"Stop. Just...stop. I didn"t give this to you, and now I"m wondering why the rumors going around all have to do with my undying love and how I"m obsessively buying you gifts."
She was all too aware of how they must look to Madison and Julia, who could surely see them on the bench.
"I"m sorry, Max. Please. Just let everyone think that I wasn"t dumped." She looked at him with pleading eyes.
"Why should I do that?"
"Because I just don"t know what I"ll do. Please. I"ll stop. This"ll be the last time. But please don"t tell anyone anything."
Max and she were done. He"d ended that. She was no longer part of the golden couple.
But she and Johnny were done, too. That, however, had been ended by her. She just couldn"t be with him. Dana was her friend. And Becca had never been a real friend to anyone. She had to do this for her. She couldn"t be with the one guy Dana had feelings for. It just didn"t feel right.
"Please," said Becca again. "I just can"t look like that big a loser."
"You"re not a loser, everyone likes you."
She shook her head. "I just can"t have everyone looking at me like I should be embarra.s.sed. Please."
She looked him in the eye, and tried to show him how much she needed this.
"Fine," he said. "But this is the last thing."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.
ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END. I HATE when that stupid expression is right.
The first time I realized this was when I went to my room the next afternoon and saw the word Wh.o.r.e written across the small mirror I had on my side of the room. I found that it was written in my permanent markers, and had to throw the whole thing away.
Over the next few days, the looks and whispers about me got louder and more frequent. Even Madison and Julia seemed a little chilly toward me, and just as they had started being so kind to me, too.
Madison asked, "Why didn"t you tell us you guys had s.e.x?"
My insistence that we didn"t fell on deaf ears each time someone new brought it up. Blake swore she hadn"t said anything, and I had to believe her. I had to feel like someone here had my back.
Max did as I asked, and denied it to everyone. It hadn"t taken long for him to fall out of the hearts of everyone. Everyone seemed disappointed in him. He didn"t care. He just kept asking me if I was okay. He said he"d do anything he could to make them stop.
Over the coming month, the weather remained cold and biting. The snow was deep and thick, sometimes sharp and icy. There was one time of day when the sun shone enough through my window that when I lay in bed, I could almost pretend that it was warm outside.
One night, halfway through March, I"d been lying in bed reading The Crucible, when the witch in my own room shrieked very suddenly, "Will you turn off that light, I can"t sleep!"
She"d been in a bad mood for weeks. It seemed that she thought Becca owed her more than just one quick visit.
I was unable to summon a civilized response, so I put on my flip-flops and a sweatshirt and went out of the room with my book. I left the light on just to be a jerk.
I headed to the dining hall for some hot chocolate. It was empty, except for one person.
"Johnny," I said, walking over to him.
The enormous hall felt even bigger and more echoing without all the usual voices and bodies filling it.
"What are you doing up?" He looked at me, and then at my pajamas and shoes.
"I"ve been kicked out of my room because I had the light on."
"Really?"
"She"s been really upset lately."
He nodded, and looked concerned. "Like, how upset?"
"I dunno. Just moody as far as I can tell." I sat down next to him. "What are you doing down here?"
"Couldn"t sleep. I"ve been having trouble lately. I don"t know why."
I could see it all over his face. His eyes were dark and sunken, and his hair was tousled in a very Axe commercial type way.
"I"ve been having trouble this semester, too. Though in part that could be due to Dana screaming at me for reading and singing to herself in the middle of the night like someone out of a Hitchc.o.c.k movie."
"Singing?"
I shrugged. "Yeah. It was weird."
"What was she singing?"
"What"s that song...oh, "You Are My Sunshine.""
He stared at me for a second, his smile fading. "That"s weird. That"s really weird."
"Yeah, I know."
"No, I mean...that was a joke she and Becca had. Dana used to say something about how..." He screwed up his face, trying to remember. "How Becca was like sunshine because of her hair. I don"t really remember."
At that bit of creepiness, I couldn"t think of anything to say, except, "I"m going to get some hot chocolate."
I was grateful that he changed the subject when I came back.
"So where are you going to college?"
"Oh," I said, "FSU. Florida State University."
He nodded. "That"s cool, why there?"
"All of my friends are going there." I thought, with a pang, of Leah. "Sort of been a plan forever."
He nodded again. "Did you apply anywhere else?"
"Yeah, I got accepted to Boston University."
"Really?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Yeah." I laughed. "It"s stupid. I did it on a whim."
"That"s not stupid, that"s an awesome school."
"Yeah, I applied in junior year for an early bird kind of thing."
"I don"t understand then, why are you going somewhere right by your house or with all of your friends? Don"t you want to branch out?"
"I did branch out. I came here. Look how fantastically this went." I laughed.
"I think you"ve held up extraordinarily well. Don"t you sorta feel like if you can handle all this, you can handle anything?"
I hesitated. "That"s true but...I can"t go to Boston...that"s crazy, I don"t even know why I applied. I could never go somewhere completely alone."
"Why"s it crazy? Money?"
"No," I admitted, my voice small. "I got a scholarship."
He furrowed his eyebrows at me. "You should do it. I mean it. Go somewhere new. Don"t stay so close to home. You"ll go back, and find that they"ve changed-or maybe they haven"t and they should have-or it"ll feel like home isn"t how you remember it. They"ll be different, and you"ll wish you"d met new people."
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe I"ll think about it."
He just leaned back and rested his head on his clasped hands.
Well, since we were getting honest...
"Johnny, can I ask you a personal question?"
"Sure, go ahead."
I hesitated, and then went for it. "Were you...in love with her?"
"Who, Dana? I liked her a lot. Once upon a time. I don"t know. I had a thing for her the whole time I knew her, but Becca got here and then told me Dana didn"t like me at all. Not even like a friend. So, I guess I gave up."
I stared at him. "I-I meant Becca."
He raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat. "Oh. Oh. No. I wasn"t in love with her."
I was still reeling at the idea of anyone having feelings for Dana. It was so impossible to imagine her as anything other than mostly crazy.
"Max told me you and Becca were hooking up. And it just didn"t seem like you to do that to your best friend."
He looked at me, and seemed to make a decision before answering. "I don"t know what we were. She was hard to read. I couldn"t tell if she actually liked me or just loved the illicitness of what we were doing. I hated myself the whole time, but I just couldn"t pull myself away from her."
"What was it about her?"
"I honestly don"t know. I know why she was fun and why she was exciting. But I can"t figure out why I felt so strongly about her. I think I just believed there was more to her than that. And I think she felt something for me. I really do. She must have. And if there was more to her...I don"t know, she went missing before I really got to find out."
I looked at him, and saw in his eyes that he had really cared about her.
"Well, I should go up to bed," Johnny said suddenly, rising.
"Oh, okay, yeah. It was nice running into you."
"You, too."
He gave me a weary smile, and left. He"d had feelings for Dana.
Huh.
I got up to my room, which was blessedly empty. I opened the window and breathed in the air. It was a little chilly, but I wanted to feel the breeze and hear the sounds of outside.
I sat on my bed for a few minutes, thinking of what Johnny had said and listening to the wind. I kicked off my shoes and looked at the floor. There was a thumbtack there, left over from one of Dana"s and my fights. I reached down to get it and spotted the Louis Vuitton suitcase under the bed that I"d grown to ignore.
An idea struck me.
Dana wasn"t here. I could look inside it. For what, I wasn"t sure. But I was curious.
I locked the door. Dana had a key, but at least I"d hear her coming and could push it back under the bed. I did not want her knowing that I had touched precious Becca"s precious stuff.
I crouched down on the floor and slid the case out. It was strange to touch something of hers. I unzipped it and pulled up the top.
Right on top was a jewelry box. It was silver and heavy. I sifted through the tangle of delicate chains and charms that lay in it. I spotted a silver necklace with half of a heart. It looked like the best friend necklaces that Leah and I had worn as kids, but it was heavier and shinier and had a diamond. Clearly, it had not been bought for twenty-five cents from the toy machine at the grocery store. Leah and I had spent all of our money, a whole dollar each, when we were six as we tried to get the set of necklaces. We ended up with a bunch of plastic spider rings and Mickey Mouse tattoos before finally getting them. When we had, they felt hard-won.
I remembered now that I"d thought of this last September. I had seen what must be this necklace"s other half hanging from Dana"s neck. I shut the jewelry box. As I did, the door behind me rattled-Dana and her key. I threw the suitcase shut, and shoved it back under the bed. I was sitting back on my bed, my heart pounding, when Dana stepped into the room.
She looked at me, with my approximation of relaxation, and her already narrow eyes turned to mere slits.
Feeling panicky, I said h.e.l.lo. Like I never do.
Dana shut the door and stepped in. She looked at me for another few seconds before her gaze dropped down to the suitcase, and my stomach plummeted with guilt. And then Dana did something I did not expect. She smiled.
"You"re curious about her."
I shook my head. "What?"
"It"s okay. We can look together."
I couldn"t move. It was like my dream about Becca all over again. I was paralyzed as a strange scene unfolded before me. I watched as Dana pulled the suitcase back out, much more slowly and ceremoniously than I had done.