Rolling Dice (34 page)

“Um …” I clear my throat quietly. “It’s my, uh … my nickname for him?”

None of them says anything, and I wonder why I feel like I’ve done something wrong and put my foot in it here. I should say something, but I have no idea what. Teresa looks at her son but he just blanks her out.

Then he says to me, “I’ll go grab your clothes from the dryer so that you can change.”

I don’t miss the look he shoots his mother as he leaves. I sit there for a moment wondering what just happened, and then pick up his empty plate and mine, and go to put them next to the sink.

Teresa says, “Madison?”

I turn around. “Yeah?”

She pauses, and I see her bite her lip as though she’s debating whether or not to say anything to me. I’m expecting her to say “never mind,” but instead she tells me, “He doesn’t let anyone call him that anymore. Ever since his dad passed away he’s always hated it. His dad started calling him Ike in the first place, you know,” she adds quietly.

“He …” I swallow hard. My tone is apologetic when I say, “He didn’t tell me.”

“No, I don’t suppose he would.” Before I can wonder what that’s supposed to mean, she surprises me by saying, “You’re good for him, Madison. I’m glad you two are talking again.”

Then there are footsteps behind me, and I turn to see Dwight holding my clothes from last night’s party. He smiles. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

I head upstairs to change, asking myself why he let me call him Ike if he hates it so much.

When I get out of the bathroom, I look down the corridor and see movement in Dwight’s room. His door is only half closed, so I walk up and say, “Knock, knock.”

He turns around. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

We both stand in silence for a long moment and both start talking at once.

“Are you sure you’re—”

“Why didn’t you tell me—”

We both stop in the same instant too, which makes us laugh. He says, “You go first.”

“Why … Why didn’t you tell me that you don’t like being called Ike?”

He closes his eyes and presses his fingertips over his eyelids. “She told you.”

“Yeah,” I reply softly. “Why didn’t you just say?”

“Because …” He shrugs and then looks at me with a helpless smile. “You looked really pleased you’d come up with a nickname for me, and I didn’t want to disappoint you. And … I don’t know … I guess I just didn’t mind you calling me Ike.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

I laugh. “I thought you were supposed to be the genius here.”

He smiles. “My turn to ask questions now, anyway. How are you?”

“I told you earlier, I’m okay.”

He raises a dubious eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” I say, punctuating my words with a genuine smile. “Thanks. For last night, I mean. And I honestly am sorry about—”

“Hey!” he snaps, cutting me off. “What’d I say about apologizing? I told you to stop doing it. Remember that?”

“Nope,” I say.
“Sorry.”

He chuckles. “So, do you … do you want to hang out here for a bit or go home?”

“I think I’d better head on home. I need to calmly explain to my mom in as few details as possible what happened—and I need to get my stuff back from Summer.”

“Okay.” A pause, then: “You know where to find me if you need me.”

A small smile slips onto my face and I nod. “Yeah.”

I don’t know which of us moves first, but suddenly we’ve stepped together and we’re hugging. That’s all. We just hug. It’s not like that time at the library when he was comforting me and we ended up kissing. This is entirely innocent, and exactly what I need right now.

I squeeze him tightly before letting go and stepping back. “Thank you.”

He just smiles and replies, “I’m glad we’re talking again.”

To say that my mom freaks out when I tell her that I had a fight with Bryce and then caught him cheating on me so I stayed at Dwight’s—and, oh yeah, Dwight and I are talking again now—would be a gross understatement.

What surprises me most, however, is how angry my dad is about the whole thing. He’s never really gotten mad at Jenna or me, but when I tell him about my night, his neck and ears turn beet red and he starts cussing about “that boy.”

When I finally escape to my room, I call Summer.

“Madison?” She picks up on the first ring. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“No,” I say quietly. “You first, though. What happened at the party? I guess there must’ve been something going around about me and Bryce.”

“Well, yeah, of course there was. People said that he’d gone upstairs with some other girl, but then they said that you were all over that guy Justin, and that it was you and Bryce getting it on upstairs, but then you bailed and you guys had a fight … I don’t know. Nobody seems to know what happened. The rumor about you and Justin seemed the popular choice. Tiffany told me she saw you two.”

“I was looking for you guys and he was …” I sigh. “He was just being
nice
. Nothing happened. I think Tiffany just … saw what she wanted to see.”

“Anyway. Moving on. What happened with you and Bryce?”

“I went to the bathroom, came out, and he was with some other girl. And you know what he tried to say to me when I left?
It’s not what it looks like
. When he had his underwear down to his ankles.”

“Oh my God” is all that Summer can say. And she repeats it several more times, like a broken record. I wait for her to find some more words. “You poor thing! You should’ve called me last night! Do you want me to come over?”

I shake my head, despite the fact she can’t see me. “No, it’s okay. This is going to sound horrible, but it … it doesn’t hurt that much. It should, but it doesn’t. And I was planning on breaking up with him anyway, after the fight we had,” I add.

“He doesn’t know that, though. That was—Ugh! I cannot believe he would do that! So you guys had some stupid fight! He didn’t know you wanted to permanently break up.
Just … ugh!”

She sounds angrier than I could ever be about this situation. Maybe it’s because she’s known Bryce longer and thought he was better than that. Or maybe it’s just that she’s a good friend and actually cares about me.

“I don’t know what to do tomorrow, though. I don’t want to see him.” This was what I didn’t say to Dwight: that now I’m actually a little afraid of going to school. Because I don’t know what everybody will be saying about me, how bad things might be.

“Think of it this way—if you can hold your head up high and come into school after he’s been such a—” She follows with a string of swearwords I never wish to repeat again in my life. “Then you’re going to look like the better person.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right …”

“Besides, I’ll be there. And I’m sure the girls will understand once you explain it to them. And the guys will too, I bet. It’ll be fine, Madison.”

“You don’t know that,” I say quietly.

“No. But you have to hope for the best. What have you got to lose?”

So I take Summer’s advice and I get up Monday morning to go to school. I wear a pair of black shorts and a white tank top and toss on my Converse. The only makeup I wear is some eyeliner, and concealer to mask the bags under my eyes. I don’t want anything that will stand out too much; if things go badly today, I may want to stick to playing invisible.

I walk to school, because I don’t want to be really early. And it goes to plan—I get there about ten minutes before everyone is due to head off to homeroom. Nobody is in our usual spot on the bench outside; they must all be inside by the lockers, I think, and so I head inside. I don’t bother taking out my earphones yet—I like the song that’s playing.

Walking through those doors is like walking into a dream.

No, not a dream.

A nightmare.

The corridors are full. I hear everyone talking, even with my earphones in; I pull one out, but all I hear is a cacophony of chatter and laughter. Why is it so busy in here? We still have ten minutes until homeroom. It’s never this busy unless it’s raining outside, which it isn’t right now.

I begin to push past people, but it turns out I don’t need to—they part and create a zigzag pathway for me, heads turned toward me. My forehead twitches with a frown. What’s
going on?

I can feel eyes on me, and I keep my head down. But I can’t help but steal sideways glances and, sure enough, everybody’s looking at me. And even though I can’t quite catch what people are saying, I’m instantly under the impression that they’re talking about me.

I turn left to head toward my locker.

That’s when it all makes sense.

There are sheets of paper everywhere: scattered over the floor, taped to the lockers, tacked to the walls and the classroom doors … The noise stops when people notice me, and they start to whisper instead, as though talking about me behind my back isn’t so bad then. My chest begins to cave in and all of a sudden I can’t breathe. I just have to make it to my locker.

Just make it to your locker, Madison. Just make it to your locker …
The way I chant that over and over to myself makes it sound as if my locker is some kind of sanctuary in this place.

I don’t care about finding the others anymore. Not even Summer. I can find them later. I just have to get to my locker and hide out in the bathroom for homeroom, and then get to History class and then Art and Photography. Twenty-five minutes. I can manage that. Twenty-five minutes. That’s all.

I make it to my locker and the whole world stops spinning. Everything freezes for one hideous, unending moment.

One of the billions of sheets of paper is tacked onto my locker door, at eye level, by someone who knows just how short I am. I reach up a hand and pull it off. It’s a photograph—not the best quality, and a little fuzzy, but it’s clear enough to see exactly what’s going on.

It’s a photo of me and Dwight kissing in the library.

There’s no way it can be anything else; no way someone could think it was anything but us kissing. I don’t know who took it or why it’s on my locker, but that doesn’t even matter right now. It doesn’t change the fact that this photo is all over the school, and everybody’s seen it.

I look up, my head turning slowly from side to side. Then I see him: Dwight pulls the photo taped to his locker off, and his face pales, and I see him gulp. Then it scrunches up as he closes his fist around it. He turns and catches my eye immediately.

I look back at my locker, lowering my hand with the photograph. And, oh look, it only gets better—of course it does.

There are letters scratched into my locker. Not spray painted. Nothing that could be removed or cleaned off or even covered over. The letters are actually carved into my locker, jagged silver scratches that stand out against the colored door.

B—I—T—C—H
.

Bitch
.

The word pinballs riotously through my head, bouncing around, echoing.

Then I remember I need to breathe, and I take in a shallow, trembling breath. And another. And another and another. Breathe out. Breathe in again. And breathe out. Yeah. That’ll do. That’s good enough.

The photo in my hand falls slowly to the floor. I stumble back a step from my abused locker. I can’t hear anything but whispers and my own hollow, shallow breathing.

“Slut,” someone calls out. And the words don’t stop, coming at me from every angle, a verbal attack. “Oh my God how dare she poor Bryce I don’t understand what happened she always seemed so nice I heard she got with that Justin guy you know the one Tiffany brought to the dance poor Bryce I knew she was a bitch freak slut freak—”

And with that, the whispers are suddenly too loud and the words all mash together in my head and I can’t handle it anymore.

This is so much worse than what I’d dreaded happening.

I’d never wanted anybody here to find out about the old me. I didn’t want Fatty Maddie coming back to haunt me, to ruin the life I’ve made for myself. I’ve stayed awake into the early hours more than once, letting various nightmarish scenarios play out in my mind where everybody found out what I used to be like.

But this …

This is so, so much worse than I could have ever imagined.

It’s not my past coming back to haunt me. This is my present, and it’s tearing down everything I’ve built for myself here. The new Madison’s life is crumbling to pieces. And the old Madison has nothing to hide behind now.

I resurrect the walls I spent so long constructing back in Pineford; they’re not going to see me cry. I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that they’ve got to me, that they’ve broken me.

I put my other earphone in and whatever music that’s playing fills my ears. I hitch my bag up a little higher on my shoulder. And I turn around and walk away.

I don’t bother trying to look like I’m trying to keep my dignity, like I don’t give a dime what they say or think about me. I keep my eyes focused on my feet as they move
steadily, one in front of the other in front of the other, my head down. I just wish I hadn’t cut my hair so short; now I have nothing to hide behind.

I feel like I’m growing smaller and smaller inside. I feel as though I’m constricting and hiding away in the most distant recesses of my mind until I’m just a shell moving step by step down the corridor.

This isn’t like Pineford all over again.

This isn’t like Fatty Maddie, who they wouldn’t let be invisible.

This is far worse.

Distantly, I hear people talking, gossiping—shouting names at me.

Someone steps in front of me; I see sneakers and the frayed hems of jeans. I stop in my tracks and follow the legs up the torso to their face.

Bryce
. My lips form his name but my voice isn’t working.

He’s saying something to me. I can see his lips moving. I can hear his voice. But my brain’s not making the connection between his voice and his words. It’s as though I’ve shut down completely. My mind is too loud, and the rest of me is just—just
there
.

So I look back at the floor and step around him, and keep moving.

Eventually I end up walking into a music room. There’s nobody here. Just instruments and music stands and chairs arranged in curves around the conductor’s stand. I pull out my earphones, and then I remember exactly why I became so attached to my music in the first place—it helped drown out all my thoughts when it was so dreadfully quiet, like it is now.