siobhan vivian - not that kind of girl (13 page)

I found her outside the library, a pile of books in her hands, one knee perched up against the wall. I knew she was waiting to see me, because for the first time since the Halloween dance, she actually made eye contact. I was no longer invisible, the ghost of a friend she used to have. "Hey," she said. "Can we talk?" I looked at my watch. The student council meeting would start in five minutes. As much as I wanted this to happen, there were too many students passing us on the way into the library. And I didn't want to feel rushed. We had a lot to discuss. "Can this wait until after the meeting?" I asked. "I could drive you home. Or we could go somewhere and get food." My mind raced with the possibility. We'd grab dinner at our favorite diner, finally hash things out, and then head back to my house. I still had the Singin' in the Rain DVD I'd spitefully watched with my mom after our fight. I'd pretend that I hadn't watched it. That I'd waited for her. She shook her head. "This won't take long." The floor went out beneath me. I couldn't believe her. She'd finally decided it was time for us to talk, and I was expected to drop everything? Now I definitely didn't want to get into it before the meeting started, because I could already feel the tightness in my throat. "I don't know what you suddenly need to tell me," I said. "You've made it clear that you don't want to be friends anymore." I tried to keep my voice down, but it felt like I was screaming. "I'm quitting student council." Her hand went up to her mouth to bite her fingernail, but she quickly pulled it back down. I shook my head. "What? Why would you do something like that? Do you honestly hate me that much? God, has Marci completely brainwashed you against me?" "This isn't about you, or Marci, or anyone. I just don't want to be in student council anymore." "What about all the committees you volunteered for? You're just going to walk out on your responsibilities?" "It's not fair to everyone that I haven't been giving it my all." She sounded like it was a pain to have to explain herself. "And quit acting so shocked, Natalie. You knew I was never really into student council." "Maybe not, but you always had good ideas. Like asking Connor for the bonfire wood and holding our own girls' night. And it's not like student council was bad for you. How's it going to look on your college applications if you quit during senior year?" I threw my hands up. "I really don't get this, Autumn. It's like you're having a midlife crisis or something. I don't want you to do something you're going to regret later on." "I don't want regrets, either. That's why I want to spend my senior year doing other things. I've missed out on a ton. I've got to make up for lost time before high school is over." So three years of our friendship was lost time? Over Autumn's shoulder, I caught sight of someone poking her head around the corner, watching us. Marci Cooperstein. It was the final straw. "Wow," I said. "Okay. I never thought you'd be stupid enough to make such a terrible mistake again, but apparently I was wrong about you." Autumn didn't back down. "I'm not making a mistake. And don't you dare judge me." I couldn't help but laugh. "Judge you? I was the only one in this entire school who didn't judge you! You think it was easy for me to be your friend? To always have to protect you? It wasn't. It sucked, actually." Autumn looked genuinely pissed now. "Don't make it seem like you were some kind of saint. No one wanted to be friends with you. Nobody even liked you! You walked around this school with your nose stuck up in the air, so much smarter, so much better than everyone else. Without me, you wouldn't have had one single friend. No wonder you wanted me to feel so bad about myself. If I hadn't, we would have stopped being friends a long time ago." I am a good friend, I thought. A good friend who didn't deserve to be treated this way. Yes, I'd always been worried about Autumn leaving me. But I'd never made her feel bad about herself in order to make her stay. I turned to walk away, because really I'd had enough, but then I spun back around. The words were hot in my mouth and I spit them like fireballs: "You realize you're making a humungous fool out of yourself, don't you, Fish Sticks?" I wanted Autumn to get mad, as mad as I felt. But instead of turning bright red, all the color drained from her face. "I never, ever thought you would say that to me," she said. Black smoke bloomed inside me. I knew I should shut up; I wanted to suck the words back inside my mouth, but I couldn't. I couldn't stop. "But that's your name, right? That's what your friend Mike Domski calls you." "I felt bad for Mike after what Spencer did to him. She humiliated him in front of everyone." "Are you kidding me? Mike made both of our lives miserable, and now you're sticking up for him? Come on, Autumn! Don't you have any self- respect?" "I probably should have expected this from you. After all, you're the one who makes me feel the worst about myself! You constantly bring up the whole Fish Sticks thing. How I should tell other girls about it, so they can learn from my mistakes. How I shouldn't be friends with anyone but you, because other people laughed at me. Well, I'm tired of it!" She was releasing her own fire and smoke now. "So people said shitty things about me. You know what? I gave them too much power. I should have never let something so ridiculous affect me the way it did. Especially when it wasn't even true!" Her words burned so bright, I couldn't see. I couldn't say anything in my own defense. All I could do was cry. I half-thought Autumn might reach out for me. Or at least apologize, when she saw how badly she was hurting me. After all, I'd held her through so many sobbing fits. I'd dried her tears a thousand times. But she stayed on her side of the invisible divide, and wiped her cheeks, which were slick with tears, too. "You've been a great friend to me, Natalie. I'm not saying you haven't. But I don't need you to protect me anymore. I don't need you making me feel bad, or reminding me of something stupid I did three years ago. I'm moving on with my life. And you should, too." She said it like it would be easy, and maybe for her it was. But for me, crying alone in the hallway, it seemed utterly impossible. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN I set myself on autopilot. Some unknown force took over my controls, while I curled up in a ball deep in the back of myself. It dried my tears and pulled me together. It walked me into the library, sat me down at the head of the table, and led an entire student council meeting, filling four of my notebook pages with action items and project discussions and thoughts for next week's agenda. Then it drove home, ate the ziti my mom had cooked, and pushed me up the stairs to my room.

I still couldn't believe that I'd called Autumn Fish Sticks. The words left a dirty taste in my mouth even now. Any chance we might have had to patch things up, I had completely ruined. I ached to take it back. But I knew that I couldn't. My phone buzzed from the bottom of my book bag. I checked and saw who it was, but I couldn't answer. I couldn't go to him. Not tonight. The SATs were hours away, the most important test of my life. I couldn't screw that up, no matter what kind of shambles my life was in. I shook thoughts of Connor out of my head and stayed focused. I spent an hour reviewing my vocab lists, looked over my essay bullet points, and packed my bag with test-taking essentials--two protein bars, a bunch of my favorite mechanical pencils, a hair tie. And then I tried to sleep. Sleep would be good for me. But I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. Sometime in the last two weeks I'd become nocturnal. My body burned energy I didn't know I was even capable of storing up. Even when I lay as still as I possibly could, all my organs and muscles churned like a locomotive. It was anxiety, it was apprehension, it was grief. I tried watching television. I tried reading a book. I tried taking a shower with the water as hot as I could stand. When I stepped out, I caught a blur of myself in the steamed-up mirror. I looked like a ghost, and felt like one, too. Using my towel's edge, I wiped away the condensation. Almost instantly, negative things jumped out. I wished that I had bigger boobs; mine were barely a handful. I turned sideways and stared at the dimpled skin on my upper thigh. The scars looked like I'd sat on gravel, from where Grammy's dog had bitten me. I twisted to see the dirt- smudge birthmark on my hip and back again to see my outie belly button, which protruded so far off my stomach that it looked like a third nipple. I thought: Is this the kind of stuff Connor would see if I let him look at me naked? I knew he liked my body in the dark. His hands were always moving, always touching. And he'd press against me so hard, like he was afraid I'd disappear if given the space to breathe. The light in my bathroom was harsh, and I felt I deserved that. I despised the girl staring back at me. This was the girl Autumn hated. This was the girl no one really liked. I couldn't stand looking at her. So I shut off the bathroom light and lit a candle that I kept by the sink. Everything got softer. The ripples on my thigh disappeared. I uncoiled the towel from my head and let my hair fall down onto my shoulders in cold clumps. I leaned forward, putting my hands on the sink edge. More shadows, more curves appeared. I didn't look like myself. I looked...hungry. Starved for affection, for someone who'd make me feel good about myself. I looked like I knew what I was doing when I very clearly did not. Because I didn't understand how being with Connor could feel so right one moment and so pointless the next. Not that it mattered. I was living life in moments, in darkness, in that shed. I wrapped myself back up in the towel, blew out the candle, and tiptoed across the hall into my room. My phone was buzzing again. Connor, surely. Not Autumn. Never again Autumn. I grabbed it, planning to text him back that I wasn't coming over tonight. Because, really, this whole thing was stupid and bound to blow up in my face. There was really no other way it could end. He wrote:

Please?

One word, and I was gone. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The idea of me showing up late to the SATs would have been laughable a few weeks before, along with the notion that Autumn and I would no longer be friends, or that I'd spend my nights in the woods. But that was my life. So maybe I shouldn't have been so shocked after all. I got to school with mere seconds to spare. Ms. Bee, the proctor for my room, stood at the open classroom door, frowning down at her wristwatch. When she looked up and saw me racing down the hall as fast as my legs would carry me, her face was a blend of relief and disappointment. I'd seen her look angry before, but never straight on. Only from the sides, the periphery, aimed at someone else. I thought of about a million excuses in the span of a second, but when I opened my mouth, she shook her head and pointed inside. "No time, Natalie. We've got to get started." The last open seat in the classroom happened to be directly behind my now-former best friend. If Autumn was at all concerned that I wouldn't have arrived on time, she didn't look it. As soon as I came in the room, she leaned over and started to root around in her bag, avoiding my eyes. It was a big slap in the face, considering Autumn probably wouldn't have taken a single SAT prep course if it hadn't been for me. I was practically her private tutor, passing on the knowledge I'd gotten from my summer course and all the manuals I'd read. Did she think about that? Did she remember how much I'd done to prepare her for today? I walked past her without crying or saying anything, but inside I wondered if I could really do this for a whole year. If we could reinvent ourselves as strangers. Ms. Bee handed out the test booklets. I stared at my future, a page full of empty circles. I'd worked way too hard for way too long to prepare for this day. I needed to push everything out of my head and get serious. This, ultimately, was my ticket to escape Liberty River, this life that I'd suddenly screwed up. Except when the test started, I ignored my booklet and stared at the back of Autumn's head, boring holes into her skull, trying to think about what could possibly be going on in her mind. And the truth was, I felt tired. I'd been all over Connor last night, kissing him so hard I'd barely breathed. Plus, the heat was on high in the classroom, the dry and hissing heat that was perfect for naps. I don't remember falling asleep. Just the earthquake that woke me. I looked up. Everyone in the room did. Ms. Bee used my desk for balance. She had one high heel off, bending over slightly to examine her big toe. She'd bumped my desk leg so hard that my pencil had fallen and rolled halfway across the classroom floor. I wiped away the wetness on my cheek, but there was nothing I could do about the translucent stain of drool right smack in the center of my test booklet. "Excuse me," Ms. Bee announced, as if it had been an accident. The look she gave me before returning to the front of the room was one of unmistakable, purposeful disappointment. I recovered and finished as much of the test as I could. But I still felt like an absolute failure. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Somewhere in the middle of our make-out session that night, Connor stopped kissing me and started thinking. Which was exactly what I had been trying to avoid. "What are you doing?" I asked, when he pulled away mid-kiss. "I can tell you're upset." "No I'm not." "I'm not dumb, Sterling." Connor rolled off me and onto his back. "What's wrong?" It was a straightforward question, but the answers in my brain were a knotted mess I didn't want to untangle. I flipped onto my stomach and pressed my face into the pillow. "Connor. Please. I don't want to get into it right now." "Then go ahead and change the subject. But I'm not messing around with you when you're like this." "Why not? I thought guys like you were always good to go." "It's making me feel gross." I lifted my head and glared at him. "Thanks a lot." "You know what I mean." "All right, fine. I've got a question for you." I smiled a very sweet, very fake smile. "Who did you vote for? For student council president?" Connor suddenly looked uneasy. "Isn't that an invasion of voter privacy or something?"

"So it was Mike." I tugged hard on the blanket to give me a little extra--Connor was a blanket hog. "Figures." "Mike's my friend. Of course I voted for him." He said it like I should have known that already. Like there was no possible way he would have voted for me. I turned away from him. I didn't know why it stung so much. Maybe because, deep down, I'd hoped that Connor secretly had voted for me. Which was stupid. Connor curled his body against mine. "I think you're doing a really good job as president, if that counts for something. I'd vote for you now." I knew why. I knew all Connor's reasons. "It doesn't, but thanks anyway." "Really? That doesn't make it better? Not even a little?" I stared hard into the dark, mad at myself for bringing this up in the first place. "No. It makes it worse." "Look, Sterling. I didn't know you then." "I hate to break it to you, Connor, but you still don't." He let out a deep, exasperated sigh. I felt it against my back. "You're not exactly an expert on me, either. You still haven't come to any of my football games. Even though I'd like it if you did." "I despise football, not to mention all the guys on your team." "I know you have your issues with my friends. Especially Mike, and I can't blame you for that. When I saw how he screwed up your campaign poster, I got so pissed I took it down myself." I blushed. "You did that?" "Come on. I've got sisters, and if a guy ever wrote stuff like that about them, I'd lose my mind. Mike doesn't think sometimes. He doesn't have the best judgment." Connor sat up. "But I'm not Mike. You know that, right?" "Maybe." I wanted to believe that Connor was smarter, sweeter than I'd originally thought. But I couldn't completely ignore the truth, either. Connor had some very questionable friends, not to mention a long history of girls he'd fooled around with. I had to be careful, even if I didn't exactly want to be. Connor took the tip of my ponytail and drew a circle in the palm of his hand, as if it were a paintbrush. "I may not know you, but I'm trying. I want to figure you out." My throat got tight. "Maybe you shouldn't." "Why?" "Because that's not what this is supposed to be." As soon as I said it, I worried what Connor would say. Would he confirm my deepest fears, that our relationship was purely physical? Or would he tell me he had real feelings for me? Both prospects scared me. Luckily, Connor didn't say anything. Quite possibly because he was as confused as me. And in a strange way, that was comforting. I took advantage of his silence and stood up. "I should probably go," I announced. I scanned the floor for my socks, tiptoeing through the darkness on a freezing cold floor. I heard him get up. And then I felt myself be spun around. Connor wrapped his arms around me tight. That's when I realized that we'd never offically hugged before. We'd touched so many different parts of each other, independent pieces that made up the whole of us, but never something so all encompassing. Even though I felt the urge to push him away, I didn't. I just let Connor hold me. And I might even have held him back. CHAPTER THIRTY "I notice you've been...distracted." I shifted in my seat and stared at the pointed toes of Ms. Bee's high heels. It was the Monday after the SATs, and if she'd wanted to fail me a thousand times over, I probably would have agreed to it. I felt that guilty. "I know," I said. "I'm sorry." "Natalie, I know you've been working hard, and you've got a lot on your plate. But your recent behavior concerns me. Thanksgiving is this week, and we're completely unprepared to assemble the food baskets. We need to begin making announcements for the students to bring food donations, get in touch with the local shelter, see how many families are--" Clearly I needed to cut back the time I spent with Connor. And the time I thought about him. Because I was thinking about him far too much. "Natalie? Are you even listening?" She put her teacup down on her desk so hard, a few drops of brown liquid sloshed past the lip. "Yes. Of course." Ms. Bee narrowed her eyes. She was not amused. "I've already finished a draft of your college recommendation letter. Please don't compel me to revise it." That caught me completely off guard. Would Ms. Bee really do something like that? Was the good reputation I'd worked so hard to make for myself in jeopardy? I nodded, apologized profusely, grabbed my coat, and got out of there as quickly as possible. That's the thing with secrets--you can't explain yourself. The only thing you're left able to say is sorry--again and again.