Suzie
Matt wouldn’t leave. I’d come home to find him waiting for me and now I couldn’t get him to leave. Of all the times for my easygoing friend to turn stubborn, this was the worst.
My eyes were still red from crying and I already had a worried Margo to contend with. She might’ve let me escape to the parking lot, but she’d be texting and calling soon, and I’d either have to avoid her entirely or tell her everything.
But first there was Matt to contend with. He crossed his arms, his stance wide as he planted himself in the middle of my bedroom. “Are you okay?”
Concern etched his familiar features making it impossible to be too irritated with the guy. He might’ve been acting weird lately but his heart was in the right place. But I couldn’t deal with him right now, and not just because I was still an emotional wreck after seeing Luke this afternoon. Sadly, that had become something of a common occurrence. Spending time with him all week had been torture, but today was the worst because watching him pitch our project—he’d just been so excited. So genuinely enthusiastic. So outrageously geeky as he enthused about the possibilities within the game, not caring at all what anyone thought about that.
In that moment I’d seen it. I’d seen him—DataG. It was the first time I’d really understood that they were one and the same.
“Matt,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
His gaze flickered over my puffy eyes, my hunched shoulders. He cleared his throat. “If you want to talk about this thing with Luke—”
“I don’t.” My voice was sharper than intended but Matt didn’t seem offended.
He knew me well.
And I knew him well. Too well. That was the real reason I didn’t want to talk to him right now. A suspicion had been forming ever since my scene with Luke at the carnival last weekend. It had popped up in my mind and I’d instantly felt guilty for thinking it. But then I’d spent the better part of this week replaying every single thing Luke had said or done that night—mainly his confession, but everything else too. It was easier, honestly, to focus on the other stuff. The things he’d said about Joel, about him not being smart enough to get away with slipping that photo into the slideshow…past the AV club.
Matt shifted, his gaze darting down to his feet and then back up to me but not quite meeting my eyes. I slowly sank onto the edge of my bed. “Matt,” I said slowly, a weird feeling of resignation settling over me and making me tired. “Is there something you want to talk to me about?”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. Then he nodded. When he was still quiet for another long minute, I sighed. “Is it about the slideshow?”
His gaze shot up to mine and I saw it—the guilt, the fear.
My stomach plummeted. I hadn’t thought it was possible to feel any more betrayed this week. “You did it, didn’t you?”
My voice was quiet but he heard me.
“Yeah.” His admission came out as a croak and he took a step toward me. “I am so sorry, Suzie. You have no idea how sorry I am.”
I stared up at him, not really feeling all that shocked. I mean, I should, I supposed. But I think I sort of knew all week. The idea had been there, nagging at me, but I kept shushing it, swatting it away out of loyalty to Matt.
He would never do something like that.
But he had.
“Why?” I asked.
He sank down on the bed beside me slowly as if he feared I’d run away from him. He had a right to think that after the way I’d run from Luke.
But I hadn’t told Matt about that, just like I hadn’t told Margo.
I hadn’t told anyone. Loneliness wrapped around me like a cloak, making me feel numb. Cold. It made me feel so far away from Matt right now, all I could do was eye him with mild curiosity as he talked.
“I don’t know why I did it,” he said, his hands coming up to scrub at his face. “I mean, maybe I do. Or at least, I did at the time…”
Against all odds, I felt a surge of pity for my best friend. I was hurt, yes, and betrayed, definitely. He’d been responsible for the most humiliating moment of my life and all the hurt that had come after. But looking at him right now, I had the feeling that no one was hurting more than him.
“That night,” he said slowly. “I was so pissed and so tired of everyone mocking us. Of everyone mocking you and Margo.” He shook his head in frustration. “We’d gone to school with those guys for so long, you know? And not one of them knew you guys. Not really. They never noticed you or me or Margo except to make fun of us. They didn’t realize that we could be fun, we could be wild and crazy, we could—”
“Do kegstands?” I offered.
He cringed. “I took the picture on a whim. I had my phone in my hand and I thought I’d show it to you afterwards to make you laugh.”
“And then?”
“And then that night I couldn’t sleep because all I could think about was Joel sneering and his friends laughing, and I just wanted to show them all that they didn’t know us. Not really.”
I nodded because despite his fast, slightly incoherent babble, I knew exactly what he meant. They spent years ignoring us, until they didn’t. And when they suddenly saw us it was clear they’d never really seen us at all. It was demoralizing. Humiliating.
But not nearly as embarrassing as what Matt had done.
“I still don’t understand,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm despite the fact that my temper was rising. “What were you thinking when you got that photo into the slideshow?”
He cringed a bit and I didn’t care.
“Howie knew?” I asked.
He nodded. Howie was the head of the AV club and one of Matt’s good friends.
“I see.” It all made sense now. Luke had been right—Joel couldn’t have gotten the photo into the slideshow, not without some help. But none of the AV guys would have helped a jerk like Joel.
Matt, on the other hand…
My chest burned with a fresh wave of humiliation and anger as I realized that Matt and his friends had known all along that Joel wasn’t to blame—not for my embarrassment or the ensuing punishment.
I gripped the comforter in my hands. “Explain.”
“It was supposed to just be a prank,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to end up as the finale of the show and stay up there like that. It was supposed to flash up on the screen and then disappear.” He groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “It was such a stupid idea.”
“It was,” I said. “It really was.”
He was silent for a second.
“Why didn’t you say anything afterward?”
“I panicked.” The shame in his eyes was clear as day but thinking back to those first few days after the incident when I’d been punished and humiliated…I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“You panicked?” I repeated in disbelief. “You panicked and just let us get in trouble? It didn’t occur to you to say anything?”
He flinched. “I didn’t expect you guys to get in trouble with the school or with your parents, and when you did I didn’t know what I could do to do to make it right. You were so sure it was Joel and I…” He swallowed and his head fell. “I was a coward and let him take the blame.”
I stared at him in horror. “And after?” I said. “When Joel and his friends started up that stupid hashtag?”
He lifted his head and threw his hands in the air. “I felt terrible, but I really thought it would blow over. I had no idea that it would go viral like that.” He looked so anguished it was hard to look at him. “You have to believe me, I had no intention of starting that whole hashtag incident.”
The Geeks Gone Wild hashtag was the trend that wouldn’t die. Sure, it might’ve eased up a bit but it was still happening…and it was all Matt’s fault.
He shook his head. “I was so angry that they wouldn’t just let it go. They couldn’t move on, they had to go and turn it into an excuse to pick on us again.”
“They?” I repeated.
He gave a look that was frighteningly close to a sneer. “You know, them. Joel and his friends, Cara and Luke and—”
“Not Luke.” I said it automatically without even thinking.
Matt’s brows shot up. “You’re defending him? After what he did to you?”
I glared at Matt. “What he did to me? What do you know about what he did to me?” He might’ve had his suspicions that night when he drove me home but I hadn’t told him anything. “You’re the one who embarrassed me, got me in a world of trouble, and then lied to me for months.”
“I know, I know,” he said quickly. “And I am so, so sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am.”
“No,” I said. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”
He stared at me for a long minute and I swallowed down tears. I didn’t want to be sad, dang it, I wanted to hang on to my anger.
Anger was easier to deal with—there were ways to vent fury. But this kind of sadness? I didn’t know what to do with it.
“Suzie, I am so sorry for hurting you,” he said.
I never meant to hurt you. I closed my eyes but there was no avoiding Luke’s voice. He’d been haunting me for days, even when he was nowhere near. He was in my head when I tried to sleep, I could hear his voice when I was supposed to be studying, and I couldn’t even turn to MageLand to escape because I couldn’t bear to see his name flashing on the edge of my screen, so accessible but so out of reach.
“Suzie?” Matt said. “Are you…are you okay?”
I stiffened at the feel of his hand on my arm. No. No, I was not okay. In the course of one week I’d lost two out of three of my closest friends. I had Margo, but she had Jason. She’d do anything for me but there was no denying that she was currently living in her bubble of happiness. As she should. She deserved it.
But right at this moment I’d never been more alone.
“Do you think you can ever forgive me?” Matt’s voice was soft and sad, and it nearly broke my heart.
I nodded. I didn’t have to think about it. Matt and I had been friends forever. I didn’t doubt it when he said his intentions had been good—stupid, perhaps, but not malicious. “You’ve been lying to me—to us,” I said, finally lifting my head to look at him. “I can forgive you but I don’t know if I can trust you.”
He blanched and I saw him swallow as he nodded. “I know. That’s on me to make things right.” We sat there in silence for a little while until Matt broke it. “Margo is going to kill me.”
I nodded. “She’s definitely going to hurt you in some way, yes.”
He sighed. “I guess I have it coming.”
“You totally have it coming.”
He looked over at me with a hint of smile and I let out a long breath. I was tired, so freakin’ tired. It wasn’t lack of sleep but weariness. I was tired of being angry, and tired of feeling hurt, and tired of hiding it all from the world. This week of pretending to be fine had sapped the last of my emotional energy and I just didn’t have it in me to hold on to my fury, not when I so badly needed him. “I don’t want to be angry with you, Matt.”
“I appreciate that.”
Tears choked me up a bit and I licked my lips, staring up at the ceiling in the hopes of staunching the tears. “No, I mean, I can’t be mad at you. I—I need a friend.” I shot him a glare out of the corner of my eye. “This does not mean that your idiocy is forgotten, but for right now can we just…can we just move on?”
He squeezed my hand. “Suzie, tell me what happened.”
My lower lip trembled. “You were right about Luke.”
I felt him stiffen beside me.
“Not about him dating me as a joke,” I said. At least, he hadn’t intended to make a joke out of me, that much I believed. But he’d still managed to make me feel stupid. I drew in a deep breath and told Matt everything.
Everything.
Starting with my newfound online friendship sometime last spring, and how that morphed into a crush on my end, at least, and how we got so close. And then how Luke found out who I was and that was why he’d been pestering me for the first month of school.
“He was trying to get to know you?” Matt asked, his brows drawn together in confusion.
I shrugged. “I guess.”
He paused. “He has a weird way of going about it.”
“And you have a weird way of trying to prove that we’re cool,” I pointed out.
He winced. “Fair enough.”
I sighed as he studied me. “You do realize you’re sticking up for him, right?”
I pressed my lips together. Was I? Crap. That wasn’t right. “I was merely pointing out that you’re in no position to judge.”
“Uh huh.” Matt didn’t look convinced. “So, let me get this straight. You liked this DataG guy.”
I nodded. “He was one of my closest friends.”
“And you also had feelings for him,” Matt clarified with a knowing look.
I could feel the heat in my cheeks. “Yes. Fine. I also had a bit of a thing for him.”
“Meanwhile you didn’t like Luke,” he said.
I nodded.
“But then you did.”
I let out a huff at his oversimplification. “I got to know him better and yeah, I thought maybe I liked him too.”
“As a friend?” Matt asked.
“Yes, and…” I bit my lip. Oh heck, who was I trying to fool? “As a friend but also as something more than a friend.”
“I see.” Matt’s smile was annoyingly smug.
“What?” I asked. “What do you see?”
“Let me just recap the facts,” he said in his most annoyingly precise editor-in-chief voice. “You liked two guys—as friends and then as ‘more than friends,’ is that correct?”
I pursed my lips at his use of air quotes but nodded.
“Now it turns out that both of these guys are one guy,” he finished.
I waited for him to continue. “What’s your point?”
“My point is…it sounds like you fell for Luke Warner.”
I stared at him.
“It sounds like you fell hard,” he added.
“But…but…” I floundered, my hands flailing uselessly as I searched for words to argue. “It’s not that simple.”
Matt’s grimace was sympathetic and maybe just a little pitying. “No, it’s not.”
“He hurt me.”
Matt nodded. I could tell he wanted to say something though.
“What? Spit it out.”
He drew in a deep breath, his expression pained. “Ugh, I can’t believe I’m about to do this.”
“Do what?”
He met my gaze evenly. “Defend Luke Warner.”
I gasped. “What? You’re taking his side?”
“I’m not taking his side,” he said quickly, shifting to face me on the bed and taking both of my hands in his. “It’s just that, speaking as someone who cares about you and who’s also hurt you, I’m in the unique position of understanding that sometimes intentions matter.”
I stared at him and he winced. “That was not a passive aggressive way of pleading my own case, I swear. It’s just that…from the sounds of it, Luke only wanted to get to know you.”
“But he should have told me,” I said.
“Yeah, he should have,” Matt agreed. “But maybe he didn’t know how.” He gave me a rueful grin. “Trust me when I say that finding the words is not always easy, especially when you know that by telling the truth you’d risk losing someone you love.”
The word love hovered between us and made the oxygen thinner. Love. Was that what this was that I felt for Luke?
I shook my head to rid myself of the thought. It was way too soon for epic words like that. I wasn’t even sure I liked the guy at this particular moment. “That doesn’t change the fact that for weeks I was pouring my heart out to him, not knowing it was him.”
Matt looked more serious than I could ever remember seeing him. “Did he take advantage of that? I mean, has Luke spilled any of the secrets you told DataG? Did he use any of the information to manipulate you or hurt you in any way?”
I’d spent the whole week thinking about my exchanges with DataG, replaying each and every one in my mind to see what I’d missed. Had he tried to tell me in some way? No.
But had he tried to use it in any way?
No.
The worst abuse of power I could come up with was that he’d sided with himself about the ski slope idea for the competition. But since his idea was really good, I couldn’t blame him too harshly for that.
Oh no, I could feel myself relenting. I didn’t want to relent because if I did, if I let go of this anger…
I held my breath to ride out the wave of hurt. I might just crumple under the weight of a broken heart. “I don’t know if I can forgive him.”
Matt seemed to ponder this. “What if not forgiving him means you hurt even more?”
I stared at my friend for a while as his words hit home. I knew exactly what he meant. Wasn’t that why I’d chosen to forgive Matt? Holding on to my anger would have robbed me of a friend. And I knew that despite his stupid actions he never meant to hurt me.
I never meant to hurt you.
Sweet mercy, I’d never get Luke’s voice out of my head. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe he’d meant it. Maybe he really hadn’t meant to hurt me.
But he had.
And somehow forgiving him didn’t seem nearly as easy as forgiving my best friend who’d had my back my whole life.
“You know,” Matt said slowly. “Letting people in has never been your strong suit.”
I frowned at him and he held his hands up. “I’m not being critical, just honest.”
I gave a grudging nod. It was no secret that I tended to hide behind silence at school, and I’d never had a great desire to expand my circle of friends beyond Matt, Margo, and some of the kids in my computer science club, who were really more acquaintances than friends.
“Fine,” I said. “So what’s your point?”
“My point is that it’s scary to let someone new into your life, and even scarier if they’ve hurt you.”
I pursed my lips. That seemed pretty obvious.
“But just because you got hurt doesn’t mean letting new people in isn’t worth the risk.”
I nodded because what he said made sense. I knew it logically but… “What if he hurts me again?”
I met Matt’s gaze and the look there was so sympathetic it hurt.
“I mean, the closer he gets the harder it would be to…to lose him.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Yeah, but if you never let him in at all then you’ll still get hurt. Right?”
I sighed. “Matt, are you seriously giving me the ’tis better to have loved and lost speech?”
He grinned. “Maybe I am.”
I let out a little laugh. “Spoken like a guy who’s never been in love.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not, but never say never.”
“Oh man,” I sighed. “You’re just full of the clichés today, aren’t you?”
He laughed and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
Matt left a little while later with promises to check in on me over the weekend. He also promised that he’d tell Margo his secret and soon. Just not this weekend because she had plans with Jason and wouldn’t be around.
I informed him he was a wuss and he agreed, so—we were basically back to normal. Our friendship might not have been perfect but he looked relieved that I’d forgiven him and I knew he meant it when he said he’d do everything in his power to earn back my trust.
After he left and I was alone in my bedroom, I was no closer to knowing what I was supposed to do about Luke. I thought about what Matt had said, and the things he hadn’t.
He didn’t have to point out that by not taking advantage of my ignorance, Luke had proved what I’d already known. He wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t like Joel or any of the other bullies in our school. Maybe he was even a good guy. Or maybe it wasn’t that black and white. Maybe there was no good or bad, no us versus them.
I lay down on my bed, my laptop close but out of reach. Staring up at my ceiling I tried to figure out what I would have done if it had been the reverse. What if I’d been the one to discover that DataG was actually Luke Warner?
What would I have done?
Minutes passed as I ran through scenario after scenario, discarding each in turn.
Finally, I had to admit the truth. I had no idea what I would have done. I probably wouldn’t have ended my friendship with my online bestie because that connection was one of my favorite things in the world. But how could I have told Luke when there was every chance he would have laughed in my face, or worse…accused me of knowing that it was him all along.
Every hypothetical scenario ended with me losing one of my closest friends—either because Luke shut me out or because I cut DataG out of my life to avoid Luke finding out.
Either way, I was left alone. Without my good friend or my first kiss. My first boyfriend? No, we’d never made it that far. But could we have? If I hadn’t found out that night…would we have?
My heart raced even though I was lying still. The house was empty with my parents out on a date night and Dale out with his friends, and all I could hear was the loud thud of my heart as something like hope spread throughout my chest.
I sat up and reached for my computer. Before I could think it through I flipped it open and logged into the game. Sure enough, his moniker was lit up. He was there on the other end. The friend I’d come to count on.
The boy I’d developed a crush on.
The guy who’d given me my first kiss.
I didn’t know what to say. Matt had been right—letting people in had never been easy for me. But this wasn’t just any person, this was my friend.
First and foremost he was my friend.
And with my friend I could be honest, right?
I was confused and I was scared, but there was one thing I knew. I missed my friend.
I clicked on his name in my message box and started typing.