Quinn Littleton was a mean girl—a skinny blonde social terrorist in stilettos. She was everything Emma MacLaren hated. Until she died.

A proud geek girl, Emma loves her quiet life on the outskirts, playing video games and staying off the radar. When her nightmare of a new stepsister moves into the bedroom next door, her world is turned upside down. Quinn is a queen bee with a nasty streak who destroys anyone who gets in her way. Teachers, football players, her fellow cheerleaders—no one is safe.

Emma wants nothing more than to get this girl out of her life, but when Quinn dies suddenly, Emma realizes there was more to her stepsister than anyone ever realized.

A meaningful and humorous exploration of teen stereotypes and grief, Dead Little Mean Girl examines the labels we put on people and what lies beyond if we’re only willing to look closer.

Dead Little Mean Girl

Eva Darrows

Quinn was a mean girl.

We’re not talking “mouthy” or “occasionally moody” or “sharp around the edges.” We’re talking “full-throttle mega-mean girl with acid spit and laser eyes.” That’s awful to say about the recently departed, but you had to see her in action to understand. If she didn’t like you, she took insidious glee in decimating you until you were a twitching pile of pudding beneath her stilettos. Worse? She got away with it. People allowed a lava-spewing horror show to rule the school because she was hot and popular

High school is gross.

Praise for Eva Darrows’s The Awesome

“Blisteringly funny and unrepentantly crass.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Maggie’s profanity-laced, snarky, deeply loving, yet antagonistic relationship with her mother is delightful.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

EVA DARROWS is the pseudonym for New York Times bestselling author Hillary Monahan, author of Mary: The Summoning and Mary: Unleashed, and, as Eva Darrows, the critically acclaimed The Awesome. Eva lives in Massachusetts with her family of some parts human, more parts fur kids. She can be found on Twitter: @HillaryMonahan.

For Becky, who always makes me smile.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Introduction

Praise

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Acknowledgments

Copyright

Chapter One

Quinn Littleton was found facedown in my garage at nine in the morning on a Monday, her corpse dressed up like Malibu Barbie. Her boobs were crammed into a homemade coconut-shell bra that tied off behind her back with pink ribbons. She wore a hula-style grass skirt she’d trimmed so short it barely covered anything, and thanks to her unflattering final position of facedown, rump pointed at the garage doors, the first thing anyone saw of her corpse was a sliver of thong bisecting perfect butt cheeks.

Quinn Littleton was dead.

And it was sorta my fault.

Did I mention she’s my sister?

I probably should have explained that with the whole “dead in my garage” thing. Hot, popular girls don’t just die there like it’s some kind of suburban elephant graveyard. Quinn is—was—related to me. Sort of. She wasn’t my birth sister but she was for all intents and purposes my stepsister. The only reason she wasn’t my actual stepsister is our moms hadn’t married yet. So Quinn and I lived together, had rooms next to one another and were forced to endure holidays together all without an actual and factual sisterly bond.

I wouldn’t have wanted one, given the choice. We didn’t jell.

Quinn was a mean girl. We’re not talking “mouthy” or “occasionally moody” or “sharp around the edges.” We’re talking “full-throttle mega-mean girl with acid spit and laser eyes.” That’s awful to say about the recently departed, but you had to see her in action to understand. If she didn’t like you, she took insidious glee in decimating you until you were a twitching pile of pudding beneath her stilettos. Worse? She got away with it. People allowed a lava-spewing horror show to rule the school because she was hot and popular.

High school is gross.

It didn’t help that I’m one of those nerdy girls—brainy, glasses, I wear jeans every day and my morning beauty regime consists of washing my face, brushing my teeth and sticking my hair into a ponytail. It was mortifying for Princess Pedicure, who got up a full hour and a half before we left for school to make sure she had time to set her curlers, apply her makeup and match her underwear to her miniskirts.

There’s nothing wrong with investing in your appearance. There is, however, something wrong with telling everyone they’re disgusting because they don’t go on the latest kale-and-prune-juice diet to be “Africa skinny.” That’s a direct quote, by the way. Africa skinny.

Quinn’s worldview was severely limited.

* * *

Quinn and I met a year after our moms started hanging out. We had no idea that they were getting it on behind closed doors, but they hadn’t advertised it, either. They were two quasi-recent divorcées who had joined a women’s support group and found one another. It was martinis on Fridays, late-night conversation and a lot of texting. Which became a lot of shopping trips and dinner dates. And weekend day trips. And then full weekend getaways to Cape Cod and weeks in Maine.

Nine months later, my mother sat me down in the kitchen to inform me that she was dating Karen Littleton, who was a lawyer and “a wonderful person who makes me feel special.” I was surprised, yes, but not bothered. Mom’s business was Mom’s business. I didn’t want to think about her sex life regardless of the gender of her partner. But Karen had reported that her daughter, Quinn, “who is the same age as Emma and I’m sure they’ll be fast friends,” took it poorly. There was yelling and screaming and a lot of “how can you do this to me?”

I was a peach by comparison, especially since the only reaction I could manage was, “Her daughter needs to calm down” and “Man, Dad will be pissed.” Which she did, and he was, and I predicted all that because I’m smarter than the average bear.

Three months after the big reveal, Mom and I had another sit-down talk because Karen and Quinn were moving in. I hadn’t met either of them by that point—Mom had kept her relationship separate so I wouldn’t get hit with shrapnel if things went bad. But a romantic week in Aruba and the happy couple determined it was time to take the next big step. I wasn’t super excited about living with strangers and I said as much. Mom apologized but it was pretty clear it was going to happen whether or not I liked it. When I told Dad, he offered an open door, but...

I love my dad. It’s just that he took the divorce to mean open season on thirty-year-old females. I didn’t want to have to deal with seeing him as the Godfather of Skank, nor did I want to be home by myself the rest of the time—he was a pilot and out of town a lot. Stuck between two bad situations, I picked Karen and Quinn.

To this day, I’m not sure that was a smart decision.

* * *

The first meeting of the East and West Side lesbian families was “interesting.” My mom is short, curvy and olive-skinned thanks to her Sicilian heritage. The hair at her temples is graying, but the rest of it is a beautiful chestnut that hangs to her tailbone. She has round features and her eyes are a pale, pretty brown. She’s an art teacher, so she spends a lot of time picking paint and clay out from under her fingernails. Karen is her absolute opposite. Tall, lithe and imposing, she wears suits and carries a briefcase and actually owns more than one pair of high heels. She’s a Nordic empress with blond hair, blue eyes and skin so pale she makes paper look tan.

From the moment Karen stepped out of her silver Mercedes with the black leather seats, I was uncomfortable. She was dressed in her version of casual—khakis and a white shirt—but she obviously had money and she comported herself like it. I grew up blue-collar middle class, and seeing her polish made me feel grubby by comparison. I fidgeted as she approached, her capped teeth gleaming in the sun.

“Hi, Emma. I’m Karen. So glad to finally meet you.” She flashed a smile before settling into Mom’s side. Mom shifted her weight, her cheeks flushed. She was nervous, though I didn’t know if that was because I was meeting Karen for the first time or because she was finally meeting Quinn. To Karen’s credit, she noticed my mom’s discomfort. She grazed her fingers across Mom’s biceps. Then she glanced at me to see if the contact freaked me out. I was more impressed that she cared about Mom’s welfare than to sweat a display of affection.

“Hey. Hi,” I said. “It’s... Yeah. Cool.”

I sounded like a stammering moron. But what if Karen turned out to be Cruella de Vil? What if she hated me? What if she made my mom unhappier than my dad did after that whole midlife-crisis flight-attendant-humping fiasco?

“Quinn incoming. I’m sure you two will get along,” Karen said, motioning at the Mercedes. “She’s worried about going to a new high school in the fall.”

Karen sounded so very certain, like an Emma-and-Quinn friendship was a preordained thing. I had a momentary flash of hope that Quinn and I could watch Doctor Who together or maybe nerd out about CW shows. If she was a reader, I had four bookshelves in my room loaded with comics and trade paperbacks and all The Dark Tower books.

Maybe this won’t be so bad, I said to myself. Maybe it’ll be cool. Then Quinn stepped out of the car. She was perfect. Her strawberry blonde hair hung to her elbows, her skin so flawless it’d make a model weep. I was short, chubby and dark. She was tall, willowy and golden. I wore three-dollar flip-flops. She wore Gucci pumps that cost more than my entire outfit. Her makeup was perfect; my lip balm was a dollar-bin find. I held a book in my hand, she held—

—a purse dog. A Chihuahua, to be exact, that I later found out was named Versace.

She stood there, her mongrel snarling at me like it wanted to eat my face. I hugged my well-loved copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban like it was the last bit of sanity in an insane world. She eyed me, I eyed her and both our faces fell. The universe had conspired to bring high school elite and high school nerd-herd together, and wasn’t that hysterical?

“Hi,” I said, forcing my lips into something that resembled a smile but probably looked more like I wanted to puke.

“Oh, good. Lesbian is hereditary. Not cool, Mom,” Quinn snapped before tromping back to the car, her familiar yapping all the way. She slammed the door and pulled out her phone, her thumbs flying over the screen. She was talking about me already—to people I didn’t know. And she thought I was...

“I’m not a lesbian,” I said to the Mercedes. I turned around to blink at Karen and Mom. “I’m not a lesbian,” I repeated stupidly. It wasn’t that I minded the misperception, but I felt a need to clarify for Karen’s sake. Or maybe I wanted to say something that wasn’t, “Wow, Karen. Your daughter sucks.”

Karen groaned and ran a hand down her face, her gaze swinging up to the summer sky. “I am so sorry. She’s taking this poorly.”

From that point on, so was I.

Chapter Two

Karen and Quinn moved in just before my junior year started. Quinn sulked, brooded, complained and was an all-around Misery Princess for the first week. Day eight was when my raging hate-on for her was born. She’d started the day with, “Girls are supposed to have two boobs, not one. Get a bra that fits,” over breakfast, and that was annoying, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. The conversation I overheard with her father later in the day, however, was another story.

My mother had worked hard to make Quinn feel welcome. The month before Quinn and Karen’s arrival, Mom painted Quinn’s new bedroom Quinn’s favorite color, refinished her floor to beautiful hardwood and bought her a new, expensive bedroom set. She’d stocked the house with Quinn’s favorite foods, and cleared space for her in the upstairs bathroom. She bought her a desktop computer so Quinn could do her homework with relative ease, and even added Quinn to the car insurance so Quinn could take advantage of her driver’s permit.

Mom cared. She showed it by asking Karen every day, multiple times a day, how she could help make Quinn’s transition easier. She treated Quinn like a VIP, buying her iced coffees and ice cream sundaes that Quinn would reject on account of calories. Whenever Quinn emerged from her Quinn hole, Mom was at her beck and call.

Through all of it, Quinn remained...aloof was probably the nice way of putting it, but she was cold, and sharp, and dismissive. She never showed any signs of appreciation. She took and took and took and offered nothing in return, which was why when I heard her slamming my mother when she was on the phone, I wanted to put her head through the wall.

“I hate it here,” she said. “It’s awful.”

I was passing by her room when she said that, the thin door not enough to keep her voice contained. I paused even though I knew I’d regret it, and she continued. “Emma, Dana’s daughter, is boring and fat. This house is ghetto, this town is gross. Dana got her lesbian all over Mom and I want to puke whenever they touch each other. Like, keep your gay to yourself, please.”

It was stupid, awful and bigoted. It was also crap; neither of our mothers was demonstrative, probably because they wanted us to be comfortable and their relationship was still new to us. Quinn was making stuff up to her father. I shook my head and rolled my eyes, about to head back to my room, when she said, “I don’t even dare wear shorts around here. Dana’s constantly checking me out.”

Oh, no. Nope, not today, Satan.

“My mother’s not a pedo,” I snapped, slapping hard on Quinn’s closed door. “And she’s been nothing but nice to you. If you’re going to lie, at least do it where someone can’t call you on your crap.”

“I gotta go, Dad.” Something smacked against the wall and I heard her stomping my way. I stepped back right as she pulled open her door, her eyes narrowed to slits, her hair tied up on top of her head in a sloppy bun. She wore one of those tank tops that showed off a belly button ring and a pair of pink and blue checkered pajama pants.

“Don’t listen to my phone conversations!” she screamed in my face, a spray of spittle striking my cheeks.

I winced and wiped my face, my jaw grinding. “The walls are thin. And don’t pretend me overhearing you calling my mother a pedophile is somehow worse than you saying it in the first place.”

“You’re standing outside of my door, you fat bitch. Don’t even!” Behind her, Versace snarled like he was Cerberus guarding the gates of Hell. I eyed him, he eyed me back and then he charged. Quinn could have stopped him, easily in fact, but she moved aside to let him come at me, the little turd of a dog darting in to attack. Razor-sharp teeth tore into my skin, Versace’s head worrying back and forth when he got a good grip on me. I yelped and punted the little jerk to get him off me.

He hit the wall with a thud and a whine.

Quinn flew out of her room to scoop up her teeth-gnashing baby, checking him for lingering injury. She assessed him for damage, bending all of his limbs to ensure I hadn’t snapped them in half like an ogress.

“Oh my God. Stay the hell away from my dog! Ugh, you are such a bitch!” I stared at her in horror, rivulets of blood streaking down my bare foot to stain the rug below. I was so mad I thought I’d rip her hair out, but hearing the kerfuffle, both of our moms crested the stairs to intervene, Karen stepping between us. She herded Quinn back into her bedroom while my mom took me to the bathroom to bandage my foot.

Mom shut the door to tune out the screeching harpy next door.

“Are you okay?” She sat on the edge of the tub, pulling my foot into her lap. It wasn’t so awful—a few puncture wounds, a scratch. Thankfully Versace wasn’t a German shepherd, though my ankle throbbed something fierce. Chihuahua teeth are no joke.

“Would you be? Her dog bites me and I’m the asshole.”

“Language,” Mom chastised. Right, language. Because that was the important part. But being snide wasn’t going to help my cause, and so I sat on the toilet, looking at the countertop. Quinn had commandeered it from day one, multiple baskets holding her lotions and potions and skin care. There were trays for her makeup, bins for her feminine products and EpiPens, and a cup holding combs and hairbrushes. The upstairs bathroom used to be mine, but her stuff was a flag staked into the ground, claiming that six-by-eleven space for the nation of Quinn.

Can I secede? Please?

Mom dabbed at my cuts with hydrogen peroxide. “She’ll calm down. Karen says Quinn’s struggled with the separation.” Mom glanced up from her doctoring, strain lines framing her eyes and mouth. “I know she’s being difficult, but we can give her a chance to settle in before we call it a wash, right?”

“She just told her father on the phone you were checking her out,” I said. “I’m not sure she deserves a chance.”

That stopped her cold, and she peered up at me from behind her dark brows. Her mouth did a pucker thing, her shoulders tensed and she sighed. “I’ll talk to Karen, but the point remains. She’s having a hard time. Let’s be the bigger people.”

Whatever.

“If the dog bites me again I want it gone,” I added as an afterthought. “I don’t need to be mauled in my own home.”

Mom nodded and reached for the Band-Aids. “That’s fair. Maybe we’ll get him a muzzle.”

Can we get one for Quinn, too?

Nah, I’m not that lucky.

* * *

The damage went deeper than the bite marks. Quinn was such a problem child, I secretly hoped Mom and Karen would break up. I knew it wouldn’t happen—they were far too happy—but my peaceful home was in tatters as a result of their relationship. As a result of Quinn. Mom kept assuring me that Quinn was adapting and to be patient, but I knew what evil lurked behind that bedroom door. A bona fide bitch. And bitches kept right on bitching because that was their basic bitch function.

Quinn threw the curveball our first day of school. I went downstairs in my jeans, sweatshirt and wet hair, expecting attitude, but she was smiling at the breakfast table. Rare. And conversational. Rarer. For the briefest moment, I wondered if maybe Mom was right. Maybe Quinn had purged the douche bag demon festering inside. Or maybe her fairy godmother had granted her a modicum of decency sometime during the night.

“You have good hair, Emma. Like, a nice color and it’s long. You should wear it down,” she said.

I blinked at her over my wobbly pile of scrambled eggs, expecting a second head to sprout from her neck. She smiled. I glanced over at my mother, who was hovering by the sink. Mom and I shared a look. She nodded, encouraging me to say something equally accommodating. It took me a minute to get over my opossum-in-headlights shock, but after a couple of bites I managed, “Thanks. I’ve been growing it out.”

“You can use my flat iron to straighten it before school if you want. Tomorrow or whatever.”

“Oh. Cool.” I had no idea how to use a flat iron, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I apparently didn’t need to, either.

“...I’ll show you later. After school.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

One morning of her being nice didn’t assuage the pain of our introductory weeks, but it did shake my resolve to hate her with the fury of a thousand suns. The whole time we waited for the bus, she chattered about how she missed her old friends and how much a new school terrified her. I mustered some sympathy for her that day. Actually, I maintained that sympathy the first week of school because she was nice to me. In turn, I introduced her to everyone I knew because that’s what you did when you had the new kid on your hip.

I wasn’t so stupid as to think that we were going to be best friends, but she was tolerable enough that I thought maybe we could coexist amicably. I was even encouraged when I found out we were going to be in the same art class. Quinn liked photography and I slanted toward sketching and inking, but art was a common interest.

The first day of art class, she took the seat next to me. The way the classroom was set up, there were four double rows of black tables, each one big enough for three workstations. I sat at the end, Quinn took the middle and, right as the bell rang, Nikki Lambert came running into the room, her hair dyed pink and gray and purple, to take the third seat. She wore a black shirt, a short black skirt, black-and-white striped tights and a pair of black combat boots. She was a punk rock chick with runway style, cool in that outcast “too mature for the rest of us” way. She and I weren’t super close friends, but we’d hung out a bit during sophomore year and over the summer, and I liked her a lot.

“Hi, I’m new. Quinn Littleton,” Quinn said as an opener. “I’m Emma’s—My mom’s dating Emma’s mom, so we’re like sisters living in lesbian land.”

Nikki dropped a camouflage bag with a red anarchy symbol embroidered on the side onto the table. Her eyebrows lifted as she looked between me and Quinn, a weird smile playing around her mouth. Her lip piercing gleamed silver as she wriggled it around with her tongue.

“I’m Nikki.” Nikki waved at me and I noticed that each of her fingernails was painted a different color. I thought it was awesome. So did Quinn. She reached out to take Nikki’s hand, pulling it close to admire it.

“The gray is Opi, yeah?”

Nikki peered at her for a long moment, not snatching her hand away but clearly surprised by Quinn’s friendliness. So was I. I never would have had the guts to be so outgoing with a stranger.

“Yeah. I think so,” Nikki said.

“I love their stuff. I’m such a nail polish whore.”

They shared a look that I couldn’t quite read. Before anything else could be said, our teacher, Mr. Riddell, walked in. He always looked like he smelled something foul—his brow was knitted with worry lines, his nostrils were pinched, his mouth was flat and wide like a guppy’s. Even his smiles looked pained. But the better I got to know him, the more I understood that this wasn’t an indicator of bad disposition. Nature had given Mr. Riddell a resting sad face.

“Welcome, everybody,” he said. “I’m looking forward to a creative year!”

We didn’t do any art that day, just got a tour of the classroom to see where all our supplies were kept. Mr. Riddell talked about his syllabus and asked us what we’d like to focus on for the year. It was the standard first-day stuff. By the time the bell rang, I was eager to get started but that’d have to wait another day. I stooped over to grab my book bag, and when I stood, there was Quinn, a grin on her face.

“Mind if I invite Nikki to lunch?”

“We’re having lunch together?” I blinked stupidly.

Quinn smirked. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we?”

I nodded despite the because you hated me two days ago rattling around inside my brain. “I don’t mind. She’s pretty cool.”

“Nice. I’ll ask.”

And I watched as Quinn dazzled her way into Nikki’s charms. She made it look so easy, like people were puzzles she had no problem solving. I should have realized then that this was indicative of a lot of experience. I should have realized that only a person who cycled through friends would know how to ingratiate herself so well so quickly.

Live and learn.

* * *

Not only did Nikki eat with us that day, she ate with us every day that week. I’d taken up my usual seat between my two best friends at the time, Laney Rosenberg and Tommy Naughters. Quinn sat across from me with Nikki to her side. They kept to themselves, giggling and whispering, so it was no big surprise when Quinn informed me that Nikki would be coming home with us after school that day. I thought it was neat that Quinn had already made a friend. Nikki clearly thought it was neat, too.

I had no idea exactly how neat things had gotten.

At the house, the two of them disappeared into Quinn’s room. I was disappointed at being relegated to third wheel, but I settled in at the kitchen table and let my mountain of homework keep me busy instead of brooding about being ignored. Every so often a peal of laughter would ripple downstairs, but that stopped fairly quickly. They were so silent, I almost forgot they were there until Karen called at half past four sounding out of breath.

“Hi, Emma. Quinn about?” she asked.

“She’s in her room.”

“Can you get her for me? I need to ask her a question so I can schedule her allergist appointment.”

I mumbled a yes and trod upstairs, wary of a Versace attack as I rapped my knuckles on Quinn’s door. She hadn’t quite latched it so it swung open with barely any pressure on my part. The Chihuahua immediately started doing his angry Chihuahua thing from his bed in the corner, and I glanced at it, but then Quinn let out a squeal. My eyes flew to her double bed with its white canopy. I blinked. I blinked twice. It took a moment to register what I was seeing, but when I did, I couldn’t unsee it.

There was Quinn, naked as the day she was born, with Nikki doing stuff to her.

Quinn grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest to cover her boobs, Nikki lifted her head in a panic, the dog scrambled to his feet and ran at me like he’d maul me from the knees down. Something clicked on in my brain telling me I should extricate from the situation before a Chihuahua devoured me, so I closed the door, my hand resting on the knob, the flat pane of white wood a blur before my face. All the while, the phone in my grasp called my name over and over again.

Finally, Karen’s voice penetrated the yeah, I totally saw that stupor, and I lifted the phone to my ear again.

“She’s uhh...indisposed,” I said.

Lame, yes, but I was pretty sure telling Karen her kid was having sex in the other room would do no one any favors—least of all me. I already wanted to remove my brain from my skull and give it a solid bleaching.

Karen sounded alarmed. “Everything all right? I heard her shout.”

“Yeah. She’s—” I struggled for the right words as Quinn and Nikki hissed furiously to one another on the other side of the bedroom door “—she’s fine. She was getting changed. I surprised her.”

“Oh! Yikes. Okay. Right. Well, tell her to call my cell. I have a dinner appointment at five so I won’t be available after that, but—thanks, Emma.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I went back downstairs, my face burning fire. What was I supposed to say to either of them when they emerged? “Sorry I interrupted your sex?” or maybe “Gee, Quinn, maybe being a lesbian is contagious after all?” We’d had peace around the house since school started, but that was probably out the window. Quinn was undoubtedly going to hate me for...

“Hey, Emma?”

Her voice wasn’t angry.

My spine stiffened all the same. “Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry ab—you know. That.” I glanced up to see her leaning over the railing of the stairs in a T-shirt and pair of shorts. She was flushed, though whether that was embarrassment or sex glow, I didn’t know. Nikki appeared behind her, her anarchy bag slung over her shoulder, her colorful hair disheveled. She was red in the face, and she barely looked at me as she darted outside, muttering a goodbye before the door slammed in her wake.

Being caught inside my stepsister embarrassed her. I couldn’t say I blamed her for that.

“Crap. I can follow her if you want,” I said, feeling guilty Nikki was so weirded out.

“No, it’s—I’ll call her later. It’s cool. But don’t say anything to anyone, okay? It’s nothing serious. I’m just messing around.” Quinn jostled her weight back and forth, her hands fluffing out her hair. “It’s not like I’m gay. I was getting off. But you don’t want that kind of stuff getting around school.”

I nodded dumbly at her, and then kept nodding when she returned to her room. I had no intention of saying anything to anyone, especially not our moms who weren’t going to take that last comment all that well. No, I’d keep my mouth shut and hope that it’d all go away.

Except it didn’t. It really, really didn’t.

Quinn lay low all that night through the next morning. When I came down for breakfast, she was quiet, tossing me a half smile but offering none of the friendly-ish chatter of the last few days. The wait for the bus was silent. Walking into school was silent. It put me on edge, but I tried chalking it up to a bad day or late-breaking awkwardness that I’d seen her being intimate with someone.

No, it wasn’t at all a sign that the dark times returneth.

I passed Nikki in the hall once and she met my eyes for a brief second before jerking her gaze away. She scampered into her classroom, head down. And when art class came I sat down at my station beside Quinn only to watch Nikki park herself at another table across the room, as far away from the two of us as possible.

“What’s that all about?” I asked under my breath.

“She’s mad,” Quinn said matter-of-factly.

“Why? What’d you do?”

“Nothing! She’s mad I won’t be her girlfriend. I’m about the pole, not the hole. Silly dyke.”

There were multiple problems with the answer. The first was her tone—it was grade A snark, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since before school started. It was enough to put my body into fight-or-flight mode: my palms went clammy, my stomach clenched. I wanted to dive under a rock to get away from such concentrated meanness.

The second was the context. Nikki had definitely not been holding Quinn down. In fact, one of Quinn’s legs had been firmly propped on Nikki’s shoulder, which was not an indicator that Quinn had been forced into anything. Nikki might have instigated it, but it was hypocritical to call someone a “silly dyke” when you were a willing participant in your very queer sex.

The last problem—and by far the biggest problem—was her volume. I’d whispered my question but Quinn had responded loudly. Loudly enough that everyone looked at her, then over to Nikki, and back again, knowing exactly who Quinn was talking about. The color drained from Nikki’s face as she looked at the class, her eyes enormous.

She’d been outed. Publicly. In a conservative high school with a whopping No One out of the closet. Westvale was gossipy, and very, very white, and very, very privileged. The fact that no one had burned rainbow crosses on my front lawn when Karen moved in was nigh miraculous.

“Stop looking at me,” Nikki snarled, her hand fisting in the straps of her bag before she ran for the door. She collided with Mr. Riddell as he walked in; he oomphed and called her name, but Nikki kept running, not to be seen again for four days.

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