“I know,” she said breezily, ignoring my attempts to get her out the door. “Is that MAC?”
Her evil gaze had lit upon my prized red lipstick.
“It’s Viva Glam,” I said.
She was taking up too much space, dabbing on my lipstick and then frowning at it like it was distasteful, talking nonstop the whole time.
“Ew. This is way too plum for me. I guess it’s meant for people with really pasty skin, like you. Pass me a cotton ball so I can get it off.”
I sat back down on the bench and handed her a few cotton balls, hoping to get her on her way, but she continued fussing with her hair and lips as if we had all the time in the world. I’d never felt so claustrophobic. Her body, her heavy white floral perfume, and her voluminous dress were physically blocking me in against the wall. I couldn’t have gotten away if I’d tried.
“It’s so weird you and Ford ended up together, isn’t it?” she asked, releasing a violent cloud of hairspray in my direction.
Waving it away, I said, “What do you mean?”
If anything, I’d always thought of our relationship—real or not—as the kind of thing that people assumed was just inevitable. We’d been close friends for almost a decade.
Claudia shrugged. “Oh, well, you know. With everything that happened to you back in high school.”
“You didn’t even go there,” I pointed out. “And what’s so weird about longtime friends getting together?”
She turned to look at me pityingly. “I’m his longtime friend too, Em.”
A flash of anger rippled through me hearing my nickname. I didn’t like anyone calling me Em that wasn’t a good friend or a family member. Claudia was neither. Not by a long shot.
“I remember him telling me all about the way you latched onto him back in tenth grade. His little sucker fish, right? Cute.”
My face went hot. “Well, I wouldn’t…I mean, that’s not—”
“I just find it really ironic, considering,” she went on.
Fine. I would bite. “Considering what?”
She turned to face me, staring down from her willowy height, made even more impressive by her stilettos. Judging by the smile on her face, it was clear I had just walked right into a trap.
“Oh, you know.” She looked at her nails, pretending to be casual. “Considering that he’d written all those nasty slurs about you in the locker room after he found out thatyourfather had been supplyinghiswith whores.”
A shockwave went through me. “What?”
“Oops!” Claudia said. “I mean ‘sex workers.’ We don’t want to be bad feminists, do we? Well. See you out there!”
With that, she gave me a condescending pat on the shoulder and then sauntered out, leaving me stunned and sick to my stomach.
I was staggered, caught between devastation and disbelief. Could it possibly be true?
Fordwas the one who had started the bullying all those years ago?
Fordhad known about my father’s human trafficking ring before I did—before anyone in my family did—and he had done nothing?
The floor was dropping out from under me. I ran back to the toilet and sank to my knees in front of it, lightheaded and still nauseated. I didn’t throw up, but it took me a few minutes to calm down as I realized that my entire relationship with Ford,from day one, had been based on a bigger lie than I could have ever imagined.
And as much as I wanted to believe Claudia had made it all up, the only way she could have known any of those things was if Ford had told her.
I got to my feet shakily and took a deep breath. Just as I was convinced that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, my eyes settled on the thing I had completely forgotten about. The only thing that could be more important than what I’d just heard.
The plus sign on my now-positive pregnancy test.
