She shook her head. “It’s jealousy.” But I didn’t think it was jealousy. I thought it was more instinctual, like being part of a pack of wild animals that drive one animal out into the wilderness to die.
It was scary, how a girl couldn’t live without friends.
“Ignore it,” my mother advised. “Act like nothing is wrong. Lali will come around. You’ll see.”
My mother was right. I did ignore it and Lali’s birthday came and went, and sure enough, four days later Lali and I were mysteriously friends again.
For weeks afterward, however, when Lali mentioned her birthday—she had taken six girls to an amusement park—my face would redden in shame at the memory of being shunned. When I finally asked Lali why I wasn’t invited, she looked at me in surprise. “But you did come, didn’t you?”
I shook my head.
“Oh,” she said. “Maybe you were acting like a jerk or something.”
“That Lali is a dope,” my mother said, “dope” being an insult she reserved for those she considered the very lowest form of human being.
I let it go. I figured it was the way of girls. But this—this betrayal—is that the way of girls as well?
“Hey,” The Mouse says, discovering me in the stacks. “He wasn’t in calculus. And she wasn’t in assembly. So they must be feeling really guilty.”
“Or maybe they’re at some hotel. Fucking.”
“You can’t let them get to you, Bradley. You can’t let them win. You have to act like you don’t care.”
“But I do care.”
“I know. But sometimes, you have to act the opposite of what people expect. They want you to go crazy. They want you to hate them. The more you hate them, the stronger they become.”
“I just want to know why.”
“The cowards,” Walt says, putting his tray down next to mine. “They don’t even have the guts to show up at school.”
I stare down at my plate. The fried chicken suddenly resembles a large insect, the mashed potatoes a nacreous glue. I push it aside. “Why would he do it? From a guy’s perspective?”
“She’s different. And it’s easier. It’s always easier at the beginning.” Walt pauses. “It might not even have anything to do with you.”
Then why does it feel like it does?
I attend the rest of my classes. I’m there physically, but mentally I’m stuck on replay: Lali’s shocked expression when I caught her kissing Sebastian and the way Sebastian’s mouth turned down in displeasure when he saw I’d come back. Maybe he was hoping to keep both of us on the line.
“She’s a little bitch,” Maggie says.
“I thought you liked her,” I say craftily. I need to know who’s really on my side and who isn’t.
“I did like her,” Maggie says, jerking the wheel of the Cadillac and overshooting the turn, so we’re driving on the wrong side of the road. “Until she did this.”
“So if she hadn’t done it, you would still like her.”
“I dunno. I guess so. I was never crazy about her, though. She’s kind of arrogant and full of herself. Like everything she does is so great.”
“Yeah,” I say bitterly. Lali’s words, “He wants me,” ring in my head. I open the glove compartment and take out a cigarette. My hand is trembling. “You know what’s scary? If she hadn’t done this, we’d probably still be friends.”
“So?”
“So it’s weird, you know? To be friends with someone for so long, and then they do one thing, and it’s over. And they weren’t a bad person before. Or at least you didn’t think they were. So you have to wonder if that bad thing was always there, waiting to come out, or if it was just a one-time thing, and they’re still a good person, but you can’t trust them.”
“Carrie, Lali did do this,” Maggie says matter-of-factly. “Which means she is a bad person. You just never saw it before. But you would have realized it, eventually.”
She presses on the brakes as the brick facade of Sebastian’s house comes into view. Slowly, we drive past. Lali’s red truck is parked in the driveway behind Sebastian’s yellow Corvette. I crumple like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.