New Girl - By Paige Harbison Page 0,46

being hypnotized.

“And what will that mean for you?” she went on. “No one here likes you. They all whisper about you. Not because you’re interesting, mind you, but because you’re just this sad little thing who wishes she was better. Everyone can see that.” She suddenly adopted a look of sympathy. “Your friends back home don’t even miss you, do they? You’ve barely heard from them, I bet. Is that right?”

I had thought this before but refused to believe it.

“Well,” she went on, “it looks like no one really needs you at all, do they?”

She laughed, and as she did, chills ran from my toes to the back of my neck. I could hear voices. Becca looked up, toward the door. The light went out. I gasped, and finally felt in control of my body again. I heard the door slam open. My heart pounded. I was sitting up and the blanket had fallen and gathered at my feet on the dusty floor, and I didn’t even know since when.

The ocean was crashing outside, and my ears filled with the pounding of that and my heartbeat. I felt paralyzed, unable to stop my fingernails from digging painfully into the rough upholstery of the couch.

Noise was still coming from somewhere by the door, but I had no idea of its source. Then, quite suddenly, the light came back on.

And beneath the bulb stood Max.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NOTHING WAS MAKING SENSE.

He saw me, and I watched as he inhaled sharply with surprise. “What are you doing down here? I went up to your room, but you weren’t there—I looked in the study room…why did you come down here?”

I could hardly speak. “I came down here to… I was just… I had to get out of my room and…and—what are you doing here?”

Words were tumbling fast from my mouth before I could form them. I stood, on weak legs, and looked around for Becca. She was nowhere. I glanced at the floor, where Becca had stamped out her cigarette. There it was. I resisted the urge to pick it up and see if it was still hot.

“We just wanted to come down and hang out I guess…are you okay?”

“What?” I whispered to myself as I looked at it. I looked helplessly back at Max.

His expression became one of concern, and he stepped back to open the door. He spoke to someone outside. “Just one second, I think I see a rat.”

I heard a few girls shriek. Max walked over to me. “I’m really sorry about earlier, Blake told me she told you…” He trailed off, as he saw the expression on my face. “What’s going on? Something else is wrong.”

“I don’t kn-know, I just…I can’t. I—” I was trying to gain control of myself, but I couldn’t breathe. It was like that feeling you get when you’re sobbing so hard that your lungs take in breaths you’re not prepared for.

“Come with me.”

And I did. He put his hand on my lower back and guided me.

I trusted him. I didn’t care where we were going or who was outside, I felt better that he was there. That was crazy, since I didn’t even know him, but it’s how I felt.

My static breathing slowed some, and I could take deep breaths. I coughed some of the dust out of my lungs as I walked outside. The usual people were there—Madison and Julia, clutching each other’s arms as I walked out hand in hand with Max, Blake, wearing a glittering tiara, and Cam in a gold crown. There must have been some kind of king and queen thing like at homecoming. They both looked at me with concern, and then to Max. Johnny also looked at him and asked, “She okay?”

I gave an embarrassed shrug and waved away their concern. “I’m fine. Not feeling well.” Other people whose names I kept forgetting were there, all talking to each other and looking at me like I’d just been dragged from the sand beneath their feet. I couldn’t look at them. I realized, as I looked ashamedly down at my feet, that they were bare. I didn’t remember when I’d taken off my shoes. I remembered Becca’s words about how everyone talked about me because I was just a “sad little thing.” This was a perfect example, I supposed.

Lonely, friendless, barefoot new girl, with no identity more specific than that. They’d never see me as anything but that. And I was really starting to fear that maybe that’s all I