For the past fifteen minutes, I’ve been debating whether to knock on the principal’s door. The thing is, this is all my fault. If I hadn’t sat at David’s table, Gabriel and Justin would never have stolen his notebook, and if they hadn’t stolen his notebook, the football team would not have decided he was Enemy Number One. And also it wasn’t until they mentioned me (or my ass, to be specific) that David went ballistic. I’m sure David can work this into some complicated algorithm, but the fact is: This is on me. Let’s be honest, other than my mother sleeping with Jack, pretty much everything else is.
But when I hear Principal Hoch ask, “You’re friends with Kit Lowell?” all condescending and disbelieving like that, like she thinks that I’m some imaginary friend that David has made up, I decide I have no choice but to waltz right in.
“David and I are friends,” I proclaim as I push open the door a tad more dramatically than I intend. “And this wasn’t David’s fault. It was mine.”
Only after the words are out, when I see David and his parents and Principal Hoch look up at me in shock, do I realize that I’m being totally inappropriate. Then I think: Could this hurt my chance of getting into college? Never have I felt more desperate to leave Mapleview than I have in the past few weeks.
“I’m not sure this involves you,” Principal Hoch says to me.
If I were smart I’d walk out. I’d go home and pack a bag and move to Alaska. Or Hawaii. Or Paris. So what if I don’t speak French? There is nothing left for me here. I seem to be blazing all the freaking bridges at once. Even I’m getting sick of my morose teenage girl shtick. It’s time to molt and shed this version of myself. Maybe I’ll even get rid of the name Kit, which is too close to Kitty, my dad’s name for me. Now Kit feels too loaded. I could go back to being Katherine. Or try out something altogether new. Kath or Katie. Just K. A mysterious initial.
“The thing is, it’s my fault, not David’s,” I repeat. I’m doing this. Barging into the principal’s office and making a case, which isn’t my case at all. This isn’t even about me. I’m a side note to this story. The part you skip over to get to the good bits.
“Kit, this isn’t your fault. But see, we are friends. What Kit just did is the very definition of friendship,” David says, and turns back to the principal. “ ‘We’ don’t have to do anything with me.” David puts the we in air quotes. “I’m doing just fine. I’ve made friends. Just like a normal person. And you should value me as a student here as much as you do the football team.”
“We do value you, and no one said you aren’t a ‘normal person,’ ” Principal Hoch says, countering with her own air quotes around normal person. If David’s entire life did not depend on this meeting, I’d laugh at their finger talking.
“Actually, that’s exactly what you’ve been saying. You are implying he doesn’t deserve the protections you give every other student and that he doesn’t have the same right to be here,” Mrs. Drucker says, and for the first time I take a good look at her. She looks just like Lauren but older. She’s beautiful, and I wonder if that’s hard for David to have such a beautiful mother, like it is sometimes for me. But then I remember he’s like Lauren, stunning too, and anyway, I imagine it’s different for a guy. Though my mother and Mrs. Drucker are equally attractive, what Justin would call MILFs, they have very different styles. My mom likes glamour and general badassery, tight clothes, and high heels. Mrs. Drucker sports a loose-fitting peasant top, faded cuffed jeans, and gray Converse sneakers. She looks like she could practically be a student. Her hair is even pulled back into a messy ponytail—all jaunty and exuberant. Unlike my mom, Mrs. Drucker doesn’t seem to try; in fact, it’s like she’s actively not trying. “You’ve been suggesting that he go to a special school.”
“David does not need a special school,” I say. I keep my voice calm, but really I feel like screaming. I can’t take it anymore. The whole world is upside down and no one else seems to notice.
The football team threatens to choke David with his own balls and he’s the one who might have to transfer?
My dad is dead.
My mom is alive.
And so am I.
So am I.
Why can’t I shut up?
“Kit, would you excuse us?” Principal Hoch asks. Maybe I should pack a bag and go to Mexico. Mexico is a more logical choice, since they speak Spanish, which I kind of know, though I suspect I might speak it with Señora Rubenstein’s same New Jersey whine, and I could drink margaritas there on the regular. I’ve never actually had a margarita, but they definitely seem like something I would like. My dad spent six months living in Oaxaca after college and promised he’d take me there one day. Maybe I should just take myself.
Poof. Disappear. Just like he did. I wonder how long I could get away with using my mother’s credit cards. Would it be long enough for the world to right itself again?
No. I’ve been wrong. Time isn’t the issue. The world will never be right again.
“Can I just say that David is awesome and he shouldn’t get in trouble for this?”
“Please get back to class. Again, no one asked for your opinion—”
“With all due respect, let the girl talk,” David’s dad says. He’s wearing khaki pants and a blue polo shirt, echoes of David’s old uniform. When David wore it he looked like an electronics store stock boy, the person to ask about the best TV. His dad looks like the manager.
Principal Hoch reflexively defends herself and says, “I’m just trying to keep this private,” but then changes her mind. “Kit, go on.”
“Think about it—it’s not David’s fault he got his notebook stolen. It’s mine. I made him a target. And it’s because of the notebook that the whole school hates him. Don’t get me wrong. He is no way normal.” I stop, look at David. Smile a little. “Sorry, it’s true. But who is? And since when is normal a requirement for high school?”
“I like her,” David’s dad says to no one in particular.
“I know, right?” David’s mom says.
“I hear you saved the day,” Lauren—aka Miney—says to me as she slides into the booth at McCormick’s. She doesn’t introduce herself. She’s Lauren Drucker. She doesn’t have to. David’s parents are taking us all out for burgers to celebrate, though David and I have to be back to school before the bell for physics.
“Not really,” I say. Lauren looks me up and down. I’m wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and ankle boots, an outfit my mother bought for me, since she’s better at getting dressed than I am. Lauren looks cool even with chipped sunglasses on her head, and messy hair and clothes. I’m too intimidated and embarrassed to ask her how she pulls it off.
“Mom said that because of you, David’s not getting expelled from school.”
“I don’t know. I think David was the one who kicked ass today,” I say.
“Literally and figuratively,” David says.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. He was like a kung fu master.”
“Krav maga, mostly. With a few traditional karate moves,” David says.
“But you had his back. I dig that,” Lauren says, and the part of me that still hasn’t outgrown the insecurities of freshman year gets a thrill from her approval.
“To Kit!” David’s mom says, and the entire Drucker family raises their milk shakes and toasts me.
Later, when we are leaving the restaurant and David’s mom stops to say hello to some lady she knows and David and his dad are debating whether it was fair of astronomers to demote Pluto from the status of planet, Lauren pulls me out of earshot of the rest of her family.
“I owe you a big thanks,” she says. “For getting the notebook back. For talking to the principal. Seriously. It’s hard not being at school to help him—I really hate being so far away—so thank you for stepping in. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss him. Or here, actually.”
“You don’t have to thank me for being David’s friend,” I say. “I like hanging out with him.”
Lauren’s eyes narrow and then widen again, and for a second I wonder if she’s tearing up.
“You’re right,” she says. “He’s good people. The best, actually. Just one more thing, though,” Lauren says, putting her hand on my arm to stop me from walking away. I notice that her feet are encased in unfashionable men’s furry snow boots, which somehow look fashionable on her. How does she do that? She’s just made of magic. There’s no other explanation.
“Yeah?”
“You’re probably good people too, but just so you know, I love David more than life itself, so if you hurt my brother in any way, or if you even think about hurting him, I will ruin you. I may not still live here, but I can still do that,” she says in the hurried whisper of a Mafia don, which come to think of it is not unlike a homecoming queen, even an ironic hipster version. Her eyes are dry now and cold. “Understood?”
“I think so.”
“Good,” Lauren says, and then she throws her arm around my shoulders in a weird, semi-friendly half hug. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”
I am at the weekly newspaper meeting, but no actual newspaper business is getting done because all anyone can talk about is the Fight. People are gossiping about it so much it has earned capitalization.
“Did you see that headlock move? It was like something out of UFC,” Annie says.
“I really thought he was going to kill Mangino. Like ten guys from the football team are in the hospital,” Violet says, who despite being our chief news correspondent tends not to always hew to the facts.
“More like Man-gina,” says a puny freshman boy I’ve never noticed before, making the kind of joke that would have been suicidal if Joe weren’t a safe distance away in the ER.
“How’d he learn to do that, Kit?” Violet asks.
“I have no idea.” I’m only half listening. Mostly I’m trying to come up with a way to ask Mr. Galto to add my name to nominees for editor in chief. Since I’m not skipping town to Mexico after all, I need to get into a good college, preferably one on the other side of the country. I bet I’d like California: sunny skies, boys in shorts year-round, reading my textbooks while lying out on a beach towel. When I imagine West Coast Kit, I am the kind of girl who can rock a bikini and sunglasses and whose entire existence can be described by the word frolic. In other words, the opposite of who I am now.
Mr. Galto, please consider me for EIC. I realize I haven’t been as reliable lately, and I missed the meeting, but I’ve worked my butt off for the past two years, and if you give me this chance I’ll do better. Yes, I’ll ask him afterward, just like that. He’s the type to respond to groveling.
“Unless we’re doing a feature on the fighting prowess of one Mr. David Drucker, which we are decidedly not, I think we need to get this meeting back on track,” Mr. Galto says, and I sit straight in my chair and have my laptop out as if I’m poised to take notes. Taking position as the model student I used to be. I can still fix this. “First order of business, the new EIC. Drumroll, please…”
My stomach drops. I’m too late. My three years of hard work and ass-kissing all down the drain because I couldn’t keep it together and was too distracted to ask Mr. Galto to consider me. I had lost track of the timing.
“Congratulations to Violet and Annie, our new co–editors in chief!” The room explodes in applause and Violet and Annie squeal and hug, because the only thing better than being editor in chief is sharing the position with your best friend. I force myself to smile, to pretend I’m not about to cry, that I didn’t completely and totally self-sabotage.
I’m happy for them. I really am. Still, I not only feel like I lost something, but even worse: I’ve accidentally solidified my position as the odd man out in our threesome. Made something I just couldn’t deal with at the moment permanent.
Violet looks over at me, and though she doesn’t say anything, I know she’s asking me for permission to be excited about this. I make my smile brighter. Give her some teeth.
And when Annie gives me a tentative Brownie salute, I give it right back.
Only later, when I’m back home, locked in my room, hiding from my mother and the rest of the world and wondering what my dad would have thought about me screwing one more thing up, do I allow myself to cry. For the third time since he died. That seal is officially broken.