I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE IT. She made People! Not just, like, if you scroll way down the site either. There’s her face, right there, the biggest of the crime stories.
Do you get it now, why I think she planned it this way? No publicity is bad publicity, right? And that girl wants to be famous. She wants people to stare. And she wants them to talk. I’ve known it ever since A Streetcar Named Desire.
I find Beck today during my spare period, under the bleachers. He’s smoking again. He doesn’t try to hide it.
“I’m not going to kiss you if you taste like ashes,” I say.
“I never asked you to.” He taps his foot. That’s new. He’s—I don’t know. Nervous?
I linger back. “You know, you’re killing me right now. In a secondhand kind of way.”
He cocks his head. “Sweetheart, nobody made you stand this close.”
“You’re an asshole. Are you not going to say anything about the article? I know you saw it. Do you believe it now? She’s guilty, Beck. They must have something on her.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe they just hope they do.”
Beck didn’t always talk in riddles like that. When we first met, he and Tabby were way over. We don’t exactly run in the same crowd—actually, Beck doesn’t have a crowd—and it took some planning (scheming is such a nasty word) to make sure we were at the same party at the same time. It was a costume one, and I dressed as an angel. It was a risk, but I wanted to be the light to her dark. We hooked up that night and just kept hooking up and it turned into more.
When Tabby first saw us together—I knew she was going to be pissed. She was with Mark, but the way she stared at Beck—she still wanted him. It was widely known that Beck dumped her for cheating on him. But you know what? She smiled. At me, or at him, I’m not sure. Almost like she liked the idea of us. Like nothing I did would shock her.
“The Blue-Eyed Boyfriend Killer,” I say. “Honestly, how stupid is that? I’m sure she thought of it herself.”
Beck just shrugs and crushes what’s left of his cigarette under his boot.
Things are different without Tabby around. He looks different. Almost, like, cheaper. Not the authentic bad boy of your dreams but a Halloween costume, pleather instead of leather, cologne where he should be gritty. But that’s just how boys look in the absence of competition.
“They questioned me,” Beck says just as I turn away. “I’m getting a lawyer.”
“I know. She’s trying to drag you down with her. Don’t let her get away with it.”
You know what this means, though, right? The fact that her face is literally everywhere? (Besides the fact that she loves the attention?)
It means they really have something on her. Or they’re about to.