Free Unlovely by Carol Walsh Greer

through her work on the yearbook committee, where she was in
charge of making sure all of the clubs and sport teams were photographed for
posterity. Mr. Fulko , an amateur photographer, was
saving the students money by giving up a personal day to take the club pictures
himself.
    Within a week, Melanie was sleeping with
him.
    Claudia wasn't surprised when Melanie
told her what was going on, at least no more surprised than usual. She was used
to Melanie's behavior by now. She was disgusted with Fulko ,
however, for breaching his professional ethics, and she was shocked at how
stupid he was. What was he thinking, risking his career in order to have sex
with a student, particularly one as immature as Melanie? Melanie was her best
friend in the world, but Claudia knew that anyone who'd slept with as many men
as Melanie had some serious emotional problems.
    As if the sexual relationship and the
risk of inadvertent exposure by Melanie weren't bad enough, Mr. Fulko made it even worse by acting like some love-sick
puppy, writing sappy notes and composing execrable poems. Melanie would show
these missives to Claudia and then, after subjecting them to rigorous
explication, tuck them into a green calico-covered stationery box she kept on
her dresser. There sat the damning evidence, right there in a box on her
dresser, where Melanie's mother or father could easily find it at any moment.
Idiots.
    Worse still, it seemed Mr. Fulko was keeping all of the correspondence he received
from Melanie in an even dumber place: his desk at work. Claudia discovered it
one day when she approached to ask a question about some homework; Mr. Fulko had opened his drawer to retrieve a pencil and there,
in the back, was a stack of folded notes with Melanie's handwriting visible on
the top.
    The very existence of that pile of notes
not only reinforced Claudia's conviction that her science teacher was a moron
(what kind of fool leaves evidence of illicit behavior unsecured?), but also
mightily disturbed her peace of mind. Although she had access to the notes
Melanie received from Fulko , she was never shown the
notes Melanie sent to her lover. Every now and then Melanie would refer to
something she'd written to "Jim," especially when she thought she'd
come up with something exceptionally clever, but Claudia never actually held
these letters in her hands or read any one of them in its entirety. Rationally,
she understood that she didn't have any right to expect access to their
correspondence, but that was the very thing that bothered her. She wanted the
right. Claudia was being shut out.
    When Melanie was sleeping around,
Claudia didn't feel threatened. She didn't approve of her friend's behavior,
certainly, but she did find some comfort in Melanie's dysfunction and her
dependence upon her. Until recently, Melanie didn't really have any other close
friends. She partied with her cousin Lisa, but didn't share things with her;
Claudia had been Melanie's sole confidante. Now Melanie had Fulko .
Now, unpleasantly, the relationship had become unequal and Claudia was in the
weaker position, the one who needed the friendship more. She had only Melanie,
but Melanie had another. Melanie was engaged in an actual affair with a man,
not just sleeping with him, and she was acting as if it were the most important
thing in her life. The ground was shifting under Claudia's feet.
    Claudia wanted Fulko and Melanie to break up. She was weary of their winks and giggles, their lame
subterfuge, their lovers' secrets and private jokes. She hated any part of
Melanie's life that excluded her. Claudia already felt incidental in her own
home: Sylvia hovered but remained emotionally distant, and Tony was cool and
detached. She didn't want to be incidental to Melanie. She needed to be special
to someone – crucial to someone – and instead she felt forgotten.
    "I never see you anymore,"
Claudia would complain.
    "You're crazy. I'm right
here," Melanie would say. But she wasn't. In her head