Don't Forget the Girl by Rebecca McKanna

Author:Rebecca McKanna
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks

* * *

The green room smells like hair spray, pancake makeup, and sweat. Most of your classmates have finished changing their clothes and filter out. Bree has taken off the dress she wore for her monologue and changed into a skin-tight, hot-pink shirt and low-riding jeans. As she and Al say their goodbyes to you, Jay enters. The three of them stop and talk for a few moments.

You focus on your own reflection in the mirror, using a baby wipe to remove the heavy base, blush, lipstick, and eye makeup. As you peel off your false eyelashes, Jay says something about Bree’s talent. You try not to listen. The three of them say their goodbyes, and then the green room is empty except for you and Jay.

He sits on a stool next to you. “It can’t be easy to be in your friend’s shadow.”

“What?”

“Bree,” he says. “She’s so talented.”

You want to clarify for him—no, Bree has always been in my shadow.

In middle school you shepherded her from unpopular, white trash loner to nearly the highest rung of the school’s social ladder. When Raquel Thomlinson had said at the end of seventh-grade biology that Bree would give them lice because she lived in a trailer park, you said, “Don’t make fun of Bree.”

Because your own social standing was so strong, that was all it took. Just a simple statement, a long look at Raquel. Raquel was smart enough—and her own popularity precarious enough—that she never said a bad word about Bree again.

“It’s not like that,” you tell Jay. Although weren’t you just feeling jealous of her back in the lobby?

“Good,” he says. “It’s great you can have that attitude.”

It’s like you’ve dropped into some horrible alternate universe. But you’re self-aware enough to know arguing further with Jay would make you look like even more of a pathetic loser. Instead you say, “I’m sorry I forgot to grab the compact.”

“The wine glass was inspired. That’s how you think on your feet.”

“I thought you were going to be mad at me.”

With the mirror across the room reflected in the mirror in front of you, it appears as though there are an infinite number of Jays looking mesmerized by an infinite number of raw-faced Abbys.

He tilts his head. “It was beautiful. The blood on the stage floor. The blood on your skin under the stage lights.”

His gaze is piercing. You have to look away. After a moment, he says, “Bree is with her boyfriend, but who are you going to celebrate with?”

You carefully study your hair in the mirror, taking the bobby pins out of your chignon. “I’m just going home.”

“We can celebrate together, if you’d like,” he says, leaning toward you. He plucks a bobby pin out of your hair, his fingers grazing your scalp. When he’s done, he holds the pin out to you. Meeting his eyes in the mirror as you take it, you swallow and shake your head.

“I should go home.”

“Suit yourself,” he says, still holding your gaze.

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