Eva Darrows - Dead Little Mean Girl

I nodded dumbly at her, and then kept nodding when she returned to her room. I had no intention of saying anything to anyone, especially not our moms who weren’t going to take that last comment all that well. No, I’d keep my mouth shut and hope that it’d all go away.

Except it didn’t. It really, really didn’t.

Quinn lay low all that night through the next morning. When I came down for breakfast, she was quiet, tossing me a half smile but offering none of the friendly-ish chatter of the last few days. The wait for the bus was silent. Walking into school was silent. It put me on edge, but I tried chalking it up to a bad day or late-breaking awkwardness that I’d seen her being intimate with someone.

No, it wasn’t at all a sign that the dark times returneth.

I passed Nikki in the hall once and she met my eyes for a brief second before jerking her gaze away. She scampered into her classroom, head down. And when art class came I sat down at my station beside Quinn only to watch Nikki park herself at another table across the room, as far away from the two of us as possible.

“What’s that all about?” I asked under my breath.

“She’s mad,” Quinn said matter-of-factly.

“Why? What’d you do?”

“Nothing! She’s mad I won’t be her girlfriend. I’m about the pole, not the hole. Silly dyke.”

There were multiple problems with the answer. The first was her tone—it was grade A snark, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since before school started. It was enough to put my body into fight-or-flight mode: my palms went clammy, my stomach clenched. I wanted to dive under a rock to get away from such concentrated meanness.

The second was the context. Nikki had definitely not been holding Quinn down. In fact, one of Quinn’s legs had been firmly propped on Nikki’s shoulder, which was not an indicator that Quinn had been forced into anything. Nikki might have instigated it, but it was hypocritical to call someone a “silly dyke” when you were a willing participant in your very queer sex.

The last problem—and by far the biggest problem—was her volume. I’d whispered my question but Quinn had responded loudly. Loudly enough that everyone looked at her, then over to Nikki, and back again, knowing exactly who Quinn was talking about. The color drained from Nikki’s face as she looked at the class, her eyes enormous.

She’d been outed. Publicly. In a conservative high school with a whopping No One out of the closet. Westvale was gossipy, and very, very white, and very, very privileged. The fact that no one had burned rainbow crosses on my front lawn when Karen moved in was nigh miraculous.

“Stop looking at me,” Nikki snarled, her hand fisting in the straps of her bag before she ran for the door. She collided with Mr. Riddell as he walked in; he oomphed and called her name, but Nikki kept running, not to be seen again for four days.

Chapter Three

Art class started as the sole thing Quinn and I shared in common, but quickly morphed into “the hour I spend with that chick I abhor.” Her stock rose after she screwed over Nikki. People were curious about her. A handful of people called her homophobic, yes, but others justified her behavior, saying it was Nikki’s fault for hitting on a straight girl in the first place. Far more people applauded Quinn’s “bravery” than condemned her insensitivity, which was all sorts of messed up.

I wondered how the perception would have changed if Nikki told everyone the truth. I had no issue with Quinn identifying as straight and screwing a girl—plenty of gay folks had straight sex, and experimentation was a legit thing. But Quinn was cruel when she talked about the gay people in her circle. Even if she hadn’t been getting her hump on with Nikki, look at her mother, at our mothers, and how she’d accused my mother of inappropriate staring. How could she be so horrible?

I stewed about it for days. The conclusions I reached weren’t heartening. Even if Nikki set the record straight, Quinn couldn’t lose. Most of the guys in my school would have been more interested in the fap material than the injustice of what Quinn did to Nikki. Quinn would go from being the hot, interesting new girl to the walking boner fodder of Westvale.

The only thing I could do was extend an olive branch to Nikki. Her first day back after her hiatus, I found her at lunch. I was so nervous, I got slimy-sweaty and worried about pit stains. A few deep breaths, a few prayers to my benevolent, godly maker, and I approached her table, my lunch tray clasped tight between my hands. She stopped eating her pudding midspoonful. Her expression was empty, like this was a stranger wearing a Nikki mask and not the girl herself.

“What Quinn did was wrong and I’m sorry.” I couldn’t look her in the eye so I concentrated on the rhinestone barrettes in her hair instead. “If you want to tell people that she’s a liar, I’ll back you up. That wasn’t cool.”

I expected her to tell me to screw off, but after a long pause, she kicked out the empty chair across from her in invitation.

“Not worth it,” she said, returning her attention to her pudding.

I ate with Nikki every day after that, Tommy and Laney joining us to round out our quartet. It marked the last day of the Quinn/Emma alliance. Quinn didn’t need me anymore. Derek Powers, our star baseball player, asked her out after Nikki’s shamefest and that was it—Quinn had her “in” with the popular kids. She was free to blossom from a petulant, pain-in-the-butt bud to a full-blown terror flower.

My home life deteriorated to its previous misery while school was “pretend the other one is dead” time. The hostility made art class a chore. Quinn would walk in, see where Nikki sat, and purposefully take the workbench farthest away. I stuck with Nikki so that put me and Quinn on opposite ends of the classroom. One day, while I was sketching, I told Nikki that it was an apt metaphor for my and Quinn’s relationship as a whole—a nation divided, ne’er the twain shall meet.

“Cool,” Nikki said. “Glad I’m on the non–douche bag side of the Mason-Dixon.”

So was I.

* * *

A week later, Quinn’s trouble with Mr. Riddell started. Once Quinn got popular, she got social. Really social. Our school had a policy that cell phones had to be put away at all times or they would be confiscated. Either Quinn thought she could charm her way out of punishment or didn’t think the rules applied to her in the first place.

That was a mistake.

It was a Tuesday, and we were working with watercolors. The exercise was to blend the paints as seamlessly as possible. It wasn’t difficult, but apparently it wasn’t interesting enough for Quinn. I could see her in the front row. She alternated between twisting the paintbrush between her fingers and reaching into her bag to pull out her phone. Every time Mr. Riddell patrolled to look at work, she’d thrust her hands under the table or put the phone away, but Mr. Riddell wasn’t an idiot.

“Focus on the work, Miss Littleton. Not whatever it is you’re doing over there.”

“Uh-huh.” She flashed him an oopsie smile, probably hoping her revolting cuteness would sway him, before picking up the paintbrush and doing three swirls across her paper. The moment he walked out of her row, she was back at the phone, her head pointed down, her shoulders hunched so she could hide when Riddell patrolled near. To use my dad’s saying, it was as subtle as a fart in church.

“Dumbass,” Nikki muttered to me under her breath.

“Yep.”

Three more circuits through the room, two more warnings from the teacher before Mr. Riddell got tired of Quinn’s crap. He didn’t come at her from the front row, but from the row behind. Quinn had her head down, her thumbs flying when he reached over her shoulder to pluck the phone from her grasp. She yelped and whirled around, trying to snatch it from his ham fist, but Riddell shook his head and headed toward his desk, depositing the phone in his top drawer.