Slide

“What’s that? You joining the cheerleading squad?”

I rub my temples. “Ugh. No. That’s for Mattie. Argh. My head.”

Rollins rubs my shoulder sympathetically. “Twice in one day. You must be exhausted.”

“Yeah.” I sigh. A part of me, small but growing every day, wants to come clean to Rollins. I mean, Rollins knows everything about me. Everything but that. Rollins is ruled by logic, though. If I told him I slid into other people’s minds, he’d laugh at me.

Wouldn’t he?

Peering into his brown eyes, I wonder if I’ve misjudged him. Maybe I could tell him. Maybe I could make him understand.

“Would it sound crazy if . . .” I trail off, not sure where to go from there. I remember my father’s expression when I told him about sliding—as if I’d just said an alien had visited me in the night.

“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling away from him. “Really. I’m fine.”

Rollins looks disappointed. I feel like I’ve let him down. I know he wants me to open up, confide in him—but I can’t. I just can’t.

“I should go,” he says. He grabs his leather jacket off the back of the couch. I follow him out of the living room and into the darkness of the front entryway, my mouth opening and closing like a fish. I’m afraid this is it—if he leaves now, our friendship will never go back to normal. I want to say stop. I want to say stay, but nothing comes out.

We stand near the door. Rollins’s face softens for a split second, and he reaches out and gently brushes my hair back, revealing the bump on my forehead. I don’t like the way it feels, so exposed. Wincing, I push his hand away.

He shakes his head and turns to open the door.

“See you later,” he says, his jaw firm, and he disappears into the crisp night air. After a moment, his car flares to life and roars away. I stand there, watching his taillights get smaller and smaller. There’s a bitter taste in my mouth. Finally, I hit the switch for the porch light so my sister will be able to see when she gets home.

I wander into the middle of my room and just stand there for a minute, not knowing what to do with myself. There’s something about being alone on a Friday night— it’s more lonely than any other night, I think. It’s like my loserishness has been highlighted by the simple fact that I’m standing here by myself at nine p.m. on a Friday.

I have to put on some Weezer to make the space a little less quiet. I stare at the walls, at the Nine Inch Nails and Green Day posters hanging over my bed. They remind me of Rollins—he’d call me every time something he thought I’d like came in. “You and your old nineties music,” he’d say, grinning, shaking his head.

The way he walked out tonight, though—it makes me scared I’ve lost him for good. I’ve shut down his every attempt to find out what’s really going on with me. I know what Dr. Moran would say—I’m pushing him away before he has a chance to disappoint me.

I try to find something in my room from before we were friends, a hint at what my life used to be like, but there’s nothing. Finally, I turn to my closet. I push aside the clothes I wear every day and peek in the back. It’s like a time capsule—my old cheerleading uniform, the preppy sweaters I used to wear when I hung out with Samantha.

When my fingers hook the glittery purple gown I wore to homecoming last year, I yank my hand back as if from a cobra. The poisonous memories come rushing back.

On the first day of sophomore year, I felt this heady rush of possibility. Cheerleading tryouts were coming up, and Samantha and I pinkie-swore we’d both get on the squad. When we did, we celebrated by sneaking wine coolers from her older brother’s fridge.

My locker was right next to Scott Becker’s—before people started calling him Scotch. Samantha and I both had the hots for him. He was smaller then, with sandy-blond hair and dimples. He did this thing where he’d stare at me until I looked, and then he’d get all red and turn his gaze to the floor.

On the last Friday in September, he asked me to go to the homecoming dance with him. I thought Samantha would be excited for me. Okay, that’s bullshit. I knew she’d be pissed. But I said yes anyway.

If I could take back anything that happened in my life— well, besides my mother dying, of course—it would be saying yes to Scott Becker.

Samantha turned mean, getting the rest of the cheerleaders to turn against me. In health class, we did these PowerPoint presentations on sexually transmitted diseases. Samantha’s was about herpes, and she Photoshopped my head onto a purple dinosaur and called it the Herpasaurus Rex. Everyone laughed, including the teacher.

Samantha spread a rumor that I gave head to all the seniors on the football team. My phone number was in every stall in the boys’ bathroom. Saturday mornings, our trees were full of toilet paper.

Whenever a cheerleader cupped her hand around some-one’s ear and whispered a secret, all the while staring at me, I felt like dying. But to give in would be to let them win, and there was no way I was going to do that. I tried to make it seem like the rumors didn’t bother me. Like I didn’t care.

Only at night, when sleep was impossible, did I cry.

The weekend before homecoming, my dad took Mattie and me to the mall to look for a dress. He pressed a few bills, crisp from the ATM, into my hand and headed off for the food court. Mattie pirouetted and skipped by my side, but it wasn’t all fun and frills for me. It was war.

I wanted a dress that would stun, that would show everyone how little I thought of the rumors and pranks. It needed to bring the boys to their knees and the girls to their senses. It needed to double as armor.

At one end of the mall, next to Pretzels ’n’ More, we found a store called Tonight, Tonight. The dress jumped out at me from the window—a dark-purple, silky, sparkly thing. It reminded me of the stream in the woods behind our house, of water spilling over rocks and twinkling in the moonlight.

When I put it on, I felt strong in a way I’d never felt before. I felt like someone else, someone older and wiser, someone who knew what she wanted out of life. The front came down dangerously low, skimming the tops of my barely-there breasts, but the saleslady pulled out these chicken-cutlet things and stuffed them in my bra, and it was like I had bloomed.

When we got home, I tried my dress on and sashayed down the stairs like a princess. I could tell my dad wasn’t too crazy about the dress and the chicken-cutlet things, but he said, “I guess you’re old enough to pick your own clothes” and “You only go to your first high school dance once” and “You sort of look like your mother in that thing”—and then he stopped talking and went into his study.

A guy on the football team with a goatee drove us to the dance, but first he took us to Kapler Park and pulled out a joint. I said no to the pot, but I took a few swigs from the bottle of Cutty Sark Scott had lifted from his parents’ liquor cabinet. It made me feel the way the dress did—all warm and grown-up and free. When we all felt light and fuzzy, we headed to the dance. It occurred to me that the goatee guy probably shouldn’t be driving, but the liquor made me feel like nothing bad could really happen, and I didn’t want to seem like a baby.

“Come dance with me,” Scott whispered in my ear. I let him lead me out to the middle of the dance floor, and it seemed like the whole crowd parted to let us through, just like in a movie. A slow song played, and I leaned against him and closed my eyes. He smelled like pot and orange shampoo. It felt perfect. But then a familiar feeling crept over me—I was about to slide—and I mumbled to Scott that I needed to sit down.

“You want to go sit somewhere alone?”

I nodded and rubbed my eyes. I could barely stand up. By the time Scott maneuvered me to the edge of the gym, by the doors that led to the locker rooms, I’d already slid into someone else.

It was a strange feeling. I’d left my body, but I was still in the gym. It was just like my perspective had changed. The body I’d slid into was standing near the punch bowl, sipping sweet liquid out of a paper cup. Her beautiful pink ring flashed under the disco lights. That’s when I realized who I’d slid into. I was wearing Samantha’s silver heels, ones I’d borrowed long before our fight, ones that she’d said made her feel like Cinderella.

My ex-best friend watched Scott drag my body into the boys’ locker room.

My worst fear was coming true. When you abandon your body, you leave it vulnerable. Maybe Scott was just looking for a place to sit with me and wait until I woke up, but then why didn’t he just prop me up on one of the folding chairs set up along the perimeter of the gym? Or, better yet, why didn’t he find a chaperone and ask for help?

I was pretty sure I knew why, but I couldn’t stomach the reason. I couldn’t think about what was happening to my body without me to protect it. I desperately wished I could force Samantha to follow Scott, to punch him in the mouth, or even just to scream for help. But there was nothing I could do.

After a few moments, I saw a boy with long brown hair and a lip piercing duck into the locker room. He was in my Spanish class—a new kid named Archie Rollins. Samantha and I had laughed out loud the first day Señora Gomez read roll call. Who names their son Archie?

My panic grew. I thought of a book I’d read about a girl who got wasted at a party. Some random guy took pictures of her naked body and posted them all over the internet. Everyone saw—even her parents.

Come on, Samantha, I thought. I know we’re in a fight, but how can you stand here and not do anything? How?

That’s when I returned.

I awoke to sounds of a scuffle. My body was laid out on one of those uncomfortable wooden benches in the boys’ locker room, my dress around my waist. Two struggling figures became clearer until I figured out it was Scott and that guy, Archie.

Archie got a good punch in, and it caught Scott right under his chin. Scott’s arms pinwheeled, looking for something to grab on to, but there was nothing. He fell hard on his back, groaning and looking like he wouldn’t be getting up for a while.

Turning to me, Archie held out a hand. “Come on,” he said, his voice gruff. “Let’s get you out of here.” I let him lead me out of the locker room, up the stairs, and outside into the cool night air. He folded me into his car, and I let him because I wasn’t thinking about much of anything but how I needed a shower.

On Monday morning, I overheard a cheerleader whisper to another sophomore that I’d gone down on Scott in the boys’ locker room at the dance. “Who told you that?” the sophomore asked. “Samantha,” the cheerleader responded, “so you know it’s true. And then Scott yakked all over the dance floor.” They giggled.

“Scotch Becker,” they called him. To this day, he goes by a nickname he earned the night he tried to date-rape me. Every time I hear it, I want to vomit.

After Spanish class, I confronted Samantha. “You saw it,” I said. “You saw Scott dragging me into the locker room, but you just stood there and sipped your punch and didn’t do anything.” My voice was shaky, and I felt like I was going to cry, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

Samantha stood with her folder clutched to her chest, her lips pressed together. In her eyes, I saw a mixture of anger, regret, and fear. I could tell she was wondering how I knew she saw it all when I was unconscious at the time. She was afraid of me, of what I knew and how I knew it. She turned and scuttled away.