15
BRIDGET
I HAVE NO IDEA how he got my email address, but the message that appears today proves that he has his ways.
The truth is coming out—you may not know your sister as well as you think. I’m not trying to be creepy—I can just tell you’re not like her.
It’s from Alexander. Alex. He’s back in Australia by now, but still finds a way to send a chill down my spine. Especially since his message comes around the same time that article goes up on Sharp Edges about the abortion.
Honestly, I don’t have much to say about that. I heard the rumors the same time as everybody else. I was at school before fifth period, getting my math textbook from my locker, and there was Elle, wanting to talk. Which was weird, because Elle never wants to talk to me. She’s Tabby’s friend, someone I’ve always been jealous of by association. People think Tabby and Elle are sisters. I used to see the comments on Tabby’s Instagram. OMG you two are twins! Yet when Tabby and I go out in public together, nobody ever comments on the resemblance.
“Tabby didn’t meet me at lunch,” she said. I could tell by her pinched face that she was upset about a lot more than lunch. “And she missed a big bio test. I texted her a bunch of times.” She leaned against the locker next to mine. “Bridge, I have to ask. Has Tabby been acting strange lately?”
There was Tabby, pushing food around, cradling her laptop in her arms like it was her baby, staring at Mark’s Instagram. There was my sister, shiny as a gold band, dulled down to something that didn’t even catch the light. I considered lying to Elle, but part of me thought I could save Tabby with the truth.
“Yes,” I said. “Ever since Mark went back to Princeton.”
The bell chose the seconds following to split the silence.
“We need to talk more about this,” Elle said. “I think something’s going on.”
Later that day, I saw what they had done to Tabby’s locker. Someone had spray-painted two words over it. BABY KILLER. I couldn’t move when I saw them, but somehow I kept walking. The longer I stared, the less I would be able to convince myself it wasn’t true. Somebody else, though—somebody else apparently couldn’t keep walking, because he was staring at the words like they were going to move. Beck Rutherford. I wondered why Beck cared now after he made it very clear to Tabby that he didn’t want her. A whole month of not returning her texts or calls. A month of Tabby’s tears, where she didn’t want to go outside or to the mall or anywhere. She always let boys become her earth, while she orbited them like an obedient little moon.
The next day, my parents got a phone call at home. They got called into a meeting with Tabby and Principal Stanton. I heard them talking about it, my ear up against their bedroom door, like an eavesdropping kid. It was exactly what I had been reduced to.
“She’s in trouble,” Mom was saying. “Ryan, we need to help her.”
Then Dad said something I would never be able to forget I heard. “Paula, you remember what happened last time. Sometimes I think she is the trouble.”
He was a traitor, our father, another boy who didn’t believe a girl when she was screaming the truth right in front of his face.
I’ll never know what happened at that meeting. I saw them all getting out of the car—Dad driving, Mom in the passenger side, Tabby climbing out of the back seat in a dress I had never seen her wear, knee-length and all buttoned up, hair pushed back with a headband. I saw her for what she was. Young and scared.
When we got to school on Monday, Tabby’s locker was back to normal. I never asked her about the words there, if they were true. I never asked her what Mark made her do. I never asked, but I should have. The truth was, nobody helped Tabby. So whatever happened next was on all of us.
