brains for what reputation-killing move to try next when I literally run into my pony escort, which has halted in the art room doorway.
“Oh, God, look,” one of them whispers.
I peer over their shoulders and see Wes Nolan sitting at his table, sketching. “So what?” I say.
“So his nose is practically touching the page.”
“Page. Paige!” the other one squeals, hitting her friend. “Funny!”
Both Usha and Harriet look over from where they stand at Mr. Fisk’s desk. “Shhhh!” the other pony says, managing to be even louder. “Do you think he you knows to it?”
“Ew! Gross!” They begin jostling each other over the grossness of this.
I look from one pony to the other. “I’m going to ask Wes Nolan to prom,” I announce. I wait for resistance from Kelsey, but this time, there’s nothing.
The ponies, however, react. “You’re what?”
“Asking Wes to prom.”
“Right?” one says, eyes glittering. “He can give you a corsage of weeds from his backyard!”
“And you can spend the dance outside watching him smoke pot!” adds the other.
“But”—the first one makes a mock-sad face—“you’ll probably never live up to the memory of Paige Wheeler.”
“No, seriously. I’m asking him.” I slide between them and up to Wes’s table, which yes, carries the slight scent of smoke. Wes looks up at the sound of my approach. I wait for him to grin and say something smart-ass, as usual, but he offers only a blank stare.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.” Still no grin, and I wonder what is wrong with him.
Now that I’m here standing in front of him, my heart is clomping as loud as Kelsey’s stupid boots, even though it’s not me standing here. It’s Kelsey and Wes Nolan. Who cares?
The thing is, I’ve never asked a boy to a dance.
Or anywhere.
“Wes?”
“Yeah?”
I take a breath and say, loud enough to carry, “Would you like to go to prom with me?”
By the end of my question, the already quiet room holds not even a pencil scratch. I glance over my shoulder. Everyone is staring, including Mr. Fisk, who doesn’t even bother to tell me to get back to my seat. The ponies are gawping. Wes mumbles something.
“Prom is kind of stupid, I know. And we don’t have to do the corsage thing,” I barrel on. “Or the dinner.”
“I said no,” he repeats quietly, and I vaguely realize that he already said this a second ago, but I talked right over him.
It seems like I’m standing there forever. “But I’m Kelsey Pope.”
He nods. “You are.”
“But, but . . . ,” I stammer, “I’m not joking. Did you think I was joking?”
“Why would you be joking?”
I put a hand to my face. My skin is hot. I can’t turn around and face all of those people staring at me, though a blush on Kelsey probably looks rosy and inviting, unlike the splotchy skin disease of my blushes.
But that’s just it, isn’t it? It’s not me who Wes said no to. It’s Kelsey. And, wasn’t this what I wanted? To embarrass Kelsey Pope? To ruin her? And then I realize, Wes saying no is way better than if he’d said yes.
“Guess it was a long shot.” I smile. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll still be available.”
“Um, sure.” Wes’s blank expression clouds with puzzlement. He drops his eyes to his sketchbook, leaving me to walk the entire length of the room back to the ponies.
“What was that?” one of them asks. “Some kind of joke?”
“Not at all.”
“Yeah, right.” She nudges the other. “Who would want to go to prom with Wes Nolan?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I would.”
The ponies become suddenly and intently focused on their art projects. They’re the only ones, though. The rest of the class bubbles with whispers and glances. I smile around the room, pleased that finally there’s no one, not even Greenvale Greene, willing to meet my eyes and smile back.
17: THE OUTCAST
WES WAS THE TIPPING POINT. BY THE LAWS OF RIDICULOUS HIGH school logic, making up lies about a dead girl doesn’t touch Kelsey’s reputation, but getting rejected by Wes Nolan makes her the joke of the school. The next week, Brooke, Evan, and I follow behind Kelsey. Even the dead kids are interested in the fallout from Kelsey’s botched prom proposal. Me especially. And this time, I’m not disappointed. Kelsey walks to her locker in a rush of whispers, everyone repeating the same rumor that they’ve all already heard: Wes Nolan turned her down. Her! Kelsey Pope! Their whispers lilt with excitement, and their eyes shine with glee. I realize that they’ve been hoping for this. They’re glad to see her brought low. And I wonder if this is what popularity really is, people waiting to hate you in the open.
The burners are the worst. Or at least the loudest. We pass a cluster of them by the drinking fountain.
“Hey, Pope! Don’t you have something to ask me?” they call.
“No, me!”
“Me!” the girls chime in. “Me!”
“I’ll even buy you that corsage,” Heath Mineo, fresh from his suspension, adds, somehow managing to make the word corsage sound lewd.
For once, Wes Nolan doesn’t seem to find the joke funny. He ducks his head and disappears down the hall in the opposite direction, which only makes his friends laugh harder.
“This is too much,” Evan says.
“Not even close,” Brooke tells him. “People should get what they deserve.”
“What did she do to deserve this? Ask the wrong person to prom?”
“No,” Brooke says. “She spread rumors about Paige’s death. It’s karma, bitch. Right, Paige?”
Both of them look at me.
“I’m not going to feel bad for Kelsey Pope. Why should I?”
“Because you know what it feels like to have a rumor spread about you,” Evan replies.
“Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”
It doesn’t take long for Evan and Brooke to grow bored with Kelsey’s long walks down barbed hallways. I keep following her anyway, until a near-silent lunch with the ponies and another razzing by two burner girls sends her to the office with complaints of an oncoming migraine. Maybe the gossip has reached even the teachers, because they let her sign out without protest. I follow her all the way to the school doors and watch her cross the parking lot, hair whipping in the wind, chin tucked down into her coat.
She lied about you, I tell myself. She deserves what she gets.
I’m sitting up on the roof when the final bell rings and, a moment later, dozens of voices begin to float up to me like balloons. Another day of school done. I peer down at them, the tiny people trickling out in pairs or clusters. I stand and stretch, thinking that I might sit in on the German Club meeting, which almost sounds like English if you listen to it sideways. I’m halfway across the roof when the tiny floating voices turn from balloons to firecrackers, screeching up into the air.
The sound is so terrible, so startling, that I nearly lose my hover.
They’re screaming. Everyone is screaming.
Then, pitched up over the screams, a squeal of breaks.
A suck of breath.
A crash.
