Page 22 of The Initial Insult

I tell them in the office that I need a locker reassignment. The secretary gives my little jean shorts a glance and tells me that locker placements aren’t negotiable. I tell her there’s a used condom in mine, and that I’m going to call my dad—who is on the school board—if they don’t change it. Right now.

That gets her moving. She points me to a chair and goes to the inner office door, says something muffled to Mrs. Anho, the principal. I text Hugh, thumbs flashing, giving him my locker number and combo and asking him if he can put a used condom in it.

He doesn’t even ask why, just sends me a thumbs-up. He’s been protecting me from mean girls, older boys, and the occasional creepy adult ever since a senior snapped my bikini top at the pool in seventh grade. Hugh “accidentally” did a cannonball right on top of his head, which resulted in the squad being called and Hugh getting kicked out of the pool for the rest of the summer.

But Hugh can’t fix everything. He can’t save me from the past, or what I did. The secretary gives my shorts another glance, and I nervously tug on the hems. When I’m sitting down, they are way shorter than I thought. Great. I told myself what I wore today was going to announce to everyone who Felicity Turnado is. Apparently, she’s a little tramp who needs a boy to bail her out when she has panic attacks.

I lean forward, putting my head in my hands, letting my hair fall in sheets on either side of me, shutting out the world.

Shutting out Tress Montor.

Chapter 18

Felicity

“No, it wasn’t like that,” I say as Tress balances a brick in her palm. She looks at me over the edge, dubious.

“Wasn’t like what?” she repeats. “Wasn’t like you had your locker moved so that you didn’t have to be near me?”

“No, Tress . . .”

I clear my throat, thinking hard. It’s difficult when it feels like my head is spinning one direction, my gut another.

“It’s so hard,” I tell her. “I . . .”

Words are slipping, sliding away from me as my focus fades, my vision going in and out. I can’t weigh everything carefully, can’t evaluate each syllable and second like I usually would. As Tress wanted: I’m stuck with being honest.

“I can’t even look at you,” I say, and that flicker of interest that was in her face goes still and hard.

“This wall gets high enough, pretty soon you won’t have to,” she says.

She lays a brick, the wet smell of the mortar rising into my nose.

“No, wait,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”

Tress reaches for another, and I’m utterly quiet.

But she lays it anyway.

Chapter 19

Tress

Felicity is not catching on quickly.

She needs a minute after I put down the second row of bricks, so I go upstairs, listening again at the door for noises in the kitchen. There aren’t any, and when I open it even the couple from the corner is gone. The music is still on, the single speaker belting out a tune for no one and nothing. The running hum of the party is gone, too. I’m tense, listening, poised like I’ve seen the cat do when he doesn’t like something he hears.

Or doesn’t hear.

Then it comes, a wall of sound—laughter, actually—rolling from the entrance hall. I relax, square my shoulders, flick some wet mortar off my hands, and pull my hood back up before following the sound. The party isn’t over; it’s just relocated. Hugh is holding court at the top of the staircase, admirers fanned out across the steps below him as he holds a phone up to capture . . . Ribbit?

“What the fuck?” I whisper to myself, slipping behind a group of freshmen who weren’t lucky enough to score a spot on the steps. They’ve got their phones out, too, and Ribbit is neatly squared in their sights.

“Now,” Hugh says loudly, positioning his chair—a ridiculously overstuffed thing someone must have pulled from in front of the fireplace—so that he’s at an angle to Ribbit, whose chair is smaller. He sways in it, the legs wobbling with his attempts to sit straight.

“Let’s get a volunteer from the audience,” Hugh says.

“What’s going on?” I ask, tugging on a girl’s elbow.