Super Awkward (30 page)

THEN RE-SNOG IT OFF.

My stomach knotted so hard I wasn't sure how I was still standing upright. They
were
the words I'd posted on
PSSSST
, but I'd never used names?! Zac had been added in. But only Tegan, Rach, Zac and I knew the truth about what really happened at Black Bay, and surely it couldn't be one of them doing this?!

Was
this an actual nightmare? Please someone tell me it's a nightmare. Mum, wake me up with a cup of tea. PLEASE. Mumbles, lick my face. ANYTHING!!

I'd never heard so much laughter in the hall. The DJ had turned the music off, as all dancing had stopped in favour of pointing fingers round the room, trying to figure out who each story was about.
Please
don't let anyone work it out. I will never moan about anything ever again, including a weirdly long eyebrow hair I have, if someone, anyone, makes this stop before more damage is done.

What could I do?! Deep breath, Bella. Think logically. Or just think at all. I needed to stop anyone getting any proof that they came from me. Then I
could
still protect the others. But I had to stop anything else going up. Anymore clues.

I barged my way over to the projector. Where
was
that stupid plug?

But I was too late. With one click the final picture came up. It was someone I knew all too well. Luke. And with a smile he was holding the worst sign yet.

THANKS BELLA FISHER FOR THE LOLS.

HAPPY PROM

CHAPTER

TWENTY
-
SIX

“So let me get this straight?” From the other side of the cubicle door, Tegan repeated herself for the fourth time. Between tears I cringed for the eighty-ninth.

I'd done my best to explain what had happened. Why it had happened. Even though I still had no real idea how. The first time they looked shocked. The second time they looked baffled. They third time they looked so angry I thought I was going to see myself ugly crying in the mirror above the sink. To preserve any dignity, I'd run into the loo and locked myself in.

I could almost see their fury seeping under the door. But it was nothing I didn't deserve.

Tegan was quiet angry – the scariest kind.

“
You told EVERYONE the stuff we promised to tell NO ONE.”

I nodded my head. But that's not so useful from behind a door.

“Sort of.”

“Sort of yes, or sort of no?” She was raging – and I couldn't blame her. It wasn't a leap for people to work out Tee was her, and R was Rachel. And Mikey probably wasn't going to speak to me ever again. Not now the whole school had shouted things like ‘Snivel-us Snape,' ‘Nothing Ron with crying' and ‘Snogwarts' as he'd run after Tegan. She'd brushed him away, mortified that her private life had now become so public. Please, please don't let me have damaged their friendship for good.

I, Bella Fisher, am like human-disaster-Velcro that life-ruining just clings to. Can I at least stick to just messing up my own stuff from now on? Maybe I should become a nun after all. Plus, those robey things look really expandable if I comfort eat for the next forty years.

I took a deep breath.

“I WISH I could explain it. But I can't.
PSSSST
was just a silly thing I did after we all fell out. I only did it to find Zac. But then people started liking my
stuff,
and I kept going. It said it was all anonymous. I never used names. I swear! I thought it was totally harmless. I didn't feel like real people could see them?!”

It sounded stupid now. Who did I
think
had been liking everything?

As I apologized for the forty-seventh, forty-eighth and forty-ninth time, I messaged Jo. I needed her to come and save me before I attempted escaping from school via the toilet pipe thing.

Rachel peered under the door.

“I don't get it, Bella. Why would you do this? I thought we were all friends again?”

“We ARE all friends.”

Tegan butted in.

“Weird thing for a friend to do, don't you think?”

“But that's the problem. I DON'T think. And I should. I will! In fact, I'm thinking RIGHT NOW. I'm thinking what a total idiot I've been.”

If
only
I hadn't gone to Black Bay. None of this would have happened. I'd only used that stupid app to try and track down Zac.

“I know you hate me right now, and I TOTALLY GET IT. I hate me too! But please, please, please can you at least think about forgiving me? It was a weird,
out-
of-control accident. Like my whole entire life. I'd do ANYTHING to make it up to you. You guys are EVERYTHING to me.”

But nothing came back except silence, until Tegan cleared her throat.

“There's no point in talking now. Rachel and I don't want to miss out on
all
the fun cos of you.”

But if I'd learnt one thing this term it was to not give up on my friends. Yes, I'd messed up, but I
knew
I could put it right. I banged the door with my hand.

“NO. I'm not letting this happen. This is NOT ruining us. I CAN be a good friend. I will be.”

But Tegan sounded broken.

“Good friends are people you can trust. C'mon, Rach.”

The bathroom door swung shut as they left me alone.

I stayed alone, in my bad-mood cubicle – moodicle – until Jo messaged to say she'd arrived. I tried to wipe the mascara away from under my eyes, but smeared it up into the world's biggest eyeliner flicks. Oh well. I couldn't be any more humiliated than I already was.

Ignoring the no-running-in-corridors rule, I sprinted as fast as I could (not fast) towards the secret path through the bushes that led down to the school gates. I
didn't
want to risk bumping into anyone.

But the one person I most wanted to avoid was taking a time-out too.

“Leaving so soon?”

If I hadn't been wearing Jo's ring that Grandma gave her, I swear I might have attempted my first ever punch, right into Luke's face. I know violence doesn't solve anything, but seeing Luke face down in a pile of twigs and crisp wrappers would at least cheer me up.

“Have I ever told you what a complete and utter douchebag you are?”

He laughed.

“Every day.”

But I couldn't find anything to laugh about. Why had he done this? How had he done this?! And why drag Tegan, Rachel, Mikey and worst of all Zac, down with me? Zac had never even had anything to do with him.

“So what? You're now some sort of internet stalker, are you?” I shook my head. “You're pathetic.”

He smiled. “But you made it so easy for me.”

I definitely hadn't. Easy was things like eating a pack of five supermarket doughnuts, not finding someone on an anonymous app that he shouldn't even know about.

“
How so, stalker?”

“Let me break it down for you.” He said it like I was three and he was teaching me my first words. “First off, you showed me the app in the library, so I knew you were on it.” Crapballs. That must have been when I almost showed him that picture of Zac. How could I have been so careless?! “Then, as literally
everyone
knows, when you sign up, it shows you the people who are nearby.” Everyone it seems, except me. “And cos of all your likes, and the fact we live three streets away, it meant you were the first person that came up.”

What the what? When I'd signed up it only offered random follow suggestions. Although – my heart sank – I
had
been on that motorway in the middle of nowhere. Maybe there had been nobody nearby
to
suggest. So hold up. Did this mean I'd accidentally been sharing my closest guarded secrets with people who lived the closest to me? How was this a good idea for an app?!

But that still didn't explain how he'd linked PruneFlapper with me? Or discovered the truth about Zac? I'd been so careful to protect everyone.

“I'm not buying it, Luke. It doesn't add up.”

“It adds up fine to me. I thought it was you when I saw that ankle bracelet on your profile pic.” My profile
pic
was just my feet on the windowsill at Black Bay? Surely Luke wasn't that observant? “And then there was the er, time of the month thing, which y'know I
could
have thought was about someone we knew.” AKA – he totally knew it was about him, and I'd just wound him up even more. “And then last week when you posted about the camera, I knew it HAD to be you. It was way too big a coincidence.”

For someone whose mum spent her whole time trying to channel good energy, I sure had the worst luck. The one secret Luke knew about me was one of the final ones I'd posted up. The one person who I'd been posting most about had been the one person to piece it all together. I could kick myself. But I was bad enough on two feet, and falling over wasn't going to help this situation.

“But
why,
Luke? Why do this?”

“What, despite you ruining my work?”

I cut him off.

“Which I didn't do.”

“Whatever. And posting that stupid story about me. And –” he flinched as if not sure to carry on, but not quite able to stop himself – “and lying to me about Zac.”

“But I
told you
the truth. I made it all up. Which you took great joy in telling the whole freakin' school.”

“
I saw the pictures, Bella. You really should be more careful what you keep on your memory card.”

Kicking myself wasn't enough. Could I please run back and forth into this large tree? Had I actually been so stressed out about the sign situation that I'd handed over my camera to Luke, complete with all my pictures?

But it was weird. Luke didn't look cross. He looked a version of . . . upset. The exact same way he'd looked when I'd told him I thought we should see each other less. The exact same way he'd looked when he saw my OTT heart-pose pic with Zac. Right before he'd shared all my secrets.

Could Mikey be right?
Was
Luke more bothered by our break-up than I'd ever imagined? I shook that thought right out of my head. Because it didn't matter to me why he'd done what he'd done. He hadn't just hurt me, he'd hurt my friends. And done it in the most public way possible. He was pathetic. So pathetic that I finally realized what I should have done weeks ago. That whatever Luke said or did from now on couldn't hurt me any more. So I needed to stop wasting any more time on him, and focus on un-doing his damage and making it up to the people I love.

Without bothering to reply, I pushed past him, ran to Jo's car and threw myself on to the front seat. I hoped
she
would forgive me for the mascara stain on her dress where my tears had pooled between my legs. As she drove away the lights flashed out of the hall, silhouetting Tegan and Rachel dancing. I guess I was happy they were putting Luke's stunt behind them. As long as I didn't get put behind them too. I tried not think about what Zac and Mr Lutas were in deep conversation about at the side of the hall, and not panic that Mikey was sitting alone at the edge of the room. But it was hard when at the exact same moment he messaged me to say thanks for blowing any chance with Tegan he ever had. I switched my phone off. I HAD to fix this.

Jo did me the favour of not making conversation the entire way home. When we arrived, she even popped into the kitchen to chat to Mum, giving me the distraction I needed to retreat to my room un-interrogated.

I stayed fully clothed under my duvet until I heard her knock. She slid under the covers beside me, not even doing a double-take at me wearing her dress as my new PJs.

“C'mon then. Hit me with it. Whatever you say will just be between you, me, and that rather fit poster of Louis.” Last week I'd turned it on its side so when I wake up and open my eyes it's like he's lying next to me
(
but without the danger of him getting a faceful of my morning breath).

Jo tucked a loose bit of hair behind my ear.

I didn't know where to start.

But before I knew it, I'd finished. Every detail, every
single
detail from Zac, through to detention, through to Luke's stupid threats, through to me accidentally winding him up so much he'd ruined everything for everyone.

“So, on the positive side. . .”

I snorted. The only positive side to this was, if I restarted life, and just used this whole thing as a terrible dress rehearsal (in actual terrible dresses too) I could get back to a normal functioning fifteen-year-old by the time I'm thirty.

“As I was saying,
oinker,
at least everything's out there now. It's not like any more surprises can be lurking.”

But there was something I
hadn't
told her. And I was done with secrets.

“Well. Nor quite. There
is
something I need to tell you.”

She raised her eyebrows.