Cornered (31 page)

Team Sports.

There was no class more demeaning for someone like me than Team Sports. I was horrible at anything athletic, I hated everything that had to do with sports, and I was not exactly “team material” in pretty much anyone's eyes. Plus Holly and Sydney were in the class with me. It was nothing but humiliation and embarrassment. As if I needed more of that.

As soon as I walked into the locker room, it started. I tried my best to ignore it, the way my mom told me to when the shit
first started hitting the fan with Holly, but it's hard to block out the cackles when they're bouncing off metal locker doors and are right behind you.

Ew, she wears granny panties.

Too bad they don't hide the cellulite on her thighs.

She's so fat her butt hangs over the bench.

Of course I knew they were talking about me. But I refused to turn around and look to see who was saying what. I just got dressed and trudged out to the gym floor, where I sat in my squad and chewed on my hair. We listened to Coach Lake explain the rules of our unit one sport—basketball.

Basketball. Great. Just what a short, fat nobody with no coordination loves to play against a bunch of tall skinny girls. If Jenna were here, she'd have faked a dizzy spell and would have asked Coach Lake to assign me to accompany her to the nurse's office.

But Jenna was gone.

Coach blew her whistle and we all stood up, two squads heading for the far half-court and my squad heading for the other one. We were playing against Holly's squad. Of course.

Let it be said that I really did try. My mom once told me that if I had fun despite them, if I showed the girls who were bothering me that what they said and did didn't even register, they would eventually go away.
Girls like that are just looking for attention, Chloe
, she'd said.
Refuse to give it to them and they'll leave you alone.
And even though I'd been following that advice forever and it had never once worked, I kept trying, because I
wanted to believe that she was right. That there was a secret to making someone like Holly stop.

So the first time Holly tripped me and I fell face-first on the court, I laughed out loud, looking around for someone, anyone to join in and make it look like that was the best thing that had happened to me all day. Nobody did though. And then when Sydney elbowed me, hard, in the ribs, I gritted my teeth and just elbowed her back, but too softly, too timidly for her to get the point.

And then Holly threw the pass.

She dribbled down the court, swiveled on one foot like a freaking pro baller, and fired a chest pass right into my face. I heard a crunch and saw a flash of white light behind my eyelids as I stumbled back a few steps, my arms reeling to keep myself from falling backward. I stepped on Sydney's foot, and she let out a wail like I'd just crushed her. Instantly, I felt blood begin dripping down over my lips. I couldn't help myself; I started to cry, making gruff grunting noises while I cupped my hand under my chin to catch the blood.

“Ew!” Sydney yelled, pushing me forward. “Gross!”

Coach blew the whistle and Holly yelled out, “She dove right in front of it. It wasn't my fault. I was just passing to my teammate.”

“Okay, okay, this happens in basketball. No big deal.” Coach came over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “You okay, Chloe?”

I simply nodded. I didn't say a word.

“Go clean up,” Coach said, and then turned and yelled, “Tracy! Get a couple paper towels from the locker room so I can clean this up. Everybody take five, get a drink.”

I turned and jogged toward the locker room, the rest of my squad rushing for the drinking fountain. I hated Holly. I hated her with everything I had. I hated her as much as Jenna hated her. Maybe even more. But I couldn't make myself stand up to her. Why not? Was she really that powerful?

No way
, I heard Jenna say in my head, just as she had the night before she died.
She is totally powerless and she knows it. That's why she acts the way she does
.

But she always has the upper hand
, I'd said.
Everyone else loves her
.

Uh-uh
, Jenna had answered.
Everyone else is afraid of her. That's why, when we leave our note behind, telling everything she did, and all that mean shit her mom said, everyone will know her game.

They won't care.

Yes, they will
, she'd said.
Because this time we won't just be humiliated. We'll be dead. Everyone will see her for who she really is and will turn against her. We have to show everyone who she really is, Chloe.

The blood was dripping through my fingers, and the tears really started to flow. I missed Jenna so much, and I was angry she went ahead and killed herself but didn't leave behind a note like we'd planned. And not only did Holly have just as much power as she did before, but Jenna had left me behind to deal with it by myself.

As if on cue, I heard Sydney's voice just behind me. “Probably wouldn't have hurt if it hit her in the gut.”

“Yeah,” Holly's voice responded, “but it probably would have hit all that fat and bounced right back at me and killed me.”

And then the two giggled like they always did.

I turned through the locker room door and ran straight for the sinks, leaning over them to let the blood and the snot and the tears just fall right into the swirling water.

Jenna was wrong. Killing herself hadn't taken away Holly's power. A dead person couldn't take power away from anyone.

But a live one could.

• • •

I would never forget the night of August 21. It was steamy hot, and even the evenings felt like you were wrapped in a wet sweater. School was coming up, and the little kids were inside early, getting used to their bedtime schedules again. The streets were dark and quiet, except for the bugs, which practically owned the place in late summer.

I walked to Jenna's house with a backpack. Inside was a notebook, pen, bottle of cherry vodka (for nerves, Jenna had said) stolen from my parents' cabinet, and a yearbook with bright red circles around the photos of Holly, Monica, Sydney, and about a dozen other kids who'd made us miserable. I was all fear and doubt.

Jenna met me on the front stoop of her apartment complex,
just like we'd planned. She stood when I approached, and the two of us walked to the basketball court at the bottom of the hill. We'd chosen the location weeks ago. The asphalt was cracked and the chains on the goals broken or missing. Nobody was ever there, but it was visible, and we knew eventually someone would find us. And we wanted to be found. Who wanted to rot in the woods with animals eating their face off for six months? Not us. Plus, her brother was home and so were my parents, and with only one gun and two shots to deliver, we wanted to make sure we weren't heard after the first shot and saved before the second.

Jenna walked right to the middle of the court and sat down. She shrugged out of her backpack and unzipped it, pulling out the one thing she was in charge of bringing—her dad's gun. I didn't know anything about guns; all I knew was this one was big and oily and ugly and it scared me to look at it. My fingers immediately went numb.

“Okay, so let's write it,” she said, laying the gun on the ground between us.

I opened the notebook and put the tip of the pen to the first line, but my hands were shaking so bad there was no way I could write. I tried pressing harder.

“To Whom It May Concern,” she said, and when my hand still didn't move, looked up at me. “Too formal?”

I shook my head and scratched out the words.

“Okay. To Whom It May Concern. If you're reading this note, we are dead.” She paused so I could write what she'd just
said. “You may think we're on drugs or something, but we're not,” she continued, but my hand wouldn't move past “we are dead.” My pen stayed on the tail of the last “d” as if magnetized, and my vision blurred on the words. “What's wrong?” she asked.

I swallowed, shook my head. All I could think of was my mom and dad reading the note. Reading those words—“we are dead”—and how they would be devastated. How they would cry. How it would ruin the rest of their lives. How shocked they'd be because they'd always been there for me to talk to, but I'd never taken them up on it.

“What about our parents?” I said, my voice sounding just as shaky as my fingers felt. “This is going to destroy them.”

Jenna made a
pfft!
noise and laughed. “Maybe yours,” she said. “Mine probably won't even notice. They'll probably be happy that they don't have to deal with me anymore.”

My tongue snaked out and snagged a strand of hair. I sucked on it and stared at the paper. I felt like I was going to throw up.

“You said yourself that you're totally lonely, so obviously your relationship with your parents isn't all that great, right?” She ducked her head, looking up at me so our eyes could meet.

I nodded, still chewing. But was it true? I was no longer so sure.

“Listen, if you want out . . . ,” she said, trailing off.

And it was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my whole life, but I nodded. Which is weird, when you think of it, that saying
I didn't want to die was the hardest thing I'd ever done. When had my life gotten so upside-down?

“I don't want you to do it, either,” I said once I found my voice. “I think we should both wait. Do something else.”

But Jenna had closed her eyes and shook her head, like a little kid refusing to listen to her parents. “I can't,” she said, without opening her eyes. “I can't take it anymore, Chloe. They're making me miserable, and I want out.”

“So we'll find another way out,” I said. She finally opened her eyes.

“There is no other way.”

“Please don't do it,” I begged.

“I understand why you don't want to, Chloe. It's okay. Really. But I'm going to.”

I felt tears rush down my cheeks. I wished I had a cell phone so I could call the police or my mom or someone, anyone who could help me change Jenna's mind. “I don't want you to die,” I said. “I'll miss you.” And as simple as that sounded, it was the truth.

“Then do it with me.” Tears were streaming down her plump cheeks.

I shook my head. I reached out and held her hand. “I can't,” I said.

She squeezed my hand, hard. “I have to,” she said.

“Don't,” I choked out, but she dropped my hand and picked up the gun, held it in her lap. And right then I knew that no matter what I said or did, she was going to do this. And I
knew that no matter what she said or did, I wasn't going to.

“You should probably go,” she finally said, and for a split second, I considered grabbing the gun and running. But I knew that it would do no good. Even if I got it away from her, she'd still find another way to do it. She'd made up her mind.

“I'm going to call the police,” I said, a last-ditch effort.

She nodded. “It'll be over before you can get to a phone. But I understand.”

I shoveled my things back into my backpack and stood up on noodly legs, unsure of how I was ever going to get home. My belly hurt from all the crying, but I couldn't stop as I ran back toward my house, the whole time listening for a gunshot I never heard.

But I knew it had happened just the same.

I knew, before my mom ever woke me up with the news:
Jenna was gone
.

• • •

With my nose all cleaned up, I left the locker room more sure than I had been in forever.

Jenna was gone and nobody seemed to care, but that didn't mean that I was gone, too. People would notice; all I had to do was make them notice.

I would set things right.

Class was still in session, but I didn't care. I wasn't going to go back out to let Holly and Sydney have another shot at humiliating me today. I scrubbed my face, changed back into
my street clothes, and walked straight out of the gym toward Mr. Kinney's office.

Mr. Kinney was our guidance counselor. He was the one who was always talking about respect and tolerance, saying we could come to him with anything. For once, I was going to take him up on the offer. Because this was what Jenna and I should have done from the very beginning.

I stepped into the guidance office, and the secretary looked up in surprise.

“Yes?”

“I need to talk to Mr. Kinney. Like, right away.”

She glanced at the clock. “Honey, final bell's going to ring in fifteen minutes.”

“This is important,” I said, and I dug my fingernails into my palms to give myself strength.

She leaned back and looked into his office, then slowly sat forward, frowned, and said, “Okay. He's in there.”

I took a deep breath and walked toward his office, telling myself the whole way that
I was making things right I was making things right I was making things right
. . . .