Those Girls (21 page)

W
hat the fuck?” Alex gasped.

Mr. Boardman dropped Veronica and looked panicked, but then composed himself. Veronica fell over and squealed.

“Getttoffff!” she yelled, and she crawled over to and curled up on a pile of dirty sheets on the ground.

Mr. Boardman just stood there, red-faced and dumbfounded. “What are you girls doing down here?” he yelled.

“What are you doing with her?” I couldn’t breathe or think. My heart was racing, and my face was getting hot, like when I found out about Veronica and Sam—when something so big is happening right in front of you that you just can’t even process it, it’s more like watching a movie than an actual moment in your actual life. I just wanted to sit down and see what was going to happen, see the girl run or the guy get arrested. I couldn’t interject myself into the scene, that would have ruined it, it was outside of what I was qualified to handle. But I had to, this wasn’t a movie, this was happening, and it was largely my fault that it was happening… and what could have happened had we walked in five minutes later.

“You sick fuck,” Drew said, and he lunged toward him, but Alex grabbed his wrist.

“Now hold on just a minute,” Mr. Boardman said in his teacher voice. “She was passed out in the hallway. I brought her here to keep her out of trouble.” He coughed and wiped his mouth. “Look, I know you girls have been drinking. I am fond of Miss Collins, and I didn’t want her to get into trouble.” He looked down at his belt buckle.

I couldn’t tell if I was just so deranged and oversexualized that I was creating this lecherous scenario in my head. Reading into his stutters and crotch glances, when really maybe he was just being a nice guy. Or maybe my gut was telling me what was really happening here, like it told me with Sam and Veronica. If I was going to learn anything from any of this, though, it was to trust myself. I couldn’t prove it, but I could feel what was about to happen, what definitely would have happened, if we hadn’t burst in at the exact moment that we did. And it was fucking horrific.

He saw me look at him looking at his belt. He looked at me, looked at Drew, and just stood there steadfast, holding his ground that he had done nothing wrong. Drew stood there in a standoff with him, but Alex and I ran over to Veronica, who was sprawled out on the floor, half asleep, half awake, half dressed, half alive and half… well, barely alive.

“Girls, I’m not going to tell anyone about this, but you need to get her out of here before another less understanding member of the faculty finds you.” He started for the door.

“Thank you?” Alex said, emphasizing the form of the question.

“You’re welcome,” he replied. Then he turned to Drew and said, “Make sure they get home okay.” We all stood there befuddled, but we’d have to ask those questions later.

Alex slapped Veronica’s cheeks and pulled down her dress. “What did we do, Mollie?”

Tears started to well in the back of my throat, but there was no time for that. I swallowed them. We had to get her, and ourselves, out of there, fast.

“I don’t know, Lex. Let’s just get her out of here. Let’s get her in the band van.…” My mind was working in overdrive now. I was running logistics and plans, playing out different scenarios of how we’d get her out of the building, who we’d see, and what damage we could control, and if we could trust Mr. Boardman to help us or if he was really the villain here. There was no time to panic. This was not a disaster yet, and we could prevent it from becoming one if we just worked together.

“Veronica!” she screamed. “Are you awake? Can you walk?”

Veronica batted her milky eyes and sloshed around on the ground. “Gone?” she asked. “Messter Boardman,” she slurred.

We both laughed a little, despite the fact that this really wasn’t funny at all. We hoisted her up.

All of a sudden, the door swung open and there stood Headmistress Cottswald, with her hands on her hips.

“Ladies,” she said in her signature quasi-British accent, even though she was from Massachusetts.

We gulped but stayed frozen there, the three of us in arms.

M
onday morning, we sat on the old couch in Headmistress Cottswald’s office awaiting our sentence. Me in the middle, Mollie to my left, and Alex to my right. None of us said anything. We just sat there, tapping our feet, Mollie biting her thumbnails, and Alex picking at her split ends.

I hadn’t spoken to either of them since prom night, because we’d all been grounded and banned from our phones and computers. Well, they had. I woke up the morning after prom with the worst hangover of my life and no recollection of what had happened the night before. Like, zero. My only clue that we were in trouble was the note my mother had left on the fridge saying,
I had to change my flight to Palm Beach because you and your friends were drunk at the prom. Get it together, Veronica. Be back next week.

When both Mollie’s and Alex’s phones went straight to voice mail, I’d assumed they’d been grounded, and that something happened at the end of the night where parents were called and that we were all in trouble. When Drew didn’t pick up my calls, I was almost relieved, because I was too hungover to deal with him anyway. I was too hungover to sit up, to open
my eyes, or to even lift a remote control, let alone have
that
conversation. I wonder if maybe I’d broken up with him in my blackout. I had no idea what I drank or took or ate that night, but that morning, it felt like nothing but knives and battery acid in my veins. My headache was eons beyond the powers of Advil, and I spent all day needing to throw up but unable to even muster the energy to heave. It was horrible, so I could only imagine what kind of trouble we were all in. But, as sad as it was, I couldn’t help but be a little bit grateful and relieved that we were all in trouble together, like old times. Like when we all got in trouble for sneaking out the windows of the motel in Williamsburg on our eighth-grade field trip or for writing secret dirty codes underneath desks in the computer lab. We were all on the same side again, and it felt great to be there, on that couch with my sisters in crime.

At the beginning of the night, Mollie wasn’t even talking to me, and by the end, clearly, we were all having enough fun together to feel as shitty as I did on Sunday and get us to Headmistress Cottswald’s office on Monday morning. Despite being in trouble and on the doom couch, a place most girls dread and fear, there was nowhere else I’d rather have been.

Headmistress Cottswald strolled in, in her Talbots pantsuit and smudged glasses, and sat down in the antique rocking chair positioned kitty-corner from the couch. The office was still dusty gray and green like it was the last time we were all there, with the window incident, and Headmistress Cottswald still had gray roots and smudged glasses just as she’d had then.

“Girls, you know why you’re here.”

We all nodded. Even though I didn’t.

“And you all know that the penalty for drinking at a school function is expulsion?”

We all nodded again. Or so I thought. Mollie raised her hand.

“Headmistress Cottswald?” she posed ever so meekly.

“Yes, Miss Finn?”

Tears had started to form in the corners of her eyes.

“I was not drinking.” Alex snapped her head and looked at her in disbelief.

“Is that so, Miss Finn?” I sensed the sarcasm in her voice.

“No, ma’am,” she said, tears freely falling now. Mollie and her goddamn crocodile tears.

“Mollie, do you think I was born yesterday?” Headmistress Cottswald asked. “I’ve been chaperoning this prom for eighteen years, do you really expect me to believe—”

The phone rang, and she excused herself. She greeted whoever was on the other end of the phone emphatically, looked up, and said, “I’m sorry, girls. I have to take this. Please sit quietly across the hall in Mr. Boardman’s classroom, and I’ll come get you in a few minutes.”

The three of us filed out of her office and into Mr. Boardman’s empty classroom. I sat on one of the desks, and Mollie stood across from me with her arms crossed. Alex pulled up a chair and crossed her legs.

We all sat there in silence for a moment. Alex was the first to speak.

“Molls, I’m not going to let you do this,” she said.

“What do you mean you’re not going to
let
me do this? You’re not my mom. You don’t
let
me do anything!”

“Guys,” I said. I was scared to speak, and I didn’t want to admit that I had no idea what was happening or where we all stood. If we were even friends again or not. I was hoping to just play along until it became obvious, but they were being so cryptic. So I spoke. “Can someone please tell me what happened on Saturday night? Clearly, we all had fun together and made up, right? Are you guys fighting now? I’m sorry, blackout city…”

Mollie looked at Alex and said, “Don’t.”

Alex looked at her and said, “I’m going to.”

“Alex!” she screamed. “We weren’t even drinking! Why should we get kicked out of school for something we didn’t do?”

“What about Veronica?” she yelled back. “Should she get kicked out of school for something we did?”

“Something you did?” I asked. Now I was really confused.

“Alex, if you do this, if you fuck me on this, our friendship is over.”

“Whoa!” I said. “Whatever it is can’t be that big a deal, guys! If we’ve made it through what happened these last few months, we can make it through anything. No one’s friendship is over, okay?” My eyes bounced back and forth between the two of them, trying to gauge their expressions. Alex was stern and focused, and Mollie was panicked. Alex sat up tall, and Mollie had her arms crossed over her chest. They both looked mean, tearing each other apart with their eyes, and neither one of them seemed even remotely interested or aware of me or my part in any of this, which I didn’t even know at this point.

“Mollie, I’m here because of you, and I’m not doing this to Veronica anymore,” Alex said.

“Don’t be a cunt,” Mollie said, eyes red, her voice cracking on the
unt
.

Doing this to Veronica
. I took a breath. I braced myself for one of those occasional,
Oh my god, you’re such an idiot, Veronica
moments that I knew was about to wash over me.

“V.” Alex took a breath. “The reason you don’t remember anything from Saturday…”

“Is because we fucking roofied you,” Mollie wailed. She sat on the desk across from mine, snot running down her nose and her shoulders shaking.

“You what?” I laughed a little, because I honestly thought they were joking.

“We put roofies in your drink at the prom,” Mollie said, calming down, catching her breath.

I said nothing. My mind was just blank; I was in a state of shock. Roofies? Those were real?

“We thought it would be a funny prank…,” Alex started.

“No, we thought it would be fucking revenge, because you fucked my fucking boyfriend,” Mollie finished, her hysteria slowly congealing into anger.

“The plan was to roofie you, and then display you somewhere public, so everyone would see you drunkenly passed out. Ha. Funny, right? Everything was going great, until we couldn’t find you where we left you…” Alex trailed off and looked to Mollie, who sat knocking her knees together, wiping her tears.

I felt like a rabbit stranded in an open field, just waiting for
gunfire from any and every direction, scared to move, scared to stay still.

“And then we found you in a laundry room with Mr. Boardman,” Alex continued. Mollie smacked her forehead with her palm.

“Mr. Boardman?” I asked. Now almost laughing, almost thinking that this was a joke, that I was on some sort of hidden-camera show.

“Nothing happened,” Mollie said. “He said he was trying to help you, and keep you out of trouble. But it felt sketchy to me.”

I couldn’t think or feel or see. I racked my brain for a memory of any of it, but it came up blank. I had no recollection of Mr. Boardman or the prom or anything. I felt like I should cry or feel something, anger, fear, disappointment, something, but I felt nothing. I just looked at the two of them sitting there, looking sorry and scared, and I felt like I was looking at two strangers. Any connection I ever felt to either one of them was gone. All this time I’d feared being left alone, but I’d always been alone, and any trust I’d put in either one of them had been a mistake. I was never their friend.

“Also,” Alex said, “I had sex with Drew.”

And now I laughed.

“Holy shit!” was what Mollie said.

“What the fuck!” was what I think I actually said.

“After his dad died. Right after. It was confusing, it was emotional, it only happened once. But there it is. It’s all on the table.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been keeping that a secret this whole
time!” Mollie screamed. “When I was pouring my heart out to you! You shady bitch.”

I was as lost as ever. This was a sick joke. All that guilt I felt about Sam and Mollie, and Alex had been doing the same thing? And yet she’d still sided with Mollie and frozen me out? Drugged me? This wasn’t real. These people were not real. I wanted to get out of there, to wash my hands of these two girls, this whole thing, rip my skin off, purge. And I was supposed to be the bad one? I was supposed to be the loose one and the party girl and the irresponsible one. What a joke! Finally, the tears started to come. The anger, the sadness, the disappointment. It all started to kick in. Why did it seem that my whole life operated on a ten-second delay?

All of a sudden, I remembered that we had to go back into Headmistress Cottswald’s office. That somehow, after all this, we were going to have to be in trouble together, possibly get kicked out of school together. Was I going to tell on them? Was I going to turn them in? Somehow, that still felt wrong. I didn’t want to deal with this that way. I didn’t want to send them to jail or get them expelled. Even though I was so mad at both of them and so hurt by them, I still didn’t like the idea of them being together and me being on the other side—that felt like giving them exactly what they wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew it involved keeping this between us, whatever
us
even meant anymore.

I tried to process, to ask the questions on my mind. Maybe there were answers.

“So you and Mollie froze me out, made me feel like shit,
like the scum of the sluttiest universe, for what happened with Sam, all the while you did the exact same thing to me?”

“I guess I never really thought of it that way. Drew was my best friend first.…”

“I thought I was your best friend,” said Mollie.

“We can have this all out later,” Alex said. “Right now, we need to present a united front to Cottswald. Mollie, we should all just admit to being drunk.”

“But I wasn’t even drunk!” I yelled. The emotions were starting to stir. “You guys freakin’ drugged me!”

“Please,” said Mollie. “Who brought a fucking flask into the prom? You’re hardly completely innocent here.”

She had a point.

“I say we go in and we all admit to drinking. We all took at least one drink that night. We take responsibility for our actions and accept the consequences for once. We all fucked up. At the very least, we’ll all go down together,” Alex said.

“You guys don’t understand,” said Mollie. “My mom will kill me.”

“We all have parents,” Alex said. “And they’ll all be pissed. At least we’ll have each other in public school?”

“Oh great,” I said. “Thank god I’ll have you two watching my back.…”

We all laughed a little, through the tears, through the settling mania. We were fucked, but it was starting to feel like us again, an us that hadn’t existed all year. I almost felt like I was having fun. But we were about to get kicked out of school,
and these two girls almost killed me, so I couldn’t feel that. That was completely ridiculous.

“Mollie,” Alex said. “Are you with us? United front?”

“Do I have a choice? Let’s all go down like the depraved little bitches we are,” she said.

They both looked at me. “Well, V,” Alex said. “I guess our fate is in your hands now.…”

It was. And I was uncomfortable holding that much power. I didn’t want it. I wanted fate decided for me. If left in my hands, I would surely make some sort of mistake with it.

“I can’t believe you whores drugged me,” I said. “And what the hell? Mr. Boardman? What if I’d gotten raped by Mr. Boardman? Gross! And where is he in all of this? Can’t we blackmail him or something to get us out of trouble?” I realized how absurd it sounded coming out of my mouth, but I was half serious.

“He’s standing by the story that he was trying to get you out of trouble,” Alex said. “He’s not in school today. Do we hedge our bets and tell the truth about it? We can’t prove anything. It’s his word against ours… who are they gonna believe?”

Mollie bit her nails and wiped her eyes. “Your call, Veronica,” she said.

Deep down, I knew they’d never believe me over him. Everyone knew I flirted with him, everyone saw us drinking, this story, the real story, was too crazy for anyone to believe and would just make things worse. Maybe he was just trying to do me a favor? Maybe Alex’s and Mollie’s dark twisted
imaginations were making this more sinister than it had to be. How could
they
understand a selfless favor, right?

“I can’t believe you guys roofied me,” I said again.

“Honestly, I can’t believe we did, either,” Alex said. “I can’t believe a lot of things that happened this year.”

“I don’t forgive you,” I said.

“I don’t forgive
you
, either,” said Mollie.

“But we all made this mess together.…” I ran my fingers through my hair and played it all out. “And it’s not like I wasn’t drinking.…” I stood up, straightened my skirt, and fixed my bra. “And I guess we all deserve what we get. I’m in.”

Alex went to give me a hug, but I brushed her aside.

I looked at Mollie, who shook her head at me, and Headmistress Cottswald knocked on the door and motioned for us to come back in. We all filed out of Mr. Boardman’s room, ready to accept whatever punishment she had in store. And oddly, I was a little excited about it.