LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      When Friday night came and there was no boathouse to sneak down to, every girl on the hallway had to scream and shout in their dorms. It was nearly impossible to sleep. Eventually I drifted into unconsciousness, my head killing me and my blankets wrapped tightly around me to ward off the chill coming through the shut window.

      Time passed, and finally everything was quiet and dark. In the hall, in my room, in my head. But then something was stealing me from my nothing-dreams.

      It was a small voice, practically a musical whisper in the blackness. My eyes snapped open like a baby doll’s as I realized first that I was awake, and then that the sound I heard was real. I couldn’t make it out at first. But finally I realized this was Dana’s voice. Singing “You Are My Sunshine.” To herself.

      I felt paralyzed.

      “… you make me happy when skies are gray …”

      I felt a little panicky, and fully awake.

       “… please don’t take my sunshine away …”

      And she finished singing, and went silent. As if it had never happened.

      chapter 23 me

      THE PINK BECCA SHIRTS WOULDN’T GO AWAY. Particularly when Valentine’s Day rolled around. I just wore my uniform, making me stand out even more than usual. I kind of wished the administration would ban those shirts, but apparently they didn’t mind.

      Everyone’s minds were on love, and so that’s most of what people were talking about. Every time I heard the words love, perfect or romantic I wanted to punch something. Perhaps because every time I heard those words I, and everyone else, thought of Becca and Max.

      I’d heard so much about how “perfect,” “in love” and “romantic” they were. I knew they were “adorable together.” So when the words were flying around like cupid’s arrows, I felt like all I could do was duck for cover.

      Max and I were not speaking. He asked to talk to me a few times, but I couldn’t bear to be told again that he just couldn’t be with me. I’d heard that enough. I also resisted the urge to ask him what he and Becca had done last year. Probably flown off to Paris and fed each other chocolate croissants while getting silly and light-headed off mimosas.

      I headed to the Black Box Theater in the art department, where they were airing a movie about romance in Paris.

      I passed by Susan Tobias, who said nothing to me. She tossed her long, straight blond hair over her shoulder. It did look a lot like Becca’s hair.

      No one was in the theater, but the lights were down, and the movie had just started to flicker on. I could hardly see around me. I sighed, feeling more lonely and pitiful than ever, and sat down in one of the seats.

      The movie was slow, overacted and impossible to pay attention to. I hadn’t even been tired, but I found myself falling asleep. At a certain point, I realized I didn’t even know what the plot was. I was just watching this woman have emotions about something or other.

      Then, quite suddenly, the lonely woman in her flat vanished and was quickly replaced by—what looked like—burning paper, and then a white screen. It stayed that way.

      I looked around. I got up and looked in the projector box. The guy running the projector was gone.

      My Valentine’s Day date with myself even sucked. I trudged sadly up the stairs and into my hall.

      It was filled with people, going in and out of rooms, laughing and dancing, looking woozy, making out, and/or fighting. Like any good party. Almost all of these things came to a halt as I rounded the corner.

      Like any Manderley party.

      Madison

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