What Kind of Girl

by Alyssa Sheinmel

It was nothing like it was in books or in the movies: the boyfriend who lost control in a fit of passion. He never asked me not to tell, never begged me to keep his dark secret.

  I can’t decide whether that would have been more or less frightening.

  The thing is, I wasn’t scared of him. Is that stupid? I didn’t think he’d ever hurt me badly enough to do any real damage. He was too careful for that.

  So methodical, so careful: Does that mean he intended to leave a bruise when he hit me on Saturday? Of course, he couldn’t have been sure exactly how hard a slap would need to be, that depends on me, on whether or not I bruised easily (like a peach), on how much iron I’d eaten in the prior few days, on how much water I’d had to drink.

  Not everything was in his control.

  Maybe another girl would’ve hit him back. Maybe another girl would’ve told right away—after that very first hit, the day he rolled his ankle on the track. Maybe another girl would’ve told even sooner than that, would’ve recognized the tugs and pinches and pulls for what they really were, instead of excusing them as passionate affection. That girl wouldn’t have fallen in love with Mike. Or at least, she would’ve fallen out of love with him months ago. But this girl—me—I let it go on for months.

  According to the rumor mill, a group of students is planning to call for Mike’s expulsion before Sunday’s track meet. He could lose his chance at a scholarship. He might never run competitively again.

  Was that what I was hoping for when I went to Principal Scott on Monday?

  Maybe I should have waited until after the season was over. Until after his scholarship had been awarded.

  After all, I’d waited this long. Why couldn’t I have waited a little bit longer?

  But I wasn’t thinking about any of that when I walked into Principal Scott’s office.

  I was only thinking one thing:

  I wanted it to stop.

  Fifteen

  The Burnout

  I walk straight past the table where the popular kids sit. I keep my gaze focused on Hiram’s car at the far end of the lot, concentrating on the relief that lies waiting inside.

  I’ve never smoked anywhere but inside his car. I guess that might look like it’s a power thing, that he controls my access. But in fact, that’s my way of controlling my access. I’m pretty sure Hiram would give me whatever I asked for. But I’ve chosen not to ask.

  I walk as fast as I can without actually running. Everyone would look at me if I ran, and I need to blend into the crowd so no one will see where I’m headed. I feel like a little kid playing tag: It is right behind me and I have to hurry to make it to the safe zone where it can’t get me.

  I look at my feet, at the brand-new pair of sneakers I ordered on Monday night. I paid extra for two-day delivery even though that’s the sort of thing my dad calls a waste of money.

  But I needed the new shoes, and when they turned out to be a little too big, I wore them anyway. I’d already thrown my old sneakers away.

  I feel his gaze on my back. No, that’s ridiculous. A person can’t feel another person’s gaze. That’s the sort of thing people say in romance novels and bad movies. But still, I can tell he’s there, somewhere behind me. I look up—across the parking lot—and see Hiram getting out of his car. I can’t remember the last time I saw him outside of his car, and he looks shorter than I remembered. Maybe only a few inches taller than I am.

  There’s a crowd, but I’m not blending into it. I’m at the center of it. I start to run. They’re already looking at me, so what difference does it make?

  Up ahead, Hiram opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Or really, I’m too far away to hear him. Instead, I hear another voice, this one coming from behind me. I hear his footsteps hurrying to catch up with me: his enormous feet, his long strides, his fast pace. I stop running.

  I could never outrun him.

  There would be no point in trying.

  Sixteen

  The Burnout

  The Bulimic

  The Popular Girl

  The Girlfriend

  “Maya,” he says. He doesn’t raise his voice. He knows I can hear him.

  I turn around.

  Part Two

  The Girls

  Monday, April 10

  One

  The Anxious Girl

  She’s going to end it.

  I’m sure of it.

  I can tell.

  Okay, so yes, I think she’s about to break up with me all the time. Especially at night. In bed. When I can’t sleep. Like now. Maybe in the morning I’ll feel fine.

  Or maybe this time is different. Maybe this time it’s not just my imagination, maybe this time she really didn’t respond to my good-night text as quickly as she used to. And when she did respond, her answer was so short: Good night. No baby, no love you, no sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.

  And it’s not just the latest text, I think as I roll over and adjust the covers (again), trying and failing to keep my eyes closed, to slow my breath, to drift closer to sleep. It’s after midnight. I have to get up in six and a half hours. If I sleep through my alarm (again), I’ll be late (again). Anyhow, I swear, Tess doesn’t initiate the conversation as much as I do. Or our plans. It’s always me:

  Tess, how about dinner on Saturday?

  Tess, I missed you at lunch today. (We never eat lunch together at school.)

  (But maybe if I’d been the kind of girl who sat with her girlfriend at lunch Tess wouldn’t be about to end it now.)

  Tess, you looked so beautiful after your run this afternoon. (Tess is on the track team at school.)

  Tess—

  Tess—

  Tess—

  The minutes tick by, and now it’s only six hours till my alarm goes off. I mean, who invented the notion that we drift off to sleep anyway? Falling asleep is hard work. It takes effort. It takes concentration.

  And I can’t concentrate on sleeping now because all I can think about is Tess.

  I’d had a crush on her for ages before we finally kissed, at a party one night. She has this perfect skin (I don’t think she’s ever had a single zit), and an Afro that makes her look about three inches taller than she actually is, which, at five ten, is already much, much taller than I am. (I’m barely five feet tall. And my stick-straight brown hair, cut bluntly just below my chin, definitely doesn’t add to my height.)

  I can’t stop imagining how she might end it. Where she’ll do it. When. The words she’ll use. No one’s ever broken up with me before—no one’s ever been with me before—so my imagination is limited to the phrases I’ve heard on TV shows and read in magazine articles.

  Before track practice on a Monday afternoon. (This afternoon.) It’s not you, it’s me.

  After school on Wednesday. I need space.

  Before school on Friday. I’ve fallen for someone else.

  Thinking about it makes my hands shake, so I try to think about anything else: our first kiss, our first real date (which came after the first kiss), the first time we held hands (which came after our first date), the first time she called me baby (which came after the hand-holding), the first time we said I love you (which came after calling me baby).

  Maybe we did everything backward. I wish we could do it all over again, in order this time: first the date, and then the hand-holding, and then the kiss, and then the love, then the sweet nicknames.

  But thinking about doing it over again makes me think about what went wrong, which makes me think about the inevitable breakup, which makes my hands shake all over again. There’s only one thing that could make them keep still, and I’m not allowed to do that anymore.

  That hadn’t always been a problem—it only started a few months ago—but I’ve never been, let’s say, easygoing. Never been the kind of girl who doesn’t care what everyone else thinks.

&n
bsp; Actually, I obsess (that’s the right word, I have a diagnosis and everything) over what everyone else thinks. Every night—not just tonight—I lie awake, going over every single word I said that day (and lucky for me, I have a really good memory so I can usually remember exactly what was said), wondering whom I might have offended, what I might have done wrong, what terrible thing will come back to haunt me, ruin my reputation, or somehow get to the admissions officers at Stanford even though there are still nine months before I’m going to apply.

  I’m the type of girl who sits at our table during lunch glancing carefully at every adjacent table to see if anyone is staring, wondering what they know that I don’t, certain that they’re talking about me, thinking about me, laughing at me, and sharing inside jokes and secret handshakes (the metaphorical kind, not the literal kind) that I’ll never understand.

  Dr. Kreiter told me that the way my hands tremble is a warning sign. Like how my mom sees spots when she has a migraine coming on. It’s called the aura.

  After our first session, Dr. Kreiter wanted to prescribe me antianxiety medication (diagnosis: generalized anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders, self-harm), but I begged my parents to let me try to handle my problems without pills. They agreed to a three-month trial: three months, no incidents, no need for meds.

  Dr. Kreiter said I’d been hurting myself to help calm my anxiety, like a coping mechanism. To Dad, coping mechanisms are finding ways to take action when injustice makes you feel powerless, or practicing yoga each morning, and meditating each night. Dad’s coping mechanisms are much more socially and medically acceptable than mine. But Dad doesn’t have an anxiety disorder, so maybe that’s why he doesn’t have a disordered way of dealing with his stress.

  Dr. Kreiter said we were lucky to have caught the self-harm—that’s what she calls it, I call it cutting—early, to which Mom reasonably (that’s Mom, always reasonable) pointed out that I’d hurt myself badly enough to need hospitalization, which didn’t strike her as early. But Dr. Kreiter said that the behavior had gone on only for months before I began therapy. She said that some of her patients had been hurting themselves for years before they sought help. I was tempted to point out that I hadn’t exactly sought help—I mean, I’d gone to the ER to get stitched up, which I guess is a kind of seeking help. But I hadn’t asked to be put in therapy.

  Dr. Kreiter didn’t like the three-month deal I made with my parents. She pointed out that the incidents weren’t the result of a lack of willpower. (My other symptoms included insomnia, increased heart rate, an inability to get places on time, biting my nails, and of course trembling like a Chihuahua.)

  The doctor suggested that setting high standards and goals was part of what had gotten us into this situation in the first place.

  I said that I found goals motivating, had all my life.

  She said this wasn’t a homework assignment, wasn’t the sort of thing I should be rewarded or punished for. That an arrangement like this would keep us from delving deep into the reasons I’d started cutting in the first place.

  I said, wasn’t the point of therapy to get me to stop cutting?

  She countered that the incidents had been going on for months before my parents found out about them. What was to keep me from hiding them again?

  I said: “If it happens again, I’ll come clean right away.”

  I knew it would work because my dad’s big on the honor code.

  Dr. Kreiter said we’d caught the self-harm early, but she didn’t say the same about my anxiety. I know my parents bristled at the implication that a doctor had recognized something almost the moment she met me that they might have missed for months or even years. I think it’s part of what made them agree to my three-month deal, like if it worked, then they’d prove to the doctor that they knew me better than she did, knew I liked goals and wouldn’t lie about whether or not I met them.

  Anyway, I was confident the three-month deal would be effective. I’d had goals (though Dr. Kreiter called them rituals) when it came to cutting even before the doctor entered the picture: I wasn’t allowed to cut anywhere but in the bathroom at night with my trusty razor blade, and only after I’d finished the day’s homework, no matter how hard my hands might shake at school, no matter how hard they might shake sitting at the desk in my room as I struggled with the night’s physics assignment. After each cut, I washed the blade with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol and blotted up the mess with tissues and toilet paper.

  I made the rules, and I stuck to them. (Except for the occasional emergency.) It was part of how I knew that my problem wasn’t really that serious, because I was able to contain it. (For the most part.) So I was certain I’d be able to stick to this new set of rules: No cutting for three months. I was confident I’d hit my goal and then even surpass it, because hitting goals and surpassing them was something I knew how to do. Or try to do.

  After I was diagnosed, Dad told Dr. Kreiter that he’d raised me to care about the world, and the state of the world these days was enough to give anyone anxiety. He said he’d had sleepless nights too. He said he’d looked for unconventional ways to relieve the pressure too. (By which he meant new types of yoga and meditation.)

  “It’s only natural,” he said. “It’s a difficult time for so many of us.”

  I think Dr. Kreiter didn’t expect my progressive, understanding parents to agree to a deal like the three-month trial, but I could’ve told her that my dad sees things in black and white. Good versus bad. A’s versus F’s. Acceptance versus rejection. Cutting versus not cutting.

  Dad said: “You don’t know my little girl like I do. She won’t let me down.”

  It’s been a month and a half.

  I’ve made it halfway to my goal without an incident.

  I’ve been okay, for the most part.

  I mean, okay for me.

  Two

  The Activist

  My parents are very supportive. They pride themselves on being allies. Once, when a colleague of Dad’s came over for dinner and I mentioned my girlfriend, he said something about my sexuality being some kind of trend. It was so insulting. So dismissive. Like I’d grow out of who I am.

  This led to one of my bigger speeches: about judging someone based on her age, based on how she looks, based on where she comes from. About foolish, cruel, and antiquated stereotypes.

  Dad didn’t stop me, didn’t say anything about being rude to his important guest.

  I literally stood up from my chair, my fork still in my hand.

  The guy held up his hands, admitting defeat. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he protested.

  I shook my head. Of course he meant something by it. Everyone means something by everything they say. When you claim that you didn’t “mean anything by it,” you’re really trying to free yourself from the responsibility of having said something rude. Like when people say “no offense” before saying something absurdly offensive.

  “Don’t say sheesh like I’m overreacting. I’m just reacting.”

  Across the table, I could see Dad trying not to smile. He was pleased with my outburst. He’s the one who taught me to argue. He’s always liked picking fights with me—he likes having a sparring partner. He takes credit for how strong my opinions are because he’s the one who instilled them to begin with. He wants me to be a human rights attorney one day, just like him. He started training me to argue when I was a little kid, using the sort of stuff that little kids believe but are totally wrong about because they can’t yet conceive of the real explanations. One of my earliest memories is the time he held a flashlight and told me that I wasn’t fast enough to beat the beam of light from one end of the room to the other.

  “Ready,” he began. “Set.” He held up the light, his finger over the button that would turn it on. I screwed up my face, ready to run as fast as I could. How could that silly little flashlight be faster than I was? I wa
s so sure I’d win.

  “Go!”

  Of course, I lost. And he used the opportunity to teach me about the speed of light.

  Dad likes to turn everything into a Lesson with a capital L.

  Three

  The Cool Girl

  Tess finds me in the hallway at school on Monday. (I’m late to homeroom. A few weeks ago my parents had a long conversation with my homeroom teacher—apparently I was one tardy away from detention—but now Mrs. Frosch doesn’t mark me as late anymore. She understands that I’m trying to get to school on time. A for effort and all that. It’s not like I want to be late. I always end up with the crappiest spot in the student parking lot. Well, second-crappiest. Hiram Bingham’s spot is even worse.)

  At the time, Tess was amazed that I avoided detention. “You can get away with murder!” she’d shouted, impressed.

  I shrugged like it was no big deal, like cool things happened to me all the time. I wasn’t about to tell her the real reason: my obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I protested when Dr. Kreiter insisted that OCD was part of my diagnosis. “OCD would make me get to places early, not late.”

  Dr. Kreiter explained that OCD can manifest in different ways, and while it’s come to mean one thing in the pop-culture lexicon—being organized and neat and prompt, none of which I was—it can also make a person habitually late and unable to manage her time or responsibilities.

  Lucky for me, those symptoms make me look cool and carefree. Tess has never suspected a thing.

  Now, Tess runs down the hall toward me as the bell rings for first period. (Apparently, I missed homeroom entirely.) I watch her hair bounce with each step. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Of course, I understand, but we said no secrets. Though maybe you didn’t think it was your secret to keep?”

  “What are you talking about?”