I’d woken up in a good mood; the night with Jake had been nice. But my mood quickly deteriorated when I was caught off guard by a call. I didn’t check the caller ID and when I answered, it was my dad.
“Lori, I’ve been trying to get hold of you.” He sounded nervous.
“Dad. Hi. I can’t speak now, I’m going to be late for school.”
“Five minutes, please. I wanted to tell you something.”
“I know,” I said, not able to hide the anger in my voice.
“How do you—”
“When your fiancé posts photos of her ring on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it’s kind of a dead giveaway.”
There was a moment of silence before his audible sigh made the phone crackle and hiss. “I didn’t want you to find out like that. I’ve been trying to call and message you.”
I kept quiet. I didn’t know what to say to him. I felt voiceless, like Vicki had said. What I really wanted to say was how much he’d hurt me when he said I couldn’t stay with him. I wanted to tell him how hurt and abandoned—and now, replaced—I felt. But I didn’t.
“I’ve got to go. School,” I said quickly.
“Okay. I love you, Lori.” It sounded like a plea, not a statement.
“Sure, me too.” I hung up, slipped the phone into my bag, and raced to school. But when I got there, Amber walked straight up to me.
“Hey, L,” she said in this soft, singsong voice.
I blinked a few times. No one had ever called me L; my name was short enough already. Besides, that L had a distinctly passive-aggressive tone to it. Or maybe it was just aggressive—there didn’t seem to be anything passive about the way she was staring at me now.
“What?” I asked, suspiciously.
“So, how’s life at BWH?” Her pseudosweet tone laced with invisible daggers told me I should probably run away rather than stay here and listen to what she was about to say.
“It’s okay.”
“Making friends? Meeting new people?”
“I guess.”
She sighed and then stopped walking. “So just a word of advice, as a friend—”
“I didn’t know we were friends?”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
I felt like shouting in her face that I had no idea what she meant, but didn’t.
“Mmm-hmmm?” I mumbled.
“Thing is with Jake—” she started.
“Jake! Why are we talking about him? What does he have to do with—” I wanted to slap myself for saying that. It had come out strange and emotional and sideways, and her smiling at me now was confirmation that she’d gotten the exact reaction out of me that she’d wanted to get.
“It’s just, I can see how you feel about him.” Her eyes zoned in on mine, and I swear, she was trying to see right into my brain.
I looked away quickly, in case she did possess some supernatural witchy powers.
“We’re just friends. No, our siblings are friends!”
“Oh, L.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “I saw how you looked at him outside Xander’s office. I mean, I don’t blame you, he’s, well, he’s Jake.” She tilted her head to the side, condescension practically oozing from her eyeballs. “But he is Jake. You know what I mean. Jake!” She was saying his name a lot. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt. You know what I mean?”
“Not really.”
“He’s not really the kind of guy to do relationships. He gets around. If you know what I mean?”
Stop saying, If you know what I mean? I screamed in my head.
“And . . .” she continued, “if he does do relationship, well, I’m not sure you’re his . . . type. If you get my vibe?”
“What?” I stared at her in utter shock, her words like a knife slipping between my ribs.
“I think you know exactly what I mean.” There was such venom in her voice, and suddenly I wanted to cry. I felt like Lori Fatty Palmer all over again. But I wasn’t going to give Amber the satisfaction of seeing me hurt.
Why was she such a cow? Why had she taken such an instant dislike to me? Because I’d ruined her moment in assembly, snapped her nail, spilled some water on her, caught the ball, had the drink with Jake? Or did she just hate me because I was fat? Was there this unspoken rule somewhere that said girls like her should hate girls like me? And did they know what they did to us? Did they know that this moment would stay with us, me, for the rest of my life? Three words from them in a fleeting second would be words I would hear echoed in my head a million times over.
She flipped her hair, almost hitting me in the face, and then sauntered away. “See you around, L.”