Unfriended (17 page)

JACK

“YOU LIKE HER?”
I asked Clay. Point blank.

“Who?” he asked.

Who. Sure. “Truly.”

Clay shrugged. He and Brooke, all they do is shrug.

“Man up, man,” I said. “Yes or no.”

“No,” Clay said. “She's nice. Strange but nice. A little sad, maybe, probably because of all the . . .”

“I like her,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “I don't. Not like . . . We were just talking. About algebra.”

“I know what all the girls are saying she did, what they're saying she is. It's not true, none of it. Are you. . . .”

“Am I . . . what?” Clay asked.

“Plotting something.” They're always plotting something. The girls and Clay along with them. Clay is like one of the girls, he's in so thick with them.

“Plotting?” Clay asked, like I was stupid, or kidding. He said
plotting
like it was
pooping.

“Yeah,” I said. “Plotting. What.”

“Jack.” He smiled, punched my arm lightly. “Come on. Chill.”

I wasn't letting him smile me out of being pissed at him, though, the way he does to the girls and even a lot of the teachers. No way. I leaned toward him, with my feet planted far enough apart that nobody could knock me over if he tried. “You do whatever Brooke tells you to, so—”

“Hey,” Clay interrupted.

“So I'm asking,” I told him. “Are you planning something against Truly?”

“Like what?” he asked, lowering the front of his head and giving me that snarky smile. “Some kind of terrorist . . . situation?”

“I'm serious,” I said, soft and slow. “She didn't do those things.”

“What things?” he asked.

“Post mean stuff about Natasha. I know her. She wouldn't do that. On my honor.”

“Okay,” Clay said. “On your . . . Sure.”

“Don't do anything to her,” I warned him.

“I didn't,” Clay said, looking down the hall toward smart kids' math class, where he needed to go. Where he had class with Truly. “I wouldn't,” he told me. “Chill, Jack. Seriously. Okay? We cool?”

I stared at him hard for a few more seconds without answering, then turned around and went in, already late to dumb kids' math.

NATASHA

FAT LOT OF
good all their sympathy does me if I'm still not invited to sit at their table at lunch. I didn't even look over there. I had a way better plan for lunch anyway: I was heading straight to Marilicia.

I know I'm the one who kicked her out last year, but come on, that was a long time ago. I think it's fair to say we all grew up a lot between seventh grade and eighth and, also, bygones.

If I joined up with Marilicia, we could start our own Popular Table. Maybe we could get Lulu to defect and come sit with us, and probably some of the guys. Maybe Dave Calderon, who I could totally flirt with and win over, probably. Maybe I could like him. Theo's too goofy, but maybe Mike Shimizu could sit with us if he could detach from Jack's heels. So what if Mike is short and serious? Some people probably like that. Why should he always have to be in Jack's shadow? I could say that, maybe, flatter him. Maybe set him up with Marilicia. She's on the shorter, more serious side, too.

“Hey Marilicia,” I said, catching her with one leg already over the bench.

“Hi, Natasha,” she said, and sat down.

I stood there. I wasn't about to sit down at the freaks' table. I should have caught up faster so she wouldn't already be committed to it. But I wasn't giving up. Anyway, too late. I was there.

“How's it going?”

“Good,” she said.

Her weird friends were checking me out. These kids were not going to be invited to our new Popular Table. Sorry. One of them had dark black hair, pale skin, red lips, liquid eyeliner. Another had a tight-shaved Afro and silver rings on both thumbs—I'm pretty sure those were both girls. A boy, right across from Marilicia, had his longish hair in loose dreads, and his orange button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves past his elbows. A dark-eyed boy with a crew cut and deep blue T-shirt, smiled up at me in a welcoming way, at least. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I answered, smiling at him. Cute. Still not invited.

“You gonna sit down?” he asked.

“I was just talking to Marilicia.”

The dark-eyed boy nodded. “True.”

I hunched down next to Marilicia, too tall, facing away from the table, and whispered, “I just, I really wanted to, belatedly, apologize.”

Marilicia turned slowly and looked very intently at me but didn't say anything. No
that's okay
or
water under the bridge
or
we both did things we could share blame for
or anything. Just looked at me like she was looking in a mirror, checking for zits.

“For getting you, you know, kicked out of the Popular Table.”

She smiled a tiny bit, so I figured I was on the right track.

“I think, I can't promise anything,” I said. “But I think I could probably get you, you know, reinstated or whatever. Back in. Or, even better, well . . .” I smiled at her. Big smile, really friendly. She smiled back. “Maybe we could, you know, take a walk, talk about it,” I suggested.

She laughed. A little chuckle at first, but it grew, slowly, until she was kind of honestly snorting and like almost coughing. Her freak friends all joined in, though a little less grossly, on Marilicia's laugh riot. All except for the black hair red lips girl, who just kept that doll-like blank expression on her face while slowly chewing whatever gross thing she was eating with chopsticks from her little plastic box. Seriously, chopsticks. The girl wasn't even Asian. At least not visibly Asian. So what point was she trying to make, chopsticks?

And what was she even wearing? It was like, weird. Made of scarves or something. Hello, nobody wears stuff like that.

“What?” I whispered. “What's so funny?”

Marilicia got a hold of herself. “It's just . . .”

She had to breathe a couple stray laughs out before she could explain her rude self. During that time I was realizing this plan completely sucked. Unfortunately, it was too late to escape.

“You come over here,” Marilicia whispered to me. “You come like you're bringing me this, what? This, like, perfect fresh-picked strawberry. Or peach.” Her hands made a bowl shape. “A peach you just picked off a tree, the most perfect peach anybody has ever picked, and you carry it lovingly, carefully, across the cafeteria, across the fields, across God's green earth to give it to me, just to me. Here's this perfect peach, Marilicia, you say, and I am giving it . . . to you.”

“Okay,” I said. This girl was certifiable. A peach? What the . . . ?

“But that's not a perfect peach, you self-important asshole,” she said.

“What?” I crossed my arms. “I never said anything about a peach!”

“It was a metaphor,” Crew Cut helpfully informed me.

“What's a metaphor?” asked Red Lips, smiling a tiny bit.

“It's for . . . stuff beyond,” Thumb Rings said.

“I got a meta-five,” Dreadlocks said. “Cost me twenty percent more.”

They all cracked up.

“You're all freaks,” I said. That cracked them up even more. “I was just saying hello,” I told Marilicia. “It's been a while, how are you, all that. But fine, forget it.”

“You were not,” Marilicia said, her smooth face suddenly serious, eyes squinched tight. “Did you actually expect me to be like,
Oh, really? Really Natasha? You'd do that for me? Help me? So I can maybe come sit with you again?
And if I plot and plan with you, maybe I can wrangle an invitation back to Samesville?”

“I didn't . . . Samesville? What?”

“Because that's the most bruised-up, bottom-of-the-bucket, piece-of-crap peach in the discount store, dude.”

“There's no peach! You don't have to get all . . . I was just being nice.”

“No you weren't.” Marilicia grabbed my arm. “You're never nice, Natasha.”

Okay, that pissed me off. I am so sometimes nice.

I shook my arm loose of her grasp and said loud enough for her freak friends to hear, “That's just what you losers tell yourself, to comfort yourself that you don't get to sit with us—
Oh, they're so mean, those popular kids. They're bad and small-minded and cruel.
But you know what? Untrue! Welcome to reality, where you sit here in loser-land because you are too freaking weird to sit with normal people and be happy.”

“We are happy,” said thumb rings. “And we actually like each other.”

“
We actually like each other,
” I imitated, maybe a little louder than I meant to. “My mistake. I thought Marilicia might like to come back to—”

“Wrong,” Marilicia interrupted. “Listen. I want you to understand a thing, Natasha. Okay? Six months ago I would've given a vital organ to hear those words from you, the
sorry
, the
you can come back to the Table
.”

“A vital organ?” Dreadlocks asked her.

“Maybe a nonvital organ,” Marilicia said, with a laugh in her voice. “A tonsil.”

“Gross,” Red Lips said. Like she should talk about gross. I think those were tiny dried fish she was eating.

“But you know what I figured out since then?” Marilicia asked.

“What?” I asked, at the same time the cute guy in the blue T-shirt guessed, “You like both your tonsils?”

“That you guys suck,” Marilicia said. “All y'all.”

“Fine,” I said. “See ya.”

“No, Natasha, listen.” Marilicia stood up and stepped out of the bench. Her tight jeans were tucked into her low boots. She looked good, I had to admit it. She looked, like, comfortable. In herself. She didn't used to, but there she was, looking just, very, Marilicia-like is all I can say. At least her outfit wasn't made of scarves.

“What?” I asked. I let my hair fall around my face, staring down at her cute boots.
I should get boots like that,
I thought. Then I'd have more confidence. My problem is my mom never lets me buy cool shoes.

“Listen,” Marilicia said. “You guys? You and those other kids at the Popular Table? You're
boring
.”

“Boring? I wish. I mean, you wish.”

“No. Really. You're . . . small.”

I let out a chuckle. If there's one thing in the world I am not, it's small—as my skinny little mother has let me know every day of my life. Big like my dad. Taking up too much space. I raised my eyebrows and looked pointedly down at Marilicia. “Small?”

“You know what I mean, Natasha, I know you do,” Marilicia whispered. “You're all trying so hard to blend in with each other, to be exactly alike, not left behind, not stand out, not be weird—that you're a wreck. Look how stressed you are. Your hands are fists.” She touched my tight hand with her cool fingers.

“I . . .”

“There's an amazing world out there, Tash, and you guys are all hunkered down, squabbling about your little nothing troubles.”

I almost smiled when she called me Tash like that. She used to call me Tash. She was the only one, and I really liked it. She started calling me that while we did our experiment about light's effects on plant germination. She made the poster and I collected the data. We were a good team, got an A+ on that and first place in the science fair for sixth graders. We worked so frigging hard on that thing. Then I went to stay with my father for a week and my mother never watered the plants. So they all shriveled up and died before all-county.

I had secretly wished Tash would catch on as my nickname. It just seemed like that would be so cool. I could see myself as Tash, and I'd call Marilicia Ri, and we'd be the leaders of the cool kids. But it didn't catch on and then the plants died, which pissed her off, and she blamed my mom and then she was gone from our table, so that was that.

“Whatever,” I said to her, all cold, because why should I care what some Random thinks of me and my friends? I started to walk away. I wanted to get out of the cafeteria and down to the playground before anybody could get the idea I'd been rejected. I expected the freaks behind me to erupt in a good hearty laugh at my expense while I was leaving, but if they did, I didn't hear it.

Losers. I didn't want to sit with them anyway. Thinking they're actually all that? Their parents probably apologize for how peculiar they are, at family parties
.
I have a cousin like that and her parents are always bragging,
She's so creative
. But what they mean is
She has no friends.
Bunch of weirdos. They just sit together because they were like the Island of Misfit Toys, each from their own unique planet. They weren't even like one another except in all being oddballs.

They were probably just pretending to be happy and like each other. Who wouldn't want to sit at the Popular Table? It didn't even make sense.

Last time I try to reach out and be nice or generous to anybody, I vowed.

Out in the hall I tripped over Truly, who was sitting on the floor like a tight little pretzel.

“Sorry,” she said, watching me stumble.

I regained my balance and walked away from her, whispering under my breath so she couldn't hear, “Yeah? Just wait. You will be.”