“Donnie and I walked home that night spitting on the ground. Trying to wipe all traces of them. Kramer drove up next to us. Another guy was in the passenger seat. ‘You girls shouldn’t walk home alone. Let me give you a ride home.’ We were so scared they were going to kidnap us or something, I don’t know what we thought. Crazy thoughts. I snatched her hand and ran the opposite way, tearing through someone’s backyard. ‘This was supposed to make us more empowered?’ Donnie kept saying after that night.”
“What was it like the next day?”
“It was like Donnie and I became queen of the freshmen. They catered to everything we did. It was crazy. The attention we got,” I say. “So I went with it—it was so stupid. What was I supposed to do? Tell someone? Cry about it? It would make me seem vulnerable and weak. And if I told someone? Can you imagine the response? ‘No one forced you into it, did they?’ Those boys looked at us the next day and lifted us up because they felt guilty, and that’s why we became queen of the freshmen. I walked around pretending I was happy because that’s what they wanted from me. ‘See? I’m not damaged. I’m not sad.’”
Ali sits down next to me and our arms touch. I lean my head on her shoulder because, in a way, we are exactly the same person.
We’re both holding on to secrets.
And we’ve held our secrets tight, and we have that together. And we’ll hold on to those secrets, maybe forever.
“Sometimes guys make mistakes, Ali. You know this, right? Even in the Initiation. I know there are guys who regretted it. There are guys who wished they didn’t do it.”
She nods. And I think that I’m getting her to understand.
I reach out for her hand. “Sean’s one of those guys,” I say to her. “He’s not perfect, Ali. But he was crying afterward. Crying to me like a scared child. Doesn’t that say something about him? That he had guilt?”
But she doesn’t answer. Not a word.
17
ALI
Three weeks into our friendship, and I understand now that there’s a difference between Blythe and the rest of the world.
She’s the aqua sea. She’s the beach filled with shells. The wind that you wait for. Blythe is all the good things. The calm things. The together things. The harmonized music. Everyone else is the clutter.
Blythe and I walk out of C-wing down to the first floor and cut over to B-wing through the freshman tunnel. “You don’t have to say hi to everyone you see,” Blythe says. The hallway is her runway, and she’s a fucking Chanel model strutting with her books tight to her chest and her blond hair blowing back untamed as if there’s a perpetual fan on her face. “Flash a peace sign. Or just nod.”
We cruise down the first floor of B-wing, and I see Sammi in front of her locker. Her face is in a wild smile, and I almost call out her name, until I think of what Blythe has just said and give her the peace sign instead. It’s kind of this jokey thing; I expect Sammi to flash me a peace sign back.
But Sammi slams her locker. She doesn’t take it as a joke. “I can make signs too,” she says loudly. She gives me the middle finger.
“Lovers’ quarrel,” Blythe says, smiling. She giggles and walks a bit faster.
Sammi storms down the hall, the opposite way. We can’t connect on anything lately, she and I. I almost want to let her go, but the way Blythe looks at me, like I’m a leper for not going after her. What kind of friend am I?
I’m too exhausted by the drama around her, though. I’d have to trail her until she spoke to me, and explain and apologize. I know this sounds awful—it is awful. I don’t want to hurt Sammi. The last thing I’d ever want to do is hurt Sammi. But I’m so deep down in my own rabbit hole that it’s hard to see anything else.
“A true friend won’t take that shit,” Blythe says. “If I ever flashed Donnie a peace sign—forget it. She’d cut my fingers off.”
I tell Blythe I’ll see her later and chase after Sammi. I notice the worst thing—she’s got toilet paper on her shoe. I can’t let her run away with toilet paper on her shoe.
“Sammi!”
“Fuck off.”
“Sammi, you have toilet paper on your shoe.”
She looks down, annoyed, rips the toilet paper off her boot, and clenches her jaw.
“That’s what you’re catching up to me for? To tell me about toilet paper—right after you throw me a peace sign? With Blythe Jensen?”
I look around, tell Sammi to lower her voice.
“Why, is it a secret now? Your friendship with her is, what, something we shouldn’t discuss? Maybe it has a password too? Like a diary where you lock it up and only give one person the key?”
I’m too tired to fight her. I’m vanishing. Really. If she only knew how I was disintegrating.
“I’m sorry. That’s all I can say right now.”
“This isn’t what our friendship is about.”
“I know.”
But this is what happens when you have nothing to say. When everything feels like dust.
“I have to go to class.”
“I know . . . Sammi, I’m so sorry about that stupid peace sign.”
“You need help, Ali,” she says. “I wish you would talk to me.”
I nod my head and let her walk away.
* * *
Later Sammi texts me.
What is going on with you?
Nothing, I
