Left

by Tamar Ossowski

  We went about our routine. I came home from school and we made our meals. I stood beside her peeling potatoes or snapping green beans or ripping lettuce. When I first arrived, she taught me how to do things in the kitchen with her hand over mine, but now I was on my own. Few words passed between us. We ate at the table in that stark white kitchen, both of us lost in our thoughts. If I accidentally touched her hand, she would jump back.

  She took a few days off from work and I think she slept while I was at school. Evelyn and I sat in the library during lunch. She read books, but I just thought about Leah at home, lying in that bed with those terrible drawings stuffed into its springs. She was always awake when I came home from school. I rushed in each afternoon like a nurse checking to see if her patient’s fever had broken, and she greeted me at the door, but each day was the same as the last. At night I talked to the fairies, begging their forgiveness for the hurt I had brought to Leah. I took the gray sweater that I loved so much and stuffed it into the garbage bin outside. When I slept I dreamed about the angry black strokes of her hair and sometimes they would reach out to strangle me and I would wake up gagging.

  I knew she wasn’t sleeping at night. Each night, I closed my door and climbed into my bed. She waited until she thought I was asleep and then she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I listened to the water running through the pipes in the walls, the sound of waves rushing around me like liquid wind, but it wasn’t enough to muffle her sobs. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I needed to do something because I wasn’t willing to lose her. I thought about talking to Evelyn, but I didn’t want to share Leah’s secret with anyone. As hard as I could, I wished for Matilda because she always knew exactly what to do.

  Days and nights passed and Leah slipped farther away. Finally, one evening I waited until she was in the shower and then I snuck downstairs. I opened the door to her art studio, which was so cold and dark that, for a moment, I wondered if the room missed Leah as much as I did. I found a large pad of paper and ripped out a sheet. There were pieces of charcoal lying on the table so I sat down and started to write. The letters were big and black and each time my arm moved, the darkness rubbed itself onto me but I didn’t care. Even though I didn’t know what to say, my hand moved anyway.

  I took the paper and ran, feeling it flutter behind me as I went upstairs and straight into her room. Kneeling in front of her bed, I felt underneath, then took them out and spread them around me. My hands were covered in black and I left fingerprints, perfectly gray ovals that reminded me of grapes all over the drawings. I didn’t care that I was ruining his pictures of her. I stamped my hands over them harder, tears splashing down on to the paper, making the spots where they landed ripple and fading the angry black lines to gray.

  And then more because I could not stop.

  I smudged and I pounded and I fought until I forgot where or who I was and then suddenly I remembered because I felt her beside me. Her hair was wet, and when it touched my cheek it cooled me. She was rocking me, kissing the top of my head. When she spoke the words got lost between us, but I understood.

  “I will never leave you again, Franny.”

  I don’t know how long we stayed that way, but when we separated I was still clutching the paper. And when I let it go, it dropped from my hand and crumpled to the floor. The black letters were now covered in a delicate swirl of gray and it was hard to read, but I could still read what I had written.

  F-O-R-G-I-V-E M-E

  After that night she came back to me. At the pool she waved from the bleachers every time I popped out of the water. She took me to the grocery store and let me pick out things that I liked. I chose bright green lollipops that made my lips pucker so much that I looked like a fish when I ate them. She thought it was funny that I loved them so much. I liked to see her smile.

  We sat in the living room together, me on the couch and she in a rocking chair, moving back and forth, floating through the stillness that surrounded us. Then one night she turned on the radio and a melody that sounded like bells streamed around us and I saw that she had her sketchbook in her hand. It took me a few minutes to realize I was her subject. She was looking at me closely, her gaze brushing down the slope of my nose and slipping across the curve of my lips. No one had ever paid such close attention to me before and it made me feel stiff. I was scared that if I moved too much, she would lose interest in me and then I would go back to being who I was before. So I stayed perfectly still, my word search book laying flat on my lap.

  “Franny, don’t forget to breathe.” She kept looking down at her page and then back up at me, her hand moving as if it wasn’t under her control anymore. “Has anyone ever drawn you before?”

  I shook my head but then I couldn’t remember what position it had been in before.

  “Just be yourself. Work on your word search book. Forget I’m even here.”

  Even if I wanted, I could never forget.

  I tried to find the same position but nothing felt right, so I stared back down at the puzzle I was working on, waiting for the words to jump out at me like they usually did. Most people circled the entire word, but I circled each individual letter. It took me longer and looked more confusing, but I liked the idea of singling out every letter separately.

  “Have you always liked letters?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s okay to talk, Franny. Really, I want you to be yourself.”

  She got off the rocking chair and sat on the other end of the couch. Then she swiveled around so that she was looking directly at me, her sketchbook balanced on her crossed legs.

  “I have always known how to spell.” I felt the hotness creep into my face.

  “That’s kind of how I feel about drawing. I’ve done it for as long as I can remember and it’s always been the one thing I could count on. No matter how bad things got.”

  The music on the radio changed and now it sounded like rain hitting the windowpanes of an empty house. Leah took a breath and then held the sketchbook close to her chest. She closed her eyes and her head swayed delicately to the music. I wished I could freeze that moment so that it would never end, the two of us with the music playing in the background, and a half-finished sketch of me in her hand. I wanted things to be easy, to hide so that nothing bad could ever happen. But something new and strange was growing inside me, taunting me until it was hard to breathe, and I knew I had to speak. I ignored the lump in my throat and took a deep breath.

  “Who was he?”

  The music was over and the announcer was naming the piece that had just played. I wondered if she’d heard me. Her eyes were still closed, but she stopped swaying. She lowered the sketchbook and was quiet for a few more minutes before she finally spoke. “Someone I thought I loved. He was sweet and passionate and then suddenly he wasn’t. And I don’t know how I didn’t see it. I don’t know how I missed the signs.”

  Her face was pale and her hair was stuck to the sides of her head. I don’t know why, but suddenly I thought about earthquakes. I reached forward and took her hand and it felt cold, damp. Her eyes closed again and she kept wincing, as though what she saw burned her from the inside out. She shook her head like she was fighting something and then, suddenly, the shaking stopped and her head was still. Even though the music was still playing, I was surrounded by an overwhelming sense of quiet. Quiet so loud that I could hear it. Finally, she opened her eyes and we sat together on the couch holding hands. We must have fallen asleep that way because when I woke our fingers were still intertwined.

  Matilda

  I don’t like being in cramped, loud places, so no matter how many times Lavi begged me, I rarely ate lunch in the cafeteria. Within the first few weeks of school, I figured out how to sneak into the auditorium and almost always ate my lunch there.

  I packed the same thing every day—a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and apple juice in a thermos. I would sling my legs over the armrest of the chair, eat my sandwich, and stare out the window until it was t
ime to go back to class. One time a janitor came in looking for something, but I slid down low and got really quiet and after a few minutes he left. My mother was keeping a more watchful eye on me, so sitting out on our porch until all hours of the night was getting more difficult. Instead, I sat in that big empty auditorium, thinking.

  Mostly, I thought about Franny.

  I wondered what she was eating for lunch. No matter how many times she tried, she never liked peanut butter and jelly. I think she hated feeling that her mouth was stuck together. Panic would fill her eyes, and I imagined that she feared she would never be able to pry her lips open again.

  I loved it for all the reasons she hated it.

  I liked how the peanut butter got thick and sticky and made it hard to swallow and then right at the moment you thought things were going to get worse, the jelly came to the rescue.

  Franny and I, we always saw things differently.

  I ate the last of my sandwich and then suddenly realized that there was a commotion growing outside the auditorium. I crammed everything back into my backpack, walked quickly to the door, and cracked it open just a bit. All I could make out were the backs of people’s heads, so I slipped out and tried to blend into the crowd, acting as though I had been there all along. The last thing I wanted was to get caught and lose the only place in the school I could really be alone. I had nothing to worry about because no one paid any attention to me. They were all too busy whispering loudly about the red paint smudged along the corridor walls.

  There were random smears here and there that reminded me of the finger paints I used in kindergarten. It would have been funny—except the streaks looked like blood and there was sense of brutality in the air, as though a battle had raged in this hallway. It took a few more minutes for me to notice that the person had also taken the time to inscribe a message across the door of Mr. West’s classroom. Boldly, unapologetically, and in crimson paint, it read:

  FAT ASS

  At first I was shocked, but then I wanted to laugh. I admired anyone who could pull off a prank designed to humiliate a man who lived to humiliate everyone around him. Several teachers joined the group and tried to coax students back to their classrooms. Then, suddenly, it got quiet and the whispering and pointing all stopped as a man made his way towards the classroom.

  Mr. West stood in front of his door, hands on his enormous hips, his goatee trembling and, even though I wished I didn’t, for a second I felt sorry for him. With a roar, he leapt into the crowd and grabbed his prey. When he reemerged, it was with a struggling Daryl in tow.

  “Get off of me, man!” shouted a furious Daryl without a hint of panic in his voice as he worked to slip out of the grip that Wicked West had firmly placed him in.

  The group dispersed. Teachers herded kids back to their classrooms, but I stayed. So many times in my life I have allowed opportunities to pass me by and I was not going to allow that to happen again. That is what I told myself as my peanut butter and jelly sandwich turned to cement in the pit of my stomach.

  “You little freak,” Mr. West growled.

  I saw his grip tighten, but Daryl didn’t look scared. Instead, he seemed comfortable, almost relaxed. As if this wasn’t the first time someone was close to smashing his skull into a wall.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?” Mr. West put his face up close to Daryl’s. I cringed, thinking about what his breath smelled like.

  “Stop it!” I yelled.

  For a moment, we were all stunned, myself included. I understood my words but . . . had that voice really come from inside of me? Did I have any idea what I was getting myself into?

  “Get out of here,” hissed Daryl.

  “Get to class, Ms. Wolley. This matter does not pertain to you.” He pushed Daryl harder.

  “But he didn’t do it.”

  Mr. West suddenly let Daryl go and turned to me. It was like a scene from a horror movie where the innocent young girl lures the killer away from her friend and then runs away screaming. Except there was nowhere for me to run.

  “This paint is still wet. That means it had to have been done within the last hour.”

  Mr. West smirked. “Brilliant, Ms. Wolley, or should I call you Ms. Holmes? Now can you explain to me how that impacts the fact that this weasel defaced school property?”

  I shuffled my feet for a minute and looked down because it was the best I could do to create dramatic effect.

  “He didn’t do it. He was with me the whole time.”

  I am not sure which of them look more shocked. The difference was that Daryl recovered more quickly.

  “Oh, really? And where were the two of you?”

  For a moment, I stumbled.

  “We were riding up and down in the elevator.”

  “That elevator is designated for staff and for students with disabilities. Do either of you have a disability that I don’t already know about?” He snickered, then grabbed Daryl’s jacket and crumpled it in his fist.

  “I guess you’re off the hook this time, dirt bag. Thank your little girlfriend. You two will have a lot of time to spend together during detention next week.” He tossed him against the wall as though he was a rubber ball, and Mr. West stormed off, leaving the two us alone in the hallway.

  Daryl adjusted the collar on his jacket, picked up the books that had fallen to the floor, and continued down the hall. He never said a word to me. But it didn’t matter; I already knew.

  I knew that he owed me and I knew that it was killing him inside.

  I got to detention early the first day. I had never been punished at school before and I certainly didn’t want to make things worse with Wicked West. Daryl sauntered in at exactly three o’clock. He sat in the front row, slouched down in his seat, and stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. That first day, he spent the entire time staring blankly at Mr. West, who pretended to be intensely engrossed in a newspaper.

  The next day Mr. West gave us more homework than ever before.

  Again, I made sure to arrive a few minutes early and Daryl got there right at three. He picked the same seat, took the same stance, and the staring contest began.

  Mr. West shuffled through his papers.

  I was trying to read the pages he had assigned in Romeo and Juliet, but it was complicated. I squinted down at the book; I didn’t understand a word of what I was reading. It was so quiet in the room that I don’t think I would have noticed it if I hadn’t looked up at the right moment.

  Mr. West had stopped what he was doing and was staring right back at Daryl.

  He had this grin on his face. The kind that made you wonder whether he was going to slap you on the back and laugh with you, or slap you so hard your teeth were going to come flying out of your mouth. I couldn’t see Daryl’s expression, but his focus didn’t seem to falter. Mr. West walked over to Daryl like it was just the two of them and I wasn’t in the room anymore and for a second I wondered what it would feel like to really be invisible. He lowered himself down and whispered fiercely into Daryl’s ear. “Got nothing better to do, dirt bag? Why don’t you get started on your assignment?”

  Daryl never moved his head.

  One hand came out of his pocket and dove straight down into his backpack. Out came a binder. He flipped it open and slid it across the table so that it teetered at the edge, inches from slipping onto the floor.

  I’m not sure how he had managed it, but Daryl had completed the entire assignment.

  Mr. West was furious.

  If I thought the homework assignment that day was bad, I had no idea what was to come. Each day the workload increased and each afternoon, Daryl flipped open his notebook to reveal the assignment in its entirety.

  On the last day of our assigned detention, Mr. West handed Daryl a piece of chalk. He made him stand at the blackboard and write over and over, “I am a liar and a dirt bag and I don’t deserve to be here.”

  Daryl did as he was told. He wrote until the board was so filled with words it looked more whi
te than black. The dust got into the crevices of his jacket and turned it ashen and still he wrote. He never changed his expression, and when he finished he walked to the door with a snarl on his face, like an animal that had just chewed his leg free from a trap. I had never seen anyone look like that before, and for a second, even Mr. West looked shaken. But then he growled at me to get my things together.

  The expression on Daryl’s face was so frightening, I could not erase it from my memory. That night, I decided to take a risk and sneak out to the porch. My mother had gone to bed early with a cold and I figured I could get away with it. I’m not sure what I was hoping for—maybe I thought I would find him there, but even if I did, I wasn’t sure what I would say.

  Suddenly, I heard a noise, a scratching sound coming from the tree a few hundred feet from where I stood. I peeked over to Lavi and Daryl’s side, but all the lights were off. Slowly, I inched my way over to the tree. I have always been scared of the dark; noises are louder and shadows scarier when the sun goes down. I got as close as my nerves would allow and then jumped as an orange streak raced by.

  A cat. The same cat that Lavi was playing with the first day we met. I walked behind the tree to see what he had been doing. It was mostly covered in dirt, but the cat had managed to unearth a corner of a plastic bag. I dug around with my fingers, feeling the soil embed under my nails. Then I pulled hard and out came the bag.

  Inside was a small canister of red paint, a paintbrush, and a bright yellow thermos covered with little black footprints. A thermos that I recognized immediately . . . I’d been present during its purchase.