Rules for Being a Girl Page 16

  “Well, hey there, Ms. Fran,” she says calmly. “You’re okay, I’m right here. I’m just going to take a stroll with our friend here, and then I’ll be right back to get you some iced tea, how about?”

  “I don’t know her,” Gram insists again—sounding more irritated than scared now, like I’m more inconvenience than threat. I don’t actually know which one is worse.

  I shouldn’t have come here, I think dully. All I do is wreak disaster everywhere I go.

  “I know,” Camille says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and squeezing once before steering me toward the door. “Come on, sweetheart.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say once we’re out in the hallway. “I’m sorry, I know you tried to tell me, I just—” Thought I knew better, I realize, feeling abruptly like an idiot on top of everything else. “I’m sorry.”

  “Marin, honey.” Camille lets a breath out—not mad at me, exactly, but not as warm as she usually is either. “Why don’t we call your mom, okay?”

  Right away I shake my head. “It’s fine, I’ll just—I’ll go. I’m sorry. You can go back in there and check on her. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”

  “Marin—” Camille starts, and I know she’s going to try to comfort me, even though it’s not her job to do that. I hold my hands up to stop her, then turn and make a beeline for the stairs, tears aching at the back of my throat.

  Down in the parking lot I sit in the car for a long time, wiping tears and snot and so much sadness from my face. I remember when I was a kid, before Gracie was born, even, when I used to stay with Gram overnight at her house in Brockton. It wasn’t long after Grandpa Tony had died and she used to let me sleep in the big bed with her, the two of us watching reruns of nineties sitcoms while the AC unit hummed in the window. She used to pet my hair until I fell asleep.

  Finally, exhausted, I pull out of the parking lot and head for home. The fastest route takes me back by school, and I glance over at the parking lot as I’m idling at the red light: eighth period got out a while ago, and the grounds are mostly empty. In fact, I realize with a quick, nasty jolt, Mr. Beckett’s Jeep is one of the only cars still parked in the lot. It’s sitting there smugly under a blooming dogwood tree not far from the senior entrance, his stupid Bernie Sanders sticker fading on the bumper.

  I think, very clearly: Don’t be such a good girl.

  That’s when I turn into the lot.

  I pull up beside the Jeep and yank the emergency brake, leaving the engine running while I pop the trunk and jump out onto the concrete. I haven’t even really articulated a plan to myself when I grab the poster paint left over from the day of Elisa’s volleyball game—still sitting in the trunk next to my mom’s first aid kit and a couple of overdue library books, like deep in the back of my own secret brain I knew I might need it again. It feels like a relic from a totally different past.

  I clamp a dry, crusted-over paintbrush in my teeth and twist the lid off the tub of paint with shaking hands, glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one is coming; the parking lot is deserted, even the birds have gone home for the day. It’s like I’m totally outside myself as I scrawl the first word I can think of, the letters huge and red and dripping across Bex’s back windshield. When I’m done I throw the rest of the paint at the car for good measure before standing back for a moment, admiring my handiwork.

  Then I get back in my car and drive away.

  Thirty-Two

  I’ve barely made it through the door of my first-period French class the following morning when Madame Kemp nods in my direction.

  “Marin,” she says distractedly as she lopsidedly scrawls this morning’s irregular verbs on the whiteboard, “there’s a pass for you on my desk over there. Ms. Lynch says they want you down in the office.”

  I freeze where I’m standing, fingers curled tightly around the strap of my backpack. All at once I think of Thelma & Louise, this old movie my mom and I watched last year on cable about two friends who kill a guy in self-defense and then go on the run. The movie ends with the two of them driving into the Grand Canyon rather than giving themselves up to the police—this incredible, shocking freeze-frame of the car flying over the cliff that I couldn’t get out of my head for weeks after I saw it. It was weirdly exhilarating, the idea of these two women refusing to engage with an unfair system. Looking at a menu of shitty choices and deciding to go out on their own terms.

  Of course: we never saw the actual crash.

  I shuffle down the senior stairs to the admin suite, where Ms. Lynch is diligently adding balloon emojis to the birthday wishes she’s composing on someone’s Facebook.

  “Marin,” says Mr. DioGuardi when I knock on the open door of his office, not bothering to say hello this time. I guess we’re officially past formalities at this point. “Sit.”

  I plunk down obediently as Mr. DioGuardi pops his whistle into his mouth, the faintest, shrillest shriek filling the air every time he breathes. Finally he pulls it out again and eyes me across the desk. “So,” he says, meaty hands folded. “Do you want to start, or should I?”

  “Um,” I say, not sure of the protocol here. In my entire life, I’ve never really gotten in trouble—and I’m pretty sure that’s what’s about to happen here, though I’m not sure who possibly could have seen me. “You can start.”

  I don’t mean to sound sullen, exactly, but I can tell that’s how Mr. DioGuardi takes it.

  “All right,” he says crisply. “Have it your way.” He turns his computer monitor around so that it’s facing me, hitting the space bar on the keyboard so the grainy security camera footage on the screen starts to move.

  Yup, I think with surprising numbness, watching in silence as my car pulls up beside Bex’s, as I hop out of the driver’s seat and open my trunk. Definitely about to get in trouble.

  I stare at the screen, transfixed by my yesterday-self as one by one the letters appear on the back of Bex’s car: S, then C, then U, then the dark red curves of the M. It occurs to me, if I was going to get caught anyway, that I could have gone ahead and picked a longer word.

  “What were you thinking?” Mr. DioGuardi asks, and I look at him, startled. For a second I almost forgot he was there. “Quite seriously, Marin, what on earth was going through your head?”

  “Well,” I say, truly considering it. “I wasn’t thinking about the security cameras, I can tell you that much.”

  That’s the wrong thing to say: Mr. DioGuardi glowers at me across the desk, his dark eyebrows nearly connecting. “Is this funny to you?” he demands.

  “No,” I promise immediately, and it’s the truth. “I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

  “Then I would be very careful how you handle this situation,” he instructs me.

  Clearly, I’ve exhausted his store of patience.

  “Your future is in your hands right now. We’re suspending you for two weeks, effective immediately. Unless you want to turn that into an expulsion—”

  “I’m sorry, what?” I shove my chair back, jumping to my feet like I’m trying to escape a burning building. “You’re—?”

  “What did I just say, Marin?” Mr. DioGuardi’s cheeks redden. “Lucky for you, Mr. Beckett has agreed not to press criminal charges.”

  I sit back down, not so much because he’s telling me to as because I think my legs might actually give out underneath me.

  “Um,” I say again, wrapping my hands around the armrests in a pathetic attempt to ground myself. I can taste this morning’s orange juice rising dangerously at the back of my throat. “Okay.”

  “He and I are both willing to acknowledge the emotional stress you’ve been under,” Mr. DioGuardi continues, “and we understand the possibility that you weren’t entirely yourself.”

  Not myself, I think dully, staring down at my hands like they’re somehow completely separate from my body.

  “The suspension is effective immediately,” Mr. DioGuardi says again. “I’ll be calling your parents to inform them of the situation,
and Ms. Lynch can escort you to your locker to get your things.”

  “I don’t need an escort,” I tell him, forcing myself to my feet again. Nothing about this conversation seems real. Suspended. Me. He might as well be telling me he’s sending me off to the moon.

  “Marin—”

  “I said I don’t need one!” I snap, and it comes out a lot more like a wail than I mean for it to. Right away I hold my hands up in surrender, like a bank teller being held hostage. “I’m going, okay? I’m going.”

  Just for a moment Mr. DioGuardi looks at me with something like sympathy. “All right,” he says quietly. “Go get your things, then.”

  The bell rings just as I stumble dazedly out of the admin suite, classroom doors slamming open like they’re spring-loaded and the entire student body spilling out into the hallway. I almost crash right into Jacob, his immaculate Top-Siders gleaming white under the fluorescents and an against-dress-code Sox hat cocked on his head, not that anybody’s going to say anything to him about it.

  “Hey, Marin,” he says, smiling a twisty, unpleasant smile. Then he nods at the admin office. “You making some alone time with DioGuardi now too?”

  It’s like something in me just breaks then, like everything I’ve been holding in with varying degrees of success in the last few months comes exploding out all at once. Before I even know I’m going to do it I’m lunging at him, shoving him as hard as I can in the chest and shoulders, the heels of my hands connecting with a satisfying thud. It’s ridiculous—I’m emphatically not a fighter, Gracie and I never even pulled each other’s hair as little kids—but Jacob’s not expecting it; I shove him again, even harder this time, knocking him loudly into the bank of lockers behind him.

  “What the fuck, Marin?” he yells, arms coming up to try and defend himself. “You’re fucking insane!”

  “And you’re an asshole!” I can hear assorted gasps and shouts all around us, my vision blurred at the corners of my eyes. “And I’ve had it with letting you all just get away with saying shit like that!”

  It’s a spectacle, the exact kind of thing I’ve tried to avoid since I got back to school after break—hell, like I’ve tried to avoid my whole entire life. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am insane, hysterical, attention-hungry, desperate. Maybe I’m everything everyone thinks I am, but I can’t bring myself to care. This whole little rebellion was a stupid idea to begin with.

  And all at once I’ve got nothing left to lose.

  I’m about to go after him again when Gray swoops in out of nowhere, dropping his crutches to the ground and wrapping his arms around my waist. “Let me go!” I order, trying to pry his arms off me. I don’t want another guy touching me right now. I don’t want anyone holding me back.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Gray says, hauling me away from the crowd with a few choice words for the scrum of onlookers. He’s twice my size, but I’m thrashing; I reach back and catch him on the side of his jaw before he finally deposits me in the hallway that leads to the library and nurse’s office, quiet and dark in comparison to the rest of school.

  “Let me go,” I insist, though he’s already done it, hobbling sideways on his walking cast, pain visible in the twist of his handsome features. The bell rings for the start of class, though it sounds strangely far away.

  Gray shakes his head. “What was that?” he asks, bewildered. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I snap, making to brush past him; he reaches for my arm, and I hiss. “Stop. Can you stop? I am so sick of this.”

  God, I have to get out of here. As soon as DioGuardi hears about this, I know I’m going to be facing an expulsion; I want to run as far as I can and never come back.

  “Marin,” Gray says, reaching for my hand again; I yank myself away, and he holds his palms out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just—”

  “I said stop!” I tell him, my voice echoing down the hallway. “Stop trying to fix everything, or protect me, or whatever it is you think you’re doing. Just leave me alone for once, okay?”

  “Okay,” Gray says, hands still up like I’m a wild animal—like maybe I’m dangerous, and need to be contained. “I won’t touch you again, I promise. I’m sorry. But can you please just talk to me for a sec?”

  I shake my head. I can’t take his affable good-guy act right now—because let’s be real, that’s probably what it is, right?

  “You’re not helping,” I inform him. “Nothing you’ve done this whole time has helped, actually, so—” I break off. I don’t know why I’m saying this. Part of me doesn’t know what I’m saying, but I can’t stop.

  “Look,” I try again. “This has been fun. But I just don’t think it’s a good idea to keep—”

  “To keep what?” Gray frowns. “What’s not a good idea?”

  “You and me.”

  “Seriously?” He looks baffled. “I don’t—why? Because Jacob is a dick?”

  I gape at him. “That’s what you think this is about?”

  “No, no,” he amends quickly. “Of course not, but—”

  “No.” I cut him off. I’m just so done. We’re so done. “It’s over.”

  “I—”

  “No,” I say again—and there’s something that feels satisfying about it, finally, even if there’s a voice in my head that’s already wondering if this is really the bridge I want to burn. His instructions from weeks ago come tumbling back to me then, and before I can stop myself I tell him: “With respect, Gray? Fuck off.”

  For a second Gray just stares at me, eyes flickering with recognition, and my heart breaks a little bit. Then his face falls.

  “Yeah,” he says, and his voice is so quiet. “I can do that.”

  Thirty-Three

  I manage to make it home and get into bed without talking to anybody, pulling the covers up over my head and closing my eyes. I know Mr. DioGuardi is going to call here. It’s only a matter of time.

  Sure enough, when the knock on my door comes it’s both of my parents, hands linked, their faces twin pictures of worry.

  “So,” my mom says. She sounds remarkably calm—calmer than I’ve heard her since this whole thing started, actually, her dark hair pulled neatly off her face. “Do you want to talk about it now, or do you want to talk about it later?”

  “Later,” I mumble into the pillows.

  To my surprise, she nods.

  “Okay,” my dad says. “We love you.”

  That’s when I start to cry.

  Both of them are across the room in a second, like I’m a toddler who fell down learning to walk.

  “Sweetheart,” my dad says, while my mom sits down beside me on the mattress, “what the hell happened?”

  I take a deep breath, the whole sad story spilling out of me all at once: the email from Brown and the call with Kalina, the visit with Gram, what I did to Bex’s car.

  “Everything you guys did. The SAT tutors. Those stupid piano lessons. Everything Gram wanted for me. I blew it all,” I tell them.

  My mom shakes her head. “You didn’t blow anything.”

  “Really?” I ask tearfully. “Honestly, name one thing I haven’t totally ruined in the last couple of months. Brown. My friendship with Chloe. Gray. And it’s all my fault.” I swipe at my face with the back of my hand, angry and embarrassed. “All of this is my fault.”

  “What?” My mom shakes her head, baffled. “No, sweetheart. That’s not true. How could any of this possibly be your fault?”

  “Because I had a crush on him!” It comes out like a keen, high-pitched and humiliating. “I did! And I did hang around all the time, and it did give him the wrong idea, and—”

  “Hold on a second,” my mom says, wide-eyed. “No way. That’s not how this works, okay? That’s not how any of this works.”

  She shakes her head one more time. “Sweetheart, do you know how many people get crushes on their teachers? Do you know how many teachers I had crushes on, growing up?”

  “It’s not the same,” I insist. “If I hadn’t—”
>
  “It’s the teacher’s job to set the boundary,” my dad says firmly. “Because the teacher is the adult.”

  Logically, of course, I know they’re right. Bex and I weren’t equal partners in some doomed flirtation; he was the authority figure, and I was a kid in his class. But looking around at the total wreckage of my life right now, it’s hard to make myself believe it.

  “Still,” I say—shrugging half-heartedly, unconvinced. “I should have known better.”

  “He should have known better.” My mom puts her arms around me then, gathering me close and stroking a hand through my hair. “And he did know better. And all of this is so unfair.”

  On that last point, at least, it’s difficult to argue, so instead I let her hold me, closing my eyes against a sudden wave of exhaustion.

  “I hate him,” I mutter into her neck.

  “I know,” my mom says, her grip tightening reassuringly. “I fucking hate him too.”

  Thirty-Four

  The first couple of days of my suspension aren’t actually so terrible. I watch a bunch of low-budget rom-coms on Netflix. I take myself on a long, winding walk. I heft Gram’s old The Silver Palate Cookbook off the shelf in the kitchen and fumble my way through the recipe for orange-pecan loaf, leave it on the counter for my mom to bring to her and the nurses in the morning.

  That’s when the boredom sets in.

  I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling for a while. I will myself not to check my phone. I’m contemplating cleaning out my closet—which is how you know I’m truly desperate—when I hear the doorbell chime downstairs.

  “Marin, honey!” my mom calls a moment later, the faintest hitch of surprise just barely audible in her voice. “You’ve got company!”

  I’m startled too: seriously, is there anybody in my entire life I haven’t somehow alienated lately? I shuffle out into the hallway and down the steps, making it as far as the landing before I stop on the matted carpet. Chloe is standing in the foyer in a silky top and a pair of open-toed booties, hands shoved into the back pockets of her dark skinny jeans. Her eyeliner is as perfectly applied as always, but for the first time in a long, long time her lips are pale.