“It’s up to you, Kippy.” He sighs. “You can either borrow the two-handed machete—a collectors item (four hundred dollars plus shipping from eBay.com)—or my bear spray, which I got for twelve eighty-nine at the Buck Fleet.” He screws up his mouth. “Given the costliness of the machete, I would have to charge a rental fee, is that all right?” He yanks the machete across the carpet, balances it on its head so I can get a better look at it, and wiggles the Ursidae can in his other hand.
I take the bear spray from him and put it in my backpack.
Uggggh, Ruth here. Sometimes I get up and it’s, like, sad or something, how beautiful I am. Because you know it’s only going to go away at some point and I’ll end up looking like Mom, and even if I don’t have children, I’ll get chubbier and wrinkled and my boobs will sag. I’m just saying, it’s a lot to lose.
Based on how much more attention I get, I’m pretty sure Kippy’s jealous (who isn’t?). And I’d feel worse for her on that point, because there are a lot of girls I look at and go, “Oh you poor, poor thing. You’re you”—except if I were going to be jealous of anybody—and let’s face it, I’m not—it’d probably be Kippy, just based on how different she looks from me. She’s basically the ying to my yang. Like she’s totally flat chested and superpale, but the real reason no one’s ever asked her to a dance is because she wears those turtlenecks and screen-printed sweatshirts with stuff like ducks or elk on them. Plus her pick-up lines need work—the other day I literally heard her telling her lab partner, “Tommy Jenkins, I truly appreciate your skill with the Bunsen burner”—and she could stand to wash her hair more often. Sometimes she literally has dirt on her face and I’m like, “Grrrrl, seriously. If this is just the tip of the iceberg, I worry about your vagina.”
But, like, it’s all stuff she could correct if she really wanted to. Cuz really she’s got nice skin and these gray eyes, and whenever she gets angry or embarrassed her cheeks grow red circles like some kind of fucking china doll. Oh and she’s a proper goy, my Mom says—as in, her hair’s actually blond even when she needs to take a shower, and not just some shitty light-brown color, like all those girls who say they’re blond just because they were when they were babies—so booyah, wannabees. Probably in New York they’d call her exotic or something. But we’re here, obviously, so people mostly tell her to eat more and whisper a lot about whether she’s albino. Albinos have red eyes, motherfuckers, go read a goddamn book.
ANIMALS ATTACK
At school the next day, a lot of people are wearing black armbands, which is pretty annoying. What email list am I not on that I’m not getting the memos about vigils and coordinated grief gear?
The worst part is that it actually occurred to me to wear some black today. Last night I read another diary entry—which was superlong, and took me forever to decode and transcribe—and it had a nugget of niceness in it, which turned me into a major crybaby and made me want to do something cliché in Ruth’s honor. Like, root around in my drawer for a black turtleneck. I even had it laid out on the carpet so I wouldn’t forget. But ultimately I decided it’d be too obvious to wear something like that the first day back and that everyone would think I just wanted attention—like, “Look at me! Look at me! My friend died.” So now here I am prowling the hallways in a rainbow turtleneck while everyone else is dressed up like yesterday was 9/11.
As I walk to first period I see that someone’s put Ruth Fried Foundation Brigade posters on all the lockers. Ruth’s school picture takes up most of each page, and then underneath it says:
MEETING TONIGHT
AT 6 AT COURTHOUSE
SAME SPOT!! SAME WINDOW!! SAME GOAL!!
(Bring markers and donations.)
It’s crazy that they think they’re honoring Ruth’s memory by terrorizing Colt.
The bell rings for first hour and I duck into AP Chemistry. As soon as I walk through the door, the whole room goes quiet. Every person at every lab table is staring at me behind their Bunsen burners. In a way it’s sort of reassuring. Part of me thought nobody would recognize me without Ruth around. I guess there are perks to being the dead girl’s friend, even if you’re the only one not wearing black.
Right away I feel evil for thinking that and remind myself that most of my classmates probably saw me give that speech at Ruth’s funeral, which sort of makes me want to crawl into one of the Bunsen burners. If I had known there were going to be nice parts in her diary, I would have talked about the year we went as the couple from American Gothic for Halloween, or when we won the fifth-grade cake walk and made ourselves sick eating the entire prize in one sitting, or the time we went sledding one winter at the golf course, and I veered off the path into the pond and fell through the ice, and it was just the shallow part but she trudged in wearing her snow pants and dragged me out by my foot.
If I could talk to Ruth right now I’d tell her sorry about that eulogy and that I don’t care about the diary or that she was bitchy sometimes. I’m afraid I’ll never meet anyone like you, I’d say. And maybe that’s sappy, but could you please just be alive? Please.
I plop down in the front row. There’s whispering behind my back but it’s interrupted by an announcement over the loudspeaker. “Kippy Bushman, please report to Mr. Jake’s office.”
If I were being ushered to Principal Hannycack’s office, then at least the whole class would have treated me probably like everybody else and gone, “Oooohhh.” But nobody ever makes any noise about Mr. Jake, because the only people who get sent there during class time are the cutters and the anorexics—or else the ADHD kids, like, if their parents call because they’ve forgotten to take their meds at breakfast. You’d think that being the daughter of a school psychologist would make me less prejudiced about going to see my own school’s guidance counselor. But someone has to kick my chair before I even leave my seat.
Dom says he and Mr. Jake have differing viewpoints on what it means to be helpful. I think they’re competitive. For instance, Dom goes by Mr. Bushman, thinking kids need a friendly authority figure, whereas Mr. Jake goes by his first name, thinking it’s better for students to see him as a friend. Up until now, my only interactions with him have been when he gives presentations to our health class. Last time he was there, he kept talking about how to use sex as a “relationship builder” instead of “orgasm teamwork.” I watched him from the back row while Ruth and I stepped on each other’s feet and tried to keep from laughing.
When I enter his office, Mr. Jake spins to face me in a magenta swivel chair and taps the floor with a yardstick, which he’s holding like some kind of cane. Mr. Jake is bald with a goatee. He’s also wearing a tie with a turtleneck, which I don’t really understand.
“Hey pal.” Even he’s got on a black armband.
The room is wallpapered with motivational posters, which all have a lot of dolphins on them, for some reason, and each piece of furniture is a happy color, including the three bookshelves, which stand in a rainbow against the wall and hold a wide array of self-help books. Think and Grow Rich. Crazy Sexy Diet. The Fine Art of Flirting. Mr. Jake uses the yardstick to gesture toward a bright-yellow couch where Libby Quinn is sitting with her arms and legs crossed, wearing an armband. “Hi Katie,” she says, crossing her arms and puckering her lips. Sure enough, she’s switched gears since her text message yesterday and is now furious for some reason.