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Bryce
Ilook down at the canvas in front of me, eyes scanning the soft curves of Rowan’s neck in the sketch I’ve been working on. The classroom is quiet, everyone seems to be hovered over their textbooks, deep in reading. No one bothers to mention or even notice that a classmate is missing.
Rowan is not here today, but I’m not really surprised. Fat chance she’ll show up, too, if the rumors of what Carly did are true.
I push my pencil to the paper, adding a few more, flowing strings of silky hair. I want to make things right with Rowan. I want to be there for her, to comfort her, to make sure she’s okay. But I can’t. None of us can. She hasn’t given anyone the opportunity.
“Dude,” Dereck says, elbowing me in the ribs. “That picture is super weird.”
Annoyed, I slip the sketch of Rowan back into my bag, rolling my eyes at him. Dereck is shaking his head, smirking, and I want to punch him out. I’ve been wanting to punch him out since the moment he and Matt decided to take revenge on Rowan and, in the process, successfully destroy her life.
“Shut the fuck up, Dereck,” I hiss. We both glance over at Matt at the same time, waiting for him to chime in. He doesn’t say anything. In fact, he doesn’t even look at us. He’s staring at the tabletop, and even though his textbook is open, he isn’t reading it. He looks bad.
“Dude,” I whisper, reaching across the table to flick his hand. “Are you okay in there?”
I know he hears me, but he doesn’t bother to look up.
“Shit,” Dereck mutters next to me. “Do you think he’s broken?”
“I think he regrets what he did, douche.”
“Whatever,” Dereck says, folding his arms stubbornly. “She deserved it.”
“No one deserves this, Dereck, and don’t pretend they do.”
At the front of the classroom, our professor clears his throat loudly, shooting eye-daggers at us, and Dereck and I fall silent. Matt doesn’t seem to notice, or care, and for the rest of the class, nobody says much of anything, but we’re all thinking it.
Where is Rowan? And is she okay?
After class, I manage to drag Dereck and Matt to the library, and it’s only on the way there that I finally find one of the flyers everyone’s been talking about. A photo of Rowan, with the fancy writing underneath. As I stand in the hallway and stare at it, my heart tightens painfully in my chest. I’m so angry; angry at my friends, at Carly, and angry at myself for not trying harder to stop this. Rowan’s decision to sleep with Dereck was a shitty one, and it was even shitter to sleep with me right after, but despite the way things worked out, this is still hard to see. Bringing Carly in on this wasn’t the way to go.
“Do you see this?” I say to Matt and Dereck, crumpling up the paper to throw it at them.
“Who fucking cares?” Dereck asks, but somewhere underneath the bitter resentment, I sense a moment of hurt. Hesitation. I look at Matt, who has already pulled out his cigarette to hold between his lips. He won’t look at me.
“This is inappropriate,” I push. “We made Rowan Bate’s life in high school horrible. Like, really bad, guys. And then as soon as we start to make it up to her, we turn around and do this?”
“No one expected Carly to do this,” Matt snarls, picking the crumpled paper off of the floor and ripping it to shreds. “This isn’t on us. This is on her.”
“It was your idea to tell Carly about Rowan and Dereck,” I remind him. “Because you were pissed. We were all pissed.”
“Fuck.” Without warning, Matt throws me against the wall, arm under my throat, seething. The cigarette hangs out of his mouth, but he hardly seems to notice it.
“Is this your solution to everything?” I ask. He’s not pushing hard. I know he’s not trying to hurt me, but it’s annoying, nonetheless, because he’s still bigger than me and he knows it. “Is this how you solve your problems, Matty? Violence? Hurt? Unbridled fury?”
After a moment he drops me. I start to crumple to the floor, unsteady, but he grabs me by the back of my jacket and hauls me back to my feet, shaking his head.
“All Carly was supposed to do was make a scene, okay? Give Rowan a hard time for fucking her date. I didn’t know she’d take it this far.”
“Would it have changed your actions?” I ask, rubbing my throat. Dereck is still standing there with us, but he hasn’t said anything one way or the other. I know he’s feeling the hurt, too.
“Yeah,” Matt says, and I believe him. “I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Look.” I sit down on the arm of the couch and fold my arms. “We need to talk to Rowan. We need to apologize.”
“Fuck that, dude,” Dereck says suddenly, hands in the air. “I’m not ready for that.”
“Of course you’re not ready. You’re pissed. And you’re hurt. I am, too.”
