I don’t stop there. I go into my settings and, in an instant, delete every single one of my pictures and videos like they never even existed. I consider deleting the whole damn page, like I never even existed.
Uncle Elliott turns from the kitchen. His eyes move in my direction and I hear Nolan ask, “Tell me what?”
Uncle Elliott shrugs him off. He takes a sip of his drink, watching me over the bottle. I look away, but when I look back, his eyes are on me, his face different than before. He releases my eye. He looks to Aunt Courtney sitting on the sofa alone (the spot beside her his) and says at random, “Hey, Court,” his words loud and abrupt, calling attention to himself.
She looks up (everyone does). She meets his eye and smiles. Her voice is tender, teasing as she says, “Hey, Elliott.”
“I was just thinking that I might get up early and go fishing tomorrow morning.”
He lifts his beer again and drinks, then lowers his beer to his side.
“Okay,” she says, pulling playing cards from her hand and laying them down on the coffee table, and then she asks what time he thinks he’ll go, and he looks at his phone to see when the sun will rise. At the same time, we hear the bedroom door fly open. Mae and Cass come running down the stairs into the living room again, Mae announcing to everyone, “We want to have a sleepover tonight. Can Cass sleep here?” looking directly at Emily, hands in the prayer position, practically begging. “Pleeeease?”
It’s not that I care if Cass sleeps here, because I don’t. It’s that I’m still mad at them—so mad that I could rage—and I’m not giving up the bed because I am never sleeping on the porch ever again. That bed is mine.
“They are not sleeping here,” I say in front of everyone. “No fucking way. I am not listening to them all night.”
On the sofa, Aunt Courtney stiffens. I can see on her face that she wants to grab Cass’s precious little ears (though it’s not like she doesn’t hear kids swearing at school) and cover them, and I hate myself for acting like that. Emily tries apologizing for me, for my language, for my behavior, but Aunt Courtney just shakes her head and says, “It’s fine. Elliott will probably just go to bed early, so he can get up early and fish. We can keep them. And then another night they can sleep at your cottage.”
Emily says okay. Mae and Cass run upstairs to pack Mae’s things. I envy them because they have each other, and I have no one.
Uncle Elliott gives them the key to their cottage and they go running back alone for the night, no doubt planning their next dumb prank, a way to get back at me for being mad at them.
I’m sitting on the bed alone, on a patterned quilt with bears and trees on it. Mae and Cass are gone now; they’re at Aunt Courtney and Uncle Elliott’s cottage for the night. I have the room all to myself and I should be happy about it—it’s what I wanted, right?—but instead, I wish someone was here with me. I stare at the wall. There’s an empty space in my chest. It hurts, like someone took my heart out, and now there’s a hole left behind. I think over and over again how I will never have friends, how I will never fall in love, how no one will ever like me.
The room is small. The double bed practically fills it. I go on my phone (though I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself) to see that Skylar has been with Gracie again. I wonder if she saw what Mae and Cass posted before I finally deleted it, if she read the comments, if she agreed with them. She hasn’t texted me in days, not since I sent her the picture of the taxidermy fish and she told me it was cool. She doesn’t know anything about Daniel.
I wish I could tell her.
I wish I could tell someone.
I wish I could tell someone that I’m lonely and scared. That I feel like no one likes me. That I worry no one ever will. That I’ll be alone forever.
Voices carry upstairs and through the open door. It makes it ten times worse. It makes me feel even more lonely than if I was in the cottage alone. There is a thickness in my throat. The need to be friends with Skylar again is so intense it feels like physical pain.
I have my back to the door. I don’t hear him come in at first. I don’t know how long he stands there in the hall, watching me from behind, until I hear the sound of his annoying little laugh.
He says, “Imagine having no friends.”
I whip around. Wyatt stands behind me, leaned into the doorframe, looking smug as fuck. His arms are crossed. He turns and looks at himself in the bedroom mirror and fixes his stupid hair. When his eyes come back, he looks down on me literally and figuratively.
He sneers.
I say, “Imagine being an asshole.”
“Where’s your boyfriend?” he asks, looking almost proud of the fact that he is an asshole, not denying it.
“I don’t know,” I say. “You tell me.”
Wyatt’s laugh is arrogant. He stands up straighter and comes further into the room. “I guess he doesn’t like you anymore.”
I try to pretend his words don’t hurt. “I guess not,” I say, though I don’t tell him that he never did actually like me. Of course he didn’t. Because what would a guy like Daniel ever want with a girl like me?
“What do you want, Wyatt?” I ask. “Why are you even here?”
“Why not? It’s not your room. It’s not your house. I can go anywhere I want.”
I push myself up from the bed. I breeze past him for the door, our elbows bumping. “Watch it,” I say, even though I’m the one who ran into him. He laughs. I go downstairs, trying to get as far away from him as I can. But Wyatt walks behind me, down the stairs and into the living room, where people still sit, playing their dumb cards.
