Mean Girls

We walked into the dim auditorium. No one was talking, but everyone watched as we found a place to sit. Soon after we did, the house lights dimmed down to nothing, and Professor Crawley took the podium.

“Welcome back, students. I hope everyone had a good Winter Break. Classes will start up tomorrow as usual, at 8:00 a.m. I want to ask you all to remind yourselves of the rules, and to make sure you ready yourself for school and to shake off the holiday mentality.” He cleared his throat, and carried on with a reminder of what those rules were. I checked off the ones in my head that I’d broken.

Most of them.

The room was filled with the anticipation of what exactly had happened concerning Becca. But we had to wait a full forty-five minutes before all of the administration had spoken and Crawley had taken the microphone again. The room stiffened and went silent.

“There’s been a … progression with the Rebecca Normandy case. I’m sure most of you already know, at least those of you who knew her, but for those of you who do not, Dana Veers is here—once again—to explain. Miss Veers?”

She took the stage, looking even slighter than ever, squinting in the stage lights. “Hi. I think a lot of you bought the T-shirts we’ve been selling outside, and I was glad to find that many of you took our suggestion to buy more than one and to send them to your friends and family members. We want to increase awareness everywhere we can, and the more people who wear her picture the better. Becca Normandy is alive, everyone.”

Cheers immediately broke out. Max was still and silent, as was I. Professor Crawley made a movement toward Dana, but then allowed her to go on when she gave him a scathing look.

“Make it quick,” he said, his voice carrying just enough to get to the microphone.

“As some of you know, Becca updated her Facebook with the following—I am alive, and I will be back to Manderley soon. Love you, Max.” I felt him stiffen next to me. She went on. “I don’t know when she’ll be back, but obviously she will be. Because of this update, her parents have funded advertising in newspapers and magazines nationwide. She has become an icon in news stories practically overnight, and I’m sure it’ll be no time until she’s back. So what I’m saying is, tell your friends and family to keep an eye out for her. All of the money from the T-shirts is going to the cause.”

She stepped down, to applause. Professor Crawley took the podium over again. “Actually, in line with that, there is no way to know if this posting was really by Becca or not. The police are searching, but please, I implore you not to get your hopes—”

But Professor Crawley could hardly be heard. Everyone in the auditorium was talking noisily.

It stayed like that through dinner. I sat at a table with Cam, Blake, Max and some others I barely knew. Most of them were talking about Becca. I was poking at my spaghetti and meatballs, and Max was staring at his meat loaf.

I tried to formulate a million different questions and things to say before landing on, “What do you think?”

We couldn’t be heard over everyone else.

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Where would she have been all this time?”

“I don’t know.”

I waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t, I took a deep breath. “Max, you must be able to guess. You have no idea if this is something she might do?”

He raised his eyebrows. “It’s definitely something she would do.”

“It is?” My heart fell a little. Then guilt squeezed it.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Attention probably. Or something else. I don’t know.”

I took a small bite of my spaghetti. A moment later, I got up the nerve to ask him what I had been thinking. “Max, do you think she might have been pregnant?”

He froze. “I don’t know.”

“Really?”

“No. I have no idea.” His tone had sharpened.

I stared at him for a moment. “I’m not very hungry. And I’m tired. The plane, you know.” I waved my hand, as if to say, Oh, planes, they put me right to sleep. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He said nothing, and let me walk away. I said good-night to everyone else. Blake gave me a kind smile and waved.

I ran into Johnny on the steps.

“Hey,” he said.

“Johnny.” I breezed past him, not stopping until I got to the rotunda. I slumped down in one of the seats with itchy fabric.

“What’s wrong?” Johnny had followed me.

I shook my head. “Do you think Becca might come back?”

“It’s something she’d do.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like the trait of a very lovable person, does it?” The question flew from my lips before I could stop it. “I mean … I mean …”

Johnny sat down across from me. “She wasn’t all simple charm. She had more to her. Yeah, this is something she’d do, but … I don’t know.” He looked thoughtfully down at his own fingers. “If she did, there’s more to it than just attention. I’m sure of that.”

“I asked Max if he thought she was pregnant.”

He looked stony. “Yeah, I’ve wondered that, too. Most everyone has.”

We were silent for a moment. “Was he … really that in love with her?”

“I don’t know what it was. It was something … different.”

My heart sank. “Okay.”

“He just couldn’t tear himself away from her. I don’t know why. But I mean, he wasn’t the only one.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean that … everyone was fascinated by her. She looked like a movie star, but partied like a rock star. I don’t know. She was just endearing in that way.”

I bit my lip and stared down at the floor. I’d never felt more drab in my life. I was like the gray, rainy skies outside, only less threatening and full of no mystery at all. Before coming to Manderley, I’d always thought I was worth knowing—certainly not worth admiring or obsessing over like Becca clearly was—but now I just felt like a mess. I bet Becca never had a hole in her socks, or a bad face day. I bet she never had puffy eyes in the morning or got hungover. She probably looked good in glasses—not that she’d have to wear them because she’d surely have perfect vision—and still look gorgeous without makeup. Probably had sexy, messy, bed hair instead of just ratty, messy hair.

She was the kind of beautiful we’ve all been comforted into thinking was just airbrushing in magazines. I was the “real” girl they always show before the airbrushing with a caption like, “But here’s what the average real girl looks like! Can you even believe it? She was walking around like that!”

“I can’t compete with that.” My face was getting hot. “Everyone looks at me like they think that I think that I’m as good as her, and I’m not even saying that I am. And yet, why should it be just so obvious that I’m not?”

I couldn’t figure out what exactly was driving my jealousy. I didn’t want to be fawned over and obsessed over. But I envied that she was.

“Look. Look at me.” He waited for me to look at him. “Call Becca the most beautiful and charming girl in the world, and it has nothing to do with who you are. You hardly pale in comparison. Everyone here, they’re just shallow. Becca wasn’t a bad person on the inside, but no one here got to know her, either. They all liked her because she was unique. She was a new toy they never really got to play with. And now that she’s gone, they just want her more than ever.”

I looked up at him, not noticing my eyes were filled with tears until some fell from my eyelashes. It was nice of him trying to console me. But I knew what he was saying was just that. Consoling.

Johnny smiled a little, furrowing his eyebrows. “Don’t. You have no reason to cry. You’re bigger than this whole school and everything anyone might think about you inside of it.”

“I never worry about this kind of thing. I’ve never been this person.”

“You’re still not, you’re just being massacred by a popular girl’s posse. It makes sense.”

I took a deep breath and laughed. “Thank you.”

Johnny looked over my shoulder and I turned to see Max.

“Are you fucking joking?” Max asked, looking at Johnny.

“Max, stop before your imagination goes crazy. I wasn’t—” Johnny began.

Max clenched his jaw, and stared straight at Johnny. “I’m not going through this whole thing again, especially not with her.” He threw a finger at me.

Johnny shook his head. “Max you gotta—”

“Fuck it, do what you want.” He walked through the dorm door, and was gone.

Johnny and I both sat silently for a moment in the now very still air.

I didn’t know what had just happened. I wanted to cry all over again.

He put a hand on my shoulder when he saw the expression on my face. “It’s okay, you haven’t done anything.”

“I have to go to sleep. Thank you so much, Johnny.”

I stood and went back to my room. I got under my covers and tried to sleep. Before I knew it, hours had passed and I was still not asleep. Finally my desire to talk to Max outweighed my desire to try sleeping.

I ran to the boys’ dorm and then through it. I knew his room number. It had been a small, embarrassing fantasy of mine to sneak into his room for months.

He opened it after a few seconds. He was in shorts and no shirt. I collected myself and then said, “What’s wrong with you? Why were you so mad earlier?”

“I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have acted like that.”

“But why did you? I was just talking to him.”

He nodded. “Yeah. So was Becca.”

“What do you—what?”

He opened the door he stood in front of. “Come with me.

“Becca and Johnny were hooking up for … I guess most of my relationship with her.”

I practically did a double take. “What? Johnny?”

“Yeah. So that’s why he and I aren’t friends anymore.”

“Weren’t you two friends for a long time? I can’t believe he would just do that to you.”

“He wouldn’t usually. It was just Becca. Just how she was.”

I nodded. I was barely even aware of how cold it was outside.

“So when I saw you two,” he went on, “it just felt like déjà vu.”

“Well, I’m not … I don’t have any interest in Johnny at all. I hardly even know him.”

“You don’t have to say that. We’re not together.”

He may as well have slapped me. “I know.” My words were hard and restrained.

He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about that. I really am.”

“I never said—”

“No, I know you didn’t. I’m sorry. I’m just …” He looked at me. “I like you. And I want to be with you. But I just can’t.”

“Max, I never said I wanted that. What makes you think you’re the one deciding you and I aren’t more than we are?”

He looked surprised, and that only made me madder.

“Seriously,” I went on, my voice rising a little. “When do you imagine I said anything about feelings for you?”

His face fell a little but I had to ignore it. I opened the door and said, “I’m going.”

A couple of guys were coming down the hallway. I felt my cheeks go red, and I closed the door behind me. They stayed silent, but I heard them start to laugh once I was past them. I flew out of the boys’ dorm door, and heard a lot of noise coming from the hall below. I leaned over the balcony.

“Miss Tobias!”

Professor Crawley, in khakis and a Harvard sweatshirt, was standing and breathing hard at the bottom of the stairs. Susan turned around when he called her name. “Stop running, I’ve already seen you—all of you—so just stop running.”

Susan Tobias was trembling and white as a sheet. “P-please, Mr. Crawley, I—I … My p-parents will kill me!”

“Come with me, and we might be able to work something out.” He ushered her with his hand. “There are only, what, five hundred students at this school? I know who you all are.”

He looked up and caught eyes with me. He crooked his finger to beckon me downstairs.

“We might have been out of bed after curfew, but she just snuck out of the boys’ dorms!” Susan was saying as I descended the stairs.

My heart was pounding. I hated getting caught doing anything. It always mortified me.

“You come with me, too,” he said, once I was next to them.

He led us through two heavy wooden doors and down a hallway. He switched on the lights and opened his office door with a key. “Sit.”

He indicated the seats across from his own, where he sat.

“I’m sorry, I—”

Professor Crawley cut me off. “I’ll talk to you in a second.” He turned toward Susan. “Miss Tobias. You’ve had a lot of detentions lately, haven’t you?” He turned on his computer and typed her name into a search box. “Yes, you have. Six in the past three months. I’m not going to ask you what’s going on. I just need you to stop messing up. You’re going to interfere with your own chances of getting into Northwestern. Also, I hate being dragged out of bed.”

“Yes, Professor Crawley. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, apologize to your future if you screw it up.”

“Yes, Professor Crawley.”

He gave a nod. “Go on to bed now.”

“Thank you, Professor Crawley,” she said quietly, before walking out the door and leaving us alone.

“So what happened with you? The boys’ dorms, really? This surprises me.”

“I wasn’t doing anything—I just had to talk to Max. Holloway. Max Holloway. I had to talk to him about something.”

“Couldn’t wait until the morning?”

I shook my head. My eyes suddenly started to burn, and I surprised myself by getting the urge to cry.

“What’s goin’ on?”

I shook my head and fought back the tears. “I don’t even know. I’m just so frustrated. I feel like all he thinks about is Her, and everyone’s always talking about it—Becca this, and Becca that—and I’m just not trying to be her—I don’t want what she had. Well, I mean, I do, I want him but that’s just a coincidence, it wasn’t on purpose. And everyone thinks it is, I feel like. And I went home and even Michael knew. Michael! He doesn’t know anything, and yet he knew about Her. And then we got in that big fight, and it’s just like even if I wanted to, I can’t even go home, and I don’t want to go to school with Leah anymore, because she’s just … ugh sometimes, you know? Plus then every time I go up to my room here, there’s Dana, just waitin’ to be weird as hell. Blake’s nice and everything, so that’s cool, and I mean, you know, sometimes it really does feel like Max likes me. But why does Dana care so much? It’s like I get sticking up for your friend, but … And what if she really comes back? Not that I don’t want her to be okay or anything.” I took a deep breath. I’d been staring at a spot on the desk, my words getting faster and more high-pitched as I spoke. I looked up at Professor Crawley and shook my head again. “I’m sorry.”

“Quite all right,” he said.

“I’m okay. Really. Like … all that stuff is just pissing me off. It’s not like I’m troubled or anything.”

“No, I understand perfectly well what you’re saying. I don’t know that I understood half of what you said, but I get that you’re frustrated. But you’re okay, you say?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded, and then opened his mouth to say something before closing it again. He leaned in on his desk and looked at me. “Listen. Kids your age love to obsess. Half of them didn’t even know Becca. But once she was missing, they all appropriated the pain and suffering. It’s just what people do. Also, they’ve idolized her. They took her from being a normal human being, and turned her into some kind of deity of popularity. I’m not saying anything negative about Miss Normandy. But you just have to remember that no one is perfect. Not even her.”

“Right. I’ll remember that.”

“All right. Feel better.”

“Thanks.” I stood to leave.

“Oh, and don’t sneak into the boys’ dorms again. If you want gossip started about you, that’s the fastest way to get it.”

When I got to my hall, I saw that almost all the doors were open, and everyone was talking.

“What happened?” I asked Madison when I saw her standing against a wall, her hand over her mouth.

“We should have known this would happen eventually.” She was shaking her head and looking upset.

“What happened?”

“Someone else was watching the tapes.”

Julia took over. “There’s this … slow guy who works with the security team, and he usually watches at night. Becca cut some deal with him last year. He usually points the cameras away for a little while or something. I guess he wasn’t the one watching tonight, or something. Or maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.”

Madison wiped the black tears from her cheeks. “At least last year he listened to Becca.”

“Listened to her how?”

Julia shrugged. “I don’t know, she talked to him one time and he agreed to keep quiet about seeing us walk down to the boathouse and everything on the other cameras. He works the overnight shifts on weekends. It was really convenient.”

I’d had no idea I’d been risking so much by going down to the boathouse those few times. I thought it … well, I guess I never thought about it.

“That sucks.” I tried to look sympathetic. “Anyway. I’m going to bed. I’m sorry you guys got in trouble.”

I pushed open my door and went in, threw off my clothes without bothering to find pajamas, and crawled into my stiff bed. A few minutes later, Dana came in. She said nothing, but started laughing. I lay there, without acknowledging her, until she sighed and went silent.

Welcome back to Manderley.

chapter 22 me

THE DINING HALL THE NEXT DAY WAS AWASH with “FIND BECCA” T-shirts.

I spotted my usual table easily in the sea of pink. I sat next to Blake, and ignored Max.

“Does it ever stop being cold here?” I asked, at a loss for anything else to say.

“Usually in April or May,” said Blake. “So did you hear about the bust last night? Cam and I almost went!”

“Yeah, I heard a little bit.”

“A bunch of people went down to the boathouse last night,” Blake explained to Max. “But apparently a bunch of people got caught. Professor Crawley came down with security guards, and then Crawley chased a bunch of people up to the school.”

“It’s crazy, dude,” Cam said, his mouth full of waffle. “Like fifteen people got a week study hall, and it’s going on their record.”

“I feel like it was more than fifteen.” Blake looked at Cam. “In any case, it’s a lot, and that so easily could have been us.”

Cam’s eyes were wide with the thought of it. “On any other day, it would have been us. I mean—”

Dana ran over before Cam could say whatever he’d been about to. She was wearing one of the pink shirts.

“I have to talk to you, Max.” Her voice was higher than usual, and her words were running together. She looked pleased.

“What?” Max asked.

“Just come with me.”

He followed her out of the dining hall, and the three of us sat watching the doorway until he came back in, looking green. None of us said anything.

Whatever she said, he looked to be taking it very seriously.

When they’d finished, Max came back to us.

“What happened?” Blake asked him as soon as he found his way into the chair.

He ignored her and looked at me. “Dana saw her last night.”

All of us froze, and I felt like I’d been punched hard in the chest.

“Becca.” Blake gasped her name. “She saw her? Where?”

“At the boathouse, apparently. After everyone got caught, Dana stayed behind to hide. When she came out, she says she saw her. Becca told her she’d been about to come into the boathouse when she saw Professor Crawley, and hid.”

Blake dropped her spoon and leaned back and away from her yogurt.

“If she’s back, why won’t she just come out?” she asked. “What’s she doing, just creeping around the beach? Seriously?”

“Come on,” said Max. “Can you not see how this would make perfect sense to Becca? She loves having people think about her. I can completely picture her just shrugging and saying it’s funny to watch everyone wonder.”

Blake nodded. “Okay, yeah, that is true.”

I stood and ran after Dana. I caught up to her in the rotunda, where she was sitting in one of the itchy chairs and writing in a notebook.

“What’s up?” She looked at me with all kinds of smugness in her smile.

“If this isn’t true, you know that it’s really wrong to lie, right? If she wasn’t here, and she’s somewhere else, then everyone will be looking in the wrong place.”

She smiled toothily, and I noticed her canine teeth were sharp and looked threatening. “What’s wrong, new girl, you afraid of what’s going to happen to you and Max?”

“Stop calling me that! And I’m not. But if you’re sure, don’t you think you should tell someone?”

“I was just about to. Is that all right with you?”

“I’m just saying it’s pitch-black out there, and I know you miss her. You were probably drunk, and maybe you just … saw what you wanted to see?”

I didn’t know why I was saying it, or what I expected to gain. I felt my cheeks go hot with embarrassment. Dana’s face, on the other hand, went paler than usual. Her eyes narrowed, and I could hear her heavy breathing.

“Why don’t you just back off? What is wrong with you? It’s like you’re obsessed with her or something!” All of a sudden she was screaming. “You’re just psycho! Aren’t you? You just want to be her! You don’t want her to come back because you want to be the new girl! You want to marry Max instead of her! You want to—”

Johnny walked out of the dorm and came over to her, and I felt Max come up behind me. I suddenly felt okay. I wasn’t alone in this.

“Dana, hey,” Johnny said as he grabbed her. “Chill out.”

She shifted her gaze to him, looking crazed.

“Calm down. It’s okay.” He was speaking to her like an overemotional child.

But it was working. Her breathing slowed a little, and she collapsed into him. Johnny looked at Max and gave him a small shake of the head.

We all stood there for a minute with a quiet dining hall behind us. I could feel eyes on me. Then, very suddenly, Dana covered her face and turned to run up the stairs.

“What happened?” he asked Max.

“Becca. She saw Becca.”

Johnny looked steadily at Max and I saw the vein throb in his forearm as he clenched his fist. “Really.”

“Apparently.”

Johnny looked like he didn’t know what to do with the information. He was staring at the floor with wide eyes.

I wondered, as I looked at him, if he’d had real feelings for her. He certainly looked as though he had. I remembered the way he’d talked about her in the study room. He had said that there was more to her. That not everyone had gotten to know her. He and Becca had hooked up—but had it been more than that for them?

By the time I came back to reality, Max and I were alone.

“I have to go study.” He didn’t look at me. “I’ll find you later.”

I went back into the hall, and took my and Max’s barely touched trays to the kitchen.

I wasn’t hungry anymore.

The school was buzzing with gossip for the rest of the week. Everyone was whispering about how she had been seen again. She was back.

For whatever reason, the increased theorizing of Becca’s imminent return made me a target of even more stares. Why this was the case was a mystery to me. It’s not like if she came back, we’d have a Godzilla versus Mothra fight and she’d take back her old bed and send me out onto the curb to wait for a cab. If she came back, she wouldn’t even be able to finish out the year, surely. I didn’t know what her return would mean. Still, people looked at me as if that was exactly what would happen.