Let me just start by saying, Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope yours is better than Addie’s.
If you like what you read here, please click the heart at the bottom (or comment, or restack, or subscribe!). I’m not trying to be needy, I just am.
[Previously…Part 1 of my yet untitled novella…
Coco Woods is high school royalty. Her twin sister Addie is not.
It’s Valentine’s Day, the worst day of the year for Addie, who is sick of having her sister’s popularity shoved in her face. But she thinks things might be looking up for her when the hot guy who sits in front of her in English class passes her a note.
Addie doesn’t get to read the note, though, because she is caught by Mr. Rochester, who makes jokes AND gives her detention. Luckily, Addie squirrels the note away and earns a heroic smile from the aforementioned hot guy Trey Dalton.]
I hope you enjoy Part 2:
Curse or cum
I know it’s a physical impossibility, but I would swear on the heavenly soul of Nana Banana, my not too recently deceased cat, that I didn’t breathe for the whole rest of the period. At the sound of the bell, I get up stiffly and make a beeline for the room across the hall where I know Lea will be coming out of AP Lit. As soon as I see her I hook my arm in hers and steer her to the closest girl’s bathroom.
“Help,” she shouts, facetiously. “I’m being taken!”
“Shhhh” I hiss, shoving her aggressively into a stall and locking the door.
“What the hell, Addie?”
We stand there for a moment while I regulate my nervous system.
I know. I am a hypocrite. I made such a haughty stink about Valentine’s Day, but then one cute boy passes me a note and I’m hyperventilating next to a toilet.
Except Trey Dalton isn’t just any cute boy; he’s the one boy I’ve been infatuated with since the fifth grade. But only Lea knows that. And, regrettably, Colette.
“Mr. Rochester just gave me detention,” I tell Lea.
“Oh,” Lea says, and deflates at my anticlimactic confession. “No big. Actually, it’s perfect. I’m staying after school for Yearbook committee anyway. We can take the late bus back together!” Her sentences ramp up in excitement until she is squealing in delight. “Galentine’s Day!”
“No,” I start.
“Why not?” Now Lea is offended.
“No, I mean, yes, that’s fine. That’ll be fun! Yay!” I try and fail to convey enough enthusiasm to satisfy her. “But this is not about the detention.” I gesture around us.
“Yes,” Lea looks around curiously. “Why are we here?”
I am just about to remove the precious correspondence from my shirt when the door to the bathroom is pushed open and someone slowly saunters in, letting their boot heels click on the tile and whistling that song from Kill Bill Vo1. 1.
Who is that? Lea mouths. I furrow my eyebrows, listening.
“Addie. I know you’re in here.” My eyes go wide. She stops in front of our stall and knocks.
I clear my throat and edge around the stall door to respond as casually as I can: “Oh, hey, Isabella.”
Lea peeks her head around the door too.
“Hi.” Isabella crosses her arms. We stare back at her.
“We’re not, like, peeing in here,” Lea explains.
“I legitimately do not care,” Isabella says, and I believe her.
“Great,” Lea says. “Just wanted to clear that up.”
“You have something of mine,” Isabella says, getting impatient.
“You do?” Lea asks, looking up at me.
“I do?” I ask at the same time.
“Trey’s note,” Isabella clarifies, tapping her foot. My heart does a tiny, nauseating flip in my chest.
“Trey Dalton?” Asks Lea.
“Stop,” Isabella says. She must see it on my face. Have I turned pink? A queasy green? “You didn’t think the note was for you?” Then she laughs, and the sound is like shattered glass in my bloodstream.
“One second,” Lea says and closes the stall door.
I reach into my bra and pull out the folded note. It feels like icy cold water is dumped over my head as I read the name Isabella—circled with a heart, no less—on the front fold of Trey’s note.
How did I not see this? Trey wasn’t flirting with me; I was just the middle man. Suddenly it seems like that should have been more obvious to me. I may as well just step into the toilet and flush myself into the sewer system.
I hate Valentine’s Day.
“Oh,” Lea says, coming to some degree of realization. She takes the paper from my slack grip, slips around me—luckily she is so small because the space is tight—and holds it out to Isabella. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” Isabella says. Her footsteps click back to the door, but before she leaves she adds, “Give my love to Coco.”
When the bathroom is empty again I leave our stall and go wash my hands. I work up a good, excessive lather while Lea leans back against the sink next to mine. The bell for next period rings.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Lea offers.
“I’d rather die, thank you.”
“Right.” Lea nods. “She’s hot, though. Isabella. Like, in a scary way. She gives these mysterious looks and I can’t tell if she wants to curse me or make me cum. Either way, I’m here for it, you know?”
“Lea!” But I have to laugh even as my heart is still slowly deflating like a farting balloon. “You’re so crude.”
I rinse my hands and use the hand dryer. “But you’re kinda right,” I add, remembering Isabella’s half smile in class today. “She looked at me like that too.”
I am significantly late to second period, US History, which is really fine except that in Mrs. Robert’s book I apparently have earned a zero for the day. We’re halfway through the year and I’m still not entirely sure how that sort of thing translates into my overall grade calculation. I imagine it can’t be a hefty consequence.
I meditate at my desk, or some semblance of the mindful breathing practice my dad taught me when I had those rage issues in middle school. I breathe in for a count of four, hold, then exhale for another count of four, hold again. I allow the thoughts of Isabella Caruso and pencil drawn hearts and love potions to gently pass through my mind without actively engaging, just noticing them like they’re butterflies flittering above me. They flap their beautiful wings and land gracefully on the tips of my ears, but then their wings turn into folded up pieces of paper that open and close, like tiny toothless mouths, laughing at me.
At the start of my third period French class, the students in Digital Literacy broadcast the morning announcements and they are projected onto the board. Chad and Emily take turns to inform us that there’s a snow storm in the weekend weather forecast, the cafeteria is serving red velvet cupcakes today to support our cheerleader’s upcoming regional competition, and the voting results for the spring dance theme are in: Persephone’s Garden.
Queen of the Underworld? That rocks, actually. Too bad I won’t be attending.
“And now for our special Valentine’s Day segment,” Chad reads mindlessly from his cue card, “I turn it over to Coco Woods.”
My classmates cheer at my sister’s introduction; somebody actually whistles. Like a prepubescent boy, I blow a raspberry, earning me irritated side-eyes.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Rosewood High!” Colette sings, and she sounds just like she did when she said that to me this morning. “As you all know, in lieu of accepting actual gifts this year, I set up a fundraiser on my personal Instagram account, and you all have shown me so much love. We have raised a little over twelve hundred dollars for Best Friends Animal Society! Great stuff, you guys.”
Only Colette Woods—and maybe Barbie herself, Margot Robbie—is hot enough to pull this off.
“Also, I’m being told to announce that everyone should pick up their handmade Cupid Grams outside the cafeteria during their lunch period. The money you spent on those valentines will go to support the craft club’s—I’m not sure, like yarn and pipe cleaners maybe? What do they do?” Colette looks off camera for support, but then just shrugs her shoulders. “Anyway, have a lovely day.” Colette winks, and as far as I’m concerned, my kinship with this girl has never been more in question.
I have no classes with Colette. I wonder if it’s intentional to keep siblings separated, not to have to get involved with our inevitable domestic disputes. Still, though, we pass each other in the hallway several times a day. She is not being carried on the shoulders of varsity jocks while freshman minions fan her with oversized feathers, but honestly, I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if she were.
Instead, she effectively parts the sea with her It-girl catwalk between every period, like the most redundant runway in existence. I’m just trying to get to my classes on time so I’m not racking up zeroes in everyone’s books today. How does she even have the time for these slow-motion hallway processions? (Again, she’s not really walking in slow-motion, but she would be if this were a movie, and she might as well be for all the traffic she causes.)
During morning announcements, Lea was delivered a coupon to redeem a Cupid Gram from the Craft Club, so at lunch we stop by together to pick it up. It’s a needle felted hamster, that Lea insists is meant to be a fox, holding a heart shaped pillow, and it’s from a girl in her Spanish class.
“Okay, but this is cute, Addie,” Lea insists, as she shakes me by the sleeve of my shirt. “Do you think it squeaks?” She squeezes it. “No. Still cute though.”
“Do you like this person?” I ask, forgetting her name already.
“Jaden is definitely someone I’ve imagined kissing, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s not what I mean, but whatever. I’m glad you have your squishy hamster and someone new to fantasize about.”
“Don’t be bitter at me just because you’re having a shitty Valentine’s Day,” Lea lectures me. “Squeak, squeak,” she adds, animating her felted creature.
“Fine,” I huff. “It’s cute, I guess.”
“See! Do you want to squeeze it?”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on.” Lea takes my hand. “I’ll buy you a red velvet cupcake.”
Finally, it’s last period. Art class is my sanctuary. It’s in the new south facing wing of the school, with floor to ceiling windows, flooded with sunlight all day. All I want to do is draw, whatever I want, while nobody talks to me.
Usually with my earbuds in and a playlist on, I could just escape, but, alas, no phones allowed. Ms. Beau has mostly been playing Chopin for background noise while we work, but sometimes it’s film scores and we get to play Guess that Movie. Today, though, she has on instrumental versions of eighties power ballads, which is a weird choice.
I gather my pencils and tools from my cubby and set up my station. I’ve been working on a series of illustrations that depict the people in my life as fictional heroes or fantasy characters. I’m just about to ask Ms. Beau what superpower she would choose when she picks up the ravaged drawing of Lea and tsks.
“What happened to this one?” Ms. Beau asks. My sketch of Lea can’t be salvaged, but I can’t bear to throw it away yet.
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “I’ve already been sufficiently punished for my carelessness.”
“Hmm,” Ms. Beau considers the blank page in front of me. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”
That seems a bit callous, but maybe the wound is still just too raw.
“I’ll have to start this one over—”
“Or,” Ms. Beau interrupts me with a delicate hand on my shoulder. “This could be your sign to take a different direction altogether.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, incredulous because Ms. Beau has been my biggest supporter since freshman year. She gave me Nimona, my first graphic novel and a revelatory reading experience, because she thought my drawing style lended itself more to illustration than realism. She was right. “I thought you wanted me to work on a collection for my portfolio. So I can apply to art schools.”
Ms. Beau eases in with, “Listen, Addie,” which I brace against because I’ve found it is never good when anyone starts with Listen, Addie. “You’ve been mastering a certain skill, and that’s great. I’ve seen so much growth in your work! But where’s the innovation? Where’s the color? Where is Adeline Woods?”
I frantically sift through my sketchbook to find a self portrait I did months ago, the one where I’m wearing a dark cloak of invisibility in a hall of mirrors. At the time, Ms. Beau told me it could be my seminal piece. Where could I have gone wrong?
“Here she is!” I hold up the sketchbook and shout more emphatically than the conversation calls for. “This is Adeline Woods!”
Am I going to cry?
“I want you to get noticed, Addie,” Ms. Beau says. “For that, you’ll have to do something worth noticing.”
That one stings, but its not the worst thing I’ve heard all day.
You didn’t think the note was for you?
My face flushes, and I grip my pencil like I’m going to break it. Ms. Beau moves on to another student, presumably to douse the flames of someone else’s creative fire.
Sabotage
After dismissal, on this, the longest day of the year, I report to detention with Mr. Rochester. The injustice of the whole situation weighs on me heavily, like my backpack is filled with rocks—rocks that were lovingly collected for someone’s new girlfriend and yet for some reason I have agreed to carry them around. I show up with a scowl and drop into my cursed seat
Tomorrow, I think, I will sit somewhere else.
But I know I won’t.
Apparently, though, Mr. Rochester doesn’t want to be held up after school either. He is rushing to clean his whiteboard with his wool coat already on and his leather briefcase in hand. I’m tempted to ask him if he’s got a hot date, but that’s cheesy even for me, and also, I prefer to think of my teachers as asexual creatures who go to sleep alone every night after watching documentaries and grading papers. Lea says I’m a prude.
“Your sentence has been sold,” Mr. Rochester informs me.
“Am I an indentured servant now?”
“Yes. Mrs. Phillips heads the Yearbook Committee, and she says they need help, so she owns you for the afternoon.”
Lea has worked her magic.
Yearbook committee is mostly made up of seniors, which makes sense to me, but Mrs. Phillips encourages underclassman to participate since we’re all a part of the student body and all of our faces will be in the finished product too, just in smaller boxes.
The only juniors I see here, though, not including myself now, are Lea and my new ride-or-die Jackson from English class. He throws his fist in the air again when he sees me walk in the room. I return the gesture; I don’t know what we’re communicating exactly, and apparently neither does Lea because she looks from him to me, then shakes her head like it doesn’t matter. Lea skips over and drags me to a laptop on a table in the corner of the room.
“What am I looking at?” I ask.
“We’re in charge of designing a six page spread to represent our class. This is just a digital slideshow of the photographs the juniors submitted so far.”
I think at this point it goes without saying that the slideshow heavily features Coco Woods, but there, I’ve said it anyway.
“This looks like a paparazzi reel,” I point out the obvious.
“There’s an equity issue, for sure,” Lea admits. “We kind of have to just work with what we’re given. The photography budget is for seniors only. But don’t worry! I’ll hand pick the images. You’re the artist here, so your role will be more creative. You and Jackson are on layout.”
“You say that like I’m actually a member of this committee.” My liberation from detention suddenly feels more like a trap.
“Oh, won’t you be, please?”
Jackson moves in and throws an arm over Lea’s shoulder.
“Is she in?” He asks Lea. She looks up at me with her rescue puppy eyes.
I hate when Lea begs. It’s impossible to say no.
Jackson has some pretty radical ideas for the high school yearbook spread, ranging from vaguely political to just surreal. I mostly spend our brainstorming session tempering his expectations–because no, we can’t have origami pop-up pages—while Lea sifts through the Coco archives. Then Lea and I ride the late bus back to my house, and we share a box of conversation hearts along the way.
“So, what happened with Jaden?” I ask because we never got a chance to chat during Yearbook.
“Nothing happened,” Lea says. “She’s already been DMing me for weeks. But she’s shy in school, you know? And she’s only been into boys before.”
“Did you say thank you, at least? For your squishy hamster?”
“Yes, mom,” Lea teases. “I’m a good-mannered queer. And it’s a fox.”
When we get to the house, there are three identical bouquets of roses, from Colette’s more unimaginative suitors, that have been delivered to the front porch. I push them aside with my foot and when they fall off the ledge I mutter a disingenuous “Whoops” before letting myself inside.
“Oh, chocolate!” I hear Lea squeak with delight behind me.
“Make yourself cozy,” I tell Lea. “I’ll grab some snacks.”
“Okay, I get first movie pick! I’ll queue it up,” she calls back from the couch, sounding like she’s already under a blanket. “Is your mom home? Would she watch with us?”
“Uhh, she would, but her and my dad booked a spa thing for the weekend.” As I say this I notice an envelope of cash on the countertop with a note that says, Girls, get yourself some takeout tonight. Eat some veggies. Answer your phones when we call you —shoot, I left my phone in Bennji’s car—and Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, Mom and Dad.
I forgo the chips and meet Lea on the couch.
“Let’s order burritos,” I say, taking the remote control from Lea’s hand. “You do it. I don’t have a phone.” At that Lea looks at me like I’ve grown an extra head.
“What generation are you even from?” She asks.
“A more evolved, future one. Get extra guacamole.”
“Obviously,” she says, and she’s already typing on her phone.
“Oh, chocolate!” I say, parroting Lea and grabbing the enormous heart shaped box she took from the porch. “What the hell is this?” I’m disappointed because when I tear the top off there’s no candy inside.
“Weird. Is that one of those vintage disc-man things?” Lea asks, abandoning her food ordering duties to investigate.
“I guess so?” I take the device out of the box and flip it over. There’s a battery cartridge in the back, and a set of cheap wire headphones plugged into the side.
“Does it work?” Lea asks, just as I find the power button. I feel the vibration of something, shifting, spinning inside. “I guess it does. What’s inside?”
I find the button that says open/close and I push it. The door swings up to reveal a silver CD, like the DVDs we used to watch.
“It’s blank,” I tell Lea, because there’s no image on the disc, no label whatsoever.
“I know what this is,” Lea declares. “Oh, this is gold. Somebody made Coco a mixed tape. We have to listen to it. Do you think it’s more like Charlie Puth or John legend stuff, or what?”
I hold one end of the headphones up to my ear and offer up the other side to Lea.
“Wait.” I have a moment of moral clarity. “Is this invasive?”
“This person violated Coco’s very specific Best Friends Animal Society donation request. As far as I’m concerned, this music belongs to the poor, homeless kittens—”
“That makes no sense,” I cut Lea off. “Let’s just listen.”
We look at each other.
“That is…not romantic,” Lea says pulling away from the headphones and picking her phone back up. “Coco is going to burn that.”
It’s the 1994 Beastie Boys song “Sabotage.”
I put the headphone over my ears properly, but I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. Is this some hilarious ploy to get Coco’s attention, to stand out from the crowd of boring well wishers? I have to know who this is from.
Listen all y’all. It’s a sabotage.
I grab the red heart it came in, but there’s no note. There are, however, letters crookedly stamped on the inside of the box.
This one is not for Colette.
I hold the box up for Lea to see, the Beastie Boys’ lyrics still building in my head.
Listen all y’all. It’s a sabotage.
But Lea is holding her phone up to my face. We mirror each other’s shocked expressions exactly, because as she sees A D D I E printed on the bottom of the chocolate heart box, I see my face on her phone screen with the words “haven’t you taken enough from us?” typed across the bottom, punctuated by a fist pump emoji.
I am a meme.
Listen all y’all. It’s a sabotage.
Yes yes yes Ashley I am wrapped with this series I want to watch it on my tv