31
THROUGHOUT the next day at school, Nicole
still doesn’t speak to me. I spend my lunch in the darkroom, trying
to develop photos for the project, but I’m too distracted to come
up with anything good. When the bell rings, I head to the big
bathroom down the hall, my backpack haphazardly crammed full of my
stuff and slung over my shoulder.
I shove the door open, hard, and when it bounces
off the wall, the girl near the sink jumps up into the air and
turns to glare at me.
I stop.
It’s Janae.
But it’s . . . not.
Her face is . . . completely broken out. Like,
totally covered in acne. Pimples litter her forehead, go down her
nose, sprinkle her chin and cheeks. What did she do—cover her face
in chocolate and then sleep in it?
She sees me staring and her eyes narrow into angry
little slits, but the effect is ruined because there are tears
streaming down her face, so I know her wrath is tempered.
It’s so weird to see her . . . well . . . ugly.
I’ve never seen so much as one pimple on her face, ever. I
mean, Nicole has battled acne for years, but Janae?
O. M. G.
I freeze halfway to the bathroom stall and give her
another long look.
This is a wish! Finally, a cool freakin’
wish.
I take in the array of pimples covering her face,
obscuring her perfect beauty, and one half of me wants to jump for
joy as the other half feels torn and sad, which I don’t understand.
Because Janae is mean, deserves everything she has coming to
her.
I remember wishing for this now. When we were
twelve, Nicole’s acne really kicked into gear. Guess if she got
boobs early, she got the acne to go with it. Janae was perfecting
her mean-girl tactics by then, and for the next few years, she’d
make Nicole burst into tears a time or seven.
And Janae had really dished it out on one of my
birthdays, because by the time Nicole made it to my house to have
cake and go out with my family, her eyes were red and swollen.
Janae had ripped into Nicole so hard that Nicole spent the first
hour of my birthday celebration sniffling.
So I’d wished that Janae would know what it was
like to be suffering from something she couldn’t control, to have
everyone see it and judge her and laugh at her.
“Oh,” I say. The word seems too big, echoing on the
bathroom walls. “Um, sorry.”
She can’t know what I’m sorry for, why I’m
apologizing, but I can’t stop the word from escaping anyway.
Because some part of me really is sorry. The pain in her eyes is
just as real as the pain in Nicole’s had been. Has been, for
years.
“Yeah, right,” Janae says as she turns back to her
reflection.
“No, seriously, I mean, that really
sucks.”
Okay, foot, meet mouth.
Janae blinks a few times to clear the tears from
her eyes. “Thanks, freak. It’s this awful new lotion, I think.” She
sniffles and stands up straighter, as if to pull herself together.
She runs a finger under her tear-streaked eyes, but it smears the
mascara even worse, leaving black winged smudges around the edges
of her eyes.
“Whatever. Your melodramatic hysterics are a bit
over the top,” I say.
She turns to look at me, really look. I want to
shrink away, because even a tear-streaked, snot-filled,
acne-covered mess, she’s still the same person. “You’re just saying
that because if you looked like this, you’d probably get out
a Magic Marker and connect the dots and tell everyone they’re
constellations.”
Is that a compliment or an insult?
I shrug. “Your face will be back to normal by
Monday. Chill.” I know it will be back to normal by Monday
because the wishes end then.
Janae turns toward me and crosses her arms. “Don’t
you have a lamb to sacrifice or something? Another body part to
enhance, perhaps?”
Oh. Okay, well, that answers that. She was
definitely trying to insult me.
I guess some people just never change, even with
wish intervention.
I head to the bathroom stall and listen as Janae
turns the sink off and leaves, the door swinging back and forth a
few times. Before it stills, however, a new group of girls
enter.
“I didn’t know steroids did that, though. Are you
sure?” The voice is nasally, annoying. I don’t recognize it.
“I don’t know, but Miranda saw her changing in PE
and said her boobs were really that big, that it didn’t look like
she was stuffing. How else do you get that big overnight? That is
totally not normal.”
“As if that girl has ever been normal.”
I freeze. I suddenly want to pick my feet up off
the ground so they won’t see me, but I am afraid to move, afraid to
alert them to my presence.
“Actually, she was totally different in junior
high. She was in my computer science class.”
“Really? ’Cuz these days she’s totally weird. I
heard she has a purple goat at home.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, she probably milks it and makes goat
cheese.”
The girls’ laughter rings out, filling the room. I
fume. I want to leave the stall, but every moment I wait makes it
seem harder to reveal myself.
There are about a thousand things I could say to
them right now. I could offer them some goat cheese, wiggle my
boobs, say something snide.
But instead I just sit quietly and listen until
they’ve left the room, and then I get up and go wash my
hands.
I make my way to my locker to ditch a few of my
books. I’m just swinging the door shut when someone taps me on the
shoulder, and I jump.
Uh-oh.
It’s Ken.
“Hey, sweetie,” he says. “I want to apologize for
last night. I didn’t realize it was a school kind of thing.”
I glance around. So far no one has noticed
him.
“Um, yeah, this is too. A school thing. This
is school, actually.”
“I know, but Ann said she’s been here before, so I
thought maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal if I just dropped
by.”
“Oh?” I’m going to kill her. Was I not clear enough
about the visitor policy here?
My heart stops altogether when he plants one hand
on either side of my shoulders, so I’m trapped between him and the
locker.
PDA alert! PDA alert!
I try to turn away, but it doesn’t work, because
Ken just leans a little bit to the right, and before I can take
another breath, his lips press into mine. My fingers tighten around
the straps of my backpack.
Ken pulls away, enough so that I can speak.
“I think we should see other people,” I blurt
out.
He doesn’t move. He’s leaning in close, like he
could kiss me again at any moment.
“What?” I can feel his breath on my cheek, warm. It
smells like cinnamon or Red Hots or something.
“Look, you’re, um, awesome, but I just don’t feel
sparks anymore. I think we need to break up.”
His eyes search mine as his face remains
expressionless.
“Is that really what you want?”
“Yes. It is.”
He nods, but he doesn’t move away from me. I feel
like he’s staring at my lips, like he wants to kiss me again to
convince me to change my mind. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You’ve
been acting weird for days.”
I clear my throat because it’s like he doesn’t
realize he’s still so close to me. “And also, Ann . . . she likes
you. You should give her a shot.”
One eyebrow goes up. It’s hard to see because his
face is so close to mine. “Ann? Really?”
I nod. I wish he’d back up.
“Maybe.”
Huh. That was entirely too simple. He stands up,
and I feel like I can breathe for the first time in ten minutes. “I
guess I’ll catch you later,” he says, and then walks away.
I watch him leave, feeling a little bit bad but
also suddenly, gloriously free, and then I turn around.
Ben is standing there, in the middle of the hall,
watching me. His expression makes guilt tear through me.
He looks betrayed, his blue eyes staring right at
me, accusing me. His shoulders, behind that perfect, ribbed navy
sweater, are slumped.
I don’t understand it, but he looks hurt. Like I
hurt him. Stuck a knife in and twisted.
And now I know.
I know that during the moment at the track, when I
stared at him and he stared back, he wanted to kiss me as much as I
wanted to kiss him. That he cursed that helmet just as I did.
That maybe he does count each time we
touch.
He shakes his head, slowly, and then spins around
and walks the other way.
And as I watch him disappear around the corner, I
can’t help but wonder if this is the exact moment where I
officially lost everything.