A few more girls started to wear the masks. Eve and Winston had biked to the dollar store and picked up packs and packs of them.
“You’re my trusted accomplice,” she’d told him.
“Your Kato, if you will,” he’d answered, informing her that Kato was Green Hornet’s brilliant sidekick.
That next morning at school, Winston had reached into his back pocket and pulled out a mask of his own. “Feel the sting of the Green Hornet,” he said as he slipped it on his face. Then he added, “Green Hornet catchphrase,” before trotting off to class.
Eve left the masks on hallway window ledges all over the school.
“So you’re trying to convince everyone to deal with bullies by wearing masks?” Nessa asked her once.
Nessa had seemed annoyed about the masks from the very first day that Eve wore one. What Nessa didn’t seem to comprehend was how free Eve felt with the mask on. Instead of wondering what each person thought about her, or what each person wanted from her, or if a given person would text her something awful later, she could look all of them in the eye and silently say to them: I’m no longer in the running for your lists or comments or judgments. The mask screamed out, “Whatever you thought I was, you were wrong. You don’t know me at all.”
She tried to write this explanation out to Nessa, but Nessa just texted her back:
o why didn’t I think of that all the times anyone made fun of me.
o yea that’s right. cuz it wouldn’t have helped me AT ALL.
Eve planned on apologizing to Nessa the next day, but she didn’t know what to say sorry for. So instead, she just let Nessa be frustrated with her.
Then one day, Eve saw a seventh grader wearing one of the masks.
“Hey, take that off!” a teacher scolded the girl.
The seventh grader pulled it off, but as the teacher moved away, she put it right back on. As she walked by Eve, the girl held her hand out for a high five.
Under her mask, Eve’s eyes crinkled in a smile.
If Nessa could have seen that, maybe she would have changed her mind.
Abe had just passed his driver’s test, and he’d spent the past twenty-four hours convincing their parents that if the law said he could drive, then who were they to say he couldn’t pick up his sisters from school?
“We’re nervous parents, okay?” his mom had said.
“Not a reasonable argument!” he’d fought back.
Eventually, they’d relented.
“Hi!” he practically sang as Eve got into the car.
“Hey.”
“Okay, we have like half an hour before Hannah gets out. So I need you to tell me what’s going on, Britt Reid.”
“Who?”
“Ha. The Green Hornet’s alter ego. You need to read up.”
Abe drove them to a spot near an outlet mall down Greer Road, and they bought hot chocolates. They sat in the car, their drinks steaming, and watched passersby go in and out of shops.
“Isn’t it wild that tomorrow we’re celebrating a holiday with the rest of the kids in town?”
“Yeah, actually,” she said. “I never really thought of it that way.”
They missed so many days of school for their holidays in the fall, and had to spend tons of time catching up on schoolwork, but on Thanksgiving everyone else went home, too. Weird.
“So, how’s the whole being-called-the-prettiest-girl-in-eighth-grade thing going?” he asked.
“Did Mom and Dad ask you to talk to me?” Eve scowled at him. “God, they’re involving the whole world in my life!”
“Mom just worries!” He sounded so much like their dad that they looked at each other for a moment and then broke out into laughter. It felt good to laugh like that with him again. It was almost like they were back in one of their pillow forts playing cards.
“So really, though,” he went on as their giggles died down, “what’s going on?”
Eve told him. Well, she told him the most important bits—the makeover, Brody’s horrible costume, the so-far fruitless plan to expose him, everyone saying she wrote the list, and why she initially put on the mask.
“So other people are wearing the masks, too?”
“Yeah. Even my guy friend, actually.”
“Oh yeah? So this guy is wearing his mask in solidarity with you, huh? Cool.”
“Yeah?” she answered, unsure.
Abe smiled. “It’s very cool he’s willing to join ranks with the girls and that he’s on your side; that he’s supporting you.”
She thought of how the morning after she’d texted Winston, he’d brought his Halloween mask to school for her. The way he smacked his lips in concentration as he scrubbed the paint off her locker. His grin as he put on the Green Hornet mask.
“Yeah, he’s on my side.”
“Sounds like a good guy.”
“I think so.” Eve took a sip of her drink and felt her body begin to warm.
“And you’re making some other friends these days, besides Nessa. Yeah?”
Eve nodded.
But all these questions felt strange. Abe had hardly spoken to her for two years, yet ever since the list had come out, he seemed so invested in her life.
As he started to ask her something else, she interrupted him. “Why do you care so much?”
“What do you mean?”
“You kind of disappeared once high school started. No offense,” she added. “And now…”
Abe sighed. “Like I said a few weeks back … high school is…” He focused on their dad’s Red Wings keychain hanging from the rearview mirror as if it would give him some answers. “Really different.”
“I feel like you’re speaking in code,” she said.
“Sorry.” He took a sip of his drink. “It’s just, this whole list thing? Man, it reminded me how middle school can be, like, the worst. And you’ve been going through it all this time, and I…” He paused, seeming to search for the right words.
Eve wondered if he even knew that she’d missed talking to him.
“Listen.” Abe leaned toward where she sat, pink-faced, in the passenger’s seat. “I wasn’t always so nice to everybody in middle school. Especially to girls.”
Abe? Abe, her big brother? She knew he hadn’t always been nice to her and Hannah, pinning them down and pulling their hair and all that, but she couldn’t imagine him being like Brody or Caleb or Curtis or the other kids who mocked her and threw water on her chest.
“Really?” Without thinking about it, Eve lifted her mask and let it sit on top of her hair like a headband. “How were you not nice?”
“Lots of ways. Like I laughed at jokes that I knew weren’t okay at all.” Abe appeared to tighten his grip on his hot chocolate. “Even ones about my own girl friends, sometimes.” She saw him shake his head as if he were trying to get rid of a thought.
“Why?”
“I didn’t get how much it was hurting them, I think. And I didn’t believe that it would matter if I said anything. Like I was … helpless or something…,” he muttered.
“Did you rate them?” Eve asked softly, afraid of the answer.
“No.”
Eve began to say “Good,” but Abe interjected.
“But I saw that kind of stuff and I probably joked about it,” he admitted. “Maybe that’s why some girls I was friends with back then aren’t so eager to hang out with me now.” He let out a sad laugh. “Can’t really blame them. I didn’t stand up for them.”
That sounded like Eve. Not Abe.
“Look.” He turned to her. “Not everyone figures out how to be good to other people until way later. I didn’t. I wish I could take back the times I just sat there or added some stupid comment I thought was clever while other guys said awful things. I wish I hadn’t cared if those guys liked me. But I can’t take it back. And I regret it.”
Eve thought of Nessa telling her, “This, too, shall pass,” on the morning after the list came out.
But some things did stick.
“Did you ever apologize to anyone?” Eve asked him.
Abe thought for a moment and shook his head. “I should have.”
The giant inflated turkey in front of the café flapped about in the wind.
“You’ve found some friends who aren’t like I was, though,” he said. “Stick with them. And don’t put on eyeliner or whatever, or wear that mask, just because of the mean kids. If you want to, that’s different. But only make decisions for yourself. Don’t let the kids who haven’t figured out how to be kind yet get to you so much. Forget ’em. I wasted a lot of time worrying about other people judging me before I figured out it didn’t matter. Be better than I was.”
Eve looked up at him and saw his earnest smile and pulled the mask back down over her eyes. “You’re being cheesy,” she said. She buried her face in her palms in embarrassment, and the mask squished up against her skin. It smelled like her mom’s lavender oil, which she’d put on the green cloth when it had started to give off the stench of sweat.
Abe chuckled. “Sorry. Had to say it. Now let’s go pick up our little sister, who is gonna need a lot more help than either of us, let me tell you.” He turned the key in the ignition. “And hey,” he added as they pulled out of the parking lot, “you’re freaking out Mom and Dad so much with the Green Hornet thing. They might make you start seeing a counselor or something.”
“No, they can’t be that upset!” Eve insisted. “Really?”
“Not as upset as Mom’s gonna be when I tell her I’m an atheist!” Abe swerved out into the street.
Eve almost dropped her drink. “Wha—!”
As they pulled up to the curb at the elementary school, Hannah threw her backpack into the car and groused, “Abe, don’t get us killed.”
Eve smiled at her little sister.
“What?” Hannah asked, weirded out by the friendliness.
“Nothing,” she said. But she felt truly okay for the first time in weeks, like her insides weren’t jumbled all about.
After they picked up Hannah and headed home, she texted Winston, Hey. Thanks for the help today, fellow Hornet.