Something catches in my throat. Even my heart stops beating for a second as I wait for Haven to say it. To mention Dani.
But she merely says, “You’re the same little pathetic loser whose life is consumed by nothing but jealousy and evil thoughts.”
She’s chosen not to mention Dani, and I don’t know how to feel about it. I want to scream at her, but when I open my mouth, what comes out is “I’m not. I’m a good person.”
Haven barks with laughter. “Okay, Fern. Whatever you say.”
Something breaks inside me. “You’re evil,” I hiss. “Did you forget what you did to Dani?”
“What I did?” Haven says, her eyes widening, as though she is truly shocked. “Are you serious right now?”
“None of it would’ve happened if you hadn’t been so shitty towards me. If you hadn’t bullied and gaslit me all the way through high school. Dani wouldn’t have—she wouldn’t—she’d still be alive right now.”
Haven shakes her head slowly, looking at me with open disgust. “Don’t you dare throw what happened to Dani in my face. You think you’re so innocent. God, you’re tiresome. Did you forget what you did to me back in middle school? You remember that fucking cookie?”
The memory of it slams into me, and I want to shrivel up with shame.
Haven continues to talk. “You know what, Fern? I was nice to you on Slack. I reached out, I tried to hand you an olive branch, and then you go and pull this shit? Fuck you.”
“You were nice to me on Slack?” I echo in disbelief. “You ruined my life! You made me lose my job. You think I don’t know that you were the one who sent emails to my boss complaining about me?”
For just a sliver of a second, guilt crosses Haven’s face. It doesn’t stay on for long, but it’s enough to confirm my suspicions that Haven was the culprit behind those emails that Annette received about me. But any satisfaction I might’ve had for figuring out the truth is overshadowed by my own guilt.
“You can’t prove anything,” Haven says finally. “Unlike me, you don’t have any evidence.”
“I didn’t—” I start to say, but even I can hear the flimsy lie in my voice. “I didn’t do it,” I say lamely.
“Let’s let Book Twitter be the judge of that,” Haven says, and with that, she turns and walks away.
Everything inside me recoils with horror. “Wait!” I gasp. “What? Book Twitter?”
Haven doesn’t stop walking. She glances back at me over her shoulder, and her smile is pure malicious glee. “I guess you haven’t been online, then. Bye, Fern. Be grateful that I didn’t spill the beans about what you did to me when we were kids. Stay away from me and my family.” She opens the back door and disappears inside my house, wheremy parents will no doubt flock to her and make sure she’s okay, because that’s the way the world works, isn’t it?
I scramble for my phone and unlock it. My heart sinks as soon as I get to the page with my Twitter app, because on the right-hand corner of the app, there is a red dot and the number 20+. I haven’t had over twenty notifications on Twitter since I made my book deal announcement. With shaking hands, I open the app and look at my notifications. And they’re bad. They’re worse than bad. Worse than I could’ve ever imagined.
You bitch, you’re literally insane ...
I’ve never come across anyone as evil as you.
You deserve prison time!!
The tweets scream at me, bypassing my ears, going straight into the center of my brain like a dagger. I am so hated. Again. A feeling I am painfully familiar with. A feeling I’d managed to convince myself I would never have to deal with again, and yet here it is once more.
One of the notifications is a tweet from Jenna that someone else has tagged me in.
@JennaWritesBooks:I feel some responsibility for all the hate that has been piled onto Haven Lee for the last few days, and I just want to say that I didn’t know what Fern was rly like. I should have, and I fully take responsibility for trusting her lies. I want to make it clear that Fern and I are no longer friends and I want to vouch for everything Haven has posted in her Tweet thread. The screenshots below, taken from our private chats, will prove that Fern has had itout for Haven from the moment she found out about Haven’s book deal.
As promised, there are four screenshots attached to Jenna’s tweets. Snippets of our conversations. My email to them:Hey guys, omg, the craziest thing just happened. My high school bully has a book deal and she’s also going to debut in 2020.Even my chat with Yuna is somehow on there. Me saying:And also, I would be extra careful about any advice that Haven Lee gives ... I just don’t think she has other people’s best interests at heart.Showcased this way, my private messages to other people, confiding in them about Haven, now look like a calculated move to sabotage her.
Why would Jenna betray me like this? She and Lisa were my two closest friends, and if anything, maybe this wouldn’t have been so shocking if it had come from Lisa. Lisa, with her passive-aggressive way of questioning my judgment when it comes to Haven. Lisa, who has been talking privately with Haven behind my back. It should’ve been Lisa, but instead, it’s Jenna who’s ended up plunging the dagger into my flesh, and the fact that it was the friend I most trusted who did it kills me.
I go to Haven’s profile and find the tweet thread she posted just over two hours ago. Through a blur of hot tears, I begin to read.
@HavenMLee:Hi everyone, I have a statement to make. I know that many of you are upset at me, and I acknowledge and hold space for all of you. But I do need to explain why I did what I did.
Fern Huang and I have a very long history. We first met back in middle school, where I thought she and I were perhaps friends. But I soon found out that Fern wasn’t who I thought she was. Even as a child, she harbored many dark thoughts which areharmful towards others. I spent the rest of my middle school years afraid of Fern, and I was dismayed when I found out she would be attending the same high school I was.
Throughout high school, I did my best to avoid Fern. I warned my friends about her as well, to protect them, and this resulted in Fern being ostracized, which was not at all my intent, but please trust me when I say it wasn’t an ill-deserved outcome for someone like Fern. I don’t expect any of you to take my word for it, so I won’t go into too much detail about what happened back then. The reason I’m mentioning our past is because I want to put everything into context before I tell you what happened last week.
