Firsts (25 page)

I can’t see Angela’s face behind her hair and Charlie’s arm, but I can only imagine how deep those dimples in her forehead are. I start to get dizzy, like any second now I might fall flat onto the concrete and lose consciousness. But I can’t do that. I remember who I came here for. Angela. Of course Charlie will put up a fight, but he won’t win. He can’t win.

“It’s not true,” I stammer. “He came over to scare me. To blackmail me into sleeping with him. Do you really think a cat did that to his face?” I pull my neckline down to reveal the red marks on my collarbones. “Here. Look what he did.”

Angela pulls away from Charlie. My heart leaps.
I got to her
. She believes me. But Charlie starts talking again before she even gets a word out.

“That at least is true. My cat didn’t scratch my face. She did, when I turned her down. She went crazy on me.” He smothers Angela’s face in his chest. “And whatever marks she’s talking about, she did to herself. The girl likes it rough, at least according to her.”

“You’re fucking insane,” I say. “You’re actually fucking insane. You’re a pathological liar. He’s a pathological liar, Angela. Don’t listen to him.”

She says something into Charlie’s chest, but it’s not loud enough for me to hear. Until she pries her head away, and her face is red and contorted with tears and rage.

“I don’t know who to believe,” she says. “I don’t believe that Mercy slept with anyone at our school. She never seemed interested in anyone. It makes no sense.”

I could just lie, work with whatever momentum I have. The pendulum seems to have swung my way, but I’m not taking that route. If Angela is supposed to know the truth, she has to know all of it.

But Charlie gets there first, and he has proof, in the form of a little book he pulls out of his back pocket. My notebook, the one Angela got me. The one that was missing from my bedroom. I want to throw up, knowing he has been literally sitting on it probably the whole day. I want to lurch at him and grab it and run as far away as I can, but I’m frozen. Just like last night, I can’t move to save my own life.

“Let’s see. September 12. Tommy Hudson. Someone started the school year off with a bang. September 30, William Malcolm. The Biter. Ouch,” he says, shaking his head. “October 11, Patrick Myles, the Nervous Giggler. October 23, Connor Reid, the Screamer.” He flips through the pages. “Somebody has been a very busy girl.”

Angela’s lip is trembling. “What’s he talking about, Mercy? Tommy Hudson is in my homeroom. He’s been with Jillian since grade school.”

I hang my head. I knew what Charlie was capable of, but somehow I never thought he was capable of this, too. Or maybe I didn’t know how the things I have done sound out loud. They don’t sound like good deeds at all.

“She sleeps with these guys, Angie. She seduces them. She lures them into her bedroom. She takes their virginity. She ruins their lives.”

Angela backs away from both of us. She holds out her hand. “Give me the book,” she says in a voice I don’t recognize.

“Angela, what’s in that book—”

She cuts me off. I don’t know what I would have said anyway.

“Gus Teller. Chase Redgrave. Bobby Lewis.” She thumbs through the pages. I can see her face get redder and redder. “Evan Brown.” She looks up at me. “Evan Brown? I know him. He came to prayer group before. He talked about how much he loved his girlfriend and how they were waiting for marriage.”

I look down at my feet again. I do remember Evan saying that, but I guess he changed his mind.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself? Or have you really been leading a double life all this time? I thought you were committed to the Lord?”

“I’m not religious, Angela,” I say, scuffing the sidewalk with my flip-flop, willing my voice not to break. “I’m not religious, and I have slept with those guys. As hard as it is, I can admit I lied about all that. But Charlie coming onto me is true.”

“It’s not true,” Charlie says. “Why do you think Mercy made such a big deal of talking to you about me? Do you really think she was being a friend? She was jealous. She didn’t want you to have me because she wanted me for herself.”

The most maddening part about hearing him speak is that his voice doesn’t change at all, doesn’t get frustrated, doesn’t get mad. His voice has the consistency of silk, where mine keeps cracking.

“She used sex to break couples apart. And she wanted to do the same to us.”

Angela glances from Charlie to me and back again. Somehow I know this is a decisive moment, her time to figure out where she stands. Finally she flings the little white book onto the ground and brings her gaze up. To me. Except it’s not a gaze but a full-on glare, her facial features screwed up in rage.

“You should leave,” she says. “And you probably shouldn’t come to prayer group anymore.” She turns and runs toward the house. I can see her parents in the window, surveying the action with concerned expressions. Whatever they think is happening out here, this I’m sure they’d never fathom.

I stoop down to grab the book, but Charlie beats me there. “I’m going to hold onto this,” he says.

“Fuck you,” I say through gritted teeth. Never before have I felt so much like I wanted to kill somebody.

“If you would have, none of this would have happened,” he says with that infuriating wink. I lunge to grab the book, but he sidesteps me.

“You should have known I would never let her side with you. Angela’s everything to me. And I’m always going to be everything to her.”

“If Angela’s everything to you, why did you want to have sex with me?”

He shrugs casually, like I asked him if he wants pizza or Chinese food for dinner and he can’t make up his mind. “Because you got in my way. You went behind my back. I figured you owed me for fucking things up. But now, I’m glad I didn’t waste my first time on you. I have other plans for it.”

I clench my jaw. “It’s not going to work,” I spit out. “Angela will figure everything out. She won’t believe you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Did you miss that part? She already does.”

I stretch out my hand. I’m not sure what I plan to do with it. Maybe hit him, or scratch him across the other cheek. But he grabs it in midair and pulls me close to his face.

He drops his voice to a whisper. “They say you never forget your first time. I won’t forget mine with Angela next weekend. Her parents are going away. It’ll be just the two of us.” He squeezes my wrist so hard that it hurts, then abruptly lets go.

“You think you’re ruined now, Mercy? Wait until you see what I do next. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut. But I guess I should have known you’re not very good at that.”

“You’re not going to get away with it,” I say under my breath. I don’t know if he heard me, or if I meant for him to. But he gets even closer, close enough for me to feel his hot breath on my ear.

“Oh, and Mercy? When I’m riding Angela, I’m going to be thinking about you.”

I swing my arm back and punch him as hard as I can in the face. I have never punched anyone before, but judging from the blood on his lip and my stinging knuckles, I probably did it okay.

“Bad kitty,” he says, licking the blood off his lip and winking at me before running to the house.

I stand at the end of the driveway for a long time, until Angela’s mom looks out with a frown and closes the blinds. I think about what’s being said inside of the house, if anything. I consider what Angela’s mom and dad think of her problem friend, the one who made her cry on the night of her engagement. But mostly I think about what Charlie is saying to her, what poison he is whispering into her ear. And what might be going on in her bedroom right now.

Bad kitty
. That’s what Charlie said. I bite my lip hard enough to draw blood and savor the metallic taste in my mouth.

If Charlie wants to think of me as just another pussy, he’s dead wrong. Because I’m going to be the one cat that has more than nine lives.

31

I don’t go home. I can’t go home, not knowing whether Kim and my dad might be in the house. Neither of them knows me at all, but if I show up at home with a face raw from crying, they’re going to pretend they know me and want to know the source of my tears.

There’s nowhere for me to go, so I walk around the neighborhood for hours, until my feet are sore and my legs are sore and the air starts to hurt my lungs with every inhale. I talk myself out of going to Zach’s house about a hundred times. Julia would probably give me one of her soft hugs, ask me what’s wrong, and make me hot cocoa. But then I’d have to tell Zach what I did, and I don’t think he would forgive me. I don’t want to keep lying to Zach. I’m going to lose him either way, and I can’t lose him tonight.

So I go somewhere else, somewhere I have purposely avoided since the summer before grade nine. It’s a playground, small and orderly, filled with screaming kids and their parents during the day but completely silent at night. I feel my breath catch in my throat as I see the big red slide come into view. Bits and pieces of memory flash before me. Luke pressing me against that slide, the way his breath smelled before he kissed me, a mixture of Cool Mint gum and beer and weed. I tried so hard to erase every detail of Luke, to bury them beneath every other detail of everybody else who came after him. I thought in time the memories would fade, but standing here now, I might as well be thirteen again, desperate for the boy I love to love me back.

I sit on a swing in the darkness, digging my toes into the sand. My stomach makes a grumbling noise that echoes in the silence. I should be hungry or thirsty or tired, but I know I couldn’t eat or sleep.

You think you’re ruined now, Mercy? Wait until you see what I do next.

Charlie’s voice comes from every direction, even though I know it’s just in my head. He doesn’t know where I am. But I can still hear it, just like I can almost feel his hands pushing me against the wall, his fingers digging into my shoulders.

I jump off the swing and drag my feet through the sand.
You tell anyone, and I will destroy you
. I break into a run.
This is what girlfriends do
. I keep running when I get to the edge of the park. I shouldn’t have come here, not tonight, maybe not ever. I run home feeling like Charlie is behind me, so close that I can hear his breath in my ear.

When I’m home, I dash up the stairs and through my bedroom and lock myself in my bathroom. My bathroom is safe. I haven’t slept with anyone in here. In here, nobody can touch me. I make a bed of towels in the bathtub and that’s where I wake up. But even though I can lock people out, I can’t keep them from burrowing into my head. Charlie. Luke. The virgins. Everybody I have given a piece of myself to.

I seriously consider staying in here all day. Charlie will be at school, fixing me with that smile. He already won. There’s nothing else I can say to change that. Faye will be there, with her big eyes full of concern. Zach will ignore me. Angela won’t talk to me or even look at me.

But I can see her, and that’s better than not seeing her, not knowing what’s going on.

I steer clear of prayer group—which isn’t hard to do, considering they’re tucked away in a back corner of the library—and make a beeline for my locker. But this isn’t your average beeline. I’m very aware of the eyes on me. Almost every single person I pass gives me a second look. This is not natural, not for eight a.m. when most of us have barely woken up.

And when it’s not natural, that means it’s not good.

I duck into the bathroom, where I’m met with a cloud of perfume and giggling girls who vacate as soon as I come in. I survey myself in the mirror, turn in a full circle. My skirt isn’t tucked into my underwear. I don’t have toilet paper hanging down the back of my leg. I haven’t put on eye shadow as blush, and lipstick isn’t on my teeth. My boobs aren’t hanging out. Despite the purple half-moons under my eyes, I look normal. Which must mean whatever is going on is internal, which is even worse.

I hide in a stall, the handicap one that nobody ever uses. Hiding in a stall is always the best place to hear gossip. I learned that by accident when senior year started. And today, it proves itself as true once again.

“She’s going to have to change schools,” a voice says. I don’t recognize the body it is attached to. And when the rumors spread to people you don’t even recognize, that’s when you know somebody has been hard at work.

“I still can’t believe she did Isabella’s boyfriend,” the other voice says. “I wouldn’t have believed it unless I saw it myself. And I sure did.”

“I have to say, that was a lot of Rafe Lawrence before breakfast,” a third voice chimes in. “More of Rafe Lawrence than I ever wanted to see.”

“I don’t know,” the first voice says. “I say Caroline is lucky. I had no idea what Rafe is working with. I guess it’s true what they say about guys with big hands.”

“Like you even noticed his hands,” the second girl says. “Anyway, I don’t think Caroline’s so lucky now that she knows what Rafe was doing behind her back.”

“Speaking of backs,” the third girl says. “Can you believe what Mercedes can do with hers?”

“I wish I could bend like that,” the first girl says. “I can’t believe I had her written off as a prayer-group nerd.”

Suddenly I’m glad I’m sitting on a toilet, because I feel like I’m about to be sick in one.

The webcam Charlie said he placed in my room. The video he threatened to release, if I told anyone. I told. He must have shown it. Which means he worked fast, and the whole school has probably seen every single part of me.

“I can’t believe Jeremy Roth went down on her. Anna always said he’d never go down on her. Thought it was gross. I guess it wasn’t gross with Mercedes.”

The first girl lowers her voice. “I just never imagined any of that from Mercedes. She was always so quiet. I talked to her once.”

This is a lie. I’m almost positive I have never talked to her in my life.

“What did she say?” the second girl says. Her voice is so hushed and serious that I almost want to laugh. Laugh or throw up.

“She said, ‘Get a life, you dumb cunt.’” A new voice enters the mix. I’d know it anywhere.