Unfriended (2 page)

HAZEL

YOU DIDN'T EVEN
look back, Truly.

Just left me standing there like a lawn jockey with your stupid lock dangling from my finger in place of a lantern. No
Come on, Hazel!
Not even a
Sorry, do you mind? I'll be right back.

Nothing.

All Natasha had to do was show up at our locker area and flash those piano-key teeth at you—and good-bye to me. I might as well have fallen through a trapdoor.

Or never existed at all.

NATASHA

I COULD SEE
from across the cafeteria that Brooke thought it was a bad idea, bringing Truly over. Brooke had to be wondering
Why?
Though of course she never asked. She'd just said
sure,
when I suggested maybe I could bring Truly over to our table, this once
. We'll see how it goes
, I suggested, trying to pretend I didn't really care either way, chewing my gum hard to cover the worried warbling in my voice.

Sure,
Brooke had answered, shrugging
.
Like she had nothing to fear, from me or anybody.
Great. Whatever.

Could she have figured out my plan already?

No. No way.

But I could tell by the way her eyes slid away from my face as I approached our table across the caf with Truly bobbing along beside me that she was annoyed. The way she leaned over and whispered to Clay. And then he turned around to see what was happening.
Hi, Clay. Yeah, remember me? Natasha?

The girl you kissed and then dumped? By text? Last week?

Jerk.

I have to make sure everybody, I mean everybody, continues to believe I dumped Clay and not the other way around. I have to keep dropping hints about it. My mom is totally right about this, if about pretty much nothing else. Well, she was also right that I have a huge pimple sprouting on my forehead this morning. Yeah, thanks hugely for
that
feedback, Mom. Really started my day off with a boost of confidence. But she is also right that you do
not
want to be known as The Pathetic Girl Who Got Dumped. Even Dad agreed with that, and for him to agree with Mom, well.

I was the hot center of the world while Clay and I were going out. Also right before, when everybody kept telling him to ask me and me to ask him. Right after we broke up, everybody was all over that, too, waiting and watching to see if I was completely sad and devastated. Lulu kept asking if I was “okay.”
I'm great,
I told her.
I don't need him. Please. I dumped him!
That's what Dad said I should tell everybody, and it felt good, tough, saying it. The sympathy was nice until it dried up, but still I didn't need people thinking Clay dumped me. This is part of the plan with Truly, to make sure even the losers and nobodies in school have it straight: I dumped
him
. Not the other way around.

But the other part of it is: although Brooke is my best friend, she's also obviously long-term close with Clay. And she acts like she's like practically the president of our group of friends. People think she's so chill and Zen and nice but I honestly think that's all an act and she is just as scheming as the next person. Me, in other words, ha-ha. Everything she says, Evangeline and Lulu are like, yeah, or that's so funny.

They definitely think I'm funny and fun, too. But second always to Brooke. Now that I'm not going out with Clay anymore, I'm practically invisible. Nobody was even noticing me at all. I got a new haircut when I was at my father's apartment last weekend. One day's worth of compliments. One. Truly always complimented my hair, back when.

Beside me, Truly was nattering on. “Why does Brooke want to talk with me? Is it because of what I said in science this morning about buoyancy, and she laughed?”

Yeah, that's the huge subject we love to confide about, Truly: what hilarious thing you said in your science class that I'm not in. Absolutely. It's that freaking fascinating.

I was near ready to stop right there and be like, you know what, Truly? It wasn't Brooke's idea to bring you over, so get over yourself. Stop concocting this little romance you're imagining with her. It's embarrassing. She doesn't even know who you are. She didn't invite you—I did. But now, forget it. Go back to your green-hair freak friend. Buh-bye!

But I hadn't yet had time to confide the story of why I had to dump Clay, who was either a jerk or too boring (must decide which) and maybe when he tried to kiss me he, like, had bad breath or something. Yeah, that's good. Bad breath.

Also, it would be mean, to dump her two minutes after inviting her.

And for my plan to work, I could not be mean. Ever. Nobody could think of me as mean ever again. I had to displace Brooke as the Queen of Nice.

So instead I smiled at Truly and whispered, “Trust me.”

BROOKE

NATASHA TRIED TO
act casual about bringing that girl Truly over to our table at lunch today. When Natasha tries to act casual, her joints get out of whack, like she's dancing to music by Stravinsky. My older sister Margot does ballet. That Stravinsky stuff is like an ear infection.

So I said, “Sure, whatever, that's great,” this morning because Natasha was at risk of dislocating a shoulder, being so violently casual. Also it is fully fine with me if some random kid sits with us at lunch or works with us on the History Day project or whatever. The more the merrier. Natasha gets very dramatic about stuff like that. Maybe it's the not-having-any-siblings thing. Makes her a little shocky I think. Gotta love her, my dad would say.

The girl she brought over, Truly, has gray eyes. That, and the fact that she is very little, almost looks like a sixth grader, was all I really knew about her. She's been in some of my classes but mostly keeps to herself.

Her idea was to do Benedict Arnold as a topic for our History Day project. Cool, I said, and everybody agreed. Then Clay and I went outside. His older brother and mine have been best friends since nursery school, so Clay and I were friends before we were born. They are both very focused people, our brothers. Both are good at school (though his brother was valedictorian) and sports (though my brother was better at that). They left for college last month. But it's different for Clay. He has only the one brother. For me it's just marginally quieter. I mean, my brother Otto is great. I miss him. But there are still three of us kids home. Clay was flat-out lonely.

“When is that even due?” he asked me.

“The History Day thing?”

“The topic, yeah.”

“I don't know. Did you lose your assignment pad again?”

“It's in my locker,” he said. “Did you see the color of that girl's eyes?”

“Truly?”

“Is that really her name?”

“Her real name is Gabriela, I think—that's what the teachers always say, first day, right?”

“Wonder why they call her Truly then.”

“Maybe she always tells the truth,” I said. “Is your name really Clay?”

He shoved me. “Shut up.”

It's his middle name. Edmund Clay Everett. His brother is James Thomas Everett III, called JT. They're not as formal as that might sound. They have worn-out rugs, wood floors, and a golden retriever named Milo. His dad, James Thomas Everett Jr., (called Mr. Everett) is always looking for his glasses, which are usually on his bald head. He's African American. Clay's mom, who lets us call her Maggie, is white. She wears slippers in the house and no makeup; she always looks like she just got out of the shower and usually has a book dangling from her hand. She runs five miles a day, like Clay, but she does hers before anybody else wakes up.

I once asked Clay's dad if he runs, too. “Not even a fever,” Mr. Everett said.

Jack tossed a tennis ball over toward us. Clay one-handed it. Before he tossed it back to Jack, he asked me, “So what do you think I should do?”

“About your lost assignment pad? Or Natasha?”

“Duh.”

Just because he'd broken up with her didn't mean he'd stopped thinking about her. I have really good peripheral vision, but a blind man couldn't miss how Clay watches Natasha. Still, though.

I shrugged. “She's telling everybody she broke up with you.”

“Fine with me,” Clay said. “Makes me sound like less of a jerk.”

“So don't do anything, if you don't care.”

Clay tossed the ball back to Jack. “She's just always so . . .”

“So . . .” I echoed, smiling at him. I knew what the problem was, and that it had nothing to do with setting the story straight.

“So tell me what to do about her. She's mad at me again.”

“Apologize.”

“I don't even know what I did.”

“Still,” I said. “Or maybe don't. Maybe just leave it alone. Do you really want to go back to that? All the drama?”

“No way.” He caught the ball again. “She's mad at me and then suddenly she's so not because she's all fluttery and, like, pressing up next to me, and then boom I don't know what I did but she's cursing at me or crying . . .”

“Yup.”

“So I should just back away.”

“But?” I asked.

He kicked a rock. “But she's so freaking hot.”

I had to laugh.

He tossed the ball back to Jack. “You suck.”

I held up my hands to Jack.

“Doesn't anything ever piss you off?”

Catching the ball, I thought for a minute. “Mosquito bites.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” he said.

I tossed it back to Jack. “Humble brags.”

“What's that?”

“Humble brags. You know. When people are like oh, I'm so frustrated I only got a ninety-seven on that test, now my average is wrecked.”

“Who said that, Akron?”

“This morning,” I said. “It was classic,”

“He said a ninety-seven wrecked his average?”

“He said it was because he hadn't eaten a good breakfast.”

“No.”

“It was a thing of beauty.”

“See?” Clay poked me in the shoulder. “You even love the stuff you hate. How do you do that? Nothing bugs you. It's just weird.”

I shrugged. No use letting stuff bother you that you can't do anything about. And some things, you can't do anything about. Like who your best friend likes. Or doesn't.

“Nothing bothers you either,” I pointed out.

“Untrue! I'm constantly hungry,” Clay said. He started counting on his long fingers. “People who walk too slow in the halls. Seams in socks. Anybody being mad at me. Shin splints. Pudding. Are you kidding? Everything bothers me.”

“Speaking of which . . .”

Natasha was on her way out, walking toward us with Theo and Lulu and Evangeline and all those guys.

Clay turned back toward Jack, held up his hands for the ball. “That girl Truly's pretty cute though, too.”

I laughed. “You're so doomed.”

“Yeah.”

He smiled his twinkly-eyed sad smile and a weird urge hit me: to throw my arms around him and hug him tight. That exact urge has been popping up more often lately, and it pisses me off. See? That's something. But it's the one I'd never tell him. We're friends, me and Clay; it would be way too awkward to admit I maybe
like him
like him. Obviously he doesn't feel that way about me. I just have to wait the urge out, like a cramp. Walk it off.

“Still too quiet in your house?” I asked him instead of continuing the topic of which girl he should go for. Because, yeah.

“Way too quiet,” he said softly.

Ugh. I'm so not willing to be like every other girl in our grade, following after him, sighing. So I shook my head and turned away, just saying, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He followed after me, talking right next to my hair. “My parents actually said last night, ‘Now that JT is gone, you'll get a lot more of our attention.'”

“Oh, no,” I had to say, because that was like his worst nightmare.

“Right?” Clay asked. “So, yeah. Fully doomed on basically every level.”

Preach.