Here Lies Bridget. Paige Harbison
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you ever actually been to one of my parties?” I asked impatiently, barely interested in the conversation.
“Um. No, but, I mean, I hear they’re great.”
I narrowed my eyes at her and cocked my head a bit to the side. She cleared her throat.
“Well, anyway, it’s just going to be like board games and stuff. My parents will be there.” She looked sheepish.
I waited to see if she said anything else. When she didn’t, and instead shifted her weight uncomfortably, I smiled.
“Uh-huh. Well, I know that I’ll be busy tonight. I don’t know about the other girls. Michelle? Jillian? Busy tonight? Want to go play some board games with Laura and her parents?”
Michelle shook her head down at her food, her face red. Jillian looked sympathetically at Laura and then said something about plans with her mom.
I crinkled my nose, and made a tsk-ing sound as I turned back to Laura looking regretful.
“Aw, that’s too bad. Maybe next time?” I smiled dismissively, and looked back down at my magazine.
“You know what, Bridget?” Laura asked, her ears turning red.
I gave her a challenging look.
“What’s that?”
“You’re just …”
There was a lurch in my stomach. I would not be told off, and I could tell that was where this was going. But I’d learned long ago to deflect this sort of thing.
“I’d stop now, if I were you. Which thank God I’m not.”
I watched her fury grow, and I felt the growing sense that I’d really gone too far.
“I’d always rather be me than you.” And she walked away.
I scrambled to think of something to say. I thought of nothing. I’d never had to. Since when did anyone challenge me?
I knew I’d been unnecessarily cruel to her, and I felt kind of guilty. But my day had sucked so far, too, and no one was apologizing to me. “Bridget—”
“So I ran into Anna today,” I started, cutting off Michelle. I knew she was going to give me grief and I just couldn’t deal with that on top of it all. Plus, I had to pretend that what had just happened didn’t bother me.
“And she introduced herself to me and all—she already knew my name—and then told me that Liam had told her to ‘look out for’ me. What do you suppose that means?”
Jillian, always interested in a good outrage, gasped and dropped her celery stick.
“He said that?”
I enlightened her on my theories of what he might have meant, and we talked about it for the rest of the period, eventually agreeing that he must have meant that I am so popular she’s bound to run into me, and to then introduce herself.
As soon as the bell rang indicating the end of lunch, I told Michelle about the deal I’d made with Brett. Well, I told her the half she needed to know, which was that she was sitting with him on Monday at lunch.
She raised her eyebrows at me.
“I’m what?”
“It’s no big deal. Seriously, I said I’d get him a date, and all he wanted was to ask you out himself.” She stared at me.
“Oh, my God, Michelle, just say no to him, it’s not that hard.” “Bridget, you can’t just—” What, now she was going to start rebelling, too? “Well, you’re going to sit with him, so …” I let the so hang in the air, letting her fill in the blank for herself with stop arguing with me. I smiled superficially, wiggled a goodbye with my fingers to Jillian and then strutted off to class. I didn’t look back to see what Michelle did next.
As I walked away, I began to wonder if what I was about to do was wrong. Sure, chances were that Brett wouldn’t get caught helping me, and that he wouldn’t dive into a depression when Michelle said no to his date. But still—what if we did get caught? What if he did fail the class, and it was my fault? What if between that and Michelle rejecting him, he did slip into a depression? Anyone would, after being expelled from this school. It was such a high-profile place that anything that happened here was practically in the society pages.
But no, I thought to myself. I was giving my actions far more credit than they deserved. Brett would be fine. We wouldn’t get caught, and even if we did … Brett would be fine.
My conviction wavered a bit once I walked into my NSL class and saw that there was a substitute teacher.
Okay, this could go one of two ways. Either the sub was nicer than Mrs. Remeley, our usual teacher, or she could be nasty.
Nasty like that teacher we’d had in middle school who kept telling us to sit up straight and hold our books a certain way during reading time.
Nice like my first-grade teacher with Valentine’s Day candy and the inability to stop me from doing what I wanted. Which, in first grade, was to use Brett to my advantage.
On my way to my seat, I watched her. She looked to be about in her fifties, but according to the chalkboard, she was a “Miss.” Miss Smithson. She was mousy and looked nervous. I instantly felt some indefinable emotion for her.
Brett was in his seat looking down at his notes when I sat down. I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Brett?”
“Yeah?” he asked, eyes still on his paper. I clicked my tongue at his lack of interest in what I had to say.
“I talked to Michelle.” I grinned as he looked up at me.
“She’s looking forward to Monday.”
I could tell that he wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth or not. Whatever, he was probably hopeful enough to choose to believe I was telling the truth. And there was nothing wrong with giving him some hope. Especially because my hope was that this encouragement would stop him from backing out.
The bell rang, and Miss Smithson cleared her throat.
“Good afternoon, students!” She waited for a response. Though she didn’t seem to notice, the only response she got was a raised eyebrow from me.
“As you know, you’ve got a test today. It’s only three pages long, and it’s all multiple-choice. I’m sure you’ll all do fine.”
Really, you are? I thought, unnecessarily.
She started passing out the papers.
“Be sure to write your names in the upper right-hand corner!”
This spurt of enthusiasm had me raising both of my eyebrows.
When the test finally got to me, I wrote my name and took a look at the first question.
What the hell was “gerrymandering”?
I looked over at Brett’s paper, which already bore the answers to three questions on the first page. I circled the a on the first question and hurried to write the other answers. He couldn’t go this fast, or I wouldn’t keep up.
“Slow down!” I commanded in a whisper out of the side of my mouth.
He looked at me, looked at the substitute and then ripped the corner off of the first page of his test. The teacher looked up, and we both tried to look busy. She finally put her nose back into her romance novel, and I glared at Brett.
I inhaled deeply as I saw that he was writing something to me in his slanted handwriting, which gave all of his letters long stems.
He slid the note onto my desk. After one glare at him for his entire lack of stealth and several discreet glances at the teacher, I opened the note and read it.