After

by Amy Efaw

  The girls continue talking to each other like Allison isn’t standing up there at all.

  “Hey!” Allison yells. “Excuse me? I’m conducting a class here. I’d appreciate it if you’d shut up and listen!”

  That gets the girls’ attention. Silence drops over the room. Macee is frozen in midmovement, bent over Ms. Coughran’s desk, where she’s counting the pencils she’d collected. Staring up at Allison, she whispers, “We’re not supposed to say ‘shut up.’”

  “Well, okay, fine. Sorry.” Allison clears her throat again. “But as I was trying to say, today’s topic is Growing Up—”

  Devon hears Karma scoff under her breath. “I was born grown up, hag.”

  “So, to start, people have certain expectations for you as you get older, right?” She looks around the room. “Meaning, the older you get, the older you’re supposed to act. The more responsibility you’re expected to take on. True?”

  Nobody moves.

  “But at the same time, as you grow older, don’t you also have expectations for the people around you? Like gaining respect and autonomy from them?” She pauses. “Autonomy is just a big word for ‘independence.’” She pauses again. “And sometimes, these two separate sets of expectations—what others expect from you, and what you expect from others—clash. Don’t they? Causing some pretty big problems. Right?”

  “Yeah. It’s called adolescence, reject,” Devon hears Karma whisper to herself. “Get some therapy, chicky; you’ll get over it.”

  “These problems sometimes come in the form of prejudice or stereotypes.” Allison looks around the room. “Are you all following me?”

  “Uh, not really . . .” says some girl with curly blonde hair sitting at the far table.

  “Okay, well . . . hopefully what I’m talking about will make more sense once we explore this together.” Allison twitch-smiles. “So, let’s start with prejudice. Have you ever been put down or called a derogatory name by an adult?”

  The room is silent.

  “Derogatory means ‘offensive.’”

  Still no response.

  “Okay, well, one of my expectations for you guys right now? That you participate in the discussion. Me up here lecturing is going to get really boring fast—”

  “Surprise! We’ve already reached that point,” Karma mumbles to herself.

  Again, nothing from the class.

  “Okay, so how about this—have you ever been told that you’re too young to understand something?”

  Allison gets a reaction this time. Devon can hear whispering popping around the room.

  “Or been made to feel that you’re less intelligent than an adult? Maybe had an adult lie to you about something so obviously untrue, as if you’d be so stupid or naïve as to believe it?”

  The whispering gets louder. Devon glances up at Allison, expecting her to shout again, but she doesn’t. In fact, she looks relieved.

  “Okay, so what about dress? Meaning, has an adult ever criticized your appearance or made negative comments about what you’re wearing? Told you that you can’t go out looking”—she makes little quotation marks with her fingers—“like that?”

  Devon thinks about the questions Allison is posing, and she feels a strange void inside. Has she ever been told she’s too young to understand something? No. Been made to feel less intelligent? No. With her mom, it’s mostly been the opposite. The secret things Devon’s mom had confessed to her, cried over, obsessed about. The advice her mom had sought from Devon, wanting reassurance and support. Devon would listen to her mom and would feel in this vague sort of way that, really, she wasn’t quite smart enough or old enough or something to hear these things. To know what to say when the collection people called wanting the status of unpaid bills. To hear her mom retell the raunchy, age-inappropriate stories she’d overheard while bartending at Katie Downs. To cover for her mom, creating white lies to tell the Latest Loser that her mom wasn’t around when she didn’t want to talk to him. No, her mom rarely kept anything from Devon because of her youth.

  “Has an adult ever invaded your personal privacy in any way? Like, read your diary? Or maybe listened in on your phone conversations? Monitored your e-mail or IMs or text messages?” Allison scans the room. “Does anyone have something they’d like to share? Because, really, I’m hearing a lot of whispering out there.” She moves her hands around like she’s stirring the air.

  “Let’s bring it out in the open so everyone can benefit from it.”

  “Well,” someone finally says, “I’m here because of an invasion of my privacy.” Devon turns to look over her shoulder at the speaker. A girl at the table behind her. Glasses, shoulder-length brown hair. Bad acne.

  Devon tries to remember her name. Jean? Jan? Jamie? That one from last night after dinner, the one who’d lost the card game some of the girls were playing. The one who’d shoved Jenevra hard, then went screaming into her cell. Everyone got Lockdown for thirty minutes because of it.

  “Okay,” Allison says. “Go ahead. But, remember, let’s keep things generic. No specific details, okay?”

  “Okay,” the girl says. “So, basically, I kinda keep a blog—I mean I did on the outs. And, basically, one of my friends’ moms read something I posted on it that she didn’t like, and, basically, she called the cops.”

  Allison nods. “Okay. But blogs are public, aren’t they?” She glances around the room. “You put it out there because you want people to read what you write, correct? So I don’t think you could call that an invasion of privacy exactly. Anyone else?”

  Is it an invasion of privacy, Devon thinks, to be lying alone in the dark, hearing her mom’s giggling in the bedroom down the hall with the Male Guest of the Moment? Or her mom asking Devon to help select which thong to buy off Victoria Secret’s clearance table? Devon feels a tightening inside herself. It’s definitely an invasion of something.

  Karma stretches her arms high, throws her head back to look at the ceiling. “It’s an invasion of privacy when after someone’s”—Karma makes little quotation marks with her cuff-covered fingers—“brother comes to visit a resident here and the staff stops her on the way back to the pod and then forces her to open her mouth to check under her tongue and—oh my gosh, can you believe it?—they discover smack. I find that really annoying and unfair.” Karma smiles at Allison. “Very prejudiced. Don’t you think? That recently happened to a”—she makes little quotation marks again—“friend of mine.”

  Allison just frowns at her.

  “Well, this one time my mom’s boyfriend moved in with us.” Jenevra is tilted way back in her chair, feet up on the tabletop. “She made me share my room with his kid. Kid as in guy. We were both fourteen, and we had to share the same bed! How about that?”

  “Whoa!” someone yells. “That’s messed up!”

  Allison shakes her head. “I’m really very sorry about that. Wow.”

  “Whatever.” Jenevra rubs her hand over her shaved head. “I kicked his ass. I mean butt. He slept in the bathtub after that.”

  “Yeah, well, when I was thirteen? My mom took me to the doctor? And had him do this check on me? To see if I was still a virgin!” someone says.

  “Bet you weren’t,” Karma mutters to herself. She shifts around in her chair, restless.

  “Well, my mom IM’d my friends and stuff pretending she was me!” another girl shouts, bouncing in her seat.

  The examples come fast now, girls talking over each other, one upping each other.

  “Okay, okay,” Allison says, holding up her hands. “Those are all really good examples. But we should move on.” She points to the whiteboard behind her. “So, I’ve written some numbers up here. These numbers represent years, all right? From age twelve to twenty-one. I’m starting at twelve because that’s when most adults begin thinking you are less like children and more like something approaching adulthood. It’s when you generally start gaining certain privileges and responsibilities. So, let’s start listing some of those privileges and res
ponsibilities up here under each year.” She picks up a marker, uncaps it. “Age twelve?”

  “Well, you can babysit when you’re twelve,” someone says.

  “Good!” Allison writes “Babysitting” under the 12 column.

  “And, also, you can take the city bus by yourself,” someone else says. “And stay home alone.”

  Karma scoffs. “Did that when I was five.”

  So did I. Suddenly the room is there, in Devon’s mind. The one with the toddler bed made up in pink piggy and yellow duckie sheets—she’d already outgrown both the bed and the sheets by then. But in the memory, Devon had stayed in that bed for hours, waiting. Finally sneaking out into the hallway when she had to pee so badly she was afraid she’d wet her panties. Everything quiet and still, the only sound was coming from the box fan propped in the kitchen window, a scrap of paper caught on one of its blades—pflipp . . . pflipp . . . pflipp—through the empty apartment. Her mom gone, disappeared for the entire weekend. The lure of the casinos and some guy with money drew her away. She’d left for work one Friday night and just didn’t come home. “Sometimes grown-ups have to have a little fun, too,” she’d explained to Devon when she had finally returned. “You weren’t scared. Were you, hon?”

  “It’s still cheaper at the movies when you’re twelve,” another girl says.

  “Good work!” Allison says. “Now. How about thirteen?”

  “Well, you get into PG-13 movies.”

  “And you’re a teenager.”

  “My mom let me wear makeup when I turned thirteen.”

  “You get your period.”

  “Shoot me!” Karma says to herself. “This is so lame.” She thrusts her hand up in the air.

  “Yes?” Allison looks over at Karma. “You have a comment?”

  “Are you even kidding me? Hell no. I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  “We’re not supposed to say ‘hell,’” Macee says from the next table over.

  “Yeah?” Karma looks over her shoulder at her. “Well, F.Y.I., freak, ‘hell’ is a hot spot destination. So, why don’t you just go on down there and check it on out?”

  “Uh, please watch your language and name-calling,” Allison says. “You may go ahead and use the bathroom, but please come right—”

  “Knock, knock!” A voice from the doorway. Then Ms. Coughran pokes her head into the room. “Excuse the interruption, but I must summon someone.” She scans the room until her eyes land on Devon. Crooks her finger at her. “Devon, you are wanted in the conference room.”

  Devon stands up. Is this it? Dr. Bacon? Already? She feels her heart jerk.

  Karma jumps up then, too. Kicks at Devon’s feet, whispers, “Doesn’t it feel good to be wanted?”

  Devon moves toward the door. She feels closed in, can’t wait to get out of this room so she can breathe. Too much Karma.

  “And where are you going, Karma?” Ms. Coughran asks.

  “Bathroom,” Karma says sweetly, flashes her fake smile. “Miss Allison said I could.”

  Ms. Coughran steps aside, allowing the two girls passage through the door. Karma hip checks Devon as she pushes past her.

  “Be good now, Karma,” Ms. Coughran says.

  Karma stops, abruptly spins around.

  Devon almost slams right into her. Only her quick reflexes prevent it. But maybe she should have. Maybe she should’ve given Karma a good thunk, like she would on the field. That not-so-subtle warning to the other players that inside the goal box is her kingdom. That meeting her 1 v 1 in that particular place isn’t going to be fun.

  “I am so good, Ms. Coughran.” But as Karma says this, her eyes are on Devon. “But not you,” she whispers. “Or . . . did the Devil make you do it? Hmm? Is that it? Is that why you’re here, Princess Perfect?” Smirking, she whips back around, saunters across the hall to the bathroom. She stops at the door, kicks it open, holds it there with her foot. “Oh, and Ms. Coughran? Just for future reference? I agree with my B.F.F., Anonymous, when she says: ‘I’d rather be lucky than good.’ Good is just so overrated. Bad girls have the most fun. Don’t you agree, Devil?”

  The door whisks shut behind her.

  Devon just stands there, staring after Karma, at the closed bathroom door.

  Ms. Coughran pats Devon on the shoulder.

  Devon jumps.

  “Hey, girl,” Ms. Coughran says. “Don’t let Karma get to you. She’s just a button pusher. It’s how she amuses herself. Next week, she’ll be on to someone else. You’ll see.”

  Maybe . . . But Devon doesn’t quite agree; there’s something more to it than that. Isn’t there?

  The thought vanishes because the door to the pod buzzes.

  Devon turns as the door opens and the woman with the long braid steps through it. Dr. Bacon. She smiles at Devon, walks toward her.

  “Hello, Devon,” she says. She glances at Ms. Coughran. “Hello, Nadia.”

  “Well, howdy,” Ms. Coughran says. “She’s all yours. The conference room awaits.”

  “Thank you. And when Devon and I are finished, I’ll need to see Macee.”

  “Okeydokey. I’ll warn her.” Ms. Coughran gives them a wink, says, “Later!” and heads into the classroom.

  Dr. Bacon puts an arm around Devon then, gently leads her into the common area and toward the conference room. Leans forward so she can observe Devon’s face. “So, how have you been? This is your fifth day here, isn’t it?”

  Devon nods. Yes, five long ones. She remembers her goal for the day then, the promise she made to Dom and to herself, though she didn’t get it down on paper.

  When they—Devon and the doctor—are both inside the conference room and the door clanks shut behind them, when the doctor’s quiet eyes are across the table from her, waiting, Devon is ready to talk.

  And she does.

  “My middle name is Sky,” Devon starts.

  Dr. Bacon nods. “And how do you feel about that?”

  chapter fourteen

  When dinner comes, Devon takes her tray to her corner of the common area, near the book cart, to eat. Tonight it’s lasagna; a reddish grease seeps out from between the noodles, pooling in the tray’s depression designed for the main dish. Garlic bread, green beans—the grayish-green kind that comes in cans—and vanilla pudding, a dollop of that stiff, fake whipped cream on top.

  Devon pushes her plastic spork out of its cellophane wrapper, takes a bite of the lasagna.

  It doesn’t touch her mom’s, not even close. Lasagna is the only food her mom can make from scratch, and it is surprisingly good. “It’s all in the ingredients,” she’d say mysteriously when someone asked about the recipe. Devon’s mom had learned how to make lasagna from her own mother—the grandma Devon’s never met—in that “other” life, her pre-Devon life, in Spokane. And strangely, lasagna had become their special meal at every holiday, the closest thing Devon and her mom owned as a family tradition. As if, in that small way, her mom’s long-abandoned family could be there with them. An unconscious presence.

  Devon takes another bite, and a memory pushes forward into her mind. Last Thanksgiving. She hadn’t eaten much that day, she remembers. She’d been feeling “fat” lately, the fly on her jeans becoming a struggle to zip, her hips and around the waist snug against the denim. So, she’d started wearing warm-ups more and more, for comfort. In fact, in this memory she’s sitting at the Thanksgiving table in her soccer warm-ups, still damp from a run she’d taken earlier that afternoon. She hadn’t felt like dressing for the occasion, or even cleaning up after her run, their only guest the Guy of the Moment. She had no desire to impress him.

  “You could’ve at least taken a shower, Dev,” her mom had hissed at her in the kitchen. “What’s up with you? I mean, you could make an effort to be nice. Phil’s a good guy. And besides that, I like him.” She’d torn open a salad bag then and dumped its contents into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkled a package of salad toppers—sliced honey-roasted almonds—and shredded cheddar cheese over the lettuce. “Just pu
t this on the table, okay? And grab the light Italian dressing, the good stuff by what’s his name? That Newman guy? I’ve gotta check on the lasagna. It smells like it’s burning.”

  When they were all seated at the table, the three of them, their plates covered with the salad and steaming stuff, Devon picked up her fork. Started pushing her food around.

  “Wait up,” Phil said suddenly. “Before we dig in, how about I say grace? You know, seeing as it’s Thanksgiving and all? We probably should give thanks.”

  “I was just going to say that myself,” Devon’s mom said, pressing her hand over her heart. “Gosh! You read my mind, Phil! It’s like we’re the same person!” She was beaming across the table at him. Phil, who fancied himself a religious kind of guy. Phil, who’d insisted on taking Devon’s mom to church on Sunday mornings, rarely the same one twice—at least on those Sunday mornings that hadn’t come too quickly on the heels of a rough Saturday night. Too skinny Phil, desperately trying to quell his receding hairline by globbing Rogaine on his exposed skin, but his balding head showing no visible change besides developing a bad case of dandruff.

  Devon had rolled her eyes, less at Phil’s request than at her mom’s annoying fawning—and fake—behavior.

  Devon’s mom frowned. “Bow your head and close your eyes, Devon. Show respect to God.”

  And then Phil began in a slow, reverential tone, “Dear Lord, our thanks are on ya. Instead of turkey, we have lasagna—”

  Devon peeked over at Phil. Was he even serious? But his eyes were tightly closed in concentration.

  “Bless us this year, O Lord. That we shall see your gracious hand in all the good that we see therein. Amen.”

  “Amen!” Devon’s mom had cheered. “That was so great, Phil. Thank you.”

  Okay, so what about all the bad stuff? Is God’s gracious hand in that, too? Devon had wanted to ask Phil this but resumed pushing her food around her plate instead. Phil wasn’t the kind to field such intricate theological questions. He’d just say something clichéd like, “All’s we can do is take the good with the bad, Devon. The good with the bad.”