We sat on his bed and he passed the bowl to me.

“Is it really final?” I asked.

Arthur opened his mouth wide and exhaled a fat tube of smoke. “It’s really final.”

“It’s fucking Dean who should be expelled,” I muttered.

“There’s a reason the cafeteria is named after his family.” Arthur tapped the side of the bowl against the bed frame, loosening up the contents. He offered it to me again and I shook my head.

“Well, maybe he would have been expelled if I’d had some balls,” I said.

Arthur groaned and launched himself off the bed. I caught my balance as the mattress shifted in my favor. “What?” I demanded.

“But you didn’t,” Arthur said. “You didn’t! So stop with this self-loathing bullshit.”

“You’re mad at me for that?” I clutched my stomach; I couldn’t take anyone else being mad at me ever again.

“You should be mad at you!” Arthur roared. “You had the chance to take him down and you didn’t because you”—he launched a hearty laugh straight from his gut—“actually thought you could redeem yourself.” That made him laugh more. “Oh my God, oh my God,” he kept repeating, like it was the funniest fucking thing he’d ever heard.

I felt everything go still and quiet in me. “Oh my God, what?”

Arthur sighed, pityingly. “It’s just, don’t you see? Don’t you get it? You were injured out the gate. And you’re just—” He grabbed his hair. When he released it, tufts stood wildly at all angles. “You’re just such a stupid cunt that you couldn’t see it.”

I would have taken Dean’s hand a million times across my face over this. At least what he wanted, what he was angry he couldn’t have, was the most basic, primal thing in the world, which was in no way a reflection on me as a human being. The realization that Arthur saw me as something completely different than how I thought he saw me was devastating. We weren’t friends, peers, united in our disdain for the Hairy Legs and HOs, above it all. I was a reject that Arthur had kindly taken in. Not the other way around. I hit back the only way I knew.

“Yeah, well,” I sputtered, “at least Dean wanted me. I had a chance. Unlike you. Fucking walking around with a three-year-old boner for him.”

Arthur’s face crumpled, ever so slightly, and for a moment I thought I would cry too. He had defended me, had been the only one to do that besides Mr. Larson. Before I could stop this train from shrieking to life, Arthur’s features settled comfortably into a mean, cold stare. And then it was too late. “What are you even talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” I flipped my blond ponytail off my shoulder. My hair, my boobs, everything about me that had gotten me into so much trouble was suddenly my only weapon to defend myself here. “You’re not fooling anyone.” My eyes darted around the room. I spotted the yearbook on Arthur’s desk. I sprung off the bed and seized it, flipping to our favorite page.

“Uh, let’s see.” I found Dean’s picture. “‘Fuck me in the ass. So hard it bleeds.’” There was so much scribble on Dean’s picture that Arthur had drawn an arrow from Dean’s face to the bottom of the page, where he’d written more. “Oh! And this gem: ‘Chop my cock off.’” I looked up at Arthur. “You’d probably stuff it and sleep with it every night like a blankie, you fucking faggot.”

Arthur lunged at me. His paws were on the book, yanking it out of my hands. I tried to wrench it back, and when I did, I lost my balance. I stumbled backward, slamming my head against the wall. Like a toddler, I was infuriated by this boo-boo. I wailed and held the place where it hurt.

“Did you ever stop to think,” Arthur huffed, our little scuffle inciting his heart, buried under all those layers of fat, “that I don’t want to fuck you not because I’m gay but because you’re disgusting?”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but Arthur cut me off. “What you should do is hack those off—no one who’s ever done anything important has a rack like that.” He cupped his own man boobs and shook them violently.

If I’d continued on the run I’d have been climbing the hill on New Gulph Road at the moment, but I still wouldn’t have been breathing as hard as I was then. I had my fingers around the picture on Arthur’s nightstand, the one of him and his father, laughing at the water, and before Arthur could grab me, I fled. I heard him on the stairs behind me, but unlike in a horror movie, the murderer was obese and slow and stoned. I was by the door, hauling my backpack over my shoulder, before Arthur had even made it to the second floor. Then I was outside, and I just kept going until I knew Arthur was well behind me, bent over and braced on his knees, gasping and furious. I didn’t stop for almost half a mile, realizing I was going for the Rosemont station now, which was further but wouldn’t be a place Arthur would think to look for me. When I finally slowed to a walk, I looked at the picture in my hands, saw the happiness Arthur wanted there, and considered turning back. But then I thought how his dad was a dick. I was probably doing him a favor by taking that picture. Maybe it would help him move on, stop being such a fat asshole. I paused on the side of the road and found a safe place for it anyway, tucking it into a folder to protect all the stupid shell decorations on the frame.

I found out a few days later that Arthur enrolled in Thompson High, a public school in Radnor. In 2003, Thompson High sent only two students out of its graduating class, 307 total, to Ivy League universities. Arthur wasn’t destined to be among them.

CHAPTER 11

It was an e-mail that, had I been twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, desperate for a job, I would have called up Nell to read aloud. “Oh my God, listen to this!”

Dear Ms. FaNelli,

My name is Erin Baker, and I’m the HR coordinator for Type Media. We have an opening for the Features Director at Glow magazine, and we’d love for you to come in and interview if you are interested. Could I take you to coffee to discuss this week? Pay is competitive.

Warmly,

Erin

I closed the e-mail. I was in no rush to respond because I was not interested in the least. Yes, features director was a major step up from senior editor and I could make more money, but I didn’t have to worry about money, not really. No matter how much they offered me, it would never be enough to make a move to a magazine exactly like The Women’s Magazine, only not nearly as iconic, when LoLo had dropped the fucking New York Times Magazine on my doorstep like a house cat does a headless mouse.

Even though I had written the words “his member” far too many times in my tenure at The Women’s Magazine, there was a recognition in the name that offered me protection, much like my engagement to Luke did. When I tell people I’m in magazines, and they ask where, I never, ever get tired of cocking my head modestly and answering in my best uptalk, “The Women’s Magazine?” That inflection in my voice—have you heard of it? Like those smug Harvard bastards—“Oh, I went to school in Cambridge.” “Where?” “Harvard?” Yes, we’ve all fucking heard of Harvard. I got off on that instant recognition. I did enough explaining in high school, to justify my peasant presence among kings—“I live in Chester Springs. It’s not too far. I’m not too poor.”

I signed out of my e-mail. I’d write this Erin Baker back later, some bullshit, “Thank you so much for thinking of me but at this time I’m very happy in my current position.”

I tapped my moss green fingernails on the tabletop, wondering where Nell was. Several minutes ticked by before I knew she had arrived. The heads turning by the entrance to the restaurant were the first sign. The second was the top of Nell’s head, the most shocking shade of blond steering her right at me.