I listened to the heaviness of her sigh, broken by the sound of the door clicking closed when she finally gave up and left.
Justin hadn’t responded to any of my texts, and I could only assume that the gossip had reached his ears and he’d chosen to listen. Did he believe the whole rumor, or just part of it? I hoped he at least didn’t believe the part about Mr. Thomas. I hoped he knew that I wasn’t that kind of person, but I wanted to hide in my bedroom so I’d never have to find out. I wanted to disappear inside the purple-and-white quilt covering my bed so I wouldn’t have to see his face when he told me he chose Sunny’s lie over me. I wanted to die.
Even Logan somehow made me out to be the villain.
Me: U know it’s not true. How can you let everyone lie like that?
A moment later my phone pinged with his response.
Logan: Exactly how many guys were u screwing behind my back? F u Taylor.
That night I dreamed about Sunny, her face dancing in and out of my consciousness like a howling banshee. She scrawled my name over and over again onto the empty pages of her spiral notebook, filling hangman puzzles and origami cranes with words once reserved for the Tracey Allens and Alanas of the world. Justin stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders as he nuzzled her neck and pointed at the horrible words she wrote, laughing and calling out insults she had missed. Jenny, Amber, and even my own mother danced in the back of the room, twirling and skipping like synchronized swimmers choreographing my demise. Alana was there too, her chubby cheeks laughing as she sat in the corner and watched them all, mouthing, what goes around comes around, what goes around comes around, what goes around comes around, over and over and over again.
I tossed and turned until my joints ached from the movement, and when my mother touched my hot skin in the morning, she agreed that it was best for me to stay home another day.
The text messages started coming that afternoon. Some of them were single words like slut, skank, and other derogatory names, while others were preachy, chiding me for what I’d done to Logan. Someone got creative and made a fake email address, using it to email a picture of a scantily clad woman perching suggestively on the lap of an older man. My face was crudely pasted on top of the woman’s face and the words “Teacher’s Pet” were printed in bold font across the top of the page.
It lacked the finesse of Sunny’s pranks. She would have taken care to center my face over the other woman’s so it looked more realistic, and come up with a cleverer tag line than “Teacher’s Pet.” Knowing it wasn’t Sunny gave me some solace because at least she wasn’t driving the knife any deeper into my back than she already had. But it still stung, and I suddenly found myself on equal footing with Alana James, wondering if the whole charade happened to teach me a lesson for all the years I aided Sunny in her torment.
By Friday I had no fever to support my argument for staying home, and without sharing the sordid details of my reputation’s downfall, I had no ground to stand on. Not that my mother would have let me stay home anyway. She probably would have told me to work things out with Sunny, or worse —taken Sunny’s side.
“Oh my goodness,” my mother said when she pulled out of the driveway and saw the trees in our front yard. “Who would do such a thing on a school night?” I shrugged as I stared at the strands of toilet paper hanging from the branches, reaching their curling fingers toward the car like they wanted to squeeze the hope right out of me. This was my life now.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said when my mom had driven me the five blocks to school. I was able to score a ride by feigning weakness from the previous days’ fevers, but next week I’d have to suffer the walk alone. I wasn’t ready to think about that yet.
I hid behind a car in the teacher’s parking lot until the final bell rang, squatting next to a bumper sticker that read “Pets are people too!” until my thighs quivered. Then I slunk my way inside the school and into one of the lesser-used bathrooms where I wouldn’t have to worry about bumping in to Sunny. I wouldn’t be able to hide long without the school calling my mother to alert her of my truancy, but I at least wanted to miss first period so I could delay my encounter with Justin.
I was coming out of the bathroom just before the second period bell when he found me. It was like he knew I would be there, and my heart squeezed at the sight of his long body leaning against a row of lockers. For a moment he just watched me, his blue eyes wide and his grin-less mouth drawn like it was on the night of the party.
He believes her. The look on his face was so weathered it didn’t seem possible for him to have dismissed Sunny’s propaganda. I waited for him to yell the words that must be coming, for him to echo the awful things my classmates had emailed me and texted me since the news broke a few days before.
Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and pressed his cheek against my hair, rocking me back and forth in a tight hug.
“I’m so sorry, Taylor. I know it’s not true, okay? I’ll tell everyone I know that it’s not true.”
“You do? You will?” The words squeaked their way out of my throat.
“Yes,” he said into my hair. “Brandon told me he was behind the house at The Fields. He told me what you and Logan were really fighting about.”
It felt so good to be in his arms again; it was almost too good to be true.
“When you didn’t text me back, I thought—”
“I know. I’m so sorry. I was processing. I should never have even considered that it was true. I’m so, so sorry.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as a fresh tear slid down my cheek. I was so sure Brandon would never tell. I thought I was stranded on an island. It didn’t even matter that the only person he confessed to was Justin—one person changed everything. Brandon Blakes saved me.