Be the Girl

“Whatever. It backfired.” Maybe if I tell myself enough, it will be. I need time to think, to figure out a way to shut her up.

“I think I like Wiser better than Jones.”

Blood rushes to my ears as I slowly turn to face Holly’s smug face.

“Gee … A girl named Aria from a school in Calgary with a llama for a school mascot? It took me, like, an hour to find a student who knew you. Bennett Ackerman says hi, by the way.” There’s a wicked gleam in her eye. “You have some dirty secrets, AJ. I was not expecting that.”

“Don’t, Holly. You’re in enough shit already,” Emmett warns in an icy tone.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says sweetly. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Uh, how about that prank you just pulled on Cassie? You know her combination lock, and the whole dog thing, and that she has a crush on Zach.”

“Have fun trying to prove it.” She glances around at the lingering students. I swear, they’re like sharks charging for a drop of blood in the water when it comes to drama. “Maybe you should ask your girlfriend,” she says loudly. “She’s the one who likes to play cruel prom jokes on people.”

Oh God. The nausea is back.

The first bell rings, but no one makes a move. Where are the teachers? Where is McNair? Why aren’t they stopping this?

“What’s wrong with you?” Emmett yells. “Are you seriously doing this just because we broke up and I’m dating her?”

She lifts her chin. “No, I’m doing this because you deserve to know the truth about the kind of person you’re dating now,” she parrots the words I once said to her, almost verbatim. I should’ve known that would come back to bite me in the ass.

“I already know what happened, Holly.”

Holly’s shapely eyebrows arch. “So, you’re okay with the fact that your girlfriend drove a girl to kill herself?”

Oh God.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a long moment. When I open them, Emmett’s deep brown eyes are on me.

“What is she talking about, Aria?” He asks slowly.

“I didn’t lie,” I whisper, silently pleading for him to believe me. I just made you believe a different truth.

Holly folds her arms across her chest. “I’d tell you to ask Julia Morrow for her side of the story, but she OD’d after Aria humiliated her in school.”

“That’s not exactly how it happened.” My voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

“But you said …” Realization sparks in Emmett’s eyes as he no doubt replays the story I told him the other night, only from another angle.

The one where I’m not the victim.

“I can’t believe you.” Emmett’s expression is filled with disbelief and aversion. He spins on his heels and strolls down the hall with his backpack, past McNair, without saying a word.

Emmett’s never going to talk to me again.

And that’s probably what I deserve.

“And you wanted to make me look bad in front of Emmett. Well …” Holly’s face twists with bitter triumph.

Only then do I feel the steady stream of hot tears running down my cheeks. “How could you do that to Cassie? Me? Fine! I would have deserved it. But Cassie?” Who has only ever been kind to Holly.

A flash of something like pain—or guilt—flickers in her big blue eyes, but then it’s gone and her eyes are cold and hard again. “Whatever. Zach is taking her like I knew he would. She’ll be fine,” Holly scoffs, dismissing Cassie’s feelings as if they’re trivial, as if she’s incapable of having them.

I don’t even realize that my fist is flying until it crashes into Holly’s nose.





I pick at a loose thread on the sleeve of my sweater. If I don’t stop soon, I’ll ruin it.

“Assaulting another student is an automatic suspension.” Mr. Keen’s squinty eyes narrow into tiny slits as he studies me intently. “What reason did you feel you had for hitting Holly Webber?”

Because she’s the anti-Christ? I bite my tongue before that slips out.

Ms. Moretti sits beside him, her brow furrowed with worry as she waits for my answer.

We’re in a small conference room beside Keen’s office. There’s nothing in here but a round table with four chairs, an oversized clock that ticks too loudly, and a framed School Conduct poster on the wall directly across from me. The room overlooks the visitor parking lot, which means I’ll see exactly when my mother pulls in.

Out of everything, I’m dreading that part most of all.

“I believe there has been some ongoing tension between Holly and Aria,” Moretti offers. “It likely has to do Emmett Hartford.”

“So, this is over a boy.” Keen may as well roll his eyes for the annoyance in his voice.

“No, it’s about Holly being a jerk and a bully and getting away with it for too long.”

They exchange glances and I can almost hear the unspoken words. We’re finally getting somewhere.

“What did Holly do to you, Aria?” Moretti asks.

“It’s not what she did to me. It’s what she did to Cassie Hartford.” I explain the joke prom invitation.

“And you know for a fact that Holly was behind that?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

I stretch the fingers of my right hand. Nothing feels broken but my knuckles are swelling. The school nurse said she’d be by with an ice pack but that was fifteen minutes ago. I guess a bruised hand is less critical than a nose gushing blood.

“Because I used to be like her.”





I check the wall clock as Moretti pushes the blinds apart with two fingers to squint at the parking lot. “She was in Toronto when I called. She should be here soon.”

That’s right. Mom and Mick were looking at something for the bathrooms. Vanities or something.

Mr. Keen left five minutes ago to meet with Holly and her parents, a notepad listing the chain of events that led to this morning under his arm and a deep scowl of disapproval on his face. It first appeared when I played them the video of Holly in the bathroom and deepened as each plot point of the rest of the story was revealed—the ensuing threat, the “accidental tripping,” the cookie fiasco, the SWF Eats Instagram account, and the final straw: the prom joke.

I left nothing out.

“I told you that I like to know about my students.” Ms. Moretti settles into her chair again and clasps her hands in front of her. “I was curious about you, about why you quit cross-country after ninth grade, that sort of thing … so I spoke to your old guidance counselor, Ms. Forester.”

The stomach-clenching reaction I’d expect to feel hearing that doesn’t come. Probably because I’ve already confessed to everything. “When?”

“About two weeks ago.”

I was right that day she started asking questions. “What’d she say?”

Ms. Moretti pauses for a long moment. “Boy, that woman needs to retire, am I right?”

The answer is so unexpected—and so on point—I burst out laughing, the simple act lifting some of the weight from my shoulders. “She had these printed one-page calendars on the wall in her office, for each year until retirement—2022, I think? There had to be, like, six years on there and she X’d off each day with a red Sharpie.”

“Probably not the best person to have in that role, then.” Ms. Moretti sighs. “She told me all about Julia Morrow. The video that started it. The joke that ended it.”

I nod, focusing intently on the ice pack against my knuckles. I’d much rather have a bag of frozen peas. “There were a bunch of us in on the prom joke. Not that that makes it okay.” My best friend, Denise, and three other friends who didn’t like Julia either. We’d all gone to the same small elementary school together, so naturally we clung to each other as we navigated this new, daunting world of high school—of unfamiliar faces and pecking orders. I can’t even say if the dislike for Julia Morrow was already there before the dubbed video she made of me. All I do remember is my friends’ fierce loyalty and desire to avenge me afterward.