Page 46 of Mad Girl

He followed me into the living room. “I saw the broken frame. You can’t help yourself, can you?”

I grabbed my coat off his couch. “She’s a bitch, and I think you can do better.”

“She is a bitch, but maybe I like that. Why do you let this one get under your skin so much?”

“I hate her.”

He sighed, shoving both hands in his pockets. “You hate everyone I date. Last year? At school? You slipped all those nasty notes into my girlfriend’s locker. You made her cry.”

“Wasn’t me. Do you have any idea how many people there have the hots for you? It could’ve been anyone.”

“But it was you—and you did it to mess with her. I’m not stupid. I know you.”

“Whoever it was did you a favor. Layla carried a Hello Kitty purse. She cried over cat videos.”

“You also cry over cat videos,” Michael pointed out, but I went on like he hadn’t said anything.

“She walked around with a lollipop in her mouth, like, eighty percent of the time.” I shot him a wicked smirk. “But I can see why you probably liked that. Those plump, pink-glossed lips wrapped around the head of a”—big pause, even bigger grin here—“lollipop.”

Michael wiped a hand over his mouth, chuckling darkly. “Layla was one of the sweeter ones, and you made her cry.”

“Whatever,” I said, going to slip one arm into my coat.

But he grabbed my wrist, stopping me. “Hey. Don’t rush off. Why don’t you stay for a while? Hang out?”

“Okay.” I tossed aside the coat, then dropped to the couch and texted you my plans to be home late.

Beside me, Michael pulled out his phone, too. Huddled close, we watched videos on his screen, and I squealed—like I always did—at the cute ones, while he complained—like he always did—about his algorithm favoring my interests more than his. He refused to open the app in public lest anyone think he loved pet prairie dogs and puppies and fuzzy yellow ducklings swimming in farmhouse sinks. It felt like old times.

We were watching a video of someone’s fluffy white kitten—and I was dangerously close to proving his point about the crying—when I said, “You were right.”

Michael leaned back. “Right about what?”

“I did slip those notes into Layla’s locker. But only because I overheard her in the girls’ bathroom talking shit about me to her girlfriends.”

“Seriously?” Michael asked, already angry on my behalf. “What did she say?”

“She called me creepy and weird. Said my mom probably left because she could tell there was something wrong with me. Said she pitied my dad for being stuck with a sociopath, that he should’ve had me institutionalized for stabbing you. And her friends ate it up, Michael. They cackled and agreed with her. So, yeah, I wrote those nasty notes. I made her cry—but she made me cry first. I’m not saying it was right of me to put the notes in her locker, but she knew it was me, and I did apologize to her.”

“And?”

“She said, ‘Do the world a favor and kill yourself, freak.’ And I cried in the bathroom again, but then I decided to just…let it go. I didn’t want to, but stabbing a pen through her arm would’ve gotten me expelled and probably killed my chances of getting into Harvard. So.”

“Jesus, Elliot.” Genuine disgust flashed across Michael’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was embarrassed.”

“But it’s me. You can tell me anything.” He ducked to meet gaze, wrapping his hand around mine. “I would’ve broken up with her much sooner if I’d known any of this.”

“Do you think it’s true, though?” I whispered.

“Think what’s true?”

“My mom left because she could tell there was something wrong with me?”

Michael squeezed my hand. “No. I think your mom left because she’s a coldhearted bitch.”

Two days later, I paused on the stairs when the doorbell rang.