Heartstopper (12 page)

For one crazy second, Sandy thought that a call had come through for her on his line, and that he was offering his phone to her as a courtesy. Only when he ran laughing down the corridor did Sandy realize what had actually happened.

By the time she got home, a photograph of her in Gordon Lipsman’s arms was plastered all over the Internet.

M
egan, Tim. Your father’s here.”

Megan glanced slowly toward her locked bedroom door, then looked back at the unsettling image filling her computer screen.

A familiar high school corridor. A man in a blue-and-white-striped seersucker suit. A woman in a conservative, pink cotton blouse and navy, pleated skirt. His arm encircling her waist. Her back arched, her head thrown back. What could actually pass as a smile on her face. It looked as if they were dancing, Megan thought, although her mother had insisted they most assuredly were not. Megan grinned. While it was decidedly strange to see her mother in the arms of anyone other than her father—and especially the unlikely arms of dorky Mr. Lipsman—she thought her mother looked pretty, and she welcomed even the hint of a smile on her lips. It had been several months since Megan had seen her mother’s face register anything but sorrow. Although that was better than nothing at all. Often there was just this vacant stare. Megan knew when she saw that faraway gaze in her mother’s eyes that she was peering into the past, trying to figure out how everything had gone so terribly wrong.

It wasn’t your fault, Megan wanted to assure her in those moments, but she didn’t because, deep down, she thought it might be her mother’s fault after all. If only
she’d dressed a little sexier or made some effort to tame her unruly curls. If only she hadn’t been so eager to voice her opinions, if she’d interrupted her husband less, gone along more. Maybe then he wouldn’t have spent so much time in distant chat rooms. Maybe he wouldn’t have connected with Kerri Franklin. Maybe they’d still be a family.

Megan sank back in her chair, blew a series of imaginary bubbles with her lips. Her mother had mentioned that Mr. Lipsman wanted her to try out for the part of Kate in the school’s upcoming production of
Kiss Me, Kate
, and maybe she would. Especially if Greg Watt, who she thought was really cute, could be persuaded to play Petruchio.

Her mother would undoubtedly be horrified at the knowledge she found anything even remotely attractive about Greg Watt and question Megan’s sanity. A girl her age had better things to think about than boys like that, she’d say.

And what could Megan offer in her defense? That she alone was able to see through the bad-boy facade, that she saw beyond the arrogant set of his jaw and the cockiness of his strut, that she liked the way his shoulders mimicked the calculated swagger of his hips, the way his jeans hugged his slender thighs and tight rear end? Oh, sure. That would go over well.

Tight
rear end?
Megan repeated silently, feeling herself blush. Who her age talked like that? Still, she could barely bring herself to
think
the word
ass
, let alone say it out loud. She was her mother’s daughter in that regard, she thought with a sigh, deciding that if her mother hadn’t been such a prude, such a stickler for decorum and proper language, her father might now be sitting in front of the TV, eating a sandwich, and not waiting impatiently by the front door to take her and her brother out for dinner. She turned back to the computer, pressed a key, and watched the image of her mother in Mr. Lipsman’s arms instantly evaporate. Would
that it were so easy to make problems disappear in real life, she thought, reluctantly picturing Liana Martin.

Where was she? What had happened to her? It had been four days since anyone had seen her.

She returned to the main menu, clicked onto MSN, pressed several more keys, then sank back in the chair, refusing to dwell on unpleasant possibilities, preferring instead to imagine herself in Greg’s strong, muscular arms. He’d protect her from harm, she thought, feeling his imaginary warm breath wrapping around her own, his lips lowering slowly, teasingly, to hers. The kiss that followed was both urgent and tender, as his hands gently cupped her face, just like they did it in the movies, Megan thought, wondering if Greg had ever entertained such fantasies about her.

It wasn’t entirely out of the question, she decided. Even though she was a year younger and a grade behind him, and they’d never actually had a real conversation—“Hi. How ya doin’?” was about the extent of it—she’d noticed the way he looked at her each time she passed him in the halls. And once, just a couple of weeks ago, she’d caught him staring at her in the cafeteria, and he’d turned away quickly, obviously embarrassed at having been discovered, and tossed a piece of cake across the table at his friend Joey Balfour, who retaliated by hurling the contents of his cup of Coke in Greg’s face, and the next thing you knew, there was this major food fight going on, and both Joey and Greg ended up being suspended for two days. Megan shook her head, wondering why Greg bothered wasting his time with a cretin like Joey Balfour. She knew that although they might appear similar on the surface, Greg was nothing at all like Joey, who was crass and crude and just plain dumb. Greg was none of those things. Deep down, he was sweet and smart and sensitive. Not to mention sexy. Megan was determined to get to know him better. And if it took auditioning for a part in Mr.
Lipsman’s next musical extravaganza, well, then, that’s exactly what she’d do.

She glanced back at the computer screen and frowned, as she did each time she saw the message that had been sitting there since Tuesday.

“Oh, God,” Megan whispered. Not only had that awful posting been there for days, but now someone had added to it.
Torrance’s own Ginger Rogers! Check out that hilarious picture of her and Loony Lipsman. Get out your dancing shoes, Mrs. Crosbie!

What was the matter with her mother anyway? Why did she always have to inject herself into the middle of everything? Wasn’t it bad enough she was a teacher at Megan’s school, so that Megan never had any privacy, never any space of her own? When she went to school, there was her mother; when she came home,
there
was her mother. And if her continual presence wasn’t bad enough, did she always have to go sticking her nose into everyone else’s business? Didn’t she realize that every time she butted in where she didn’t belong, she exposed her family, her
daughter
, to potential ridicule? Was that why her father left? Because he couldn’t stand the fact she was always
around?

Megan could still hear her mother ranting when she’d seen the picture upon her return from school this afternoon:
There was no such thing as privacy anymore! Someone was always lurking with a camera! Some idiot was always eager to post the picture! The bullies were everywhere!
That quickly segued into another of her familiar tirades:
If you didn’t conform to their rigid dictates of what was acceptable, you didn’t survive! If a girl didn’t fit into a size two pair of jeans, if she didn’t wear her hair long and straight, if her nose wasn’t small and upturned, and her breasts large and round, she was a loser. Or worse, an object of scorn and ridicule, like Delilah Franklin. If a boy lacked six-pack
abs, if he dressed differently, like Victor Drummond, or was quiet and sensitive, like Brian Hensen, then he was a weirdo, or worse, a homosexual. Since when had the standard of beauty become so narrow? Since when had young people become so intolerant? Why did everybody feel compelled to look and sound exactly the same? Why was everyone struggling so hard to be someone else? Were they so unhappy with who they really were?

Megan pushed her long, straight hair away from her perfect, oval face. She understood the pain behind her mother’s outrage, discerned the echo of the question she was really asking:
How could your father leave me for a woman like Kerri Franklin?
But while Megan recognized the truth of her mother’s remarks, sometimes she wished she would just shut up.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for Delilah, who’d never done anything to deserve the kind of abuse that was regularly heaped on her. Of course, the girl did nothing to help her cause. Surely she could go on a diet, try to lose a few pounds, make more of an effort to fit in. Was she really as oblivious as she seemed?

Megan suddenly wondered what would happen if, God forbid, her father actually married Kerri Franklin. That would make Delilah her stepsister, and could she possibly imagine a worse fate? She’d worked so hard all year to make friends, and she was so close to being accepted into Torrance High’s inner circle, to being an actual confidante of Tanya and Ginger and Liana—where
was
Liana?—and to think of the ridicule she’d be subjected to if she and Delilah were actually to become family! No, it was too awful to contemplate.

Just as it was too awful to think about what might have happened to Liana. The school was rife with rumors: she’d run off because she was pregnant and Peter had refused to marry her; she’d died during a botched abortion; she’d eloped with some older guy she’d met on the Internet; she’d been raped and strangled by a sexual predator, her
body dismembered and scattered throughout the Everglades, like pieces of discarded, stale bread.

Megan closed her eyes, her fingers absently scrolling down the screen, as she tried not to picture Liana Martin’s voluptuous body serving as alligator fodder. When she looked up again, the offensive e-mail had been replaced by another posting.

“Oh, God,” Megan said again, seeing her brother’s name at the bottom of the list. She felt instantly sick to her stomach. Had Tim seen it? Of course he’d seen it. “The whole school has seen it,” she whispered.

There was a knock on her bedroom door. “Megan,” her mother said. “Didn’t you hear me call you? I said your father is waiting.”

Megan felt her mother lingering on the other side of the door. “I’ll be right there.”

A second’s hesitation, then: “Well, hurry up.”

“Two minutes.” Surely her mother and father could spend a few minutes alone together without fighting.

Her mother would have a fit when she saw this latest posting, Megan knew, snapping off the computer without going through the appropriate channels, and hearing it
groan in protest. She’d assume Joey and Greg were responsible, just as they were responsible for posting that stupid picture of her and Mr. Lipsman, and that awful song about Delilah. Were they?

Well, obviously Joey. But surely not Greg.

Megan pushed herself away from her desk, grabbed her purse from the floor, and threw it across the shoulder of her white-and-green-striped cotton dress, then opened the door to her bedroom. She could hear her parents arguing even before she reached the living room.

“He looks fine,” her mother was saying.

“He looks like a punk,” her father countered. “I told you I was taking them to the golf club for dinner. You know that means a shirt and tie.”

“How would I know that? I’ve never been there.”

Silence. Megan could almost see the pinched expression on her mother’s face and her father’s fists clenching at his sides. The golf club was an especially thorny issue between them. Her father had argued that the cost of joining the expensive club was justified because of all the professional contacts he’d make, and her mother had acquiesced against her better judgment. The ink was barely dry on his deposit check when he’d moved out.

Now her father stood in the middle of the small, rectangular-shaped living room, shaking his head sadly, as if he were a helpless bystander at the scene of a horrific accident, trying to come to terms with what he’d just witnessed.

“Daddy, hi,” Megan said in greeting. She forced one reluctant foot in front of the other, praying there’d be no further eruptions.

“Sweetheart.” Her father’s arms surrounded her, and she felt her body stiffen involuntarily, her own arms freezing at her sides. She knew her mother was watching them. If she returned her father’s embrace, as she was desperate to
do, her mother would take it as a betrayal, and her mother had been hurt enough. “You look gorgeous, as usual.”