Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Chill Brandon

Why I'm hiding from Betty

"I have a new phone now. It's a cheap model, since Betty is tired of wasting her money on phones only for me to 'lose' them. I still haven't told her about what happened to the last one. (Thrown into a pool by Mackenzie.) Or the one before that. (Stolen by Mackenzie, who lost it in the school dumpster.) So what else can Betty do besides chalk it up to my teenage carelessness? 

This is a cool closet. It's dark except for the light of my flip-phone. (Yes, apparently they still make those!)

It's kinda cramped too, but that's okay. I'm not claustrophobic.

Notebook, you might be wondering why I'm hiding in here.

Or not.

You are just a notebook after all, lacking the ability to wonder about things.
I'll explain anyway!

I'm trying to avoid Betty, and hiding seemed like a good strategy.

She was pretty worried when I called her on the Hollisters' landline, hours before she was supposed to pick me up. 

Maybe because I was failing at speaking coherently though my crying.

I was in full on hysterics, in case you're wondering how embarrassing the crying was.

There's no point now in trying to convince her that I don't need therapy anymore--not after that night. She saw (heard?) too much. I wasn't thinking about the consequences. I just wanted her to pick me up so I could get away from the girl who destroyed my phone and my faith in humanity.

So... those consequences I wasn't thinking about--I'm facing them now, weeks after the incident.

When I had a meltdown over the phone, Betty didn't ask many questions. She sounded understandably concerned, but she only asked if I was dying or on the verge of it. When I said, 'No, just mentally scarred for life,' she said okay, she'd pick me up. She didn't ask why I was mentally scarred for life, which I appreciated.

That was then. This is now.
Now Betty expects me to talk about it. She wants an explanation!

She was fine without one two weeks ago, when she found me hiding in the Hollisters' bathroom. 

We went home. I went to my room and considered sleeping. Then I came back out and happened to hear Betty saying to Phil that she shouldn't have forced me to go to the party. (I agree, but that's water under the bridge.) 

I thought that was the end of it. I thought she forgot.

Yeah, I know. That was foolish of me. It's Betty. Of course she didn't forget.

This morning, she brought up the subject. Before I knew what was happening, breakfast had morphed into an interrogation scene...
So I quickly made an excuse to get away.

'I have to get to school!'
Right after I said it, I remembered it's summer vacation.
'Isn't school out for the summer?'
'I mean the bathroom!' I amended, horrified by my lame excuse-making skills.

Betty narrowed her eyes.
I ran. I hid. That's how we got here.
I'll come out in an hour or so. Hopefully by then Betty's focus will be on something else, like Phil's habit of leaving his socks draped over the TV.

Yeah right.

She won't forget. As soon as I stop being a chicken and come out of here, she's gonna start asking me about the party again.

But I can't tell her. She'd be furious. She'd get all protective and do something embarrassing like tear Mackenzie limb from limb or have a heart-to-heart with her parents! I know Betty. And I know she would also give me the look--the 'This-is-why-you-still-need-therapy' look, which isn't as bad as the Look of Disappointment™ but still really sucks--and tell me I overreacted. And she would be right.

Of course, what Mackenzie did was wrong, but I should've handled it better. I'm pretty sure hiding in a bathroom and crying never solved anything.

So, I can't tell Betty. Even the thought of telling Betty is making me anxious.

What if I don't have a choice though? She has a way of figuring things out without me telling her anything. It's inexplicable.

I never told her about my hopeless crush on Nikki. But she knows! (Okay, it was pretty obvious, but still!)

I never told Betty about being the drummer in Nikki's band. But somehow she found out. She showed up at the WCD talent show, sat with Phil at the front of the auditorium, and cheered very loudly.

And my parents. Betty didn't know about their issues when she and Phil took me in. No one did. I wanted to keep it that way.
Then, out of the blue, she put me in therapy. And she doesn't talk about them anymore, as if they never existed.
As if she was never their friend.

She knows, and I don't know how, and I wish she didn't have this creepy superpower of knowing everything!

She probably knows where I am too. This closet is a bad hiding place, and I use it too much.
It's pathetic.

Also I'm hungry."