Confessions Of An Angry Girl

ROSE ZARELLI, self-proclaimed word geek and angry girl, has some confessions to make...

1 I’m livid all the time. Why? My dad died. My mom barely talks. My brother abandoned us. I think I’m allowed to be irate, don’t you?

2 I make people furious regularly. Want an example? I kissed Jamie Forta, a badass guy who might be dating a cheerleader. She is now enraged and out for blood. Mine.

3 High school might as well be Mars. My best friend has been replaced by an alien, and I see red all the time. (Mars is red and “seeing red” means being angry—get it?)

Here are some other vocab words that describe my life: Inadequate. Insufferable. Intolerable.

(Don’t know what they mean? Look them up yourself.)

(Sorry. That was rude.)

“Thanks for the carnation. It’s pretty.”

“You’re welcome,” Jamie says with that slight smile that makes the back of my neck tingle with warmth.

I don’t want to be just friends with Jamie Forta.

What would happen if I leaned over and kissed him? Do I have it in me to do that? Would he stop me?

I suddenly hear myself breathing too hard and too loud. I start to feel stupid, dumb, needy. Fifteen minutes ago, Jamie Forta said we were just friends, and so what do I do? Fantasize about kissing him. It’s crazy. This whole thing is crazy.

Confessions of an Angry Girl

Louise Rozett

www.miraink.co.uk

For Alex Bhattacharji,

who helps me—in so many ways—to do the work I love

Thanks to The Feedback Pack—Alex Bhattacharji, Jean & Ron Rozett, Michael Rozett, Lynn Festa, Spencer Kayden, Elisa Zuritsky, Tim Brien, Rachael Dorr, Monica Khanna, and Becky Sandler. You’re all so darn smart.

Special thanks to Barb & Sean Patrick, for arranging a phenomenal day for me at Fairfield Ludlowe High School. And of course, special thanks to Hamden High School, and to all the great teachers and wonderful friends I encountered there who helped make high school everything it should be. (Truly!)

Super special thanks to Natashya Wilson of Harlequin Teen, who challenged me to find out what was really making Rose Zarelli so mad, and to Emmanuelle Morgen of Stonesong. Thank you both for taking a chance on our angry girl—and on me.

Contents

Prologue

Fall

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Winter

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Spring

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Preview

PROLOGUE

THIS, DEAR READER, is a tale of the hell of high school. Of being dropped into a world where it seems like everyone is speaking a foreign language. Where friends become enemies and enemies become nightmares. Where life suddenly seems like a string of worst-case scenarios from health-class movies.

This is a story about a girl with a stellar vocabulary who is four years away from college and a year and a half away from a driver’s license. About a girl trapped in a hostile universe where the virginity clock is ticking down—relentlessly—with zero consideration for her extenuating, traumatic, life-altering circumstances.

This is a story about death. About the occasional panic attack, the inability to shut up and high school in the suburbs without a cell phone.

Read it and weep.

FALL

plummet (verb): to fall suddenly, sharply, steeply

(see also: to start high school)

1

“JAMIE. YOU GONNA eat that? Jame. That bagel. You gonna eat it? ’Cause I’m really hungry, man. My mom threw me out before I could eat my cereal. And she didn’t give me a dime.”

Jamie slides the half bagel dripping with butter over to Angelo without looking up from drawing on the back of his notebook. Angelo is silent for thirty seconds, and then he’s on the make again, looking for someone else’s leftovers. The PA system screeches with feedback, and the din gets louder as everyone tries to talk over it.

“Good morning, Union High. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.” The brightly colored riot-proof seats welded to the cafeteria tables left over from the 1970s creak as period-one study hall drags itself to its feet to say words that we haven’t thought about and don’t understand—or can’t make ourselves say. Jamie stays seated, his pencil slowly tracing the lines of his drawing.

“Forta, is that your assigned seat?” Jamie nods at Mr. Cella, the gym teacher who would probably rather be anywhere other than chaperoning first-period study hall. “Then get out of it and join the rest of us in pledging allegiance to this fine country of ours,” Mr. Cella says kind of sarcastically as he moves on to the next table.

Jamie looks around and sees that people are in the middle of the pledge. By the time he stands up, everyone is sitting down already.

“Jame, you got any money? I’m still starvin’, man. I just need another bagel or a piece of toast or something. I’ll pay you back tomorrow. I just need, like, a dollar. You got that? Could I have it?”

Jamie reaches into his pockets for change, coming up with a quarter. He hands it to Angelo, who looks majorly disappointed.

“This all you got, Jame?”

“Here. Here’s seventy-five cents.” The slightly sweaty freshman girl in the blue cotton sweater at the end of the table, also known as me, reaches out three quarters, glad to have made it through another pledge to the flag without throwing up. I don’t exactly feel like swearing my allegiance to America these days, and I probably won’t for a long time, if ever.

Angelo looks at the quarters suspiciously. Maybe he’s unsure why I’m suddenly talking to him after not speaking for the first three days of school. He probably thinks I’m a snob, but I’m really just afraid to look up from my books. I just survived the worst summer of my life, and I don’t remember how to talk to people. Plus, I just started high school—this guy has probably been here for more than his share of four years.

The PA system squawks, “Have a good day,” before shutting off. Angelo takes the quarters from me slowly.

“Thanks. Do I gotta pay you back?”

“Um, not if you…can’t.”

Angelo stares hard, keeping his eyes on me as he swaggers backward over to the pile of bagels on the counter. He picks one and then smiles at me. I quickly look back down at my books, thinking I might have made a mistake, being nice to one of the vocational-technical guys. Especially one of the older “vo-tech” guys. He pays and makes his way back to the half-empty table for six, sitting across from Jamie. His jacket is too small for him, and he wears a ratty Nirvana T-shirt that looks like it belonged to an older brother when Kurt Cobain was actually still alive.

“Good bagel,” Angelo says to me, while I pretend to be lost in my biology textbook. “What are you reading?”

“I’m studying for a biology test,” I say without looking up.

“You already got a test?” he asks. “We only been back a few days. You in those smart classes?”

I decide not to answer this time, but it doesn’t do any good.

“Didn’t you study at home? You look like a girl who woulda studied at home.”

“I did. But I don’t think it was enough.”

“Want me to quiz you? I could quiz you.”

“No, thanks.”

Angelo slides over so he’s sitting right next to me. He leans in. “I bet it would help,” he says. I shift back slightly. He’s got a ton of sharp black stubble, and he smells like cigarettes and Axe. He looks like he’s at least twenty.

“That’s okay.”

“You sure?” He reaches for my textbook. “I know a few things about biology.”

“Leave her alone,” says Jamie without looking up from his notebook. Angelo turns, raising his eyebrows. “She don’t wanna talk to you. She’s studying.”

“Fine, man. I’ll leave her alone.” Angelo gets up and moves toward another table. “See ya later,” he says to me. “What’s your name, anyway?”

I start to answer, but Jamie lifts his head from his drawing to stare at Angelo.

“What, man?” says Angelo. “What’s the deal? She your girlfriend or something?”

I can feel the blush start at my collarbones and work its hot way up to my cheeks. Jamie looks directly at me for the first time ever, as far as I know, and I have to look back down at my book. The words blur before my eyes as I try to focus on something, anything but what’s going on right next to me.

“I’m just tryin’ to be nice. She gave me some money.” Nobody says anything. Jamie studies the tip of his ground-down pencil. “All right. See ya in shop, Jame. Bye, Sweater,” Angelo says.

Jamie goes back to his work. I can barely breathe. Tracy, my best friend since the beginning of time, is suddenly in the seat across from me. I kind of can’t believe she’s here—upperclassmen get to go where they want in study hall, but the freshmen are supposed to stay glued to their seats.

“Did you study last night? It’s going to be so hard. Are you okay? You’re all red.” She brings a spoonful of yogurt to her mouth, studying my face in that weird, concerned way that I’ve seen a lot these past few months. Then she looks sideways at Jamie, at his construction boots and the ragged, dirty cuffs of his too-long jeans. “It’s too bad you got stuck at this table. We’re all studying together over there.” She points to a big twelve-seater full of freshmen who are probably talking about the keg party that they won’t get into at the nearby private school’s polo fields tonight. Why they even want to go is beyond me. But I’ve been trained by Tracy not to say that stuff out loud. It doesn’t do anything to increase my popularity, according to Miss Teen Vogue.

“I study better by myself.”

“Yeah, I know, you always say that. Maybe that’s why you always get A’s.”

“I don’t always get A’s.”

“Oh shut up. Have you thought about what we talked about?”

Tracy is referring to whether or not she should have sex with her boyfriend, Matt Hallis. We’ve been talking about this nonstop for the last few weeks, and it’s become my least favorite topic ever—for a lot of reasons. At first I thought she was bringing it up all the time to distract me and give me something to think about. But now I realize that she’s totally obsessed. It’s like she decided that the second she started high school, she had to lose her virginity or she’d never fit in. Or be cool. Or be…whatever.

Mr. Cella materializes out of thin air behind Tracy, who notices me looking past her and freezes.

He consults his seating chart. “Ms. Gerren, would you care to go back to your assigned seat?”

“We’re just talking about our biology test, Mr. Cella.”

“You had ample time to do that last night via text, or cell, or IM, I’m sure. Back to your seat.”

Tracy gets up. “You’re okay, right?” she asks. I nod. “Sorry you’re stuck over here,” she says again, before Mr. Cella escorts her back across the cafeteria without so much as a glance at me.

It took only two days for the teachers to stop looking at me like some sort of pathetic freak. Which is exactly what Peter said would happen, when I was complaining to him about starting high school barely three months after burying our dad.

What was left of him, anyway.

I try to concentrate on biology and ignore the flush in my cheeks that is taking its time receding.

I sneak a glance at Jamie.

Jamie Forta.

I know who Jamie is. I know because of Peter. Jamie and Peter were on the hockey team together when I was in seventh grade and Peter was a junior. Jamie was a freshman then. Dad and I used to come to the games to watch Peter, but after getting a good look at Jamie in the parking lot after a game once, I mostly watched Jamie. The next year, Jamie got thrown off the team during the first game of the season for high-sticking a West Union player named Anthony Parrina in the neck.

Although I hadn’t seen Jamie in a year, I recognized him the second I was assigned my seat at this table. Even without the hockey gear.

I can hear the scratch of Jamie’s pencil as he draws, grinding graphite down to wood. My gaze finds its way across the pages of my book, over the table and onto his notebook. It takes me a second to recognize the upside-down image as a house, a strange-looking house in the woods with a porch and a massive front door at the top of a wide staircase. I lean over the table to get a better view. And I realize he’s no longer drawing.

I’m afraid to lift my eyes from the page. When I do, Jamie is looking at me, his pencil in midair. Again, the flush rises from my chest, up over my neck and into my cheeks. Before I look away, I think I catch the slightest, tiniest, most minuscule glimpse of a smile in his eyes.

“That’s a really nice picture,” I whisper, unable to get any volume.

He looks at the pencil and shakes his head at its wrecked point, dropping it next to his notebook. He reaches into his pocket and draws out a dollar as he gets up from the table and starts toward the food. Apparently he’s learned to keep some of his money for himself, rather than give it all to Angelo.

“You should be studying,” he says with that hint of a smile in his eyes, and walks away. I feel the heat intensify at the sound of his voice, making the skin on my face tight with imaginary sunburn. He disappears in the rush of upperclassmen who have just come in from the cafeteria courtyard to get food before the bell rings.

I close my book and put it in my backpack, hoping to spy a piece of gum at the bottom somewhere to erase the dryness that goes along with humiliation. I rifle through my new makeup bag, which Tracy put together for me (“You can’t go to high school without a makeup bag”) and find an old piece of partly wrapped gum stuck to a busted eyeliner (apparently I got her hand-me-downs). I take the eyeliner out with the gum and separate the two, deciding the gum looks clean enough to chew. Weirdly, it tastes like lipstick. I rifle a little more, searching for something to help me find solid ground again. My fingers brush the eyeliner sharpener.

I take the sharpener out and look quickly over my shoulder for Jamie, who’s in line waiting to pay for a coffee. I grab his pencil and jam it into the sharpener, twisting and twisting and twisting, watching the yellow wood shreds peel off and fall to the table. I take his pencil out and look at its now-sharp point. The bits of eyeliner stuck in the sharpener have left a few electric-blue stains, but the point is truly perfect. I quickly put it back where I found it, looking again just in time to see Jamie turning away from the cashier to start back to the table. The bell rings. I grab my bag and run.

blunderbuss (noun): clumsy person who makes mistakes

(see also: me)

2

“MY GRANDMA SAYS it’s better not to be beautiful, because then you have nothing to lose. And you know that the guy who married you married you for the right reasons,” Stephanie says.

“Or you just know that he’s ugly, too,” Tracy responds.

“I assume the level of conversation in the room means that everyone has finished his or her exam?” Mr. Roma says from his position by the blackboard. “Ah, Robert still has his paper, girls, so no more talking until he’s done. You have ten minutes, Robert. Is Robert the only one?”

No one else says anything. Robert looks up, catches my eye and winks. I look away. Tracy and Stephanie laugh.

“Enough, girls. Let the man finish.”

“Genius takes time, Mr. Roma,” he says.

“You have nine minutes, Robert.”

I suddenly remember the answer that I needed for the fifth question, and I become convinced that I failed. But I’m always convinced I failed, and it has yet to happen. The class has been sitting in silence for two minutes when a note lands on my desk. I can tell by the way it’s folded that it’s from Tracy.

Students are not allowed to bring cell phones or smart phones or anything like that into classrooms. This drives a lot of people crazy, including Tracy, who is addicted to texting and IM-ing. But I couldn’t care less about the ban because a) I’d rather get a nicely folded note with words that have all their letters than a stupid text any day of the week; b) I hate people who cheat, and cell phones make it really easy to do that; and c) I don’t have a cell phone. Tracy thinks it’s really lame that I’m so far behind the curve.

I was going to get one before school started this year, but other things came up. Like death.

I try to open the note without making any noise, but Mr. Roma hears me. He raises his finger to his lips to silently shush me, but he doesn’t get up to claim the note and read it out loud, which is what he did yesterday to Stephanie. Instead, he gives me a frowny smile. Apparently, Mr. Roma still thinks I’m a pathetic freak in need of sympathy even if Mr. Cella does not. I look down at the note.

What did you do to that guy at your table in study hall? He asked me where your last class was.

My heart stops. Where’s your last class? can be code for several things: Where do you want to meet so we can walk to practice together? or Where should I meet you so I can sell you those drugs? or Where can I find you so I can beat you up? Since Jamie and I aren’t on a team together—I’m not on one yet and, in fact, I don’t think he’s allowed on any team anymore—and I have no interest in buying drugs from him—not that I know he actually sells drugs—that leaves one option. But that doesn’t make any sense, either. All I did was sharpen his pencil.

I turn to Tracy. Did you tell him? I mouth. What? she mouths back. I point to the note and mouth my question again, more slowly this time. She nods seriously and then shrugs at my panicked expression.

“What was I supposed to do? He creeped me out,” she whispers.

“Was he mad?”

“Kinda—”

“Tracy Gerren! Enough! Go sit by the window.”

Tracy rolls her eyes, gathers her things and heads toward the back of the room. “Thanks a lot,” she mutters in my direction. Robert places his paper down on Mr. Roma’s desk with a flourish.

“I am officially finished, ladies and gentlemen. You are free to talk.”

“Sit, Robert. And be quiet. In fact, everyone stay quiet until the bell rings. I’ve decided that I like this class best when it’s silent.”

Three minutes until the bell. I have no idea what’s going to be waiting for me out there. I feel sick to my stomach, which gives me a great idea. I slide out of my seat and head toward—Mr. Roma’s desk. Robert tries to grab my hand as I walk by. He smells like cigarettes. I ignore him. I’ve been ignoring him since sixth grade.

“Mr. Roma, I know the bell’s about to ring, but I need a lav pass.”

Mr. Roma hands me the pink pass after writing the time on it without so much as a raised eyebrow.

I guess there are some benefits to freak status after all.

* * *

I’m in the bathroom by the gym—the bathroom farthest from the school’s main front doors—when the final bell rings. Two girls are smoking in a stall at the end. It’s hard to breathe. I wait until they leave, and then I wait a few more minutes. It’s still hard to breathe. I wonder if I’m having one of those panic attacks my mom is convinced I get now. To distract myself I read the graffiti on the wall, which says Suck it, among other things, in hot-pink nail polish.

Such originality here at Union High. Such excellent use of vocabulary.

When I can breathe again, I leave.

The halls are basically empty. I go to my locker. I get my books. I grab my French horn out of the orchestra room so I can practice later, and I leave by the front doors because there’s no other way to leave at the end of the day; they funnel us out through the front to keep an eye on us. I’m waiting at the crosswalk when I see him on the other side of the street. He isn’t holding any books. The crosswalk light goes from the red hand to the silver guy, and I’m afraid to move, but I do anyway. I get closer and closer and closer, but he doesn’t say a word. In fact, I just walk past him as if I don’t see him, and a few seconds pass. My legs are still moving when he says, “Rose.”

I’ve never, ever heard anyone say my name like that in my entire life. I didn’t even know that was my name until he said it like that.

“Yeah?”

He holds out his pencil. “What did you do?”

“I…just…it was…” I falter.

“What’s this stuff on it?”

“Oh, um, sorry—it’s eyeliner.”

He takes a few steps closer and looks carefully at my eyes. “You don’t wear that stuff.”

The flush starts. It’s slow-moving, but it’s going to be a huge burn—it stretches from shoulder to shoulder and it’s going to spread above my collar in about three seconds. I notice that his eyes are hazel with gold specks and then I can’t look anymore.

“Sometimes I do.”

“Like when?”

“If I’m going out with my boyfriend or something.”

“Oh, yeah? Who’s that?” I have nothing to say. “You’re a freshman, right?” he asks.

“I’m fourteen,” comes out of my mouth. And then, like we’re playing in the sandbox, I ask, “How old are you?”

That glint of a smile shows up briefly again but disappears before I’m sure it was real.

“Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“You don’t know where I live.”

“Yeah, I do,” he says. I stare at him dumbly. “How’s your brother?” he asks.

The question surprises me. Even though Peter and Jamie played hockey together, I assumed they never talked off the ice. “Okay, I guess. He’s at Tufts. Are you guys friends?”

“I drove him home when Bobby Passeo skated over his fingers,” he says, not answering my question.

“I saw you, you know. Play hockey. When you were still on the team.” I become very interested in my shoes, realizing that I sound like exactly what I am—a babbling fourteen-year-old. He looks at me, waiting. When I don’t say anything else, he says, “So do you want a ride?”

“I can’t get in the car with you,” is my response. I’m no longer a babbling fourteen-year-old. I’m now ten. Or maybe eight.

He can’t help himself this time. He breaks into a huge smile. My heart skitters for a second.

“What do you think is gonna happen?” he asks, taking my French horn from me. I feel like an idiot. “Come on, freshman. I’ll drive you home.”

* * *

His car is old, and rusty and a strange, flat green. But the inside is clean, and black and smells like cold rain. I’m sitting far away from him, embarrassed that I was embarrassed when he opened my door for me in the school parking lot. The radio is playing Kanye, but Jamie changes it to a classic rock station. Pearl Jam. When I was in kindergarten Peter used to play Pearl Jam for me and make me recite the band members and the instruments they played. Eddie Vedder, singer. Mike McCready, guitarist. I can’t remember the bass player’s name. Jeff Something. Peter got me addicted to good music and real musicians at a very young age, which, to be honest, hasn’t done me any favors socially.

I can’t believe I’m in a car with Jamie Forta.

“Are you cold?”

“No.”

“You look cold.”

“Not really.” He’s right. I am cold. But not because of the weather—September in Connecticut still feels like summer. I always spend the first three weeks of school sweating through my new fall clothes because I couldn’t stand to wear my summer clothes for another minute. I’m probably the only person in my entire school of 2,500 who wore a sweater today, willing the weather to be cooler.