What Kind of Girl

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  What beach is Hiram taking us to? I mean, sure, we live in California, but it’s not like the beach is our backyard. I think Hiram is driving toward Sausalito, toward Marin Headlands. There are beaches there, but it’s more than thirty minutes from school. Which means we probably won’t be back in time for fifth period, which means we’ll be cutting class, which I have literally never done unless you count being late so many times that it probably all adds up to missing a class or two. But everyone saw what happened, and no one would blame me for leaving with Maya. How could I really get into trouble for helping my best friend at a time like this? I mean, Mike isn’t even in trouble, not really, not yet. But even if I’m not in trouble, the school will probably call my mom to let her know I left, and then she’ll call me but she won’t be able to reach me because my phone is back in the school parking lot.

  I shake my head. I shouldn’t be worried about getting into trouble for cutting class or forgetting my phone. I should be worried about Maya. I should be the one asking if she’s okay. I should’ve been a good enough friend to get Mike to let go of her. I should’ve been a better ally, prepared with my phone so I could have recorded the way Mike held her arm, so that everyone would see what only I (and eventually, Hiram) was close enough to see, that Mike was holding on too tightly. Or maybe I should’ve kept my cool and yelled for a teacher to come help us, instead of just standing there holding Maya’s hand.

  Oh crap, I really wish I hadn’t left Hiram’s pills behind. He might have more, but I’m not about to ask in front of Maya, who’s never broken a rule in her life. (Until now, I guess, since we’re cutting class.) But she’s definitely never done drugs. Anyway, I’m still not sure Hiram and Maya even realize I’m here. They’re talking to each other as though they’re the only ones in the car. I slide my hands beneath my thighs.

  Actually, they’re not talking at all anymore, but sitting in comfortable silence. Maya never does say whether she’s okay or not, which I guess means she isn’t okay, because really, who would be? I’m not okay, and I’m not the one whose boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?) grabbed her in front of the whole school. Since I don’t have my phone, and I don’t wear a watch (and the dashboard on Hiram’s old car doesn’t have a working clock from what I can tell), I have no idea what time it is, or how long we drive, but eventually Hiram pulls into a sandy parking lot and shifts into park. He turns back to look at me and smiles. “How about a swim, Juniper?” he asks with a grin.

  I guess they did know I was back here after all.

  * * *

  It’s only April, but it’s sunny and warm today. Unseasonably warm, my dad would say, and then he’d launch into a lecture about weather patterns and climate change. It’s not that I don’t care about climate change (it’s literally the greatest crisis facing mankind, of course I care), but right now I’m happy it feels like summer. It feels less like cutting class that way.

  Of course, if it were summer, the beach wouldn’t be empty.

  Hiram sits on the hood of his car and squints in the sunlight, but Maya grabs my hand and pulls me toward the water. She takes off her pants, right there in the sunshine. She doesn’t seem to care that Hiram might see her half-dressed.

  “Come on,” she shouts. She sounds like a little kid. I glance back. It doesn’t look like Hiram’s really watching. Slowly, I slide off my pants and follow her toward the water. If I get under-water fast enough, they won’t have time to see my scars. It’s going to be freezing. Even in summertime, the water doesn’t really get warm here, just slightly less cold. I read once that apathy is a side effect of hypothermia. Maybe the cold water could freeze me into feeling calm.

  Maya shouts when she hits the water. It’s so cold that it hurts, but I don’t so much as whimper when I cut myself, so why should this be any different? I don’t see Hiram strip down to his boxers, but in a flash he’s splashing around beside us, rubbing Maya’s shoulders to keep her warm. Maya leans against him, then dives beneath the waves. She comes up gasping.

  The water’s so cold that we can’t stay in long. I’m not sure we’re actually in the water for more than thirty seconds. Maybe a minute or two total. Hiram leaves the water first, then Maya. She collapses onto the sand and lies down with her eyes closed and Hiram follows suit. I leave the water last. Eventually, I follow them to the spot on the sand where they’re lying flat on their backs in the sunshine. I ball my hands into fists to try to stop their shaking, but then I see that Hiram and Maya are shivering too. It’s just the cold.

  Maya opens her eyes before I have a chance to put my pants back on. “How’d you get that?” she asks, reaching up and touching the scar on my left inner thigh with her fingertips. The doctors had to close it with nine stitches.

  I shrug.

  “You didn’t have that the last time I saw you in a bathing suit.” She squints in the sunlight, which makes her bruise even more noticeable. “Last summer.”

  “I know.”

  I glance at Hiram. His eyes are still closed and his breathing’s steady. There’s no way he fell asleep so fast. It’s not like he doesn’t know I have issues, given our recent interaction. I wonder if he told anyone. He’s not exactly bound by doctor/patient confidentiality. Even Dr. Kreiter isn’t entirely—since I’m underage, she has to report back to my parents on my progress.

  I sit beside Maya. Sand has sharp edges. Isn’t it technically, or at least partly, tiny pieces of glass?

  Maya asks, “So, how’d you get it?”

  Before Valentine’s Day, my cuts were mine and mine alone. No one saw them. Before our three-month deal, there were no expectations attached to whether I was going to cut or not. It was entirely up to me. Afterward, it was like having something taken away from me—not just getting to cut, but getting to cut in secret. Now, it’s something I have to share. Something I have to talk about. (Or anyway, something I’m supposed to talk about. Usually Dr. Kreiter does the actual talking.)

  But Maya is the first person to simply, plainly ask. For some reason, that makes it easier to talk about.

  “I cut myself,” I say softly. I slide my hands beneath my hips. I’ve never told anyone about the cutting before. The people who know—Mom, Dad, Dr. Kreiter, the doctors in the ER—didn’t find out because I actually told them.

  Maya doesn’t ask if it was an accident. Instead, she says, “Why?”

  “Feels better.” I’ve never said that out loud either. Dr. Kreiter didn’t need me to tell her that. Like she said, she’d worked with other patients like me. She knows—or anyway, she thinks she knows—why we do what we do. Why I did what I did.

  Maya doesn’t ask better than what (which Dr. Kreiter did), or say that’s insane (like my father did). Instead, she says, “It feels better after I throw up too.”

  I don’t ask whether she means she makes herself throw up. I slide my hands out from beneath my legs.

  “Other people don’t get it,” I say.

  Maya nods. “Nope.”

  “I mean, it’s not like I think it’s good for me or anything.”

  “Of course not,” Maya agrees.

  “But other people don’t understand how hurting yourself could possibly feel more right than not. Even though I know it shouldn’t.”

  “I understand,” Maya says.

  “I didn’t know you would.”

  “You didn’t have to keep it a secret from me.”

  “You didn’t have to keep it a secret from me either.”

  “Which part?”

  “Huh?”

  “The throwing up or Mike?” Maya surprises me by laughing, as though she’s made a joke. After a beat, I join in. It probably shouldn’t be funny, but we can’t stop laughing. We laugh until our stomachs hurt. We laugh until we’re not cold anymore.

  “If I were a better friend, I would’ve known what was going on,” I say finally. Maybe she knew I’d say the wrong thing. Maybe she tried
to tell me, but I wasn’t listening. Or maybe I was too busy talking and thinking about my own stuff to notice she had something to say too. Not that we’ve talked that much lately.

  Maya shakes her head. “No, you wouldn’t. I hid it. The same way you hid it.”

  I nod. Maya’s right. We both know how to hide what we don’t want others to see. “Why did we do that?”

  Maya shrugs.

  I glance at Hiram, still politely feigning sleep, then say, “I didn’t see you as much once you were with him. You didn’t even let me drive you to school anymore.”

  “I know.” She sits up and wraps her arms around her knees. Her long hair falls across her face, partially hiding her bruise. “He wanted us to be together. All the time. As much as we could.” She sighs. I think of the way I wanted to be with Tess. The way I waited for her to respond to my text messages. When she didn’t answer right away, I was so scared she didn’t care about me.

  Maya’s eyes are very bright. “He was always so nice to me.”

  “How can you say that?” The words come out before I can stop them. I always say the wrong thing.

  Maya shrugs. “I don’t know,” she answers.

  “Can I ask you something else?” Maya nods. “Do you want him expelled?”

  “I don’t know,” she says again.

  Quickly—again, so fast I can’t stop myself from saying the wrong thing—I ask, “But you must, right? Otherwise, why would you have gone to the principal instead of anyone else?”

  “Habit?” Maya suggests. “You know, some leftover thing from elementary school, when they taught us to tell the teacher if something was wrong.”

  I nod. “Makes sense.”

  Maya smiles. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “It does a little bit,” I insist.

  “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

  “Hey, I’m the one who feels better when she’s bleeding. I’m in no position to judge.”

  Maya laughs, not a deep long-lasting laugh like before, but a real laugh nonetheless. “You always know just what to say,” she says.

  “Are you kidding?” Now I laugh. “I never know the right thing to say.”

  Maya’s wavy hair is even wavier in the salty beach air, and she tucks a few strands behind her ears, then rests her chin on her knees. I try not to stare at the dark pink skin around her eye.

  “You’ve heard about the protest on Sunday, right?” Of course, I know she has. I told her about it at lunch. “They—we—are going to ask them to expel Mike.” Maya doesn’t respond. I rush to add, “I can stop it if you want me to. I could try.”

  Maya looks out at the water and takes a deep breath. Finally, she says, “You remember how they used to tell us not to tattle? Like, in kindergarten. No one likes a tattletale,” she singsongs. “No matter what the grown-ups said, we knew that kids weren’t supposed to get other kids in trouble.”

  “You didn’t tattle on Mike. You…” I’m not sure what the word is. Eventually I say, “You reported on him,” like Maya’s a journalist and her relationship with him was research for her latest exposé.

  No; that makes it sound like she did this on purpose.

  Maya watches the waves, one after the other, as if she’s hypnotized. I adjust so I’m sitting the same way, but instead of looking at the waves, I look at her.

  “You’re still wearing the bracelet he gave you,” I notice out loud.

  Maya nods. “I know.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever take it off?”

  Maya’s gaze moves up and down, in time with the waves. “I don’t know.”

  Three

  Maya

  By the time we got to the beach, I could still feel Mike’s touch on my upper arm. I knew he wasn’t still holding me, but it was like my skin didn’t know. I used to love that—how I could feel Mike after we’d been together. Now, I wanted it to stop. So I ran into the water like I thought I could wash him off. I knew Hiram and Junie would see my upper thighs, my stomach, the spots that are thicker and softer than I want them to be, parts that I usually camouflage with clothing, but I needed to wash off Mike’s touch.

  I guess it worked. Or at least, the water was so cold that I couldn’t feel anything else.

  I still don’t want to go home, but we’ve been here so long that the fog is rolling in, and it’s getting cold. Junie doesn’t invite us over to her house. Maybe she doesn’t want her parents to see her with Hiram. Her mom might know about him, since (unlike my mother) Frida is one of those moms who’s involved in everything and seems to know about everything and everyone. She asked about Mike’s and my first date a few nights after it happened, when I was at Junie’s house for dinner. That was before I stopped coming over for dinner. Junie’s mom is a great cook (unlike mine).

  “Let’s go somewhere without parents,” I say finally. “Or teachers. Or guidance counselors.”

  “Got it,” Hiram says. We get back into his car, and he starts driving again.

  “Does your hand still hurt?” I ask after a while.

  Hiram grins. “Not as much as his face does.”

  I twist back around to look at Junie and see that she’s covering her mouth like she’s trying not to laugh. We’re finding strange things funny today.

  Hiram drives up into the hills above school, where the nicest houses have views of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Kyle—Mike’s best friend—lives up here. I’ve been to his house with Mike a few times.

  Hiram keeps driving, up past Kyle’s street. The streets are lined with hedges so thick that you can’t even see the houses behind them. Finally, Hiram pulls into a driveway. There’s a gate blocking the way, but Hiram leans out and punches some numbers into a keypad. The gate swings open.

  In front of us is a house that looks like it’s entirely made of glass. It’s all windows, floor to ceiling. Hiram puts the car into park.

  “Whose house is this?” Junie asks from the back seat.

  “Worried about getting into trouble for breaking and entering?” Hiram asks. Junie doesn’t know him well enough to hear the joke in his voice. He twists around in his seat and sees how nervous Junie looks. “Don’t worry,” he adds gently. “This is my house.”

  “It is?”

  “Yup. How else did you think I knew the code for the gate?”

  Junie shrugs.

  “Believe me, I’m not nearly as much of a criminal as the North Bay student body seems to think I am.”

  He opens his door, and after a beat, Junie and I each open ours. At the front door—also made of glass—there’s no keyhole, but another keypad. Hiram punches in a few more numbers, maybe the same numbers as the numbers at the gate. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to know.

  The lock unclicks, and Hiram says, “You wanted a place without parents.”

  “What about your parents?” I ask.

  Hiram opens the door, and Junie and I follow him down a flight of stairs into the fanciest living room I’ve ever seen. The furniture is all white, and the wall of windows looks out onto the bay. “Mom’s at a retreat in Big Sur,” Hiram says. “Dad’s at work in the city.”

  Hiram’s phone dings with a message. He reaches into his pocket and pulls it out. He makes a face, then hands the phone to me. I read the message and pass the phone to Junie.

  “Are you kidding?” she practically shouts. “You violated school policy?” She shakes her head. “They haven’t even officially ruled that Mike violated school policy, and you’re practically expelled on the spot.”

  “It doesn’t say I’m expelled,” Hiram corrects. “Just that they’ll discuss it at next week’s board meeting.”

  “When they should be discussing Mike,” Junie scoffs.

  “There were at least a dozen people watching this afternoon,” I interject. “Unlike what happened between Mike and
me.”

  “So, Hiram will be punished while Mike gets off with a slap on the wrist, if that?”

  I shake my head. “Everyone saw what happened—Hiram was provoked, he thought he was protecting me. The board of trustees will understand, and they’ll do the right thing.”

  Junie shakes her head. Her parents raised her to believe that the right things don’t come without a fight. But unlike Junie, I’m not sure what the right thing is in this case. Because Hiram did punch Mike, and even if it was provoked, it’s still against the rules. And if they’re going to expel Mike for breaking the rules with me, then they’d have to treat Hiram the same way, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.

  Not that I want Hiram to get expelled.

  Or Mike.

  Maybe.

  I’m not sure.

  If Mike gets expelled, he’ll lose any chance at that track scholarship.

  Which could impact the rest of his life.

  “You can’t really turn this into one of your social justice crusades, Juniper,” Hiram says as he leads us into the kitchen. The counters and cabinets are gleaming white. Hiram opens a fridge that’s camouflaged to look like just another white cabinet. He pulls out several containers of food and offers us each a soda. Junie and I perch on cold steel stools surrounding the kitchen island across from him. “It’s not exactly like I’m an underdog,” he adds, waving at the absurdly nice house around us.

  “It still wouldn’t be right if you get expelled and Mike doesn’t.”

  “You could both be expelled,” I say. “I might have screwed up both of your entire futures.”