Unfriended (10 page)

BROOKE

WAIT, SERIOUSLY?

Is she kidding me?

Who does something like that, put down somebody's sibs? And why? Just to make the friend feel crappy or embarrassed about herself—and her
family
?

Not that she should even feel embarrassed because come on, we all have our issues, you get whatever brain or body you get
and
whatever sibs, too. My little brother Corey is a monster and a half, total pain in my butt, but if somebody said something down-putting about him? My door is slammed shut to you from then on, ex-friend.

But that was so obviously what Natasha's intention was, and worse: to offhandedly mention Truly's brother's and sister's issues, in order to intimidate Truly and make her think she is
less than,
make her think she is awkward and being judged harshly. By
us
.

Making me and Evangeline and Clay and Lulu and Jack seem like we would all privately think less of Truly because of whatever struggles her family has.

Screw you, Natasha. No.

Screw you for saying anything mean about two kids I don't even know, who might or even might not have problems. None of my business, but if they do have stuff to deal with, more power to them. They're probably working harder than any of us just to get through the day. But screw you even more for thinking you speak for me or anybody else in putting them down.

You think you're going to act like that, all conniving and passive-aggressively abusive, and then still have friends when the day is done?

No.

Just, no.

TRULY

I DON'T KNOW
what happened today but because of something, something I have to figure happened online or last night or I don't know when or where—Natasha got kicked out of the Popular Table.

Brooke was sitting where Natasha usually sits when Natasha and I walked into the cafeteria. I was walking around to where I usually (well, for the past two weeks) sit. So I didn't hear exactly what they said, very quietly, to each other. The thing I did hear was Brooke saying to Natasha, “Why don't
you
stop pretending to be all innocent?”

Natasha glared at Brooke for a second and then at Clay and me for a bunch more. Clay got very interested in his sandwich. I stayed still and small.

“Maybe find somewhere else to sit,” Brooke said to Natasha.

Natasha smiled tensely. “Brooke . . .”

“I'm serious,” Brooke said.

Natasha stormed away, tossing her full lunch bag in the trash as she went.

My stomach was in such a knot I couldn't open my own lunch bag, either. I just sat there, trying not to move until Brooke and Clay finished eating their lunches. I tossed my untouched lunch into the garbage next to Natasha's and followed everybody else out to the playground.

I started biting my fingernails again. Mom hasn't noticed yet but I'm sure she will very soon. I'm down to the nubs. It's bad. Brooke has such pretty hands she could be in nail polish ads. I have to get this under control.

But all I have to do now is start wondering if I am the next one to be kicked out of the Popular Table, especially since Natasha is the one who brought me in and was trying to be my protector against everybody else I don't know very well, and apparently I keep messing up, and within the minute I am gnawing at my cuticles like they're the only food in a famine.

NATASHA

THEY DUMPED ME.
Just like that. No warning, no gradual growing apart. They were my best friends in the world, my sisters, my twins, my future bridesmaids at my wedding, the only people on earth I told my darkest secrets to. Brooke, Lulu, Evangeline—the girls I dressed up with in matching costumes last Halloween. Also just all alike on random days, for fun, because we're such dorks together. These were the girls who totally had my back when Clay and I broke up. Especially Brooke.

Or so I thought.

But as of lunch today, that was all abruptly in the past. I walked into the cafeteria at 11:20 this morning without a clue and headed straight toward our table. But I didn't even get to sit down at it.

Walking out of the cafeteria afterward I wasn't even mad yet. I was just thinking
I will never sit at our table ever again
. Nobody gets invited back in once they're kicked out.

I should know, I was thinking, since I'm the one who made that rule, last May, when Marilicia was kicked out. She deserved it, for being such a damp sponge. She didn't have to be with us, if she thought it was so lame to dress alike for the field trip. Everybody else thought it was a good idea. She didn't need to dis me like that. Everybody agreed. I don't care that she hates me. She does, she's obvious about it. Tough. It was her own fault, and she can go live her sad little life with the other weirdos at the extreme freak table.

But that's not me. I'm no damp sponge. What did I even do? Did I do one foul thing, ever, to Brooke? I mean that she could possibly know about? Seriously—what? Went out with Clay? She said it was fine with her. I have the texts to prove it.

That's when it hit me: even though it was Brooke who did all the talking there at the table today, of course, in her typical calm measured Brooke way, I realized by the time I got to the library with the other outcast losers that it must have been sweet downcast-eyed Truly behind whatever happened.

She must have somehow turned Brooke against me. Maybe as revenge for supposedly, in her words, “dumping” her in sixth grade? Truly is a very patient person, so maybe. Maybe she has been waiting and plotting all this time to, like, give me a taste of my own medicine, make me feel how she must have felt when I unfriended her. But that is so unfair, to turn my best friend against me.

All my friends.

For revenge about something that happened when we were, what? Eleven? Are you kidding me?

Fine, then, I decided, plopping down my books on the library table. That's what she wants? To take me on? Good. Bring it.

I sat there at the front library table perfectly straight and tall like my father always says I should. For the first time it felt good to be straight and tall, because I was buzzing with energy. Tall and strong not like a telephone pole for once but like a badass. As Daddy says, I don't have to shrink down and try to take up less space. I don't have to hide what I am. I'm tall like him, so good. Take charge. I'll never look adorable like Truly, my petite mother has pointed out more than once, and trying only makes me look ridiculous.

Maybe they dumped me because I'm too tall? No, Evangeline is just as tall. The pimples on my forehead? I am doing everything possible to get rid of them. Am I just not pretty enough? I work so hard at being pretty, it's the only hobby I have time for. And nice. Nice, nice, nice, and pretty, my hair smoother, my skin clearer, my clothes perfect. I'm worn-out but it's never enough.

Be yourself, the adults always say. Yeah, right: myself. Which is who, exactly? Myself is some gawky stranger. I don't even know her. Myself is the girl who just got dumped by her best friends. Why would I want to be her?

Mom would probably be like, yeah, well, you must've done something wrong if all your friends hate you. If I told her this happened. Which, ha, no.

Fine. I'll be who I really am: tall, strong, and independent, like Daddy tells me to be. Like all his willowy ditz girlfriends. Well, they're all tall, at least.

Brooke thinks Truly is so sweet and innocent, but she doesn't know Truly like I do. Thanks to me, Brooke and Truly are whispering in the halls, cracking each other up, passing notes. Three weeks, less, and those two are tight as new jeans.

And who's left out now? Me.

But not for long.

What really pisses me off is, I tried to be nice to Truly. Help her. Bring her into the popular crowd, like she so obviously wanted to be. She dumped her green-haired best bud in one hot heartbeat when I just mentioned she could sit with us once at lunch.

What kind of person does
that
?

That's what I should've said to Brooke, when she said to me, what kind of person does what you did, Natasha?

Does what?
Is all I came up with, and she wouldn't explain.

That's what I would say to a jury: what kind of person dumps her best friend the second she gets a chance to sit at the Popular Table? Right? Boom! They'd all agree. What kind of person? A shallow, selfish person is the answer. I was just trying to be nice to her, give her exactly what she wanted, and this is how I'm repaid? She barges in and takes my seat at the table the way my frigging temporary stepfather took my dad's seat at our kitchen table back when? And Truly of all people knows—she had to know—how that would feel to me. She was my best friend during that whole crap-storm—and now she's decided to make that run on repeat in my actual life?

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got at her. It was, like, diabolical, what she had done to me. She totally plotted the perfect revenge for sixth grade. It wasn't my fault Truly still wanted to play with her plastic horses and imagine we were runaways in the Wild West when I wanted to figure out how to do a smoky eye. We grew apart. It happens.

Maybe, horrifyingly, my mom was right: the whole time we were best friends, Truly thought she was better than me. Better at school, cuter, thinner, prettier, more cheerful, with her perfect little family of five plus cute little dog, while my family was such a mess, then. There in their perfect house with the neat hall closet with twenty extra rolls of toilet paper and twenty more of paper towels all lined up on the shelf. That closet totally killed me. Anytime these past few years I was tempted to be friends with Truly again, I'd just picture that closet with all the spare rolls of toilet paper and paper towels and, no. No way. They'd never run short of anything and have to use the napkins from the bottom of the takeout bag. They always had more than enough, at Truly's. They didn't even have to finish the cereal. They didn't have to eat the crumbs that clog up the milk in the bowl because don't be a spoiled brat, it's still food as my dad says. “Just toss that,” Truly's dad told me one time on a sleepover. “You can open a fresh box.” I'll never forget that.
Open a fresh box
.

So Truly pitied me.

I always thought Mom was the mean one. But at least she tells the truth. If she thinks I look bad, she says so. If my laugh sounds like a hyena's, Mom lets me know. Truly acts like she thinks I'm great, but maybe that's way meaner, really, if she actually hates me deep down.

She just sat there today at lunch, eyes down, with her long straight hair and her perfect flat chest, tiny Truly the new pet project of my best friend Brooke.

My
best friend.

Truly obviously told Brooke that I mentioned to her not to act all innocent about how much she was flirting with Clay. So what? My own mom says stuff like that to me all the time:
Don't act so innocent, Miss Natasha, I'm on to you!

Anyway, I was trying to help Truly out! Oh, no, my advice hurt her feelings? Poor little snowflake. Like she is the only person on earth to ever have her feelings hurt, like hurt feelings are nuclear war.

Actually, it's the same thing she did with that girl Hazel's note. Turned it around so she was the victim: you hurt some poor innocent girl by randomly dumping her? Call 911!!!!
You've
been assaulted!

And I fell for it. I thought I was playing Truly—but all the time she was using me. As soon as her position at the Popular Table was set, boom! Good-bye, me.

Truly was obviously sending me a message that she can take anything of mine—my mom braiding her hair instead of mine in the middle of the night, my place at the lunch table, Clay's attention, Brooke's friendship. And then pretend she had no plan, no evil intent. All sweetness and light, our Truly.

But I see through her now. Like she's made of glass.