New Girl (15 page)

“Why are you wearing your coat? It’s sweltering!” Blake said, after giving me a hug.

“Is it? I’m just so cold.”

She nodded and then started talking to Johnny. Max looked at me.

I scrambled for something to say. “No date?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Didn’t ask anyone. Except you, that is.”

My stomach twisted. “Oh, I see. I like your costume.”

“I don’t know if I like yours.”

“Why?”

He gave me a look. “I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Oh!” I laughed. Maybe I didn’t need to be so nervous.

I took off my coat and revealed my dress. His smile vanished, and his jaw tightened.

Blake gasped, hand over her mouth, and she looked at Max.

“What?” I asked, my arms closed tightly over my chest. “I look stupid?”

I should have known it was worse than that.

Suddenly everyone was looking at me. Max looked like stone, and Johnny looked like the floor had fallen out from under him.

I looked to Blake.

“
What
is the matter?”

Max walked over to me and put his hand on my wrist tightly. “What is wrong with you? Why would you
do
that?” He let go. “Take it off. That’s not your fucking dress.”

He turned and walked out. Anyone who had been watching us was looking at me in shock or following him with their eyes.

Blake came close to me, so everyone else that was listening wouldn’t hear her. “That’s what…that’s what she wore last year.”

Blake must have seen the comprehension dawn on my face. She shook her head apologetically. “It’s just that…for a minute it looked like…it looked like she was… It would be like her to show up like that.”

I was dizzy. I had no words. I wanted to scream louder than I ever had, and without my permission, tears had begun to fall down my cheeks. All I could do was breathlessly look from Blake, who pitied me, to Johnny, who just looked concerned, and then to Madison and Julia who had just come up. Madison looked hesitant and worried. Julia looked shocked.

I ran out of the dining hall, ignoring Blake calling my name.

I burst in, and panted at Dana.

“Why would you
do
that to me?”

“Do what?” Dana spoke quietly, as if she hadn’t just fed me to the wolves. “Oh, by the way,” she reached under her bed, “this came for you last week.”

She threw a white package onto my bed. It was from Costume Warehouse.

I wanted to cry. My throat was constricted and my knees weak. Where would people go with this? Would they start to think I was some kind of crazy person, desperate to be like
her?
Did they already think that?

“What did I
do
to you?” My eyes were burning. “Or to anyone else? I didn’t know she was missing when I accepted this spot at school! It’s not like I intentionally tried to replace her!”

She shrugged and set down her book. “I think it’s good everyone finally saw you for what you are.”

“Saw me for— And
what is that,
Dana? What is it that I really am?”

“You want to be her. You’re trying to be her. Now everyone knows that about you.”

“I don’t
want
to be her!” My voice was strong, but I felt it might give out at any second.

“Why wouldn’t you?” She looked challengingly at me.

I breathed deeply, never taking my gaze from her empty black eyes. “I didn’t know her. I don’t want to be her. I don’t want what she had.”

“What, to be beloved by everyone? To have Max deeply in love with you? To have Johnny wanting you?” She cocked her head.

I did like Max. I had gone to the ball with Johnny. I shook my head. I didn’t want to think that she might be right.
Was
I just going after what had made Becca happy?

“No, I don’t!” I said, trying to sound stronger than I was. “I don’t want that. What I want is to be back
home!
”

“Then leave. Who would care? Who would even notice if you did leave?”

I shook my head. “Shut up. Please, just shut up.”

“I will if you stop trying to steal the identity of a girl you couldn’t be an eighth of if you sold your very
soul
to the devil.”

“I’m
not
trying to!” My face was hot, and all my words came out in sputters.

She sighed deeply and shook her head. “That’s fine. You’ll know when she comes back.”

I threw the door back open, not knowing where I was going to run to. I heard Dana’s taunting voice as I closed the door: “And she’ll be back soon....”

When the library was locked, for what ungodly reason I could not imagine, I ran to the only place I could think of. The boathouse.

I flew from Manderley into the raw, gusting air. The surrounding trees had dropped their dead leaves, which now crunched under my feet and swirled around in the wind like in a cartoon. One big gust of wind set me backward in my trek by a few inches and made me shut my eyes as much as I could and still see.

The waves were like a million dead, gnarly hands throwing themselves onto the sand and trying to bring whatever they could back with them into the darkness. The sand was prickling me in the legs, as if warning me that the waves were after me. I pushed and walked through the boathouse door. The threatening sounds from outside died a little. I gave one big shake and clutched my arms with my hands to keep warm.

I felt around for the light switch before realizing it was just a beaded cord that hung from an exposed lightbulb. I pulled it, and tried to convince myself that anything I heard was the ocean and not waves of cockroaches and mice shuffling across the two inches of dust on the floor. The boathouse felt a lot more sinister when I was there by myself. I could see now that the walls were covered in dust and spiderwebs, and that the windows were so covered in grime that you wouldn’t be able to see out of them even if it was light outside.

My sandals clunked with every step on the hollow-sounding wood beneath them as I made my way to the couch. I’d just wait until Dana was probably asleep and then go back up. She was usually in bed by eleven, so I’d just wait until…dammit. Once again, I had no idea what time it was. I needed a watch.

I sat on the couch and got a throat full of dust. I waved it away from my face. There was a thick blanket—or maybe it was one of those rugs that are easily mistaken for blankets—folded on the armrest. I grabbed it and wrapped it around myself. It was almost as cold as I was. I lay down, curled up as tightly as I could, and tried not to think.

But I couldn’t help it. All I could think of was Manderley. Why did I leave home? I should have just been honest and told my parents I didn’t want to leave. My friends were probably all at Lucy’s house, where her parents had funded every snack imaginable, and where losing at Apples to Apples was anyone’s biggest concern. Rather than being here, where everyone was straight out of a Lifetime milk carton movie.

That wasn’t very nice. I didn’t mean that.

But even without its zombie students, the ones milling in the dining hall right now, Manderley itself was cold and austere. It was nothing like the proud and exciting hallowed building I’d imagined at that early age.

I’d been here for two months now, and it’s not like I knew
no one,
but it did seem I’d only gained them as friends by luck. I was like the unwanted new stepsister who was suddenly supposed to be accepted as part of the family. Like everyone had been perfectly content before I came along, and now I was making Manderley a little bit too cramped.

Nobody wanted to know me. And I was not the type to get down on myself like that. There was a distinct message from everyone here to me:
we don’t like you.

I could go this year without friends. Fine. I could quiet the part of my brain that told me how different it would be if I were still back home. But I was constantly being reminded that it wasn’t good that I was here, and that I might as well leave. And Becca was here, too
, everywhere,
even though she was nowhere. I heard people talk about her all the time. Everyone wondered what had happened. Everyone had a theory. Everyone had questions. Everyone had to talk about it all the time.

I’d made the right choice when I decided to go to FSU. I didn’t have what it took to be a risk taker. I was a small-town girl, who couldn’t handle the real world.

I lay there, getting colder every second, and tried to do that thing my mom taught me about breathing in and counting slowly to three and then breathing out and slowly counting to three. It should steady my breathing and relax me, apparently. Instead, it just meant that I was breathing slower than my thoughts were coming.

I didn’t want to be ungrateful. I didn’t want to
not
be able to make the best of it here. I hated hating my situation, but I couldn’t help it. I felt like I was trying to wear someone else’s clothes, and they didn’t fit. I gave an audible scoff as I realized I
was
in Becca’s clothes right now. It was darkly funny, and then it was spooky.

Maybe this was all my fault. I’d made the mistake of liking Max—something that was starting to feel embarrassing
and
blasphemous—and now I’d shown up at the only school-wide occasion so far and worn Becca’s dress. I wanted to undo it. But I couldn’t.

In…one, two, three.

Out…one, two, three.

In…

“Get out of my dress.”

I blinked. I looked around the room, and saw her. Becca Normandy, smoking a cigarette and looking as cool as we’ve always been told cigarettes don’t make you, and leaning on her crossed legs.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk. She was…she was here. She was…here. My throat was tight from the shock. That feeling of chills running down my back wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t ask what she was doing here—all I could do was see her. Her blond hair, so much lighter and softer than mine, had light reflecting off it that made her look practically ethereal. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible in this musty room.

She was staring at me, and I felt like she could see everything about me. Everything I’d ever been or thought.

I opened my mouth, and she rolled her eyes.

“I don’t even want to hear it. You’re a cheap imitation of me. You’re
dirty
blonde. You’re muscle-skinny, not a waif. You own
moccasins
.” She stood, and stamped out her cigarette. “That dress looks terrible on you. You know that, right?”