The Rumor Mill

By Wednesday I understood exactly how fast a rumor moves through eleven hundred people when Sable Winters is the one pushing it.

Small at first. Sideways looks in the hallway. A cluster of girls by my locker who went quiet the second I showed up. Thursday, Dana caught the actual version of the story and hauled me into the empty art room at lunch, arms crossed, ready to explode.

"Sable's telling people you called the whole cheer squad a bunch of airheads who only made varsity because of who they're dating," she said. "Half the team believes her."

"I never said that."

"I know. But you dumped Gray Locke in front of the whole cafeteria, so right now you're the villain of Cedar Bluff High and nobody's giving you the benefit of the doubt." She dropped her arms. "What's going on with you? Weight loss. Skipping lunch. Disappearing for whole afternoons. Then this thing with Gray out of nowhere. Talk to me."

My chest hurt with how much I wanted to. "I'm dealing with something. I can't talk about it yet."

"Josie—"

"Please. I'll tell you when I can."

She let it go, though her face said she hated letting it go.

Gray caught me at my locker after seventh period, and for one stupid second I hoped he'd come to talk it out. His eyes told me otherwise before he'd said a word.

"You had your mom lie to me at the door last week," he said. "I came by, she said you weren't home. You were home. I saw your light on."

"I wasn't feeling well."

"You've said that forty times this semester and I believed you every single time, because I trusted you." He shook his head. "Now you humiliate me in front of the whole school and can't even give me a real reason. What happened?"

I'd rehearsed this. The words came out anyway, tasting like poison the whole way.

"I like someone else," I said. "Marcus. From chem."

Disbelief, then something sharper. "You don't even know Marcus Diaz's last name."

"I know it fine."

"I know you, Josie. This isn't you."

"Maybe you don't know me the way you think you do." Each lie dragged me further from anything I could take back later. "He notices things about me you never bothered to."

"That's a lie and you know it." His voice cracked right on the last word. "You're twisting yourself in circles so you don't have to say the real reason. Fine. I'm done trying to figure you out."

He walked off, shoulders squared the exact way they'd been squared the year after his mom's funeral, back when he didn't want anyone stopping him to ask how he was holding up. I stood there with the taste of my own lies stuck in my mouth.

I'd wanted to protect him. Turned out I'd only found a slower way to gut him.

My phone buzzed. A number I didn't know.

UNKNOWN: did you really think Sable wouldn't find out what's actually wrong with you? see you at practice, sweetheart.

I read it once. Read it again. Read it a third time, because my hands wouldn't stop shaking long enough for the first two to sink in.