The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,36

cans in the house tucked away in corners, behind doors, out of sight. I toss the tissue, miss, and have to dig around to find it, knocking over a box of tampons in the process.

Felicity must have started, I realize . . . then think about the fact that I didn’t know. I didn’t know because she didn’t tell me. And she didn’t tell me because—

“Because we’re not friends anymore,” I say aloud.

We’re not. I knew that. I knew it when I got a text from her and had to double-check that she actually meant to invite me to her party, that she didn’t accidentally text the wrong person. I knew it when April carried my boots outside. I knew it when Felicity hugged me—so tight, too tight—with a desperation to deny what she already knew, too.

We’re not friends anymore.

And, while that may be true, something else is as well. There’s a box of tampons in this house, and there aren’t any where I live now. When I asked Cecil to add them to the shopping list he told me it’d be a cold day in hell before someone caught him in that aisle, and that I should just hold it until I got to school.

“It doesn’t work that way,” I’d told him, but he said he’d gotten this far in life without learning women’s business, and that was just fine. Which for him, I suppose it was.

Me, I need tampons.

And here are some, right in front of me.

I grab the box and stuff it down the front of Felicity’s pajamas. If I get back into the bedroom and get under the pile of blankets I can slip it out of my pants and into my backpack once everybody else is asleep. I straighten up, close the cupboard and give my reflection one last check before turning toward the door, where a shadow slides away.

Gretchen’s quick, but I’m faster. You don’t live around wild animals for months without developing reflexes. I grab her wrist as she tries to spin away from me.

“Let me go,” she says, pulling away. But I’ve got her in a good grip; I can feel the tiny bones of her wrist grinding together as I clamp down.

“Guys?”

Felicity and Maddie are standing in the bedroom doorway, confused. I let go of Gretchen’s wrist and she holds it against her chest.

“What’s going on?” Felicity asks, eyes moving between the two of us.

“Tress stole your tampons,” Gretchen says, shooting me a nasty look as she rubs her wrist.

“Did not!” I say, lying reflexively. Everyone looks at the obvious outline of a box in the waistline of my pajamas. Felicity’s pajamas. Felicity’s tampons.

“Hey! Let’s . . . let’s watch a movie!” Felicity says brightly, voice high and fake, like her mom’s. “You can pick, Gretchen. Doesn’t that one cute guy you like have something new out? Or like a special on HBO? There’s that new horror show, I heard it’s super scary!”

She’s trying, but it’s not enough. We’re going to pretend that everything is fine, that I belong here, that we can all just watch a movie together and go back to having a sleepover at a birthday party after one girl puked her guts out and then stole someone else’s tampons. The girl who can’t buy her own. The girl who doesn’t belong.

I duck back into the bathroom and toss the box under the sink, not caring that I knock over a dozen bottles in the process. They’re all lined up, matching sets of shampoo and conditioner in bright colors. I push over the last two for good measure, go back to the bedroom and curl up under some of the blankets without a word, my back to the others, snuggled into a nest of my own making.

I can’t be here, but I can’t go home, either.

I don’t have one of those anymore.

I lie still, listening to the others drop off, one by one. Maddie goes first, her little comments about the movie falling away into light snores. Gretchen sticks it out longer, but eventually she asks Felicity if she can sleep in the bed because sleeping on the floor is just not comfortable enough. Felicity tells her that yes, of course she can, and soon Gretchen is out, too, her breathing deep and regular.

I hear Felicity get up, tiptoeing around the others. I hear the bathroom door swing open, the higher creak of the cupboard door following that, and the sound of her straightening her shampoo bottles. She