“It was Caleb,” Winston told her. “I watched him do it.”
He held her hand and begged her not to leave.
The voices onstage melded with Winston’s pleading whisper, and it all felt like a dream.
“You know how Caleb was my best friend.”
She nodded.
“I know you understand. You also have a best friend like him, someone you’ve known forever. But I don’t have a brother or sister. Caleb was that for me.”
“Winston…,” she started to say, to stop him. She had to leave. She had to talk to Nessa.
“Okay. Wait.” He took a breath. “Everything I told you about myself was true. School was brutal for me. Caleb knew I was a target for guys like Brody, so going into middle school he became friends with him. He said it was to protect us both. But I found out that to be protected from guys like that, you have to become guys like that. And I couldn’t. But for Caleb … it seemed easy. He liked feeling, I dunno, in charge. And until this year, it wasn’t so bad. He worked on our robot project with me after school; he didn’t talk about girls all day long or something. But eighth grade? First, he got obsessed with Amina, saying all day how gorgeous she was and stuff, then he said Brody had told him she was ‘crazy,’ and so he started to get all obsessed with Rose. And he just … disappeared.” Winston spoke in a rush, the words pouring out of him as though, if he stopped speaking, she might leave.
“They’d text each other all day,” he went on, hardly catching a breath. “He would laugh at me when I talked about stuff we both used to like. It was just Rose and Caleb, nonstop. But, like, I started to get it. I got why they liked each other. Because Rose was a girl version of Caleb. She wanted to be friends with Sophie Kane, and Caleb wanted to be friends with Brody Dixon, and that was all that mattered.”
Eve nodded.
“So one day, Caleb told me to meet him at the library during breakfast. When I met him there, he was writing the”—Winston paused, like it was a bad word—“list. He told me he’d made the list for Rose and he was going to put her in the top five. He said she’d be so excited.”
No, no. This couldn’t be happening. Eve got up to leave.
“No, wait! I told him that it was a really bad idea. I swear. I told him that everyone would think she wrote it, and he was like, ‘That’s why I’m making her number four.’”
“That’s why it was a bad idea?” Eve fought the urge to shriek.
Winston kept going. “He said that nobody would suspect number four wrote it. He put Sophie Kane as number two, and you as number one.”
“But why?” she rasped.
“He said you … he said you had ‘a body.’” Winston couldn’t look at her, staring instead at the light switchboard. His words slowed. “He said over the summer you’d … changed.”
Eve felt tears begin to shoot down her cheeks even as her face remained still and no sound came out.
“Eve, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you then.”
“And why does it matter if you knew me or not?” Eve spoke in such a low whisper she couldn’t be sure if Winston even heard her.
“I thought, ‘Oh, that girl seems nice. Sure.’ I thought you’d like it. I mean, I thought that any girl getting called the prettiest would be, like, the greatest thing ever for them. I actually even remember thinking that the only good part about what Caleb was doing was that”—he sighed—“that someone who wasn’t popular would get such a big compliment. Like maybe it would change your life.”
“It did,” she whispered.
“I know, and I’m so sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry.”
“Okay. Okay.” He rubbed his temples. Down below, Nessa sang.
“What happened next?” Eve asked. She had to know.
“I don’t understand why he put certain girls in certain spots, exactly. He didn’t want Lara on there because she ‘seemed too full of herself’ or something, and not Miranda Garland because she was annoying, and it went on and on, and I was hardly listening to him, I promise! I was just sitting there!”
Back to the switchboard. Adjust the lights. Then back to her.
“Listen, I knew from the day of the assembly that I was wrong about it being a great compliment. I knew it when I saw you run out. And I found your poem.”
“What?” Eve said too loudly, and Winston put a finger to his mouth to quiet her. His shushing infuriated her. The tears stopped. She should leave. She needed to go. But he had more to say.
“It’s in my backpack. Always,” he said.
Eve vaguely remembered dropping some of her notebook pages on the way to the choir room that day. He’d read them?
“The poem … I mean, you were clearly really sad. I chased after you. Did you hear me calling you? Before you ran into the choir room? I spent weeks trying to figure out how to tell you who wrote it and say sorry. How to make it all go away.”
Winston picked up his backpack and pulled out the poem, handing it to her. She saw her own handwriting. The first line began: I am large. I contain …
“I knew that I’d hurt you by not stopping him. So much. And I hurt so many people. And I really did want to take down Brody. Because he is a bad guy! I didn’t lie—he did brag that he wrote the list! Who would do that? And he ruined Caleb! Look, I know I lied. I wanted to tell the truth … And then your friends got this idea that I know something about IP addresses? I’m into mechanical engineering, not computer science, so … I guess theater kids think all science is the same? I just went along with it, I don’t know, I wanted to be there to help you, all of you, in some way…”
She could see that he knew he was losing her.
“And every time I wanted to tell you, every time I even brought it up to Caleb, Caleb told me I’d get expelled. And he saw that I was getting to know you. He told me my mom would never forgive me, and that you wouldn’t, either!”
She could feel him trying to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him. The curtains wheeled in from the wings, marking the end of the show.
“And you’re … wonderful. You’re smart and talented and such a good friend and you think all these thoughts that no one else could think and … and I just—”
“Caleb was right,” Eve interrupted him. “I won’t ever forgive you.”
She ran out of the booth. She had to get to Nessa.