Alana thought about the video on her phone. Eleven thousand four hundred views. Three hundred comments. The hallway. The steps. The wet mat.
"I don't think it can get much worse," she said.
She would think about that sentence later that night, and almost laugh.
* * *
Madison Cross made it out of the cafeteria, and down the hall, and around the corner, and into the second-floor girls' bathroom by the chemistry labs, before she let her face do anything at all.
The girls followed her in. Britney and Kelsey and the others. They stood around her by the sinks in a loose half-circle, watching her the way they always watched her, waiting to be told what to think. She looked at herself in the mirror. Perfect hair. Perfect bow. Perfect uniform. She had gotten up at five-fifteen that morning to do the hair. Her mother had come in at six and fixed the parts of it that were not right.
"He's just doing it to get to you," said Britney. "Everybody knows that. He's going to come crawling back by the dance. He always does."
"He hasn't always done it," said one of the varsity girls, a junior named Paige, before she could stop herself. Britney turned and looked at her, and she went red and looked at the floor.
"Shut up, Paige," said Madison, without turning around. She was still looking at herself in the mirror. Her voice was perfectly calm. "Get out. All of you. I need a minute."
They got out.
When the door had swung shut behind the last of them, Madison Cross stood at the sink by herself for a long time, looking at the girl in the mirror.
She was thinking about her mother.
She was usually thinking about her mother, in one way or another. Patricia Cross had been homecoming queen at Westfield High School in nineteen ninety-four. She had been head cheer captain. She had been senior class president, and valedictorian, and Miss Virginia Beach Teen. There were photographs of all of it in the front hall of the big white house on Linkhorn Bay, in silver frames, polished every week by the housekeeper, and Madison had walked past them every morning of her life. Her mother had married Richard Cross, who had owned one dump truck and a lot of ambition, and had built him, with her own two hands and her father's money and her own family's name, into the most important man in the county. Then she had run for the school board, and won, and won again. She had planned Madison's life with the same care. Cheer captain. Homecoming queen. Senior class vice president, because president would have looked like trying too hard. Valedictorian, if possible. Jake Martinez, whose father owned eleven restaurants that Madison's father had built, and whose mother sat on the hospital foundation board beside Madison's mother. The University of Virginia, where her mother had gone. A sorority. A wedding at the country club. A house on Linkhorn Bay of her own.
Madison had never been asked whether she wanted any of it. It had simply never come up. It was like asking whether she wanted to have blood.
Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her uniform skirt. She took it out and looked at it.
Mom: Jake's mother just called me. Is it true that he sat with that girl at lunch?
She stared at it. How had his mother found out already? It had been six minutes. Then she remembered that half the school had been filming. Of course his mother knew. Everybody's mother knew everything in Westfield, always, within six minutes.
Another buzz.
Mom: Madison. Answer me.
Another.
Mom: Also Gerald Harrison has called and asked your father and me to come in Monday morning. He won't tell me what it's about on the phone. He says it's a formal matter. Do you know anything about this? Is this about yesterday?
Madison looked at the phone in her hand.
She felt something cold begin to spread outward from the center of her chest, slowly, like ice forming on a pond.
She thought about the water bottle. She thought about the moment she had held it out over the mat, low, at arm's length, and turned it upside down, and watched the water come out. It had been so easy. It had taken two seconds. Nobody had been looking. Nobody was ever looking. That was the thing about Westfield. Nobody ever looked, as long as you smiled, and your mother was on the board, and your father had built the gym. She had done it before. Not exactly that. Smaller things. A uniform in a shower drain. A photograph. A rumor. A little push at the wrong moment in a stunt. It had always been easy. The girls always left. And nobody ever looked.
She thought about the new girl in the hallway that morning, looking up at her on crutches, saying, you already tried, yesterday, remember.
She thought about the school board vote.
How did she know about the vote?
Madison typed, with fingers that were not quite steady: I don't know what it's about. Probably something stupid. Don't worry.