By the time Monday morning rolled around, I was actually glad of it for once. Noah and I had talked on the phone again on Sunday, but it had been worse than usual: stilted and full of pauses and so not like it usually was. I just couldn’t figure out exactly what had gone so wrong to know how to fix it.
I was being stupid, right? There was nothing wrong, and I was getting paranoid for absolutely no reason, and things were fine. We’d just been away from each other for a while and that was why things were weird. I was being stupid.
Lee was running a little late in picking me up for school—it was his turn to drive this week—so we arrived just as everybody started pouring from the student parking lot to homeroom.
“Is it just me, or are people staring at me?” I asked him, dropping my voice and looking around furtively. Maybe it was leftover paranoia from thinking about Noah, but I was sure that people were looking at me. And not glancing over my way and smiling, like they might on any other day, but staring at me and muttering to their friends.
I looked down at myself. Had I dropped peanut butter down the front of my uniform? Had one of my buttons popped off? Was my fly open? Was there toilet paper stuck to my shoe?
Nope.
“Is there something on my face?”
Lee gave me a once-over. “No, you’re good.”
“People are staring, aren’t they?”
“Maybe it’s me. I mean, now Noah’s gone, maybe they realize that I’m a hot piece of ass myself.” He tossed his head to get the hair out of his eyes. He’d been growing it out—now I realized, probably to look more like Noah. “Noah does take after me in his good looks, after all.”
“Ha-ha.” I rolled my eyes. I’d have laughed, except my heart was pounding and my palms were starting to sweat. I hated this feeling. Something between being the center of attention and missing out on something big. Whichever one it was, I hated it.
“Seriously. Please tell me I’m imagining things.”
“No, I think they’re staring. Yeah, see? That guy pointed.”
“Why? What did I do?”
I racked my brain, trying to think if I’d done anything at the party on Friday night that people would be talking about. Sure, I’d been crying, but so what? A sobbing, tipsy girl wasn’t unusual for a high school party. And I had a clear memory of the whole night and knew I hadn’t done anything really stupid.
We merged into the throng, not bothering to try and find the others—there was no point in trying to catch up with them now; it wasn’t long until homeroom. We’d just see them later. Lee started talking about this book passage he was writing an essay on for English class and how brilliant one of the metaphors in it was, but I wasn’t really listening.
I was too busy concentrating on what everybody else was saying.
“I feel so sorry for her.”
“Did you see her at Jon Fletcher’s? She left with that new guy, Levi Monroe. I bet they went home together. Slut.”
“You saw her leave with that Levi guy, right?”
“I heard they broke up.”
“She doesn’t even look upset. If that were me, I’d be devastated.”
“I can’t believe he’d do that to her.”
“He’s such a dick. I mean, she’s such a sweetie. How could he?”
“I heard she hooked up with Levi Monroe. I know, right? He could totally do better….Do you think they broke up?”
It was only when Lee pushed me in front of him into homeroom that I realized he’d had his hand on my back and had been guiding me here the whole time, and I’d totally zoned out. Now I froze, and he pushed me again, gently. I stumbled, feeling like Bambi on ice.
When we took our usual seats, Rachel leaned forward immediately. “What the hell, right?”
“Huh?”
“All these rumors going around. They’re crazy.”
“What rumors?” My brain felt fuzzy. Maybe they weren’t even rumors about me. Maybe someone else had pulled some crazy shit over the weekend. Maybe someone else had gone home with Levi, when he’d gone back to the party. I blinked a few times, but it didn’t help clear my head.
“Everyone’s talking about it,” Lisa pitched in, and even though she gave me a pitiful, sympathetic look, her tone was laced with the excitement that accompanied any kind of gossip. “How you left the party early. With Levi.” She glanced at his empty seat.
“But we know you didn’t actually, you know, go home with Levi,” Rachel added, cutting Lisa a glance that clearly said “Shut up.”
Then I caught on, gaping at them, and Lee said what I was thinking before I could recover from my speechlessness.
“Wait, people think Elle hooked up with Levi?”
The girls exchanged a look. Lisa said, “Yeah. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lee and I chorused. We exchanged a look, Lee pulling his best “WTF?” face.
I carried on. “Why would they think that? Just because I left early and he took me home? Like that never happens to anyone else?”
The girls looked at each other again, more apprehensively now. My stomach was already tied up in knots, and now those knots pulled tight and I squirmed in my seat. My nails dug into my palms.
“What? What aren’t you telling me?”
“People are also saying,” Rachel said slowly, looking down at her fingertip tracing a pen mark on her desk, “that…that you and Noah broke up.”
That threw me even more than the rumors that I’d slept with Levi. “Wait, what? Where did that come from?”
“Well…did you?” Lisa asked, obviously unable to help herself.
My eyes narrowed. “No, we’re…we’re still together.” If a little rocky…“Why? What are people saying?”
Rachel suddenly hauled her huge Mary Poppins–esque purse up onto her desk, pawing through books and files and sheets of paper for her cell phone. “It’s less what people are saying”—she tapped on her phone a few times, before holding it out—“and more what they’re seeing.”
Lee got up and moved to Levi’s empty chair, then leaned over so his head was next to mine. He sucked in a sharp breath. I was pretty sure I’d forgotten how to breathe.
Blown up on Rachel’s cell phone screen in crisp, high definition, was a photo uploaded to Facebook from someone called Amanda Johnson.
Noah was tagged in it.
The caption read: Such a fab night! xxxx—with Noah Flynn.
The picture had sixty-two likes. It had seventeen comments. Eighteen—someone else commented while I was looking.
The photo showed Noah, wearing a white shirt lined with blue under the collar and with blue thread; I remembered him buying it just before he left for college. There was an extra button undone. There was a huge grin on his face, and he looked like he was laughing at something.
He had his arm around a girl, holding her in close.
The girl was blond and beautiful, and her dress (at least, I guessed it was a dress) was strapless and very low cut to accentuate what little curves she had.
And what little curves she had were pressed up against my boyfriend, and she looked like she was giggling, her eyes half closed and crinkled around the edges.
And she was kissing his cheek.
And he was grinning.
I felt sick.
Lee took Rachel’s phone out of my hands—which was lucky, because I probably would’ve dropped it a second or two later. My shoulders slumped before it hit me; I tensed up completely, even my toes curling in anger.
“This is some kind of sick joke, right?”
Rachel leaned away from me slightly and slowly took her cell back from Lee, dropping it into her cavernous purse. “Um…”
“Oh my God.” I ran my hands hard over my face and up into my hair, shaking it out just for something to occupy their agitation. Was this why he’d been weird when we talked yesterday? Not because of our conversation on Saturday, but because something had happened with this girl? “Tell me this is some kind of joke.”
“Shelly…”
“Please.” My voice broke on the word, but somehow, miraculously, I managed not to start crying.
Rachel and Lisa looked at each other yet again, and something in me snapped. I shot out of my chair, almost knocking it over, and stormed out—ignoring Mr. Shane calling for me to sit back down—and I heard Lee chasing after me.
I stormed down the hallway, taking a few turns until I was in the staircase, where it was silent, and Lee grabbed my hand from behind, stopping me from running away any farther.
He jerked my arm, tugging me round, and I let him wrap his arms around me.
I took a few shaky breaths, more angry than upset.
No, I wasn’t angry—I was furious. Livid. In a rage.
And even more than that: I was confused. How could Noah do this to me? There had to be some kind of explanation for that photo, but…but even if it was totally innocent, why was some random girl kissing his cheek? Wouldn’t he have told me about it, if it was no big deal? And why did he look so damn happy about it? Things between us had felt so distant lately. What if…?
I drew in another ragged breath and then stepped back from Lee, and he let me. I blinked the tears out of my eyes, to see Lee smiling sadly.
“I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything, Elle. Noah loves you. You know that. I know that. Everyone knows that, after he went all out at the Summer Dance to win you back. He was probably drunk and even if some girl kissed him on the cheek, it’s not like it was a proper kiss, you know? It doesn’t mean anything. Cam kissed you on the cheek at Jon’s party, and Lisa didn’t go crazy.”
“That’s…Everyone’s looking at me like it does mean something, though. And what if it does? What if they’re right, Lee?” Without meaning to, I’d raised my voice, so that it echoed throughout the staircase. My chest heaved with shallow breaths. “What if it does mean something? I haven’t seen him for weeks and what if he’s forgotten all about me and met other girls—better, smarter, prettier, funnier girls, who are there, with him, and not on the other side of the country, and in a totally different time zone, too? Things were so weird between us when we spoke this weekend. What if he’s met someone and he’s just waiting until Thanksgiving when he sees me in person to break up with me, because he’s trying to be nice?”
Lee shook his head, but the way he bit his lip made me wonder if I was right.
“Has he said something to you?” I asked, my voice a hesitant murmur and totally pathetic. “Lee? Please, tell me.”
“He just said that he’s finding it hard to be away from you.” Lee sighed, looking me in the eye from under his thick eyelashes. “But I didn’t think he meant that he’d met someone else and that he didn’t want to be with you.”
“And what if he did?”
“Then…I guess you’ll have to call him later and talk about it and find out. But, Shelly, listen—Noah can be kind of a butthead sometimes, but he wouldn’t cheat. That’s not him.”
I knew he was right, but it made me feel nauseous all over again, just to think about making that phone call. And if I was wrong, how much worse I’d make things by accusing him of something like that. Sure, maybe it was totally innocent and everything would be fine, but…
But this was the same guy who couldn’t tell me something as simple as the fact that he was finding college hard.
So what if it wasn’t fine?
For the rest of the day, I’d listened to people gossip about me.
The general idea everyone had decided to go with was that Noah and I had broken up, and I’d hooked up with Levi at the party (I heard the terms revenge sex and rebound getting thrown around a lot) and Noah had, in turn, hooked up with this preppy girl Amanda from college, the (so-called) evidence now all over Facebook.
Levi had shown up to school late—he’d had a doctor’s appointment first thing—and we’d told him about the rumors over lunch. He’d just laughed.
“People should mind their own goddamn business,” Rachel had muttered, taking an angry bite out of her apple. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her so irritated.
“It’s high school,” Dixon responded, deadpan. “What else do you expect?”
When I finally did get home, I barged up to my room, slamming the door so my dad and brother got the message not to try and talk to me, and I called my boyfriend.
If I could call him that anymore.
My hands were trembling so hard that I could feel my cell phone shaking against my face. I stopped pacing and sat down on the floor, my back against my bed, and I brought my knees up to my chest, wrapping my free arm around them.
I crossed my fingers that he wouldn’t pick up.
And closed my eyes and wished he would.
Any second now, it would go to voice mail.
Pick up. Don’t. Pick up. Don’t. Pick—
It went to voice mail. I hung up.
And before I could decide whether to just toss my cell onto my bed out of the way or whether I should try calling again, he was calling back.
I jumped when my phone started buzzing in my hands and fumbled to answer it.
“Hi,” I croaked, my voice sounding weirdly raw. I coughed to clear my throat, but it didn’t do anything to clear my head and order my mess of thoughts.
“You rang?”
“Yeah.”
There was a pause. “Um, was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about, Shelly? Or are you just calling because you miss my dulcet tones?”
I wanted to laugh.
I couldn’t manage a smile.
“Elle? What’s up? Is everything okay?”
“I saw it.”
“What?”
“I saw the photo.”
Another pause. “I’m really not following. What’re you talking about?”
“The photo on Facebook!” I yelled, my frustration bursting out of me. “The photo of you and that girl”—I spat the word, like it was some kind of insult—“at the party you went to on Saturday night. With your arms around each other and her kissing your cheek, and—”
“Oh, that.”
I bristled. How dare he sound so flippant?
“Did you think I wouldn’t see it? That I wouldn’t find out?”
I heard him wince. Maybe I was a little shrill, but I couldn’t help it. “Elle, please, stop freaking out on me. Take a deep breath. Let’s talk.”
“Talk? You want to talk? You had all of yesterday to talk to me about this, but you didn’t. Do you have any idea how humiliated I was when I went to school today and everybody else had seen that photo and everybody else knew, and gossiped about it behind my back? Do you have any idea what that felt like?”
“Elle, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was a big deal. It’s just a photo from a party.”
“Oh, so if I go on your Facebook profile, I’ll find a whole album of you cuddling random girls at parties with them kissing you?”
It sounded crazy and irrational even as I said it, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was spiraling. I just kept thinking how if he couldn’t talk to me about something as normal as how he was actually doing in college, then what else couldn’t he talk to me about? Was he finding our relationship hard, too? Was the distance too much—was that why he’d suggested I apply for colleges in Boston? Did he regret trying long-distance and was just waiting for the right time to tell me?
Definitely irrational and crazy, but…
But I was so scared of losing him.
“Amanda’s not some random girl.”
Those were the last words I wanted to hear from him, and I sucked in a sharp breath through my nose and clenched my jaw. “What are you trying to say—she means something to you? Are you trying to tell me something?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. I meant, she’s a friend. She’s my lab partner. We hang out; we study together. That’s all I meant by it. Seriously, Elle, just calm down.”
“If she’s such a good friend, why is this the first I’m hearing about her?”
Noah sighed, agitated. “Okay. So, Elle, there’s a girl I’ve been hanging out with a lot. We have classes together and she’s my lab partner, and we study together a lot. We have mutual friends and hang out and go to parties together. You think I don’t know how that sounds?”
I bit my tongue, hard, before snapping back, “Is that your way of telling me you think I’m some psycho, jealous person who won’t let you hang out with other girls?”
He was quiet for a moment. His voice came out cold and steady. “You just called me to yell at me about a photo, Elle.”
I was so ready to snap at him again but caught myself, seething quietly instead. There was a bitter tang in my mouth and I was flushed, heart hammering. I’d broken out in a cold sweat.
So he was right. But it still felt like he’d been lying to me.
I started to understand, for a moment, just how shitty Lee must have felt when he found out I’d been dating Noah behind his back. The realization was like barbed wire around me.
When Noah realized he had a chance to say something, I heard him sigh heavily. “Listen, Elle. I know how bad things look and that maybe I should’ve mentioned Amanda before, and I know that wasn’t exactly the sort of photo you wanted to see of me, but I swear, nothing happened. It was totally innocent. She’s a hugger. She kisses people on the cheek. It’s just her thing. That was all. It wasn’t a romantic thing, and she’s not even interested in me like that. And I’m not interested in her like that either, okay?”
“Okay,” I said quietly. But…
“I want you,” he went on, “to be able to trust me.”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I pursed my lips, because I was afraid of what I might say. Because as much as I wanted to say yes, of course I trusted him, my reaction to this whole thing made me second-guess that.
“I’m sorry that it happened, and I’m sorry you were so humiliated by it at school. But it’s no big deal, what actually happened. You know? I get that you’re mad right now but you’ll see it wasn’t. And you know I love you, and we’re good, right? It’s just gossip. You know how much people used to gossip about me. Trust me—it never means anything.”
“It feels like it means something,” I murmured. “It’s not nice to hear people calling me a slut in the hallways between classes. Or to think you’re keeping secrets.”
“Why were they doing that?” he asked, a protective edge sharpening his words.
“Because I left the party on Friday early with Levi. And with that photo of you and…Amanda…” God, I hated saying her name. I hated her. I didn’t even know her but I hated her. Talk about irrational. “…everyone jumped to conclusions. They thought we’d broken up and that we were both on the rebound. Or whatever.”
“Oh.”
“You can say all the gossip doesn’t matter, and maybe it doesn’t in the long run, but right now it’s pretty damn hurtful. Not to mention embarrassing.”
“This guy Levi…”
“Yeah?”
“You and Seven For All Mankind seem pretty close now.”
His tone was neutral, but like he was trying to make it so—and I couldn’t tell if he was jealous or not.
And he had no damn right to be. My temper flared.
“We are. And his name is Levi. Don’t be mean.”
There was a long pause. In a weird sort of way, I was glad if he was jealous—like it was payback for Amanda.
I hated myself for even thinking it.
It was petty and irrational.
This whole long-distance thing was such a breeze.
“Shelly?” Noah’s voice was startlingly soft and quiet, not irritable and full of jealousy like I’d expected. “We’re good, right?”
“Of course we are,” I said, though if I was being honest with myself, I really didn’t know anymore.
I wanted us to be good. I wanted everything to go back to normal. I didn’t want to fight—or be petty. I took a deep breath.
“I’m…I’m sorry I got so angry.”
“That’s okay. You have every right to be.”
Part of me wondered where this calm, cool, collected Noah had suddenly come from—he would usually yell just as much as I would; we could both get fired up when we argued. But he was rarely ever the voice of reason like this.
Had college really changed him so much?
“I have to go,” he said, sighing. “I’m sorry, I really am, but I promised some of the football guys I’d meet them for dinner to hang out…but I’ll try to call you later?”
We both hesitated, listening to each other’s breathing, and then I pulled the phone away from my ear and hung up.
My eyes slid shut and I tilted my head back against my bed, taking a deep breath. If things were supposed to be so great with me and Noah, why did I feel like my heart was breaking?