Absent (14 page)

“Well, except for Usha Das,” another adds.

“Wait,” I say, “Usha was nominated?”

“Yeah, she’s the fourth nominee.”

“Wow,” I breathe, smiling. Yes, the whole thing is still absurd, but if someone is going to be prom queen, it
should
be Usha.

“Yeah, wow,” one of the ponies says to me. “My reaction exactly.”

“Of course, you know why,” another adds.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because of
you know
.”

“She means pity,” the first one says smoothly.

“Pity?” I say.

“People feel sorry for her because her friend killed herself.”

I cock my head. “And what about us? Why are we nominated?”

The other nominees look at each other.

“Because people like us,” one of them says slowly.

“Do they really?” I ask. “I don’t think they do.”

“What’s gotten into you?” the other one says, nostrils flaring.

I shrug. “Call it honesty.”

The ponies look like they have a decisively different name for it. I smile innocently at them. Kelsey is nominated for prom queen? Fine. Let’s see if she wins.

“What happened to your regular clothes?” one of the bolder ponies asks as I join them in the cafeteria line an hour later.

The others outright stare at the wrinkled T-shirt and sweatpants I pulled out of the lost-and-found bin in the locker room. Kelsey had stormed and bucked inside me, but I forced her feet
through the elastic cuffs of the sweatpants, her head through the dank cotton of the shirt. I’d gotten the idea for the clothes from Greenvale, though I’d refrained from throwing Kelsey’s original outfit in the toilet. Just.

Anger runs through me and, with it, a sense of rightness and power. I’ve been thinking about it all morning. I know that I can’t make Kelsey say anything she wouldn’t say herself, or she’ll just take it back as soon as she’s herself again. But I can make Kelsey
do
things, things that she can’t undo later. Kelsey ruined my reputation? Well, I can ruin hers right back.

The sweatpants Kelsey now wears are a stained (with what? don’t ask) baby blue, elastic at the ankles. The shirt advocates for some team called the Fighting Pelicans, though it’s not clear what type of sports team the Fighting Pelicans are or even that the large-beaked bird is a pelican. He looks more like a vulture with a top hat. Kelsey’s hair? In pigtails. High ones. Kelsey had resisted me again and again, especially when I yanked on the sweatpants, but I’ve gotten good at planting my feet on the ground of my own will. It’s like standing still in the middle of the hall just as the warning bell rings. Shoulders bump you on every side; some people will even run smack into you, but you have to stay standing.

“What? You don’t like it?” I try not to show my amusement as the ponies struggle to find the right answer for this question.
Come on, you can say it
, I think.
It’s hideous
. Even strangers are turning to look.

“Is it a Spirit Day?” a pony asks hopefully.

“Nope. I just thought I’d try something different.”

“It’s different, all right,” one whispers to another.

“Actually,” one of them says, “my sister’s friends at Bard dress like that.”

“They do?” I ask. “Really?”

“I’ve seen it. It’s, like, the kind of style where you don’t try too hard.”

“Besides, you’d look good in anything, Kelsey.”

They all nod in agreement. Ponies. The worst part is that they’re right. Kelsey looks okay—maybe better than okay, maybe hip, daring, cute, even—in wrinkled lost-and-found gym clothes.

“The line’s moving,” I say, and sigh.

I let the ponies go ahead of me, gathering their salads and soft pretzels. When I get to the counter, I slap down dessert after dessert—slabs of brownie with cracked sugar tops, squares of cake thick with frosting, two wavering towers of soft-serve ice cream—until my tray is laden with small circular plates. Kelsey rages around inside me, and for a moment, I lose my grip on the tray and drop it with a splat. Everyone around me claps sarcastically. The lunch ladies sigh as I reload a fresh tray, but they don’t make me pay twice.

When I slide my tray onto our table, the ponies stare at it.

“Hungry?” one of them ventures.

They share looks.

“That’s brave,” another notes.

“You trying for bulimia? Induce the urge to vomit?”

“What do you mean?” I take up a forkful. “Looks good to me.”

They watch me eat the tray’s contents with big eyes and repulsed mouths. But when I take the last bite of the last piece of cake, they start applauding, this time in earnest.

No luck with rudeness. No luck with clothing. No luck with food. On the way to art class, I’m racking my brains for what reputation-killing move to try next when I literally run into my pony escort, which has halted in the art room doorway.

“Oh, God, look,” one of them whispers.

I peer over their shoulders and see Wes Nolan sitting at his table, sketching. “So what?” I say.

“So his nose is practically touching the page.”

“Page. Paige!” the other one squeals, hitting her friend. “Funny!”

Both Usha and Harriet look over from where they stand at Mr. Fisk’s desk. “Shhhh!” the other pony says, managing to be even louder. “Do you think he
you knows
to it?”

“Ew! Gross!” They begin jostling each other over the grossness of this.

I look from one pony to the other. “I’m going to ask Wes Nolan to prom,” I announce. I wait for resistance from Kelsey, but this time, there’s nothing.

The ponies, however, react. “You’re
what
?”

“Asking Wes to prom.”

“Right?” one says, eyes glittering. “He can give you a corsage of weeds from his backyard!”

“And you can spend the dance outside watching him smoke pot!” adds the other.

“But”—the first one makes a mock-sad face—“you’ll probably never live up to the memory of Paige Wheeler.”

“No, seriously. I’m asking him.” I slide between them and up to Wes’s table, which yes, carries the slight scent of smoke. Wes looks up at the sound of my approach. I wait for him to grin and say something smart-ass, as usual, but he offers only a blank stare.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” Still no grin, and I wonder what is wrong with him.

Now that I’m here standing in front of him, my heart is clomping as loud as Kelsey’s stupid boots, even though it’s not me standing here. It’s Kelsey and Wes Nolan. Who cares?

The thing is, I’ve never asked a boy to a dance.

Or anywhere.

“Wes?”

“Yeah?”

I take a breath and say, loud enough to carry, “Would you like to go to prom with me?”

By the end of my question, the already quiet room holds not even a pencil scratch. I glance over my shoulder. Everyone is staring, including Mr. Fisk, who doesn’t even bother to tell me to get back to my seat. The ponies are gawping. Wes mumbles something.

“Prom is kind of stupid, I know. And we don’t have to do the corsage thing,” I barrel on. “Or the dinner.”

“I said no,” he repeats quietly, and I vaguely realize that he already said this a second ago, but I talked right over him.

It seems like I’m standing there forever. “But I’m Kelsey Pope.”

He nods. “You are.”

“But, but . . . ,” I stammer, “I’m not joking. Did you think I was joking?”

“Why would you be joking?”

I put a hand to my face. My skin is hot. I can’t turn around and face all of those people staring at me, though a blush on Kelsey probably looks rosy and inviting, unlike the splotchy skin disease of my blushes.

But that’s just it, isn’t it? It’s not me who Wes said
no
to. It’s Kelsey. And, wasn’t this what I wanted? To embarrass Kelsey Pope? To ruin her? And then I realize, Wes saying
no
is way better than if he’d said
yes
.

“Guess it was a long shot.” I smile. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll still be available.”

“Um, sure.” Wes’s blank expression clouds with puzzlement. He drops his eyes to his sketchbook, leaving me to walk the entire length of the room back to the ponies.

“What was that?” one of them asks. “Some kind of joke?”

“Not at all.”

“Yeah, right.” She nudges the other. “Who would want to go to prom with Wes Nolan?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I would.”

The ponies become suddenly and intently focused on their art projects. They’re the only ones, though. The rest of the class bubbles with whispers and glances. I smile around the room, pleased that finally there’s no one, not even Greenvale Greene, willing to meet my eyes and smile back.

WES WAS THE TIPPING POINT. BY THE LAWS OF RIDICULOUS HIGH
school logic, making up lies about a dead girl doesn’t touch Kelsey’s reputation, but getting rejected by Wes Nolan makes her the joke of the school. The next week, Brooke, Evan, and I follow behind Kelsey. Even the dead kids are interested in the fallout from Kelsey’s botched prom proposal. Me especially. And this time, I’m not disappointed. Kelsey walks to her locker in a rush of whispers, everyone repeating the same rumor that they’ve all already heard:
Wes Nolan turned her down. Her! Kelsey Pope!
Their whispers lilt with excitement, and their eyes shine with glee. I realize that they’ve been hoping for this. They’re glad to see her brought low. And I wonder if this is what popularity really is, people waiting to hate you in the open.

The burners are the worst. Or at least the loudest. We pass a cluster of them by the drinking fountain.

“Hey, Pope! Don’t you have something to ask me?” they call.

“No, me!”

“Me!” the girls chime in. “Me!”

“I’ll even buy you that corsage,” Heath Mineo, fresh from his suspension, adds, somehow managing to make the word
corsage
sound lewd.

For once, Wes Nolan doesn’t seem to find the joke funny. He ducks his head and disappears down the hall in the opposite direction, which only makes his friends laugh harder.

“This is too much,” Evan says.

“Not even close,” Brooke tells him. “People should get what they deserve.”

“What did she do to deserve this? Ask the wrong person to prom?”

“No,” Brooke says. “She spread rumors about Paige’s death. It’s karma, bitch. Right, Paige?”

Both of them look at me.

“I’m not going to feel bad for Kelsey Pope. Why should I?”

“Because you know what it feels like to have a rumor spread about you,” Evan replies.

“Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”

It doesn’t take long for Evan and Brooke to grow bored with Kelsey’s long walks down barbed hallways. I keep following her anyway, until a near-silent lunch with the ponies and another razzing by two burner girls sends her to the office with complaints of an oncoming migraine. Maybe the gossip has reached even the teachers, because they let her sign out without protest. I follow her all the way to the school doors and watch her cross the parking lot, hair whipping in the wind, chin tucked down into her coat.

She lied about you
, I tell myself.
She deserves what she gets
.

I’m sitting up on the roof when the final bell rings and, a moment later, dozens of voices begin to float up to me like balloons. Another
day of school done. I peer down at them, the tiny people trickling out in pairs or clusters. I stand and stretch, thinking that I might sit in on the German Club meeting, which almost sounds like English if you listen to it sideways. I’m halfway across the roof when the tiny floating voices turn from balloons to firecrackers, screeching up into the air.

The sound is so terrible, so startling, that I nearly lose my hover.

They’re screaming. Everyone is screaming.

Then, pitched up over the screams, a squeal of breaks.

A suck of breath.

A crash.

I run back to the edge of the roof, scrambling up onto my death spot and looking down below.

There they are:

One set of tire tracks curls, the arc and color of shrieking rubber.

Two bodies.

One on the hood of the car.

Another sprawled on the ground in front of it.

By the time I reach the parking lot, there’s already a circle of people around the crash site. A few are on their cells. I hear the words “fast” and “nowhere” and a girl crying so gently it sounds like she’s singing a wordless song. Others have their phones held high, videotaping, their arms slowly waving with the weight of them, and I think of a concert when the audience holds up their lighters aflame. Most of the onlookers, though, stand in a stunned silence.

The crowd is thick, but I find pockets of emptiness. I duck through here and there, finally walking out into the space at the crowd’s center.

I recognize him at a distance by his shoe, which sits, empty of foot, in front of me. A week ago, I was wearing that sneaker. The
note from Lucas had dropped out onto its toe. I look across the blacktop. Heath Mineo lies facedown on the ground, knees tucked to his chest and arms thrown wide, a white sock peeking out from beneath his crumpled body.

Two burners stand over him.