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As someone entered the restroom, Beau tensed up and tried to stay as silent as possible. It really sucked to let these girls get to you, but it was absolutely unacceptable to let them know they had gotten to you. Beau peered through the tiny crack where the stall door closed and caught the briefest glance of a dark blue bob. Okay, okay. The new girl. Genevieve, right? That wasn’t ideal. She didn’t have it out for Beau directly like some of the other girls, but she did definitely hang out with the girls who did. The ones who were here because the school was prestigious and would launch them into good marriages and better careers, unlike Beau, who was here because she had to be. The ones who got to go home when they graduated.
When Genevieve had shown up out of nowhere halfway through the semester, those girls had crawled all over her like ants at a picnic. A real celebrity! Or, well, a celebrity’s daughter. Jester’s mom was an actress. Beau had seen her movies and they were fine, but Jester’s mother was incredible. Even in bit parts, Marianne Lavorre dominated any scene she was in. It helped that she was heart-breakingly jaw-droppingly fucking gorgeous, not that Beau would say that out loud. Compared to her mother, Genevieve wasn’t anything too special–pretty eyes, chic hair, but also about 20 pounds heavier than Marianne now and at least 30 pounds heavier than she had been in her heyday. That being said, she had a certain inner light, a massive allowance, and a mean streak that made her exceedingly popular with the kind of girls Beau fucking hated. Needless to say, they hadn’t talked much.
Beau’s breath hitched on a half-restrained sob and Genvieve stopped where she stood, checking her wild eyeliner in front of the mirror. “Hello,” she said tentatively, “are you pooping? I’ll go away if you’re pooping, but it really seems like you’re crying in there and, like, I can hear it so that’s sort of awkward.” There was a pause and then Genevieve appeared over the left stall wall, folding her arms to rest her head as she took in Beau’s smudged makeup. She must’ve been standing on the very top of the toilet to reach up this high. Beau had seen her walking the halls and would put her at 4’10” at the most. Genevieve smiled, her teeth just slightly too sharp at the canines. “Hi, I’m Jester,” she said and stuck a hand down into the stall.
Well, this was happening now. Beau took a deep breath to settle herself and then shook her hand awkwardly. “I’m Beauregard. Uh, Lionette. I thought your name was Genevieve.”
Jester’s eyes glittered. “It used to be.”
“Okay, well.” Beau started navigating out of the stall. “I’ll just go cry in my room. Sorry I bothered you.”
Jester scrambled out of her own stall, almost tripping and ending up with a foot in the toilet as she clambered down from her perch to block Beau’s exit. “Wait,” she said, fishing something out of her god-awful Betsey Johnson purse. She pulled out a hand-painted out-of-order sign and hung it on the outside of the bathroom door before closing it again, leaning back against it to ensure it stayed closed. “You should tell me what’s wrong.”
“Do I get a choice in that?”
Jester cast her eyes toward the high window on the other side of the bathroom. “I mean, I guess you could go out the window.”
“That’s a no, then.” Beau sighed and fixed her posture into her patented can’t-be-fucked-with stance, arms crossed in front of her chest. She watched Jester watching her, purple eyes (rumor was they were contacts) running up and down Beau’s body, and oh. Beau felt a shock of recognition. Interesting, but not interesting enough to get her to spill her guts to a demonstrably malicious almost stranger.
“I heard,” Jester started, tracing her eyes back up slowly to meet Beau’s and smiling wide, “that you’re here because your dad didn’t want you to go to juvy.”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your–”
“Me too!” Beau blinked. It was one thing to hear this girl had escaped rehab to go to this fancy prison of a boarding school instead, but juvy? Unbelievable. Then again, the way she said it, like she was just so excited to meet someone who’d had the same experience as her… It wasn’t a sob story to her, just a thing that had happened. If Jester was trying to deceive Beau, this was a terrible strategy. And, for some reason she couldn’t pinpoint, Beau had the sense that Jester was a really great liar.
“What did you do?”
Jester deftly changed the subject, her expression changing into the mock sadness Beau had been expecting. “I bet they were mean to you, right? They’re always saying such backhanded things to me, and they like me so I can’t imagine how they treat someone like you.”
“Yeah, we are in agreement that your friends suck.”
Jester laughed. Absolutely baffling. “Well, what’d they say?”
Okay, calculated risk. What could Beau say? At this point, she just wanted to see what would happen if she played along. “They don’t like how I look.” Beau raised an eyebrow, a ‘your move’ gesture like they were playing chess in this grimy school bathroom instead of talking like… well, like girls.
“That’s stupid! My mamma always says that when you’re beautiful, people only either want you or want to tear you down.”
“No, that wasn’t it,” Beau said. It was true. Beau looked like this on purpose. She knew what she was about and was almost proud of her butchest girl at school title. Not proud enough to say the word butch out loud, but, hey, why give them the ammo, right? But, Beau wasn’t thinking about any of that. Even as she said to Jester, “I don’t care what they think of me,” what she was thinking was, She thinks I’m beautiful.
“What was it then? You were crying.”
“I wasn’t. I… I just don’t like it when they’re right.” Beau swallowed hard. “One of them–Kaitlyn, I think–said something about how obviously my dad wanted a boy, which isn’t even why I dress like this, but, like, it is also… true. My mom’s due in April. I don’t really know what’ll happen after that.” Beau had been looking at the wall behind Jester when she said all of this. It was easier to speak that way. But, now, she looked back at her face and was shocked to see it blanketed in absolute rage. Jester noticed Beau noticing her and trained her expression into something cheerful again.
“I get it. My mom didn’t know what to do with me either. She never let me go outside our estate but she couldn’t keep me there anymore so she sent me here.” She’d flipped out her iPhone and started texting intently as she said this, but for this next bit, her eyes briefly met Beau’s again. With breathtaking sincerity, she said, “We’re stuck, I guess.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Beau wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here. She moved slightly closer to Jester to get a quick look at her phone. She was texting someone just labeled “The Gentleman.” Beau had heard rumors about a shady boyfriend. Maybe that’s what had gotten Jester thrown out. Beau figured, so long as they were standing in this weird bubble of intimacy together, she might as well try asking again. “Why are you stuck?”
Jester’s fingers never stopped tapping her phone as she explained, cheerful but practiced, “Mamma had a stalker. I really really hated him cause he was always, like, around, you know. Sure, he was paying my mom to be there, but, like, he was always there .”
Beau wasn’t at all sure what to make of that. She was briefly caught up in the image of Jester as one of those girls you saw on the news. Self-defense cases. Brave rape victims with teary eyes. The courts cruel and entirely unjust. “Did he attack you?” she tried.
“Oh no,” Jester said in the same voice she said everything. “I set his car on fire.”
“Uh.” Beau said, intelligently.
Jester put her phone away and smiled. “There, it’s done. Let’s go to my room, okay? We’ve already missed fifth period so… We can watch movies and talk about boys and stuff.” She hooked an arm into one of Beau’s crossed ones and pulled her out the door, collecting her out-of-order sign as she went. Boys. Right. Okay, okay. Maybe it was code or maybe this girl was more of an enigma than Beau was giving her credit for. Whatever. Beau let herself get swept up.
“Beau?”
“Yeah, Jess?” She wasn’t sure where Jess came from but it made Jester smile soft and real so Beau decided it had been the right instinct.
“I’m gonna make them really fucking sorry, okay?”
“Sure.” Beau felt Jester move her arm down, brushing against Beau’s own the whole time, until she found Beau’s hand, took it, and squeezed twice. The next time Beau saw Kaitlyn, she was missing part of her ear.