Skin

by Napoli, Donna Jo

  “Why? Why would you care?”

  She walks over and we stand face-to-face a moment. Then we both move a little closer, and she kisses me. Melanie kisses me on the lips.

  I knew she would—in the instant before it happened, I knew. I let her. I yield as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. Soft and lovely.

  But then I step quietly away. “I’m not into that, Melanie.”

  “Do you really know what you’re into?”

  There’s no doubt about it: I’m aroused. But I want Joshua. I want Joshua so bad. “Yeah. I do. I really do.” I put on my jacket and head for the door. Then I stop. Hell, why not be honest? “Thanks for the kiss.”

  “Anytime.” She’s stuffing things into her backpack; she doesn’t even look up.

  “You want to walk with us? Owen and me?”

  “Nah.” Her voice is light, and I can’t detect sadness in her. She looks strong. And wonderful.

  A strong and wonderful person who gave me the first kiss I’ve had on these naked white lips. “Thank you. Really.”

  She turns her head, still leaning over her pack, and her eyes crinkle. “You’re welcome.” She grins. “Really.”

  I walk out and Owen’s waiting for me. Faithful Owen. He smiles at me and either he’s pure of heart or he’s a great actor, because I don’t see even a flicker of pity in his eyes. Owen is the best.

  He starts talking automatically, like he’s that windup bunny in the battery commercials. All about math. Just like he’s done every Wednesday for so long.

  “Owen,” I say.

  He stops with a loud intake of breath. “You spoke. You actually graced me with your words. Well, one word.”

  “Tell me, what do you do on Wednesdays? What keeps you after school?”

  “I organized a club. We talk about the environmental movement that’s circling the globe, the one Wangari Maathai started.”

  “Who?”

  “Maathai. She won the Nobel Peace Prize for getting people to plant trees in Kenya.”

  “Trees? A peace prize for trees?”

  “Trees combat erosion and offer shade and building materials and fruits and barriers to keep wild animals from your herds, and the list goes on. If you have trees, life is good, and when life is good, you don’t need to fight. Trees lead to peace.”

  “So you plant trees?”

  “No.” He smiles. “We talk about planting trees.”

  I manage a smile back.

  “And in the spring, we’re going to landscape that big, ugly dirt field beside the elementary school, where they used to play soccer before the new field got set up.”

  “And then the elementary school children will stop all their wars?”

  “They might.”

  I laugh. I actually laugh. And Owen’s the one who got me to do it. “What do you call your club?”

  “The Green Club.”

  Green. A convergence of green. A serendipity of green. A splendid lushness of global green. I’m not mystical, no no no. But this is just too much. And my motor’s still running from Melanie’s kiss. I halt and twirl in place.

  Owen takes a few more steps, then notices I’m not beside him. He stops and faces me.

  I rush up to him and realize with surprise that he must have grown a few inches in the last couple of months, because my head barely reaches his chin as I hug him hard. Then I step back.

  He steps toward me.

  I put my hand up. “That was just a thank-you.”

  “Well, you’re welcome. And, Sep.” He clears his throat. “You can thank me any time.”

  My body is electric. But it’s not Owen I want. Still, something has happened. Somehow I know I’m going to want someone again someday. I will not spend the rest of my life missing Joshua Winer.

  But I mustn’t hurt anyone else even by accident. Owen is real. “I hope I didn’t confuse you. It was a burst of gratitude. But the last thing I want is to confuse you.”

  Owen smiles. He says nothing. But his eyes tell me everything.

  MELANIE’S AUNT IS RIGHT. The pink-green connection turns out to stem from visual afterimages. If you stare at pink for ten seconds, then look elsewhere, you’ll see green—the afterimage. It’s an optical illusion. I found a website that demonstrates it, called the Lilac Chaser. Pink dots move in a circle, and you stare at a black cross in the center. Pretty soon you see only one green dot moving in a circle. The cool thing is, there never really is a green dot. But the eye “sees” one.

  I don’t know if it matters whether there’s a green dot. I mean, if you perceive it, how different is that from what it really is? We act on what we perceive. It’s the best we can do.

  On Thursday after school Jazz Dance Club meets again for a rehearsal. We’re performing between acts in the Battle of the Bands tomorrow night. I get there early and the only people in the gym are Becca and Ms. Martin. One look tells me they’re arguing. I lean against the wall and try to be inconspicuous.

  “We practiced last weekend,” says Ms. Martin, which is true. We had two practice sessions, one Saturday morning and another Sunday afternoon.

  “It isn’t enough. We aren’t ready.” Becca’s arms are crossed at the chest. But now she drops them and her whole body cries defeat. “This is going to be a big fiasco. You should have let us practice after school all week. This is going to be so bad.”

  “Too much practice—”

  “How can you keep saying that!” Becca shakes her head. “You’re the one who makes us do the same yoga poses a zillion times.”

  Ms. Martin puts her hand on Becca’s shoulder. “Dance isn’t yoga, Becca. With yoga you do it over and over and over, striving for perfection. But a dance performance is different. You have to practice it enough that your body can do it without thought, but not so much that your body can do it without heart. What you want is organic. The girls know their parts. You’ve done a good job leading them. The audience will enjoy watching you.”

  I’m totally alert. I had no idea Ms. Martin really cared about dance.

  “Whatever. It’s too late now. We can either cancel or dance.” Becca looks down. Then she looks over at me and her face changes. “All right, then, I’m rearranging the floor plan. Sep and I will be center front and the rest will be in three small groups at each side and the rear. And that means…”

  She goes on explaining the changes all this will make in the choreography, and Ms. Martin is agreeing, and the girls are coming into the gym and I’m waiting by the wall, suspended on those words: center front.

  I’ve become a good dancer. I’d have to be an idiot or an even worse liar than I am not to admit that. I changed this fall. It’s not like I’d go out and tell every girl who wants to dance that she should get laid, but I really believe sex woke my body up somehow—and now it’s got some new level of awareness or plane of existence or whatever it is people say when they talk about these things. I simply know my body better now. So it makes sense Becca would want to try to focus the audience’s attention on the two of us. But what will my face look like under the spotlights? Our costumes cover our arms and legs—but our faces are exposed.

  Becca explains the new layout to everyone. I can’t meet anyone’s eyes when she tells where she and I will be, but no one objects, and we rehearse and it’s good. Becca’s changes actually make the whole dance better, regardless of who starts out center front and keeps returning to center front and ends in center front, center front, center front. We are dancing to Gnarls Barkley’s song “Crazy,” and I am loving, I am loving, I am loving the way he begins his lines over and over again till he gets to his point. I think I know what he’s talking about, too. I know exactly where he’s been, because I’ve been there. And right now, with center front ringing in my head, I feel like I could go there again.

  In the locker room, I go up to Becca. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and stand straight. “About makeup…”

  “I knew you’d do this.” Becca slams her locker and turns to me. “We
’re all wearing lipstick. We’re all wearing eye shadow. Whatever else you want to do to yourself is your business, Sep. The audience will be looking at your moves, not your face.” She leaves. And I can hear the words she didn’t say lingering in the air: so get over it.

  Sure. I can do that, sure. But what’s the point of making the audience have to get over it? The parents and friends and little brothers and sisters and the kids in the high school who haven’t seen my face before—what’s the point of making them have to go through the surprise of vitiligo before they can pay attention to the dance?

  Except maybe if they do see my face and then I dance good—really good—they’ll forget my face. Wouldn’t that be something. Our dance is short and fast-paced; it’s just a few minutes really. Is that long enough to win their attention away from my naked face to my moves?

  Can I dance that good?

  Friday after dinner, which I really can’t eat, I pull my hair into a ponytail and look at myself in the mirror. It’s just the Battle of the Bands, but I feel like I’m going to war. Like the soldiers in Vietnam in the book Owen gave me. I’ve read it three times already. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross made them slog on through the incessant rain, despite the mud and the lack of visibility. They didn’t want to, but they did it. I know what I have to do.

  I scrub my face and leave my skin cream unopened.

  We’re all supposed to meet in the actors’ makeup room down the hall from the auditorium at least a half hour before the show starts, so I walk to school. That way Mamma and Dad don’t have to wait so long. Dante said he’d come, too—with Tim and Zach. And Devin will be there with Charlie. And Rachel said she’d come. Owen didn’t say anything, but I know he’ll be there. So that’s it—I’ve got my cheering squad.

  I put on my costume in the girls’ locker room and go crowd into the actors’ makeup room. Everyone’s joking, but their eyes are haunted. The MC calls the first group to go arrange themselves on the stage behind the curtain and the second group to line up in the wings, ready to run on after the curtain drops and the first group gets off. He leaves with those two groups.

  Jazz Dance Club is all here now. Lipstick and eye shadow and costumes. None of them give me any weird looks. No one in the makeup room gives me any weird looks. Everyone’s too worried about themselves.

  The big clock over the wall of mirrors says the show has started. Someone undoubtedly is saying some sort of welcome and thanking the long list of people who helped make this all possible and all that. Then we can hear them. Trumpets blasting. Pretty bad, I think, but who can really tell from here? The first band now clatters into the hall and the rest of us in the makeup room strain to hear: Is anyone clapping?

  Things go fast. The third band has already left the makeup room. There are nine competing bands. That’s a lot. A ton. Jazz Dance Club performs after the fifth band, to break things up.

  Now the fourth band is called. Then the fifth. Then Jazz Dance Club squishes into the wings.

  The band that goes on before us calls itself Blue Man Group, which seems like it might not really be legal, but they do it anyway. They’re three guys and one plays the drums while the two others try to fit together candy-cane shaped pieces of PVC piping, which is supposed to be a drumbone (whatever that is) but keeps falling apart, so the two guys give up and bash each other with the pieces, laughing like idiots. The drummer stays with it, though. At least the audience is prepared for failure now, so that’s good. And the audience actually claps at that total fiasco. Yes, this is a good audience. I look around and my eyes meet Melanie’s in the dark. She gives a quick nod.

  The curtain comes down and we take our places and it goes up again. I can’t see anything past the lights that glare up at us. I can’t see my cheering squad. Or anyone. Anyone else who might be out there. And anyone might be out there.

  I feel stupid. Like I’ve entirely forgotten the routine. I can’t even remember how it begins.

  But the music comes on strong and my body moves the second it does. Bang, just like that. We’re all moving, fast and furious. The back I count on rolling across is there, right on time. And the bodies Becca and I have to weave through are all there, right where they should be. Arms and legs and feet and hands, everything pivoting and rocking and kicking and flying. All that matters is this elbow jab and that moon roll and these kicks kicks kicks. Everything clasps where it should and releases at just the right moment, with the rhythm of the music and the beat of our hearts and the hum of the universe. Galactic wonder!

  It ends. Music gone. All we do is pant now, pant and sweat.

  The audience is clapping and hooting and stamping their feet and we somehow realize it’s time to bow. Deep, over and over. The lights go off and for a split second I can see into the crowd, but I close my eyes and listen to the thwack of the falling curtain. I let myself be ushered away into the wing and out into the hallway.

  I danced my ass off. Better than ever before. I ran up and down the spine of that endless serpent, I swam in the milky ocean, and whether I shook Vishnu awake or not, I am awake. That’s what’s important. It’s great, this being awake thing, this dancing thing. It’s sensational.

  With or without an audience.

  Over the next week the realization slowly sinks in. Dance is it for me. This semester I’ve learned so much and, while I still love math, I’m pretty sure I want to be a biologist who works on animal behavior. But I’m going to dance all the rest of my life, till I drop from old age. Dance holds body and soul together.

  Yesterday was Christmas. In a week, we’ll be in January. Joshua Winer’s birthday is in January. I don’t know the day. He never told me. But I want to do something nice for him. I ended things so selfishly—protecting myself, not him. It’s time to do something decent.

  And I’m strong enough to do it now. I’ve danced naked-faced in front of strangers. And I can stand on my head for as long as I want—yoga’s sinking in. I laugh sometimes, too, especially with Owen. And Devin and Rachel and Becca.

  So I go on the Internet and find a copy of Blue Moose, by the author who wrote Joshua’s favorite children’s book, and I order a copy mailed to him. It feels good.

  IT’S SNOWING. THE FIRST snow of the season. Dad talks about how weird this is. How when he was a kid snow started before Thanksgiving. Winter is shrinking. But it’s not gone. And, oh, I love this snow. I take some in my hand and I literally love it. I feel goofy.

  There’s a male cardinal in the spruce tree. On one of those ugly bare lower branches that a gust of wind has already swept the snow from. He’s brilliant scarlet. And I love him, too. In fact, I’m in love with him.

  I go inside and wash my hands, and I’m in love with the water that gushes from the spigot. And the soap. And the towel. And the towel rack.

  Owen and I go sledding. Each in our own aluminum disk. But one time he invites me in his, and he circles his arms around me and we slide and swirl. I know he’s wanting more. And I know I have to tell him it won’t work. I can’t just talk about some vague kind of confusion. Sometime soon I have to explain point-blank that I don’t like him that way.

  The next day I make the most delicious pea soup with Dante. We stand at the kitchen counter and chop side by side. Carrots and onions and celery and cabbage and potatoes and tomatoes. It’s perfect, looking out the kitchen window at the snow. I wonder where the fox is now.

  “You know, Dante,” I say, “I’m okay these days.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “So?”

  “So you can stop being nice to me.”

  “No shit? I can torture you again?”

  I laugh.

  “Okay, Slut. I’m out of here. You finish.” And he leaves.

  But I don’t even care. It’s more normal this way.

  I dump the rest of the chopped vegetables into the pot and put a lid on and talk Mamma into watching it while I go to the mall. I need a long walk right now. It’s just too beautiful.

  I fall in love with every car that passes. With every te
lephone pole. And when I finally get there, with the whole busy parking lot.

  Slinky’s selling perfume to a man. Oh, I know her name is Carey, but somehow the name Slinky is still in my head and it’s not bad to let it stay, now that I know the label means nothing. Slinky leans toward the man. I eavesdrop. He buys two bottles.

  When he leaves, I say, “You’re good at that.”

  She turns to me, her mouth opens and stops slack for a second, then on she goes into a big smile of welcome. “Merry Christmas. Or belated Merry Christmas. Or early Happy New Year.”

  “It’s called vitiligo. Do you want me to go through my whole speech about it, or will the name be enough?”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not the way you mean.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Is it dangerous?”

  “You won’t get it. And I won’t die of it.”

  She taps her fingers thoughtfully on her lips. “It’s an interesting challenge.”

  “Forget it. I’m through with makeup. No lipstick, no nothing.”

  “Good. That’s a good decision.”

  “Is that a mother’s approval or a professional cosmetics clerk evaluation?”

  “Both. This way you’re unique. Can I sell you shampoo, then?” She smiles and there’s a wicked glint in her eye. “I have some that will make you smell like vanilla. Appropriate, no?”

  “I bet you don’t sell any of that to your African-American customers.”

  “You lose. Vanilla is popular; everyone likes to smell like a pound cake. Or a pumpkin pie. Want pumpkin shampoo? Or eggnog? Oh, yeah, how about eggnog shampoo?”

  “Are you trying to get me eaten alive?”

  “Eaten, huh?” Slinky leans across the counter and whispers, “Did you bed the football hunk?”

  “I never called him a hunk.”

  “But he is, right?”

  “That’s ancient history.”

  “Are you sad about it?”

  “Some parts of it. Not all.”

  “Hmmm. So who are you in love with now?”