Page 137 of The Initial Insult

They’re blaming Tress. And they’re not being quiet about it.

“First she runs off, scaring everyone half to death,” Jill goes on. “And now this!” She waves one gloved hand at the four of us, heads bowed, wet hair hanging in curtains over our faces as we lean forward around the card table Mom had set up.

“Where is Tress?” Brynn’s mom, Angela, asks. On my head, I feel my mom’s hands stiffen.

“You didn’t really expect April to invite her here, did you?” Jill asks, refilling her wineglass.

“How else is the poor girl supposed to get clean?” Angela says, keeping her eyes on the back of Brynn’s head. “Do you really think that old man is going to look after her?”

“Well, he obviously doesn’t,” Jill says. “Gretchen’s head was just crawling—”

“Felicity isn’t too bad,” my mom pipes up.

“Neither is Maddie,” adds Kira Anho, who had been quiet until now and has hardly taken a drink. Mom had to push her to take a glass at all, saying that she wasn’t our principal yet.

“Brynn hardly has any,” her mom says.

“Well, Black kids don’t really get lice, though, do they?” Jill says, quaffing the rest of her wine.

“Jill!” my mom says. “Maybe you should lay off the wine.”

Everyone laughs, like they’re supposed to. Everyone except Brynn and Angela. Brynn is next to me, her arm pressed against mine. It’s stiff, all the muscles tightened up, waiting for the moment to pass, or wanting to strike out, slap the laughter out of the air. I don’t know which.

“What?” Gretchen’s mom says. “That’s what I heard. I mean, maybe it’s different since she’s mixed race—”

“Did you hear that the dollar store is closing?” Mrs. Anho pipes up, shutting down Gretchen’s mom.

“No, that’s too bad,” my mom says, happy for the subject change. “I mean, we don’t shop there, of course, but it will be a loss for a lot of families.”

I can’t see Brynn’s face, our hair hanging between us. I can’t see Angela, either, but I can feel a wall of tension behind me, her quiet rage something that my friend has inherited, something she puts on like a coat for a cold day at recess. Except I guess in Amontillado it’s always a cold day at recess for Brynn and Angela. My thumbs fly across my phone as I text her.

I don’t think Tress had lice.

I think it was Gretchen.

Next to me, her phone vibrates. Seconds later, a bubble appears on my screen.

Yep.

And her mom’s a bitch.

I stifle a giggle, not wanting anyone to know we’re texting, or that Brynn just called Jill Astor a bitch. I look down at my phone, at the texts I sent.

I don’t think Tress had lice.

I think it was Gretchen.

I know it’s true. Gretchen had been itching the night of my party, not Tress. Mom had burned all the bedding, the little red mess from Maddie’s melting Popsicle going up in flames along with Gretchen’s lice, still clinging to my pillow—the one she’d used.

I think about Dr. Gabriella, and how she’d turned my back to her, how looking at a painting of trees instead of her face had made it easier to tell the truth. I think about her telling me to try that in real life sometime.

I don’t have a painting of trees, but I do have my hair falling around me in a curtain right now, blocking off everyone else so I can’t see them. There’s a script right in front of me, the words written out so that all I have to do is read them. Say them aloud.

My mom tilts my head a different direction and I minimize my texts.

I don’t say the words. I’m learning.

Girls who live in a trailer with their grandfather at an animal zoo have lice.