Confessions of a Hater Page 15

  I felt my stomach drop. Skyler didn’t keep what she knew to herself to protect us. She was just looking to prolong the agony. And she had us dead to rights.

  All of which must have been illustrated on my face.

  “Wait, Hailey, don’t worry!” Skyler exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I really am. My tongue gets away from me sometimes.”

  No shit.

  “Skyler, seriously, what the hell?” I asked. “Why are we here? You want to say whatever you want to say to whoever, I can’t stop you. You claim there are security tapes to nail us, congratulations, we’ll see. Far as I know, it’s still our word against—”

  I stopped.

  “Are you recording me, Skyler? Taste of my own medicine?”

  “No! Hailey, I—”

  “You know, it’s illegal to record someone without their knowledge,” I found myself saying. I saw that on an episode of Law & Order.

  “Oh, is it?” Skyler said. “Really, that’s illegal? Because…”

  Oops.

  And then we caught each other’s eyes and both broke out laughing. Yes, laughing. Me and Skyler, laughing together. Oil and water, Cain and Abel, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie.

  How the hell did this happen?

  “We’re not all that different, Hailey,” Skyler was saying, and for some reason, in that moment, it almost made sense. “We, like, both want to, I don’t know, define ourselves. You were looking to do it from the second you stepped into our school. I saw it. I get it. I know the new-girl-in-town thing. Seen it, like, a million times.”

  “Okay—”

  “So let’s just end this now.”

  What?

  “End it?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Right here, right now.”

  Oh my God, we’re going to fight to the death. We’re going to fight to the death right now. I really should have learned krav maga …

  “So is that cool?” Skyler asked.

  What did she say?

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “Is that cool? Peace. Like, a seize fire. No more crap.”

  Cease fire, I thought, but didn’t say it.

  I also didn’t quite buy it.

  “Skyler, no offense, but … I don’t get it. I don’t know why you’d play nice with me, and after the morning announcements thing—not to say you didn’t deserve it, because you sure as hell did—the last thing I expected was for you to be declaring a—”

  Say it. For everyone’s good, just frigging say it.

  “—‘seize fire.’”

  Skyler reclined against a tree, which was as unlike her as anything I’d seen in my life. She had a gorgeous cashmere cardigan wrapped around her, and why on earth she would let cashmere touch tree bark was beyond my comprehension.

  Maybe I’d had her wrong all along? Sure, she’d done some awful things, but maybe she wasn’t awful to the core?

  Or maybe her family just had so much money it could shit cashmere?

  “Like I said, Hailey, you’re smart. I’m smart too. I might not know a lot about stuff you’d see on Jeopardy!, but I know people. I know there’s nothing to be gained by making an enemy of you. We might not all be besties, but there’s no reason we can’t … um … what’s the word? Co … habitate?”

  “I don’t think that’s the word you mean.”

  “Co … shit, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”

  “You mean coexist.”

  “Yeah! Coexist!”

  Good Lord. “Coexist. Well, yeah, Skyler. We all just want to coexist. We want to coexist without someone making us feel second-class all the time. And it doesn’t matter what you think of me. You make any of my friends feel like shit, that’s a shot at me. I have friends with weird interests. I have friends who don’t look like runway models. I know kids who get their clothes from Walmart, because their parents can’t afford anything else. Our school is full of artists and actors and gay and straight and weird and unique and funny and a million other things that don’t fit into your tiny box of what’s acceptable.”

  I paused for effect. (Hey, we’ve all learned something from Xan.)

  “You want to ‘seize fire’?” I asked. “You leave them alone.”

  Skyler put her palms out toward me, a classic sign of surrender.

  “Hailey, I’ll do you one better,” she said. “I’d like to invite you all to a party.”

  Turn yourself around, you weren’t invited.

  —YEAH YEAH YEAHS

  “Honeybear”

  CHAPTER

  12

  “Oh, bullshit.”

  Yeah, that was Anya. Which was pretty much the response I expected from Anya, but still … I wasn’t sure. People are all, like, multifaceted, right? So maybe Skyler had more facets than I’d given her credit for. It wasn’t impossible.

  The party was at Skyler’s amazing house in the hills. Other than Anya, none of us had ever been to Skyler’s house. Actually, other than Anya, none of us had ever been to any amazing house in the hills.

  I’d pretty much predicted Anya’s response to the invite, and she came through with flying colors:

  “No way. It’s a trap.”

  Couldn’t blame her. Anya knew Skyler much better than I did, after all. They were close for a while, whereas I was hardly more than a weekend guest of the Clique of Evil.

  Still … Skyler had really seemed genuine. Some of what she said made a lot of sense. It wasn’t really in her best interests to make enemies of the Invisibles. She’d learned that firsthand. And I have to admit, the idea of being invited to a party at Skyler’s seemed a tiny bit cool to me, and it was beyond the realm of anything many of the Invisibles had ever thought possible.

  The girls had adopted a certain sense of pride for fighting back. When we got the invite, they felt they’d finally won the respect of the popular kids. Once Skyler realized we wouldn’t be pushed around, the girls reasoned, she figured there’s no reason we couldn’t all be friends.

  It actually made sense. Maybe this was actual acceptance, our “coming out” party as equals? The truth was, we’d grown in numbers, and the lines between who was popular and who wasn’t were starting to blur.

  The popular kids want to stand apart and be known. But from the outside, you’d never really know who was or who wasn’t in the Invisibles. And when push came to shove, the popular kids weren’t entirely sure who or what they were up against. Even worse: You can’t be a popular kid without the “normal” people in school thinking you are popular.

  Were things really balancing out? I wasn’t so sure.

  So there we were, Anya on the defensive, after school at Chipotle, where we’d agreed to meet for some burritos and bitching. What started as a discussion turned into quite the heated debate among the Invisibles over whether or not to go to the party.

  “How is this even a discussion?” Anya scoffed.

  “Maybe because we can see the good in people?” Kura suggested.

  “Cristina Yang would never, never believe this crap,” Anya said to Kura. “She would know it was bullshit. She’d be the first one to call bullshit. So if you want to be a Yang, you need to grow a healthy dose of reality check.”

  “Anya,” I said, “I understand why you’re skeptical—”

  “Yeah?” she said. “Then why the hell are you going along with this, Hailey?”

  “I’m not. I mean, I am. I mean, I don’t know what I mean.” I paused. “Look, I’m just telling you what she told me. She seemed sincere. She seemed to realize there was no point in letting this go any further.”

  “Yeah, funny how that works after your cooch crawlies get blasted all over the school,” Anya said.

  For the oddest second, I found myself wanting to defend Skyler. And before I could stop myself …

  “She could have gotten you expelled, Anya,” I said.

  “Oh, bullshit,” she repeated. “We had that covered, Hailey. Just because you bought her line about the security cameras and shit—”

  “Okay,
maybe that’s a load. It’s probably a load. But she knew about Dahlia. She could have told them all about Xan and Dahlia and me, and she didn’t.”

  “Because she’s not stupid, Hailey. She’s horrible. Not stupid.”

  Xandra chimed in: “We can’t always be cynical. Why can’t we accept that maybe they want to become friends with us?”

  “Because people are evil,” Anya said. “People are just the worst. That’s a fact. We are an ugly, terrible species.”

  “Like a ray of sunshine, you are,” I said.

  “Thanks, Yoda,” she replied. “Look, I would love nothing more than for Skyler to just fuck off and leave all of us alone. That’s my greatest wish. And that would be so much better than this. Just let me live my life. I don’t need Skyler to invite us to some ‘fabulous’ party.”

  “But maybe some of us do want that, Anya,” Emily said. “God, I’ve never been to a nice party, and I don’t know if I ever will. What if Hailey’s right? What if Skyler’s for real, and she’s really okay with us coming?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly say I was sure—” I started.

  “Well, Chris sure knows her well,” Anya said. “What did he say?”

  I’d been keeping my burgeoning thing with Chris pretty quiet, so maybe this was Anya’s way of putting me on the spot. Kinda uncool, but anyway …

  “He doesn’t trust her,” I said. “But she isn’t really talking to him. I think it’s because she’s seen me and him hanging out. He isn’t even invited to the party.”

  “But if she’s cool with us,” Anya said, “wouldn’t she be cool with Chris too?”

  I sighed. She did have a good point. “How the hell should I know? She’s a nutjob.”

  “Exactly,” Anya said. “And you know what Andy said…”

  “What did Andy say?” Emily asked.

  “He said he didn’t know of anything specific, but that Jericha, Daniella and the rest have been really quiet lately,” Anya said.

  “So maybe they’re just chastened,” I said. “We got ’em good, and now they’re laying low.”

  Anya rolled her eyes. “I know Skyler,” she said. “I know her way better than you do. And I trusted her. I trusted her with the secret that was most dear to me in the world. And she turned around and used it to disembowel me.”

  There was a long pause and then Emily said, “And that’s awful. But that’s also why you’d be the last to notice if she’s changed.”

  “Fine,” Anya said. “If you guys want to give these bitches the benefit of the doubt … let’s just see what happens. I’ll go. I’m Team Invisible, for better or worse. But I have a pretty strong feeling that it’s gonna be ‘for worse.’”

  Grace had been quiet for most of the discussion, but she finally piped up: “I’m going. I want us all to go. But dammit, I’m going.”

  We were all too stunned to speak.

  “If she really hated us, would she invite us to her house?” she asked. “I wouldn’t want people I hated at my party.”

  “Well, if it were a trap,” I said. “Maybe.”

  “I’ve known Skyler since second grade,” Grace went on. “I’ve never once been invited to her house. I’ve heard about her parties for ten years. When we were in fourth grade and I didn’t know better, I actually asked her why I wasn’t invited to her pool party, because I thought it must have been a mistake.”

  “Oh boy,” Anya said, seeing this one coming.

  “And?” I asked.

  Grace put her hands on her hips. “Skyler said I was ‘so fat I would drain her pool if I jumped in.’”

  “God!” I exclaimed. “She was even a monster back then?”

  “Well, that was when my thick phase began,” Grace said. “And I guess at this point we can’t really call it a ‘phase.’ But who would seriously care about something like that in grade school?”

  “Skyler!” several voices rang out, a chorus of Invisibles.

  “Seriously, Grace,” Anya said, “she’s been such a dick to you for ten years, calling you fat in fourth grade, so why would you be pumped to go?”

  “I mean … it’s still a Skyler Brandt party, right? You must have gone to her parties when you two hung out, right?”

  Anya shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “And they were amazing, right?”

  Anya considered it for a second. “I guess. I mean, yeah. Definitely. At the time, they seemed like the sweetest shit ever. All the coolest kids, that gorgeous house, and damn, I don’t know where she gets the budget for those things, but every event, every occasion, it’s pretty wild. Actually, I guess I do know where she gets the budget.”

  “Her parties have names!” Emily said. “Like her C-and-C party, which she threw at the end of last year.”

  “C-and-C?” I asked. “Like the clothing brand?”

  “No.” Anya laughed. “It stood for Cocaine and Champagne.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Welcome to Los Angeles!”

  “This is my point!” Grace said. “So to actually go to one would be epic. I’ve dreamed about going to her parties. Now we’re actually invited. We at least need to give it a shot, give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  Emily chimed in: “Yeah, her parties are legendary! Like every room is a hookup room, right, Anya?”

  “Well,” Anya said, “that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but … it’s not too far off.”

  “So,” I interrupted, “basically she calls it a ‘party,’ but really it’s a free sex motel? Doesn’t she have parents?”

  “That never came up between you two?” Anya asked me.

  “We didn’t hang out that long,” I said. “And basically every conversation was about what to wear, what not to wear and what to never ever wear under penalty of torture, execution or having to shop at Walmart. Which is why we didn’t hang out that long.”

  “Her dad’s out of the picture,” Anya said, “and her mom isn’t around a whole lot, but she makes sure Skyler is well funded at all times. Your basic super-enabler. Plus she’s got some serious issues.”

  “Like what?” I asked. “You can’t say that and just leave us hanging!”

  “Her mom is … kind of a mess,” Anya said. “She slept with the PE teacher and everybody knows it. Then there was that one night when she chaperoned the freshman dance and got smashed on bourbon in Mr. Mitchell’s car and came back in screaming ‘I’m still hotter than all of you bitches.’ She hasn’t been asked to chaperone since.”

  This was new information. And in a way it made me feel sorry for Skyler. I mean—that is embarrassing. And here she was extending the olive branch.

  “Look, guys,” Kura said. “Sure, Skyler’s been überbitch to all of us. But she came to Hailey and she sounded sincere, right? So we can do the cynical thing and keep this war up forever and think the worst of everyone and miss out on a kick-ass party. Or we can show up and see what happens. That’s what Noel would do, right, Hailey? Even if she thought it might be a trap, she’d show up and adapt, right?”

  She had me there. Which is probably why I said, “You have me there.”

  “Fine, then, it’s settled,” Kura said. “Let’s hope it’s not a trap.”

  You’d think that meant it was actually settled, but not so much. We kept debating it for a couple of hours. It wasn’t until the staff at Chipotle was passive-aggressively sweeping around us and removing the hot sauce bottles from our tables that we realized they were closing soon and we’d overstayed our welcome. Then again, they also could have been annoyed by Kura’s frequent trips to the bathroom. (Something was up there, and I made a mental note to look into it.)

  Ultimately, hope triumphed over cynicism and we decided to go.

  Best-case scenario? We’d have new friends, we’d no longer live in fear at school and everything would turn out wonderful … just like the last five minutes of your favorite hour-long TV show. Worst-case scenario? The bitch squad would’ve come up with new and improved ways to humiliate us and we’d go home covered in pigs�
�� blood.

  Personally, I found myself torn, but I was leaning toward the former. Maybe it was just my improved confidence since following the lessons in Noel’s How to Be a Hater journal, but I really did consider myself a force to be reckoned with. Skyler really did have to believe she shouldn’t mess with me, right? She didn’t build her little cult of personality without being savvy about threats to her position. She knew diplomacy was the smartest play, so she went with that. And we could take pride in the fact that we forced her hand. We had the cojones to go toe-to-toe with her, and she blinked. That’s why we deserved to break bread with the glitz-and-glamour crew.

  The next few days were fairly uneventful. Skyler and her minions had done nothing at school to make us think she wasn’t being genuine and didn’t really want the “seize fire.” The only thing that made my heart skip a beat was when I got called into Mr. Muñez’s office. I thought I was going to get in trouble for something I hadn’t done, which I had to admit would be sorta karmic, given my luck at avoiding trouble for stuff I had done. Not that I was in any hurry to get my yin and yang balanced out. I had no idea what it could be … but I wouldn’t be shocked in the slightest to find the Hater Tots secretly orchestrated something. And I was sure it would be vicious. And cruel. And embarrassing.

  Give ’em credit: For a crew of teenage twits, they sure had shown off a green thumb for evil.

  So I braced myself for the worst. Turned out it was nothing of the sort. Not even close.

  Mr. Muñez’s smile betrayed my good fortune before he said a word.

  “I called you in to tell you about a possible opportunity I’d like to recommend for you … if you’re interested.”

  “Sure,” I replied. “What is it?”

  “It’s a summer internship. Previously, it’s only been offered to college students, but they’re opening up a special workshop this year to mentor exemplary high school artists.”