Unfriended, page 14
“Okay,” I said. This girl was certifiable. A peach? What the . . . ?
“But that’s not a perfect peach, you self-important asshole,” she said.
“What?” I crossed my arms. “I never said anything about a peach!”
“It was a metaphor,” Crew Cut helpfully informed me.
“What’s a metaphor?” asked Red Lips, smiling a tiny bit.
“It’s for . . . stuff beyond,” Thumb Rings said.
“I got a meta-five,” Dreadlocks said. “Cost me twenty percent more.”
They all cracked up.
“You’re all freaks,” I said. That cracked them up even more. “I was just saying hello,” I told Marilicia. “It’s been a while, how are you, all that. But fine, forget it.”
“You were not,” Marilicia said, her smooth face suddenly serious, eyes squinched tight. “Did you actually expect me to be like, Oh, really? Really Natasha? You’d do that for me? Help me? So I can maybe come sit with you again? And if I plot and plan with you, maybe I can wrangle an invitation back to Samesville?”
“I didn’t . . . Samesville? What?”
“Because that’s the most bruised-up, bottom-of-the-bucket, piece-of-crap peach in the discount store, dude.”
“There’s no peach! You don’t have to get all . . . I was just being nice.”
“No you weren’t.” Marilicia grabbed my arm. “You’re never nice, Natasha.”
Okay, that pissed me off. I am so sometimes nice.
I shook my arm loose of her grasp and said loud enough for her freak friends to hear, “That’s just what you losers tell yourself, to comfort yourself that you don’t get to sit with us—Oh, they’re so mean, those popular kids. They’re bad and small-minded and cruel. But you know what? Untrue! Welcome to reality, where you sit here in loser-land because you are too freaking weird to sit with normal people and be happy.”
“We are happy,” said thumb rings. “And we actually like each other.”
“We actually like each other,” I imitated, maybe a little louder than I meant to. “My mistake. I thought Marilicia might like to come back to—”
“Wrong,” Marilicia interrupted. “Listen. I want you to understand a thing, Natasha. Okay? Six months ago I would’ve given a vital organ to hear those words from you, the sorry, the you can come back to the Table.”
“A vital organ?” Dreadlocks asked her.
“Maybe a nonvital organ,” Marilicia said, with a laugh in her voice. “A tonsil.”
“Gross,” Red Lips said. Like she should talk about gross. I think those were tiny dried fish she was eating.
“But you know what I figured out since then?” Marilicia asked.
“What?” I asked, at the same time the cute guy in the blue T-shirt guessed, “You like both your tonsils?”
“That you guys suck,” Marilicia said. “All y’all.”
“Fine,” I said. “See ya.”
“No, Natasha, listen.” Marilicia stood up and stepped out of the bench. Her tight jeans were tucked into her low boots. She looked good, I had to admit it. She looked, like, comfortable. In herself. She didn’t used to, but there she was, looking just, very, Marilicia-like is all I can say. At least her outfit wasn’t made of scarves.
“What?” I asked. I let my hair fall around my face, staring down at her cute boots. I should get boots like that, I thought. Then I’d have more confidence. My problem is my mom never lets me buy cool shoes.
“Listen,” Marilicia said. “You guys? You and those other kids at the Popular Table? You’re boring.”
“Boring? I wish. I mean, you wish.”
“No. Really. You’re . . . small.”
I let out a chuckle. If there’s one thing in the world I am not, it’s small—as my skinny little mother has let me know every day of my life. Big like my dad. Taking up too much space. I raised my eyebrows and looked pointedly down at Marilicia. “Small?”
“You know what I mean, Natasha, I know you do,” Marilicia whispered. “You’re all trying so hard to blend in with each other, to be exactly alike, not left behind, not stand out, not be weird—that you’re a wreck. Look how stressed you are. Your hands are fists.” She touched my tight hand with her cool fingers.
“I . . .”
“There’s an amazing world out there, Tash, and you guys are all hunkered down, squabbling about your little nothing troubles.”
I almost smiled when she called me Tash like that. She used to call me Tash. She was the only one, and I really liked it. She started calling me that while we did our experiment about light’s effects on plant germination. She made the poster and I collected the data. We were a good team, got an A+ on that and first place in the science fair for sixth graders. We worked so frigging hard on that thing. Then I went to stay with my father for a week and my mother never watered the plants. So they all shriveled up and died before all-county.
I had secretly wished Tash would catch on as my nickname. It just seemed like that would be so cool. I could see myself as Tash, and I’d call Marilicia Ri, and we’d be the leaders of the cool kids. But it didn’t catch on and then the plants died, which pissed her off, and she blamed my mom and then she was gone from our table, so that was that.
“Whatever,” I said to her, all cold, because why should I care what some Random thinks of me and my friends? I started to walk away. I wanted to get out of the cafeteria and down to the playground before anybody could get the idea I’d been rejected. I expected the freaks behind me to erupt in a good hearty laugh at my expense while I was leaving, but if they did, I didn’t hear it.
Losers. I didn’t want to sit with them anyway. Thinking they’re actually all that? Their parents probably apologize for how peculiar they are, at family parties. I have a cousin like that and her parents are always bragging, She’s so creative. But what they mean is She has no friends. Bunch of weirdos. They just sit together because they were like the Island of Misfit Toys, each from their own unique planet. They weren’t even like one another except in all being oddballs.
They were probably just pretending to be happy and like each other. Who wouldn’t want to sit at the Popular Table? It didn’t even make sense.
Last time I try to reach out and be nice or generous to anybody, I vowed.
Out in the hall I tripped over Truly, who was sitting on the floor like a tight little pretzel.
“Sorry,” she said, watching me stumble.
I regained my balance and walked away from her, whispering under my breath so she couldn’t hear, “Yeah? Just wait. You will be.”
TRULY
NOBODY WAS TALKING to me.
What did I do? Okay, a lot. I know. But not the stuff people were saying online that I did.
I walked the halls between periods. Everybody just watched me until I passed, then turned to whisper behind their hands, behind my back.
If I were brave I’d have gone up the C Stairwell and hid there during lunch. What’s the worst they could do to me if I was caught? Suspend me? Please, please, suspend me. Send me home and don’t let me come back.
But I was scared, so I sat in the hall, pretending to read until Natasha fake-tripped over me, just to literally kick me while I was down, and then walked away muttering.
I learned nothing. I spent every class doing the math of how many minutes until the end of school when I could go home. I counted backward, ticking off the time during class. 173 minutes. Still 173 minutes. Don’t look at the clock again. Ugh, still 173.
172 minutes to go.
172.
Time was stuck. Me, too.
HAZEL
MY PERFECT REVENGE fantasy was coming true: Truly, wandering the halls alone, her huge gray eyes wide and sad. She deserved this, I reminded myself.
Karma.
I even got my smaller, bonus wish of Natasha on the outs, still not back at the Popular Table, though not completely scorned by them anymore either. So, purgatory. I watched her try to get in with Marilicia’s group at lunch, but Marilicia clearly said no. Maybe it was partly retribution, which I understand as a powerful primal force and also personally, but I like to think it was also an aesthetic rejection. Natasha was far too ordinary and strivey for Marilicia and her friends. Those kids are actually cool.
If I were a world dominator type bad-guy, I’d be laughing my evil cackle, enjoying myself fully because my every wish of misery on my past tormentors was coming true. Just exactly as if I had asked a newly freed genie to do it for me. As if it were all my doing.
But much to my own surprise, I couldn’t enjoy it. Couldn’t even cackle.
I briefly wondered if maybe I am godlike—able to seek righteous revenge for wrongs done to me but then unable to rejoice at the suffering of my enemies. But no. Sadly, I’m not. If I were, I would have gone over to Truly when she sat all tight in a ball in the hallway during lunch. I didn’t. I kept my distance.
Failure of empathy? No. Even worse.
Just a failure of courage on my part.
Honestly? I didn’t want to risk being rejected again.
Self-protection.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying not to notice anybody.
When I got home, my house was empty. My mother had left a note that she and my dad were out for a walk together. Not sure what is going on with them lately. After all these months of fighting, hating each other, and heading, I was absolutely sure, toward a divorce, suddenly they, what? Went back in time and became a high school couple in love again? Can you actually fall back in love with somebody? After you’ve been really legit mean to each other?
Plus it was like I didn’t even exist anymore.
I went out back to sit at the gravesite of my bird for a while to collect my thoughts, and looked again at the photo Brooke had texted me the other day. It was of herself making a silly face.
I hadn’t figured out how to respond until right then, at Sweet Pea’s gravesite.
I took a photo of myself looking very serious. Over it I wrote: You shd come over again maybe this time nobody will die.
After I sent it to Brooke, I started worrying that maybe she wouldn’t understand that I was being funny. Or she might think funny weird instead of funny ha-ha. I waited, watching my phone do nothing for a while. I rebooted it a couple times in case it was frozen. Nope. She didn’t reply.
I started to text Truly. I knew I should explain what was really going on and my part in it. I should tell her what I’d done and what Natasha had done, including the rumors Natasha was spreading that it was Truly who posted the mean stuff about her. Hard to believe anybody fell for that. So not Truly’s style at all. Nobody would believe that about Truly, so she should just stop looking so sad and hurt.
Please stop looking so sad and hurt, I texted her.
But then I deleted it. Soon, I promised myself. I’ll text her soon. I’ll admit everything and beg her forgiveness. And maybe she’ll beg for mine, too.
Maybe I’d even call on the phone, despite my deep phonophobia.
Not quite yet, but soon.
Truly just needs a little time to herself, first, I bargained internally. A person sometimes needs a little time to herself, my dad used to say when I was having a meltdown, time to collect herself, have a little think on things.
Which is exactly what I was doing. With good reason: my parents are acting deeply odd and love-drunk; my best friend dumped me; my other friends bore me. Honestly. There I’ve said it, they are nice but mostly it’s like parallel play punctuated by the occasional Congratulations on making all-county orchestra—oh thank you so much congratulations on coming in seventh in the chess tournament oh sweet Jesus kill me now. My dear detested grandmother was just moved to a nursing home, presumably to live forever torturing the nurses there; and my beloved bird was decomposing, buried two feet below where I was sitting alone and ignored in the backyard. Along with the symbols of my earnest and then ironic childhood dreams.
I am way too old to believe that bad things happen precisely because I wished a curse onto someone I love. Maybe that’s why I can’t cackle now.
I’m not sure.
All I know is, all day I kept noticing Truly’s attempts at bravery: sad smiles, head held high, hard swallows before giving answers in class. And each time it broke my heart a little.
NATASHA
EVERYBODY DOES IT.
Most of us won’t admit it but it’s true: each of us wants to be on top, most popular, most powerful, and screw anybody who stands in my way. Some of us do it by blunt force intimidation, like Jack all big and strong, his feet far apart and his arms crossed over his big chest, his posture practically screaming, don’t mess with me. Some of us do it like Brooke, all Zen calm and accepting, unruffled, like she has plenty of friends already even when she’s alone so she doesn’t need you. Evangeline has her tough-girl scowl and her lightning-fast comebacks, and Lulu has her bubbly nature and solid sense of what’s right, plus her tragic family stuff. Clay’s got those happy-sad eyes of his, all lost and sweet and needing help.
Marilicia pretends she’s not in the game, just like Truly’s friend what’s-her-face with the green hair—their camouflage is: It doesn’t matter if nobody likes me, I’m so weird I don’t care because I’m too busy being artsy-fartsy, making ironic comments about people who are way cooler than I could ever hope to be. But I’m obviously a brilliant special snowflake because I have a crap black manicure and look like I got dressed in the dark and brushed my hair with the stick blender.
And then there’s Truly. Innocent, sweet Truly, who never even liked me at all, probably. In elementary school, she made me depend on her and then she acted like I was her charity case because my life was less perfect than hers. And then when the tables were turned and I had some power, she couldn’t stand that one bit, could she? So she got her revenge. Congrats. She’s the most ruthless of us all.
But will any of those people ever admit they’re jealous of everybody else? That they spend time every day measuring themselves against every other kid in our grade and falling short, over and over?
No. They won’t.
Maybe their parents all coddle them too much. Maybe they all actually believe all the stuff we’ve been told since we were toddlers about everybody’s special and everybody in the class is your friend.
Yeah, right.
You’re ordinary. And most of them hate you.
My mom may be a raging bee-yotch to me, but at least she’s honest. I can count on her for one thing: she tells it like it is. So? I’m not as smart, not as pretty, not as smooth socially, not ever going to have a shot at being a scientist, not as popular, not as spoiled, not as loved. We don’t have a closet full of excess paper goods. So what? At least I know it.
That counts for something.
So when I post stuff about Truly from all my anonymous accounts that take like five seconds each to create, do I feel guilty? Ha. Why should I? My own mom helps me plan out what to say. When I get that twinge in my stomach, I just remind myself, or Mom reminds me, that Truly and her mom would do the same to me in one hot heartbeat. Any of them would. It’s all a game. Welcome to the real world.
Stop crying you whiny little wimp, I remind myself, or you’ll be the one on the receiving end. Toughen up and fend for yourself.
Then I post some more stuff, wacky stuff like a few photos I took of her weeks ago, where she was trying to look all sexy and pretty, with my socks stuffed in the dress I wore to my aunt’s wedding. She looks like such a wannabe slut in those, with lipstick smeared across her mouth and her hair flipped over her shoulder. She begged me at the time never to post them or her mom would have a fit. Tough. Bet her mom won’t be the only one grossed out by them, either. I’ll get that party started in fact.
TRULY
SO MUCH FOR home being a break. All day I counted the minutes, the seconds, until I could come home. But for what? There’s no getting away. There’s no way to disconnect, not really, not ever. You can decide not to look, but still the vortex spins and catches your life in it, sucks you under, whether you see it happening or not.
You can’t break free, ever. That’s why they call it the Web, I guess.
I closed my computer. Unplugged it. Didn’t work. I was still staring at it.
Just one look, I thought. Let me check one more time. Maybe somebody came to my defense. Or said lol jk. One person. One good rope, thrown for me to grab onto and pull myself out of the drowning?
Nope. No rope.
More of the same. More photos barely disguised Natasha put up on sites to rate how ugly I am, how hot or not. Maybe she posted most of the stuff, or maybe other people did a lot too. No way to tell. It hardly mattered anymore, especially with all the strangers and even some kids I definitely knew from school but didn’t realize had opinions about me jumping in and judging, rating, criticizing. Looking.
Saying how awful I am, what a terrible person, bad friend, nobody likes me. Why do I bat my eyelashes like such a freak, do I really think boys actually like that? Get over myself. Why do I even come to school when I just annoy everybody by being there all sad-faced and slutty.
On every site. On every app. Faster than I could untag myself.
I didn’t even know I knew so many people. Kids I didn’t really know were joining in the hate-fest. Cracking jokes, making judgments. A bunch of kids from all-county orchestra think I’m stuck up and not as pretty as I act. A few ninth grade girls think every picture of me deserves a LOL or a SMH. Some boy who doesn’t go to school with us and looks sixteen thinks I’m hot. Ew, ew, ew. I couldn’t delete myself fast enough, couldn’t keep up. I closed my computer, giving up.
I sat down at my desk in front of the stack of History Day scripts I had printed out. I stapled them and neatened the pile. I had already proofread them so many times, I had the whole script memorized, all the parts. Don’t check the phone. I proofread the script again. Well researched. No mistakes.
