meat for the slaughter. I almost felt sorry for them.
Why do people think being with someone is the answer to everything? Julia hated it when I said stuff like that, but I can’t help it. Thinking about one person will just turn you into my parents, and all you have to do is look at them to see that love doesn’t give you a perfect life. In their case, it gave them me.
I paid for my “food,” and even though I’d wished mustache girl would suddenly realize she had that thing on her lip and then rush off to bleach it, she hadn’t, and so I had to wander around trying to find a seat. I passed Beth’s 162
table as I was making my way over to what looked like a vacant chair at the end of the choir table.
Yes, that’s what I’m reduced to these days. Hoping the freaking choir people won’t tell me, “Sorry, you can’t sit here.” I know it’s what I deserve, but it’s . . .
it’s hard.
Beth was talking away about her favorite subject—
herself—and so of course everyone was making appropri-ately excited hand gestures of joy. Except Corn Syrup. She really . . . wasn’t. I mean she was trying, but she clearly wasn’t into it. She looked tired. Sad.
I smiled at her. It was stupid and I don’t know why I did it. I guess maybe I was thinking about the stuff she said when we hung out, and how awful English class had been today. How Beth acted when Mel tried talking to her in class, threat wrapped in a smile. How defeated Caro had sounded when she’d talked about her.
How she’d said the last real conversation she’d had was years ago. With me.
Caro started to smile back, but then—well, she realized what she was about to do, and a look of terror fl ashed across her face. It was like I was a little kid again, standing there as she turned away, turned to Beth. I can’t believe I forgot, even for a second, that she’s still the same moron she always was.
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I made myself move then, made myself walk off. I told myself it wasn’t like I’d expected anything different, but I guess part of me had because I felt . . . I felt like I used to years ago, before Julia came along. She never would have done anything like that to me. She—and drinking—made me shinier, stronger. Julia was always there for me.
And then I knew, suddenly, what I had to do.
I dumped my tray and left the cafeteria. I heard people saying stuff—
I went to what used to be her locker and I made it Julia’s again.
It felt so good when I started that I wished I’d done it sooner. I’d thought I couldn’t before. I was afraid. But it was nothing to reach up and pull down all those stupid stars and messages. It was easy.
“Do you want some help?”
It was Patrick. I’d been looking around as often as possible, checking to make sure no one was in the hall, so I should have seen him coming. I mean, he’s a big guy, 164
built like the jerk jocks that shove through the school making sure everyone knows they’re around. He’s not like that, though. He moves like he doesn’t want to be seen. It reminded me of that night, the one where I didn’t see him until I tripped over him and then moved closer and closer, holding on tighter and longer than I ever have with anyone.
He wasn’t standing super close or anything, but I wanted him farther away. I wanted to block him out.
Block memories. His skin. His breath skittering over my ear, my throat. His question to me that night at the movies, about who I used to be and did I miss her, that girl that once was.
“I’m fi ne,” I said, and my voice—it shook. It cracked.
Outside I am tall, but inside I am so small. So weak.
“She wasn’t really a foil star poetry kind of person, was she?” he said, and pointed at the flood of fake stars and words scattered around my feet.
“Nope,” I said, grinding one shoe into a heart sparkling with Beth’s name. (No message, of course. Just her name—BETH—in glittery letters.) And then, when I realized what he said, “You knew her?”
He pulled a star off her locker. “Not really. But she . . .
she stood out. And we talked once.”
“She never told me.”
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He handed me the star. I waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t, just unpeeled and unstuck and caught the door after I yanked it open. It smelled like Julia for just a second, a hint of her under the scent of glue and ink spelling out messages she’d never see, and I felt dizzy with how much I missed her.
I stuck one hand inside to steady myself and found something. On the top shelf, wedged back in the corner, I found a pot of lip gloss, one Julia bought when we went to the beauty supply store with her mom’s credit card the day after Thanksgiving last year, the one she loved in the store but hated when we got outside because instead of deep red it was a dark brownish orange, a shade no one could ever wear.
I remember when she put it in her locker. “To remind me,” she said, “that everyone makes mistakes. Even me.” Then she grinned, so wide, and pulled out two little liquor bottles.
She waved them at me, teasing, and then we snuck into the bathroom. She laughed when I reached for the second while I was still drinking the first, and I laughed too because I knew she’d give it to me, knew Julia would —
