Unfriended (3 page)

CLAY

TO DO:

1. Focus on schoolwork

2. Stay AWAY from Natasha

3. Topic for History Day project (due WHEN?)

4. Find assignment pad (somewhere under the mess in my room? In locker?)

5. Take a shower/use deodorant. Yuck. The whole getting wet/getting dry cycle. And goo in my pits? Maybe skip this one.

6. Find a new series to binge on. Maybe ask Jack what he's watching these days.

7. NO! No more TV/Internet/Facebook until ALL homework is done. BE A TOOL like JT. Making a to-do list is a total tool move. On my way, yo!

8. Clean room/surprise Mom and Dad? Or will they be pissed I'm not studying? Probably. Never mind that one either, then. Crossing stuff off this list like a BOSS.

9. Ask Brooke if I should respond to the billion Snapchats from Natasha.

10. Text JT again: possible to Skype soon? (Whenever. He's busy. Being a tool.) Maybe find something funny on the Internet to send him.
#research

11. Friend that girl Truly.

12. Or maybe not?

13. ??? ugh so bored nothing to do.

TRULY

MY BEST FRIEND,
Hazel, stood over my desk first period today with a note dangling from her fingers. I had tried to talk with her after lunch yesterday, but she walked away fast. I told myself maybe she was rushing to class. I left her chat and text messages last night, just to make sure everything was still normal between us. But she ignored me until the end of first period today.

“Hi, Hazel!” I said. She didn't answer. The note was folded up tight and small, my name in her tiny, neat green script on the outside. I watched it drop onto my desk. Hazel left math without me, her green hair bouncing behind her.

The note said she hated me because I only thought about myself, was spoiled and a bully and mean.

I sat at my desk for a few minutes and just read it over and over.

Out in the hall, I showed it to some of our other friends to see what they thought. Esther Luo said that Hazel's grandma had broken her hip last night. But everybody else was like, that's not a good excuse. What does her grandmother's broken hip have to do with saying all those mean things about Truly?

Of course we all knew what Esther meant, that Hazel was just upset about her grandma so she was striking out at me. Esther is a very understanding person, very kind. But she was making excuses for Hazel. Everybody agreed.

“Not excuses,” Esther protested. “Just a possible explanation. I think she went up the C stairwell.”

“No way,” we all said. But none of us went up there to see, because you could get suspended for going up the C stairwell. There are rumors people go up there to make out or do drugs. There's supposedly a locked closet for custodial supplies or maybe access to the roof up there. We stood looking up it for a minute but didn't hear anything, so we decided to get going to second period quick so we wouldn't be late. It seemed unlikely even Hazel would hazard going up the C stairwell.

When I got to English, I guess I was looking pretty wrecked. Natasha came straight over to me and whispered with her face all sad and concerned, “What happened? What's wrong? Tell me!”

So I showed her the note Hazel had dropped on my desk. As she read it, her perfectly pink-glossed mouth opened wide in disbelief. “Oh, my gosh,” she whispered. “That is
so
mean.” She pulled me into a hug and didn't let go until the teacher, Ms. Fenton, said to take our seats please.

My mom had said to be careful, last night, when I told her about being asked to sit at the Popular Table yesterday. I think she worries that popular girls are all secretly mean. I explained that the girls who sit at the Popular Table are actually the nicest girls in the whole eighth grade. Things were probably different when Mom was my age and it was called junior high school. I've seen some of those movies—it's awful, and I don't just mean the hair.

Natasha passed me a note when Ms. Fenton turned to write the homework on the board. In her still-so-familiar plain blue print, it said, “Are you okay?”

“I guess so—just really confused,” I wrote back. Girls from the Popular Table love stuff like that, passing notes and somebody who's been wronged.

On the way out of English, Natasha said, “See you later, Truly!” For almost two years, most of sixth and all of seventh grade, plus the first few weeks of eighth, she had barely glanced in my direction. I tucked her note into my pocket, too.

Hazel ignored me the whole rest of the day, walked away every time I got near her. I didn't want to assume I was invited to sit at the Popular Table again, but I also didn't want to sit next to Hazel at our regular table either, after that note and the ignoring. So I was planning to volunteer in the library at lunch. I wasn't very hungry anyway. But Natasha hooked her arm through mine before lunch and chatted with me the whole way down to the cafeteria and sat down with me right there at the Popular Table like that was my normal spot.

Those kids laugh a lot. At my regular table—I hadn't noticed this before but we kind of pick on one another. “That's so stupid,” Kim will say if Jules says something is cute, or Hazel will go, “You know that makes no sense at all,” if Kim comes up with some theory. I'm sure I do it, too. It's just our sense of humor, I've told myself. Only Esther says, “That's an interesting point,” even when it isn't.

I didn't talk while I sat at the Popular Table today. I smiled and listened, watching closely. Lulu giggles at everything. Evangeline disagrees and acts tough but I think is just kidding. They talk very fast, all laugh in bursts, and clearly all watch the same TV shows. I will have to binge-watch tonight, in case I'm invited back again. Mom will understand and probably let me watch more than I'm usually allowed.

When Lulu's mom died a few years ago, my mom helped organize people to bring over food and stuff to her family, even though we didn't really know the family well. She used to ask me sometimes how Lulu is doing, but I have never really known, other than she seems great, very smiley. And of course Evangeline is famous for being so awesome at both sports and school that even the parents know her. And then there's Brooke. Her whole family is cool. There are four kids, and each one is the most popular in whichever grade. They own a bookstore and all go bike riding together, looking like a commercial for something awesome and expensive when you see them flying by, all gorgeous, laughing together. They're the family all of us wish we could be in.

“What's she like?” Mom asked last night.

“She's . . . really nice,” I said. “She seems . . . happy.”

“Nice,” Mom said. “That is such a good quality to have, just being happy.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She's especially cautious about Natasha, probably because of our history. I cried a lot in sixth grade. But maybe also because of her own history with Natasha's mom. They were best friends until Natasha's mom took me to get my ears pierced for my tenth birthday, even though my mom had told her not to. Mom made me take the earrings out and let the holes close. I still have the studs in my jewelry box. I'll never throw them out because that day was one of the happiest of my life, until I got home. Mom made me wait until this year, when I turned thirteen. She said it was “unconscionable” for Natasha's mom to take me. I get that, but I think Natasha's mom was just trying to be nice. She's one of those moms who wants to hang with the kids and be like a friend to us. She's a little scary to me sometimes with her long nails and too much eye shadow and cigarette breath, but then sometimes I think she seems lonely and a little, like, trying too hard to seem upbeat.

Mom says her worries about Natasha befriending me again have nothing to do with her own history with Natasha's mom; they grew apart, as happens sometimes with friends. It's that Natasha is edgy. And though edgy is sometimes very attractive, it can sting. Mom's just protective of me. She can't help that.

I rolled my eyes the way Natasha does at that, to show Mom I'm too grown-up for that kind of protection. And maybe a little edgy myself. But I know in truth I'm lucky I can talk honestly with my mom about what's going on socially at school. Most kids can't do that with their moms.

When I got home today, I told Mom about the latest with Hazel. I showed her the note. We sat at the kitchen counter together, drinking seltzer from our new seltzer maker. I love when I get special time with her, even though my brother and sister need her more.

Mom thought it was very inappropriate, all those things Hazel had said about me. Even if her grandmother's hip was broken, and she felt left out when I sat at a different lunch table. “And why is it written in green ink?” Mom asked.

“Hazel always writes in green ink,” I explained. “It's her
thing
.”

Mom raised her eyebrows for a millisecond. She says she loves Hazel but I'm not sure that's true. I know Hazel's moodiness and rudeness sometimes bother Mom. I think the green ink bothered her, too. I'm not sure why it would. But I'm pretty sure it did.

“Do you think I should call her?” I asked Mom. “Or Skype or e-mail or . . .”

“Sure,” Mom answered. “Whichever feels most comfortable to you.”

“What should I say?”

We brainstormed a couple of possible openings but finally agreed I should just say exactly what I felt, which was that I was surprised and confused by her note, and then let Hazel say what she needed to say. Maybe she would say she was sorry, she was just in a bad mood. Maybe she'd blame her grandmother's hip. Or maybe she would say that she was mad about the lunch thing.

I wasn't sure what to say about that, if that's what she said. I mean, I could say I was sorry, but that wasn't really true. I was, truthfully, happy I got asked to sit at the Popular Table. I could say I was sorry she was hurt that I got asked to sit there and she didn't, which is true, but there's really no way to say that without sounding like a complete jerk. The nonapology apology is just the worst.

So that's why I was nervous about making the call. I'm not confident Mom fully understood that part, which made me feel strangely lonely.

I went up to my room to plan it out independently a little. Maybe I should just tell Hazel that I knew she was upset I'd gone off with Natasha and those guys, and apologize, and promise not to sit with them anymore.

But that felt really terrible. Is that the only way to handle it and still be a truly good person? My parents started calling me Truly when I was like two years old, because I was always so earnest, they said, always trying do the right thing and seeming so mature. Truly Yours, they called me for a long time, until it got shortened to just Truly. I don't want to let them down, or myself either. Be called Untruly. But what was the right thing to do? Dump my new friends for my best friend, even if she was the one being meanest to me? Should I take it, though, because maybe she's just feeling hurt and it's my fault? I was asking myself these hard questions, lying on my bed with my stuffed dog Francisco pressed over my face. Why can't I be friends with everybody and also not have anybody be mad at me?

Why does Hazel make me feel like I'm so evil, just for getting to be slightly friendly with some nice kids in our grade? Is that fair?

I was starting to get a little mad back at Hazel. She says I am spoiled a lot, mostly whenever she is in a fight with her mother, but she has never said any of those other mean things to me before this, or put it in writing.

I sat up and reread my two notes from today. Maybe I shouldn't be as quick as usual to say
That's okay don't worry about it
if Hazel does apologize right away. I decided I would just listen to whatever she said and maybe write down her words on my pad and then just say, “Okay, I'll talk with you more about this tomorrow. Bye.”

She didn't pick up the phone—her cell or the family's phone. She's not big on answering either because she is phone-o-phobic, or so she says. I don't know if that is a real thing. My brother and sister both have learning challenges that neurotypical people don't always understand, though. Older relatives think my brother and sister should just “try harder” or “stop acting like that” which is both mean and clueless—so I'm extra careful not to question people about their issues. Anyway, I was kind of relieved that she didn't answer.

After dinner, before I went to bed, I checked my computer. Hazel hadn't e-mailed me, but Natasha did.
See you tomorrow . . . meet up at the wall?

The wall is where all the kids who sit at the Popular Table “chill” before school.