She looks at me so carefully, studying me. A new air about her now. Something superior.
“Blythe, I’m going to write something about what happened in the school paper.”
It takes my breath away. Like a brick in my chest. Everything swirling. My life in a stupid newspaper.
“You can’t. You can’t just do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because people are going to have questions. People are going to look to me for answers. People see me in a certain way, Ali. I know you understand this.”
“Ah, I see,” she says, taunting. “You don’t want people to judge you. You don’t want people to know that you purposely became friends with me to convince me that Sean Nessel was a nice guy. The kind of guy who wouldn’t do something so awful. Isn’t that what you said?”
I’m not used to Ali talking to me this way. Wasn’t I the one to show her how to walk through the hallway? The one to teach her how to stand? Her captain, her confidant. For just a little while, leading her through the crowded school corridors. Inviting her into C-wing. Now, her face angry and bunched. Her hands clenched. This is a different girl. Not the mousy Ali I first met. This is a girl out for blood.
“So you’re just going to write about me and you think that’ll be it? No consequences?”
“It’s not about you, Blythe!”
“Don’t say it’s not about me, when I am a big part of this story. People are going to ask if I knew about it. They’ll ask if Sean talked to me about it. If I tried to hide it when I should have reported it,” I say, trying to slow my breath. Trying to get her on my side. The school paper. The archaic school paper. Who even reads newspapers anymore? But they have a website. It’s the kind of story that’ll go viral. I can see it now: Popular Girl Covers Up Rape by Soccer Star. “Ali, look. Don’t you understand that he tricked me, just like he tricked you?”
“I don’t believe that. Your eyes were wide open, Blythe.”
“Oh my God, Ali. So you are going to just throw me under the bus, aren’t you?”
“I’m going to tell the truth.”
I have to convince her that this is not a story she wants to tell. Not like this.
“I thought we were friends,” I say. I sound desperate. I sound fake. I wish I never said it.
She walks up two steps. She doesn’t even turn around.
I have to think of something that’ll stop her. Something that will make her think, to pause, just for a second. To be reasonable!
“You should know I’m not running the Initiation,” I say. “I’m not stepping up. I’m backing out.”
Finally Ali stops. Turns to me.
“Good. You shouldn’t be anywhere near that. I’m proud of you, Blythe.”
“You’re fucking proud of me?”
“Yes. Because I know it’s an uphill battle. And I know it must be hard to say no to those people. And I know how fucked up it made you,” she says.
I take a step back. Once she was so broken. Now look at her. This self-assured girl. So self-assured that she’s going to destroy everything in her path. Bring down the big man. And the lady. Me. She wants to punish me.
“I promise I’ll make him apologize to you,” I say. “He has to apologize to you. It’s stupid that this hasn’t happened already, in fact—”
“You don’t understand,” Ali says, seething now. Face-to-face. Turned to me. Back down the steps. “I don’t want an apology from him. I don’t want him near me. I wish you could just support me. And just be honest about how this all started. You could come clean. You were manipulated too. But you could say you made mistakes. It would be better.”
“Better for who?”
She doesn’t answer me.
I feel tears on my cheeks. I don’t even know why.
“I’m the only person in control of my own destiny, Blythe. I’m the only one. You know that’s my only option. You would never let anyone be in control of the story if this was happening to you. Don’t wait for them to get out of the way. Make the room yourself. That’s what you told me when you were talking about managing the stupid hallway. Well, guess what? This is my life.”
I can see people looking at us from a lower staircase. I don’t want to wipe the tears away from my cheeks because then it would really look like I am crying.
* * *
In C-wing. The Core Four. One cigarette after another.
“Don’t tell Ali anything,” I say. I instruct.
“What does that mean?” Suki says.
“It means she’s writing an article for the school newspaper and talking about what happened to her.”
“I don’t want to say I told you so,” Cate says.
“That’s your response? That’s the most original thing you can come up with? ‘I told you so’?”
“Actually, it’s kind of badass. To out Sean like that,” Cate says.
“How insane would that make Sean?” Suki says, smiling, then looks away, inhales deep on her cigarette. “I kind of love it.”
“I don’t kind of love it. I really love it,” Donnie says. “Dude gets what’s coming to him, B. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I have so much more respect for her now. I’ll pass that paper around. I’ll take screenshots of it and ’gram it until someone presses charges.”
“I hate to bust your bubble,” I say. “But will you love it when she goes after all of us? How we’re bitches and how we’re manipulators? How you basically slut-shamed her and how I orchestrated my friendship with her to cover up how Sean raped her? How we created a situation, an environment, so that she couldn’t talk about it?”
Suki’s face goes blank.
“But why would she do that?” Suki says.
“It’s not like any
