“What was it, then? Because it was the meanest thing I feel like you could possibly do to me.” I feel the exploding heat of rage and shame in my face again, the melting sensation of my features. I am ugly. I am
unlovable. Penny
doesn’t love me enough to
leave Pfeff alone. Pfeff
doesn’t love me enough to
be true to me.
“Why would you do that, Penny?” I ask. “What have I ever done to deserve being treated like that?”
Penny sighs. “I mean, you irritate me, yes. It’s really irritating, how you act.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even now. Mooning over him, making yourself so vulnerable, letting everyone know how you feel at every possible moment of every day. It’s a lot to be around.”
I am stung.
“But that wasn’t it,” she goes on. “Not really.”
“What was it, then?”
“I don’t want to get into it.”
“You just ruined my—you ruined everything for me,” I say. “I think you owe me an explanation.”
“If it was that easy for me to ruin it,” says Penny, “it couldn’t have been very strong.”
She is right.
She is right.
But also, it was three weeks of happiness. I wore his T-shirt. He kissed the palm of my hand. “Sometimes things are fragile,” I snap. “That’s why they’re valuable.”
She shrugs. “I’m just saying, if he went off with me, he wasn’t really with you.”
I grab her arm and shake her. “Stop it,” I say. “He was with me. He was. And you knew it. Don’t tell me you didn’t know it.”
She sighs again, heavily. “I knew it.”
I go on. “The question isn’t why did Pfeff do what Pfeff did. The answer is obvious. It’s because you’re beautiful, and you get whatever you want, and everyone wants you. The question is, why did you do what you did. To me.” The perimeter walk is windy and cold. Our hair is whipping around us.
“I didn’t do it to you!” cries Penny. “I told you that already.”
“Well, I feel like you did!” I shout. “I feel like you went behind my back and kissed my boyfriend, and I don’t see how you can possibly say you didn’t do it to—”
“I did it to Erin,” she yells. “Okay? To Erin.”
“What? Why would Erin care?”
“Don’t be stupid,” says Penny.
“I’m not. I—”
“Figure it out.”
“I can’t. I don’t— Why would Erin care?”
“She and I are together,” Penny says. “Okay? I mean, we were. We— It started just at the end of the school year, when she stopped going out with Aldo, and I was never all that interested in Lachlan, and then I—well, I’ve had feelings for girls for a long time,” she finishes. “A very long time.”
I reel. I am stupid.
I never thought.
Penny goes on. “I know Daddy and Mother will be just—ugh.”
“Not the best.”
“Not the best. And I like boys, too. I think. Maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t want to disappoint them. The parents. I can’t deal with all of it.” She tries to catch her hair, which is whipping around her head in the wind. She pulls most of it back and snaps it into an elastic she has been wearing around her wrist, making her face look suddenly severe. “Don’t tell Bess.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” she goes on. “I haven’t told anyone. I don’t even know if I’m— I don’t know yet, is all. And Erin, when she first got here, everything was great, and it was like, this beautiful secret romance, but then, I don’t know. The newness wore off, maybe. For her. Or she was just goofing around or experimenting or something. She isn’t into it anymore, is what I’m saying, and we had this fight about whether she should go home tomorrow. She wants to go home and then be just friends at school, like we used to be, and have boyfriends and all that. And I wanted to make her want to stay, you know? Like if I kissed somebody else, she’d get jealous, and then she’d realize that she cared, and then she’d stay.” Penny wrings her hands. “I hoped that, anyway. Or maybe I wanted to hurt her.”
“Sounds like you.”
“Or maybe I wanted to tell myself I like guys. If I could just like guys, everything would be easy. Nothing that happened with Erin would even count, at all. Part of me was thinking that. You know? Like, it’s not too late to just be a straight girl. I should just like a guy instead. Easy to do.”