Relying On Ben and Jerry (Waltham #1)

Chapter Forty: Whoooooo Are You?

I called Aubrey later that night.

“The dare is off,” I told her slowly, feeling so embarrassed, like a little kid. Like a fool. “I’m not going to do it anymore. I just thought that I should let you know, since this was all your idea and everything.”

“Wait,” she called out, sounding surprised. “You’re not going to dress up anymore?”

I shook my head before I realized that she couldn’t see me. “Nah. I’m all out of ideas and money for more clothes.”

“Then use old ones,” she argued matter-of-factly, and I could nearly hear her rolling her eyes from the other side of the line. “I don’t think they’re going to judge you if you mix and match, to be completely honest.”

“Aubrey,” I said slowly, hoping I sounded casual, “I just don’t really want to do it anymore.”

She was silent for a long time. “But you loved this dare.”

“It was fun, I guess,” I admitted, “but still.”

“Lena, what happened?” she suddenly demanded, totally serious. Her voice was like unrelenting steel, and I winced. She was the Aubrey that had stood by me through the toughest times in my life, the one that handed me a pint of ice cream and told me to eat it and stop crying so many times. She was the girl that I could tell anything to, but I didn’t know how to tell her what was happening now. I didn’t want to hear her dismiss it, like I know she will.

So I just said, “Nothing happened, Aubs. I’m just . . . kind of bored with it, I guess.”

I could have explained it to her, but Aubrey didn’t understand the world from my point of view. When I was pushed around in school, that was one thing. I could take the physical blows because I had an older brother who had been holding me down and shoving dirty socks into my mouth since I was three years old. It was their words that hurt me, that haunted me. It had been that way for a long time, and she wasn’t unaware of it. She knew as well as I did that the moment someone said something critical about me, it stabbed me directly in the heart.

I couldn’t put my heart into something like my dare when I knew that people were laughing at me for it. When I knew that it was only going to add some serious fuel to the fire.

“Look, I’ve got to go,” I told her when she started to ask, cutting her off mid-rant. “Talk to you later, okay?”

“Lena!” she exclaimed, but I hung up.

~*~

Felton knocked on my door later that night. I opened it enough for my face to peak out, and I looked up at him curiously.

“What’s up?” I demanded, but his face was completely void of all emotion as he stared down at me. I shot him a funny look. “What?”

“Where were you today?” he replied slowly, waiting for a reaction. “The school called Mom. She’s worried.”

I shrugged.

“Aubrey called, too,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him, rolling my eyes, but it felt like there was a dagger being shoved into my chest. Putting on some funny clothes just felt so extremely childish now. I knew it was just low self-esteem, but I smiled like it was fact. “It’s just kind of stupid, you know? And you were talking that morning about acting as someone that you’re not and it got me thinking . . .”

My older brother didn’t say anything. He just took a long step and shoved the door open, knocking me backward enough that I stumbled.

The entirety of my closet was strewn about on the floor, my tutu hanging over a lampshade, my bowling jacket hanging from the ceiling fan, and Watson’s head was poking out of one of my yellow rain boots as he slept. I winced and tried to close the door but Felton, despite looking scrawny, had quite enough muscle on him to hold back a wimpy teenage girl. He looked around at the explosion that was my room, his eyes guarded. As I watched, a muscle in his jaw jumped.