Fury (23 page)

There was only one place to go—the old gym, a sweaty-smelling building down by the teacher parking lot. It had been replaced three years ago and was only used these days if it was raining and more than one team needed a place to practice. Sometimes smokers hid in the old locker rooms when it was too cold to hunch down by the tennis courts’ broken fence. It was bound to be demolished or renovated sooner or later, but right now it was the empty refuge Chase was seeking.

He burst through the doors, dizzy and confused. This was not supposed to happen. Not to him. He was too careful to let shit like this happen. . . . But he hadn’t been careful enough, not with Ty.

He took a few deep breaths in the chalky air and coughed out the smell of smoke and rubber mats and varnished floors. His cough echoed in the empty room, but there was another sound, too. A sniffle, a sob.

Chase looked around. At the top corner of the bleachers, her shoulders skimming an old felt champion banner, was Em. She was staring at him, wiping her nose and smoothing a hand through her long, tangled hair. She was wearing only jeans and a tank top that showed her bra straps.

“What are you doing here?” Em called out from across the room, her voice sounding small in the big space.

“I could ask you the same question,” he responded, still standing in the doorway.

Like a crab, Em moved down a few rows in the bleachers, but didn’t get up. Chase took a few steps toward her.

“God, it’s freezing in here,” he said, rubbing his arms. She didn’t answer immediately, and he felt the silence yawn between them. He felt the urge to talk, to fill the space, to write over everything that had gone so wrong for him. He came a little closer to her. She flicked her eyes to him once, then dropped them again. “Remember how hot it used to get during assemblies?”

Em nodded. Her face was all red.

“There was that one, during freshman year, when Gabby was running for social vice president—” He didn’t even get to finish his thought before Em hunched over and started shaking.

Jesus. Now he’d made her cry. Chase held still for a moment, squinting into the light filtering through the dusty windows along the top of the gym. He hoped the moment would pass.

“She won,” she said with a gasp. He inched closer, barely able to make out what she was saying. “She won because she’s so great. And I’m so terrible.” She was doing this sad little thing, picking at tiny threads in her jeans, not looking at him.

“What’s up with you, Winters?” He slid into a seat next to her. He didn’t really want to deal with Emily’s drama—he didn’t have the energy for it—but he had nowhere else to go, anyway.

“Gabby.
Gabby.
” She wailed it the second time. And then
she started talking and she wouldn’t stop, except to cough and sniff and swallow. “We were going to meet this morning, before school, like usual. We meet at Dunkin’ Donuts and we get half coffee, half hot chocolate.”

Chase nodded. At least hearing about someone else’s problems was better than thinking about his own.

“And so I walk up to her this morning and I’m all smiling and holding out this gift I got her, this great present—I really wanted to make things right, Chase, really—” Here, Em held out her hands to him, gripping his knee, like she was begging him to believe her. “And she . . . she . . . she
threw her drink in my face
!” Em recoiled as if she were feeling the hot liquid for a second time.

“She threw coffee at you?”

“
Yes!
You don’t even get it. She’s usually the one who offers
me
clothes if I stain mine—she has a whole extra wardrobe of outfits in her gym locker!” Em wailed, pointing at her ruined sweater, tucked haphazardly into her bag. “And . . . and it hurt, Chase,” she said now, quieter. “It hurt so much. She . . . she called me a slut. A liar, a slut, a traitor.” Em took a deep, haggard breath. She kept tugging at her hair and picking the cuticles around her nails, which were already shredded and chewed bloody. She was a mess.

“She was saying that I hit on Zach and that it was all my fault,” she went on, not even letting Chase respond, “and that I
was a deceitful slut who tried to steal people’s boyfriends. Like, as if Zach had no part in it. As if I had just been lying in wait, you know?”

“Were you?” Chase blurted out bluntly.

“No! And then she said she was going to tell everyone at Ascension about what a terrible person I am. She said she had some kind of text message that proved it. She drove off and I was just standing there. With coffee all over me.”

Chase rubbed his forehead. A monster headache was brewing just behind his eyes. “How did she find out already? Didn’t she only get home last night?”

Em shrugged and laid her head across her knees. “When she got home from the airport last night she realized she’d left her contact stuff at the hotel, so she went to buy some more. Apparently some pixie girl walked up to her at CVS, right in the aisle, and told her. I didn’t even have time to ask
what
, exactly, she was told, but it seems that Zach got clean off the hook. And the worst part is that she’d believe some ‘red-ribbon-wearing fashion victim’”—here, Em used air quotes—“over me, her best friend.”

“Red-ribbon-wearing fashion victim?” Chase repeated. Weirdly, the description rang a bell, though he couldn’t place it. Em shrugged again.

“Gabby’s words,” she said, able this time to crack at least a small smile. “I have no idea how some random stranger even
knew
about it. Or what Zach said. He was clearly not going to incriminate himself. . . . I guess everyone must know. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that this happened at all. That I let this happen. That I deserve this.” She was crying again, but more softly now. More desperately.

“Emily . . .” Chase threw his hands up. He wasn’t very good at comforting anyone, much less a crying girl. But after a moment’s hesitation, he put his hand on her back. She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed into his touch. He knew how she felt—to plummet from safety and security to nothingness, social-outcast status, overnight. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean to hurt Gabby. You just . . . got in over your head.”

She turned her head a little, and he could see a drop of snot running down her lip. “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, sometimes you think you know what you want, and then shit just spins out of your control and you can’t do anything about it. It’s beyond you. Unstoppable.” His voice caught a little at his own words. At the things in his own life that he couldn’t take back.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Chase rubbing Emily’s back, surprised at its boniness. Surprised to be touching her. Surprised to give a shit about her at all, really. They heard the bell for second period ring, but neither of them moved.

“I saw those pictures,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Chase got hot all over and removed his hand from her
back. He thought about the photos and how he’d never be able to live them down. He shuddered involuntarily, remembering the way his face looked in one of them, thrown back, laughing, totally out of control. Not one person at Ascension had ever seen him like that. For a moment they sat in silence. And suddenly Chase had the desperate urge to tell Emily, to confess everything, to figure out how and why his life had gotten so screwed.

Without intending to, he blurted out: “You ever think about karma?”

“Karma?” Em wrinkled her nose.

Chase could feel heat spreading through him. “Yeah . . . like, what goes around comes around. You ever think that could be true?”

“What do you mean?” Em asked.

Chase hesitated. It was all on the tip of his tongue.

“Well, like how my dad was such a dick to me and my mom, like he would get drunk and just wail on her, and then one day he got bashed in the head by a machine and that’s what killed him. It just seems like . . . everything comes full circle. Like maybe that asshole deserved to die. Ya know?”

He could see his story had only upset Em more, and he wished he could take it back. Everyone already knew about his dad—it was old history. Chase didn’t usually like to bring it up.

Em looked at him with pity.

Chase elbowed her. “Don’t listen to me. I’m just the naked guy who writes poems.”

Em smiled a little then. “Good poems,” Em said, elbowing him back.

“Yeah, you know, I got a friend who can really write.”

“Oh, so we’re friends now?” Em said it sarcastically, but her eyes were wide and hopeful.

He thought about Zach. What their friendship had been. How it had soured so easily. “I’m not sure I have many other options,” he said, smirking. “I don’t think I even had many friends to begin with.” And then, as if saying that had flipped a light switch in his head, Chase smacked his forehead.

“Oh, shit. Shit shit shit.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“The freaking Football Feast is tonight.” Chase fidgeted with the cords that hung from his sweatshirt hood, then shook his head determinedly. “There is no way in hell that I am stepping foot in that room with those people. No chance.”

“No, you can’t not go, Chase. You’re going to be captain of the team.”

Chase thought about his teammates, about how everyone had looked at him in the cafeteria. “I’m not sure I even have a team anymore.”

“You can’t just not go,” Em repeated. “It’s too important. It would be total defeat.”

The idea came to Chase in an instant: “Why don’t you come with me?”

Em stared at him, incredulous. “Me?”

“Yeah.” The more he thought about it, the more perfect it seemed. “We’ll make a great couple, the freak and the slut.” He smiled at her with closed lips, not sure if he’d gone too far. But she looked like she was really thinking about it.

“Gabby will be there. With Zach . . .” Em bit her lip.

Chase shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get another chance to talk to her. Either way, you don’t have to worry—they don’t serve coffee at the Feast.”

Em cracked a small smile, nodding slowly, thinking about it. She took a deep breath. “You’re sure?”

“Why not? Things couldn’t get worse.”

“Fine. Yes. Okay.” Em smiled gingerly. Chase smiled back. They were two pariahs, sitting on a bleacher, going to the Feast together. It felt good. Like a big ol’ Fuck You to the rest of Ascension.

Beep-beep-beep.
That was his phone. It sounded like it was far away, but it was right by his feet, in his backpack. He knew who it was going to be from, and he didn’t want to look. Em nodded toward his bag.

“You gonna get that?”

With a sigh, Chase leaned over and grabbed his cell. Sure enough: one new message from Ty.
Plz plz plz,
it said.
I need to
explain. I must see you. ASAP. All a mistake.
In a second, Chase was on his feet. All the confusion, sadness, and anger came rushing back to him, rattling his whole body.

“I gotta go,” he said abruptly, his heart racing.

“So I’ll see you later, right?” She was looking up at him, concerned. The same way she’d looked at him the other night, when he’d come home bloody and bruised.

“Yeah.” He was distracted now. “Um, I’ll pick you . . . I’ll meet you there. I’ll wait for you right inside the doors, okay?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. He shoved his hands in his pockets and squared his shoulders like he was gearing up for a tackle. He was going to meet Ty, and he had a feeling this would be their last play.

Em couldn’t get through to Gabby. She’d tried chat messaging. She’d tried texting. She’d tried calling—her cell
and
her house. Nothing. Well, nothing except a thinly veiled lie from Gabby’s mom, who seemed more confused than anything else by Gabby’s obvious refusal to come to the phone. Gabby and Em never fought.

She was desperate to get in touch with Gabby, to explain herself. To make things better. To assure her that it had all been a big mistake, and to vow to do whatever it took to make Gabby trust her again. Maybe she would even tell Gabby about the other stuff—there were other girls, it wasn’t just her—if she thought Gabby would believe her. But every mode of communication was failing her.

So she’d made a decision: She was going to pull Gabby
aside tonight, at the Feast, when Gabby couldn’t avoid her. She would make her see that their friendship was more important than any boy. Even a boy like Zach McCord. Even that boy, who had just broken her heart . . .

It wasn’t going to be easy.

To steel herself for the task at hand, there was one last thing she had to do: burn Cordy.

Em was ready. She had the charcoal, check. The lighter fluid, the matches, the barbecue tongs, her warmest winter hat and gloves. And of course, she had Cordy. She held him up, this lump of fluff and fake zebra fur. She hugged him, breathing in his stuffed-animal smell, part like carnival, part like Em’s bedroom, and part something else. Her heart hurt looking at his stupid black plastic eyes and the unraveling threads around his tufted mane.

This was it. Her feelings for Zach, and this whole mess, would go up in smoke with the stuffed zebra. They had to. Em had never believed much in talismans, but one thing was for sure: She didn’t want Cordy anywhere near her pillows. She knew that somewhere in Cordy’s ashes, she’d be able to resurrect her friendship with Gabby, her old self, her life before she ever kissed Zach.

Her parents would be home around dinnertime, and she needed time to get ready before the Feast, so she had to get started. Em sighed. All she wanted to do was camp out
in the basement with JD, some rum-and-Pepper floats, and Scattergories. But no, she had to put on a dress—she was going for simple, black, classic—for a fake date with Chase, of all people. Em had to admit she was a little worried about him. After he’d gotten that text message this morning—he’d looked so spooked, Em was sure it was from the girl, Ty—she hadn’t seen him for the rest of the day. Not that she’d been looking hard. Em’s day was spent avoiding eye contact with pretty much everyone. She had no idea what, or how much, Gabby had told.

A cold wind picked up as Em stood there shivering in her alpaca mittens on the Winters’ back porch, cuddling Cordy to her chest and fiddling with her fire-making supplies. It was scary not knowing what people were saying about you. Em realized how many times she and Gabby had whispered about other people behind their backs. Nothing really malicious, but outfit appraisals and mean nicknames and I-can’t-believe-he’s-with-her’s all the same. She’d never stopped to think about how terrible it felt to be on the other side of the whisper-shielding hand.