Tease(3)

Natalie finally shuts up for a minute, just as I get to sixteen white cars. When she speaks again, I hear her. I mean, I forget to block out her voice out, so it gets in.

“We’re trying to get you out of this. A girl is dead, and everyone wants to hold you and your friends accountable for what happened.”

“But we’re not,” I blurt out. “We didn’t do anything.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It should be.”

Natalie heaves a big sigh. “I know, but it’s just not. People are sad and angry and they just want to see how sorry you are.”

But that’s the thing right there.

I’m not sorry.

Emma was a boyfriend-stealing bitch right up until the day in March when she killed herself.

I didn’t do anything wrong, but she totally ruined my life.

By the time I get back to my old Honda Accord, it’s basically an oven inside. The dark upholstery soaked up every minute of sunshine, so even though I’m finally free from the damn interrogation room, I can’t leave yet—I have to stand around with the doors open and the fans turned on full blast, waiting for the seats to cool down enough to just sit. I lean carefully against the back door, making sure none of my skin touches the metal, and check my phone. All I have is a text from my mom about picking up milk and an unfinished game on my Free Cell app.

I’m supposed to go to the therapist now, and then home to do summer schoolwork. This is seriously the funnest summer ever. And people wonder why I’m not crying about Emma all the time.

I wonder what Brielle told her lawyers about the locker room thing. Everyone seems to know a version of something by now. Most of the school has been interviewed by someone, and there were a lot of people in that locker room, and at school with us, and at the other schools Emma went to. Well, maybe not a lot in the locker room. Not a teacher, anyway. Not the one girl Emma had been sort of friends with, Megan Corley. Megan is kind of slutty too, and they didn’t always get along. Since March Megan’s been everywhere, including on a trip to New York to be on the Today show with her mom. I guess Brielle and I weren’t very nice to Megan, either, because she’s basically called us murderers on national television.

And now the whole world thinks Emma Putnam killed herself because we called her a slut—not because she was a slut. That makes sense.

Waving my hand around in the car, I decide it’s safe to at least sit on the edge of the front seat. Sweat is starting to make my shirt stick to my back and I aim one of the vents toward it, but there’s not much point.

The real mistake I’m making, at least according to Natalie, is acting like I don’t care that we were mean to Emma. No matter how much I try to explain that Emma did her share of crap to us, that it wasn’t this big conspiracy like the papers keep saying, it doesn’t matter. So now I have a lawyer, Brielle has a lawyer, the guys have their lawyers. We’re all blaming each other. No one’s blaming Emma for anything.

My chances of graduating on time are slim to none. I might never get into college. But if I’m more careful, if I work hard and do what Natalie says and be sorry, things might be okay, even if we go to trial.

That’s what they all say. But it’s not like I was ever getting into Harvard or anything. I wasn’t such a great student before all this. And I’m not saying I was a great person, either. It’s just—it’s like Brielle said, after it happened: Emma got off easy. Everyone keeps saying she’s not here to defend herself—but I’m here, and it seriously sucks. It’s like, someone dies, so everyone left alive is automatically guilty.

Except, in this case, only five of us are. And with all the separate lawyers and charges, my best hope is to just avoid taking all the blame.

After another minute of the car not cooling down, I sigh and pull my red-flip-flopped feet in, yank the door shut, and try to steer out of the parking space with my fingertips. Muttering every curse word I know, I almost don’t see the person walking up to the passenger-side window until she’s tapping on it.

“Gah!” I scream, slamming on the brakes and accidentally grabbing the wheel. My hands are instantly scorched and I curse again.

Outside the car I hear, “God, you skank, you almost ran me over!”

Brielle.

I put the car back into park right where it is, halfway out of the space, and jump out again. Sweat is pouring down my back and my neck now, but Brielle looks fresh as a daisy. She’s actually wearing a loose white tank top with daisy cutouts around the hem.

“Hey,” she says easily, like we haven’t just spent a solid ten weeks not speaking. I haven’t even been able to Facebook-stalk her—Natalie made my mom shut down my account. Which was just as well; if I thought the people at the grocery store were mean, I was completely unprepared for what they’d be like online. I probably should’ve closed the account myself, instead of staying up until two a.m. every night, looking at how many insanely mean comments people posted under any and all photos I was tagged in. Hundreds of mean things, millions. A lot of dislike out there.

“Hi,” I say lamely. I must look like a nutjob, almost driving into her and then jumping out of my car like it’s on fire. Pulling my shirt out a little, to let some air in between it and my back, I try to smile at my (former?) BFF and say something normal. “Your, um—your lawyer’s office is here, too?” I guess I was right; that must’ve been her SUV I saw.