Here Lies Bridget Read online

  But the one trick I did get blamed for entirely was the one they pulled on Michelle. As I said, it happened in sixth grade, during Outdoor Ed.

  Outdoor Ed. To me, this seemed like the bad idea of some hippie who thought it wise to send a bunch of eleven- and twelve-year-olds to crawl around in the woods, barely supervised.

  The Event with Michelle happened on the second night in the cabins.

  I had just seen The Parent Trap at the time, and I was eager to come up with something similar to—but less messy than—

  the honey and toilet paper scene from the movie. I was eager to come up with a good prank instead of always being the follower. They had decided that Michelle was the perfect target, as she was generally considered to be the prettiest girl in school.

  Michelle had always been nice to me. Foolishly, rather than figuring that she might be a bad person to prank, I figured she might forgive me. So I agreed to do it to her.

  My friends and I snuck off from the nightly campfire and tiptoed back to the cabin that we, Michelle and three other girls were staying in, stif ling giggles the whole way.

  One of the girls I was friends with, Melissa, had come up 6 2

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  with the idea of squirting shampoo and some other substances into the sheets and under the blanket, so Michelle wouldn’t know until she crawled under the sheets. We all had to take showers across the property, and she wouldn’t get an opportunity to wash up until the next day.

  The other two girls were all for it. I, being the moral (my word, not theirs) one of the group, thought that it wouldn’t be fair to make the bed impossible to sleep in, to incapacitate her in that way. That would be cruel.

  When I said that, they just stared at me.

  So I said that we would probably get caught if we were the ones with the shampoo that smelled the same. I also pointed out that if and when she was forced to tattle on us, we’d have to all stay awake and in trouble until they got new sheets for her and that the chaperones probably would walk her over to the showers.

  Jenny, the leader of the group, shrugged and told me to come up with something better. I scrambled to come up with something tame, but still cool enough to satisfy them.

  I was still thinking when Tammy, the girl whose name I longed for at the time, shrieked.

  I gasped when I looked up to see her pulling something out of Michelle’s Cinderella bag, which everyone had made fun of her for bringing. We all said it was babyish. The truth was that I loved it, and hated her for having not only the bag, but also the confidence to bring it with her, despite the risk of being mocked.

  Tammy pulled out a lump of tin foil and ran over to us to show us what she’d found inside.

  Kotex. Sanitary pads.

  I remember feeling shocked. Shocked that Tammy had dug through someone else’s things (although a moment later I remembered that it was Tammy we were talking about, and 6 3

  that it was par for her course); shocked that a girl in our grade already had her period; and then shocked that we were the ones to find out. I shuddered to think what trick they were going to pull with this knowledge.

  As soon as Melissa and Jenny saw the pads, they instantly jumped into action. Jenny told Melissa to go get the red nail polish she’d snuck into the cabins and asked Tammy if she had any more Butterfinger candy bars with her. Jenny herself started laying the pads out on the ground, for reasons I couldn’t have imagined.

  I watched in private horror as they dripped nail polish and water onto the pads and smeared chocolate onto one side.

  I couldn’t do anything to stop them. If I said anything, I knew they would just do something like this—or possibly far worse—to me as retribution.

  Rumor had it that Jenny had actually punched people before.

  They peeled the backs off the pads and started sticking them to the frame of the bunk bed Michelle was sleeping in.

  When they finally finished, they stuffed away the evidence and stood back to look at their work.

  “Nice, ladies,” Jenny said, her hands on her hips. Tammy and Melissa laughed.

  “There’s only five minutes left ’til the end of campfire. We’d better go,” I said, suddenly feeling like there was no time at all. I had to get out of there, away from all of that mess and meanness and impending humiliation.

  They agreed and headed out. I said I had to pee and would be right behind them.

  None of them responded, and they continued walking.

  As soon as they were gone, I started pulling down the pads. I was just pulling down the third one when I heard the 6 4

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  cabin door open. I stood there, frozen, with nowhere to go or hide.

  Melissa, Jenny and Tammy were back and standing there, mouths agape. And then they started to laugh loudly and enthusiastically.

  A second later, our other roommates came in. After what felt like another mere second, there were even more. And they were all laughing. I couldn’t tell if it was at me or at what they thought I was doing. Maybe it was at Michelle. I just couldn’t tell. The survival instinct in me just wanted them to direct it at someone else.

  With a start, I saw what they saw.

  I looked like the perpetrator.

  And then, finally, Michelle came into the room.

  Before Michelle could react, the parent chaperone—Mr.

  Lambert—walked in. Seeming to understand immediately what was happening, he shouted my name and told me to come with him. Still frozen, I stood still, watching more and more faces come into the room. It seemed like every girl in camp piled in to see what I had done, and even some of the boys stuck their heads in to have a good guffaw.

  When I finally was able to move my eyes to Michelle, I saw that she was standing just as frozen as I was, staring at me.

  Looking livid.

  I gave her a pleading look.

  What happened next passed by in such a f lurry that I hardly knew what happened. I was vaguely aware of Mr. Lambert taking me by my upper arm, talking on his official-looking walkie-talkie, Michelle shouting at me, and the faces of Melissa, Jenny and Tammy turning red from all the suppressed—

  and unsuppressed—laughing.

  The rest of the night passed in much the same way. I was in an office, I was being reprimanded, I had to call and tell 6 5

  Meredith—then my new stepmother—what I’d done, and I had to go back to the shameful limelight of the cabin to pack my things. Escorted, and then supervised.

  The next thing I knew, I was in Meredith’s Land Rover, on the way home.

  We were silent during the ride, until I felt my throat tighten and my eyes start to sting. I started crying and couldn’t stop.

  Meredith told me to calm down and that she wouldn’t tell my father, who was out of town for a game at the time.

  When we got home, she made me a mug of warm vanilla milk—a tradition she told me was from her childhood (but that I was unfamiliar with). It soothed me enough that I finally fell asleep with my head in Meredith’s lap, with her stroking my hair.

  When I woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of the phone ringing. I answered, groggily, and heard the voice of my father on the other end.

  “Bridget Jane Duke! What is wrong with you? How could you do that to Michelle?”

  He continued on like that, not stopping once to hear my explanation, completely typical for him. I said nothing, thinking only about the fact that Meredith had sworn she wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d think about that for the rest of the school year, which I spent grounded.

  I knew I shouldn’t like her, I thought to myself scathingly.

  She’d seen my parents’ big house, my father’s limited fame and fortune and that my mother was out of the picture. And she’d glommed on.

  From then on, I hated her.

  C H A P T E R F O U R

  “I guess we’ll do…fifteen large pizzas…make five regular cheese, five pepperoni and the rest of them…I don’t
know, Hawaiian or something. Okay, is it cool if I pay now over the phone, and you deliver them at ten-thirty? Awesome, okay, so the credit card number is…” I scrambled around the kitchen looking for the “for emergencies only, please” note and credit card Meredith had left me, making “um” noises as I searched. When I finally found it, I read the number and expiration date to the pothead-sounding pizza guy on the other end of the phone.

  “And the name on the card?” he asked, sounding bored.

  “Meredith Duke. Do you need me to spell it?”

  “Nope. Got it.”

  No, I didn’t ask to use it for pizzas, but I figured it would be fine; it’s what Meredith always did for my parties. When she wasn’t mad at me.

  Plus, saving my popularity was a total emergency.

  I was confirming the order when I heard the doorbell ring.

  “’K, so then I’m all set, right? I have to go, thanks, ’bye.”

  I hung up the phone and ran.

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  I opened the door to a hauntingly familiar sight that I hadn’t seen in over a year.

  Liam, on my doorstep, hair mussed the way it always was, clothes casual but perfect, skin perpetually tanned from actual sun instead of the fake bake I used. The only difference was that he wasn’t smiling at me like he always used to. And that was a big difference.

  It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized I’d been staring at him with my mouth open.

  “Got a sec?” he asked, in a tone I didn’t quite recognize.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess, I’m just setting up for the party.” Then I remembered the cooler in the garage. “Actually, if you could help me move something—”

  “Sure, but let’s talk first.”

  He stepped into the house, and in the split second when he stood next to me and didn’t look at me, I started feeling panicky. It was disconcerting how accustomed I was to seeing him in my house, and at the same time how completely out of place he seemed. It was like seeing the president in his old elementary school classroom.

  Except

  that

  I was the reason Liam hadn’t been back.

  The reason he didn’t want to come back.

  I was so distracted by how intimidating he seemed that I forgot to wonder why he was there, wanting to talk to me.

  I followed him into my living room. When he sat, I sat.

  “What’s up, Liam?” I always felt like a suck-up when I talked to him nowadays, despite my efforts to seem casual.

  He still wasn’t looking at me. “The party, Bridget. I just want to make sure you’re not planning any kind of embarrassment for Anna.”

  Instantly all the unresolved feelings from our breakup con-gealed in the pit of my stomach.

  “Anna? The new girl?” As if I didn’t know. “I’d never—”

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  “Yes, you would.” His tone challenged me to object.

  I knew if I did, he’d walk.

  Instead, I asked, “What’s with you two, anyway?”

  “Does that mean you were planning something if she showed up here?”

  “Oh, come on, Liam, I’m not the wicked witch. I can be civilized, you know.” I thought of the drink-spilling trick I wasn’t planning for Anna’s shirt later on. The trick that involved me giving her a shirt of mine to wear, and it being too small and therefore unf lattering on her.

  (And me, but I wouldn’t tell her that.)

  “Listen,” Liam said, “I’m just saying that I don’t think you should do anything. I know you’re probably pissed about her being so well-liked already and stuff, but don’t take it out on her.” He sounded like a grown-up talking about high school drama. Maybe that should have told me something, but it didn’t.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so worried about it.”

  He hung his head, and answered into his hands. “Because she’s a nice girl, and I know you.”

  … are not was what he was saying.

  That wasn’t true.

  It

  wasn’t.

  “You don’t know me. Not anymore.” I felt the petty I’m-still-not-over-it words come out of my mouth, and any of the cool I did have left me.

  “Whatever, I know the social homicide you’re capable of committing. Just don’t do it.”

  I clenched my jaw. I hated when he talked to me like a child.

  “I won’t,” I said, and he finally looked me in the eyes.

  I smiled, and held up my hand like a Boy Scout. “Bitch’s honor.”

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  Some part of me hated that I had to play that role even with him.

  He looked at me for a moment, and I felt the chill in my chest soften my expression. Just for that moment, we were us.

  The old us, where I was just goofy and outrageous and he was indulgent. Where we were real with each other. Sometimes I missed that. Sometimes I wanted to just throw down the crown I wore at school and be his again.

  But that would be foolish. He wouldn’t take me back anyway.

  I was shaken from my reverie when he cleared his throat and asked, “All right, what do you need me to move?”

  “Cooler.”

  “What did you do, load it before putting it outside?”

  I nodded sheepishly. He shook his head with a smile, and muttered my name. “Ah, Bridget. Where is it?”

  “Garage.”

  He immediately turned and headed toward the garage. The garage with the side door I used to sneak him in through when we were younger. A moment later, he came through the kitchen with the cooler, the veins on his forearms raised.

  “Deck?”

  I nodded again and f litted to the sliding door to open it for him. I leaned on the doorframe and watched him put the cooler down. After setting it neatly against the fence of the deck, he walked toward me, stopping in front of me.

  “Anything

  else?”

  I felt a little winded as I hurried to try and think of something else I needed him to do.

  I couldn’t. “I don’t think so.” When he kept looking at me, I added, “But thanks.”

  “All right then, I guess I’ll see you later.”

  My heart skipped a clichéd beat.

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  “Literally, later? Like, you’re coming to the party?”

  Wow, did that sound desperate. But I had to make sure. He rarely came to my parties, and it was often only when I asked him to personally.

  He gave a single laugh, “Yeah, literally.”

  “’K, then.” He was coming. He thought Anna was coming.

  Was that because he was bringing her? Or because he just assumed she’d heard about it like everyone else? I decided it had to be the latter. “Oh! Bring your bathing suit!”

  “Aw, no, Bridge, does that mean you’re going to be swimming? Are you going to do any ‘awesome new tricks’ you learned?” He laughed a real laugh, and I knew he was remembering the embarrassing episode I’d had at the pool when we were eleven. And the front-toothless school picture that had followed. It still hung in the front hall.

  I narrowed my eyes at him and smiled playfully. “At least I didn’t pee in the pool, Wee-um. ”

  “I was like five,” he said coolly, and opened the front door,

  “and I was trapped in the deep end.”

  “Ha.” I felt my uncreative response end the moment.

  Liam gave a short laugh and started down the front steps.

  “Okay, see you later,” he said again, then added, “literally.”

  He pulled on the key lanyard that hung from his front pocket and got into his black SUV.

  I watched him go and not look back.

  Then I turned back to the house and went in. I closed the door and walked absentmindedly into the kitchen to make a sandwich so I wouldn’t be so hungry that I’d pig out on pizza at the party.

  It was always weird seeing Liam. Probably weirder for me than for him,
I guessed. Though maybe it shouldn’t have been.

  I mean, we’d known each other forever.

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  We’d met in elementary school, and as kids he’d been my number-one advocate, no matter what the situation. When I was bullied, he was there standing up for me. When my mom died, he was there comforting me—which isn’t an easy feat for a child.

  When we were younger we’d spent every recess, every lunch period and every bus ride together. Once we were a little older and had a little more independence, we walked to and from school together and still went to lunch together.

  He was the best part of my day for a really long time. And he stuck by me, even when I was stupid enough to be friends with the girls who planned the Outdoor Ed event.

  It was in high school that our relationship changed.

  We’d been repainting my room—which I insisted upon doing myself, and not with the help of Todd the Professional—

  when a moment came upon us. I don’t know where it came from, or who initiated it. All I know is that one second we were squirting each other with a spray bottle of Rust-Oleum, and the next we were kissing.

  For the rest of the summer, we’d been entirely blissful together. I didn’t see the girls I’d been hanging around with (it was mostly an in-school friendship), and I felt more like myself than I had since I was a kid.

  He thought I was fun and wild (I knew because I asked him why he liked me every two and a half seconds), and I thought he was super cute, strong, funny, sweet…

  We spent the days at the pool or walking his dog (I didn’t have one of my own, thanks to Meredith’s stupid allergy), and the nights on the phone or watching movies. In the wee hours of the morning, when we would sometimes still be on the phone, we would sneak out and meet each other in the field between our houses. We’d lie on the thin-bladed grass and stare up at the sky, watching as the sunrise turned from 7 2

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  orange to purple to blue, and talk about everything we could think of.

  How we were still able to come up with new topics for that long, I have no idea.