Leila Sales - This Song Will Save Your Life

Her face was almost as red as her crocheted scarf when she said to me, in a mechanical tone, “I wanted to apologize. For the blog. Elise Dembowski’s Super-Secret Diary.”

“What?” I said.

She looked at Mr. Witt and he nodded. “I wrote it,” she muttered.

“You…” I stared at her. She was short, with a bob cut and cat-eye glasses. Her fingernails were stubby, with chipped nail polish, and the toes of her Converse sneakers were scuffed.

“ You wrote it?” I said. “Why? You don’t even know me. I didn’t even know your name until two seconds ago.” I took a breath. “How could you not even know me and still hate me enough to do something like this?”

She drew herself up to her full height, which still left her a couple inches shorter than me. “It’s postmodern,” she explained, drawing out the word as if she were speaking to someone who had only recently learned English. “It’s a piece of experimental art.”

“It’s not art,” I told her. “It’s my life .”

“Watch that tone, Elise!” Mr. Witt murmured.

“Oh, you want to hear a tone?” I asked. “Here’s one for you. ‘Nobody likes me. Why would anyone ever really like me?’ Does that tone sound familiar to you?”

A feeling was welling up inside of me, so strong that I felt it spilling out of my eyes and mouth and nose. It was strong, but it was nothing I was accustomed to, so it took me a moment to identify it.

I was angry. Not at myself. I was angry at someone else.

“It’s an exercise in storytelling,” Marissa appealed to Mr. Witt. “Trying to get in the mind-set of someone else, trying to see the world through their eyes.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what my mind-set is,” I said.

“I’m using the blog as part of my application for the Gutenstein arts fellowship,” Marissa said to Mr. Witt. “They really like this sort of thing. Giving voice to the voiceless. I’m sorry you didn’t like the writing, Elise, but you have to remember it’s not really about you . It’s about a character who just happens to share your name.”

“Marissa,” Mr. Witt said, “this is bullying, and here at Glendale High, we take bullying very, very seriously.”

This was news to me.

He went on, “I’m going to call your parents so we can discuss how to proceed. But for now, I can tell you that you’re suspended, and this will go on your permanent record. You will take down the blog and replace it with an explanation and apology post, to be approved first by me. You will not be allowed to attend the graduation ceremony or the Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal. And the school will no longer support your application for the arts fellowship.”

“What?” she shrieked. “Are you serious?”

“Very,” he said. “Now I’m going to let Elise get on with her day, while you stay here and we sort this out. But before she goes, is there anything else you want to say to her?”

Marissa stood still for a moment, her mouth moving, like she was trying to figure out what words to form. At last, she settled on, “Nobody at this school appreciates artists.”

“Give me a break,” I said, and I walked out.

And what I realized in that moment, as I turned my back on the voice of Fake Elise, is this:

Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn’t you. That isn’t you at all.

The final bell was minutes away from ringing, so I didn’t see any point in going back to class. Instead I walked outside to wait for my mother to pick me up. I stood for a moment on the wide stone front steps of the school, turning my face up to the almost-summer sunshine. And I smiled. Because I had met Fake Elise. I had seen her face-to-face. And she was nobody .

I heard a voice behind me. “Did Mr. Witt talk to you?”

I turned around to see Emily, alone. Two words that do not go together. “Yes,” I said.

“Cool.” She stepped out of the shade of the building and immediately pulled her Gucci sunglasses down over her eyes. “I told him,” she added.

“Mr. Witt?”

“Yeah. I told him who wrote that blog.”

“You knew?” I asked, surprised that someone like Marissa would discuss her insane creative pursuits with someone like Emily.

“Of course not.” Emily made a face like she’d taken a bite of raw meat. “I’ve never talked to that girl before. She’s weird. I just found out.”

“How?” I asked.

“What do you mean, ‘how’? The same way anyone knows anything. I ask. People tell me stuff.”

“Well.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you, Emily. That was really … like, surprisingly kind of you. I appreciate it.”

“You’re probably wondering what I want in exchange,” Emily said, immediately undermining any credit I had given her for surprising kindness.

“Now I am.” I shut my eyes for a moment. If there’s one thing I never asked for, it was to sell my soul to Emily Wallace.

Emily turned her head to glance around, as if to make sure no one was there to hear her. Then she leaned in and said in a low voice, “I want to go to your party tonight. You know, the one that was listed in the paper. Also, Petra’s coming. And Ashley. Do not get us kicked out again. That is not acceptable.”

Emily flashed me her pearly white teen-model smile. If she’d been trying to sell me toothpaste, I might have even bought it.

I considered telling her that I didn’t even know if I was going to my party tonight—didn’t know if I wanted to, didn’t know if I was allowed—but that was, frankly, none of Emily’s business. “That’s it?” I asked.

She pursed her lips, like it hadn’t occurred to her that she might wrangle yet another payment out of me from this one good deed and she wanted to make sure she used it wisely. At last she asked, “So did you actually try to kill yourself? Or did that weird bitch just make up the whole thing?”

Silently, I held up my left arm, wrist facing Emily. She crossed her arms and kept her lips squished together as she examined me for a moment, sizing up those three perfect scars. Finally, she said, “You know that you’re supposed to cut down to kill yourself, right? You did it wrong.”

I looked at Emily and thought about what would have happened if I’d cut the other way. Or what wouldn’t have happened. Char wouldn’t have broken up with me. Alex wouldn’t be mad at me. Pippa wouldn’t hate me.

And I would never have met Vicky. I would never have had my first kiss. I would never have worn rhinestone pumps. I would never have heard Big Audio Dynamite. I would never have discovered Start. I would never have known I could be a DJ.

Emily Wallace didn’t know what she was talking about. She never had.

You did it wrong, she said.

“No,” I said to her. “I didn’t.” Then my mother’s car pulled up in front of the school, and I turned my back on Emily, and I walked away.

“You could have told us,” Mom said as she drove me to Alex’s fair. Before my mother picked me up, Mr. Witt had called her to reveal the identity of the blogger and reassure her that Glendale High was once again, as promised, a Very Nice School. “You could have shown that diary to your father, or me, or Steve, and we would have put an end to this long ago.”

You couldn’t have put an end to it, I wanted to tell her. You don’t have the power of Emily Wallace.

“Don’t you think having a conversation about what was going on would have been more productive than ruining Alex’s school project?”