Whisper (Novella) by CRYSTAL GREEN Page A

when they’d snark at you for not having a dad around.”
    True. Kids did get bored after a while if you didn’t react. But this kind of teasing was different because they were defending their idol, and they were even meaner.
Could
I go a whole season laying low? And would a season turn into even longer than that, making me an eternal social pariah in the town I’d grown up in?
    I settled back into my sun worshipping, even though I was still aware of every move and sound the others made. “I said yes to coming here because I thought the lake would be deserted this time of day. Isn’t it too early to party?”
    Just like they’d heard me, their music blasted even louder. They “whoo”ed, and I could’ve sworn it was aimed at me. I even heard one of the ex-cheerdevils from high school—someone an average Josette like me would never hang out with—yell, “Here’s to you, loser!”
    â€œDicks,” Evie muttered.
    A laugh cut out of me, like that would somehow ease the tension. But the thudding beats from the music kept digging into me.
    Evie stirred on her towel, and I opened my eyes, squinting against the sun. She’d perched her head in her hand, lying on her side, inspecting me.
    â€œSo,” she said. “You ever gonna explain what exactly happened at school to get them so riled up?”
    That rock in my throat wouldn’t go away. “I told you on the phone months ago. All the gory details.”
    â€œRight. But you never really went into . . . Well, you know.
Why
you handled things the way you did with Rex . . .”
    Crap. “You mean why I was so insecure that I ended up overreacting with him about Lana Peyton? Why I was such a cruel bitch to him in the end, just like all his friends are calling me?”
    â€œThere’s a lot more to talk about than that, Shel, and you know it.”
    Yeah, there was more, like why my feelings for a guy who’d disrespected me were still so messed up. Anyone with some dignity wouldn’t have a shred of emotion left for Rex, but here I was, shriveling into an emotional vacuum just because of his name.
    Fucked up. Screwed up. I didn’t want to be that way, but I couldn’t stop myself. Love hurt and it hoped and it sucked.
    Luckily, Evie seemed like one of the only people in this town who hadn’t judged me for being so hard on Rex—a guy who represented the future most people here would never have. He was a homeboy made good, a rising star at college, and I was the asshole who’d gone over the top during our breakup and publicly humiliated their golden boy. In a place like Aidan Falls, people took their idols seriously, and it didn’t help that half my graduating class had also gone to Texas-U so they’d been around for every painful minute of the breakup. To them, I was the psycho ex-girlfriend, the ingrate weirdo who’d never belonged with him in the first place.
    I hadn’t been that way in high school. Evie and I were fringe rebel-nerds—she was artsy, and I liked keeping to myself, organizing plans for future businesses, designing what my office would look like, pretending I had money to invest in stocks and fake playing the market. Yup. N-E-R-D. But then graduation had come and, during last summer, I’d grown into a different, taller, curvier non-nerd body.
    Rex had noticed.
    But those kids were right about one thing when it came to me. I could’ve—should’ve—done things differently. When I’d believed Rex was cheating, emotion had taken me over, and that had never happened to a so-called nice girl like me before.
    Evie gave up on trying to squeeze any deep talk out of me, and she rested her arms on the blanket, cradling her chin on them. Streaks from the layers of sunscreen I’d rubbed onto her back gave off a clean summer scent.
    â€œJust know I’m on your side,” she said. “No matter