethie Botts much thought in all the years I'd known her, except to wonder how she could care so little about the things that worried me so much—how to look pretty, how to smell good, how to wear the right clothes, be friends with the right girls, never say anything or do anything that would mark you as different.

“She's poor,” said Andy. His voice was low and toneless. “She doesn't dress like you and your snotty friends because she can't afford it.”

“I'm not snotty!” The words burst out of me. After all the years of pretending that I was the same as my classmates, here I was, desperate to claim my status as different. “You don't know what I'm like!”

“I know what I see,” said Andy. I hung my head. I knew what he saw when he looked at me. A girl with designer jeans and fancy sneakers, a big house with a pool out back. A girl with her own bedroom, her own car and phone and phone number, a girl whose parents had told her they'd send her to whatever college she wanted to attend and whose grandmother had promised her a graduation trip to wherever she wanted to go. How did that look to a guy who'd gotten free lunch and wore secondhand clothes?

“I was awful last night. I know I was. But I've never done anything like that before. I just wanted my heart . . .” My voice caught.

Andy's
voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear it. “I thought you were different.”

I looked up at him, fist clenched, waiting until he met my eyes. “I am different. I'm the girl who missed six weeks of school for three years in a row because I was in the hospital, and when I came back I had to carry an oxygen tank around. I'm the girl who's had so many operations that the anesthesiologist sends me a birthday card, and I still wake up with my mom standing over my bed and crying because she thinks . . . she thinks . . .” Words were spilling out of my mouth, unplanned and unstoppable. I'd never told anyone this, never talked about it, hardly even to myself. “I had a friend in the hospital once, her name was Alice, she was the only one who ever told me the truth about stuff, about what it's like to be that sick, to get that close to dying, and then she died, she died, she died when I was eight, the time in the hospital when I met you, and she was the only one who understood and I never even got to say goodbye to her, so I know, I know what it's like to feel . . .” I stopped, gasping, trying to catch my breath. Tears were sliding down my face, my nose was running, I was sure that I looked awful, but I didn't care and I couldn't stop. I wiped my eyes and lifted my head. “To feel like you're the only one.”

He made a noise then, a sort of angry sigh, and closed his eyes. I saw his lashes resting on his cheeks, and his scalp peeking through his cropped curls. His hands were balled into fists, hanging at his sides, but he didn't push me away when I hugged him.