Margarette (Violet) by Johi Jenkins, K LeMaire Read Free Book Online Page B

Margarette then remembers Tommy carrying her up the night before. She
feels so empty that her own chest threatens to collapse. Why doesn’t she ever
know when to shut up? She feels like she ruined her chances with him.
    May starts with simple yet frustrating small talk
about school, asking Margarette who she knows. The toast is dry and the butter
isn’t really butter. The conversation is less fulfilling than the meal.
    Afterwards Margarette says, “Thank you for
breakfast.”
    “Leaving so soon?” May asks.
    “Leave her alone,” Tommy warns his sister.
    “Sorry. I need to get home,” Margarette says.
    “There’s no need to say anything,” Tommy says.
    The ride is mostly silent except for Margarette
giving Tommy directions to her house. As they approach her street she quickly changes
her mind and alters course. She asks him to drop her off at the Snappy Snack
Shack convenience store where she sometimes gets groceries with money that she
finds in her mother’s jeans when she does the laundry. He offers to drive her
home and help her with the bags, but she assures him that she only needs two
things and her house is not far. She waves goodbye as he drives away, but the
second he’s out of sight she turns around and walks home.
    She lied—she just couldn’t imagine taking him to
her house. There’s only a small chance that her mother will be awake when she
gets home, but Margarette didn’t want to risk a confrontation in front of
Tommy. Why ? She asks herself. Then she rolls her eyes in self-reply as
she realizes what worries her. Her situation in life and Tommy’s opinion of her
suddenly matter to her. What would he think if he met her mother? She’d be so
embarrassed.
    In the end all her efforts were unnecessary; her
mother is still sleeping when Margarette returns home. She smiles to herself
thinking that sometimes having a negligent mother pays off. Aside from Tommy
and his sister, no one else would ever know that Margarette did not spend the
night at her own house.
    But what she doesn’t realize is that it doesn’t
matter what anyone really knows. It’s what they think they know
what gets repeated around. Around and around, maliciously, without a care for
the lives it may destroy.
    And in the smallest of small dirt towns everyone
thinks they know what happened to Margarette. Yet most of them didn’t even know
her name until that night.
    Margarette is completely oblivious of the words
that are exchanged by half the school population that weekend, the many stories
that each additional phone call spurs. She only looks forward to school being
over in a few weeks—because, again, she finds herself without friends. She
cannot forgive Alice and Julie, but in three weeks she won’t have to see them
again. And whatever fool she made out of herself after they poisoned her, in three
weeks all would be forgotten. Most people had the attention span of a gnat.
    She had a knack for being
entirely wrong almost all the time.

Chapter 5.             Following
     
    Margarette walks with the midday sun in her eyes
toward the lunch table outside the school lunchroom. Her ex-friends aren’t
there yet; she sits at her usual spot. It’s Monday, and she didn’t hear from
them all weekend. She looks up and catches glances of people looking away, as
if they had been staring at her while her eyes were elsewhere. Or it could
just be your imagination , she thinks.
    She drinks cold coffee through a straw that she
smuggled in from home and tries not to seem paranoid. Drinking coffee through a
straw, room-temperature or otherwise, is an old habit of hers. She started
doing it because she heard it protects teeth from staining, but now it isn’t clear
whether she does it to protect her teeth or if it’s just that she likes it when
the boys notice her sucking through a straw. But now she wonders whether people
are staring at her because she looks weird drinking coffee through a straw. No.
It’s not that weird.
    But when