Until It Hurts to Stop

by Jennifer R. Hubbard

  “Mm,” I answer. And even though she has said the supposedly right things, a sourness lingers at the back of my throat. I can’t escape the feeling that I don’t measure up, that I never will.

  “Your dad’s home now. We’re going to watch Casablanca. Want to join us?”

  It’s one of their favorites: doomed romance, and people who are way more heroic than I am. It’s the last thing I can stand to see right now. “No, thanks,” I say. “I have homework.”

  As soon as she’s out of the room, I sigh. The worst part of this is that I know she’s right—at least about beefing up my applications. Some of the teachers at school have said the same thing, and the admissions forms I’ve seen all ask about activities.

  Ugh.

  What can I do about it? Every activity I can think of, everything we mentioned at the dinner table, has a strike against it, a reason it’s not for me.

  It’s not fair that this same old social stuff might keep me out of college. Why can’t college just be about your studies?

  Maybe there’s something I’ve missed. I should double-check the school clubs, make sure they haven’t magically added a mushroom club or something else that’s perfect for me when I wasn’t looking.

  I go to the school website and scroll through the list of activities, but nothing’s new.

  Why isn’t there a hiking club or something like that?

  That gives me an idea. I look up some of the environmental groups in the area, to see what options they have for students. One has a special program called “Hands-on Conservation.” They do park cleanups and trail maintenance, that kind of thing, all outdoors. Now this is the kind of group I could join.

  I fill out the online application. If they accept me, I’ll need Mom’s permission, but after tonight’s talk she can hardly say no.

  I hit send with a shaking finger, realizing that if this group doesn’t want me, it’ll hurt much worse than rejection by Raleigh and her crowd. I never pretended to have much in common with Raleigh, but this is a club where I should fit right in.

  I only hope that my failure on Crystal isn’t a sign that the woods are rejecting me now, too. Because if I don’t belong there anymore, either, where do I belong?

  seventeen

  On Monday I’m in the girls’ room at school, wrestling with the toilet paper that they jam into the holder so tightly you can only tear off tiny shreds at a time, when a girl out at the sinks says, “So, you and Nick Cleary, huh?”

  I peek through the crack around the edges of the stall door. Vanessa Webb leans toward the mirror, sliding lip balm across her mouth. Janie Fletcher stands beside her, fingering the ends of her own hair.

  “I can’t believe how people talk at this school,” Vanessa says. “Anything happens, and the whole world knows in a day.”

  “It’s true, then?”

  “Depends on what you heard.” Vanessa smiles at her reflection.

  “What should I have heard?”

  Vanessa laughs. “He came over yesterday.”

  I spent my Sunday trying new pieces on the piano, researching colleges, and arguing with my mother about whether my favorite pair of jeans was comfortably broken in (my opinion) or ready for the trash can (hers). After that, we fought about the fact that the last time I’d done the laundry, I had ruined her clean-towel-rotation system.

  I didn’t hear from Nick all day, but I had no idea he was at Vanessa’s. I knew, from their eye-lock at the party, from his taking pictures on the mountain for her, that he was interested in her. But I never guessed he would act on it so quickly.

  “Aaaand?” Janie asks.

  “We talked. You know.”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.” Janie lets go of her hair, stands back from the mirror, and tugs at her shirt. “Did he kiss you?”

  “Why, Jane Fletcher, I’m shocked that you would ask such a question.” Vanessa’s tone is playful, mock-offended, her lips pursed, her eyes still laughing. “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  Janie bumps her, hip to hip. “Don’t tell me he didn’t even try!”

  “I won’t tell you that. . . .”

  I may puke. Good thing there’s a toilet so close by.

  “I thought he was going out with that girl Maggie, what’s her last name . . .”

  “He says he isn’t. And she told me the same thing. They’re just friends.”

  “So, is he any good?”

  Vanessa smiles again, her eyes on the mirror. She tucks away the tube of lip balm. “Better than good.”

  “Oh, now you have to tell me!”

  “Well—I swear he reads my mind or something.” Vanessa pauses. “Like, he knows when to slow down and when to get more intense. It’s—good, that’s all.” She fluffs her hair. “He doesn’t act like he’s God’s gift to girls, the way Marcus did.”

  Janie snorts. “Marcus. I don’t know why you ever went out with him.” She turns sideways and smoothes her shirt over her stomach. “So, about Nick: I want the whole story. Details. Where were you, and who started it? And did he try to shove his tongue down your throat right away, or did he wait, like a gentleman?”

  They both burst out laughing at the word gentleman. In the stall, I clamp my lips together queasily, thinking, Please, no details.

  “All right, Miss Gotta-Know-Everything. We were talking in the living room, and my parents were in the kitchen where they could eavesdrop. James wasn’t home, and I asked Nick if he wanted to see James’s aquariums. I’d already shown him the aquariums at the party, so I knew if he said yes, that meant he wanted to be alone with me.”

  “And he said yes.”

  “We went into James’s room and I closed the door, and we stared at each other, and he kept looking at my mouth but not making a move. So I said, ‘The least you can do is kiss me, after I went to all this trouble to get us some privacy.’ He laughed and then he leaned in and did it. He said, ‘I just wanted to be sure you wanted to.’”

  “Yeah, definitely not like Marcus,” Janie says. “You’re lucky your brother is a tropical-fish freak. Any time you want to get out of the room, all you have to do is say, ‘Let’s go look at the aquariums!’ I only wish my brother was that useful.”

  They laugh again, and Vanessa says, “Let’s go. I want to see if we can catch Emily before class.”

  I stay in the stall after they leave, running Vanessa’s words through my mind on an endless loop: Better than good. Better than good.

  So Nick has been kissing Vanessa. I think of the lip balm rolling over her mouth. Nick’s mouth there, touching hers. Her brother’s aquariums bubbling away in the background. The watery blue light washing over them, and Nick kissing her the way he kissed me.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and lean my forehead against the metal door.

  I’m about to leave the stall when Raleigh Barringer comes into the girls’ room, her heels clicking on the tile floor. I hold my breath, my hand still on the latch, praying she won’t know I’m here. She goes into another stall and bangs the door shut, and I wait.

  I’m not moving until she’s gone. I even consider pulling my feet up, so she can’t tell I’m here.

  Since junior high, I’ve done my best never to be in the girls’ room with her. She and Lissa Carpenter once trapped me in a stall.

  “You can’t come out,” Lissa giggled that day, “until you admit you wash your hair in the toilet.”

  “Everyone knows it,” Raleigh said. “I mean, if you ever wash it at all!”

  Lissa laughed so hard she could barely speak. “Did you think we couldn’t tell?”

  I huddled in my stall. So many times, I was defenseless because they would pick on ways in which I knew I wasn’t perfect, even though they exaggerated. I washed my hair every day, but it was thin and staticky, and tended to tangle. I’d tried conditioner, but that made it flat and greasy looking. Still, no matter what else was wrong with my hair, at least it was clean.

  Raleigh held her phone up over the stall door. Those
doors were never high enough; tall girls could peek over them if they tiptoed. “I’ll record it,” she said. “Just say it, and then you can come out.”

  “No,” I said.

  She hammered on the door. “Say it! Everyone knows it’s true, anyway.”

  “No.”

  “If you don’t say it, you can never come out. You’ll die in there.”

  I sat on the toilet seat with my pants pulled up. I would outwait them. They had to get bored after a while, didn’t they?

  Except Raleigh never got bored when it came to tormenting me.

  They waited, banging on the door and screaming at me from time to time. I read the graffiti scratched into the wall: I luv Brian. Maggie Camden sucks. JV + MT. Ashlee + Ed 4eva!!! I wished there was something interesting written there. Evidently, nobody had ever foreseen the need for reading material in case of imprisonment.

  Sometimes the outer door creaked when other girls came into the restroom. The footsteps always started out bold and quick, then paused, and I knew that was when they spotted Raleigh and Lissa. Then the steps would patter quietly back out the door.

  I didn’t call for help. Who would help me? Everyone knew better than to mess with Raleigh.

  I didn’t break until the bell rang at the end of lunch. I could not stand to read Maggie Camden sucks or Ashlee + Ed 4eva!!! one more time. I was worried about missing my afternoon classes. And I knew that nobody was coming to save me.

  So I closed my eyes and said it. “I wash my hair in the toilet.”

  “What? Wait, let me get it on my phone. And louder!” Raleigh barked.

  I said it again. Raleigh and Lissa howled. They played the recording, laughed until they collapsed, and played it again. And again. And again. I had to listen to myself saying those words, over and over. My voice in the recording was flat and forced, the words an obvious lie, but I knew that wouldn’t matter to anyone who heard it. People believed what they wanted, not what was true.

  As I knew they would, Raleigh and Lissa sent the recording around to phones throughout the school. Kids laughed over it for weeks. Even after the joke faded, someone would always bring it up again, a single jab whenever it was on the verge of being forgotten. “Maggie, what took you so long in the bathroom?” “Phew, it stinks in here. Maggie, did you just wash your hair?” “Hey, Maggie, did you discover shampoo yet?”

  Now, out at the sinks, Raleigh flips her hair over her shoulder and washes her hands. I’ve been in this stall for a hundred years, first waiting out Vanessa, and now her.

  How many times can a person rinse her hands or pluck at a stray hair? Isn’t she ever going to leave?

  At last, she stalks toward the door. For a moment, rage flashes over me. I itch to run out and knock her into one of the stalls, lock her in, make her beg to get out. See how she likes it.

  I don’t know where it comes from. I haven’t felt it in years. It flares and dies, leaving me shaking.

  Nick sits alone at our lunch table, scrolling through his messages. “Isn’t Vanessa joining us today?” I ask.

  He glances up from his phone. “I don’t know.”

  I don’t know. My stomach hardens into a block of ice. He didn’t say, “Why would Vanessa join us?” He didn’t say, “What are you talking about?” She actually might sit with us.

  “By the way, I can’t eat with you tomorrow,” he says. “Student council meeting.”

  “That should be exciting.” I pretend to yawn. Yet I can’t stop digging at the Vanessa thing. “But listen, you’re the talk of the girls’ room. Your kissing technique, and so forth.”

  He frowns and clicks off his phone. “What?”

  “Vanessa—critiquing your tongue action—girls’ room— fourth period.”

  He stares at me but doesn’t bite at the bait, doesn’t ask for details. His eyes stay on me until I almost want to squirm, even though I don’t do that anymore. By eighth grade, I learned never to squirm on the outside, no matter what’s going on inside me.

  “What’s your problem, Maggie?”

  “I thought you’d be dying to hear the gossip.” I bite into a carrot stick, trying to be casual.

  “I don’t care what people say.”

  “Not even Vanessa? You don’t want to hear how she rates you?”

  “If I want to know what Vanessa thinks, I’ll ask her.”

  “So you admit you gave her something to talk about.”

  “Admit? What am I, under arrest?” He shuffles his long legs beneath the table. They stretch under the seat next to me. “I went to Vanessa’s house yesterday. Since you’re so interested. If you want to ask me about it, Maggie, just ask—what do you want to know?”

  137

  The carrot is like a wooden twig in my mouth. My face burns. I shake my head.

  Bio lab with Raleigh’s best friend is not the way I want to finish off the day, but I’ve been getting used to Adriana. The sound of her voice no longer slices into my nerves quite as much as it did before. Although whenever someone makes a joke in class, her sudden cackle causes me to jump.

  Today Thornhart has us build double helices out of blocks and pegs. When our DNA models are built, Thornhart comes by to pull things out and shift them around, and then we have to repair them. “Enzymes do this work in the real world,” he says. Then we make RNA strands from our model DNA, and from DNA that’s been mutated by our teacher’s hands. We unwind our models and re-create the missing strands from the existing strands.

  “I guess this does help you remember how everything works,” Adriana says as we take apart our models at the end of class. “When you have to put it all together with your own hands, it sticks in your mind.”

  “Yeah,” I say, tearing apart my simulated frame-shift mutation. For a minute, the whole room takes on a strangeness: the double helices mimicking what’s going on in my cells this very minute, which I would never even know about if it weren’t for bio class. It’s like a glimpse of something miraculous, mysterious, important: a piece of the blueprints for life itself.

  Adriana says, “Did you ever look at your hand and think: ‘Wow, there are all these cells dividing right now’? I mean, do you ever think how this stuff we’re reading about is happening in our bodies, not just in the textbook?”

  I stare at Adriana, unable to believe she has channeled my thoughts. When I don’t say anything, she flushes and turns away, dumping her blocks and pegs into the storage box.

  Ethan Crannick waits at the door. His eyes are blank, gliding past me to settle on Adriana. Her voice gets even higher than usual, more animated, as she takes his hand. I slip away, putting distance between them and me. I can’t forget that Adriana is still Adriana. She and Raleigh used to trick me sometimes, tempt me to think the punishment might be over with. They would back off for a while, maybe even hold open a door for me or say something nice. Which made it all the more vicious when they started up again, never letting me have more than a day or two of rest.

  Adriana and I may get along all right while we’re sitting at a lab bench, but it would be stupid to let down my guard.

  eighteen

  Vanessa is eating lunch with Nick and me.

  It had to happen sooner or later. In the three days since I overheard her describe Nick’s kisses, I’ve seen her with him in the halls. Her name has flashed across his cell-phone screen.

  Last weekend wasn’t a one-time thing. She really is his girlfriend.

  She freshens her lip gloss, and the fluorescent cafeteria light bounces off it. I tried wearing lip gloss back in eighth grade, but I hated the way it felt on my mouth, the stickiness of it. Does Nick enjoy kissing lip gloss, I wonder? Does any guy? Or maybe some do and some don’t?

  “Bonjour, Marguerite,” Vanessa says through shining lips.

  “Bonjour.” I sigh.

  “Are you going to join the French club? I’m president this year.”

  “French club? Oh—no—I don’t think so.”

  “I hear you and Nick have been trying to cl
imb Crystal Mountain.”

  “That’s right.” Has he told her about my panic attack? If he has, she doesn’t bring it up.

  Nick plucks a French fry off Vanessa’s plate. I hate that, the casualness of it. The intimacy of his reaching over to her tray without asking, and the way she smiles and welcomes it. Especially since Nick has always been almost as closed off as I am, almost as shy, almost as slow to trust people. He mostly interacts with people by passing them a basketball. How can he be so relaxed with her?

  It makes me feel so extra. Even though they’re including me in the conversation. The heat between them is impossible to ignore. Next thing you know, they’ll be heading up the homecoming committee and hosting joint beach parties, and doing whatever else class-couple types do.

  I choke down my sandwich and tell myself not to be ridiculous. I know Nick, and he’s not about to fall into lockstep with Vanessa, exchanging cutesy nicknames, matching his clothes to hers.

  And he’ll still be my hiking partner. Even if we can’t (okay, if I can’t) tackle the Cinnamon Range, we’ll still do the Cannon Lake and Hemlock Brook hikes, visit the county parks and wildlife preserves, the way we always have. We’ll still go to the woods.

  I think.

  Vanessa doesn’t ride home with us, maybe because she has her own car and lives in the opposite direction. Luis cranks up the music on the ride to his place, saying, “Listen to that guitar. Just listen to that!”

  “Why?” Nick says. “Is it going to reveal a secret code?”

  Luis grimaces at him. “You should hear these guys in concert! It’ll change your life.” In desperation, he turns to me. “Maggie, you know music. Isn’t that guitar incredible?”

  “Piano’s my instrument.”

  Luis rolls his eyes toward the car roof, groaning. But the truth is that I probably could appreciate the guitar more if I weren’t thinking so much about Vanessa, still feeling her presence at Nick’s side.

  When we pull up at Luis’s and he’s getting out of the car, Nick stops him by saying, “Hey, Morales.”