Unfriended, page 18
“Natasha! Open the door this minute!” Mom yelled, banging on it. “Or so help me I will kick it off the hinges. Natasha, don’t test me I will do it!”
I shuffled to the door still trapped inside the dress. On the way I guess I stepped on some glass shards that used to be my lamp. “Ow ow ow,” I was saying as I bent in half to unlock my door. My mother slammed the door open and it swung into my arm-and-head enclosing dress and knocked me over onto my butt. “Ow!”
“What are you doing?” my mother demanded, flicking on the overhead. Great.
I lifted my arms enough so I could see her face through the dress/periscope. “Just hanging,” I said.
“Just . . . have you lost your mind?”
“Are my feet bleeding?”
“Yes! And you are going to rip that dress. Why are you always such a disaster?” She sat down on my bed, cross-legged. “That lamp cost eighty dollars. And unlike Truly’s family . . . that was her mother on the phone just now. Do you know what Truly did today?”
“Cut school,” I said. “Could you . . . Mom? I can’t. . . .”
“She tossed her phone in Big Pond. And her mother wants me to tell you to stay away. Like it’s my kid who’s going mental.”
“I’m hemorrhaging from my feet and trapped vertically in a dress,” I said through the tunnel of dress. “Truly’s mom could make a pretty strong case, I think.”
“Good point.”
We both started to laugh. A little at first, but then the whole thing just, I don’t know. It all seemed so nuts. I rested my hands on my bed so I wouldn’t topple over onto the glass again. Mom and I could not stop laughing. I ended up on my knees beside the bed, like a little kid saying her prayers, by the time we got a hold of ourselves. A few aftershocks of laughing shook us as we sighed it out.
“So, what are you doing?” Mom asked finally.
“I can’t get out of this dress,” I said, laughing a little more. “Can you help me?”
“I don’t know how,” she said.
I swallowed hard. The laughs disappeared. She didn’t know how to help me. “I need you to know how.”
“But . . .”
“Just try something,” I whispered. “Please be able to.”
She tugged and yanked and pulled. She dragged me onto the bed. I stepped on more glass shards and banged my shin on the bed frame, but little by little and then all at once I was out. I blinked in the air.
“Ugh, that was like childbirth,” my mother said, gawking at my nearly naked, sweaty body. “Never planned to birth you a second time at age thirteen.”
“Ew,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself.
“Oh, Natasha, look at you.”
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t look at me. I’m fat and sweaty and I don’t want to hear it, okay?”
“Natasha, I never said you —”
“Yes, you did,” I said. I was shaking, my fists clutched in front of my face. “You always do. You make me hate myself, and then, it’s like, all I am is hate. All I have, all I can put out there into the world is hate.” I was thumping my fists into my forehead.
Mom’s face looked shocked, maybe hurt, maybe mad. I didn’t know and didn’t care. “You’re gonna blame me for every sorry thing in your life?” she asked.
“Hurt people hurt people you once said,” I yelled at her. “Well, you must be in agony because look what you do to me. And make me do to my friends.”
“Your so-called friends deserve what they—”
“No! Mom. You’re not listening! I hurt. I hurt so much.”
“If I’m hard on you, Natasha,” Mom started, “it’s because I’m on your side, and I want you to—”
“Ugh! Maybe you could go be on somebody else’s side for a little while,” I said. “Go be on Truly’s side. I need a break.”
A small laugh escaped Mom’s lips. It seemed like she was trying to hold it in like a burp, but it got away from her.
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re funny. You don’t even try, and you’re . . .” She tossed me my old green sweatshirt from the bed. “You’re funny. Did you really step on the glass?”
I nodded, slipping into the comfort of that big sweatshirt. It used to be my dad’s. At least there was room for me inside it. She really thinks I’m funny? Funny is good. People like funny. Brooke, especially,
“Let me take a look,” Mom said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.”
She patted my bed. I rolled my eyes and sighed. She patted the bed again.
I tiptoed over and sat down next to her. Flipped my legs up onto the comforter and let her look at my huge ruined feet.
“Ooooh,” she said. “Stay right here. Don’t move. There’s a bunch of glass in there. I have to get alcohol, and, I guess, a tweezers, some paper towels, if we have any. Ugh. I think we’re out.” She picked up the base of the lamp, its shade hanging at an injured angle, and placed it back onto my night table. “I’ll find something.”
“Can’t we just leave bad enough alone?” I asked.
“No,” she said, her arms crossed with my dress knotted up around them. “We have to get every last piece out, dodo. Might take some work, and be disgusting, but we can do it. We’re tough.”
“Do you even know how to do it?”
She turned her face away and sighed. “I’ll try,” she said. “No promises.”
“It’s gonna hurt,” I said.
She nodded. “It’s not gonna be a picnic for me, either.” She looked out into the hallway, away from me. “I’ll be as gentle as I can. And then we’ll see about letting out this dress. Okay?”
“I guess.”
“Natasha,” she said, turning around.
“What.”
“I . . . I’ll get some ice,” she said. “That might take away some of the pain.”
“Okay,” I said. “Worth a try.”
HAZEL
“SO THAT ANSWERS my first question,” I said to Truly when she got to the lockers this morning.
“What question?”
“You’re still alive,” I said.
She looked at me solemnly. Her hair was shiny and hanging down, no ponytail today, just clipped back on one side. She had on a bit of mascara and no eyeliner, with clear lip gloss. She looked beautiful. Made me almost want to scrub my own face clean. She didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “As I said in my—you read the e-mails I sent you?”
She nodded.
“I had good reasons but still,” I said. “I shouldn’t have hacked your accounts.”
“No,” Truly said. “You shouldn’t have.”
At least she was talking to me. I held out my hand, open palm, to give her the lock I had bought her. A word lock. “It spells friend,” I told her.
She didn’t take it.
“You can change the word if you want.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, her head bent. “I know I didn’t—”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
We just stood there for a minute, the new lock on my hand like an unchosen hors d’oeuvre. “Maybe keep it as a spare,” I suggested after the early bell rang.
She lifted it from my hand.
“I like your bracelet,” I said.
Her cheeks pinked up. “Thanks.” She turned to her locker and spun her old combination. My plan had been to take her lock off and put the new one on as a surprise, but at the last second I decided against it, as maybe too much. She knelt and arranged her things.
“My parents are so upset,” she said, toward the inside of her locker.
“They probably hate me,” I said.
“They don’t.” She shook her head. “They just think we all got a little out of hand. They’re disappointed that I didn’t tell them what was going on with me, and everything.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I guess I was trying to not be babyish.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, but like even my grandmother has people she complains to, tons of them, and she’s anything but babyish. She’s ancient!”
“She’s okay then?”
“She’s horrible, but, you know, fine, thanks.” It felt so good to talk with Truly again. “My point is, you can be strong and independent but still have backup from people you trust.”
“Now you tell me. I’m grounded from going online for a month. They say it’s just a cooling down period, take a breather after everything that happened. Not a punishment.”
“But that’s how it feels?”
“A little,” she said. “Yeah.”
“As if being online is the problem.”
“Right?” She stood up and leaned against the locker beside hers. “Though I guess the online-ness of it did make it all worse.”
“And faster and more, like, public.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Exactly.”
“I’ll ban myself for the month too,” I said. “From the whole Internet. Or all screens if you want.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” I said. “In solidarity.”
She smiled a little. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Did you really throw your phone in Big Pond? People were saying.”
She nodded. “It’s gonna take me until about tenth grade to earn enough to buy a new one.”
“I bet,” I said.
“Stupid, huh?”
“Nah,” I said. “Sometimes a person has to make the grand gesture.”
She looked up at me, warmly I think, and said, “Yeah.”
“Did it make a glorious splash?”
“Not really, no.”
“Well maybe in your memories the splash will grow,” I said.
I picked up my triptych presentation on the role of bananas in the rise of the Confederacy. “Did you know bananas played almost no role in the rise of the Confederacy?”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“Spoiler alert,” I said.
She managed a small sympathy smile, then said, “You can go ahead.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.” Dismissed.
“Hazel?”
I turned around.
“See you down there,” she said. “Okay?”
“Good luck to us all,” I said. I picked up my triptych and headed toward the gym, trailing yellow and gold banana glitter behind me.
TRULY
I STOPPED IN the girls’ bathroom doorway, halfway in, halfway out. I was planning to take a moment alone before facing them. But no. They were all in there and now it was too late. They’d already seen me.
“Hi,” I said. I braced myself. Whatever they say, I’m okay. I can deal. That’s what my mom told me to remember. No matter what, I’m okay. Just breathe.
“Hi, Truly,” Brooke said.
I waited. I breathed. I was okay.
“Hey,” Brooke went on. “Did you see what happened with all those posts and stuff?”
I shook my head, happy suddenly to have the excuse. “My parents took away my computer for a month.”
“Oh,” Brooke said. “Sorry. We got most of that crap taken off-line. Some of it we couldn’t, but I think we deleted nearly everything mean. About any of us.”
“Really?” I asked. “The, all the . . . pictures and, opinions, rumors?”
“Yeah,” Brooke said.
“In the trash where it belongs,” Evangeline said.
“Well, the virtual trash,” Lulu said.
“So you just went through and . . .” What? “When?”
“Instead of rehearsing yesterday afternoon,” Evangeline said.
“YOLO!” Lulu yelled.
“Yeah, we’re gonna bomb today,” Natasha said. “We have to use our scripts.”
“I’m sure that’s fine,” I said. “Thanks, you guys. So much.”
“Shouldn’t have been there to begin with,” Brooke said, and shrugged.
“No,” I said, looking over at Natasha. “None of it should have.”
We both knew she’d been the one who posted at least those pictures of me with kissy faces. She was the only one who had those.
“True,” Natasha said. “Whoever posted all that is such a—”
“You look really nice,” I interrupted. No need to go there.
“I do?” she asked.
I nodded. I breathed.
“You were right, Natasha,” Brooke added. “That dress is perfect.”
“And I love the scarf over it,” Lulu said. “That’s such a great addition. Don’t you think, Truly?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“How about these sweatpants,” asked Evangeline. “Sexy, right?”
“Super hot,” Brooke assured her.
Lulu shook a bottle of white hair spray and told Brooke and Evangeline to cover their eyes, then sprayed a toxic cloud onto their hair. It dispersed into the air. Almost invisible, but not quite, and we were all breathing the fumes. A dusting of white covered Brooke’s hair and Evangeline’s.
“Do I look like George Washington?” Brooke asked, coughing. We all gathered around the sink and looked into the mirror above it, together.
“Totally,” Lulu said, and crossed her eyes. “I thought you were a dollar bill, standing there.”
“I almost put you in my wallet,” I said.
They all laughed. Then Brooke stuck out her tongue at our reflection. Natasha made a fish face. I tilted my head and raised one eyebrow. Evangeline snapped a photo of us in the mirror.
“Let’s post that,” Brooke said. “We gotta put something good up, right? Not now though. Don’t we go first? I think I just forgot everything.”
We all grabbed our stuff. As the others rushed out, Natasha grabbed my wrist, the one with the bracelet on it, and held me back.
“Hey,” she whispered. “Truly, so you know? I’m not the one who . . .”
“Let’s not . . .” I whispered back. “Not right now. Let’s just let it all . . . My mom says we should take a break from each other, but . . .”
“Fine.” She dropped my hand.
I held the door open and let her walk through. I followed her. “You okay?”
“No, Truly. You killed me. Hurt me to the core. Get over yourself. You want a break? Great, fine, whatever. I actually don’t care.”
“No,” I said. “I meant, you’re walking very . . . carefully. Are your feet hurt?”
“Long story,” she said. “Don’t ask.”
“You’re always mad at me.”
“Yeah,” Natasha said. “That’s probably true.”
“Okay. Well, what I was gonna say is just, instead of talking it through or taking a break? Maybe we could just try not to be so mad at each other all the time.”
We walked along, side by side, not talking. Both stepping tenderly.
“It’s kind of a habit by now,” she whispered.
I smiled up at her and nodded. “I know. For me, too. I didn’t, I guess I didn’t want to know that about myself, but . . .”
“But there it is. Now we know.”
“And I’m terrible at breaking habits. Just ask my cuticles.” I held out my hands.
“Ew. That is disgusting,” she said, slapping them down. “Put that freak show away.”
She grabbed the gym door and held it open for me.
“Thanks,” I said, and smiled. It wasn’t even a fake smile. I don’t know fully why.
“Okay,” she whispered as I passed through. “I’ll try. No promises.”
“Fair enough,” I whispered back. “Me, too.”
Ms. Canuto was under the basketball hoop, yelling into the microphone at everybody to sit down, settle down! Welcome to History Day please sit!
Natasha ran on tiptoes to join Brooke, Evangeline, and Lulu in the front corner, beside the flagpole. I sat down at the back, alone.
“No, no, no,” Ms. Canuto said into the microphone. “Truly Gonzales! Stand up!”
I stood up. People turned around to look at me.
“You have to introduce the play!” Ms. Canuto said as I stood there, trying not to devour myself fingers first. “Come on up front! Boys and girls, settle down now. For our first event of History Day, we have an original play! Here to introduce the play she wrote—starring Brooke Armstrong, Natasha Lawrence, Lulu Peters, and Evangeline Murphy—is Truly Gonzales! A round of applause and your attention please! Truly? Come up here, dear!”
Great. I walked around the halfheartedly clapping crowd to the front of the gym. As Ms. Canuto lowered the microphone way down to my level, I looked out at the faces of all the kids in the whole eighth grade. They were kind of swimmy, like in my dream of the horrible carnival. There was Hazel, though, watching me. I latched my eyes onto hers like you’re supposed to do on the horizon when you’re on a boat, to keep from puking out your seasickness.
“This is a play about Benedict Arnold.” I gripped the microphone stand. “He was a traitor. A bad guy. As everybody knows.”
