Chapter 11

I could have done without the prom banners going up, but I knew I couldn’t have done a thing about it. Everywhere I looked I saw a reminder, and Kelly made sure to give me even more to be upset about. I just wanted to move past this. I wanted to stop seeing them together and feeling like my time with Peter didn’t matter. He’d replaced me so quickly, and it sucked all the meaning out of every I love you he had ever said to me.

Poe flicked my shoulder, because I had been staring at the banner too much. “Just give me the okay, and I’ll—”

“Stop offering, because I might take you up on it.”

He smiled and pulled me to his side as we walked down the hallway. “The offer always stands. I want to murder that guy for making you feel like any of this is your fault.”

“It is,” I said, and it sounded so whiny. “I wasn’t enough. Kelly was enough…”

Poe flicked me again. “Shush. You’re feeling sorry for yourself because you’re in a mood. It’s fine to be in a mood, but you act like he was some prize that you lost. The guy is an asshole who clearly wasn’t ever in it with both feet.”

I groaned, coming to a stop. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it just makes me feel stupid for having both my feet in.”

Poe stopped with me and held my face. “Listen here, woman.”

I smiled.

“You’re not stupid for doing what you were supposed to do. It doesn’t make you dumb, and don’t take this as a sign to stop trusting people. You did nothing wrong, and Peter should have done things different if he wasn’t sure about you two.”

“But maybe he used to be sure. Then him and Kelly went off and—”

“Clover, I like you so much, so I hope this doesn’t upset you. But it is none of your business what Peter got up to after you broke up. Is he a prick for moving on so soon? Yeah, and he’s a prick for a lot of other things, but you guys are done, so he’s able to go off and do whatever. Same as you. If you adopt the idea that it’s none of your business, then it’ll make your life a lot easier. If you start thinking about it, try to shut it down. It’s hard, but you have to try.”

He had a point. It wasn’t any of my concern what Peter got up to now, and it only upset me when I pictured it in my head. I just wished I could make the dwelling stop. I kept thinking about him and wanting things to go back to the way it had been. Simple, and safe. We had all these plans, and that was still the future I wanted.

“It won’t go away,” I said.

“What won’t go away?”

I inhaled, trying to slow time. “It hurts. Everything hurts, and he’s fine. It’s infuriating.”

“I know it is. You have to find a way to work past it.”

It didn’t look all that possible from where I stood. I didn’t want to still be hurting in a year, or five. But on the other hand, it felt so wrong to think that one day, I wouldn’t know what Peter was up to. He would be a total stranger to me, when he used to mean so much. Everything. It sounded like blasphemy.

“How come I’m so replaceable?” I asked, like Poe could have answered. “He used to come to me with all of his problems and worries, and I made him feel better. How could I go from the only person who could do that, to what I am now?”

“I don’t know, honey. I can’t come up with a reason, because I don’t know the person who you’re talking about. All I can tell you is that Cathy won’t replace you, and I won’t replace you.”

I blinked and stared away from Poe’s face. “I was all fucked up too. I had the same problems he did, feeling worthless, and unwanted.”

“And he made you feel better when you talked to him about it?”

My face contorted as I felt the line form between my eyebrows. “We never really talked about that.”

“What?”

I shrugged. “We didn’t talk a lot about my issues. He knew he couldn’t make it go away, so we didn’t talk about it. I tried not to bring it up when I was upset, because there was always something up with him. It wasn’t fair for me to complain when he had it worse.”

Poe grumbled, and then rolled his eyes. “I really hate that guy.”

“What? Why?”

“Other than the obvious? He used you to feel better, and he didn’t help you at all.”

“He needed me. I got by without leaning on him like that. He didn’t need that stress.”

I didn’t understand why Poe stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “He should have been grateful for the stress, especially if it would have made you feel a little better. Peter didn’t try, and that’s not right. You deserve for someone to try, even if you think it’s useless, because that’s not the point.”

I flinched at the touch of aggression, but Poe noticed and settled down. He took my hand, tugging me back over to him. His lips pressed against my temple, and then he put them to my ear. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “I promise that eventually, this is going to fade away.”

Rubbing my eyes, I sighed. “I feel like garbage. I want to do something insanely petty to upset him. I mean, he probably wouldn’t care about anything I did, but it would be nice to upset him just once, to try and even out this constant misery he’s put me in.”

Poe smiled, and looked upward. “Hmm, give me a little time. I can come up with something good.”

“I swear to god if it involves your bladder…”

He laughed, but didn’t tell me no. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out. Sugar in a gas tank is pretty good too, by the way. Or stabbing him.”

“Oh, I like that one. Wanna be teenaged Bonnie and Clyde?”

“Do I get to kiss you on the mouth?”

My heart decided to slam into my ribs for some reason, but I decided not to pay attention. “I mean, obviously.”

Poe nodded. “Then I shall go out with you in a hail of gunfire.”

“The way the lord intended.”

We walked with linked arms to Poe’s first hour class, where he got the joy of making up a test he missed the day before. That meant I didn’t get a ride home. Cathy had a thing with her friends, working on something for the goddammed motherfucking prom, so that meant a lonely walk home for me. Cathy said she would dedicate a song to me when she played at the dance, and that was meant to make me feel better.

“Abandoner,” I accused in a sigh when Poe and I got to his class.

“So sorry,” he said. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“How?” I asked, lifting up on my tiptoes before dropping.

He cocked his head, getting a cute thinky face. “I’ll let you know.”

We parted, and I shuffled slowly through the empty hallway. We’d lingered too long, and most of the students had gone home. Fridays cleared out quick, and I couldn’t blame them. I had nowhere to be, so what did it matter?

Once I got outside, I trudged past the boys headed off to do their lacrosse stuff. They went in the opposite direction as I did, and I kept my head down as I walked through the grass.

Everything felt hunky dory until I felt a sharp pain in my foot. I stopped, cursing as I looked at the bottom of my shoe. What the hell was a nail doing in the grass? I hopped over to the edge of the walkway and sat down. My feet hung over, and the drop to the parking lot looked to be about six feet down. Not bad, but I didn’t want to fall.

I pulled the nail out and tossed it aside for some other unlucky soul. When my shoe came off, I only saw a little blood on my sock. The wound probably wouldn’t kill me, so I decided I didn’t need a doctor visit.

I saw the shadow as I put my shoe back on, but I didn’t know who came over to me, or why. Before I registered the body, it lowered down, and sat on my lap. Tammy smiled at me and put an arm over my shoulder.

Stunned wouldn’t have been a big enough word to describe me. I couldn’t move or say a word yet. My instincts told me to shove the girl off of my lap, but she could have landed wrong and broken her neck. I didn’t need to add murderer to my resume of failures. Maybe Tammy wanted to bury the hatchet, and this was part of her personality. Cathy acted kind of weird too, but I loved her for it. This didn’t feel like that.

“Hello,” Tammy said to me, a tiny smile on her face. “How are you?”

What was I supposed to say to her? “Um, okay I guess. You?”

She tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “Oh, I’m great. I actually decided something, and it made me feel a lot better.”

God, I wanted her off of me. Almost bad enough that I could have shoved her. I’d caused enough problems in her life this month, so I kept my hands to myself. “What might that be?”

Tammy smiled widely, and her fingertips brushed my cheek. “I’m going to destroy you.”

My heart tried to escape my chest, crashing against my ribs as the air left my lungs. She couldn’t have meant that. Not with how happy her smile looked, and soft her voice sounded. Tammy had to have been fucking with me.

“What?” I asked.

She adjusted on my lap and folded her hands on her own. “I’m going to destroy you. I’m going to make you wish that you could find a place to hide. Nowhere will be safe.”

Before I could say another word, she leaned forward, and pressed her lips against mine for about two seconds. Stunned, I didn’t fight her. The girl smiled again and got off of me. I didn’t even watch her walk away.

I… did not know what the hell that had been about, but my hands started shaking. I assumed Tammy hated me, but that felt like a bit much. She might have been serious, and I didn’t know what that meant for me. If this had been something meant to scare me, then she nailed it. Not that I thought she would have killed me or anything, but the girl had kissed me against my will too. That wasn’t okay with me.

I stood up; my legs wobbly as I rubbed lip gloss off. The lacrosse team sounded loud on the other side of the field as I started hurrying off. I could have gone to tell Peter. Or, I guess I couldn’t have. A couple months ago, I would have run right to him and he would have… Wait. What would he have done? He wouldn’t have gone to talk with Tammy. He wouldn’t have wanted to deal with the confrontation. He would have taken me home.

Now, if I told Cathy, she would have killed the girl. Poe, he probably would have come up with some kind of revenge for me. Maybe involving peeing on her car. My friends would have had my back.

But I didn’t go to my friends. I went to the office instead.

Two secretaries sat, stationed behind the desk in the main room of the office. Several other rooms were attached to this one, like this was the damn Pentagon or something. The counselor’s office sat to the left, the principal straight forward, vice to the right, and a couple other doors I didn’t know about. Probably storage or where they did their virgin sacrifices. It wasn’t really any of my business.

I went up to the lady at the desk, noticing that the other one wasn’t there at the moment. This one had dark hair, short, and a little curly. She smiled at me as I approached, and I put my hands on the edge of her tall desk.

“Can I help you?” she asked. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Weevil?”

I shook my head. “No, but I don’t really know who to talk to here. I was just threatened by another student. She kissed me—”

“What?” the woman said. “She threatened you by kissing?”

“No. I was sitting outside, and she came up to me.”

“Who?” she cut me off again.

“Tamara…something. I don’t know her last name.” I went on with the rest of the story, trying to remember as many details as I could, and say them as if they didn’t freak me out.

“That sounds like the exact thing a teenage girl would say to get a rise out of someone,” the woman said to me. “She wanted to scare you.”

“Maybe,” I said. “And she did. What do I do now?” I assumed there was a form I had to fill out, or someone else I had to talk to. I didn’t know how far this would go, or if the cops had to get involved. The thought made me want to throw up a little, and I wished I’d gone and gotten Poe.

“Nothing,” the woman sighed. “Unfortunately, there isn’t anything we can do for something like this.”

“Something like this,” I repeated. “Something like a student threatening another student.”

She dared to sigh at me again. “To me, this sounds like some petty mind games.”

I flinched back. “No. This person kissed me, against my will, and on campus. You’re telling me you won’t do anything about that?”

The woman leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I know that some people have certain…problems, with kissing people of the same sex. But—”

Much louder than I had been before, I said, “I don’t have a problem kissing girls. I have a problem with someone sitting on my lap, telling me they’re going to destroy me, and then kissing me before they take off. You can try and make me sound as awful as you want to, but I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The other secretary must have heard my fit, because a grey-haired lady came out of nowhere, and sat beside the other one. She kept her voice calm, as if she tried to soothe a wild animal. “What seems to be the trouble here?”

Before the dumb woman could answer, I cut in, and repeated my story word for word. I told it exactly like it happened, trying not to sound biased or anything. I didn’t want to give them any ammo against me, since it looked like at least one of the women wanted to paint me as crazy.

“Honey,” the second lady said, and I already gave up hope. “This is normal teenage girl stuff. She’s not going to hurt you.”

I honestly thought that these people would have jumped on this, trying to help me out. Instead, it almost sounded like they barely believed me, and I realized I had no one on my side. It shocked me a little, this response so opposite to what I thought I would have gotten. I thought schools were supposed to have a zero tolerance on bullying things. Though, this didn’t come across as bullying to these people.

“You don’t know that,” I said, trying one last time. “She said she was going to destroy me. That doesn’t sound like she wants to be friends.”

The women exchanged a look, and they felt like a little army against me. The first one leaned forward again, and I already wanted to take a stapler to her fingers. “I understand that you got a little spooked, but I’m sure this is nothing. I hear about things like this all the time. Nothing ever comes from them.”

Except for when they do, and people got hurt. This time, it was me up on the chopping block, and I couldn’t get these people to see reason. Fine then, I didn’t need them.

“Is there someone else I can talk to?” I asked. “I bet the principal would want to hear about this.”

Woman Two raised her hand at me. “I wouldn’t bother him with this, honey. How about you head home and relax. Cool off, get some rest. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

So now I’m crazy… Great. I needed more people to make me think what I already knew. But of course, I could have lived with that. It was the fact that they denied me the right to tell someone who might have cared. Now I had to cross my fingers and hope that Tammy didn’t want to take this any farther. Or that if she had something planned, it wouldn’t kill me.

“Sure,” I said, scratching my temple. “Thanks so much.” I’ll have my parents send you the funeral bill.

“Bye, sweetie,” bitch one said to me.

I smiled, and then walked out of the office before I could shatter all the glass in the room.