Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (27 page)

“You have to fix this,” Eric says, shaking his head. “Delete the comments and turn comments off. I can’t believe you let people post anonymously without moderating. What the hell were you thinking, Cass?”

My mind is empty. I was thinking … that people would be nicer? That nobody would really read it? “I didn’t think I’d be able to get on the computer much to moderate,” I say. “I didn’t think it would matter much because the whole blog is anonymous.”

“You didn’t think,” says Eric. “You didn’t think this could get real.”

Is it real? I mean, is it that bad? It’s still just one post on a silly blog. I’ll delete the comments and only a handful of people will have seen them, and really, who’s going to believe it was actually me who commented? Why would I have given my name when nobody else did?

“Look, Eric, my name is there, too, okay? I’m deleting them.”

“Dinner!” Mom calls from the dining room, and I remember poor Darin, in there with my dad. “I’ll finish as soon as we’re done eating,” I say.

“No. Do it now.” Eric stands guard, and I hastily change my blog settings to full comment moderation.

“Damn it, there are already eight more comments.” All anonymous, all making mean comments about Drew, and a few about me as well. Drew’s dirty hair is mentioned in five of them, and the other three are much worse, full of disgusting speculation about her hygiene and sexual health. “Oh god, they’re horrible.” I begin to delete the comments, but I can only delete one at a time, so the going is slow. At least the new comments land only in my Divinia Starr email account now, instead of going straight up. Still. Is everyone from school reading the blog at this exact instant?

“Hurry.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“Helpful was when I warned you ages ago not to play this game.”

“Look, I’m going as fast as I can, okay? You can go on about how you told me so once I’m done, but right now I’ve got”—I check the total—“sixty-six more comments to attend to.”

“Eric and Cassandra, we’re waiting.” My dad. There’s no arguing with this summoning.

“I got the worst of them,” I say, closing the browser. “The poems are gone, and the names. I’ll get the rest after dinner, I swear.” I chew on my bottom lip. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” I look to Eric for any scrap of forgiveness, but he only shakes his head and scowls as he pushes past me on his way into the dining room.

“You didn’t mean it,” he mutters, “but you could have prevented it.”

42. Something you
should have done …

Kayla finally comes back to school, and for the second time in as many months, she’s waiting for me when I get off the bus, except this time she’s got nothing to say. We stare at each other, silent.

“You didn’t return my calls,” I say. “I was worried.”

“
I
was worried,” she says. “I did everything wrong, Cass. Every single thing.” She looks terrible, her face all sallow and miserable. “I saw the blog,” she says.

“Yeah. It’s kind of all messed up, isn’t it?” I hitch my backpack up onto my shoulder and make a face. “I’m sorry my church is being stupid about the carnival.”

Kayla makes a face, her mouth quirked up on one corner like it does when she’s being a smartass. “Yeah, my weekend antics didn’t really help the cause.” She stops, drags her toe through the layer of slop on the ground. “I wasn’t really driving, you know.”

“Were you … otherwise engaged?” I can’t really look at her, so I make designs in the slush, too.

“Ew, gross, is that what they’re saying? I was
asleep
.” She giggles and pulls her coat tight, looking up at the sky. Her eyeliner is a mess, and to be honest, she looks like she hasn’t slept in days. “Bryan was driving and he slid off the road, which is why we were found by the cops.”

“Are you … okay?”

“Like, did I get hurt?”

“Like, are you
okay
?” I shiver. It occurs to me that it’s not always such a bad thing to be the boring friend, the sane one. I start walking again, toward the school.

“I guess. Are
we
okay?”

Kayla has never asked me anything remotely similar to that in her life. “You’re sure you didn’t get a head injury?” I say.

As if on cue, a wet, sloppy snowball collides with my own head. “What the … ” I look around, wiping nasty slush off the side of my face. “Ew, it got in my ear!”

“What the
hell
is your problem?” Kayla has identified the attacker and is giving him a hand signal that does not mean truce. Another snowball lobs toward us, but she opens the door to the school and blocks it. Splat! The wet mess slides down the safety glass.

“That was so gross.” I shake the snow out of my collar and run my fingers through my hair. “And uncalled for.”

“Cass?” Drew looks as though she’s been waiting for me. She looks desperate.

“Oh, uh … hey.” I busy my hands with my once-again-soaked mittens. “What’s up?”
What’s up.
As if I don’t know.

“You … you didn’t read Divinia Starr?” Her whole face is trembling like a beaten puppy. I want nothing more than to flee this conversation.

I fight to keep my tone neutral, thoughtful. “Hm, yeah, I think so. Britney showed me some comments or something last night when I was working on the newspaper. She said they were from Joyful News.” I shrug, feigning cluelessness. “I don’t really get into that stuff, you know.” I try to walk away, to extract myself painlessly from this moment. Obviously she read the catastrophe. But what does that mean? How many other people read it? Do they really think I wrote those awful things?

“Cass. It’s all over the school. Everyone’s talking about it.” She reaches for my elbow, but I feel her desperation and move past her, like an eel. A slippery eel.

“Stop this! Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she says. “The other comments, Cass.”

I turn to see her face dissolve—in an instant, she’s nothing but soggy despair.

“I only wanted some advice, and now everyone has seen my poetry, and … ” She crushes her fists into her eyes and then searches my face desperately. “It wasn’t you, was it? Look, I know it was stupid, to write to the blog about something I should have just talked to you about … ”

“It wasn’t me.” I take a half step toward her, but then I stop. “Drew, I swear. Those poems … ”

Out of nowhere, a crowd has formed—it’s not exactly obvious yet that they’re gathering to watch Drew and me, but the traffic in this hall has definitely slowed and people are milling around in clumps, their murmured conversations lulled. They stare, talking behind their hands. Are they talking about me, what a bitch I am, or are they talking about her, what a loser she is? It doesn’t matter. “It wasn’t me!”

Drew shakes her head. “But my poems—”

“Cassie!” The crowd parts for Annika and Britney, trailing their mechanical minions.

I turn to look at them, incredulous. Do they really think I’m going to act like we’re friends after they set me up like this? They stole the poems and then ridiculed them on the blog
while pretending to be me
. They’re evil in pink lip gloss, basically.

“It was them,” I say to Drew. “It was Annika and Britney.”

“Cassie, we
need
to talk,” says Britney. “Seriously, this cannot wait.”

“You gave them my poems?” Drew asks. Her voice is soft, hurt.

I shake my head. “You
wanted
me to give them your poems.”

Her face is so covered with tears, it’s no longer pitiable. It’s gross. I take a step back. Of all the people in this school who could want to be my best friend, why Drew Godfrey? That “off” smell of her. The way she stands too close. All of this drama, over what? A heavy weight sinks into my stomach. Over me using her, that’s what.

“Cassie, OMG, is this that creepy girl who’s stalking you or what?” says Annika.

“Is this the loser from the Divinia Starr blog? OMG!” echoes Britney. A murmur of shocked voices from the robots.

“Cassie, we want you to know we don’t blame you for telling her off like you did,” Annika says, her pink nails digging into my arm. “I mean, it was deleted right away by Divinia Starr, but luckily someone got a screenshot.”

“Yeah, it’s basically gone viral. You’re, like, a celebrity, Cassie.”

“Whatever, I’m out of here,” I say, looking around for Kayla. She’s gone. Melted away into the crowd, like always. And here I thought maybe things were changing.

“I told you to give them the poems, but you
knew
I wanted to remain anonymous,” says Drew. Her voice has a little hiccup in it now and her eyes look sort of bleak, like. Sort of dead. “I didn’t want anyone to know they were mine.”

Her words are a plea, but what does she expect me to do? So many eyes, all around us. The hands, the shoving elbows. What are they waiting for? They think … do they think I was the one who
posted
her poetry? Do they think I betrayed her on top of betraying her? I try to read their faces, but they only look hungry—waiting for more drama.

“Drew, I—” It doesn’t matter. They don’t care who gets hurt as long as there’s something to gossip about. As long as they can pin a target on someone other than themselves.

Annika tugs on my arm. “Drew’s disgusting, Cassie,” she says. Her perky tone is gone, and what is left is pure bitch. “It was funny, okay? It wasn’t really about you. Just
look
at her.”

I look at her. Her stringy hair. Her splotchy face. The ring of people waiting, grasping for details to gossip about later.

“I’m sorry, Cass,” Drew says, barely louder than a whisper. She’s apologizing to
me
, of all the messed up things on earth.

And I can’t do this. I can’t be Drew’s friend, but I’m sure as hell not going anywhere with Annika. I can’t believe Kayla abandoned me.

“I’ll see you in study hall,” I say to Drew, and then I turn away. I’m about to push past the ranks of kids to get to my locker, but through them from the other direction strides Mr. Dawkins, followed closely by Kayla, who must have run to get him.

“What’s going on?” He walks into the center of the hall. Traffic moves along; people dissipate. Even Drew wipes her eyes and lowers her head, slipping past him toward the girls’ bathroom. “Is she okay?” he asks us. I shrug and turn to go, too.

“Cass.” His voice is sharp.

I stop. I don’t turn back.

“Is she okay?”

I swallow, my head inching back toward him a little. “She’s fine,” I say, but my voice is hard to find, and he asks me to repeat myself. “She’s fine!” I shout, and then I run toward my locker, away from the bathroom. I want to smash things, or cry. I want to go home.

“Write me some poetry!” Mr. D calls after me. What a tool. He has no idea what’s going on in my life. This stupid poem … my fists shoot out on their own accord and slam into my locker door. Sharp pain stabs up through my arms.
Stupid everything.
I round my shoulders into the books I’m carrying and stumble off toward homeroom.

43. If you could have
a second chance …

Drew wasn’t in study hall seventh period, she didn’t show up at school or youth group on Wednesday, and she isn’t anywhere in the halls this morning either. Darin gives me a few questioning looks in English class but doesn’t ask about the poem or anything else, and neither does Mr. Dawkins. Kayla and I manage to pretend like nothing ever happened, but the rest of the school is not as tactful.

“Did you hear about Drew Godfrey?” I overhear in one class. “I heard her parents shipped her away to a Christian camp to save her soul from sorcery.”

Totally not true. Drew’s mom isn’t a church member, and they didn’t say a word about the blog or anything at church last night. I keep my mouth shut, though. It’s so cowardly, but I’m relieved they’re leaving me out of it, that aside from a few strange looks, nobody’s talking about me. Maybe people will forget my apparent part in all this. Maybe it will blow over once they get all the drama milked out of it, once some other gossip-worthy event pushes this into the dim recesses of our rather short-lived collective high school memory. I’m worried about Drew, though.

“That’s not what I heard. She’s not coming back; she’s being homeschooled.”

“It’s like some kind of cult, anyway, that church.”

“I heard she’s switching schools.”

“I heard she had a psychotic break.”

Everyone has heard something, but when the assembly is called at the end of the day, nobody is talking about Drew.

“It’s the carnival.”

“They’re gonna cancel it.”

“How can they cancel it? It’s
tomorrow
. Martin Shaddox is coming and everything!”

“It’s that stupid church.”

“It’s those stupid snow sculptures in their underwear.”