Katie Williams: Absent

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. They’re just looking into it. Besides, it’s just a rumor.”

“Yeah, but that’s a pretty sick rumor,” Whitney says. “I mean, think about how Paige Wheeler’s friends must feel. Or her parents.”

“Right,” I say. “Exactly.”

“If it were up to me, I’d suspend her,” Whitney continues. “Or expel her. Something permanent-record for sure.”

The others voice their agreement in unison.

I hide a smile. “You guys won’t tell anyone, right?”

The next morning, I stand under the drop cloth and wait anxiously to see how Chris’s new rumor is faring. I hear nothing from the early arrivals, and my mood starts to sink under the weight of another failed plan. The thick of students marches in minutes before the bell, and still nothing. It’s nowhere.

I was so sure it was going to work. Everyone knows Chris Rackham wouldn’t lie; he is always completely and totally honest. And besides, yesterday at lunch, the well-rounders had all seemed to believe him.

“What’s wrong with you?” I grumble at the milling crowd.

They walk on, oblivious. People want to believe bad things, I tell myself, glaring around at my classmates. They want to believe the most shocking story. They see you as the worst version of yourself.

Then, at the end of the hall, I hear my name. It’s Whitney Puryear, her voice loud enough for everyone to hear. Chris Rackham stands in front of her, tugging nervously at his hair, then his jacket collar.

“So you made it up?” she says. “The whole thing?”

I try to rush over to them, to inhabit Chris before he can answer, but there are too many people between us, many of them stopped and gawking at Whitney and Chris, many of them thinking my name. If I run through them, I may well inhabit someone other than Chris. I try to weave through the gaps between people, but I already know I can’t get there in time.

Chris says something hushed, and Whitney responds with, “But there’s no investigation?”

And I’m close enough now to hear Chris say, “No investigation, no anything. My mom didn’t say anything to me about Kelsey Pope or Paige Wheeler.”

Whitney wrinkles her nose and booms, “Why would you tell us all that, then?”

I’ve reached them now, and they’re both thinking about me, but instead of inhabiting them, I hang back, curious to know what Chris will say next.

“I think . . .” He takes a breath and lets it out, whistling through his nose. “I just wanted to see if you’d believe me. I don’t know. I got an impulse and then I was saying it. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did it. As soon as I said it, I felt terrible.”

“Have you told the others?”

“Yesterday, as soon as I could. But I couldn’t find you.”

“My mom picked me up early. I had a dentist’s appointment,” Whitney says, sounding more put out about being the last one to know the truth than about being lied to in the first place.

“You didn’t tell anyone, did you?” Chris asks. “About what I said?”

“Maybe just a couple people,” she answers slowly.

“Well, take it back,” Chris says evenly. “Tell them the truth.”

“What am I even supposed to say?”

Chris shrugs. “Tell them I’m a liar.”

No, I think as the bell rings and Chris and Whitney disappear along with my brilliant plan. Kelsey is the liar.

And you, something in me whispers. You lied, too.

“Paige,” a voice says at my back. I turn to find Evan’s pale eyes and each one of his many freckles blaring concern.

“Why aren’t you in class?” I point up. “That was the late bell.”

“I was going and then I saw you standing here.”

“I was just . . .” I turn around in a slow circle in the middle of the empty hallway and stop back where I started. “I give up.”

“You give up?”

“I give up. I accept it. Everyone thinks I’m a jumper, a suicide.”

“People are going to think what they think,” Evan says. “But you know the truth. You know who you are.”

“Do I?” I ask. “I don’t know.”

“Well, then”—he nods curtly—“I know who you are.”

I can’t take his pitying expression anymore. I stick out my tongue.

“Yeah,” he says. “See? That about sums you up.”

FISK MUST HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE DROP CLOTH entirely because it’s still tacked on the wall the next day. It’s not as effective as it was at first, though. Fewer and fewer people look at it when they pass by; fewer still think of me. One of the only people who does spare me a thought is Kelsey Pope. She canters in with her herd of ponies, glancing at it once, then twice, each time her thoughts calling my name.

I haven’t wanted to inhabit Kelsey, haven’t wanted to be trapped in her perfect form. I’d told myself it was a last resort. If all other attempts to kill the suicide rumor failed, then I would make Kelsey tell everyone how she’d made it up. But after what happened with Chris Rackham, I’ve learned that even that won’t work. As soon as I’m no longer controlling Kelsey, she’ll just take back anything I’ve said. She’ll just lie again.

I give up.

Kelsey looks back at the drop cloth a third time, thinking my name. I trail after the ponies, both bothered and intrigued that Kelsey is thinking so much about me. Is she regretting the rumor she started? Or, more likely, is she planning to say something else next?

When they reach Kelsey’s locker, the group of ponies around it is somehow larger than ever.

And it’s jumping up and down.

“Kelsey!” they shriek. And somehow they reform their circle with Kelsey and me at its center.

“You’re a nominee!” they say as they jump, their voices rising and falling with gravity. “For prom!”

“Congratulations!” they all gush, as if Kelsey has already won. As if she isn’t nominated queen for every dance. As if a paste-crown coronation in the school gym is anything but absurd. This time when Kelsey thinks of me, I don’t hesitate. I step forward. Suddenly, I’m balancing on tippy-heeled boots and counterbalancing a dozen pounds of hair. Worse, there’s what feels like a pebble stuck inside my mouth. I poke my tongue at it and find the back to Kelsey’s piercing. The ponies press in around me, expressions morphing from gleeful to vaguely confused.

“You’re not smiling,” one of them notices.

“You’re not jumping,” one says.

“She’s always nominated,” another adds archly. “Maybe it’s not a big deal.”

“You know who wasn’t nominated this time?” the first pony says in my ear, and before I can voice a guess, “Lucas Hayes. He’s gotten so weird.”

“Good move dumping him.”

“Kelsey always knows which way the wind is blowing,” someone whispers with acid, but when I turn to see who has said this, a camera phone is in my face, and two other ponies have appeared giddily at my side. “Here they are,” the pony photographer announces, then lowers the camera. “Kelsey, you’re still not smiling. Let’s try again: Here they are, the prom court!”

“Well, except for Usha Das,” another adds.

“Wait,” I say, “Usha was nominated?”

“Yeah, she’s the fourth nominee.”

“Wow,” I breathe, smiling. Yes, the whole thing is still absurd, but if someone is going to be prom queen, it should be Usha.

“Yeah, wow,” one of the ponies says to me. “My reaction exactly.”

“Of course, you know why,” another adds.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because of you know.”

“She means pity,” the first one says smoothly.

“Pity?” I say.

“People feel sorry for her because her friend killed herself.”