We refresh Instagram. Suki’s mouth open. Her hand to her lips as she scrolls down the list. And scrolls. And scrolls. “I don’t know. It’s a lot. It’s over a thousand maybe.”
I grab her phone out of her hand. “Over a thousand? Who the hell is liking this thing?”
I scroll down through the list. All the people, none of them any faces or profiles I even recognize.
“If the school finds out about this,” Cate says.
“And she had to go and mention C-wing, didn’t she?” Donnie says.
“She had to say there was one girl who knew about it. She knew it all. What a bitch. I didn’t know about it all. That’s not even remotely true,” I say.
And I didn’t know about it all. Did I have an idea? Yes. Did I know something bad happened? Yes. But wasn’t it more complicated than that? And who was I supposed to believe? Sean, who I’ve known for practically my whole life, or Ali, who I never spoke to once until that night? I wanted to help Ali. I wanted to make it . . . less public. I wanted to be by her side through this. Not out the whole situation on social media.
“She could have had allies,” Donnie says. “But she had to go and mention all of us.”
“Give me a break, Donnie. You hated her. You thought she wormed her way in here.”
“She did, Jensen. She was your little charity case. But I could have backed her up if she had done this differently. I could have done some damage to Nessel without her even asking me. Any of us—” She looks at Suki. “Any of us would have done this for her. But you wanted to keep her close like a little mama birdie. You wanted her right there, stuffed under your wing. And now she’s written something that’s going viral that’s going to be damaging to you.”
I think of Ali and her little face. How she was always confused, squinting at me like a little nothing. Donnie’s right. Ali’s a baby bird. A little swallow. I took her into my world with my friends and she liked it. She can’t deny that she liked it. That she liked being around me.
We were really friends. Weren’t we?
Weren’t we?
I think back to that night when Sean cried.
That girl made a mess of my jacket. She bled everywhere.
You know I would never hurt anyone. You know I wouldn’t do anything to anyone.
His words drowned everything out. All I heard was his side. All I knew was his want. His pain. His fear. And what’s been the outcome? My friendship with Ali is over. Dev broke up with me. All to absolve Sean.
But she wouldn’t listen to me. The other day in the stairwell. I tried! I told her I was backing out of the Initiation. That I wasn’t going to be in charge of it. And what was her response? I’m proud of you. Then she goes and paints me as an evil witch who tried to cover it up.
“Don’t you remember how it was in the beginning, B? You were the one who tried to convince her that Nessel was this great guy. The kind of guy who would never do such a thing,” Donnie says.
“I tried to get her to see Sean’s side. That was all. I never told her not to tell anyone.”
“Yeah, and that seemed to go well.”
Donnie grabs the phone from Suki. “Let’s dissect this shit.” She reads it like she’s some Shakespearean actress.
“‘There was one girl who knew about it. She knew it all. How did she know? Because the guy, you know, my rapist, told her. It was her job to persuade me not to tell.’”
“That’s called obstruction of justice, B. She’s trying to get you arrested,” Donnie says.
“You’re being paranoid,” I say. But wasn’t that the same thought I had? That the police would want to question me?
“Maybe she wants some notoriety,” Suki says.
“Maybe she just wanted to blow the top off everything, which I would totally back,” Cate says. “I just don’t know why she had to mention us.”
“She didn’t exactly mention us,” Donnie says. “She mentioned Blythe. And worse, she told Blythe’s story. Without your permission. She wrote about the Initiation, basically.” Donnie reads from the paper again. “‘She even had her own experience as a freshman. But her assault was sanctioned.’ She outed you, B. Do you understand that?”
“Who gives her the right to say that?” Cate says. “She went up there with Nessel like a little fucking lapdog.”
“She was half dead when B found her,” Suki says.
“How did you lose control of this girl, Jensen?” Donnie smacks the gum in her mouth. Blowing oversize billowing bubbles. Waiting for answers, waiting for me to take charge. The three of them. Their eyes heavy on me.
I unravel from all my Ali Greenleaf empathy. I loosen from that friendship that we had. Raging now.
They’re going to come for C-wing next. We toss our cigarettes in the toilet. Maybe for the last time. Attached to a bathroom. Isn’t that strange? How can you be attached to a bathroom? But this is the end of it.
I whisper to Suki as we’re walking out, “Remember everything I said before about letting go of this?”
She nods her head.
“It was a temporary lapse of reason. She can’t do this to me. To us. This isn’t going to be a war. This is going to be revenge.”
44
ALI
In school it feels like everyone is watching me and I can’t think straight. All my teachers and their words droning together. I thought it would feel better to write this. But it feels worse.
* * *
Terrance nudges me in physics. “The article is blowing up,” he says, his face bright and smiling. I think about Blythe and if she’s read it. I wonder what she and her friends are thinking. If the police are going to find out.
