Backlash (32 page)

T
HE KITCHEN
timer goes off, and I step into the shower to rinse my hair, turning the water as hot as I can stand it. I watch the water swirl into the drain, dark and muddy, as it washes the excess color from my hair. When the water finally runs clear, I comb through the conditioner and wait for two minutes like it said on the instructions, wondering as I wait how I am going to look, what my parents are going to say, whether this is going to make a difference.

After I blow-dry and look in the mirror, I look like me, but different. My hair is inky black, not light brown like Mom’s or chestnut like Dad’s and Liam’s. My skin looks pale in comparison: white and almost translucent under the mirror lights. I like it. It feels more like the me I am now instead of the Bree I’m trying to escape.

If I can ever escape her.
That’s the million-dollar question. Transferring schools only helped a little because everyone at my new school knows what happened. When you’ve been a national news story, it’s hard to get a fresh start short of getting into the Witness Protection Program and getting a whole new identity. Important crime witnesses qualify for that, but high school cyberbullies don’t.

So every day I face the whispers, the looks, the cold shoulders when I try to make new friends.

The only light on my horizon is dance team, which makes me feel a part of something. My teammates still don’t invite me to sleepovers or to go shopping with them at the mall, or anything out of school — real friend stuff. But at least they say hi to me in the hall and let me sit with them at lunch, and when we won a competition I was part of the group hug just like everyone else. At least they don’t shun me. It’s a start.

When I transferred to the new school, Mom tried to get me to try out for cheerleading.

“No. I’m done with cheerleading,” I said. “I’m trying out for dance team. I already talked to the coach and she said she’d let me, even though it’s midyear.”

“What do you mean you’re
done
with cheerleading?” Mom said. “You love cheerleading!”

“No, Mom. I don’t.
You
love cheerleading,” I said. “I am sick to death of cheerleading. I’m glad I didn’t make the team at Lake Hills. And I’m not going to try out at West Lake.”

My mom opened her mouth to say something, but Dad put his hand on her arm to stop her.

“Mary Jo, it’s okay. Maybe exploring a new activity is just what Bree needs right now,” he said.

Mom closed her mouth and ate the rest of her dinner in stony silence, while Dad tried to keep up the conversation to lighten the atmosphere.

The weirdest thing about that whole night was Liam. He’d been speaking to me only when necessary, barely making eye contact, like he couldn’t stand to look at me because he hated me so much.

But that night at the dinner table, after I said I wasn’t going to do cheerleading anymore, he actually looked me in the eye and grinned. I smiled back, but I don’t know why he did it. It’s not like it lasted — he’s still really angry with me most of the time. But it was something.

Since then, we’ve sat watching TV — basic cable because we had to cut all the movie channels — and have laughed like we did before at stupid stuff, until he remembers he’s mad at me again.

Everyone is in the kitchen when I go downstairs — Dad’s reading the Sunday paper, Mom is looking at the help-wanted section, and Liam’s eating a bowl of cereal. I slip in quietly and go to get a bowl for my cereal, waiting for someone to notice.

“Morning, hon,” Dad says, but he barely glances up, so he doesn’t. Liam doesn’t pay any attention to me, as usual.

But of course my mom notices.

“Breanna Marie Connors, what on earth have you done to yourself?” she shrieks.

Knowing that my mother hates my hair just makes me love it all the more.

Liam stares at me, a mouthful of unchewed cereal in his mouth.

“Well, that’s a very … different look, Bree,” Dad says, lowering the paper to the table. “What brought this on?”

I can’t tell from his measured tone if he’s mad at me or not.

“And how could you do this without asking us?” Mom adds. There’s no doubt from her voice that
she
is.

“It’s
my
hair, so it’s my decision,” I say.

“However, you are fifteen years old and we’re still your parents,” Dad reminds me.

I guess he
is
mad. I don’t care.

“I needed a change,” I tell them. “I want to be someone different. Someone besides Bullying Bree.”

“Yeah, like dyeing your
hair
is going to change things,” Liam says. “Right.”

Thanks for nothing, Liam.

I raise my chin defiantly. “It’s something. It makes me feel more like myself when I look in the mirror.”

“You look like a drug addict,” Mom says. “It washes you out completely.”

“Wow. Thanks, Mom,” I tell her, swallowing the lump her words bring up in my throat. “I can always count on you to build up my self-confidence.”

“Would you feel better if I lied to you?” Mom asks. “Okay, fine. You look like Miss America. There, happy?”

“No, but —”

“It’s not a parent’s job to sugarcoat things, Bree,” Mom says. “It’s our job to tell you how the real world works.”

“By making me feel like I’m never good enough?” I throw back at her. “Because if that’s the case, you’re the best mom ever.”

“Okay, that’s enough, Bree. Upstairs,” Dad orders me.

“But I haven’t even had breakfast!”

“Now!” he demands.

I hate my family. I hate my life. I hate everything and everyone.

Making as much noise as I can stomping up the stairs, I head up to my room and slam the door hard enough that one of the ornaments on my desk falls over. Luckily, it doesn’t break. I’ve messed up enough things in my life as it is.

I fling myself on the bed, clenching my fists so tight that my fingernails dig into my palms. I want to explode, but I’m too numb, like my detonator’s gone missing. Only those half-moons in my palms remind me I can feel, that my pain is real.

There’s a knock on the door. It opens before I decide whether to say “go away” or “come in.”

It’s my dad. It was only a courtesy knock, telling me sure, it’s my room, but I’m only fifteen years old and he’s still the parent, so he’s coming in no matter what I say.

I sit up and curl into a ball, holding my knees, as he walks over and sits on the bed next to me. He’s carrying a bowl of cornflakes, which he hands to me.

“Thought you might be hungry,” he says.

Shrugging, I take it from him. I’ve kind of lost my appetite, but I take a bite or two to make him happy, then put the bowl on my nightstand.

Dad’s regarding me sadly.

“Things are really tough for you,” he says.

“You think?”

“Believe it or not, honey, we’re on your side. We want to help you. I could do with less attitude.”

“Mom wants to
help me
by telling me I look like a drug addict?”

Dad takes my hand, which is still clenched into a fist, and holds it between his two hands. They are large and warm and comforting, despite everything.

“Breenut, when you created that fake profile, you acted before you thought,” Dad says. He hesitates. “And sometimes … sometimes Mom speaks before she thinks.”

The relief of Dad admitting that Mom was wrong to say that makes me unclench my fists. He strokes my hand, turning it over. First he sees the deep marks in my palm where I’d dug my nails into the skin. Then he sees the other marks. The ones I made last night when I dragged a sharp pair of scissors across the skin on my forearm.

“Honey, what did you do?” he asks, sucking air through his teeth as he touches the marks gently with his finger.

“Nothing,” I say, turning my face away. I can’t meet his gaze.

“This isn’t
nothing
, Breenut.”

When I don’t respond, he says, “Look at me, Bree.”

I turn my face toward him and see concern.

“What’s going on, Bree? The hair … hurting yourself like this …”

“I don’t know.”

He shakes his head. “You must
know
,” he says. He sounds … angry. “People don’t just do things like this out of the blue without knowing why.”

“I already
told
you about the hair. You just don’t
listen
.”

There’s something inside me that’s so big it scares me. But no one sees it. No one hears it. I don’t have the words for it. All I know is this:

“I just … I need what hurts to show on the outside as much as I feel it on the inside.”

I look away, because I don’t expect Dad to understand. I’ve given up on being understood. I blew that right when I pretended to be Christian. One stupid mistake and I’ve messed up my entire life, forever.

“Bree,” he says, and his voice sounds strange. Strangled.

I turn to him and there are tears rolling down his cheeks. The only time I’ve ever seen my father cry before is when Grandma died. He holds open his arms and something breaks open in my chest. Suddenly, the numbness is gone and in the comforting warmth of my father’s hug I sob — great, messy, painful sobs so big they feel like they’re going to break my ribs.

Dad strokes my hair as I cry and tells me it’s okay, that he’s going to arrange for us all to go to a family therapist, that he thinks we need outside help to get through this, that it’s more than we can handle by ourselves.

“I know some people say asking for help is a sign of weakness, but I don’t hold with that,” Dad says. “The smartest, strongest thing a person can do is to know when to get help.”

“But d-doesn’t that make me c-crazy, just like L-Lara?” I sniff.

“Haven’t you learned not to call her crazy?” Dad says.

“Mom always does.”

“Well, that’s another thing we need to change around here,” Dad says. “Calling people names.”

I pull away and ask him the question that plagues me every moment of every day.

“Did I mess up my life forever? I mean … will people ever forget about this?”

Dad’s the one who is most likely to tell me the truth.

His hesitation in answering tells me the most.

“Things will get better. I can’t tell you how, or when. It might take a very long time. But we’ll get through this.”

He doesn’t know. None of us do. The future, once so full of possibility, is now a dark and scary place. But hopefully, like Dad says, maybe with help we can get through it, however long it takes.

T
O SAY
life is back to normal would be a lie. It’s probably more accurate to say we’re living the “new normal.”

Mom is still trying to get Lara Laws passed in the state legislature and is using the notoriety of our case to lobby for similar laws across the country. She and Dad are still furious that Mrs. Connors and Bree weren’t prosecuted for what they did, and they want to make sure there’s a law in place to protect people. But after we talked about it in family therapy, she agreed to change the name to BIC Laws — against “Bullying in Cyberspace.” Doing that allows her to heal in her way and me to heal in mine.

Healing for me is still a work in progress. Before I went back to school, Dad kept nagging me to look at the list of people who’d liked Christian’s mean post on my wall or had made awful comments. I didn’t want to, any more than I had in the hospital. In the end, I compromised by taking the list to therapy and looking at it there — away from the house, away from my parents, in a place where I could just feel whatever I needed to feel about it.