16: THE NOMINEES
FISK MUST HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE DROP CLOTH entirely because it’s still tacked on the wall the next day. It’s not as effective as it was at first, though. Fewer and fewer people look at it when they pass by; fewer still think of me. One of the only people who does spare me a thought is Kelsey Pope. She canters in with her herd of ponies, glancing at it once, then twice, each time her thoughts calling my name.
I haven’t wanted to inhabit Kelsey, haven’t wanted to be trapped in her perfect form. I’d told myself it was a last resort. If all other attempts to kill the suicide rumor failed, then I would make Kelsey tell everyone how she’d made it up. But after what happened with Chris Rackham, I’ve learned that even that won’t work. As soon as I’m no longer controlling Kelsey, she’ll just take back anything I’ve said. She’ll just lie again.
I give up.
Kelsey looks back at the drop cloth a third time, thinking my name. I trail after the ponies, both bothered and intrigued that Kelsey is thinking so much about me. Is she regretting the rumor she started? Or, more likely, is she planning to say something else next?
When they reach Kelsey’s locker, the group of ponies around it is somehow larger than ever.
And it’s jumping up and down.
“Kelsey!” they shriek. And somehow they reform their circle with Kelsey and me at its center.
“You’re a nominee!” they say as they jump, their voices rising and falling with gravity. “For prom!”
“Congratulations!” they all gush, as if Kelsey has already won. As if she isn’t nominated queen for every dance. As if a paste-crown coronation in the school gym is anything but absurd. This time when Kelsey thinks of me, I don’t hesitate. I step forward. Suddenly, I’m balancing on tippy-heeled boots and counterbalancing a dozen pounds of hair. Worse, there’s what feels like a pebble stuck inside my mouth. I poke my tongue at it and find the back to Kelsey’s piercing. The ponies press in around me, expressions morphing from gleeful to vaguely confused.
“You’re not smiling,” one of them notices.
“You’re not jumping,” one says.
“She’s always nominated,” another adds archly. “Maybe it’s not a big deal.”
“You know who wasn’t nominated this time?” the first pony says in my ear, and before I can voice a guess, “Lucas Hayes. He’s gotten so weird.”
“Good move dumping him.”
“Kelsey always knows which way the wind is blowing,” someone whispers with acid, but when I turn to see who has said this, a camera phone is in my face, and two other ponies have appeared giddily at my side. “Here they are,” the pony photographer announces, then lowers the camera. “Kelsey, you’re still not smiling. Let’s try again: Here they are, the prom court!”
“Well, except for Usha Das,” another adds.
“Wait,” I say, “Usha was nominated?”
“Yeah, she’s the fourth nominee.”
“Wow,” I breathe, smiling. Yes, the whole thing is still absurd, but if someone is going to be prom queen, it should be Usha.
“Yeah, wow,” one of the ponies says to me. “My reaction exactly.”
“Of course, you know why,” another adds.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because of you know.”
“She means pity,” the first one says smoothly.
“Pity?” I say.
“People feel sorry for her because her friend killed herself.”
I cock my head. “And what about us? Why are we nominated?”
The other nominees look at each other.
“Because people like us,” one of them says slowly.
“Do they really?” I ask. “I don’t think they do.”
“What’s gotten into you?” the other one says, nostrils flaring.
I shrug. “Call it honesty.”
The ponies look like they have a decisively different name for it. I smile innocently at them. Kelsey is nominated for prom queen? Fine. Let’s see if she wins.
“What happened to your regular clothes?” one of the bolder ponies asks as I join them in the cafeteria line an hour later.
The others outright stare at the wrinkled T-shirt and sweatpants I pulled out of the lost-and-found bin in the locker room. Kelsey had stormed and bucked inside me, but I forced her feet through the elastic cuffs of the sweatpants, her head through the dank cotton of the shirt. I’d gotten the idea for the clothes from Greenvale, though I’d refrained from throwing Kelsey’s original outfit in the toilet. Just.
Anger runs through me and, with it, a sense of rightness and power. I’ve been thinking about it all morning. I know that I can’t make Kelsey say anything she wouldn’t say herself, or she’ll just take it back as soon as she’s herself again. But I can make Kelsey do things, things that she can’t undo later. Kelsey ruined my reputation? Well, I can ruin hers right back.
The sweatpants Kelsey now wears are a stained (with what? don’t ask) baby blue, elastic at the ankles. The shirt advocates for some team called the Fighting Pelicans, though it’s not clear what type of sports team the Fighting Pelicans are or even that the large-beaked bird is a pelican. He looks more like a vulture with a top hat. Kelsey’s hair? In pigtails. High ones. Kelsey had resisted me again and again, especially when I yanked on the sweatpants, but I’ve gotten good at planting my feet on the ground of my own will. It’s like standing still in the middle of the hall just as the warning bell rings. Shoulders bump you on every side; some people will even run smack into you, but you have to stay standing.
“What? You don’t like it?” I try not to show my amusement as the ponies struggle to find the right answer for this question. Come on, you can say it, I think. It’s hideous. Even strangers are turning to look.
“Is it a Spirit Day?” a pony asks hopefully.
“Nope. I just thought I’d try something different.”
“It’s different, all right,” one whispers to another.
“Actually,” one of them says, “my sister’s friends at Bard dress like that.”
“They do?” I ask. “Really?”
“I’ve seen it. It’s, like, the kind of style where you don’t try too hard.”
“Besides, you’d look good in anything, Kelsey.”
They all nod in agreement. Ponies. The worst part is that they’re right. Kelsey looks okay—maybe better than okay, maybe hip, daring, cute, even—in wrinkled lost-and-found gym clothes.
“The line’s moving,” I say, and sigh.
I let the ponies go ahead of me, gathering their salads and soft pretzels. When I get to the counter, I slap down dessert after dessert—slabs of brownie with cracked sugar tops, squares of cake thick with frosting, two wavering towers of soft-serve ice cream—until my tray is laden with small circular plates. Kelsey rages around inside me, and for a moment, I lose my grip on the tray and drop it with a splat. Everyone around me claps sarcastically. The lunch ladies sigh as I reload a fresh tray, but they don’t make me pay twice.
When I slide my tray onto our table, the ponies stare at it.
“Hungry?” one of them ventures.
They share looks.
“That’s brave,” another notes.
“You trying for bulimia? Induce the urge to vomit?”
“What do you mean?” I take up a forkful. “Looks good to me.”
They watch me eat the tray’s contents with big eyes and repulsed mouths. But when I take the last bite of the last piece of cake, they start applauding, this time in earnest.
No luck with rudeness. No luck with clothing. No luck with food. On the way to art class, I’m racking my
