Unfriended, page 17
immediately change your password because locker143542 is not secure
5. But who really is?
What was she even blathering on about?
My hand clenched the phone tighter, tighter, my one lifeline to everybody, this phone I begged my parents to buy me for my thirteenth birthday, back when becoming a teenager seemed like it would be so great, so exciting and full of adventure.
Hahahahaha.
I threw my phone up into the air. I watched it arc perfectly through the air, like a Salugi ball thrown by Evangeline, or Jack, one of the kids who is actually coordinated. It sliced silently through the unbelievably blue sky and then crashed into the water in the center of the pond. Not an explosion. Barely disturbed the pond water, never mind the universe. Just a quiet plink.
And it was gone.
53
JACK
I WALKED OVER to Truly’s house instead of going to practice. I didn’t care. Coach could bench me. He’d be right to. I was letting the team down, cutting practice, I knew. Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing, though.
You just do.
She lived a long way from school, I knew. I had looked her up in school directory. Not in a creepy stalker way, just . . .
Okay maybe that does seem creepy stalker of me. I was looking up her phone number because I was going to call her to ask What was the science homework but I hung up before anybody answered because, yeah.
But I am pretty good at memorizing things like her phone number and her address. And walking. I can just walk and walk; it’s no problem.
I rang the doorbell at her house. Nobody answered. I knew she had left school early, I watched her walk out and off school grounds, watched her walking toward home, so I knew it wasn’t that she’d stayed after school hanging out with friends or doing sports or anything.
I rang a few more times. No answer. I was about to start knocking and yelling but then I heard a squeak from around back. I stayed very still, listening for another sound. One little squeak. Then another, each followed by a dull little thump.
I went down the steps and around past the garage onto the narrow side path. When I got to the backyard, I saw her, sitting on a swing in the wooden swing set back there, slowly swaying.
I didn’t want to startle her so I walked with heavy steps toward her. She lifted her eyes slowly to see me and didn’t scream or jump, so I kept going.
When I got to the swing set I wasn’t sure if I should maybe give her some pushes like a little kid, which is what she looked like, or just sit down in the other swing. I went with sit on the other swing. It seemed like the better choice.
I pushed a bit with my toes, but kept them in the dirt, dragging, catching up to Truly’s rhythm.
After about a million minutes of silence, I thought of something to say: “How’s your busted knee?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Okay.”
“The stitches came out fine?”
She nodded a tiny bit.
“So it’s healing up well?”
“Crusting over.”
I nodded. “Sorry again about smashing into you.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t . . .”
And then she started bawling. Seriously. Not a few little tears tracking down her cheeks like used to happen to my mom sometimes back in Ohio when she thought I was asleep. No—this was full-out sobs, with her shoulders shaking and her nose running so much she had to wipe it on her sweatshirt sleeve. I didn’t know what to do. I had no tissues. My mom tries to give me a travel pack sometimes but I never take it. So I had nothing.
Well, not nothing.
I leaned forward and reached into my backpack. “Here,” I said, handing her the small white box with its slightly crushed ribbons.
She didn’t take it. She was still sobbing. Her shoulders were heaving and wet was dripping from her face to the dirt. Mostly tears, I think, but there might have been snot and drool in there, too.
Why didn’t I take those tissues?
“Oh, wait,” I said. “I have a napkin. Don’t worry it’s clean. My sandwich today was kind of dry, not my best effort—turkey with not enough honey mustard and some Craisins. Eh. But on the plus side, I didn’t use the napkin. So you’re in luck.”
I had fished it out by then and held the napkin under her face, which was parallel to the mud puddle fast forming between her tiny feet.
She took my napkin and rubbed it on her face.
First time I ever felt happy about a too-dry sandwich.
She sniffed a bunch of times and then said, “Thanks.”
I was still holding the box. I reached it out so she could see it better. “This is for you,” I said. “Maybe it will cheer you up.”
She shook her head slightly, or maybe she just was sitting there and the swing bobbled a little.
“Do you want me to open it for you?” I asked.
Maybe she was too shy to say she did want me to open it for her, yes please. Or maybe she was thinking, Why is this guy being a creeper and bringing me a present? Like my mom hinted she would, though Mom thought we were talking about a possible present, not an actual one. Still, my mom is very smart about reactions, and normally I would never ignore her advice. But it was too late by then to have not bought it, so I decided to just keep it tucked into my backpack where nobody putting away socks would notice it accidentally.
And now it was also too late to not show it to Truly.
“Or you could open it,” I suggested. “When you’re ready. No rush.”
“Who’s it for?” she asked.
“You,” I said.
She plucked it gently from my hand. Then she just held it for a while. The ribbons were crushed in multiple places. I wished they looked as smooth as when I first got them. I wished she would open it. She was just holding it, still.
“It’s not my . . . why?”
“I just wanted to,” I said.
“Did you see what they said about me online?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Some.”
“Oh, no,” she moaned.
“People say a lot of stupid and untrue stuff. What are you gonna do?”
She leaned forward and carefully lifted the box off my hand. Her bony little fingers began working those knots open. I had spent a bunch of my free time picturing that exact thing, so much, in fact, that it was like I was remembering it, even while I was watching it happen for the first and only time right in front of me.
She dropped the ribbons into her lap and lifted the box top off, then fished the bracelet out. It didn’t look as pretty as I remembered from the shop. It looked like maybe I made it out of tin foil scraps.
“It’s for you,” I said. “It’s a bracelet.”
She looked up at me suddenly, the gray parts of her eyes floating in pools of red. It was a tiny bit scary. She held the bracelet up and looked at it. Please think it’s pretty, I was thinking. Please don’t think I’m a creepy stalker.
I was imagining that she’d maybe put it on, asking for my help if she wanted it, and then maybe shyly smile and thank me. And then maybe we could swing a while, talking about this and that.
That’s how I was thinking it should go.
But instead she just sat still, with the bracelet dangling limply off her finger.
“I got it for you a while ago,” I explained. “After I knocked you down at Salugi. I was waiting for a good time to . . . but then I saw you leave school early today, and I know all that stupid stuff people posted, so I thought, maybe you could use a present.”
She looked down at the bracelet dangling like a spiderweb from her fingers, then back at me. “Why are you so nice to me?” she whispered.
“I like you,” I admitted.
She shook her head.
“It’s true,” I said. “I mean I know I don’t know you that well, but I’ve noticed you for a long time. I liked your bug-poop-in-dust report. Also your gravelly voice and how smart and good a person you are, and—”
“No,” she interrupted. “I’m not good. I’m petty and selfish and I threw my phone in Big Pond just now.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m just wrecked.”
“Wrecked meaning your busted knee?” I asked. “Because that’s my fault.”
“No, like, my personality,” she said.
“Your personality seems good to me,” I said.
“It’s not,” Truly said.
“Maybe you’re just, kind of like that bracelet,” I said, wishing she would please put the bracelet on instead of leaving it dangling limply like that. “Delicate, a little bit. Most of us are, no matter how sturdy we look, I think. So maybe we all have to be, you know, a little gentle with each other. Less rough. But maybe it’s also stronger than it seems so don’t worry too much about that.”
She blinked a few times. Some teardrops were caught in her eyelashes.
“I don’t know a lot about bracelets or girls, though, so I could be wrong,” I admitted.
“Thank you, Jack,” she said.
“So you want help putting it on?”
“Okay,” she said, and held out her hand to me. I managed to open the bracelet’s clasp on my third try and stretched the bracelet around her tiny pale wrist. Then it took another few tries to open the clasp again and hook it inside the tiny silver O. But I did it, my thick thumbs managed.
Truly waggled her hand a bunch of times. The bracelet twinkled in the sunlight while she did it. It didn’t fall apart in confetti bits on the dirt, luckily, because that would have been really bad for a couple of reasons, including that I had just basically compared her to the bracelet. So, phew on that.
She let her hand hang down by her side. The bracelet looked just like I’d hoped it would, sparkly and pretty on her wrist.
“If you don’t like it, you can return it and choose something else,” I said, not taking my eyes off it.
“I like it a lot,” she said.
“It’s not too . . . flimsy?”
“The opposite,” she said. “It feels strong as a rope to me, actually.”
“Okay,” I said, hoping she meant it in a good way. I stood up from the swing. “A rope?”
“Yeah.”
“You like rope?”
She smiled a little. She has such a sweet smile. “I’ve actually been wishing for one to grab on to.”
“Oh. Okay. Good then. Well, I guess that’s all. I just, I wanted you to have that. It’s not real rope, which, if I’d known you wanted it, I guess I could’ve . . . and it’s no watermelon lollipop but . . .”
She laughed. I hadn’t heard her laugh full-out before. It had kind of a bubbling-over quality, like when you’re heating milk and it gets all frothy.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Phew,” I said. “Well, then, see you tomorrow, bye.”
I live far from Truly, the other side of town, the less fancy area, but a long walk wasn’t going to hurt me any. Very little could right then. I’m strong. I got through people saying no to me before this; I could get through a girl wearing a bracelet I bought her and saying it was perfect, thank you. Even if my face might explode from smiling so hard as I walked along. Even if I might have to run partway home because of so much energy booming inside me.
One foot in front of the other, my mom says, that’s how you get through stuff—keep going. Keep going, I told myself, smooth and steady; don’t jump around or shout YES! Not until you’re out of sight of Truly’s house and then a few blocks more to be safe. I calmed myself down by thinking about what to make for dinner. Maybe something new, something with multiple steps and lots of ingredients. I had enough energy in me to make a ten-course meal. Something delicious, and when she’s done Mom would say, “Oh, Jack, thank you. This is so good.”
And it would be.
BROOKE
WHEN I GOT home from Evangeline’s after school, my dad was standing in the kitchen, staring at groceries. He had spread them all over the counters in piles and groups instead of putting them away straight from the bags, the way my mother does. His way drives her nuts. She has to leave the kitchen when he unloads groceries. He gets it done but it takes forever, my mom complains. They have such different styles and speeds it’s kind of funny they could work together all those years in the bookstore and also at home, always together. Though, of course, their store was as belly-up as Hazel’s dead bird, now, so maybe it wasn’t such a successful partnership after all.
“What are you doing, Dad?” I asked him.
“Hmmm?”
I leaned against the fridge with him, crossed my arms like him. “Why are we admiring the groceries?”
He laughed his snort-laugh. “I just spent two hundred dollars in the grocery store,” he said. “I came home with all this but no milk, which is what we needed.”
“Oops,” I said.
“And I was just thinking, I once spent two hundred dollars on a car.”
“Really? Two hundred bucks for a whole car?”
“Yup,” Dad said. “Well, it had no floor. And no brakes.”
“Oh.”
“But I was young,” he said, sighing. “And it was a car. And I had places to go and no need yet for a floor, or milk, or brakes.”
“You miss it?” I asked him. “That car and, that . . . feeling?”
“Nah,” he said. “Other than the lack of milk, I’m the happiest guy I know.”
“Yeah, but, what about . . . you know, all the bad stuff that’s happening?”
“Bad stuff’s gonna come,” Dad said. “You just have to walk it off and start over, when it does.”
“Sure, but what if you’re the one who blew it?”
“Everybody’s that one sometimes, darlin’,” Dad said. “I figure, you go all out, shoot the moon, every time. Sometimes you get lucky. And meanwhile you work on developing a good second move for when you mess up. If you never fail, you’re not trying hard enough. That’s my strategy. For what it’s worth.”
“Mine, too,” I said. “I think. I’m trying, anyway.”
“Then good luck to you. You’re gonna need it. Now help me put all this crap away before your mother gets home and sees what a mess I’ve made.”
While I was helping I got a Snapchat from Clay. It was a photo of the C stairwell. Over it he’d written, “Best place on earth.”
I managed to save it, just in time.
NATASHA
I WAS STUCK.
It was a tight squeeze getting into the dress, but I had forced it on. I had told them all I was definitely wearing it tomorrow for the performance, so it had to work. It had to. They were all mad at me enough already, for being harsh to Truly at school and then she went missing. I told them she sometimes gets emotional and not to worry but I don’t know if they believed me until we saw she deleted a bunch of stuff and answered Brooke’s text. So at least she wasn’t dead or anything. They still all seemed mad, though.
Could I really have grown so much since my aunt’s wedding? No way. The dress must’ve shrunk. I somehow worked it down over my body and checked myself out in the mirror. I looked like a cartoon character. Or maybe a sausage. It was horrible. And I hadn’t even zipped it yet! This wasn’t going to work, obviously. I started peeling it off, from the bottom up. My mother didn’t have any dresses I could steal because the woman is way skinnier than I am. As she lets me know, even without saying so, every time she glances at me.
It had already been a long afternoon, when we were supposed to be practicing our play at Evangeline’s, but instead we basically spent the whole time online looking for Truly and making sure she was okay. And then deleting or blocking all the mean stuff about her everywhere.
Ugh. Can nothing work for me? Ever?
I was sweating. I was taking the dress off over my head and it was really freaking tight. Maybe Mom washed it, or took it in to prank me. Or somehow when Truly tried it on that afternoon she came over and the two of us hung out laughing so much, maybe the dress had somehow squooshed down to her tiny proportions.
Obviously that was impossible. The dress was cutting off blood flow to my brain. I had gotten it partway off. I had to stop to catch my breath and reassess my strategy.
The dress was inside-out over my chest, head, and arms. It was so freaking dark. I hate overhead lights and I didn’t need it bright as an operating room to check myself out in the mirror in a dress I was worried might be a squeeze, thank you. But with the dress inside-out over my head in the lowest dimmed click of lamplight of my room, I couldn’t see anything.
Okay, it was time to admit the truth: I was completely trapped in the torture-chamber-tube of dress, and my fingers were starting to prickle, up there in the air like Hey, throw me the football.
I bent over so my hands touched my rug and tried to step onto the hem of the dress with my toes. It wasn’t working. I chased the bottom of the dress (which was almost at my fingertips) around with my feet. Folded in half like that I lost track of where I was and crashed into my night table. So there went my lamp, smashing onto the floor in shards of glass. In case it wasn’t dark enough before.
“You okay?” Mom called out in the hall.
“Fine!” I yelled back.
“What are you doing in there?”
“Nothing!
“Did you just throw your lamp against the wall?” she demanded. “Because so help me, Natasha, I have had just about enough of your—”
“No!” I yelled. Oooh, I was fully sweating.
Her phone rang. I could hear it perfectly well. Was she like leaning against my door? What is wrong with her?
“Oh, hello, Alicia,” Mom said. Alicia? That’s Truly’s mom. Why was she calling my mother while I was trapped in my dress?
I’m fine, Mom was saying. You? Oh, really? No I didn’t know that. Sorry to hear she’s . . . Humph, Truly always seemed so even-keeled . . . Uh-huh. I for one try to stay out of . . . uh-huh. Ugh, kids these days, I tell you, the screens! It’s constant! And the . . . oh. No, I didn’t hear that. I’m not sure why you think I would have anything to do with . . . Uh-huh. I am listening, Alicia, but did it occur to you that maybe you’re only getting one side of the . . . I know that. Yes. Who said? I don’t know anybody named Hazel. Hazel? Oh, that kid. Well, she’s obviously a paragon of sanity, that one. She said what? Why do you trust her word over mine, then? What proof? Well, but, uh-huh but maybe Truly posted some nasty stuff about Natasha, too. Did you think of . . . These things have two sides, at least, and you’re only . . . Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I don’t see why it’s Natasha’s fault if Truly throws her phone in the . . . was Natasha even there? Right, so how is this . . . Are you suggesting . . . Well, there I agree with you. You bet. And you keep Truly away from . . . Hello? Hello?
