“I never sang it,” she says, and then, like she’s forced to keep reciting everything we ever did, continues. “You took pictures of me when I was showering.”
“That was Lindsay,” I say automatically, getting more and more uncomfortable. If she would get angry, it would be one thing—but it’s like she’s not even seeing me, like she’s just reading off a list she’s looked at a million times.
“You posted the pictures all over the school. Where teachers could see.”
“We took them down in, like, an hour.” I’m ashamed as soon as I say the words. As though the fact that we took them down makes it better.
“You hacked into my Yahoo account. You published my—my private emails.”
“That wasn’t us,” I say quickly, feeling a rush of relief that this, at least, was not our fault. To this day I’m not sure who did hack her account, and circulate email exchanges between Juliet and some guy named Path2Pain118 she’d obviously met in a chat room. There were dozens of emails, all of them long rants about how much high school sucked and how awful everybody was. The hacker had forwarded the emails to almost everyone in school after giving them a new subject line: Future School Shooters of America. I shiver, thinking about how easy it is to be totally wrong about people—to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it’s the effect or vice versa. And though I’ve now been at Kent’s house five times in six days I feel disoriented, confused by the bright bathroom light and Juliet’s impassive face and the sounds of the party coming through the door.
Juliet keeps going on like I didn’t even speak. “You started the rumor that I lost my virginity for a pack of cigarettes.”
Ally. That was Ally. I can’t say it. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It was us. It was all of us. Everyone who repeated the story and whispered “slut” and made a smoker’s hacking cough whenever she walked by.
“I don’t even smoke.” She says this with a smile, like this is the funniest thing in the world. Like this, her whole life, is one big joke.
“Juliet—”
“My sister heard that rumor. She told my parents. I—” Finally she loses it a little, balling her hands into fists and squeezing them against her thighs. “I’ve never even kissed anyone.” This comes out as a fierce whisper—a confession—and the intensity of it, the sadness and regret, makes a black well of anger break somewhere inside of me.
“I know, okay? I know we did horrible things. I know we’ve been shitty and things are bad and—” I break off, the words getting tangled in my throat. I’m on the verge of tears, full of blind fury that hits me like a cloud, blots out everything but a single burning point of frustration: I can’t make her see, can’t make her see that I’m trying to make things right. I feel like I’m watching both of our lives swirl down the drain, mine and hers, wrapped around each other. “What I’m saying is, I want to make it up to you. I’m trying to apologize. Things—things are going to get better.”
She presses her lips together, staring at me mute and white-faced, and I have to tense every muscle in my arms to keep from reaching out and grabbing her shoulders, shaking her.
“I mean…” I’m going on blindly now, groping, grabbing at words and ideas as they come buzzing up to me through my anger, trying to get through to her. “You got those roses today, right? Like a whole bunch of them?”
An enormous shudder goes through her. And now a light snaps on in her eyes again, but instead of gratitude, there’s hatred burning there.
“I knew it. I knew it was you.” Her voice is so full of rage and pain I rear back like she’s hit me. “What was that? Another one of your little jokes?”
Her reaction is so unexpected it takes me a few seconds to think of a response. “What? No. That wasn’t—”
“Poor little Psycho.” Juliet narrows her eyes, almost hissing at me. “No friends. No roses. Let’s screw with her one more time.”
“I didn’t want to screw with you.” I have no idea what’s happening or how things have gone so badly wrong. “It was supposed to be nice.”
I don’t know that she even hears me. She leans closer. “So what was the plan? What were you going to do with that ‘secret admirer’ crap? Bribe one of your friends so he’d pretend to like me? Ask me out? Maybe even to go to prom? And then—what? On the night that we’re supposed to go, he just won’t show up? And it will be so goddamned funny if I freak out, if I go crazy, if I cry or break down in the hallways when I see him in school.” She jerks away. “Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re repeating yourselves. Been there, done that. Eighth grade. Spring Fling. Andrew Roberts.”
She slumps forward as though her speech has exhausted her, the anger and the burning light disappearing simultaneously, all the expression going out of her face, her hands uncurling.
“Or maybe you didn’t have a plan,” she says, this time quietly, almost sweetly. “Maybe there was no point to it at all. Maybe you just wanted to remind me that I have nobody, no friends, no secret admirers. ‘Maybe next year, but probably not,’ right?” She smiles at me again, and it’s much worse than her anger.
By this point I’m so frustrated and bewildered I have to fight back tears. “I swear, Juliet, that wasn’t the point. I just—I thought it would be nice. I thought it would make you feel better.”