I scroll down and below the first comment, I notice another that makes my heart stop:
Maybe someone should talk to her boyfriend.
Chapter Twelve
Naomi
October 2022, seven months before her death
Ben and I are passingthe eating clubs on our way to Sterling when my heart tightens in warning. Up ahead, a rowdy group of guys are blocking the sidewalk, shouting and laughing, completely wasted. A lanky guy in a blazer tosses an empty bottle in the air. His friend unbuckles his pants and relieves himself into a bush. They’re the type of boys I’ve spent my entire life trying to avoid.
“Excuse us,” Ben says, making his way through them. We’re almost clear, just passing the last two, who are in the midst of a shouting match. Now that we’re closer I realize these guys are juniors in Sterling, which makes me feel better since that means Ben knows them too. Ben taps one of them on the shoulder to let him know we’re squeezing by, and when the guy turns around, Ben’s hand accidentally grazes his chin.
“My bad, Pete,” Ben says.
Pete Whitney, a junior on the lacrosse team, turns, smile fading as his eyes focus on us. He doesn’t move out of our way. Instead, his bloodshot eyes shift from Ben to me. He has red hair, narrow-set eyes, and a nose that looks like it’d been broken and healed poorly.
My shoulders tense, and suddenly I’m back in eighth grade, staring up at the boy who’d left a condom-wrapped banana in my lunch box, once again the awkward girl who’d been poked and teased.
“Not cool, man,” Pete says.
“You’re taking up the whole sidewalk,” I tell him, the familiar anger unfurling in my chest.
He raises his eyebrows, his face nearly as red as his hair. When he steps closer, the alcohol on his breath fills my nostrils. My hands curl into fists and I have the sudden urge to fight back. Ben puts up a hand, stopping Pete from getting closer.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” Pete says, the words spewing from his mouth like hate. My whole body is tense, flushed with anger and adrenaline.
“Then move, asshole,” I mutter.
I should have seen it coming, but what happens next happens fast. In one swift movement, Pete raises a hand to strike me. I anticipate the sharp blow to my cheek, the pain. But suddenly, he staggers back instead. Ben’s shoved him to the ground. Furious, he pushes himself up and shoots us a look of disgust.
“Woah.” His friend, a slightly taller and lankier version of him, grabs his arm. “Come on, Pete, take it down a notch.”
He wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve. His face twists, lips curling in disgust, and for a second, I think he might lunge at us again, but his friend keeps a firm grasp on his shoulders.
Ben pulls me past, and I hold my breath until we’re a good distance away. When I look back, Pete looks furious; he’s muttering something to his friend, who is still holding his shoulders. Though it’s dark, I can make out his twisted expression, the veins in his neck, can practically feel his hate crawling over my skin. What he says next makes my arms go numb. “Motherfucking chinks. Go back to wherever you came from.”
—
“What an asshole,”I say, once Pete and his friends are out of earshot. My hands ache from being clenched into fists, and blood has rushed to my face.
Ben remains silent, eyes cast down as we create distance between ourselves and them. When he finally speaks, I can hear the anger in his voice. “Pete Whitney went to my high school in Manhattan, a year behind me,” he explains. “He’s disgusting. He has Confederate flag shot glasses in his room, a tattoo of one on his thigh. In high school, he got suspended for writing a racist email to a girl who’d turned him down for a date.”
“Did he get kicked out?”
Ben shakes his head. “Nope. Dad’s a billionaire. Mom’s a congresswoman and big-time donor. His parents hired a lawyer who claimed free speech. He didn’t even get suspended.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yeah,” Ben sighs. “I’m pretty sure he spends his time commenting on conspiracy-theory subreddits and harassing people on Twitter.” I can hear the hurt in his voice, and despite how different Ben and I look, I understand our shared pain.
I think of the boy who used to bully me. The one who used accents with his friends, threw bits of gum wrapper in my hair in class, and spread horrible rumors about me.
“I can’t believe Princeton let him in.”
“Yeah,” Ben says. “It’s fucked up, the amount of racist shit he’s said. The other Sterling guys are always saying to chill, it’s not that bad, but they don’t know. They don’t see it.”
I understand what he means. To some of my friends or past partners it had seemed invisible, even though for me it was a constant presence. And the truth was, it had gotten worse since Covid.
