Truth about Truman School (13 page)

I couldn't believe
Amr
was milkandhoney. Amr was one of the nicest people I knew. He was always so calm and easygoing. He never said anything bad about anyone else. That just goes to show you can never really know a person.

It had been two years since Lilly dumped us. Even though I didn't even want to be friends with Lilly anymore, I had to admit it still hurt. It didn't hurt as much as it did back in sixth grade, but it hurt. Probably because she was so nasty about it. If she had just stopped hanging out with us that would've been one thing. But no, she had to show off to her new friends and say mean things about us to prove she wasn't our friend anymore. Things like, “
Zebby and Amr?
No, they're not my friends. I only hung out with them a little bit in elementary school. And I only did it because my mom made me.”

FYI … her mom was such a mess when Lilly's dad left that that were some days she never even got out of bed. Her mom was in no condition to
make her
do anything.

Lilly called me Grease Girl in sixth grade because my hair wasn't always squeaky clean. And I remember once she even called Amr a terrorist. That was the worst thing.

I got really mad about that, but Amr said, “Let it go, Zebby. It's not worth getting upset about.”

But apparently, he
was
upset. More upset than I would have guessed. And now he was getting his revenge.

So what was I going to do about it?

All my friends were ignoring me at school. How could I have gone from “popular girl” to social outcast so fast?

Nobody was talking to me at school, but they sure were emailing me. Every time I got on the computer, I had several new messages. Most were from made-up email addresses, and most were messages telling me how ugly I was, what a hypocrite I was, or what a poser I was. One even said they wished I would die.

Delete … Delete … Delete …

“Lilly, are you on the computer again?” my mom asked.

I jumped when I heard her voice. My mom was like a cat sometimes—you never heard her coming. I quickly closed my email program and my web browser and tried to act normal.

“What are you doing?” Mom asked, peering at the plain background that was up on the computer.

I shrugged. “School stuff.” It wasn't a total lie.

Mom frowned. “What kind of school stuff?” She stepped closer to the computer. “Why did you close everything up when I walked into the room?”

I couldn't deal with my mother on top of everything else. Not now. “Why do you have to know what I'm doing every single second of the day?” I asked. Then I hit the power button and stormed off to my room.

I tried to slam the door shut behind me, but Mom caught it before it closed and pushed her way into my room.

“Can't I get any privacy around here?” I cried as I flopped onto my bed. I rolled over so I was facing my wall instead of my mother.

“No,” Mom said. “Not when you act like this.”

“Like what?”

Mom sat down beside me. She touched my shoulder. “What's going on, Lilly? Why are you being so secretive?”

“I'm not!” I wiggled out from under her grasp and tears sprang to my eyes.
Do not cry
, I told myself, blinking them away.

“Yes, you are. And whatever it is, I think it has something to do with the computer. You're always using the computer, and then you shut everything down whenever I walk into the room.”

I clamped my jaws together. I couldn't talk about this. Not with her. Not with anyone.

“You're not talking to some stranger online, are you?” Mom asked.

What? “No!” I cried.

“I hope not. I hope you know better than to get involved with people you don't know online, because that can be really dangerous.”

“I know,” I said into my comforter. What? Did she think I was five years old?

Mom sighed. “Then what is it? Tell me!”

But I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone.

We were pretty sure Lilly would get the hint eventually and realize she wasn't in our group anymore. But she'd already tried instant messaging me, and even though she seemed to know better than to sit with us at lunch, she still kept staring at me in school. It was like she was obsessed with me or something.
Ew! What if she really
was
gay?

“What if Lilly shows up at the football game on Friday ready to cheer with us?” Brianna asked when we were hanging out at my house after school.

I didn't think Lilly would really do that … but what if she did? That would be so embarrassing. For all of us. We had already replaced her with Cassie. And I don't want to be mean, but Cassie's a much better cheerleader than Lilly ever was. She shouts louder and jumps higher, and well, she makes Brianna and me look good.

“What can we do to make sure Lilly doesn't show up on Friday?” I asked. We couldn't exactly go over to her house and take away her cheerleading uniform and pompoms.

“Hey, I know!” Brianna said. “We could, like, pretend to be Reece or Austin or somebody else on the football team, and we could send her an email that says ‘please don't cheer for us because people will laugh at us if we have lesbian cheerleaders.' ”

Hmm. Now
there
was an idea!

So we wrote the email together. It was kind of fun to pretend we were guys. Brianna and I laughed and laughed as we reread what we wrote in deep, guy voices. You know, with lots of grunts and stuff. All I can say is, thank goodness for email! It's so much nicer to drop someone by email than in person.

I checked the Truth about Truman website the next morning while my mom was in the shower. Whew! Nothing new.

Then I checked my email. I deleted seven nasty emails without reading them. I was about to delete the one from “ten-concerned-football-players,” but then I saw Reece's name at the bottom, so I went back and read the whole email:
Dear Lilly, Yo! We don't want you cheering at our
games no more. It's embarrassing. None of the other schools
have any lezzie cheerleaders. We don't want no lezzie cheerleaders either, you ugly cow!
It was supposedly signed by all the eighth-grade varsity football players.

Was this for real? Or had Hayley and Brianna written it to kick me off the cheerleading squad? Was there any way to find out?

I clicked my instant message program and waited to see if anyone was online.

I drew in my breath. Hayley was.

What could I possibly say to her? Dear Hayley. Please be my friend again. That sounded so desperate.

Well, I
was
desperate. So I double clicked on her user name, then typed,
Can we talk?

But a new window popped up. It said:
This user has blocked you from instant messaging.

I guess that answered my question.

Every time I passed Amr in the hall, he looked like he wanted to shoot me full of poison arrow darts. And Amr was not normally a violent person.

What was the deal? Why was
he
mad at
me
? It wasn't like I'd turned him in.

If anyone had a right to be mad around here, it was me. Amr lied to me. He
lied
to me! And then
he
accused
me
of being milkandhoney.

I was so mad at him, I went to the media center after school so I wouldn't have to see him walking on the other side of the street.

“Zebby! Hey, how are you doing?” Mrs. Conway asked when I walked in. She had a small stack of books in her arms.

“Okay. Do you need any help putting books away?” I asked.

“Well,” Mrs. Conway said, gazing off into the 500s. “This is all I have left. Trevor and Sara have gotten everything else put away already.” I could see Trevor putting away paperbacks and Sara pushing in chairs.

The two of them were
always
in the media center after school! Every single day. Didn't they have lives?

“I could still put those books away for you,” I said. I really didn't want to run into Amr on the way home from school.

“Okay,” Mrs. Conway said, setting the books in my arms.

It didn't take me very long to put them away. “Is there anything else I can do?” I asked Mrs. Conway when I finished.

“I don't think so, honey. But thank you.”

I nodded, then started to walk away. But before I reached the door, Mrs. Conway asked, “Is everything all right, Zebby? You seem kind of down.”

I
was
down. And if there was anybody at school I could talk to about my problems, Mrs. Conway was it. But I didn't know if she even knew about the Truth about Truman. And I didn't feel right talking to her about Amr.

“I'm fine, Mrs. Conway. Just tired,” I said.

I'd figure out what, if anything, to do about Amr on my own.