“What?” I demanded, but when I looked up from Nancy, I could see that the damage was done. Kaitlyn’s face—the right side of it, that I could see past her long black hair—crumpled and she turned away quickly, somehow finding a way through the crowd away from me.
Clearly she had heard everything and thought that Nancy and I had been talking about her—saying the horrible things the bitch-witch in front of me had practically shouted so everyone—especially Kaitlyn—could hear.
“Kaitlyn, wait!” I exclaimed, and tried to go after her, but she was gone already, lost in the rush of students to get to their next classes, and I couldn’t see her anymore.
I rounded on Nancy instead.
“Why did you do that?” I demanded, grabbing her by the shoulders and squeezing hard—though not as hard as I could have, or as hard as I wanted to. “Why would you say such a cruel thing and make sure she could hear it?”
“Because,” she snarled. “It’s obvious you’ve got some kind of thing for the little freak and anybody who prefers her over me has a fucking problem. So if I can’t have you—neither can she!”
She tore herself away from my grip and flounced off down the hall, accompanied by the two girls who always followed her everywhere, all three of them casting scathing glances over their shoulders at me.
I watched them go as my Drake roared inside me with frustration. For a moment today, I had felt like I was making some progress with Kaitlyn. She had felt so soft and right in my arms and the way she had met my eyes across the Dining Hall made me hope…
But there was no hope now, I thought bleakly. Not now that Kaitlyn thought I was talking about her and saying awful things to hurt and degrade her.
Damn Nancy Rattcliff! My hands curled into helpless fists as I went towards my own fifth period class. What was wrong with someone like that? Why had she felt it necessary to ruin the only chance I’d ever had with the female I so desperately wanted?
And what could I possibly do to convince Kaitlyn that none of what Nancy had said was true?
7
Kaitlyn
I’m ashamed to admit I had to stop in the bathroom to cry a minute before I made my way to fifth period. I knew I would be late for Trig, but I just couldn’t make myself care.
I locked myself in a stall, sat on the closed lid of the toilet, put my face in my hands, and sobbed.
What a fool I had been! What an idiot to think that someone like Ari Reyes could care anything for someone like me. He had probably been setting me up for some kind of mean trick—one of those Cruel Intentions things where he would make me think he liked me and then screw me over in the worst, most public way possible to make everyone laugh at me.
Well, if that was the case, then Nasty Nancy had done me a favor, I told myself, blowing my nose and straightening up at last. At least now I knew how he really felt.
“I won’t be fooled again,” I said in a low, trembling voice. “I don’t care how nice he seems—it’s all just a trick. I won’t be stupid enough to get taken in a second time.”
Leaving the bathroom stall and making sure I was alone, I made myself go to the mirror and look at my reflection.
The right side of my face—which was all I could see—was actually quite pretty. I’m mixed and I got all the best features of my African American mother—her full lips and high cheekbones—as well as the best of my Caucasian dad—a cute nose and big, clear aquamarine eyes. They stood out with startling clarity in my smooth creamy pale brown face.
Or the right one did, anyway.
Stealing myself for what I knew was coming, I forced myself to pull back the curtain of hair that covered the left side of my face.
I looked like someone had taken a lighter to a Barbie doll and melted the plastic.
My left eye drooped downward and my left ear was nothing more than a misshapen lump. The left side of my face was a mass of ugly pinkish scar tissue.
Sometimes I thought I could bear all the other scars on my body, if only The Fire hadn’t affected my face. If only this one part of me—the part that all the world saw first and judged me by—wasn’t so hideous.
I knew it was wrong to think of myself this way. I’d had lots and lots of body image therapy once the doctors had determined the skin grafts weren’t going to take and I was going to be stuck this way for life. So I knew this kind of negative self-talk was wrong and harmful.
But damn it, sometimes I just couldn’t help it. When people like Nancy said terrible things about me, they felt true. And while I knew that my self-worth shouldn’t be tied to my looks, I was a teenaged girl. Looks mattered to me, whether I wanted them to or not.
That was just the way things were.
“Look at yourself,” I said harshly, speaking to my reflection. “Take a good long look, Kaitlyn. This is how you look—this is what you are. And this is why nobody like Ari Reyes is ever going to want anything to do with you. Remember that.”
Then I pulled my curtain of hair back around, mercifully hiding the ruined left side of my face, and headed out of the bathroom for Trigonometry. It had been a tough way for my sad little crush to die—a hard lesson to
