“Wow.”
“Sorry to have to tell you, but that’s what friends are for.”
“Yeah. Friends. Thanks for letting me know.” I looked at my T-shirt, purchased from a thrift store in Albuquerque, and felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. If Bridger’s social class had an opposite, I would be it.
Yet a little part of me hoped Yana was wrong. Okay, a big part of me hoped. Mrs. Carpenter’s dogs liked him, after all.
Even though I had been warned, my heart beat like a galloping horse every time Bridger said hi to me in the hall. When he smiled at me, or talked to me during track, I couldn’t stop grinning. The few times we walked the same direction to class, he took my hand and interlaced his fingers with mine, and my blood raced through my veins.
I started counting the hours until prom.
On Thursday, when I got to third period, Senior English, I noticed the female half of the class was staring at me, as if noticing the new girl for the first time—again. Their eyes and whispers clung to me. When I sat down at my desk, a loud snickering filled the classroom. Danni, who sat directly behind me, was in full hysterics.
I turned around to see what everyone was laughing at, and they laughed harder. The girls did anyway. The guys were studying the walls or ceiling.
Class passed normally, with me struggling to hold my eyes open. We were discussing The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a novel about a woman who had to wear a red A on her dress so that everyone knew she’d had sex out of wedlock. It was one of my least favorite books and, to make matters worse, I’d read and dissected it junior year. The urge to let my eyelids sag shut was almost overwhelming. The rest of the class seemed just as bored, antsy for class to end. Yet when the dismissal bell rang, no one made the usual mad dash for the lunchroom. They all stared at me.
My palms became clammy and my stomach started to churn, the same feeling I got when I knew the girls at my old school were planning on jumping me in the hall. My eyes met Danni’s. She grinned from ear to ear. Did Ollie tell her about me?
I stood to leave.
The class burst into raucous laughter. I reached between my shoulder blades, expecting to find a paper with Kick me taped there, but felt nothing. The class laughed harder. I clenched my teeth and left.
Laughter followed me down the hall. Every person I passed exploded with it when they looked at me. They pointed at my back and whispered, told other people to look, and they laughed, too.
Panic clawed at me. I started to run toward the girls’ bathroom. It felt a mile away. By the time I reached it, tears were filling my eyes and I was gasping for air.
When I looked in the mirror, though, nothing was wrong. It was just plain old red-faced me staring back. I don’t know what I had expected—a clown nose, maybe? Footsteps echoed in the empty stalls and Yana walked into the bathroom.
Her eyes met mine, and then wandered down my neck, over my red sweater, and to my jeans. She cringed.
“You riding the crimson wave?” she asked delicately.
I didn’t know what she meant. Crimson wave?
“You’ve bled through your pants,” she croaked, as if the words hurt her throat.
I turned around and looked at my butt in the mirror. Crimson smeared the seat of my jeans. I touched the stain and brought my fingers to my nose. Nail polish. I had sat in bright, blood-red nail polish.
My hands balled into fists and my blood started to boil. I saw the pink-and-gray-tiled bathroom through a fog of red. As I ran from the bathroom to the crowded lunchroom, I told myself what I was about to do was worth the consequences I would face.
Danni was watching for me, perched atop a table surrounded by her friends. Bridger was there, too, talking to Danni and smiling. My heart sank. He was in on it. I didn’t know who to hit first—him or Danni.
But then Bridger saw me and frowned. He met me halfway across the lunchroom and grabbed my fist. I kept walking, pulling him with me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to uncurl my fingers. I glared at him and stopped.
“Tell me we’re friends,” I growled, clenching my fists tighter. “Tell me you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”
He studied me. “We’re friends. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”
“Good.” I yanked my hand from his and strode over to Danni. She was gloating, laughing as I approached. When she opened her mouth to say something, I shoved my balled fist into it as hard as I could, knocking her backward off the table. She lay frozen on the grimy lunchroom floor, staring up at me. But when I started for her again, she scrambled to her feet and hid behind a couple of big senior guys. I pushed and shoved them out of my way and grabbed the back of Danni’s shirt as she tried to run away.
She whirled around to face me and the fight was on.
She didn’t know how to fight—just sort of hugged me, pulled my hair, and buried her face in my shoulder—making it impossible for me to punch it again. I started punching her in the ribs and pulling her cropped brown hair. She tried to kick my shins and bite me, but in the middle of a fight, you don’t feel little things like that.
When she was suddenly yanked away, I swung hard and fast and my fist clipped her just below the eye. Arms came around me. I could smell Bridger and knew he was the one restraining me, but I wasn’t done beating the crap out of Danni Williams. I struggled against his iron embrace, but couldn’t break free.
Then I saw Danni wrapped in a backward hug by the school nurse. Danni wasn’t struggling to get free, like me. She was struggling to put Ms. Opp in front of her. Danni was terrified. Of me. I froze.
All the steam went out of me and I leaned into Bridger. I had become just like the girls that used to corner me and beat me up. I couldn’t believe I’d sunk so low.
“If I let go of you, do you promise to leave her alone?” Bridger asked, his mouth against my ear.
I nodded because I knew if I tried to talk I’d probably start to cry. His arms fell from me and my body heat seemed to fall with them.
“What is going on?” The gathered students moved aside as the principal strode over. He gasped when he saw Danni. Her chin was streaked with blood from a split lip and her eye was swelling shut. His astounded, glasses-framed eyes turned to me. “Did you do that to her?”
I nodded, still unable to speak. Bridger’s hand found the small of my back and lingered there. I closed my eyes and leaned against him.
“To my office, girls.” I squared my shoulders and stepped away from Bridger. Dr. Smith started herding Danni and me out of the cafeteria. “We don’t need your assistance, Mr. O’Connell,” he said when Bridger tried to follow.
Slowly, like the onset of a really bad headache, my bruises and scrapes became painfully obvious. My shins hurt, my shoulder throbbed from Danni’s biting, and my right hand was burning. I looked down and saw blood on my knuckles—my blood. Danni’s tooth had split my knuckle and beneath the skin I could see pale bone. I pressed the knuckle against my jeans.
The three of us walked to the office in silence, and once we were inside, the interrogation began.
“Maggie Mae, what happened?” Dr. Smith asked stonily.
I shrugged. “I hit Danni.”
“Why?”
I glared at her but she was staring at the floor. “Because she is a malicious witch who deserved it.”
“And why do you feel she deserved it? You are the one dating her ex-boyfriend. I thought she would have swung the first punch.”
Danni finally looked at me. Her eye, the one that hadn’t swelled shut, was full of hate.
“Danni deliberately put red nail polish on my chair and I sat in it without knowing. She made it look like I’m having my period.”
Dr. Smith winced. “Please stand up, Ms. Mortensen,” he said, though he looked less than thrilled.
I stood.
“Turn around,” he prodded, spinning his pointer finger in a circle. I turned and stared at the wall while he inspected my butt. Dr. Smith sighed heavily. “You may sit.”
I turned and sat back down.
“Danni, what do you have to say in your defense?” Dr. Smith asked.
Danni looked at Dr. Smith with a wide eye and batted her eyelashes. “I would never do something like that to a fellow female. I don’t know what Maggie Mae sat in, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. She hit me for no reason.”
“You’re saying she hit you unprovoked?”
Danni sniffled. “Yes.”
My face started to burn and I clenched my fists. One swift punch and both her eyes would swell shut.
Dr. Smith’s lips thinned. “Ms. Mortensen, we have a no-violence policy at this school. A first offense is punished with suspension. You are suspended for the remainder of today and tomorrow. And this will go down on your permanent record.”
“Does that mean she can’t go to prom?” Danni asked hopefully.
“No. The dance is on Saturday, not Friday. You are excused, Danni. Go to the nurse’s office. I’ll call your mother and have her come and get you.”
Danni left without looking at me, and Dr. Smith sat back down.
“Ms. Mortensen, you need to leave the school premises immediately. I’ll have the attendance office call your guardian and explain what has happened.”
Without a word I left the principal’s office and found Danni waiting for me in the hall. She held out an empty nail polish bottle and smirked. “He only wants to take you to prom because you’re a slut,” she hissed. “And it’s every guy’s dream to get laid at senior prom.”
I bit my tongue and walked past her, hurrying through the empty hall. As I approached the front doors, my feet slowed. Bridger stood leaning casually against the wall beside the exit. When I saw him, a dam broke inside of me. Tears began streaming down my cheeks.
“Hey, you want a ride home from a friend?” he asked, putting a finger under my chin and tilting my face up to look at him.
“Yes, please. That would be great.”
He wiped the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs, took my good hand in his, and pulled me toward the door. I glanced over my shoulder and caught Danni staring at us, eyes full of fire.
