The S-Word (27 page)

“We both know why you’re here,” I say, positioning myself on the arm of the couch. “I’m not deleting the photo.”

He dabs at his nose. It’s all red around the edges and I try not to notice. I can’t afford to feel bad for him. “I don’t care about that,” he says.

“Yeah, right.”

“I don’t,” he insists. “I just want you to understand. I want someone to understand.”

I roll my eyes, but it’s forced. “Understand what?”

“That I didn’t do it on purpose.”

I scoff and almost lose my balance in the process. “You’re joking, right? You accidentally painted a naked picture of a girl behind her back and emailed it to the entire school? Gee, Marvin, you have worse luck than I do.”

“I didn’t mean to do that!” His hair is a rat’s nest falling in his face. I want to offer him a comb.

“This is going to be rich,” I say, repositioning myself. “Well? Out with it.”

He’s quiet a minute. When he speaks, all that forced bravado is gone. His voice sounds weak. “Lizzie didn’t talk to me much. Art was the one thing we had in common.” He smiles, remembering. “I liked to draw, she liked to make things. When she saw me trying to imitate one of my Alchemy cards, she got all animated. She said the woman on the card was the most beautiful she’d ever seen. So I thought . . . I could paint her on a card and then she’d see.”

“See what? That you’re a Peeping Tom?”

“That she was beautiful.”

I wait a beat. “And you thought you would do that by
leering into her window
? When she wasn’t looking?”

His face is red, but he doesn’t lash out at me. I have to give him credit for that, at least. Or do I? It occurs to me that so many people I’ve trusted have turned out to be awful. My standards, as a result, are suffering.

So I don’t give him credit. But I don’t bite his head off either.

He says, “Lizzie had nightmares,” and I can’t help but counter with “I know that.” It’s like we’re having this contest to see who was a better friend, which is ridiculous because we were both terrible to her.

But the fact that he might not be as evil as I thought scares me. When people are a hundred percent bad it’s easier to hate them.

“She used to get up in the middle of the night,” he says, and that I didn’t know, before the diary. “She’d stand in front of her
mirror, sometimes for hours, checking for something. I don’t know what.”

Scars?
I wonder, thinking about the monster in her dreams.
Stains?

“I shouldn’t have watched her . . .”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“But sometimes I did. The blinds were open—”

“Don’t blame her for choices you made.”

“It was hard not to look in. I was in love with her.”

“If you loved her, you would’ve thought about her feelings. You would’ve respected her privacy. And you never would’ve passed that picture around! Why did you do that?” My voice is rising. “Because of Drake—”

“No! I thought she was misguided,” he says, and I want to slap him. Even if she’d loved Drake, it would’ve been her right to feel that way.

“But I did not mean to email that to everyone. I couldn’t give it to her in person.” He talks to the floor when he says “I feared she’d laugh at me—”

“She wouldn’t have. She might’ve felt
horrified
and
violated,
but she wouldn’t have been mean.”

“So I chose to email it to her,” he says as if I weren’t speaking. “But even that seemed too much, so I dipped into my parents’ liquor stores—”

“Ever heard of drinking responsibly?”

Now his eyes roll. “Angie, you really should learn when to speak.”

“And you should stop treating girls like they’re your fucking property!” I leap to my feet. “Lizzie’s body didn’t belong to you, and neither does my voice. Haven’t you learned anything?”

His face just drops. I almost feel bad, but damn it, he makes me
so angry. If he’d given the slightest bit of thought to Lizzie’s feelings, he’d—

“Marvin? Oh, God, don’t cry.”

But it’s too late. Big, sloppy tears are seeping out of his hands and now I do feel bad. “You’re right,” he’s sobbing. “You’re right. It’s my fault she’s gone.”

“Oh, shit, that’s not what I meant.” I go to touch him, but I’m not sure where, or in what way. “I meant ‘be more considerate.’ I meant ‘don’t be a pervert.’ ”

Shut up, Angie, you really think that’s helping?

“The point is, I wasn’t saying it’s your fault. Okay? We all worked together on this one, trust me.”

He looks up from his blubbering. “I drank too much,” he says. “I meant to send it to Elizabeth but I sent it to the Elizabethan Club.”

My ears perk up. “Let me guess. Shelby’s the president?”

He shakes his head. “She’s head of the Shakespearean Club.”

I almost laugh, the conversation is so ridiculous.

“The Elizabethan Club is mostly freshmen,” he explains. “For those who don’t make it into the Shakespearean Club.”

I snort. “Junior varsity.”

He peers at me like he’s afraid he’ll catch Cheerleader Disease. “I helped them with some sketches earlier this year. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have had their email address, and this never would’ve—”

“So it’s the Elizabethan Club’s fault?”

He inhales sharply. “I’m just trying to explain.”

“I know. I get it.” Again, I go to touch him, but I can’t bring myself to do it. “Frankly, I’m not sure if I should be happy the email was an accident or horrified you thought it was acceptable to paint her without her permission.”

The truth is, I’m leaning toward horrified, but I don’t want to send him over the edge again. I’m not even sure I want to print out his picture now.

How screwed up is that?

A few minutes pass, and Marvin pulls himself together. I show him to the door, trying desperately to get my anger back. He’s a pervert. He violated Lizzie’s privacy and sense of freedom. And whether he meant to or not, he emailed a drawing of her naked body to a bunch of idiots. He deserves to be punished for that.

Still, hours after he’s gone, I keep seeing that look on his face when he said he’d caused Lizzie’s death. I know the look well. I see it every time I look in the mirror. It reminds me of the day I almost offered her my forgiveness.

THE DAY STARTED
like any other post-prom-humiliation day. I dragged my ass out of bed, forcing myself to go through the motions: wash, dress, choke down breakfast. I’m not going to pretend my days were anywhere near as hard as Lizzie’s. But I’m not going to pretend life was awesome either.

It sucked.

I was so lonely. I thought of approaching Lizzie so many times. I know that sounds like bullshit, like I’m rearranging the events after they happened, but it’s the truth. The issue of forgiveness barely even came into play. If she had apologized to me, I would’ve taken her back. But she didn’t, and I knew what that meant. She didn’t want me in her life.

So I stayed away.

On that particular Monday, three weeks after prom, Lizzie was taking her books out of her locker. She wore jeans, a sweater, a sweatshirt, and a coat. Her hair was hanging in her face. These days, she used it as an extra layer of protection against the people
who always followed her in swarms. They had to be careful, you know, with the administration watching, but how hard was it to knock into someone and blame clumsiness? How hard was it to whisper
“Stupid bitch”
in someone’s ear? They could push her into the bathroom where all their friends were waiting. They could vandalize her locker when the tardy bell rang.

Case in point: the S-word now covered every inch of her locker door. The janitor couldn’t wash the words away fast enough. They showed up in different sizes, some cursive, some printed, increasingly etched into the paint. People exaggerated the differences to make it clear her attackers were many.

I hovered halfway down the hall, waiting for her to finish gathering her books. Our lockers were still next to each other, in spite of several desperate pleas to the office to relocate me. And yeah, it made things incredibly difficult. But we had a system. We never approached when the other was there, and it had worked up until today.

Why isn’t she leaving?

I needed my English book. Now. I couldn’t afford another mishap after the Marvin-library fiasco. I had to be a good little student and come to class prepared. That meant going to my locker while Lizzie was still at hers.

It was probably the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, walking up to the girl who broke my heart. Still, it must’ve been a thousand times worse for her. She looked like she hadn’t eaten or slept in days. In spite of everything that had happened, I wanted to lace my hand through hers and lend her my warmth. I wanted to summon that feeling of invincibility that came from knowing we’d never be alone as long as we had each other.

But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t reach for her. I didn’t speak to her, even as the whispers reached a fever pitch. I opened my locker, making a wall between us, and pulled out my English book with
hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. My entire being wouldn’t stop shaking, and I just stood there, not able to look at her, and cried right in the middle of the hallway, quietly, so she wouldn’t hear.

Every move, a mistake.

Still, she waited. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious she was hoping I would say something. All I had to do was tell her I still loved her. All she had to do was tell me the same. If either of us had been brave enough to say something, everything would’ve been different. For the rest of my life, this ache wouldn’t live inside me, reminding me of the emptiness Lizzie left behind. I wouldn’t hate myself, and life, and want to leave this place. I wouldn’t feel the desire to hurt everyone who took her life away, most of all me.

Neither of us spoke.

I zipped my backpack and wiped my eyes. I turned just so, closing my locker with my back to the crowd, so they wouldn’t see that I’d been crying. And I walked away. I left Lizzie alone in the place that was destroying her. I left her to the mercy of Verity’s vultures, when I could’ve stopped them from tearing her apart.

I did nothing.

S
ATURDAY MORNING I
stop off at the police department to give Lizzie’s diary to the detective who handled her case. I tell him I found the missing pages in Drake’s bedroom, and if he doesn’t believe me, he can check it for fingerprints. Then I tell him I’ve got to run. I have a graduation ceremony to get to.

My phone starts to ring as I cut through the school park. I answer it and say, “Meet me at the football field in five minutes,” then hit the end button quickly.

Out on the field, Kennedy and the rest of the Cheer Bears are pretending to practice. Half of them have on their graduation gowns, unzipped, over their uniforms. I’m supposed to be in my uniform as well, but I really didn’t feel like it.

I jog up to them, my heels squishing in the grass. Whoever thought they should water the lawn this morning was a moron. I’ve got four graduation gowns slung over my shoulder: mine, Cara’s, Elliot’s, and Drake’s. I’m freezing my butt off but I can’t put mine on in front of Kennedy. It’ll spoil the surprise.

Cara and Elliot invite me into their circle like we’re the best of
friends. Elliot’s already crying. I give her a cheek kiss and tell her it’s going to be okay.

“No—it’s not!” She’s got the hiccups, bad. “Half—of us—are going—to different places—”

Kennedy wraps Elliot in her arms. “Knock it off,” she says, but her tone is kind. She steers Elliot toward the bleachers. “I know what will cheer you up.”

“Our surprise?” Elliot asks. Several girls perk up at the mention.

“Yep. Come on.” Kennedy motions for us to follow.

“What surprise?” I ask, tagging along.

“It’s for you.” She holds out a hand for me. She’s still got an arm around Elliot. “By the way, what the hell are you wearing?”

“A dress.” Lizzie’s dress, to be exact. The gold one her father pushed on me. I figured, whether Lizzie’s looking down from some magical world, or giving life to daisies in the Fir Point Cemetery, seeing me in the dress would make her smile.

“You better have your uniform in that purse,” says Kennedy.

I give her my best poker face.

“Okay, you do look hot,” she concedes.

“Well, thank you.” I clap my hands. “Now give me my surprise.”

Kennedy digs through her giant purse. I check the position of the gowns on my arm. Right now I’ve got mine over the top, face-up, so it looks like I’m just carrying one. Still, the stack’s a little bulky. Cara gives me a wink as I try to smooth them. Poor girl thinks we’re in cahoots.

Cahoots. Like we’re spies.

I’m not looking forward to seeing Jesse today. He’s got that
I’m so disappointed in you
look down to an art. Plus, I miss him.

Okay, that’s the real reason.

Kennedy pulls out a stack of photo sheets and some scissors to cut them into wallet-size prints. But she’s not the subject.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Is that—”

“Ew,” several girls squeal at once.

“This is supposed to cheer me up?” Elliot asks, but she’s wearing this deranged smile.

I take one of the sheets. The boy is dressed in tighty-whities and a wizard hat. He’s holding a wand. It’s Marvin.

But I didn’t send it.

“Where did you get this?” I ask.

Kennedy grins mischievously. “Showed up in my email last night.”

“That’s impossible,” I breathe, staring at my handiwork. “Who sent this to you?”

“Somebody named ‘MacDaddy’ something.” She snickers while I cringe. “Sixty-nine—that’s right. How could I forget? I thought it would be fun to print them out, like real school photos. See? We can cut them out and pass them around.”

“Aren’t you smart. Do I get to do the honors?” I hold out a hand.

She hands me the photos, eyeing me suspiciously. “Cut away, then.”

I stare at the pictures. My eyes start to sting. With all these photos circulating the auditorium, everyone in the school will catch a glimpse of half-naked Marvin by the end of the day. He’ll be a bigger joke than he already is. He’ll know Lizzie’s pain.