Chapter 4 - What Madison Wanted to Say
He texted her back that night. Two words. Sure. When?
She answered inside a minute. Tomorrow. Before homeroom. By the side doors.
I only knew because he left his phone face-up on the counter and the screen lit while he was in the shower. I didn't scroll the thread. I saw enough.
I barely slept. In the morning I made his eggs and didn't bring it up. He didn't either. He ate fast, checked his phone twice, and shouldered his bag. At the door he stopped.
"I'll tell you how it goes," he said.
"You don't have to."
"I know." He looked at me. "I want to."
He told me that evening. Same table, same chairs.
Madison had been waiting by the side doors, alone, which surprised him. He said she looked different with none of the others around her. Smaller. Like she wasn't sure what to do with her hands.
"She said she was sorry," Ethan told me.
"What exactly did she say?"
He thought about it. "She said, 'I was awful to you last year and I've thought about it all summer. I don't expect you to forgive me. I just needed you to know that I know what I did.'"
I watched his face. "And?"
"And I just stood there," he said. "Because I'd run that moment in my head like a hundred times. What I'd say. How good it was gonna feel." He turned his water glass in a slow circle on the table. "It didn't feel like I thought it would."
"How did it feel?"
"Kind of sad, honestly." He frowned at the glass. "She looked like she really felt bad. And I realized I didn't actually want her to feel bad. I just wanted it to have never happened."
I nodded. "Did you say anything back?"
"I said, 'I appreciate you saying that.' Because I did. And then I said, 'Can I ask you something?'" He looked up. "I asked her why. Why she laughed. Why she said that stuff about my clothes and my face."
"What did she say?"
Ethan was quiet for a second. "She said Brandon had been trashing me to her for weeks before I ever worked up the nerve to talk to her. Told her I was a joke, and that if people saw her being nice to me it would make her look bad." He paused. "She said she believed him. And she said she's ashamed of that now."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"So Brandon set the whole thing up," I said.
"Basically." Ethan nodded. "And he's the one who spread it to the other guys after. Madison didn't even know that part until later."
Something moved in my chest. Not exactly anger. Something colder and more precise than anger.
"Ethan," I said. "How bad did it get with Brandon last year? The stuff you wouldn't tell me."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he reached into his bag and put a folded piece of paper on the table.
"I found this in my locker," he said. "Last March."
I unfolded it. I read it once. Then I read it again. My hands were perfectly steady, which surprised me, because nothing else about me was.
"Why didn't you show me this?" I asked quietly.
"Because I knew exactly what you'd do," he said. "And I wasn't ready."
I laid the paper flat on the table. "Are you ready now?"
May you like
He looked at me for a long time.
"Yeah," he said. "I think I am."
