And it’s usually reserved for Sterling.
It’s recklessness.
This time, she heads straight for me and only stops when she’s facing me and just a few inches from my face. The guys are all gathered around waiting to see what she’s going to say next. I know I’m not the only one who looks visibly tired of her drama. Sterling looks completely ready to escort her off the stage if she starts getting too nasty. But instead, she does the one thing that I never thought she would do.
“You know what, Aubrey?” she says. This time she looks genuinely upset and doesn’t even have the theatrically placed hands on her hips. “You’re right.”
“Excuse me?” I say, wondering what kind of mind game she’s trying to play now. “I’m right about what?”
“You’re right about no one ever loving me. Because the one person who maybe would have loved me, I had to give up. And for what? For this? To be here at this crappy reform school with a brother who only pretends to care about me, a guy that only pretended to like me, and a bunch of fake friends that would just as easily choose you over me at the toss of a coin?”
She throws back her head and lets out a strangled laugh.
“All that so I could be humiliated like this and told that I’m unlovable by a girl like you? A worthless, penniless, cruel-hearted person whose entire existence here should have ended last semester.”
This is definitely rock bottom for Bridget. She has a feverish look in her eyes that’s started making her look a bit like a rabid animal.
It seems like she’s barely holding on by a thread now. Before I even see it coming, and before I can do anything to stop her, Bridget turns to her brother and does the very last thing I expect.
She starts to tell him everything while Sterling, Chase, and I look on helplessly.
“So, you love her, huh?” she says to Warren. Her words sound like they are intended to sting. “Then I guess that means you two are always honest with each other about things, right? Because isn’t that what people who love and trust each other are supposed to do—be honest with each other?”
Warren just stares at her as if she’s a toddler having a meltdown and it’s just going to be a train wreck no matter what he does or doesn’t do.
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but Aubrey has been lying to you this whole entire time,” she sneers. “That girl is nothing like you think. Poor Aubrey, right? Wrong.”
She stops and bares her teeth at her brother. “She’s not the victim she’s made herself out to be.”
All three boys look at me, and in that moment, breath catching, I see the resolve falter on their faces.
I’d be mad at how quick they are to doubt me if Bridget wasn’t telling the truth.
“What are you ranting on about, Bridget?” Warren asks, his eyes flickering between her face and mine.
“Aubrey has been blackmailing me,” Bridget says, simply.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that all three boys let out the smallest, relieved sighs.
They don’t believe I’m capable of it.
But of course, they’re wrong. I am.
“Blackmailing you?” Warren asks with a chuckle. “Really? That’s the best thing you can come up with? Okay, I’ll bite … about what?”
Bridget doesn’t answer him, instead she just looks at me and smiles widely.
“How does it feel to be exposed?” she asks me.
I feel every nerve ending in my body standing on edge. I have the foreboding feeling that this is all going to get much worse before it gets better.
I open my mouth—but to say what? I could deny it, but then what good would that do?
I’ve already told enough lies.
I also can’t seem to get myself to tell the truth, so I just stand here in awkward silence, my lips moving but no sound coming out.
I only feel worse when I feel a reassuring hand press against my lower back.
“What in the hell could Aubrey possibly have to blackmail you about?” Warren asks again. “Blackmail only works if you have something to hide. Do you have something to hide, Bridget?”
Suddenly, there’s the slightest falter in the pressure on my back as Warren turns to me.
“What is she talking about?” he asks, his voice raising just a bit. “Is there something going on between the two of you?”
I don’t answer him either because I’m not sure what Bridget is going to do, and I don’t know if telling the truth or keeping silent is the better choice at this point.
“Damn it, Aubrey, tell me what’s going on!” Warren says angrily.
Sterling and Chase are both silent and the air hangs around us in a pregnant pause. The hand on my back slips away entirely, and suddenly, though I still stand planted to the same spot, I’m falling.
Warren’s tone unnerves me completely. Even last semester when he teased and tormented me, his tone was always bullish and taunting, but it was never so ripe with raw anger and frustration as it is right now. I take a step back in the chaos and bump up against a control panel on the side of the stage, which startles me even further.
All three boys are staring between Bridget and me, but no one is saying anything at all. I want to tell him—I want to be honest with all three of them, but at this moment I am keenly reminded of what Alaska and Clark had said.
I went too far.
I really went too far this time.
With Bridget, with them, with all of it.
Now I just wish that I hadn’t done any of it. I wish that I could take it all back and that I hadn’t ever hid anything from Sterling, Warren, or Chase. Now how am I supposed to fix it?
“If she’s not going to tell you,” Bridget says resolutely, “then I am.”
Warren’s face is contorted in confusion as he looks away from me
