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.
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?