151 Days (45 page)

“Oh” was all Robbie could manage as we watched him assemble the weapon.

J
EREMY

T
HE
LIBRARY
nerds went outside and came back with binders of
Magic
cards. I’d never played the game, but I had seen it all over school; it was the geek equivalent of crack cocaine. Why Kyle would have them bring that crap in here was beyond me. Kelly’s pack of rabid jocks were still standing in the kitchen, trying to distance themselves from the rest of the unclean in case being a loser was contagious.

So far, though, it was better than I thought it would be. No one had screamed at anyone yet, and my music seemed to be well received, so there was a kind of balance in the air. It was something that couldn’t last. Instead of being actual peace and acceptance, this was forced cohabitation, and it was just a matter of time before one of the monkeys went apeshit on one of the others.

Brad came back downstairs and began talking to Jennifer. It was easy from afar to see why they’d gone out with each other. There was a sameness that the eye was drawn to and said, “They should be together.” It was the same program that made you think celebrities should only date other celebrities. Perfect people gravitated toward perfect people. Thinking about it, everybody gravitated toward perfect people.

He was upset about something, and he was trying to explain it to Jennifer. When Kyle walked over, the three of them talked for a second, and then Kyle began to walk upstairs. Instantly I knew what was about to happen. Kyle was about to confront Kelly about his feelings. This was it—my chance to get them all back.

I began to follow him and then stopped, realizing I couldn’t make the same mistake I’d made in Dallas. I needed proof this time. I needed something to get Kelly back with. My phone was still playing music, so there was no way for me to take it with me. Sammy was swaying to the music, drinking something next to me.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked, wanting to run upstairs before I missed the explosion.

“Sure, why?” she asked, handing her phone over to me.

“Need to check in with my dad before he goes all psycho on me for being out.” It was a complete lie, but my dad was a big enough dick to make it believable. I took her phone and practically sprinted upstairs. I listened at two doors before I heard talking on the other side. With a skill that had been perfected over the years of not waking up a hung-over father, I turned the bedroom doorknob and slowly cracked the door open.

Kyle’s voice became clear. “—about; this is what’s going to kill you. Even if you got what you wanted tonight, come tomorrow, how could you live with it?”

Kelly began crying, and I tried not to jump up and down in glee. This was exactly what I needed. I stuck the phone in the crack of the door and began recording it. I’d have time to go over it in detail once I got home, but from what I could catch on the other side of the door, this was pure gold. I would destroy Kelly with this video. I was going to bring him and all his douche bag friends to their knees.

As the conversation went on, I heard someone burst in downstairs, and it sounded like he was making trouble. Cursing under my breath, I pulled the phone away and dashed back downstairs before Kelly and Kyle came out and found me. I ducked into the kitchen and hid while Tony Wright made an ass of himself in the living room. I was about to join Sammy and the drama crew when I realized I had to give her phone back.

Fuck, how did I get this video off without her knowing? I supposed I could e-mail it, but that would take time to upload, and I still wanted to get Sammy back for going against me. I looked over the icons and saw she had the YouTube app. Crossing my fingers, I opened it up, hoping she was still logged in. When I saw the account name BluehairedgirlinTx pop up along with her password, I knew I was going to kill two assholes with one bullet.

I began to upload the footage to her account and then hit the home screen. The network icon was still spinning, meaning even though the phone looked normal, it was still uploading Kelly’s confession to the web. All I needed to do was get home, pull up Sammy’s account, grab the video, and edit the boring parts out. Once I had done that, it was a simple matter of posting it to Facebook and watching the world fall down around Kelly. The best part was if anyone tried to find out where the video had come from, it would lead them to Sammy, who deserved whatever crap she got as well.

Kyle was right; this could be the most important party in all of Foster, Texas history.

L
INDA
S
TILLENO

I
HAVE
a problem.

It’s a statement that has rolled around my brain more than once, and though it may seem like an incredibly obvious thing to you, for me it was just starting to seep in. Once again I had the closing shift at work and ended up going to the Rodeo Club with friends after, knowing that Kyle would already be asleep. As I am wont to do, I drank too much, took the party back to my house, drank some more, made a complete fool of myself, and then passed out just as the sun was coming up.

There is little chance of me ever winning mother of the year.

Growing up, I was never one of those girls who thought about being a mom. I didn’t like dolls all that much, and playing house seemed about as much fun as watching paint dry. I ran with a pretty wild crowd, and for a time I behaved like I was Peter Pan and never going to get old.

And then I had Kyle.

There are some people who will tell you having a child changes your world instantly, that the moment you stare into that baby’s eyes, the universe adjusts itself around you, and it becomes the center of everything. There are also people who will tell you that Bigfoot is real and that aliens took them far away and probed them intimately. I’m not saying that having a child doesn’t change you; nor am I saying there is absolutely no chance that something like Bigfoot exists out there. I’m just saying it sure in the fuck doesn’t happen the way those people described it.

Kyle was a gift, no doubt, but I have spent the better portion of my life wondering if he would have been better off with someone else as his parent.

At first I tried to do the whole “responsible mom” thing, but since the guy—notice I don’t say “father,” because I don’t feel like insulting fathers everywhere by lumping this asshole in with them—but since the guy who was partly responsible for Kyle wanted nothing to do with him nor me, I was forced to go it alone. My parents, who had moved to California once my father retired, offered to move back to help, but in what can only be temporary insanity I told them no, I could do it myself.

That’s a mistake I don’t think I ever recovered from.

Looking back on it now, I can see what I did to screw things up. I decided to be stupid and not ask for help, and the instant it got too hard, I used the excuse to climb back into a bottle or worse. Of course, the reason it was too hard was because I wouldn’t ask for help, but I was too fucked up to see the logic loop I had created. Instead, I would go through cycles, getting worse and worse, realize I was ruining Kyle’s life, try to get clean and sober, and then give up because it was too hard.

That isn’t an excuse; that’s just how I got myself into this situation.

The specific situation I’m talking about was me passed out while someone pounded on my door. At first I thought it was just a headache or possibly my pulse, but as I became more and more awake, I realized the sound was someone almost breaking down my door. Slowly I stumbled toward the noise. You can tell how zoned I was because I didn’t even check the living room to see if there was anything illegal left out, just in case it was a cop. My mind was nowhere near awake even as I opened the door.

Gayle from the diner was standing there, looking four kinds of pissed.

“Typical,” she practically spat at me as she pushed past into the house. “You know, I honestly gave thought that you might just be at work instead of hungover, still asleep. Against all odds I really did want to believe that, but I should have known.”

I had no earthly idea what she was talking about, so I closed the door and asked in a quiet voice, “What are you doing here?”

She had already walked away and into the kitchen. I heard the water from the sink turn on and tried to figure out what the hell was happening. Was she in there doing my dishes? I walked into the kitchen and was met head-on by a glass of water thrown in my face. Now I’m not sure what the protocol is when a crazy lady walks into your house and throws water in your face. Miss Manners never covered that when I was younger. I do know that if I had been awake, my reaction would have been different than half-asleep.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” I screamed at her, wiping my face off.

“Because you need to be sober and awake, and since the first part is impossible right now, I’ll settle for the second.” She brushed past me as she walked into the living room.

My mind had finally woken up, and it was pretty pissed. I grabbed her hand as she walked past. She turned back to look at me, and the expression on her face made it pretty clear she did not like me at all. Since I had been awake all of about forty-five seconds before I was doused, the feeling was mutual.

“What makes you think you can walk into my house and treat me like this?” I asked her, as ready as I had ever been to hitting an older woman.

Instead of answering, she turned the TV on with her other hand. Rather than game shows or soap operas, it was showing local news. I saw half a dozen cop cars in front of Foster High, the words “Shooting at Local School” scrolled beneath the images. I felt my hand drop to my side as I stood there in shock. This could not be happening, not here. This was Foster. This place was safe… this wasn’t real.

Gayle slapped my face, not hard, but enough to get my attention back.

“Your son is in trouble, and he needs you. Get dressed now.” It was pretty clear from the tone in her voice she was going to wait for me.

I opened my mouth to argue with her, to fight with her, to do
something
to defend my life to this woman. Instead I saw the police push the news crew farther away from the school and knew this nightmare was real, and I was wasting time.

I turned and ran back into my room.

J
EREMY

I
T
WAS
like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Or better, it was like watching one of those YouTube clips where this hot, jock douche bag thinks he’s going to be all cool and grind down a stair rail but instead biffs it and nails himself in the balls. It was like that except the guy just kept falling and falling and falling. I grabbed the video from Sammy’s account, edited it down to the golden moments, looped it, and then uploaded it back to her account again. It was a simple matter to make a dummy Facebook account, link the video to Kelly’s wall, and wait.

I didn’t have to wait long.

It’s a well-known fact that sharks will consume their own in the middle of a feeding frenzy. The same is true for high school douche bags trying to be as popular as they can. I labeled the video “Who’s the fag now?” my very own cryptic clue to who I was, in the same manner that Joker left clues for Batman. Of course Kelly and his ilk weren’t detectives, so I was in no danger of being discovered.

By noon it had become a thing.

Kelly had removed it from his wall, but it made no difference. People just kept passing it around and linking it back. Each time, more and more people took the opportunity to remind Kelly of what a worthless human being he was. By the end of that weekend, it was pretty clear that Kelly’s life as he knew it was over. His so-called friends had thrown him overboard, since all he was now was social chum to the bottom-feeders waiting in the deep water. Tuesday, Kelly deactivated his Facebook account, but not before some guys spray-painted FAG across his truck and posted pics all over Instagram.

It would have been painful if it wasn’t so fucking funny.

That afternoon, after my dad had gone to work, someone woke me up pounding on the small window that looked out onto the street. Not having a door or a real window was the only drawback to having a room in the basement, but I didn’t mind since no one really came to see me anyways. I could see Sammy’s face glaring in at me from the other side of the glass. When she saw me look at her, she pointed toward the front door and vanished.

I took my time getting dressed before walking up the steps to the door. I took a deep breath before opening it.

“What in the fuck did you do?” she roared, pushing past me.

“Please, come in.” I said dryly as I closed the door.

She held up her phone. “What did you do?”

I looked at her blankly, making sure I kept any hint of a smile off my face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Sammy.”

“You posted that shit on my account,” she raged. “Why would you do that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, sounding bored as I sat down in my dad’s chair. “But if I did, I’d hazard a guess that this is the day all family business is dealt with.” She gave me a confused look, and I knew she had never seen
The Godfather
. “You turned on me, Sammy, and this is the price. Learn to deal with it.”

Her face turned four shades of red as my words sank in. Her hand holding the phone trembled, and I assumed she was fighting the urge to throw it at me. “We’re supposed to be friends,” she more pleaded than said.

“Life isn’t what’s supposed to be.” I was sneering at her, but only because of the openly weak stance she was taking. Someone always has to play the victim. “You think I’m supposed to be stuck in this nowhere town while Kyle Stilleno lives my life?”

“People will kill you when they find out,” she said, turning around, ready to flee my living room.

“People will kill
us
,” I clarified. That stopped her dead in her tracks. “I mean, who’s going to believe you had nothing to do with it? It’s been almost four days. You had to have found out before now. You think you aren’t going down in the same ship I am if you tell? Trust me here, Rose, we’re both hanging on to the same iceberg this time, and I will kick your fat ass off before I go down first.”