Vesper (3 page)

Beside me, Megan stared at the ceiling, completely unfazed. Listening to the crying of the shiny blond girl next to her, she rolled her eyes.

"Drama queens," she muttered in my direction.

The assembly that closed the first day of school wasn't the usual kind; even the rowdiest of the boys kept it down in respect as the principal and a woman from the police department spoke to all of us. They stood on the Carver High Cougars mascot painted in the center of the basketball court and took turns at the microphone. They said very little about the details of the murder but made it clear that they were concerned about student safety in light of the incident—seeing as how Emily Cooke was killed while alone on the streets of a good neighborhood—and that everyone should go straight home from school.

I sat next to Megan in the top row of the bleachers, listening as precautions were discussed. We were told to always keep in groups of twos or threes, and to get rides from trusted friends or family instead of walking.

Megan picked absently at the plastic bench as she stared at the ceiling, but I couldn't help watching the kids around me. There were more than a few who hugged one another and cried openly, even some guys. It felt surreal, like something out of a movie. I half expected somber music to play over the scene while a camera zoomed in on my pointedly thoughtful expression.

As the school officials droned on, Megan slipped on her sunglasses and scowled in the direction of four girls huddled together, mascara tears drawing black lines down their cheeks. They held one another and whispered what I guessed were comforting words, their faces ugly in their grief.

"'Oh,
wah"'
Megan mimicked as she watched the girls. "'Emily Cooke and I were, like, totally best friends. Like, we used to go shopping all the time, and we shared a boyfriend that one time. Now who will tell me which shade of pink goes best with my lip liner? Death is so not fair."'

"Megan..." I whispered.

She ignored me. "They should just tell everyone what really happened.

That Emily C. decided to walk barefoot for three miles in her pajamas. Did I tell you her parents caught her acting all dazed and out of it earlier that week too? So don't take an evening stroll dressed for bed and cracked out on drugs, and bam, you won't be murdered."

"Megan, come on. A girl is dead."

Megan peered at me over her sunglasses. "Okay, you are, like, the Queen of Schlocky Horror Flicks. I have no idea why you're so mopey. Why does this bother you so much?"

"Those are movies," I said. "This is real life. It's different. I mean, it could have been me."

Megan frowned- "What? Why would it have been you? 'Cause you're both named Emily?" She flicked her hand dismissively. "That's stupid. It's not like you're dumb enough to wander blazed into dark neighborhoods like Emily C."

I remembered the open window, my outstretched leg, the darkness that had seemed so inviting. I remembered my own freaky—though not drug-fueled—mind lapse.

"Yeah," I said. "I'd never do that."

We watched as the class president, Tracie Townsend, took the floor to give a hastily written eulogy. "Anyway," Megan said, talking over her, "you hate these girls as much as I do. Give it a week, no one will even remember what Emily C. looked like, I guarantee you."

"You didn't seem to think that way last night when you were worried it was me," I said.

"Well, that would be different. You actually matter."

Harsh. But that was Megan. I was used to it. But I also didn't have anything to say in response.

We fell silent as Tracie began speaking in that curt way of hers, her pretty features turned down in a frown, and her perfect black curls bobbing with her somber nods. I considered telling Megan that, no, I didn't actually
hate
any of the other girls at school. Though some had gone out of their way to make Megan's life hell, they never really did anything to me. And anyway, even though Megan wasn´t exactly the forgive-and-forget type, as far as I was concerned all of that was over the day Sarah Plainsworth left. Now no one really seemed to care one way or the other about us.

I also considered telling Megan about what had happened the night before—the clothes, the window, all of it. But no, I couldn't admit any of that.

Anything that would make Megan think I was going to get all glossy and popular would not go over well. Even if most girls wouldn't consider my idea of dressing to be "glossy and popular" so much as "sleazy and desperate.” I didn't think Megan would make the distinction. Not after she'd had us make a pact never to become like "them”

Besides, it was just a one-time freaky mental slip.

Or was it? Maybe it wasn't drugs that had made the other Emily seem so weird to her parents. Maybe there was something going around, some sort of personality-altering disease. I mean, what would possess Emily Cooke to go wandering miles from her house, barefoot and wearing only her pajamas, especially on the same night I dressed like a streetwalker and decided to jump out my window?

Maybe it was the weirdness of the night before, or the bizarreness of coping with an entire school filled with shocked people walking around like zombies all day, but I didn't
feel
right. Something felt shifted inside of me, off center and wobbly, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't put that unnameable something back in place.

Megan nudged me as Tracie finished speaking and the kids in the bleachers applauded politely. "Hey, don't get all silent on me," she whispered. "It sucks that the other Emily got whacked, okay?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn't get a word out before a girl turned around and shushed us. Embarrassed, I clamped my lips closed.

Megan rolled her eyes but didn't say anything.

We sat there, silent, as the rest of the world's most depressing assembly death-marched to its somber finish and we could finally go home, where I could escape into a book and forget all about dead teenagers and strange mood swings and this horrible sensation that after last night, nothing was quite right anymore in our school or our small town.

After racing through the downpour to my front door, I hugged my dad, where he sat at his desk killing undead hordes in his computer game, then decided I'd distract myself by trying once again to read
Lord of the Rings,
since it felt like my geeky duty to do so. I didn't last long at that—yes, I know, I should feel horribly ashamed that I can't get past all the hobbit singing to get into the story. Instead I went browsing online.

Maybe it's just me, but hearing about someone my own age, someone I vaguely knew, dying ... it wouldn't leave me alone. Forget my giant DVD case filled with movies about teenagers getting murdered—I'd seen so much CGI and makeup and red-dyed corn syrup that when it came to the idea of another teenager dying it never seemed real. I'd never really considered that one day I could walk outside and get shot, and it would be all over.

So maybe that's why I Googled "Emily Cooke" and spent hours reading about her. There were local news articles about the mysterious murder, of course, and a whole slew of blog posts from people who'd known her, talking about their shock. Some people posted letters of hers they'd saved—

Nothing gets your mind off of depressing thoughts of dead teenagers like being called fat on the internet.

It happened the same day as the assembly. Nothing was on TV that night—

it was only early September, after all, and new TV seasons don't start until mid-month—so I was in my room. I'd come home from the horrible downer of school five hours earlier after riding alongside Megan through a torrent of rain that fogged up her windows, the world outside hidden behind a gray mist. I'd say that the weather had matched the day's downcast mood, but I knew that was a joke. The writhing storm clouds would soon give way to blue skies before returning a few hours later along with, like, a flurry of hail or something. No one's mood is as bipolar as western Washington weather.

After racing through the downpour to my front door, I hugged my dad, where he sat at his desk killing undead hordes in his computer game, then decided I'd distract myself by trying once again to read
Lord of the Rings,
since it felt like my geeky duty to do so. I didn't last long at that—yes, I know, I should feel horribly ashamed that I can't get past all the hobbit singing to get into the story. Instead I went browsing online.

Maybe it's just me, but hearing about someone my own age, someone I vaguely knew, dying ... it wouldn't leave me alone. Forget my giant DVD case filled with movies about teenagers getting murdered—I'd seen so much CGI and makeup and red-dyed corn syrup that when it came to the idea of another teenager dying it never seemed real. I'd never really considered that one day I could walk outside and get shot, and it would be all over.

So maybe that's why I Googled "Emily Cooke" and spent hours reading about her. There were local news articles about the mysterious murder, of course, and a whole slew of blog posts from people who'd known her, talking about their shock. Some people posted letters of hers they'd saved—

surprisingly well-written letters that contained amusing haikus and clever, off-kilter short stories about the person she had written to.

Eventually I ended up on Emily Cooke's own blog. I clicked through the pictures of her smiling with her friends, then started to read all the comments from people saying how much they'd miss her.

In the middle of those comments, I saw this:

Terrizzle Sept 8, 4:54 p.m.

sad ur dead emily ur much hoter than fat Emily
My first thought:
"Terrizzle" (real name Terrance Sedgwick) should not
be in eleventh grade and writing like that.
Capitalization, punctuation, and spelling words out aren't that difficult, especially in what's supposed to be a message to a dearly departed friend ... or a hot girl he wanted to hook up with, whatever.

My second thought:
Wait, fat Emily "?
There are—or, well, were—only two Emilys in our class, which meant...

Oh. Oh no.

Here's a fun fact about me: Like the partial truth I'd told Dawn the night before, the last thing I ever wanted was for guys like Terrance to look at, think about, or talk about me to other people. The mere idea was completely terrifying. Even so, I guess I had always sort of fantasized that a guy would see me and get past the ponytail and the glasses and the giant sweatshirt to discover how insanely awesome I am, then come and whisk me off into that magical teenager fairyland where everyone else gets to prance around.

But nope. A guy, some random guy at school, looked at me and thought,
What a heifer. What a pig.
And then wished, if anyone named Emily had to die, that it had been me. The "fat" one. That way he could continue to think about Emily Cooke's hotness without having to feel weird about how she's now lying on a cold slab in a morgue somewhere.

I blinked and stared at the screen some more, feeling like there were crowds of pretty teenagers standing in my room and ogling me, judging me. I could almost see long gone Sarah Plainsworth giving me that withering glare of hers. My cheeks burned, and though I didn't really believe the words I was about to say, I whispered to myself, Tin not fat."

It didn't matter what I said to myself, though, because I knew this to be true: All that mattered was how others perceived you. If others saw me and thought,
Big ol´ fatty hambeast,
then that's who I was. And now everyone at school would see this and know all about what Terrance Sedgwick thought of previously invisible me.

The clock ticked away on my computer from 8:07 to 8:11 and still I couldn't stop from sitting there, staring at my computer screen and feeling utterly embarrassed by that one stupid comment.

And then, at 8:14, my guts twisted and I gasped.

A massive shudder ran through my body, as though the ground was quaking beneath me, and I fell out of my chair onto the floor. I clutched my stomach, clenched my teeth, and felt my toes curl. Another twist inside my gut and I dry heaved, but my stomach was unwilling to release whatever poisons I was sure were swirling inside of me.

I tried to call out, but the only sound I could make was a pitiful squeak.

Not that anyone would hear me if I did yell, anyway—my dad was downstairs with his headphones turned up while he played his game, and my stepmom and Dawn were out. Whatever this was—a seizure?—wasn't stopping, and I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't move, and no one could help me, and oh God was I going to die?

And then, as the red digital numbers on my nightstand alarm clock switched to 8:15, it was over.

I felt... different.

I felt
good.

I lay on the floor, my breathing calming as my heart slowed from a frantic pounding to steady, confident thumps. I arched my back and stretched my arms above my head, cricking my neck as I did. My entire body felt stiff, atrophied from lack of any appreciable amount of movement. This wouldn't do at all.

I grabbed the edge of my desk and pulled myself to my feet. Emily Cooke's blog was still open on my computer screen, Terrizzle's message of my fatness front and center. I read it again.

And I laughed.

"Oh, please," I said aloud. Seriously, Terrance of all people should not be calling people fat. The boy wasn't exactly svelte himself.

I turned to my right and caught my reflection in the mirror. The image was blurry even with my glasses on, so I squinted to see better. Hoodie two sizes too large? Check. Completely plain face and hair? Double check. No wonder Terrizzle thought I was a fatty.

But I could show him, couldn't I? If bad teen romantic comedies taught me anything, it's that glasses-and-ponytail girls are always in need of emergency makeovers. So I snapped the glasses off my face and let my hair down. Without the glasses I didn't need to squint anymore—I could see fine.

And though that shouldn't have made any sense, at that moment all I thought was:
Wicked.

I tilted my head. Better, but not quite right. I tore off the oppressive hoodie and T-shirt I'd had on underneath, then studied my torso, clad only in an old-lady bra my stepmom had bought me. My hips and chest? Sure, they were wider than some other girls', but in a definite old-school, busty-pinup-girl sort of way. But my waist was more or less narrow, in no way fat unless your idea of fat was anyone above a size zero, in which case you needed your head examined.