I know right away something is wrong when I come home. Mom’s car is in the driveway, and Karen’s and Amanda’s bikes are lying in the front yard, looking like they were ridden onto the lawn and dropped while they were still moving. When I walk in the house I can hear voices in the kitchen, and when I shut the door behind me, the voices stop.
Mom is standing with her hand on Amanda’s shoulder. Amanda is sitting with her elbows on the table, and holding her head in her hands. Karen has her chair pulled up next to Amanda’s, and the way they try to kill me with their eyes, I know right away what has happened. Nobody died. Yet. For a second they all just look at me and I just look at Amanda, and then Karen clenches her teeth and says, “I should kick your scrawny butt.”
I do the first thing I think of. I smirk at her and say, “I’d like to see you try . . .” I glance at Amanda, who keeps her eyes on the kitchen table.
“Donnie, what were you thinking?” Mom has her I-just-can’t-understand-you voice on. “Why would you start a rumor like that?”
I think about telling Mom to leave the room so the kids can talk.
I watch Amanda study the table and think, Look at me, look at me, look at me. She doesn’t.
“Donald, a girl’s reputation is—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ma,” Karen snaps.
“Don’t swear at me, Karen. It’s true. A girl’s reputation is all she has.”
Karen rolls her eyes and then levels them at me.
“Donnie, why’d you make up lies about Amanda?”
Amanda glances up at me with fierce but interested eyes.
I shrug.
Amanda looks back at the table and Karen rails on.
“Did you think it’d make them like you? That’s it, right? You wanted your loser friends to like you. Fucking pathetic—”
“Karen!” Mom snaps. “Watch your language!”
Karen ignores her, and as Karen talks, Mom just keeps making these little meep sounds in her throat every time Karen swears, like she wants to interrupt her but more than that she wants Karen to tear me a new butt hole.
“You know even the upperclassmen make fun of you guys, right? You know that the only reason you don’t get the shit [meep] beat out of you is because of me and Amanda, right? You care so much about what those fucking [meep] rejects think, you make up lies that nobody—nobody—in their right mind would believe. Seriously, Donnie. Did you think it wouldn’t get back to us? Did you think someone would believe that you and Amanda—”
“Karen, that’s enough,” Mom says.
“I mean, she’s a JUNIOR!” Karen finishes, shouting.
Mom says, “Amanda is too upset to even talk to you, Donnie.”
“No I’m not, Mrs. LePlant. I’m just mad.” Amanda sniffs and looks me full in the face. It was better when she was looking at the table. She wasn’t lying when she said she was pissed off. I’ve never had someone look at me like that. Look back down, look back down, look back down.
“What happened, Donnie? Why’d you say those things about me?”
Karen jumps in. “Do you know what they’re calling her, Donnie? Do you know what they wrote on her locker at school?”
I shrug.
“Rowboat.”
I smile. I smiled! Oh, shit, I just smiled. I cough to try to cover it up, but Amanda is already across the kitchen and in my face.
“You think that’s funny, Donnie? You think it’s funny that guys are taping pictures of their little brothers on my locker? It’s only the second week of school and I have to deal with this shit!” She’s so close I can feel her breath on my face. I could touch her lips with my tongue. “You think it’s funny that they call me a cradle-robber and ask if I’m still breast-feeding? Yeah. Real funny, Donnie. Good one.”
She hates me. She hates me so much; I can feel it coming out of her. Everything’s gone wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble, and turn to walk out of the kitchen. She hates me; I’m the world’s biggest jerk, fine. But I don’t have to stand here and get reamed by her in front of my mom, for God’s sake. But Amanda has other ideas. She moves in front me.
“You’re right, you are sorry. You’re a sorry little snot and you need to stay the hell away from me.” She pokes me in the chest with her finger and it makes a hollow thump.
Amanda grabs her backpack off the floor and heads toward the door. She stops and turns around.
“You don’t know what it’s like, Donnie. I have to be on the defensive every day—just because some guys at school make a sport out of trying to feel you up in the hallways or listening to every word you say to see if they can turn it into something having to do with sex that they can shout out to their friends. It’s exhausting, Donnie, and then you throw them a jewel like this and they practically pee themselves with excitement.“
The sound of Amanda slamming the sliding glass door stays in the room for a long, long time. Then Mom says, “They try to feel you up in the hallways?”
Karen says, “For Christ’s sake, Ma,” and pushes past me out of the kitchen.
Mom says, Meep.