Why was I getting so upset about this? I didn’t even like the kid all that much. Sure, he’d helped me feel a little better last week, but so what?
I guess I’d just thought maybe…
I heard a car horn honk across the lot and saw my mom waving to me. I glanced up and down the street one more time. There wasn’t a bike in sight.
Never mind. It didn’t matter.
As I walked towards the car, I thought about Dr. M’s Happy List.
Make a new friend.
Fuck that.
Chapter 13
Dirty Little Secret
Secrets have a way of getting out
They sneak around in the shadows
They hide under the bed
They sit in the closet
Secrets are always waiting
Waiting for their chance to come out and play
Waiting to jump out and say “Boo!”
Waiting for you to slip up
You can try to bury secrets
In a notebook
Under a pile of clothes
In the deep corners of your heart
You can try to bury the secrets
But in the end you won’t win
Dirty little secrets don’t like to be kept
We were studying limericks in English class today. A limerick is a poem with five lines where the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme and the third and fourth lines rhyme. I didn’t like limericks all that much because they were supposed to be comical and usually had a light-hearted vibe. I didn’t do light-hearted, and anything that I found comical would most likely earn me a one-way ticket to the guidance counselor’s office.
If you took out the whole “comical and light-hearted” aspect of the poem, limericks really weren’t that difficult to write. I mean, if you listened to the kids in my class you’d probably think that a limerick was some complex technique for brain surgery, but I literally cranked out this bad boy in under two minutes:
This class is giving me a headache
Candace Fowler’s hair is so fake
Someone knock me out
Or soon I’ll shout
That I’d rather be drowned in a lake
It wasn’t exactly “silly” or “joyful,” but it did have that musical quality that my teacher said was typical of limericks. And the line about Candace Fowler’s hair did give the whole thing a bit of comic relief, if you ignored the fact that I’d rather be drowned in a lake. Plus, it was totally accurate. Candace Fowler’s hair was about as real as her boobs.
“Does freckles rhyme with pretzels?” I heard someone whisper behind me.
“No, dude. Why would you write a poem about freckles and pretzels?”
“Because Danielle Dawson has freckles and I want pretzels.”
“So?”
“So, Mrs. French said to write about what you know and what I know is that there are two very delicious things in this world and they are Danielle Dawson and pretzels.”
“You’re stupid, bro.”
“You’re stupid… But seriously, does freckles rhyme with pretzels?”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked up to Mrs. French (who had a very ironic name for an English teacher) and asked her if I could use the bathroom. We had a mutual understanding, Mrs. French and I. I sat and did my work quietly and she let me use the bathroom whenever I felt like my brain was going to explode all over her classroom. I disliked everyone at this school, but I disliked Mrs. French the least. I felt like she probably hated this place almost as much as I did. She was a quiet old woman that had most likely spent the past thirty or so years asking herself why she hadn’t become a lawyer or something.
As I walked out the door, I looked back at Mrs. French. She was just sitting there at her desk, gazing miserably out the window, probably fantasizing throwing each of those jerks out of it. I felt kind of bad for Mrs. French. I could escape that zoo of a classroom and hide in the bathroom when I felt like I wanted to throw one of my classmates out the window. Mrs. French didn’t get that luxury. Then again, she was being paid not to throw kids out the window, so my sympathy was short-lived.
When I got to the bathroom, I locked myself in the big stall with the sink and the mirror. I put the seat cover down and sat on top of it. When I looked up, I saw my reflection staring back at me. I’d always found it creepy that they put the mirrors right across from the toilets in these big stalls, so you were forced to look at yourself as you did your business. I put my elbows on my knees and propped my head in my hands, watching as the girl in the mirror mimicked my movements.
I looked tired. And worn out. I looked just about as good as I felt, which was like crap. My hair was in two pigtails because even after straightening it this morning it insisted on trying to curl. My roots were starting to peek out at the top, and the black was beginning to fade. I’d have to re-dye it a.s.a.p.
My eyes looked droopy and all the eyeliner I used just made me look like a sleep-deprived raccoon. I was wearing a black tank top and flannel shirt, along with the black skinny jeans I wore yesterday. I’d been too lazy to pull out a fresh pair of pants and these had been sitting right there on the floor where I’d left them last night. It wasn’t like you could tell the difference between these and another pair of black skinny jeans that I would’ve worn. I did have the sense to check them for mustard stains this time, though. They’d passed the inspection.
I felt kind of like an alien, trapped in this body and this world where I didn’t belong. Like I was just occupying space until my alien brothers and sisters found me and beamed me up out of this miserable place. I sighed and walked over to the mirror, pulling an eyeliner pencil out of my pocket as I went. A folded up piece of paper fluttered to the floor in front of me. I stopped and picked it up. It was the Happy List Dr. M had given me the night before. I’d forgotten to throw it away. I read the whole list for the first time.
Make a new friend
Read a book
Create something
Try a new food
Watch the sun rise
Go for a bike ride
Take pictures of your world
Listen to music (really listen – to the words, the beat, the emotion)
Volunteer
Face a fear
Take a walk in the morning
Play a sport
Do something spontaneous
Watch a funny movie
Write a letter to someone that has hurt you
I couldn’t help but laugh. This list was a total joke. Take pictures of your world. How the hell was that going to help me feel less depressed? My world was part of the reason why I felt like I was suffocating seventy-five percent of the time. If my world were happy enough to take a picture of, then I wouldn’t be locked in a grimy bathroom stall staring at this Happy List.
I got the urge to flush the thing down the toilet right then and there – send it straight to the sewers with all of the other papers that were full of crap.
I turned back to the toilet and hesitated. I didn’t understand what was going on. My brain was telling my hand to drop the paper, but my hand was just dangling in midair like a useless lump, refusing to let go. I couldn’t get those four words out of my head.
Make a new friend.
Make a new friend.
Make a new friend.
I didn’t want a new friend. I didn’t want any friends at all. The whole “friends forever” thing was a joke, something they told little girls so that they wouldn’t be disappointed with the finality of most things in life. Because everything had an expiration date, everything eventually came to an end, and friendships were no exception. People left and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it. No BFF bracelet had the power to stop that kind of thing.
So why was it bothering me so much? It felt like if I threw the list away, it would ruin any chances I had of potentially making a friend, like the paper wouldn’t be the only thing I’d be flushing down the toilet. But what difference did it make?
I exhaled loudly. I was frustrated. And conflicted. And confused. I wasn’t usually superstitious, but for some reason, a part of me didn’t want to let go of the Happy List. Not yet.
Screw it. I was sending that thing to its doom. Time of death: Now.
My hand made a little twitching movement.
Oh, but what if it clogged the toilet. What if the toilet fought back and flooded the bathroom and then the whole school and then on top of everything else I’d be the girl who clogged the toilet and turned this place into an above-ground sewer system. And I guarantee nobody would believe it was a piece of paper I was trying to force down the pipes.
“Ughhhhh!”
I stomped out of the bathroom. I couldn’t stand there forever, staring at the stupid thing while I waited for my hand and brain to come to some type of agreement. I’d get rid of the Happy List later.
When I got back to class Mrs. French was telling everyone that they needed to hand in their limerick before the bell rang. I hadn’t been aware that we’d have to turn in what we wrote and I obviously couldn’t hand Mrs. French my slanderous poem about Candace Fowler and her fake hair, so I had about three minutes to whip up something else. Sure, I could crank out poems like some kind of lyrical factory, but I didn’t do well under that kind of pressure.
This was what I ended up turning in:
There once was a bunny named Loo
He thought he was a cow that could moo
He found out he was wrong
So he sang a sad song
Man, that poor bunny’s life blew
It was no masterpiece and it certainly wasn’t as good as my first limerick, but it was all I’d been able to come up with before the bell rang. As I walked out the door all I could think about was the fact that “Loo” was the worst bunny name I’d ever heard and probably constituted as animal cruelty. No wonder the bunny had an identity crisis.
Waiting for the buses to pull up to the school at the end of the day was seriously one of the worst things ever for a person that had no friends (me). You just stood there awkwardly by yourself, trying not to be noticed as you were surrounded by all of the people that did have friends and were having a lovely time talking and laughing with those friends. If you were lucky then your loser-ass got through those minutes of waiting without becoming the subject of their laughter. If you weren’t lucky, well, then you’d be me.
There was a group of three girls huddled together a few feet away from me. The group consisted of two brunettes and one blonde and I swore they’d spent ten minutes taking turns looking over at me and then giggling like a group of brainless hyenas.
It should’ve been legal to punch idiots in the face, or at least bite off their pointer fingers because if Blondie pointed at me one more time she was going to be short a body part. I could handle the giggling, but the pointing…no. Just no.
I looked down at the sidewalk and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. I started counting the globs of gum that were practically cemented to it to distract myself. One… Two… Three, damn that one looked freaking prehistoric… Four… Five…
When was the bus going to get there?
Six… Seven… Eight…
That’s when I heard it. A high-pitched squeal that made me want to shove knives in my ears to make it stop. I couldn’t help but look up. When I did I saw that Blondie was yet again pointing at me. She was staring right at me as she did it too, so I gave Blondie a big smile.
And then I flipped her off.
“Well that’s not very nice,” I heard someone say behind me.
I turned around and saw Kellen standing there, smiling and laughing. A green baseball cap was on his head and his bike was leaning against a pillar behind him.
I wanted to smile with him. I wanted to laugh with him.
I wanted to punch him in the throat.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“It’s nice to see you too,” he said, the smile never leaving his face. “I went through a lot of trouble to find you.”
“What?” I asked mostly because I had no idea what to say to this. “Are you stalking me?”
Kellen laughed again. “No. If I were stalking you I would have found you a lot sooner and saved myself a lot of time.”
“How did you know I went to school here?” I asked, still glaring. There were five schools in this county, so I found it hard to believe that Kellen found me here without resorting to creepy-stalker tactics.
“This isn’t the first high school I’ve been to this week.”
“Huh?” I was surprised, so surprised that I stopped glaring. He surprised the glare right off my face.
“Well, last Thursday you left the office before I could ask when I could see you again,” he said.
“You were sleeping in your chair. I didn’t want to disturb nap time.”
“Right, well I spent all weekend thinking about how I wanted to see you. Of course, I knew you would be at the office on Wednesday and I could see you then, but I didn’t want to wait until Wednesday. I knew you didn’t go to my school because I’d never seen you, so after school on Monday I tried Jackson High. You obviously weren’t there so on Tuesday I went to Grove. Yesterday I biked over to Spars, which was admittedly a stupid idea on my part because if I had just gone to the office then I would have seen you there but I’m a little stubborn.”
I appreciated how he called it “the office.” The office could’ve been anywhere and anybody eavesdropping wouldn’t have a clue that Kellen was talking about a shrink’s office.
And there were definitely people eavesdropping. And staring. Girls and guys alike. The guys were looking at Kellen with narrowed eyes as if he was some kind of foreign competitor coming to threaten their turf. The girls were looking at Kellen like he was a piece of cake they wanted to devour.
I wanted to claw their faces off.
I wanted to claw my own face off for feeling that way.
“So you go to Lee,” I said. Lee High School was the only other high school in the county and it was about twenty minutes away from here by car, which meant that Kellen would’ve had to bike at warp speed to make it here before the buses. “How’d you get here so fast?”
“I might have skipped the last few minutes of Economics.”
“What a rebel.”
“Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for important causes,” Kellen said, grinning. “I knew this had to be your school, so I wanted to make sure I made it here before you left.”
“But what made you so sure I wasn’t just hiding in a bathroom or something at one of the other schools?” I asked.
Kellen’s plan was so full of flaws it was amazing he managed to find me at all. I couldn’t help but smile a little though, but I turned my head so he didn’t see me.
“Because I asked around and nobody at any of the schools had heard of a gorgeous girl with black hair and a bad attitude named Carson.”
I stopped smiling and looked at him, thinking he must be making fun of me, but his eyes were steady, serious. I started to feel warm all over. I knew I must’ve been blushing straight through my face powder again.
“Do you want to hang out, Carson?” Kellen asked.
The way he said my name made my body feel jittery. I couldn’t decide if it I liked it or not.
Stop that, body.
I cleared my throat. “Uh, when?” I asked. I hated how my voice shook.
“Well now would be kind of nice,” he said with a smile.
All of a sudden I saw Roxi Ray slink over in her cheerleading uniform.
“Hey, Carson,” she said. She made it sound like we were old friends.
We weren’t old friends. We weren’t current friends. The only thing Roxi Ray and I had in common was Roxi Ray’s boyfriend. He and I messed around a few weeks ago when he and Roxi Ray were having a fight, but I was pretty sure she didn’t know about that.
“And who’s this?” Roxi Ray asked, smiling at Kellen.
&
nbsp; I looked away. I didn’t want to see how Kellen was no doubt looking at Roxi Ray, who was the real-life version of Snow White – clear and almost sparkling skin, red lips, naturally dark hair, and sing-song voice. The only thing keeping her from a book of fairytales was the fact that if she accidentally ate a poison apple, Roxi Ray would be just fine. She already had poison in her veins. The girl was so toxic she’d probably end up killing the apple in a major plot twist. Oh, and there was also the issue of her name, which wasn’t exactly G-rated. I mean, come on, “Roxi Ray?” With a name like that her parents had doomed her to a porn website.
For a minute Kellen didn’t say anything and I figured he was probably staring at Roxi Ray’s chest or something. I didn’t want to see it, but I also did because I figured seeing Kellen drooling over Not-So-Snow White would force the jitters out of my stomach. But when I looked up, I was looking right into Kellen’s eyes.
“I’m Kellen,” he said, answering Roxi Ray but keeping his eyes on me. “I’m a friend of Carson’s.”
He smiled and even though it was against my nature, I smiled back.
“Ohhhhh, you’re Carson’s friend. I see,” Roxi Ray said. I shifted my gaze to her and saw that she had an evil twinkle in her eyes. “Well, I’m Roxi Ray.”
Roxi Ray was smirking at me and I didn’t like it one bit. I knew what she was about to do, and I didn’t intend on sticking around for the show.
I walked away from Kellen and Roxi Ray without saying anything. Forget the bus; I’d walk home.
“Carson, where are you going?” I heard Kellen ask.
I didn’t turn around, but a few seconds later I heard the sound of a bike behind me and I assumed Kellen was following me. I wished he wouldn’t. Roxi Ray was determined to tell him what she was going to tell him and having her scream it after him would just make it more humiliating.
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