Pieces of Us (14 page)

Katie

T
he halls clear quickly. I noticed it more right afterwards. This Katie hasn’t been paying attention, too caught up gathering her books, thinking of Alex.

“It’s been a long time,” says Chris, and I jump. When did he get here?

“Not long enough.” Books, focusing on my books. Just get them and go go go.

He crouches down beside me. “Here, let me help you with those.” He puts my books in my backpack. His fingers squeeze my knee, and I’m a pathetic, useless sculpture again.

“Shit,” says a voice behind me. The cinnamon stench makes me jump. “You’re starting without me?”

I grab my backpack, and Chris grabs my wrist. “Going already? Not even a thank you for the books?”

I try to get free, but he holds tighter. Ethan grabs my other wrist. “We had a deal,” I say stupidly to Chris.

“I’ve come back to cash in.”

“No,” I say, trying the word out.

Ethan and Chris laugh. “Maybe if you said that the first time,” says Ethan, “we’d still be together.”

Chris lets go of my wrist. He motions for Ethan to do the same. But they stay close. “Look, man,” says Chris. “She’s saying no. We shouldn’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

Ethan rubs his chin like he’s thinking it over. “You’re right. Sorry, Katie. We’ll see you around.”

Can it be that easy?

“Unless,” says Chris, “she changes her mind.”

I shake my head no. Why would I change my mind?

“Yeah,” says Ethan, ignoring me. “Then, it would be okay.”

They planned this. Just like before. I shake. “What is it?” I ask.

Chris raises his eyebrows. He looks at Ethan.

“Well,” says Ethan, and Chris takes out his cell phone. “We have this video.”

And it’s me. And it’s them. And I’m not saying no. And Ethan is on top of me. Then Chris. And my hands are on them, doing what they want. Why don’t I remember that? He keeps playing it. When it ends, he starts it again.

I’m cold. I run to the garbage can and throw up.

“She better brush her teeth,” I hear Ethan say.

“So, what’s it going to be, Katie?” asks Chris. “You can come back to my house. The three of us can have some fun, and then this video is gone.”

“Or,” says Ethan, “you can say no, and we’ll totally respect that. But who knows where the video may wind up.”

“The choice is yours,” says Chris.

I don’t have a choice. I think of Alex, the stars. He can’t see the tape.

But does everyone already know? What about what Derek said? What Marissa keeps writing in the bathrooms, not bothering to hide the marker when I see her? The looks she gives me. “You haven’t told anyone?”

They look surprised, like that’s not something they expected I’d ask next. “You don’t exactly brag about your girlfriend cheating on you,” Ethan says.

“But Marissa—”

Ethan rolls his eyes. “She’s just likes making shit up. She doesn’t like you for some reason. Did you know that?” He laughs and makes the sound of cats fighting.

Chris slams my locker shut. “So back to the tape. No one knows. You say yes, it stays that way. You say no, and … ” He shrugs.

There can’t be an and.

“I get to erase it myself,” I say.

“Obviously,” says Chris, bored.

I pick up my backpack, and the three of us walk out of the school.

Kyle

E
ach time you pick up the phone to call Julie, it starts. The quickening heartbeat, the racing pulse, the sweat. You’ve called her over a dozen times, and it doesn’t get any better. But you like it. Crave it. Wait for it, because it’s something you depend on now. You don’t know what to call it, but you know it’s not love or the high you felt with Sarah. But it relaxes you in a way only your mother’s tranquilizers were able to do. And when it comes, you feel safe.

Tonight, she’s supposed to call you, and you lie on your bed and wait. The waiting is always the hardest. Your clothes get damper, breath gets shallower. Each minute you wait, you replay the last conversation you had. What if it was the last one? What if tonight is the night she stops calling? You don’t know why you want her words so much. Why her touch, that seems to come through the phone on her breath, doesn’t scare you anymore. You made up your mind last night, as you drifted off to sleep, thinking about tonight, that you need her touch and more than through her voice.

When the guys at school talk about sucking this and fucking that, you can listen without freaking. You can laugh with them and not wonder if they’ll ask you to tag along to a make-out party or try to hook you up with a girl that’s “so into you.” They know you’re taken. They know to back off. You’ve even been going out more because the pressure is gone. Even Alex is letting you be and not bringing home his string of hos.

But there’s a part of you that’s pretty sure you’ll never
love her. That feels guilty because you think she might. That hears it in phone pauses when you say good-bye. You hear her waiting, wondering if tonight is the night you’ll add the “love you.” Then, there’s a tiny sigh and a catch in her voice and she says, “Yeah … bye.” You know why the catch is there. But she doesn’t understand how you feel. She’s survival, she’s air, she’s food.

And isn’t that greater than love?

Katie

T
he cheerleaders all dress up as zombie cheerleaders for Halloween. Dark eyeliner, ripped fishnets, white makeup on our faces.

I like dress-up, but I don’t think being a zombie is a stretch for me. I walk the halls dazed, waiting for Ethan or Chris to resurface with some new game. Then I remind myself it’s over. Two weeks ago, in Chris’s room, when they were done with me, I held the phone in my shaking hands and pressed
delete
. I scrolled through the contents over and over, making sure there were no copies. It was done. I should feel free.

“Over here, Pyramid Girl,” calls Leah from the cheerleader table. I smile big as I make my way over, ignoring the too-loud swish of my cheerleading skirt. Was it always this loud? The girls at the table bend heads and whisper and giggle, and I keep smiling while hoping their whispers are not about me. They’re not, I tell myself. I’m still Pyramid Girl. Invincible. No one knows.

I sit down, and fit right in with the other zombies. Ethan is dressed as a zombie football player. He tries to feed Marissa a fry, but she pushes it away. Instead, she picks at her chicken pot pie. The only reason anyone buys the chicken pot pie is because four bites has been proven to send you rushing to the toilet with heaves. Why does Marissa want to lose more weight?

“So get this,” says Trina. “You’ll never believe what I heard about Mr. Stevens.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Marissa tense and raise a spoonful of congealed chicken to her lips.

Trina leans further in. “Someone caught him and that secretary with the purple highlights doing it in the woods behind the school. You know—the pot fields?”

“Classic!” says Ethan, clapping.

“Shut up! You’re not serious!” says Marissa, laying on the disbelief too thick. I see her hand shaking as she picks up another bite of chicken. “I always knew that woman was a skank.”

There was a new slur in the bathroom yesterday.
Katie Taylor is a skank
.
It was dark and I drew a big willow tree over it. All the leaves made my pen run out of ink. Marissa mixes the crust into the creamy mess. Does she want to be Pyramid Girl this badly? I’d give it to her, but then I won’t be unbeatable anymore. I won’t be able to pocket extra glitter just in case I need more magic.

“Totally,” comes a chorus. “Who does that?”

Skank. Whore. Bitch.
The words keep coming.

I look at Ethan, and he mouths
you
.
No one else sees him.

Marissa eats another spoon of pie. One more to go. I hate her.

“Her?” I say. “Really?” Marissa looks up. They all look up. My voice has a razor’s edge. They’re not used to that. “What about
him
? Why does he get off free and clear? Guys like that, you know they just use women, right? Then”—and now I look straight at Marissa—“when they’ve gotten everything they want, they toss her away, like the skank they know she is.”

Marissa turns pale. Ethan gives me a warning look. He doesn’t know why what I said upset Marissa, but he knows I upset her. He doesn’t like that. She plunges her spoon deep into the pie and inhales the creamy mess. Spoon four. She gags and rushes for the bathroom. Too late. Chunks of the barely digested chicken, peas, and carrots fly to floor, just missing the garbage. She heaves again and the cafeteria erupts in “eww, gross.” The bell rings, and the cheerleaders pick up their trays in unison and walk around the vomit and a crying Marissa. “Sorry, girl,” says one, and keeps on walking.

Ethan’s eyes are lasers. I pretend they don’t scare me. He stays behind and helps clean up her barf. He never stayed behind to clean up mine.

I walk away quickly, and my phone vibrates. I know I shouldn’t look. I tell myself it’s Alex, even though that would be too perfect. Nothing is perfect here. It vibrates again, telling me to check my text. I look back at Marissa and Ethan, and he mouths
phone
.
I open it, and he smirks.
WHORE.

Alex

I
’m getting ready to call Katie when I get a text from Jas
mine:
U need to come in.

I text back:
Don’t work tonight, babe. Sorry.

It’s an emergency,
she writes.

It’s fucking pizza,
I write.

Pleeease :-(
she says.

Fine. Give me 20. U owe me big.

I can give you something big … ;-)

I don’t text back. She doesn’t do it for me anymore. None of them do. I wake up thinking of Katie. I deliver shitty pizzas and think about what I can buy Katie with the tips. Old hos brush up against me, and I only get hard out of reflex. I haven’t called Katie my girlfriend, but what else can she be?

I get to Tony’s, and it’s just Jasmine there, her braless tits almost hanging out of her V-neck. Fuck me. “What’s the emergency?” As if I don’t know.

She comes up to me and backs me into the door. Her boobs are practically in my mouth. “I’m making it up to you.” She moves her skanky hand to my zipper and pulls down. Then her mouth is on mine and her hand is doing its thing. God. I picture Katie, and Jasmine could never be her. Not with that filthy mouth. I push her away. She doesn’t move. Just says, “Sshh” and keeps going. I push her harder and she rubs me harder. Goddamn.

I only want Katie to make my head—both of them—explode. How did I get this way? Fuck me if I know. “Get the hell off me, you slut!”

She stops. And pushes me hard. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” She raises her hand to slap me but I grab her wrist.

“Just relax, okay? We had fun, and it’s done.”

She sputters. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

I laugh. “I’ve been called worse.”

“Get out.”

“So there’s no emergency?”

“Get. Out.” She throws a chair at me.

“Be careful with that hand. You’ll need it to make some other guy happy.”

“You know,” she says, voice full of desperation as I walk to the door, “when your little whore stops doing it for you—and she will—you’ll come crawling back. Ask me if I’ll be here waiting.”

“I’ll see you around, Jas. Get some rest.” I make a mental note to work any shift but hers from now on.

I’m smiling as I walk to my car. I check my phone to see if Katie texted. She didn’t. And an unfamiliar feeling starts in my gut. Disappointment? Over a chick? It’s like she owns me. This should scare the shit out of me, but it doesn’t. Hell, I
want
her to own me.

I don’t wait until I get home. I text her and tell her she needs to come to Philly. She doesn’t answer right away, probably analyzing the whole thing from every angle like girls do, and I almost text her to forget it, no big deal. But then she texts:
YES!
Like that, all caps. Freaking exclamation point too. I text her to bring Julie. I think little bro would like that. She texts back a heart. I get in the car and tell her I’ll call her as soon as I get home.

I gun the gas, go through a red light, and lucky for me the coppers are off eating donuts. At home I dial Katie’s number, and realize I’m whipped as shit and damned pleased about it.