Here Lies Bridget

“So we have a deal.” It wasn’t a question. I wanted him to feel like he had already agreed.

“She’ll sit with you Monday at lunch.”

I snickered to myself and walked past him to the cafeteria. But as soon as I walked away, Liam loomed in my mind again, removing any trace of laughter.

I STAYED QUIET THROUGHOUT the lunch period, ignoring the gossip Jillian was imparting to Michelle. Instead of participating, I spent the whole period looking through my Allure magazine and glancing at Liam as furtively and often as possible.

He was about six foot three, his body lean and toned. His hair was the dark, shiny brown that you might see in a shampoo commercial, and reached down just past his dark, straight eyebrows. His eyes, though I couldn’t see them from where I sat, I knew to be the same light color of a swimming pool. The dark circle of his pupil and his thick, dark, straight eyelashes made the color seem even more striking.

He was sitting with Anna, who was taking a bite out of a cheeseburger. Eyeing the bottle of Coke Classic that sat in front of her, I wondered how she ate like that and still stayed so thin. Even if we had been friends, though, I never would have asked her that—that was what people asked me.

Not the other way around.

I decided that of all things, I didn’t have the energy to look at the pair of them.

“Bridget?”

I blinked away images of times Liam’s eyes had been close enough to mine that I could memorize them.

“What?” I snapped, and looked up to see a girl named Laura’s eager-looking face.

She recoiled slightly at the harshness in my tone.

“Um. Well, I was, uh …” she nervously tripped over her words “.wondering if you guys wanted to come over to my house tonight. I mean, it’s not going to be like a big deal party or anything. Not like your parties.”

“Have you ever actually been to one of my parties?” I asked impatiently, barely interested in the conversation.

“Um. No, but, I mean, I hear they’re great.”

I narrowed my eyes at her and cocked my head a bit to the side. She cleared her throat.

“Well, anyway, it’s just going to be like board games and stuff. My parents will be there.” She looked sheepish.

I waited to see if she said anything else. When she didn’t, and instead shifted her weight uncomfortably, I smiled.

“Uh-huh. Well, I know that I’ll be busy tonight. I don’t know about the other girls. Michelle? Jillian? Busy tonight? Want to go play some board games with Laura and her parents?”

Michelle shook her head down at her food, her face red. Jillian looked sympathetically at Laura and then said something about plans with her mom.

I crinkled my nose, and made a tsk-ing sound as I turned back to Laura looking regretful.

“Aw, that’s too bad. Maybe next time?” I smiled dismissively, and looked back down at my magazine.

“You know what, Bridget?” Laura asked, her ears turning red.

I gave her a challenging look.

“What’s that?”

“You’re just …”

There was a lurch in my stomach. I would not be told off, and I could tell that was where this was going. But I’d learned long ago to deflect this sort of thing.

“I’d stop now, if I were you. Which thank God I’m not.”

I watched her fury grow, and I felt the growing sense that I’d really gone too far.

“I’d always rather be me than you.” And she walked away.

I scrambled to think of something to say. I thought of nothing. I’d never had to. Since when did anyone challenge me?

I knew I’d been unnecessarily cruel to her, and I felt kind of guilty. But my day had sucked so far, too, and no one was apologizing to me. “Bridget—”

“So I ran into Anna today,” I started, cutting off Michelle. I knew she was going to give me grief and I just couldn’t deal with that on top of it all. Plus, I had to pretend that what had just happened didn’t bother me.

“And she introduced herself to me and all—she already knew my name—and then told me that Liam had told her to ‘look out for’ me. What do you suppose that means?”

Jillian, always interested in a good outrage, gasped and dropped her celery stick.

“He said that?”

I enlightened her on my theories of what he might have meant, and we talked about it for the rest of the period, eventually agreeing that he must have meant that I am so popular she’s bound to run into me, and to then introduce herself.

As soon as the bell rang indicating the end of lunch, I told Michelle about the deal I’d made with Brett. Well, I told her the half she needed to know, which was that she was sitting with him on Monday at lunch.

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“I’m what?”

“It’s no big deal. Seriously, I said I’d get him a date, and all he wanted was to ask you out himself.” She stared at me.

“Oh, my God, Michelle, just say no to him, it’s not that hard.” “Bridget, you can’t just—” What, now she was going to start rebelling, too? “Well, you’re going to sit with him, so …” I let the so hang in the air, letting her fill in the blank for herself with stop arguing with me. I smiled superficially, wiggled a goodbye with my fingers to Jillian and then strutted off to class. I didn’t look back to see what Michelle did next.

As I walked away, I began to wonder if what I was about to do was wrong. Sure, chances were that Brett wouldn’t get caught helping me, and that he wouldn’t dive into a depression when Michelle said no to his date. But still—what if we did get caught? What if he did fail the class, and it was my fault? What if between that and Michelle rejecting him, he did slip into a depression? Anyone would, after being expelled from this school. It was such a high-profile place that anything that happened here was practically in the society pages.

But no, I thought to myself. I was giving my actions far more credit than they deserved. Brett would be fine. We wouldn’t get caught, and even if we did … Brett would be fine.

My conviction wavered a bit once I walked into my NSL class and saw that there was a substitute teacher.

Okay, this could go one of two ways. Either the sub was nicer than Mrs. Remeley, our usual teacher, or she could be nasty.

Nasty like that teacher we’d had in middle school who kept telling us to sit up straight and hold our books a certain way during reading time.

Nice like my first-grade teacher with Valentine’s Day candy and the inability to stop me from doing what I wanted. Which, in first grade, was to use Brett to my advantage.

On my way to my seat, I watched her. She looked to be about in her fifties, but according to the chalkboard, she was a “Miss.” Miss Smithson. She was mousy and looked nervous. I instantly felt some indefinable emotion for her.

Brett was in his seat looking down at his notes when I sat down. I tapped him on the shoulder.