A Really Awesome Mess (14 page)

The minute that last part left my mouth, I wanted to suck the words right back into my lungs. I knew it sounded like I had a crush on Mason, and of course by that time I did. A whopper.

But I shouldn’t have worried. He’d broken into a huge grin. “I was kind of hoping you’d say that, because there’s someone else I like …”

He trailed off and went in for a kiss. It was
killer
. One of the best moments in my entire life, even now that I knew how shitty
it had all ended up. Fireworks went off in every molecule of my body. Parts of me I didn’t even know existed tingled.

We made out the rest of the supposed study session and for the first time, got Bs on our tests. I didn’t care in the least. My grade for the semester was still an A, and now I had this great guy to go along with my awesome GPA.

Except I didn’t really
have
him. At least, not as far as anyone else knew. He’d asked that we keep our “thing”—whatever it was—on the down low because he didn’t want to hurt Lizbeth’s feelings by dumping her and asking me out all in the same day. This indicated to me that Mason was a nice, compassionate person, so I was all too happy to comply. I figured things would work themselves out soon enough.

After a couple of months, though, Lizbeth still hadn’t rebounded. If anything, she was worse than ever. She was kind of disappearing before everyone’s eyes. Her clothes started hanging off her body, she looked gaunt, her eyes were hollow. She wasn’t the golden girl who had been Mason’s girlfriend anymore. She’d gone from beautiful to brittle, from someone to be envied to someone to be pitied. Honestly, it was scary.

“Emmy, we’ll let everybody know about us as soon as Lizbeth gets her shit together,” he told me. “I promise. I just don’t think it’s fair to kick her when she’s down though, you know?”

Again, I was totally on board. I mean, only the world’s most heartless bitch would have rubbed how much Mason and I liked
each other in a sick girl’s face. And I wasn’t that kind of girl.

But I didn’t actually know what kind of girl I was anymore either, because I definitely wasn’t acting like my normal self. As our relationship went further underground, our “study sessions” (which were now more like sexy sessions) and bathroom breaks at school (which were just excuses to make out anytime, anyplace we could, from the janitor’s closet to the handicapped bathroom) got hotter and heavier than ever. There was something incredibly exciting about all the hiding and scheming and plotting and planning. It turned absolutely everything in me on, my brain and my body. I should have known I was in trouble, but the whole situation was just so intoxicating I kept going back for more.

And so one night when we were talking before bed like we always did and Mason asked me for a sexy pic, I was totally game.

“Only if you send me one, too,” I’d told him, teasing the fun out to the maximum degree.

Five minutes later, I had one of him in my phone and he had one of me in his. I’d gone into the bathroom, locked the door, took off my shirt, made sure my B-cups were nicely pushed together, and snapped a few dozen topless (from the chin down so only he would know it was me, of course) pics. I picked the hottest one and sent it. He texted me hearts, I texted him a little devil emoticon and a smiley, and we signed off for the night.

I didn’t think much more about it, no less regret it, until I stepped foot in the cafeteria the next day. Apparently when
Mason had gone to buy lunch, his friend Danny Schwartz decided to flip through all the pics on Mason’s phone. And that’s when he stumbled on my boob shot.

Everything might have been okay—I mean, my face wasn’t in the shot, I’m not that stupid—but it seemed I’d made a huge tactical error. In my bathroom, my mom had just put up those decorative tin letters they have at Urban Outfitters. Which meant reflected in the mirror of my edgy nude shot was Y-M-M-E. I’d just been outed.

Danny started in on the “me so horny” thing immediately, often adding with a big fat guffaw that he thought my nipples would’ve been slanted instead of round. What’s worse, he started a rumor that I was the reason Lizbeth had gone off the deep end—that I’d been so obsessed with Mason I’d barraged him with nude pictures until he’d broken down and started having sex with me, which Lizbeth then found out about. It was total bullshit, but everyone bought it.

By the end of the day, the entire school thought I was a total slut. I’d gone from nobody knowing or caring who I was to everyone hating me. It might have been bearable if Mason had taken a big stand in my defense, but as far as I could tell he maybe weakly protested the theory the first day and then said pretty much nothing after that.

Bad enough, that still wasn’t rock bottom. The next week, he and Lizbeth got back together.
You know I still love you, right?
he’d texted me after they went public.
But I can’t be responsible for her being so sick anymore, you know? It makes me feel terrible
.

What he failed to recognize was what a terrible situation all this left me in. I mean, why wouldn’t people believe I’d been this weird stalker? Mason had never so much as taken me out for a Starbucks. My friends—everyone except Joss—started avoiding me like everyone else in school.

“I seriously don’t believe you did that when you saw how it affected Lizbeth!” one even came right out and said to me.

I protested, asserted my innocence, stood up for myself—and it did absolutely nothing in the end. No one wanted to take the pariah girl’s side. It made me alternately furious and depressed times a thousand. I finally decided revenge was the only way I’d ever get any satisfaction. For Danny, I chose the online attack strategy. For Mason, I chose the same weapon as his girfriend had: Noticeable weight loss. That would teach those motherfuckers to ruin my life.

“Come on, I’d love to hear about the bad relationship that wasn’t. I’m talking to you, right? And that’s hard for me,” Jenny said.

I looked up and saw Tina giving Jenny the thumbs-up. She tried to pretend she had just been running her fingers through her hair when I noticed. Tina wasn’t the most subtle when it came to breakthroughs.

“Why
are
you talking to me now?” I asked, trying to steer the
subject away from the whole Mason debacle and ridiculous Justin question. “I mean, not that I don’t like it. I do. It’s just that you had so many opportunities when we’re in our room and it’s just been dead silence. It would’ve been nice to have someone to talk to before now.”

“My goal is to head home after the next Family Weekend. That gives me just about a month to get to level six. I’ve been stuck on four forever because I haven’t let someone new into my ‘speaking circle’ ”—here she put her fingers up in air quotes—“as the Asslandians like to call it. I have to show I can be ‘proactive’ and ‘empowered,’ you know.”

I gave a little laugh. “Asslandians! Good one!” I said. “I hope you make it.”

Tina turned around, all smiles. “I have a feeling she will, especially after that big step!”

Jenny beamed, but I felt shittier than ever.

I WOKE UP WHEN THE VAN STOPPED. “STATE FAIRGROUNDS
, everybody!” Tina called out, and everybody kind of started moving in slow motion. Everybody except Diana, that is.

“Okay, who’s too chickenshit to go on the puke rides? ‘Cause I wanna ride everything, and if you guys are too weak to take it, I’m gonna have to sit next to some black-toothed meth-addicted local yokel, and that does not make me happy because they might try to kidnap me because I’m pretty.”

“Not to mention good-natured,” Chip said, and everybody except Diana laughed.

Diana shot back, “Listen, Frodo. Keep talking and I will put my foot so far up your ass that my toenails will be your teeth.”

At this, Tina blew an airhorn. The sound was excruciating as
it bounced around the metal box we were in, and everybody froze and looked at Tina.

“Okay, listen up, guys. I need you to understand something. As you may have gathered, this little trip is not standard procedure at Assland.”

There was stunned silence. Finally Diana said, “You … you called it …”

“I know what I called it, Diana,” Tina said, smiling. “This is in order to emphasize something. We are not on campus. It’s impossible for anybody to monitor what happens here. And I want you to know very well that I understand the temptation to misbehave. That’s why I just did it.”

“Ooo, you said ass,” Tracy said. “Big deal.”

Tina stared at him. “Shit. Fuck. Queef. Happy?”

Emmy snorted. “Did you really just say—”

“Yes. Now listen. I’ve really gone out on a limb for you guys. Okay? I begged, wheedled, and cajoled the administration into allowing you guys to have some extra privileges, because I really believe that the teamwork you’ve been showing in the past few weeks is a great thing and is really helping all of you. I spent an hour on the phone with each one of your parents getting their approval for this.”

I, for one, was impressed. “Did you actually talk to my dad for an hour?” I wasn’t sure anyone had gotten an hour of his time in the last sixteen years.

Tina looked at me. “I did. He’s very worried about you.”

I didn’t want to be thinking about that asshole on a night when I was supposed to be having fun, so I didn’t go any further with this conversation.

“All I’m saying is this: I have put my own ass on the line for you. And if you screw this up by doing anything even remotely unethical or illegal, then I am most likely finished at this school. Don’t make me look like an idiot for putting myself on the line for you. Okay?”

Everybody nodded, some of us kind of sheepishly.

“I didn’t hear you. I said, Okay?”

“Okay, okay!” everybody said.

“Great. One more thing. Have fun tonight. You guys really have worked hard, and I’m really proud of you.” Tina opened the doors of the van and we all filed out into the parking lot. I took a deep breath.

“Hmm … manure, car exhaust, fried food, and, unless I miss my guess, just a hint of BO,” I said.

“It smells like freedom!” Diana yelled.

At the ticket booth, Tina bought us all plastic wristbands that meant we were good to go for all the rides. She also handed each of us a twenty dollar bill that she informed us all of our parents personally authorized. She furthermore told us we needed to be back at this exact spot three hours from now, and should we fail to appear by three hours and ten minutes from now, she had the
state police on speed dial and we would be reported as runaways.

“So,” I said to Chip and Tracy, “what are we gonna go on first?”

“You guys can go on whatever the hell you want,” Tracy said. “I’m going to find some girls.”

“And who are you tonight?” I asked.

“I think I’m Hakeem,” Tracy said. “From the ATL, y’all. I’m tryin’ out for the hoops team at state. Gotta get my scholarship on, yo. Make that paper, son.”

“Parrot them cliché’s, dawg,” Emmy said. “Maybe it’s not everybody else who’s racist.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Tracy said.

“Maybe you live in an all-white neighborhood and you do this crap because you hate how different you feel.”

“Or maybe that’s you,” Tracy said.

Emmy smiled. “Oh, it’s definitely me,” she said. “But I think it might be you, too.”

“I think he’s just chickenshit,” Diana said.

“I am not afraid to go on some carnival ride!” Tracy spat back.

“Really?” I said. “Because I kind of am. I mean, I don’t have a whole lot of faith in the maintenance of these things—”

“He’s afraid to be himself,” Diana said.

“Why the hell would I be afraid to be myself?” Tracy asked.

“That’s between you and your therapist,” Diana said. “But when you move up a level by identifying that as your core issue,
you can thank me. Now are you bitches going to go on some rides or what?”

Tilt-A-Whirl. Check. Cheesy, completely unscary haunted house. Check. Seats on a big pole that climbed the outside of the pole and then dropped down very quickly. Check. For an extra ten bucks, you could ride the Space Shot, which was a small metal cage attached to two springy cords attached to two giant cranes that shot you like seven hundred feet into the air. I was definitely passing on that ride, but Tracy, who I suspect was still smarting from Diana’s chickenshit remark, ponied up the ten bucks, and once he was on, Diana had to go with him.

We stood to the side and watched the video feed from inside the cage on a big screen. It was hilarious—Diana laughed hysterically the whole time, while Tracy screamed with a look of pure terror on his face as the cage shot into the air and then bounced on the bungees, up and down for about a minute.

Of course we all—well, all of us but Jenny, who was not speaking and who had smiled but hadn’t let out a single “whoo” on any ride—teased Tracy when he staggered off the ride. “Dude,” Chip said between guffaws, “your face … you should have seen it. Oh my God I am totally buying the DVD just so I can watch you scream like a little girl—no, sorry, the little girl wasn’t screaming like that …”

Tracy actually smiled. “Why don’t you put some money down and go on it yourself and we’ll see
your
face. At least I went on
it. I tried something that was tough for me. All you guys did was stand and watch. And at least I’m not puking into a garbage can.” He gestured at Diana, who was hunched over a fifty-five-gallon drum, barfing out the contents of her stomach.