So if your mom kicks you out and you lose your best friend and you have to live with your dad in his tiny apartment? Suck it up.
The morning you arrive with your huge suitcase, Dad tries the heart-to-heart, but it’s not helpful to have him rant about what a bitch Mom is and then punch the wall beside the fridge, get hammered that night, and refuse to go to work the next day.
Certain kinds of support are worse than none at all.
Dad says you can skip school Monday and stay home with him, which gets you out the door and onto the subway lickety-split.
Aaron Deeter is waiting at your locker.
“I heard about your friend,” he says. “She do it to you too?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, uh, never mind, I figured you knew,” he says. “Anyway, I was wondering, you wanna go out this weekend?”
“Wait a sec, what about Bernadette? What do you mean?”
His face cracks into a grin and he leans in close.
“Lesbo,” he says. “We’re talking full-on dyke-a-rama. Everyone’s saying that’s why you’re not talking to her, that she tried grabbing your tits or something.”
“No, she didn’t. Jesus!”
“So, what about this weekend?” he says. “We on?”
“No.”
“Oh. You busy?”
“No.”
His eyebrows lift and he hold his hands up. “So-rry. That time of the month?”
You had sex with this idiot. Good God.
“Get lost, Aaron.”
He shakes his head and walks away.
At lunch you walk your tray of goopy macaroni to an empty table, and sit. Before you take your first bite, you notice Bernadette a few tables away. Something is happening. Faith English and her clique of preppy friends, Shelby, Ginny and Rebecca, stand over Bernadette.
“Everybody knows what you did,” Shelby says.
Bernadette’s hand has stopped, halfway to her mouth, with a carrot stick in it. She looks from Faith to Shelby and back.
“Yeah,” Ginny says. “Faith told us all about you hitting on her.”
“She was disgusted,” Shelby says, “Weren’t you, Faith?”
Shelby stares at Faith until she nods.
“I saw her running out of the sauna right after. She had to go and puke, she was so revolted,” Shelby continues.
Bernadette’s cheeks are red, and you’re afraid she might cry. You get up, move closer. Bernadette and her attackers notice you at the same time.
“Leave her alone,” you say.
“Why don’t you tell us, Mara,” Shelby says.
“Tell you what?”
“Everybody knows you saw. You saw her grabbing Faith’s tits and trying to dive for her beaver!”
“It wasn’t like that,” you say.
“Mara, shut up,” Bernadette says.
“But Bee, that’s not how it ha—”
“SHUT UP,” she says again, emphasizing the “t” and the “p.”
Suddenly you realize. Oh, fuck.
“I mean, it didn’t happen,” you say. “Nothing happened.”
“Right,” Shelby says, and smirks. “Keep talking, rug-munchers.”
“This is bullshit,” Bernadette says, and stands up. “It’s all bullshit.”
“Exactly,” you say.
“Please shut up, Mara. You’re not helping,” she says, then picks up her knapsack and leaves the lunchroom. People snicker and call her names as she passes. She stands up straight and doesn’t look back.
***
Bernadette doesn’t come to school for a week.
A few people, fuelled by Aaron Deeter, call you dyke and lesbo. You stare them down and say nothing. A few times you pick up the phone to call Bernadette, but after the way you screwed things up, why should she trust you? You search for a way to make it right, something you can offer for the return of her friendship.
One day, during calculus, you follow Faith into the bathroom. You get into the stall next to her, stand up on the toilet seat, and lean over the wall.
“Hi, Faith.”
She screams.
“Shh,” you say, and put a finger to your lips.
“What are you doing?” she says.
“I saw you,” you say.
“Saw me what?” She looks down at her bare upper thighs.
“I saw you. You were even on top.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you kissing her. Touching her. You looked the opposite of disgusted to me.”
Her blonde hair is not so pretty from this angle, but even with her Guess jeans around her ankles and pink Calvins inside them, everything else about her is perfect. Except she’s a liar and a fake and she’s ruining Bernadette’s life.
“What the hell do you want?” she asks,
“Tell the truth. If Bernadette’s a lesbian, then so are you.”
“SHHH! Shut up! I’m not.”
“There’s no one here, and I can see the door,” you say.
“I’m not,” Faith whispers. “I’m not like that. She might be, but I’m not.”
“Then you need to take it back.”
“Can I please have some privacy?”
“Say you were lying. No one needs to know what part you were lying about.”
She tries to laugh, but it comes out like a sob. You’d feel sorry for her, but your pity is spoken for.
“Or you could say it was a joke,” you say.
“Who’d believe that?”
“I don’t know. Don’t care, either. But it’s going to be a long year for you if you don’t fix this. My life isn’t so great right now, and I have lots of time to hound you. And I could tell everyone what I saw.”
“They won’t believe you. I’m more popular.”
“Then you have more to lose.”
She stares up at you with tears in her eyes.
“Please,” she finally says, “you don’t understand.”
“I don’t need to.”
Now she starts sobbing for real.
“If my parents find out...People will forget, but my parents...Please don’t tell.”
“Sorry. No deal.”
You leave her weeping and go back to class.
***
Alone in her bedroom on the weekend, Faith English ingests so much rum that she passes out. Her parents find her and rush her to the hospital where she has her stomach pumped. You hear about it Monday morning and feel sick all day. They say her parents are sending her away to boarding school.
You’re early for school on Tuesday, and therefore see a pinched, dark-haired woman emptying Faith’s locker. Unable to stop yourself, you approach.
“Are you Faith’s mom?” you ask.
She turns with narrow, glaring eyes.
“Sorry, I...” My God, she looks like she wants to kill someone. “I just wanted to know; is Faith all right?”
“Are you a friend?” she asks.
“Sort of.”
“You’re name?”
“Um, Mara. Mara Foster.”
She gives you a long, measuring look and suddenly you feel overly conscious of the pink streak in your hair and the deliberate rips in the knees of your Levis.
“I wonder,” she says, “do the parents of this school have any idea what kind of evil their children are getting up to?”
Evil?
“Um...”
“Do your parents know?”
Shit. She knows about Bernadette. She knows about you threatening Faith. She’s going to kill you, brand you, chase you with a hot poker...
“The Lord will punish,” she says. “The Lord will punish you.”
Uh oh, she certainly knows something.
“Look to your salvation, the fires of hell are nigh.”
You flinch. If her eyes were the fires of hell, you’d be burning right now.
“Cigarettes! Whoring and drinking! Satan’s music!” she says, and then points at Faith’s Bon Jovi poster. “Now I know. Faith was an innocent before she came to this school, and she will be an innocent again.”
Yikes.
“Listen,” you say, “I don’t think Faith was, ahem, whoring or smoking or—”
Her arm whips out and she points a finger at you.
“Jezebel! Stay away from my daughter.”
“Um...”
She moves closer and stares fiercely up into your eyes. The smell of mothballs and stale sweat nearly overcomes you. “Stay away. You and all of your friends—tell them to stay away from her.”
You blink.
She turns back to the locker, rips down the poster. Pulling out two chemistry books from the shelf, she jams them into her purse.
You should be running, but you just stand staring.
Mrs. English slams the locker door. The sound jolts you. You are backing away when her hand reaches out like a claw and clamps on to your arm.
“I want my daughter back,” she croaks, and tears come to her eyes. “Give me my daughter back.”
Your veins turn to ice as you pull your arm away and take another step back.
“Give me my daughter back!” she repeats, louder this time.
Oh my God, oh my God. You keep moving, but she follows you.
“GIVE ME MY DAUGHTER BACK!”
You bump into someone behind you and then pivot and run as fast as you can, out of the school, into the yard and all the way to the bus station.
You can’t stop seeing her, those eyes ripping into you with their pain, her voice on the verge of lunacy. Too late, your heart is filled with horror for Faith, who must be living in her own kind of hell.