Rules for Being a Girl

Of course: we never saw the actual crash.

I shuffle down the senior stairs to the admin suite, where Ms. Lynch is diligently adding balloon emojis to the birthday wishes she’s composing on someone’s Facebook.

“Marin,” says Mr. DioGuardi when I knock on the open door of his office, not bothering to say hello this time. I guess we’re officially past formalities at this point. “Sit.”

I plunk down obediently as Mr. DioGuardi pops his whistle into his mouth, the faintest, shrillest shriek filling the air every time he breathes. Finally he pulls it out again and eyes me across the desk. “So,” he says, meaty hands folded. “Do you want to start, or should I?”

“Um,” I say, not sure of the protocol here. In my entire life, I’ve never really gotten in trouble—and I’m pretty sure that’s what’s about to happen here, though I’m not sure who possibly could have seen me. “You can start.”

I don’t mean to sound sullen, exactly, but I can tell that’s how Mr. DioGuardi takes it.

“All right,” he says crisply. “Have it your way.” He turns his computer monitor around so that it’s facing me, hitting the space bar on the keyboard so the grainy security camera footage on the screen starts to move.

Yup, I think with surprising numbness, watching in silence as my car pulls up beside Bex’s, as I hop out of the driver’s seat and open my trunk. Definitely about to get in trouble.

I stare at the screen, transfixed by my yesterday-self as one by one the letters appear on the back of Bex’s car: S, then C, then U, then the dark red curves of the M. It occurs to me, if I was going to get caught anyway, that I could have gone ahead and picked a longer word.

“What were you thinking?” Mr. DioGuardi asks, and I look at him, startled. For a second I almost forgot he was there. “Quite seriously, Marin, what on earth was going through your head?”

“Well,” I say, truly considering it. “I wasn’t thinking about the security cameras, I can tell you that much.”

That’s the wrong thing to say: Mr. DioGuardi glowers at me across the desk, his dark eyebrows nearly connecting. “Is this funny to you?” he demands.

“No,” I promise immediately, and it’s the truth. “I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

“Then I would be very careful how you handle this situation,” he instructs me.

Clearly, I’ve exhausted his store of patience.

“Your future is in your hands right now. We’re suspending you for two weeks, effective immediately. Unless you want to turn that into an expulsion—”

“I’m sorry, what?” I shove my chair back, jumping to my feet like I’m trying to escape a burning building. “You’re—?”

“What did I just say, Marin?” Mr. DioGuardi’s cheeks redden. “Lucky for you, Mr. Beckett has agreed not to press criminal charges.”

I sit back down, not so much because he’s telling me to as because I think my legs might actually give out underneath me.

“Um,” I say again, wrapping my hands around the armrests in a pathetic attempt to ground myself. I can taste this morning’s orange juice rising dangerously at the back of my throat. “Okay.”

“He and I are both willing to acknowledge the emotional stress you’ve been under,” Mr. DioGuardi continues, “and we understand the possibility that you weren’t entirely yourself.”

Not myself, I think dully, staring down at my hands like they’re somehow completely separate from my body.

“The suspension is effective immediately,” Mr. DioGuardi says again. “I’ll be calling your parents to inform them of the situation,

and Ms. Lynch can escort you to your locker to get your things.”

“I don’t need an escort,” I tell him, forcing myself to my feet again. Nothing about this conversation seems real. Suspended. Me. He might as well be telling me he’s sending me off to the moon.

“Marin—”

“I said I don’t need one!” I snap, and it comes out a lot more like a wail than I mean for it to. Right away I hold my hands up in surrender, like a bank teller being held hostage. “I’m going, okay? I’m going.”

Just for a moment Mr. DioGuardi looks at me with something like sympathy. “All right,” he says quietly. “Go get your things, then.”

The bell rings just as I stumble dazedly out of the admin suite, classroom doors slamming open like they’re spring-loaded and the entire student body spilling out into the hallway. I almost crash right into Jacob, his immaculate Top-Siders gleaming white under the fluorescents and an against-dress-code Sox hat cocked on his head, not that anybody’s going to say anything to him about it.

“Hey, Marin,” he says, smiling a twisty, unpleasant smile. Then he nods at the admin office. “You making some alone time with DioGuardi now too?”