Chapter 22
Tress
Felicity’s face falls, and her knees go out, her wrists alone supporting her as she sags. Her head drops, the jester cap sliding to the front again, but I saw her expression when I hit her with shame, and it told me everything I need to know. She went from pretty to ugly with just one word, the spark behind her eyes when we laughed suddenly stomped out. I know what defeat looks like. I know shame, thoroughly and completely.
Felicity Turnado knows something. And I’m going to find out what.
But I need her full attention in order to do that, and right now it looks like she needs to stew for a minute. My phone goes off in my pocket—again—and I pull it out for a glance. Cecil is actually attempting to text for the first time in his life, since I’m not answering any of his calls.
Cat dance. Kill some odyssey were
I stare at it for a second, completely lost. I end up having to retype everything into my phone and take some suggestions from autocorrect to try to translate it. What I finally work out is: “Cat dangerous. Kills somebody and we’re done.”
“No shit,” I say to my phone. What Cecil didn’t do is send any suggestions about how a person is supposed to go about capturing a panther and leading it docilely back to its cage in the middle of the night. I know there’s a dart gun back at home, but stalking a cat is a dangerous business that becomes impossible when it’s a black cat in utter darkness.
Nope. Cecil will have to wait. Or sober up and do it himself—there’s a thought.
My phone vibrates in my hand, drawing my attention to a string of tweets and Instagram posts featuring the hashtags I’d set on notifications—#HonestUsher and #TrueLoser. There are hundreds of alerts, and they’re picking up steam. People I know are using it, but it’s being retweeted and reposted at an alarming rate, strangers getting in on the game. Someone even has a livestream going on Facebook . . . and it has over three hundred viewers at the moment.
I hop on to see Ribbit leaning dangerously to one side of his chair; the only thing apparently balancing him is a beer in the other hand. Somebody is keeping him refreshed, making sure the show doesn’t end before they’re done watching.
“Next question,” Hugh says, and the camera goes over to him, large and kingly in his stuffed chair.
“What are you doing?” I ask the screen. Hugh’s a good guy; we’ve got a friendship that’s rooted in my cock-and-balls shirt from freshman year. I know that if I send him a text right now and ask him to stop, he will.
But I don’t.
“This one is from . . .” Hugh glances at his phone, seems confused, then starts again. “This person wants to know if you’ve ever shit your pants.”
The camera swings back to Ribbit, who seems to be thinking very hard. “Yes,” he says, his face dead serious. “You know the pizza they sell at the pool?”
The whole crowd groans, and the camera pans them, some people nodding enthusiastically, wanting to know the rest, others covering their mouths in horror.
“It runs right through you,” Ribbit says, enjoying the reaction. “You know . . . runs?”
The camera swings back to Hugh for a reaction, but his eyes are on his phone as he scrolls through it.
“I tried to make it to the bathroom,” Ribbit goes on, turning to the crowd. “But even though I was running . . .” He leans into the pun, enjoying the shocked reactions. He pauses for effect. “I didn’t quite make it. I’m pretty sure I left a little something in the pool.”
Everybody goes nuts, some people overjoyed, others disgusted. Brynn Whitaker goes up to Hugh, clearly unhappy. She grabs his arm, whispers something in his ear. Ribbit spots her and points with his beer hand, froth splashing over the front-row viewers.
“You were there,” he says, speech slurring. “You had on a pink bikini.”
The crowd whoops, and Brynn gets a few catcalls, the concerned look on her face quickly switching over to anger.
“Your boob popped out,” Ribbit continues. “I held on to that image for months. Like, really held on to it,” he says, and mimes jerking off.
The Facebook stream goes nuts along with the crowd upstairs. Hearts and laughing faces and thumbs-ups are flying across my screen when I switch over to text. My fingers hover for a minute, debating. The hashtags are gaining momentum and the livestream has a thousand people now. Me texting Hugh isn’t going to stop this. Brynn shakes off Hugh’s hand when he tries to grab her, and she storms off. I watch her exit the screen accompanied by the hard strikes of her footsteps above my head as she stomps away.
Bells jingle, and I glance up. Felicity has raised her head, fresh tears streaking down her face. “Tress,” she says, my name barely a whisper. “I don’t know anything. You’ve got to believe me.”
“Yeah.” I shove my phone into my back pocket and stand up, the chair creaking under me. “See, the thing is . . . I don’t.”
Another roll of laughter comes from upstairs, loud enough to reach us in our solitude.
“What’s going on?” Felicity asks, eyes going to the floor above us.
“Ribbit got drunk,” I tell her. “He’s answering anything anybody asks him, and it’s going viral.”
Felicity shakes her head. “They’ll eat him alive.”
I shrug. “They’re your friends.”
“It’s your cousin,” she snaps back. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
“I am doing something,” I tell her, and I pick up a brick.
She goes quiet and watchful, eyes following me.
“Eighty-eight bricks,” Felicity says, the fever spots in her cheeks brighter now. “Eighty-eight bricks and Lucy should just buy all the apples; that way everyone can have as many as they want.”
“Or maybe,” I say, weighing the brick in my hand before I lay the third row. “Maybe she has to steal them, because she’s fucking poor.”
There’s a lull upstairs, and I hear the clock, running backward to chime the hour.
Chapter 23
Felicity
Sixth Grade
My phone lights up with a text, and my heart goes up into my throat when I see the name. I play it cool as I go downstairs, stepping over the pile of shoes Mom set aside to go to the yard sale fundraiser to benefit the PTO. She became the president right after I started having seizures, and now she’s at the school all the time. Mom always manages to find something to do in my classroom, one eye on me. Last week David Evans told me my mom was hot, and I stomped on his foot. I got in trouble and had to apologize to him in front of the class.
“Do we hit boys?” Mom asked in the car on the way home, the school buses I’m not allowed to ride anymore blocking traffic.
“No,” I muttered, and she nodded, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“What do we do when a boy says something nice to us?”
“Say thank you.” I repeated the lesson she’s been drilling into me since I started to get boobs, but David didn’t say something nice to me. He said it about my mom. And his face didn’t look nice when he said it.
“Moooom,” I call out, scanning the empty first floor from the open staircase.