Furious - By Jill Wolfson Page 0,3

their next class, and none of them are staring or smirking. Raymond and I have study hall next period and can easily ditch that. With a quick pivot, I start walking down the corridor and he follows, not bothering to lower his voice. “Not so fast, Meg. You were dauntingly intimidating. Terrifying! You hate everyone? Speak!”

And say what?

I push through a set of double doors into a stairwell, and I’m so befuddled that I can’t decide what to do next. Where was I going? Up? Down? My hands claw through my hair in frustration.

“Sit!” he orders, pressing on my shoulder.

I do. He joins me on the bottom step. “Deep breath in and out. Explain.”

I swallow hard, shiver a little. How do I start? I can’t explain it to myself. I just want to rub out the whole incident, make the collective memory of thirty-two students disappear. I don’t want to think about every pair of eyes trained on me, some kids laughing so hard they had to put their heads on their desks, others dropping their eyes in embarrassment, like I just confessed in public that I masturbate every night. I don’t want to think about how angry Ms. Pallas is at me and how Brendon—that boy with the crinkle eyes—turned so pale, like he somehow sensed that my hate was focused on him.

“Well?” Raymond asks again, and the question echoes in the empty stairwell.

I let my body cave in on itself, dropping my eyes to the floor, my voice a mumble, as if making myself smaller will make the whole subject disappear. “It was nothing. A blood sugar drop or something.”

“Blood sugar?” His voice is loud and cracking.

I cobble together a few coherent sentences that I hope will satisfy him for at least right now. “I don’t know what happened. I was thinking. It was … slippage.”

“Slippage?”

“From my brain.”

His face lights up. “Oh! You mean brain slippage! Good old brain slippage. That explains everything.”

“It does?”

Raymond sighs, not buying it for a second. “I’m not talking about the content of your impromptu confession—we’ll come back to Meg’s astounding moment of existential crisis in a minute. It was how you said it.” He cups his hand into a megaphone. “Cue the zombie.”

I shush him. His eyes search my face. I look away—at my feet, at my nails, at the square tiles of acoustical ceiling, at a big wad of bubble gum fossilized on the wall. But it’s no use. Raymond has infinite patience for my avoidance techniques. He will wait in annoying silence until I spill every detail.

“Talking it through might help,” I finally admit. Who else can I talk to about it, anyway? My understanding foster mom? My other friend? “Okay. But Raymond, don’t you dare laugh.”

“Why would I laugh?”

“’Cause you laugh at everything.”

He makes a big drama of swiping a hand magician-style across his face, pretending to wipe away any trace of humor. “Totally serious.” Pause. “Devoid of levity. You may proceed.”

I force a calmness into my voice that I don’t actually feel. “I know it was strange…”

So much for calmness: I blurt everything, at least as much as I can remember, because it’s all beginning to fade. “That’s the best I can do, my explanation for being, you know, not like myself.”

“Not yourself? You were positively Demon Girl—with a strong hint of Possessed Person.” Raymond turns his body rigid, arms glued to his thighs. “I hhhhhhhate everyone.”

“Well, I do!”

“Do what?”

“Hate!”

Only when I say the word hate right now, it’s nothing like what I was feeling before. This hate is ordinary hate, like when you hate Brussels sprouts or PE. That other hate had weight and texture; it took up space and vibrated in my chest like a gong being struck. I try to explain.

“I don’t hate you, Raymond! And not everyone all the time. But some people some of the time. Like Brendon—you know I hate him, but when I say that now, it’s different than when I said it in class. That was hate hate. I don’t … I can’t…”

Raymond puts an open hand completely over my face, fingers spread, palm on my lips—“Interrupting starfish”—then removes it. He studies me. “This is serious. You’re mega upset.”

“It was horrible, Raymond. Humiliating! Everyone laughing at me. But before it was horrible, it was…”

I stop short because I realize that I’m about to say something I’m not sure I want to say aloud. Because saying it aloud will make it real, and I’m not sure I want it to be