Connecticut
Winter, Sophomore Year
My mother freaked out, as predicted, when I came home from sledding looking like I’d gone ten rounds with a slasher movie villain. A phone call to the doctor resulted in the very plausible explanation that it had probably been a combination of lingering sinus issues and dryness caused by the extreme cold, along with the assurance that they could cauterize my nose if it happened again.
We were both satisfied with that, especially since it hadn’t been my first nosebleed ever, just the most intense.
Not so satisfying? The balled-up snot rags that had mysteriously started littering the floor near my locker the Monday after the incident. The first time it happened, I’d wrinkled my nose and kicked them away, remarking to David that people who didn’t have basic knowledge of how to use a trash can shouldn’t be allowed to graduate. But when it happened for the next two consecutive days, the feeling I’d had when Maddie and Isabel’s friends mocked me at the golf course—the one of having swallowed a bowling ball—returned with a vengeance.
“David,” I murmured as I frowned at three white wads. When I leaned closer, I saw that some of them had been colored with red marker. “They’re doing this on purpose.”
“Who is?”
“Isabel and her friends. Maybe Maddie, too. I saw them making fun of me when we were leaving the golf course.”
David frowned. “You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s embarrassing.” My shoulders sagged as I kicked the tissues away.
“I’m getting to the bottom of this right now,” David said.
My head snapped up in time to see him striding down the hall toward Isabel, his back straight and tense.
“David, don’t—” But it was too late. I wished I could crawl inside my locker and hide as he caught up to her. Isabel’s eyes grew round and incredulous as David looked down at her like he’d caught her stealing. That part I might’ve liked.
My mortification turned to confusion, though, when David’s features relaxed after a few seconds and his scowl morphed into a smile. Then the two of them headed toward me, together. I tried to appear busy with my books as they closed the distance, the whole time wondering why Isabel looked like she was about to hug me. And hoping like hell she wouldn’t.
“Kelsey!” Her voice dripped with remorse. She motioned toward the scattered tissues. “I am so sorry about this. I had no idea what was going on. Sometimes my friends think they’re funny when they’re not. It’s so immature.”
I glanced at David. He raised his eyebrows and nodded ever so slightly toward Isabel, like a parent prompting a kid to remember her manners. Which meant he was buying this crap.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s pretty immature.”
She pressed her manicured fingertips against her collarbone. “That’s why I wouldn’t have any part of it.”
No, she’d just tried to decapitate me with her laser eyes.
Isabel’s red-glossed lips pursed earnestly. “You saw that, right? It wasn’t me making fun of you.”
I had to give her credit. Declaring her innocence in front of David was one smooth move. Especially since I couldn’t deny it.
“I saw, Isabel. I saw the whole thing.”
“I’m so sorry, Kelsey,” she repeated. “This will never happen again. And I’ll make sure that they apologize to you.”
I held up my hand. “I don’t need an apology, really. As long as I don’t get any more ‘presents,’ it’s fine.”
“You won’t.” She flashed a brief grin at me, then turned a full-on beam at David, like she’d completed the performance of her life and expected him to applaud or something. “Walk us to class, David?”
“This is where Kelse and I part ways,” he said. “But I’ll walk with you.” He looked at me. “See you after second period?”
“See you then.” I was too tired and too weirded out to pull off a fake smile. David might’ve bought her apology hook, line, and sinker, but I would’ve eaten my textbooks before I’d believe one word had been sincere.
I hated fake people.
But even more, as I watched them walk away together and leave me with crumpled tissues at my feet, I hated that I felt so alone.
“You look tired, Kelsey,” Mom said, studying the purple-tinged bags beneath my eyes over her coffee mug. “And pale. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
I dragged a piece of pancake through the syrup on my plate, finding no desire to put it in my mouth. “I got my period last night. It’s really heavy.”
“Ah.” Mom nodded knowingly. Once a month my body decided it hated me, a trait I had picked up from my mother’s end of the gene pool. And it seemed to be hating especially hard this month, though certain other stressors probably weren’t helping the fact that my energy level was zero lately. But I didn’t want to get into that with my mom. I wouldn’t put it past her to ambush me into a meeting with Maddie and Isabel to “talk things out.” She watched me play with my food for a few more seconds before asking, “Do you want to stay home from school?”
I shook my head. I hated being absent to be sick. Playing hooky was one thing, but staying home alone to feel lethargic and useless was its own brand of suck. One person, however, definitely wouldn’t complain about it—Isabel.
I’d felt her eyes drilling holes of hatred into the back of my head during study hall ever since the sledding incident, despite her apology and the cease-fire on tissue-bombing my locker. I still couldn’t figure out why my bleeding had offended her so thoroughly. I just knew that she saw the time David and I spent together as a roadblock in her never-ending quest to hit on him, even though His Denseness shrugged off my suspicions.
I caught up to him at his locker before first bell. “Hey,” I said. “You never responded to my text about the history project last night.”
“Um, last night?” He avoided my eyes as he transferred books to his bag. “I kind of went over to Isabel’s to help her with her homework.”
My fingers tightened around the strap of my own backpack. “Went over . . . to her house? For real?”
He mumbled something I couldn’t hear over the sound of lockers slamming and feet shuffling and jaws dropping. My jaw, anyway.
I waited for him to apologize for not texting back, or to at least make an excuse and then spill the details I was dying for. Like what Isabel’s house looked like on the inside and whether or not he’d seen the four Porsches her parents were rumored to own. And whether or not Maddie had been there, sucking face with Jared and acting like David was her new best friend.
He said nothing.
“So,” I hedged. “How was your study date?”
The red tinge that lit his ears told me they hadn’t done much studying at all. “It was fine. She’s um—she’s nice.”
Oh, Christ.
“I’ll bet she is.” I’d meant to sound teasing, but it came out sour.
David threw his bag over his shoulder. “You’re not mad, are you?”
“I’m too tired to be mad.” Which was true.
A look of concern clouded his face. “You have to snap out of this soon, you know.”
“Why is that?”
He looked past me and bobbed his head to indicate something behind me. “For that. It’s this weekend.”
I turned around to see what he meant. A poster hung on the side of the lockers, featuring glittering black and white snowflakes whirling around the shadowed figures of a dancing girl and boy. WINTER SWIRL TICKETS NOW ON SALE.
I shrugged as I faced him again. “Eh. Isabel will be happier if I don’t go. Then she’ll have you all to herself.”
“Wha— Isabel? What does she have to do with it?”
“You’re taking her, aren’t you? Because that idiotic look on your face a minute ago told me you probably should. You must’ve at least copped a feel.”
“Kelse, me and Isabel . . . I don’t think . . .” He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck.
“You don’t think what? Whatever you did counts? Oh, David. You got a piece. Just say it.”
David didn’t laugh at my ribbing. He seemed genuinely flustered, and even a little frustrated. “But she’s—I—Isabel’s a junior. She’s not gonna want to go to the dance with a sophomore.”
Before I could answer, a manicured hand appeared on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Isabel said. She beamed up at him.
And ignored me.
“Oh, hey,” David said, his ears turning beet red. “We were just talking about you.”
She pressed her chin against his shoulder. “I know. And I’d love to.”
David shot a half-nervous, half-apologetic look at me. “Uh, that’s—”
I spun on my heel. “I’ll catch you later.” Between my nosebleed and my period, I didn’t have enough blood in my digestive tract to keep my stomach from rejecting my breakfast if I stuck around much longer.
I’d only made it ten steps when I felt a hand on my arm. David pulled up in front of me, blocking my path. “Kelse, wait a second. I’m sorry about that. That’s not how it was supposed to happen.”
Now I was the one confused. “What were you planning to do? Get her roses or something?”
“I wasn’t planning—” He shook his head. “Never mind. You’re still gonna go, right?”
“I doubt it.”
David’s face fell. “Why not?”
I looked down. I didn’t want to say something as self-pitying as No one else cares if I go, even though it was obviously true after what had happened at the golf course. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling everything I’d felt that day, right down to the cold.
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Well, think about it, okay? I really want you to be there.”
“Oh-kay?”
He smiled, my bewildered answer apparently satisfactory.
As he walked away, a pinprick of realization started somewhere in my head, turning my whole body hot with embarrassment as it spread. Blood loss and all, any moron should have been able to see what had just happened, and why David had been acting so weird.
Maybe I’d misinterpreted his half-finished sentences. When he said he hadn’t planned for it to happen that way, he hadn’t meant the way he asked Isabel to the dance. He meant he hadn’t planned to take her at all.
He’d planned to go with me.