Cracked Up to Be (10 page)

“Sit down, Parker.”

Henley and Grey say it in unison, but judging by the looks on their faces, they don’t mean to. I shoot myself in the foot and laugh. They both frown at me and I sit. Chris stares at his shoes. I ignore the knot in my stomach. I’m a great improviser, but I generally prefer having an idea of what I’m getting into.

Grey starts us off: “Parker, do you have any idea why you’re here?”

It comes to me like that: the math homework.

“No, ma’am.” Pause. “Ma’ams.”

Henley stands. She never wastes time, ever. She may have told my parents she was wholly committed to getting me back on the right track, but she has a school to run. I can trick Grey into chasing her tail, but Henley I can’t trick into doing anything.

“Mr. Ellory has informed us you copied his last unit’s worth of math homework—homework you were supposed to have completed on your own.” She rests her hands on the desk and leans forward, nearly elbowing Grey in the face. I have the sense not to laugh this time. “Homework Mrs. Jones was generous enough to grant you an extension on to complete.
On your own
. What do you have to say for yourself, Fadley?”

I concentrate on not blinking. I hear that’s a sign of weakness.

“Well, what’s Chris’s punishment?”

His head snaps up. “
My
punishment?”

“I just did what everyone expected me to do,” I tell him. “You’re the one who’s not supposed to enable me.”

He starts spluttering.

“Now, just a minute here,” Grey breaks in with that watery voice of hers. “What Parker means is—”

“Enough.” Henley’s voice is as hard as her face. “Fadley’s right, Ellory. You’re not supposed to be enabling her and I speak for Ms. Grey and myself when I say we’re disappointed in you. However, given the nature of your relationship with Fadley and her penchant for manipulating people, the fault does not entirely rest with you.”

Chris exhales. That’s when Henley focuses on me.

“Parker, everyone in this room is on your side. You’re a smart girl; you know that. Did you really think you’d get away with this?”

I can’t believe someone as smart as Henley would be stupid enough to ask that question.

“Obviously, I did,” I say.

“Don’t get smart with me—”

“But I am smart; you just said it yourself.” I’d better quit while I’m ahead. “Look, I wouldn’t have done it if Chris hadn’t offered. It’s all his fault for giving me the option.”

Chris sits up. “If I hadn’t, you would’ve found someone else—”

“Oh, really? Like who, Chris? I find it pretty fucking amazing—”

“
Language
, Fadley!”

“That you’re sitting here acting like a victim of my calculating mind considering what I had to do to
get
that math homework—”

“She came to school hungover!” Chris blurts out before I can tell everyone he used his homework to get my goods. This is so great.

Grey and Henley stare at me.

“When was this?” Henley asks.

“He
thinks
I came to school hungover,” I say.

I will kill him.

Grey looks all disappointed. “Oh, Parker. Did you?”

“He
thinks
I came to school hungover,” I repeat. “And besides, what I do in the privacy of my home is my business. You can’t penalize me or take away my diploma for anything I do on my own time, in my own house, outside of—”

“But if you’re caught drinking at school again, you
will
be expelled and you won’t graduate. You know that,” Henley says sharply.

Yes, yes, yes. I know that. I know that.
I know that
. I bite my cheek and nod, my chest tightening. I want to snap my fingers, but I won’t do that in front of them.

I won’t.

“Which brings us back to the issue at hand: copying Chris’s math homework.” Like I said, Henley doesn’t waste time. She paces in the narrow space behind Grey’s desk. “I only have one question, Parker. Why?”

“Well, it’s not like I didn’t try to get caught up.”

It’s not a total lie. There were a few nights where I stared at the homework and considered doing it. That should count for something.

“It’s like every day I get further behind, no matter how hard I try to catch up, and it’s all I can think about because I actually
do
want to graduate, but when I sat down and tried to do that stupid math unit it seemed so impossible, it made me want to kill myself.”

It figures the last thing I should say is the first thing out of my mouth. The room gets so quiet I can hear the faint sounds of the chemistry teacher shouting formulas all the way down the hall through two closed doors. Henley stops pacing and glances at Grey, and Chris looks like I’ve slapped him across the face.

“Ellory,” Henley says. “You’re excused.”

He forces himself out of the chair and looks all sad because of what I’ve said. I’d feel bad about it, but it’s technically his fault I said it in the first place. As soon as he’s gone, I put on my best
sorry
face, because this has the potential to get way out of hand.

“I didn’t mean that,” I say. “You don’t need to call my parents.”

“We have to call your parents now,” Grey says.

“You said anything I say in this room is totally confidential, so we can trust each other! Don’t you want me to trust you?”

“You’ll never trust me, Parker.”

I guess Grey’s not as stupid as I thought or she looks.

But I can’t let her do this.

“You
can’t
tell my parents.”

“
Enough
,” Henley says again. The bell rings. “Ms. Grey, call her parents; arrange a meeting. In the meantime, I’ll be discussing what to do about this math situation with Mrs. Jones. Go eat lunch, Parker. You’re excused.”

Chris is waiting for me at the end of the hall when I come out. I maneuver my way around students on their way to the caf to get to him.

“I can’t believe you told them even after I made myself
kiss
you!”

“I can’t believe you said you wanted to
kill
yourself!”

“I wouldn’t have said it if you hadn’t
told
!”

“I
didn’t
tell!” Chris yells. People stare at us. He grabs me by the elbow, drags me down the hall and pulls me into an empty classroom. As soon as the door is shut, he turns to me. “Becky told.”

I cross my arms and wait. He looks nervous.

“Because she was mad at you, because of what we did—”

“How come she wasn’t in the office with us?”

He shifts.

“Chris.”

I have perfected the way to say his name when I want information he doesn’t want to give. I hit exactly the right tone, frequency, whatever, and it never fails: he caves.

“She told Henley and Grey she was afraid of you because you’re so . . . volatile, and then she cried until they let her go. But you can’t blame them for believing her and—hey! Where are you going?”

I hate her. I hate her.
I hate her
.

My feet walk me to the gym at top speed while a terrified Chris follows ten paces behind and I keep thinking about my parents.
My parents
. I don’t even want to guess what I’ll have to sit through when I get home.

I am going to
end
Becky Halprin.

I push through the gym doors so hard they
whack
against the wall. The basketball players—Jake among them—stop playing and the cheerleaders’ heads snap up from their carrot sticks and water.

“Becky!”

I storm across the court. Becky drops her carrot stick and stands, all white-faced and wide-eyed. She smooths her skirt and moves to meet me halfway. When I’m close enough and she’s close enough, I reach out and shove her.

Hard.

“Holy shit,” one of the basketball players says behind me.

The other members of the squad flank Becky instantly, but it doesn’t matter. I only needed to shove her once, put the fear of God into her, that sort of thing.

And like I’d rob myself of the opportunity.

“Parker, don’t,” Chris says. I ignore him.

“I just realized it must really suck to be you,” I say. “And it’s all my fault.”

She raises her chin defiantly. “What are you talking about?”

“I was a better cheerleader; I was a better cheerleading captain; I was a better student; Jessie liked me better; Chris liked me better; hell, Chris
likes
me better. How must that feel? How does it feel to know that even at my worst, you’re still not enough?”

“Fuck you.” She turns this hideous shade of red and her hands start shaking because the truth hurts. “Parker, I could make your life seriously miserable from where I’m standing.”

“Becky, you’re only standing there because I decided I didn’t want to.”

“Holy
shit
,” the same basketball player repeats behind me.
I clear my throat
.

“Parker,” Evan says nervously. He runs a hand over his prickly black hair and holds out a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. “Uh—shot?”

Jenny Morse flees from the room. I take the bottle and the glass
.

“Wow,” I say. “This is so interesting.”

I move to the kitchen counter, pour my first shot and knock it back. It burns going down and I have to make a concentrated effort not to choke. Chris says it’s pathetic that after three years of high school I haven’t mastered the taste of alcohol
.

Chris says I should loosen up
.

“You and Jessie made it up yet? Because she feels terrible about what happened at practice and she wants to make it up with you.”

The words tumble out of Evan’s mouth and I can’t tell if he’s lying. I pour my second shot, which is really stupid because it’s not even dark out yet and it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t let Chris get away with
.

Evan watches. Hesitates
.

“You’re not going to tell her, are you?”

I shrug. He takes the vodka from me and pours himself a shot. Knocks it back. Then another. And another
.

“I can’t believe you,” I say, reclaiming the bottle. I don’t even bother to pour a shot this time, just drink it straight. It’s gross, but Chris says I should loosen the fuck up. “I thought you loved her.”

“Oh my God, I do,” he says desperately. “Seriously, look, Jenny doesn’t mean anything to me; she’s just
—”

“She’s just a lay, right?” He doesn’t say anything. “I knew it. I totally knew it. I had a feeling and I was right. I’m always right.”

He’s sweating now. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?
”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

I leave him there. When I step into the foyer more and more people are arriving and Chris has the music going proper, really loud. It’s in my feet, up my legs, in my lungs, my heart
.

The party has begun
.

“
Do you want
to go to the mall with me?”

Jake glances over his shoulder. “Are you talking to me?”

He’s such a dork.

“Yes, Jake, I’m talking to you.”

“Me? Go to the mall with you?” He frowns. “Why?”

I don’t have the patience for this.

“Because it’s fun! I don’t know, why do people go to the mall? I just thought since I was going to the mall after school and you’re practically stalking me all the time, you’d probably wonder why I didn’t get on the bus and spend all night obsessing over it, and I don’t want to be responsible if
you
don’t get a good night’s sleep.”

“You’re having a rough day, aren’t you?” he asks. “Everyone’s talking about what happened at lunch.”

I inhale slowly through my teeth.

“Look, do you want to go to the mall with me after school or not?”

“Uh, yeah!” Finally. He forces a smile. “Sure.”

“Meet me outside after the bell.”

There
.

I’ve decided to kill as many hours as I can at the mall because I don’t want to go home and face my devastated parents right away and I know the phone call from Grey will devastate them. Maybe they’ll send me to an actual therapist or something; I don’t know. I just don’t want to go home until I absolutely have to, even if it does make everything worse, and I figure toying with Jake will be a good distraction from that eventuality, because I need that, too. A distraction.

“So why’d you ask me to come with you?”

The outside light and fresh air is immediately swallowed behind us as we step through the doors of the Corby Shopping Center. It’s crowded, but I can stand being around this many people. It’s not like school, where everyone knows me.

“Why not ask you?” I shrug. “Where do you want to go first?”

“I don’t know. This is my first time at your local mall. Give me the grand tour.”

“Well, we simply must start with the food court. Does international cuisine interest you? The first slice of pizza is on me.”

“Just a sec.” Jake reaches out and feels my forehead. “Temperature’s normal. Invasion of the body snatchers, maybe? Have you been possessed? Remember, like, two days ago when you told me I didn’t have a chance with you?”

I brush his hand away. “First slice of pizza is on you.”

We don’t have pizza, we have Chinese food and Coke on Jake at my insistence, but I think he’s the type of guy who would pay anyway. The food court is really packed, so we have to eat at the fountain. We sit on the edge of the pale pink tiles while water gushes out of the mouth of the large metal fish behind us. Loose change scattered over the bottom of the fountain catches the weak light overhead and glints at us. Annoying elevator Muzak is piped in from God knows where, but hey, it’s a mall.

We’re quiet at first and then I start thinking about my parents again, which I don’t want to do, so I try for a conversation. A nice one.

“Tell me about you,” I say.

Jake takes a sip of his Coke and stares at the shoppers passing by.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything. Tell me about your family and life at your old school and—I don’t know—what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”