Page 33 of The Initial Insult

Just like me.

Chapter 27

Felicity

“I was trying to help you,” I say, bristling. “You needed tampons; I gave them to you. I was trying to be your friend!”

Tress is shaking her head. Slowly. Calmly. But I wouldn’t say patiently. No, I wouldn’t call it that.

“My friend?” she asks, crossing her arms. “Giving me things doesn’t make you my friend, Felicity. It’s . . .” Her face contorts, and I know she’s trying to find a way to say what she wants to say without using the word charity.

She clears her throat, trying again. “It doesn’t make you my friend. Giving me stuff makes me . . . less than.”

Tress Montor < Felicity Turnado

“I never looked at it like that,” I say.

“No.” Tress comes to her feet, mortar trowel in hand. “Of course you didn’t. You were just thinking of yourself, how it made you feel to give me stuff. And how did it make you feel, Felicity?” she asks, stepping closer.

I grind my teeth, shredding the new layer of enamel that was recently applied in an attempt to undo years of damage . . . years of me doing exactly this—grinding my teeth and thinking about Tress Montor.

Because yeah, it did make me feel better to give her things—clothes, pairs of shoes when there was a BOGO, books that my ever-hopeful librarian aunt bought me for Christmas that I was never going to read. Over the years it went way beyond tampons, every box that I dropped on her doorstep late at night lightening the load on my heart.

They came back sometimes—but not always.

“Don’t act all insulted,” I say, though I am keeping an eye on the trowel. “You didn’t return everything. So don’t stand there all high and mighty and act like you’re above a handout.”

“No,” Tress says. “Only what I could balance on my bike, or carry, once I outgrew my bike. The rest ended up in the river.”

“That’s . . .” I imagine designer-label clothes, tags still on, hardcover bestsellers floating down the river along with bottles of body spray. “That’s ridiculous, Tress. Jesus, swallow your pride.”

“Pride?” Her grip on the trowel tightens, knuckles going white. “You actually think I have some of that?”

Tears pool in her eyes, and she turns away from me, shoulders hunched, back tense with an urge to strike out at something. When she speaks, her voice is an empty echo, bouncing back to me off the stone walls.

“When you gave me things, it made you feel better—and that’s all you thought about, how it made you feel. You never thought maybe it made me feel even worse. I wasn’t your friend, Felicity. I was your pity project.”

“What was I supposed to do?” I ask, anger pushing the words past my enamel-capped teeth. “How was I supposed to make everything better?”

She turns back to me, eyes wet.

“You were supposed to tell the truth.”

The truth . . . a slippery element stuck somewhere between what I witnessed but wasn’t there for, something I saw but can’t remember. “Tress.” I lick my lips, gloss coming off on my tongue.

It’s gone, along with my makeup, which has mixed with tears and blood and has dried on my cleavage. All my armor is melting away, but my tits are still high, almost to my chin because of the push-up bra I’m wearing under my costume. I came to this party prepared . . . but not for this. Not for Tress Montor.

I remember what I looked like before I left, the last glance at the mirror that showed me Felicity Turnado—bold, confident, sexy. A girl who takes beers from boys and they’re thankful for it, because maybe our fingers brushed. A girl who other girls mimic, dress like, act like, follow around. I’ve cut more than one of them with my tongue, knocked them down a few pegs when they climbed too close, putting them back where they belong. Beneath me.

Fuck Tress Montor, and fuck her pride.

I toss my head and straighten my shoulders. “Those jeans you’re wearing are mine,” I say. “Seven for All Mankind, boot cut, size 6. The pullover you had on at school Monday was mine, too, Collina Strada, crew neck, medium. So don’t stand there and talk to me about not taking my charity. You are, even if you don’t know it.”

I said something similar to a girl from Prospero at the football game last week. She wanted to knock me back by telling me she screwed Hugh. It’s more than likely the truth, but I covered the drop in my gut by saying it was my shirt he ripped off her, and that’s probably what turned him on in the first place, that she was almost me . . . but not quite. She ran away from me crying, the sequins on the Parker Isaac top that used to hang in my closet flashing as she went.

But Tress doesn’t even blink. She comes closer, leaning in to give me a hard look. I’m the first one to flinch. Content, she pulls back.

“These may be your jeans,” she says. “But it’s also your blood on them. So don’t get too cocky.”