The S-Word (2 page)

Even after everything that’s happened.

We’ve walked for two blocks in silence when the sight of the staircase, nestled cozily between buildings, makes me feel warm. We go down the stairs and into the dark. Inside the hidden café, fake candles emit a pathetic orange light. I’m pretty sure this place has used the same dingy cleaning rag since the seventies. But that’s okay, because they let you smoke inside, and you can set your flask in your lap and they pretend not to notice.

We order two mochas and sit in an all-wood booth. The place is pretty much deserted. Kennedy offers me her flask but I decline.

“Suit yourself.” She sets to work making a poor-man’s Spanish coffee. “I take it you’ve seen the writing?”

I peer at her through my lashes. Guarded, like I’m some sort of detective. (Yeah. Right.) “What do you care?”

Real smooth, Angie.

She gives me a look. “So I didn’t love the girl. I’m not heartless.”

“No one expected you to love her.”

“Sure they did. Everyone’s supposed to love fairy princesses.” Kennedy ties back her hair with a ribbon. God forbid a strand should slip into her coffee and soak up some alcohol. Miss McLaughlin makes every drop count.

“Is that why you treated her the way you did?”

Kennedy scoffs. “I was nothing but cordial to your little friend.”

“You were icy at best. And after prom, you acted like . . .”

“Like what?” She narrows her eyes. In the light of the low-hanging chandelier, those hazel irises look golden, like she’s lit up from the inside. “Like she hurt my friend?”

Like she was already dead.

But I don’t say it. I can’t say it.

“You acted like you hated her,” I say instead.

“I was angry with her,” Kennedy corrects.

“Angry enough to brand her a slut?”

She leans back, making room for the accusation. “The entire school did that, last I checked. Or maybe just Drake Alexander.”

At the mention of his name, my eyes close. Yes, I thought I loved him. Yes, I invented a future for us in my head. So what? I’ll get over it eventually. I have no choice.

“I need to know who’s responsible,” I say, and I hate how desperate my voice sounds. These days, I could cry at any moment. It’s humiliating. “Do you know who went after her—”

“Went after her?” Kennedy cuts me off. “Were there torches involved?”

“You know what I mean.” I shake my head. “The S-word could’ve showed up on her bedsheets for all I know. Can you imagine?”

“Yeah, I can actually. I got tits when I was eleven. That automatically labels you as easy.” She smiles smugly. “But you know that.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “It was worse for her.”

“Only because she was a late bloomer.”

“So you’re not the one who wrote it?”

“No. Wait—before or now?” Her eyes are narrowed into slits.

I shrug, all nonchalance. “Either.”

“Are you serious?” She jerks forward. “You think I’d do it
now
?”

“What’s the difference? It was mean before, and it’s—”

“Awful now. Sincerely fucked up, Angie. Only a deranged psychopath would write it now. In
her
handwriting.”

I lean back. It’s impossible to get comfortable in this booth, but I want to give her the illusion of space before I ask my next question. My eyes trail to the darkened room, the dust hovering above our heads, the lights that flicker if you look at them the wrong way. But I turn and catch her gaze when I say, “So you know what her handwriting looks like?”

She doesn’t even bat an eye. “Anyone who sat close to her could have mimicked her writing. She was always scribbling in that little diary.” She rolls her eyes. It’s so dismissive I want to scream. “God knows why she brought it to school.”

“She didn’t want her dad to see it,” I say without missing a beat.

Kennedy pauses, dropping her gaze. It’s like it never occurred to her that Lizzie had a family. “Well anyway, her handwriting was no secret,” she says more softly.

“So anyone could imitate it?”

She nods.

“But only a psychopath would?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

Finally, I lean in. “What about before? Before she—”

“Before is different.” Kennedy brings her cup to her lips. “Like I said, now it’s deranged. Back then it was just . . .”

“Life ruining? Suicide inducing?”

She fishes for the dregs with her tongue. “High school.”

NEXT MORNING I
get a big fat dose of high school when Mrs. Linn sends me on an errand during first period. I’m heading back from the office when I see the piece of paper stuffed into my locker grate, just below a fresh scribbling of SUICIDE SLUT. I pull it down and skim the writing. I skim it again. I’m skimming and skimming and I know people will be coming into the hallway soon, but I don’t tear my eyes from the page. Even in poor copy, the script is unmistakable.

The looping little
l
s.

Fairy wings around the occasional
i.

Pretty enough to have been written by an actual fairy.

Lizzie’s perfect handwriting.

Lizzie’s diary.

This year is going to be different.

(I know. I’ve said this before.)

But now I really mean it! No more cowering in the dark. I’m coming out of the shadows—and I’m ready to be seen!

Ready to be loved, if love is ready for me.

I’ve spent so much of my life keeping my affections a secret. Keeping
myself
a secret, afraid of what people would think of me if they knew the real Lizzie Hart. Would they hate me? Would they push me aside?

I can no longer afford to wonder about these things.

I’m seventeen. This is my senior year, and I’m going to enjoy my time here no matter what people think.

(That’s the spirit when walking into a lion’s den, right?)

So here I am, world, not the prettiest picture, but a hundred percent unique. My heart is open, and I’m ready to be invited into the light. And into someone’s arms . . .

Whose?

Well, that too will be revealed when the time is right. After this year, I might lose the chance to tell you how I feel. So I’ll do it. I have to do it. Regardless of the consequences, I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.

There are just a few things I need to get in order before I do:

First, I must present myself to the world in an appealing fashion. (How I’m going to do this remains to be seen.)

Second, I must find a person, at least o
ne person,
who accepts me for who I am.

And third, I must make amends with the one girl in the entire school who has every right to hate me.

The girl I betrayed.

T
HE BELL RINGS.

I look up from Lizzie’s entry. People are flooding the hallway, passing around me in little streams, barely glancing my way.

They have no idea what I’m holding.

The page slips from my hands. Back pressed against my locker, I slump down to the floor, landing in a heap. Lizzie’s entry follows, fluttering to my lap. The movement takes so much time, a part of me wonders if those words will rearrange into a different story when they land.

They don’t.

There they are, as clear as day:
The girl I betrayed.

“Who did Lizzie betray?” I murmur as people crowd around me. To their credit, they’re not laughing and pointing yet. But they are whispering and staring, some of them crouching down to get a better look at the page.

To them I ask: “Was it me?”

Lizzie’s words make no sense. No matter how many times I
read them, they make no sense. This entry is from September. She didn’t go after Drake until April.

Didn’t she?

I look up, above the heads of my audience. I need to give my eyes a break. My vision is getting blurry.

Still blurry.

No, that’s just the mural on the wall. After Gordy Wilson died, a group of art students created the Unity Murals: four massive paintings depicting “student unity” on each of the main halls. Each hallway got a different color scheme: red for freshmen, gold for sophomores, violet for juniors, and blue for seniors. But they didn’t realize that painting humans in a range of blues makes them look like they’re drowning. The kids in the sophomore painting look like they’re catching fire. The junior hallway is nice—that soft violet hue gives the impression of floating.

I won’t set foot in the freshman hallway. On the wall, as in life, those kids are bleeding.

My eyes trail from the senior mural, where bodies flail in an azure sea, to the line of still-beige lockers underneath. There, Drake is moving as if through water, reaching up slowly and pulling a page from his locker grate.

My heart seizes.

I could stop him,
I think.
I could run screaming through the hallway. I could tear that page out of his hand and shred it to pieces.

But I don’t. I’m rooted to the spot, stomach churning, both horrified at the thought of him reading Lizzie’s secrets and mesmerized by the idea of how he will feel.

If he knows how she felt about him, will it make a difference?

Will he regret using her and then throwing her away?

These questions are rhetorical. I’ll never know the answer to them. I never want to speak to him again. Besides, I have more
pressing concerns, as two pretty little Cheer Bears yank me to my feet.

Elliot Carver and Cara Belle. The girls we toss into the air. The ones so light and airy they disprove the theory that real women aren’t as skinny as models. For this reason, people find them easy to hate, but I used to like them.

Now I wonder if their sweetness is an act.

“We’re getting you out of here,” Elliot whispers, red hair tickling me. She’s pressed so close she might as well climb into my lap. On the other side, her dark-haired partner in crime plucks Lizzie’s entry from my hand, linking her arm through mine. They’re wearing the same damn dress—one in black, and one in red—to complement each other’s hair.

Sisters from another mister, I guess.

I almost laugh as they guide me down the hall. These idiotic musings are the only things keeping me sane. Elliot’s full Irish, and Cara’s Italian and Japanese, but they do that twin thing whenever they can. Today they look like witches, with long fingernails and kohl-rimmed eyes.

Rumor has it they mix love spells into their lip balm.

They all but shove me into the bathroom. That’s when I break free from their grip. Stumbling across the room, I lock myself in a stall. Still, I’ve got too many questions to sit quietly.

“What did Lizzie mean?” I study the graffiti scribbled across the stall door. Phone numbers. Words of hate. Same as always. “How did she betray me?”

Silence. On the other side of the stall, a faucet is dripping. But the girls aren’t talking, and I need them to, right this minute.

“Did you guys know about this?” I plead, my voice dangerously close to desperation. “I need to know.”

Still nothing.

Finally, as if through the vast recesses of time and space, Elliot
speaks. Her voice is pinched. “Maybe prom night wasn’t the first time . . .”

My eyes flutter closed. Her words shouldn’t bother me after everything that’s happened. But the idea that prom night was just the tip of the iceberg is almost too much for me to handle.

“Did you . . . hear something?” I manage, voice cracking.

“Nothing!” Elliot squeaks. I wonder if she’s going to cry. God, what a pair we make. “I’m just guessing.”

“Don’t guess.” That’s Cara, and her voice is cold. I peer through the crack in the stall so I can watch them.

And it’s a good thing I do. They’re putting on quite the silent little movie out there. First, Cara glares at Elliot, pushing Lizzie’s entry into her hand. Then, Elliot nudges Cara in the ribs.

No,
Cara mouths.

I step out of the stall. For a minute I just stand there, holding on to the frame for support. “What do you know?”

“We don’t know anything,” Cara insists.

I step forward. “I saw you,” I tell Elliot, who’s rolling up the entry like a wand. “I saw you arguing through the stall. Why did you nudge her? What do you know about this?” I rip the entry from her hand.

“We don’t know anything!” Cara exclaims, stepping in front of her friend. Protecting her from me. Isn’t that sweet? “I promise, Angie. I just
hate
talking about this. It
kills
me.”

“That’s a funny choice of words.”

She goes white as a sheet.
White as a ghost?
It’s like all the blood has drained from her face. “Please,” she begs in that mesmerizing voice. “You have to give us a break. We haven’t slept. We aren’t eating.”

When are you ever eating?
I want to snap. But that’s counterproductive, now, isn’t it? And I’ve got more important things to get at.

“Why are you so upset?” I place my hand on Cara’s arm, like maybe I’m comforting her, or maybe I’m dangerous. And I could be either. I haven’t decided yet.

Now she’s crying. “You know why,” she whispers, blinking up at me. It’s hard to look away. “We weren’t nice to her. We wouldn’t let her be our friend.”

“She even tried harder this year,” I agree, thinking of the times Lizzie sidled up to Kennedy when she thought I wasn’t looking. At the time, I thought she was trying some weird social project—bridging the gap between the outcasts and the elite.

Now I think she just wanted my friends to be her friends.

“You rejected her,” I say. “You rejected her earlier this year, and I rejected her after prom. None of us would give her a chance.” I hold Cara’s gaze. “So if you know something, now would be the time to get it off your chest.”

Cara’s shaking, and Elliot won’t look me in the eye. But they say nothing.

I’M ON MY
way to being very late to second period when I pass the office. I start to get this tingly feeling on my neck, like maybe I should go in. The office staff knows me pretty well; being Mrs. Linn’s TA has its perks. How hard could it be to get ahold of the student locker list?