Absent (Katie Williams)

Pope.
    She arrives late, and I know that walk. She’s spent the entire morning, while getting ready for school, telling herself to be tough. She’ll show them she doesn’t care, even though they still titter and whisper. Which they still do. I follow after, wondering how long she’ll be able to keep it up.
    Turns out, not long.
    The hall is full when Kelsey reaches her locker. No ponies gather around it. No surprise. Kelsey doesn’t glance over to where they are gathered at another pony’s locker. She keeps her eyes on her own locker, spinning the dial and giving it a yank.
    Hundreds of prom tickets spill out at her feet.
    We, all of us in the hall, stare at the pastel slips of paper scattered around Kelsey like confetti. Kelsey stares, too, her eyes surprised at first, until she picks up one slip and then drops it fluttering to the floor.
    Even from a few yards back, I can see that the ticket is professionally printed. The well-rounders, I think. They’re the ones who organize the prom, who print the tickets. It takes less than a second for me to spot Whitney Puryear, her face lit with an anticipation almost like hunger.
    The hallway explodes in sound. It’s not laughter, not all of it, but enough of it is. I watch as Kelsey’s eyes fill with tears.
    This is it. Exactly what I’d engineered, exactly what I’d said I’d wanted. How is vindication supposed to feel? It should feel like the parts snap into place. It should feel like eating a bowl of warm, thick soup on a cold day. It should feel like suddenly you’re solid again.
    I watch the tears tremble in Kelsey’s eyes and feel nothing.
    Suddenly, I find myself stepping through people, directly through their mouths curled in laughter, their hands lifted to shield a whisper, their narrowed, judgmental eyes. I arrive in front of Kelsey.
    “Think of me,” I order. “You dumb pony, think of me.”
    But why would she?
    Maybe because my old best friend steps out into the middle of the hall and shouts, “Shut up!” Usha balls her hands on her hips. “All of you, shut up!”
    Kelsey stares at Usha, tears finally spilling over her cheeks, cutting across the expression of confusion on her face. She opens her mouth, but before she can speak, her voice thinks my name: Paige. It’s enough.
    I turn her around, chin lifted—damn the tears, damn the tickets, damn the laughter—and walk her through the crowd, a queen through the jackals, until the laughter fades away behind us.
    And that’s how it remains for the next week and a half. Every day, I wait until Kelsey thinks of me, then I inhabit her. I take herthrough her day—classes, lunch, worst are hallways—like the whispers and stares don’t exist. She doesn’t push back at me now, but then again, I don’t do anything she wouldn’t do herself.
    Evan starts to ask where I’ve been. Even with Fisk’s classes, he’s started to notice that I’m not around.
    “I’m here and there,” I say lightly.
    “You’re where and where?” he asks.
    I almost tell him. But I can’t. It’s the same feeling as when I couldn’t tell Usha about my hook-ups with Lucas. I don’t know how to explain why I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing. I just didn’t think revenge would feel like this. Shameful. Petty. Mean. All the things I’ve accused Kelsey of, now it’s me.
    The next Wednesday, two weeks since the car accident, I walk Kelsey out of the cafeteria and see Wes and his burner friends clustered in the hall that leads to art class. Though Kelsey has to sit across the room from Wes in art, I’ve been trying to skirt him elsewhere because, maddeningly, no matter how I try to avoid it, my eyes always somehow land on his. As they do now. Before his friends even see me, Wes’s eyes catch mine. Fortunately, there’s a door a few steps away.
    I duck into Brooke’s bathroom to wait for the burners to disperse, but as I turn the corner to the sinks, I freeze.
    Lucas stands in the same exact spot where he stood on the afternoon when he guarded the flooding sinks. I hadn’t seen him since we’d sat together in Principal Bosworth’s office, though I knew he must have been back from his suspension. It surprises me that I’d forgotten about him, the boy I used to look for at every ring of the bell. The girl with him is young, maybe only a freshman, though she’s trying hard to look older, with a mouth dark as poisoned fruitand clunky boots that must make each step heavy. She floats up from the boots as if