I smile a little. I’m glad that she considers me a friend, but I’ve also spent my entire life living under the umbrella of my overprotective parents, and if friends are the family you choose, I choose not to be friends with people who try to hold me back. “I don’t need you to protect me,” I tell her.
“Good.” And then she adds, “I don’t think you’re weak, Millie. Not at all. I just... I’m starting to realize that I’m the kind of person you should be protected from. I’m the jerk or the bully or whatever.”
“You don’t have to be”—I clear my throat—“an a-hole, as you put it.”
She picks up her backpack and shakes her head. “That’s what you keep telling me. Maybe someday it will stick.”
When I get home, I sit in the driveway for a minute to text Malik. My mind is absolutely spinning, but somehow I still find myself focused. I have tasks that need accomplishing. I need help, and the only way to get it is by asking for it.
ME: I need your help with something.
MALIK: Is it legal?
ME: I am a strictly by-the-books kind of girl.
MALIK: Dangit. I was hoping to make my criminal debut.
ME: Do you have any access to the AV equipment at school?
MALIK: Do I have access? DO I HAVE ACCESS? I am access.
ME: You? Me? Sunday afternoon? A room full of AV equipment?
MALIK: Sounds like a date.
When I get to school on Tuesday morning, it takes me a moment to realize there’s something different about the main hallway where the front office is, like my eyes are adjusting to a bright light.
It’s green. The whole hallway is green.
“What is this?” asks Amanda as she plucks a green sheet of paper off the wall.
“I have no clue.” But my stomach grumbles with unease.
The first bell rings, but no one in the hallway really makes any move to get to class. Amanda and I stand there as I read over her shoulder.
THE SHAMROCK SECRET SHIT LIST
Jill Royce has a raging crush on her stepdad.
Hayley Walker pooped in the community pool on Jefferson the summer after eighth grade but blamed it on Janelle Simpson.
Addison Caliro stole her mom’s oxy and sold it to Mr. Graham, the tennis coach, who’s in rehab now for a prescription drug addiction.
Whitney Taylor created the anonymous Twitter account that slut-shamed Chelsey Lewis until her parents sent her to private school.
Lara Trevino took her parents’ car for a joyride and ran into a cop cruiser. When she got caught, she pretended to be sleepwalking.
Jess Rowley saves her toenail clippings and catalogs them by year.
Bethany Howard is obsessed with eating her own earwax and once even ate her brother’s earwax off an old cotton swab to see if it tasted different.
Gretchen McKinley purposely walked into a door and broke her own nose so she could get a nose job before tenth grade.
Zara Espinosa flushed a cherry bomb down the toilet in the library. Not only did the toilet explode, but the priceless art on loan from the Dallas Museum of Art, which was housed on the other side of the wall, was also destroyed.
Emma Benjamin wanted to impress her senior friends by forking a rival team’s football field, but she got too drunk and just ended up forking our own field, which resulted in a forfeit during the historic season when the football team was just one game away from qualifying for District playoffs.
Natalie Forrester sells her little brother’s Adderall to a select few faculty members in exchange for good grades.
