Say Something (3 page)

In first period, Jean-Ann Splittern was all in an uproar about StuCo.

“Can you believe they let her in?” she kept hissing to anyone who would listen, her overly made up eyes all big and scandalized. Mostly nobody could believe it, whatever she was talking about.

I really hadn’t been paying attention—I couldn’t care less about Jean-Ann Splittern’s little dramas—but when she pivoted in her seat and said to Leesy Blackburn, who sat next to me, “I mean, really, to let her into Student Council after what her boyfriend did last May? My mom is flipping out about it. I’ll bet she calls to complain.”

And then I knew. And suddenly I cared a lot about Jean-Ann’s little drama. Who else could she have been talking about, if not Valerie?

I basically didn’t hear anything Mr. Dennis had to say about tectonic plates and blah blah blah, because all I could think was that what Jean-Ann was saying didn’t make sense. Valerie on Student Council?

Val?

The girl who hated—and the whole world had proof now—pretty much every single person on Student Council? The girl who leaned into me as we walked to lunch every day junior year, whispering about every petty little thing Jessica Campbell did? The girl who cried, literally, on my shoulder the day Christy Bruter tripped her in the Commons, causing her to spill an ink blot of ketchup down the front of her shirt?

It was impossible.

I caught up with Valerie between second and third periods.

“Hey, David,” she said. She looked nervous, the skin around her fingernails picked ragged, a slight limp carrying her along.

“Hey,” I said, and even though I was unsure how I felt about Valerie anymore, my palms still squeezed out about half a gallon of sweat. I hadn’t talked to her—not really—since that first day. Duce had made it pretty much impossible. He didn’t say it outright, but the message was clear: talk to Valerie, and you could find other friends to hang out with.

And if people knew the truth about me, about what I knew and wasn’t telling, I wouldn’t be able to find a friend, not to save my life.

Say something
, my brain started in, but I slammed the thought away.

“So Jean-Ann Splittern was talking about you this morning,” I said.

Valerie’s expression immediately disappeared behind a wary veil. “Most people do,” she murmured. “I’m used to it by now.”

“She’s saying you joined StuCo.” It sounded like an accusation.

She stopped. “I didn’t join it.” She looked so cold, like she didn’t even recognize me. And in some ways maybe she didn’t. I’d known Val for more than a year, and over that time I’d seen her change from the gentle girl with the jet-black hair and big, searching eyes to a girl bathed in darkness. A girl whose face seemed forever guarded. I’d watched Nick change her, outwardly, inwardly, and now I barely recognized her as the same girl who’d leaned across the computer kiosk and invited me to hang out at Blue Lake sometime with the gang.

“I didn’t think so,” I said. “Jean-Ann’s a liar. Just like the others.”

But it turned out Valerie was the liar. She may not have officially joined StuCo. She may not have been putting up posters and giving speeches and getting elected, but she was part of StuCo now, just the same. A few days after our conversation, I saw her go to a meeting. I saw her walk into Mrs. Stone’s room after school, watched through the tiny bulletproof window Angerson had installed, as Valerie sat down between Jessica Campbell and Josh Payne. I saw her with my own eyes.

She was becoming one of them.

I turned the corner angrily, trying not to feel betrayed and like I was losing grasp of everything and like, ever since the shooting, I had nothing. Nothing but a brain full of blame.

I stopped by my locker, and I was so pissed it took me a minute to realize what I was seeing—my locker door unlatched, as if someone had been in there. I ripped the door all the way open, and there it was, scrawled across the inside of my locker door in black Sharpie:

FAG!

Immediately I scanned the hallway, half expecting to see Chris Summers standing behind me, bumping shoulders and laughing with Jacob Kinney and their other friends. But I knew that was ridiculous—Chris Summers was dead—and the hallway was empty.

Why would I think this would die with him? How could I possibly make myself believe that anyone had changed? I saw Jacob Kinney pants Doug Hobson in the field house, business as usual, and yet I’d still convinced myself that I’d somehow escape the same treatment.

• 104. Chris Summers
  
• 104. Chris Summers
  
• 104. Chris fucking Summers
  

Just like that, I was transported to that day in the Commons. I was standing inside the doorway, my ears full of gunshots and screams.

And that voice.
He’s shooting! Go!

That voice.

I leaned my head against the cool metal of the locker next to mine and shut my eyes.
Come on, we need to get out of here! He’s shooting! Go!

Slowly, my hand curled into a fist. I punched the door softly, then harder, harder, my knuckles scraping over the word—
FAG! FAG! FAG!

I pushed away from the locker and slammed the door so hard, it bounced right back open, and then I just walked away, not even caring anymore. Let them see.

I barreled down the hallway, refusing to look into the StuCo room, where Valerie was chumming it up with half the people who were on her hate list just a few months before.

I knew I couldn’t outrun this…
problem
… of mine. I knew it was bigger than me, bigger than Chris Summers or Nick Levil or any of the other crap that was chasing me down.

But still, I picked up speed, and soon I was sprinting, pushing through the double doors out into the abandoned parking lot. I ran all the way home and barged into my house, choking for air like I’d just come out of a fire, my hands on my hips, sweat sticking my T-shirt and jacket to me.

“David?” Mom called from the kitchen.

But I ignored her—just kept going through the dimly lit living room, where Brandon was parked on the recliner, down the depressing hallway of what I now was beginning to realize was my entirely embarrassing life, to the bathroom. I kicked the cheap wood door shut behind me and lunged to the floor, throwing up the nothing I’d eaten for lunch.

FAG!

I was not who they said I was, but given the secrets I kept, how could I ever convince anyone of that?

It was so gradual and so complete, it was almost unnoticeable, the transformation in Valerie. She and Nick became such an interchangeable couple, they began to physically resemble each other. They even shared clothes sometimes—Nick would take off his shirt in the parking lot after school, and Val would ball it up in the bottom of her backpack. Then the next day she’d show up to school wearing it, tucking her nose down into the collar, smelling his scent.

They talked about the same things, too, and they seemed to get increasingly darker, angrier.

“I hate that bitch,” Val said one day in the Commons. She used her fork, which had a French fry speared on the end, to motion toward a sophomore. “Here, have one,” she said, scooting her tray toward me.

“Who is she?” I asked, munching gratefully.

“No idea,” Val answered. “Just some SBRB. That’s all I need to know.”

“What’s an SBRB?”

“Something Nick and I came up with to describe bitches like her. It means Skinny Barbie Rich Bitches.”

Not five minutes later, Nick showed up, swigging an energy drink and carrying a pink tardy slip. He motioned over his shoulder at the same girl.

“I hate that bitch,” he said as he sat down. “SBRB.”

Same person. They had become the same person.

There were other changes, too, especially as we got closer to the end of the year. Val became quieter, more withdrawn, like she was forever in mourning. She seemed so unhappy, so angry, and I didn’t understand why she wanted to be with him if he did that to her. I could have made her happy.

Junior year was winding down, all of us getting antsy for school to be out and make us officially seniors.

One day, as spring was just starting to warm up the air, I went to Nick’s house after school and was surprised to find my brother there, along with his friend Jeremy Watson. Jeremy was the one who Sara called the Dedicated Life Loser and who my mom didn’t want hanging around the house because, she swore, things went missing every time he so much as stepped in the yard.

They were pulling out of Nick’s driveway when I walked up, Brandon flipping me off through the passenger-side window. Nick stood on the front porch.

“I didn’t know you hung out with my brother.”

“I don’t,” Nick said, leading the way into his house. “He came with Jeremy.”

Nick had a sweet, smoky smell to him—a smell I recognized from Brandon’s bedroom. I’d never smoked weed, but I wasn’t an idiot. Weed was what Jeremy specialized in.

“Where you been? Val said you’ve been skipping a lot.” I followed him down the now-familiar stairs to his bedroom.

“School’s a joke,” he answered. “A joke full of jokes.” He laughed and sat down on a padlocked trunk, stretching his feet out in front of him and leaning his head back against the concrete wall. “A joke full of jokes, and not one of ’em be laughing for long.”

I squinted at him, trying to decipher what he was talking about, but decided he was too messed up to make sense. “Val’s worried,” I said.

He waved his hand. “She’ll live. I know that for sure.” He grabbed a battered guitar and started plucking the strings.

I leaned over and picked up the hate list, which was lying on the floor next to the bed.

When I was at his house, it wasn’t unusual for me to check the list, if he had it. It was funny. And somehow it made me feel closer to Val, like I was in on a secret with her.

But this time when I flipped through the pages, I noticed something different. Several of the entries had been scratched through with red ink.

• 20. Jessica Campbell
  
• 67. Tennille
  
• 5. Ginny Baker
  
• 43. Jacob Kinney
  

All people Nick and Val hated, marked out, one by one.

It was as if the hate list had become more of a… checklist. I caught Nick staring at me, his eyes dark and hard, shining, one side of his mouth pulled up into a smirk, as if daring me to ask about the scratched-out names. Chilled, I shut the book and occupied myself with a video game instead.

If I hadn’t known Nick, I’d have started to wonder if something was up. If he was planning something.

But even if he was up to something and keeping it from me, Valerie would have known. And she would have told me.

She would have stopped it.

Or maybe that was just what I was telling myself.

This time they pantsed Doug between lunch shifts, in the hallway outside the choir room. Women’s choir was letting out, and the same two girls who had squealed in the field house the last time were squealing again this time. Jacob brayed with laughter, pointing at them, spit flinging out of the corners of his mouth as he yelled, “Got you again!”

So this was the game now. It was really about the girls. Doug was just a pawn, a tool for Jacob’s flirting.

People wandered off to class, giggling, glancing over their shoulders at Doug, whose lunch bag had spilled out as he’d dropped it to save his pants. At least Jacob hadn’t done as thorough a job this time. Doug’s boxers were mostly still in place, and where they weren’t, his shirt covered his skin. He’d begun wearing longer shirts lately.

Jacob followed the girls down the hall, his stupid laughter ringing out even after he turned the corner. I bent, picked up Doug’s sandwich, and held it out to him. “Here,” I said.

He wouldn’t look at me. Just kept his face pointed toward the floor, toward the baggies of chips and cookies, an elementary kid’s lunch.

“It’s no big deal,” he mumbled, roughly grabbing the sandwich out of my hand and stabbing it into the bag. The bell rang, and we both ignored it.

“You should punch him,” I said, and in the back of my mind I thought,
Oh, rich of you to say, David. You’re such a fighter. A real badass.
“I’d like to,” I added, arguing with myself.

“He’s not worth it,” Doug said. He stood and started toward the cafeteria, his rumpled bag in one fist. “Besides, it’s just a joke.”

“It’s not funny, though,” I called out. “You’re not laughing.”

He pivoted, walking backward. “I’m not gonna do anything stupid, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not a homicidal loser like Nick Levil.” He pivoted again and disappeared into the Commons.

***

After school Valerie pushed through the double doors at the same time I did. She was alone and seemed clean and fresh, like she’d finally started paying attention to how she looked again.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” She pushed her lips together and glanced nervously out at the parking lot.

“How are things?” I asked, hating the way it felt like we were strangers.

“What do you mean?” Her shoulders hunched guardedly.

I shrugged. “I mean, how’s your life? Nothing. Never mind.”

She made a noise. “My life,” she said, and then just let the sentence die. We stood side by side for a few minutes, and it was getting awkward. She watched cars pull up and pull away again.

“Still riding with your mom?”

“Well, last time I took the bus, it didn’t go so well,” she said.

I remembered. After she’d gotten off the bus that morning last year, she’d rushed up the bleachers and shown me her broken MP3 player. I’d suggested she get it fixed. And then Nick had arrived, and everything had changed forever. Everything.

Say something.

“Hey, um, so are you friends with Jessica Campbell now or what?” I asked.

She tapped her foot, impatient. “Why are you so worried about it?”

“I’m not. I just… it seems to me like some things haven’t changed at all. I mean with those people. And I thought…”

She turned to me. “Thought everyone was going to be nicer after what happened? Me too.”

“But they’re not,” I said. “Jacob Kinney is constantly pantsing Doug Hobson.”

“Jacob isn’t on StuCo, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not… if you want to be on Student Council, that’s your business. I’m just saying that some people are still—”

“I don’t want to,” she interrupted. A gust of wind blew a piece of her hair across her forehead; it got stuck on her eyebrow, but she made no move to push it aside. “I don’t want to be on StuCo. I just am, okay? And I’m sorry if that’s some big betrayal to you or Nick or… everybody.” She shook her head. “It’s what I have to do. You asked how my life is? I’m just trying to get it back, but half the time I don’t even recognize it. And sometimes I think Jessica isn’t who we th…” Her eyes glistened as she trailed off. “My mom’s here,” she said, and she was gone before I could even say good-bye.

***

Dad was home again when I got there. I joined him downstairs, where he was taking apart an old foxhole and rebuilding it.

“Hey, bud,” he said when I sat on the stool across from him. “How was school?”

“It was school,” I told him. The same answer I’d given him for most of my life. But there must have been something in my voice, because he sat back and wiped his hands on a work towel.

“And?” he asked.

Say something
, my brain urged.
Tell him what happened that day. Tell him what’s happening
now
.

“You think people can really ever change, Dad?” I asked.

“People? Or any particular person?”

“People in general. Like the people at my school. The ones who were there for the… you know.”

He dropped the towel, worry lines etching across his forehead. “Is something going on?”

Yes. Yes, something is going on. People died, and nobody seems to even care. Everyone is acting like it was just Nick, just his problem. He was crazy, they’re all normal, that’s what they think. But they’re wrong. I knew Nick. I knew the Nick who fought Chris Summers in the locker room. He wasn’t crazy; he was desperate. And I thought I knew Chris Summers, but it turned out I didn’t, and I can’t tell anybody what really happened, because I’m too afraid for myself if I let the truth out.

I watched the worry lines deepen, the fear fill his eyes, and I remembered rushing to him on the sidewalk on May 2nd, the police keeping parents back while officers secured the school. I remembered my dad standing there in his work clothes, the factory smell still on him, the way he grabbed onto me and cried when he saw me—heavy sobs that felt like they were pushing my shoulders down.
I was so worried
, he choked out.
I was so worried you were hurt.

I couldn’t do that to him again. He didn’t deserve that fear.

“No, nothing’s going on,” I said. “It was hypothetical. For a paper I’m writing about free will.”

“Oh,” he said. He went back to work. “I suppose people can change if they try hard enough. But most people don’t want to try. Most people would rather have their familiar bad traits than unfamiliar good ones. Change can be hard work. Just ask a smoker.”

I sat back and watched him build, thinking about what he’d just said. Jacob Kinney would never change. Why would he want to? It was so much easier to rule the school—to have all the popular girls love you and everyone else afraid of you—than to work to be a good person.

I thought about Doug saying it was all just a joke, no big deal. And about Valerie blowing me off, acting like I was the enemy. I thought about the
FAG!
that was still drawn on the inside of my locker door.

But mostly I thought about the names with the red lines scratched through them and how everyone was totally shocked when those people ended up shot.

When some of them ended up dead.

Everyone, that is, except me.