Page 113 of The Initial Insult
“What are you doing?” I ask the screen. Hugh’s a good guy; we’ve got a friendship that’s rooted in my cock-and-balls shirt from freshman year. I know that if I send him a text right now and ask him to stop, he will.
But I don’t.
“This one is from . . .” Hugh glances at his phone, seems confused, then starts again. “This person wants to know if you’ve ever shit your pants.”
The camera swings back to Ribbit, who seems to be thinking very hard. “Yes,” he says, his face dead serious. “You know the pizza they sell at the pool?”
The whole crowd groans, and the camera pans them, some people nodding enthusiastically, wanting to know the rest, others covering their mouths in horror.
“It runs right through you,” Ribbit says, enjoying the reaction. “You know . . . runs?”
The camera swings back to Hugh for a reaction, but his eyes are on his phone as he scrolls through it.
“I tried to make it to the bathroom,” Ribbit goes on, turning to the crowd. “But even though I was running . . .” He leans into the pun, enjoying the shocked reactions. He pauses for effect. “I didn’t quite make it. I’m pretty sure I left a little something in the pool.”
Everybody goes nuts, some people overjoyed, others disgusted. Brynn Whitaker goes up to Hugh, clearly unhappy. She grabs his arm, whispers something in his ear. Ribbit spots her and points with his beer hand, froth splashing over the front-row viewers.
“You were there,” he says, speech slurring. “You had on a pink bikini.”
The crowd whoops, and Brynn gets a few catcalls, the concerned look on her face quickly switching over to anger.
“Your boob popped out,” Ribbit continues. “I held on to that image for months. Like, really held on to it,” he says, and mimes jerking off.
The Facebook stream goes nuts along with the crowd upstairs. Hearts and laughing faces and thumbs-ups are flying across my screen when I switch over to text. My fingers hover for a minute, debating. The hashtags are gaining momentum and the livestream has a thousand people now. Me texting Hugh isn’t going to stop this. Brynn shakes off Hugh’s hand when he tries to grab her, and she storms off. I watch her exit the screen accompanied by the hard strikes of her footsteps above my head as she stomps away.
Bells jingle, and I glance up. Felicity has raised her head, fresh tears streaking down her face. “Tress,” she says, my name barely a whisper. “I don’t know anything. You’ve got to believe me.”
“Yeah.” I shove my phone into my back pocket and stand up, the chair creaking under me. “See, the thing is . . . I don’t.”
Another roll of laughter comes from upstairs, loud enough to reach us in our solitude.
“What’s going on?” Felicity asks, eyes going to the floor above us.
“Ribbit got drunk,” I tell her. “He’s answering anything anybody asks him, and it’s going viral.”
Felicity shakes her head. “They’ll eat him alive.”
I shrug. “They’re your friends.”
“It’s your cousin,” she snaps back. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
“I am doing something,” I tell her, and I pick up a brick.
She goes quiet and watchful, eyes following me.
“Eighty-eight bricks,” Felicity says, the fever spots in her cheeks brighter now. “Eighty-eight bricks and Lucy should just buy all the apples; that way everyone can have as many as they want.”
“Or maybe,” I say, weighing the brick in my hand before I lay the third row. “Maybe she has to steal them, because she’s fucking poor.”
There’s a lull upstairs, and I hear the clock, running backward to chime the hour.
Chapter 23
Felicity
Sixth Grade
My phone lights up with a text, and my heart goes up into my throat when I see the name. I play it cool as I go downstairs, stepping over the pile of shoes Mom set aside to go to the yard sale fundraiser to benefit the PTO. She became the president right after I started having seizures, and now she’s at the school all the time. Mom always manages to find something to do in my classroom, one eye on me. Last week David Evans told me my mom was hot, and I stomped on his foot. I got in trouble and had to apologize to him in front of the class.
