Falling From Grace

by SL Naeole

  It was that smile that finally snapped me back into focus. Robert knew it, too. He let go of my chin, but continued to watch me.

  "I'll be fine. I'm fine. I can do this." I reached for my book bag, which he had placed by his feet, and unzipped it. I grabbed the blue folder that held my soliloquy for Erica and pulled it out. Sticking the folder between my teeth, I reached for my crutches and stood up.

  Robert pulled the folder out of my mouth, smiling. "I don't think she'll appreciate you getting spit all over her dialogue."

  I shrugged my shoulders as I placed the cumbersome crutches underneath my arms and then snatched the folder out of Robert's hand. "I don't think that really matters right now, do you? She's going to crucify me in front of all of these people, and she's going to enjoy every second of it. The only thing I have on my side is the truth, and that won't matter much to any of them." I motioned to the people behind me with the folder in my hand.

  Robert grabbed my elbow, his rock solid strength effectively stopping me from moving. "You're wrong. You also have Stacy on your side. And Graham..." He motioned with his head at someone who was approaching us.

  I hesitated to look, unsure if he'd grab my chin again to prevent me from seeing who it was that was headed directly for us. When I was positive that he wouldn't stop me, I turned my head to see Graham, a determined expression on his face.

  What is he doing? I looked at Robert again, panic flooding into me.

  He wants to know what's going on. He didn't know that you and Erica were in the same class. Or that I was as well.

  Oh dear bananas. The last thing I needed was a confrontation between Robert and Graham. And in front of what was starting to look like half of the student body, too.

  Taking a few deep breaths, I turned my body completely around to face Graham. "What are you doing here?"

  He looked at Robert's hand on my elbow, and then back at me. "Erica told me that she had a thing today for her dramatics class. She didn't tell me that you were in the same class with her. She didn't tell me a lot about this class, actually," he said, glancing back at Robert, his eyes mere slits.

  I was sick. Whatever it was that Erica had planned for today was going to hurt Graham, too, and she had meant for me to be the one to do it. I looked at Robert's face and his eyes were cold steel, his mouth a grim line. Both confirmed my suspicions. My head started spinning, and I could see the little black and white dots twinkling in front of my eyes, like snow on the television set; the precursor to the dreaded faint. How utterly appropriate.

  Take some deep breaths, Gee.

  It wasn't as though I wasn't trying. I was taking the deepest, slowest breaths I could, but the cold sweat that broken out on my forehead has also spread to my palms. Robert helped me to sit back down, while Graham grabbed my crutches. Both seemed too intent on making sure I didn't pass out to care about the other's presence at the moment, which suited me just fine.

  I...needed something. I couldn't figure out what it was, but it was close. It was something that was so close, I could taste it. A warm hand still holding my elbow squeezed it gently, no iron grip needed to keep me from leaving anymore. He had said that I had Stacy and Graham on my side.

  I looked at Graham and through the snowstorm of my vision, saw the concern on his face--and surprisingly, the hurt--and knew that Robert had been right. I thought back to Stacy's face this morning, and how she had helped me so much this past week, and knew that he was right about that, too. But was that it?

  "What about you? Do I have you on my side, too?" I asked, my voice shaky, my eyes still unable to focus well.

  "Never doubt it for a second."

  And that was it. I had three people in my corner. Three more than I ever imagined I'd ever have.

  Actually, you have one more.

  I looked at Robert, confused. He pointed towards the back of the auditorium, where a bunch of girls were gathered, laughing and pointing at a group of guys sitting a few rows down. I didn't have to look for long before I saw who he was pointing at. She was the only one not laughing, though her face was just as beautiful, just as perfect, and her eyes were just as sightless though I knew now how deceiving that blindness truly was.

  "What is she doing here?" I kept staring at her, waiting for some sign of friendliness, anything.

  "She goes to school here, too, Gee. She's a sophomore."

  I snorted. A sophomore? She's over five hundred years old; the least she could have been was a junior!

  I turned to look at her again and knew she had heard me. Of course she had heard me. She knew what I was going to say before it even came out of my mouth.

  Hate me? I looked at her.

  She shook her head. Why would I hate you? I said the exact same thing. If I'm incapable of appreciating irony after five hundred years, I don't deserve this inhuman existence.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. It felt good. It felt really, really good actually, knowing that I had all of them supporting me, even if Graham was the only one who didn't know what exactly was going on. It was enough.

  Steady and sure, I stood up again, accepting my crutches from Graham, and my folder from Robert. I ignored the stares as I stepped-pulled-swung myself towards Erica. I ignored the whispers. I ignored everything except my destination.

  She saw me approaching, her face full of amusement, and I decided to smile back. All the humor left her face at my unexpected reaction and that smug smile I had refused to place on my face this morning came back with a vengeance. "Here's your soliloquy." I handed her the blue folder, pleased that I had taken the route I did with it.

  She looked at it as though it would infect her with something, but didn't open it. She bent down to reach into her large tote bag and pulled out a manila folder that contained a few sheets of loose paper. "Here is yours. Remember, no peeking until we're called up."

  I felt my smug smile dip a bit, but pulled the corners of my mouth back up before she could notice anything. I was going to get through this, one way or another, no matter what she had written for me to say. "You, too."

  I remained standing there while she walked away, the blue folder in her hand appearing to weigh her down. When Mr. Danielson announced that we were ready to begin, I found myself being ushered back into my seat by several sets of hands. I looked up to see both Robert and Chips, sans Dip and Salsa, standing by me. I made the assumption that they had been partnered together, and together, had worked to get me away from Erica as quickly as possible once our folders were exchanged.

  The first pair up on stage happened to be Dip and Salsa, which explained their absence, and each took humorous jabs at their nicknames--Dip announcing that he was lactose intolerant to himself, and Salsa saying that no one really likes a chunky dunk--as well as making light of their prowess with the ladies, which neither had. It was easy to see why the trio truly got along so well and I couldn't help but feel a bit envious of them for it.

  Three more pairs went up before Robert and Chips had their turn. Robert lamented at how handsome he was, and how he'd fallen in love with himself, but still could do nothing but envy the utter awesomeness of a guy named Chips.

  The giggles from the audience pleased Chips, whose grin would have been bright enough to forgo the use of the spotlight that seemed to be singeing his clothing right before our eyes. When it was his turn to speak, he spoke about his obsession with food, and how he had named everything he didn't want to eat "Robert" so that he'd have an incentive not to eat his new best friend in the whole wide world, his "BFFL".

  That drew a series of loud guffaws from the two dips, as well as some pretty amused laughter from an unlikely, yet familiar source who less than an hour ago had been upset over his mere presence. And then, it was my turn.

  FACE OFF

  Erica glided up to the stage effortlessly. I took notice of her skintight, dark denim jeans and black boots, her olive green off the shoulder, low cut top with white camisole underneath, and admitted to myself that even dressed as casually as she was, s
he still outshined me in Janice's best. With Robert and Chips' help, I hopped onto the stage and nodded my readiness to Mr. Danielson, whose face looked as excited as a kid on Christmas.

  This was what he had been waiting for. As I looked around the auditorium, the faces that I could make out despite the bright, blinding spotlight all held the same curiosity and excitement. They had all come to see a show. A show that Erica apparently promised them would be worth it. God help us if it wasn't. God help me if it was.

  Because her last name alphabetically came before mine, she was given the opportunity to go first and get hers out of the way. She declined, deferring to me, and I could have sworn I saw purple stripes and a tail pop out from her face, her smile was so Cheshire cat-like.

  I hobbled my way to the microphone standing dead center in the middle of the stage. There was a black music stand there to place our scripts on, which I did. I removed the crutches from underneath my arms, and bent down and placed them onto the stage floor. I didn't need them for this.

  I opened up the manila folder and removed the three sheets of paper that contained my soliloquy. I closed my eyes.

  You can do this.

  I licked my lips that had gone painfully dry.

  I'm here for you, Gee.

  I counted to ten, then opened my lids and began reading the lines on the first page.

  "I hate to look at myself in the mirror. Who am I to anyone but a stranger, even me? The three people in this world that know me don't even know the real me, and all that they do know just plain bores them to death. It would be different if I were attractive, or smart, or funny. Since I'm none of those, I simply exist in a world where I don't fit in.

  "I look different from all of the other girls, and if I notice it, then of course they do, too. And if the girls are noticing how different I am, of course the boys are. I cannot even get my own best friend to take me out, and he's used to the way I look.

  "But even my looks are something that people can get past. It's not like I'm the ugliest girl in the school. I guess I could be passable if I tried hard enough. Plus there's always plastic surgery to fix the things makeup can't.

  "No. My looks, even my clothes can change. But the real me is where the problem is. The part of me that no one really knows, but they whisper about when they think I'm not listening. I know what they're saying.

  "They say that I'm stupid for thinking that Graham loves me and wants to be with me. I probably am. He's one of the most popular guys in school while I'm just the freak, so how could we even make a friendship work? What do we have in common besides our addresses? And if I can't land him, what makes me think I'll land Robert Bellegarde? A guy like him can get any girl he wants. Shouldn't I have learned with Graham that if guys are nice to me, it's only because they feel sorry for me?

  "Why is it that I never get just how desperate I really am? I've thrown myself at two guys now, and both have rejected me for someone else. I don't understand why I simply cannot give up like a normal person would.

  "The answer is simple, of course. I'm not normal. That's the point I need to grasp that I just can't. Everyone else knows what kind of person I am, and I know what they think I'm capable of. I know by the way that they look at me that they wonder if I did it, if I was to blame for it.

  "They all think I'm responsible for my mother's death; they all think I killed her. Maybe I did. Maybe I drove her to crash the car. Maybe I was being such a brat that she simply couldn't take it anymore and decided that the best thing was to take out both of us. She always had a hard time controlling me, and everyone knew that I was a handful at that time. It's why none of those other girls would ever be my friend. It's why Graham was the only one who ever talked to me. It was why Dad was always out of town. I was difficult.

  "No. I was more than difficult. I was a terror. A monster. I don't blame my mother for picturing eleven more years of living with me and thinking it was too much to deal with. I always made things much too difficult for everyone. Maybe I should have been drowned at birth. And there I go: Making it about me again. It's always about me.

  "Why do I have to make it about me? Even now, talking to myself, it's about me! I should be talking about the country or poor, starving children in Africa, but all I can think about is myself! It's like I'm obsessed or something. I just don't get it. This is why people stare at me all the time, why no one wants to be my friend, why I'm always the butt of everyone's joke.

  "I'm too self-involved. I'm too needy. I want too much from people. It's like I'm an emotional leech and I'm just looking for my next victim to feed off of. Perhaps...maybe it would have been better if I hadn't survived the hit and run. Maybe it wasn't even a hit and run. Maybe it was me being so needy, I threw myself in front of some poor guy's car. Maybe I was just trying to finish what my mother had started. Maybe..."

  When that last word left my lips, and I heard my voice echo off of the walls, only then did I actually feel the trembling in my arms and legs, even through the casts. The casts! They were rattling against the music stand and the floor, and the sound was like one of Dad's antique word processors typing up a twenty page essay. It was the only sound in the entire auditorium once my voice stopped echoing.

  I had done it. Spastic shaking and all, I had done it without stopping, without crying, without screaming out denials, and most importantly, I had done it without a single audience member saying anything. I couldn't see them, the lights were far too bright in my face, but I knew the faces that were the most important were not looking at me with the same disgust I felt for having said those words. They were looking at me with disgust for the person who had written them.

  And that person was standing off to the side with a smile that would brighten even the darkest room plastered on her gleeful face. Cheshire cat indeed; she was the red queen and the cat all rolled into one. One great, big, sadistic, scepter carrying, red and purple smile with a tail.

  "Well...thank you, Miss Shelley, for sailing through that...uninspired and absolutely predictable diatribe written by Miss Hamilton. I think that were it not for the person reading it, most of us would have walked out before the third line was ever uttered. You were the only redeeming thing about that piece, and I applaud you for sticking with it and completing it even though I'm certain that it disgusted you as much as it did the rest of us." Mr. Danielson stood up and ushered me off of the stage.

  I clumsily sat down near the stairwell, numb and speechless, my crutches leaning up against the wall behind me while he gathered the sheets of paper that were still on the music stand and unceremoniously tore them in half lengthwise. The sound of the paper tearing, more so than the actual tearing itself, caused a few gasps to ripple across the auditorium. I turned around in disbelief, afraid that I had just embarrassed myself for nothing.

  I watched as Erica walked out on to the stage, my blue folder in her hand, that evil smile still stretching from ear to ear, and stood in front of the microphone. Whatever her thoughts, the tearing of her three page ode to me wasn't enough to disturb them. She opened the folder and removed the two neatly typed sheets of paper that had been placed inside.

  With utter confidence, a confidence I certainly hadn't possessed when I started, she placed those papers directly on top of the folder and placed that on top of the music stand. She seemed so comfortable, so at ease, and I knew it was because she had enjoyed the reaction of the audience, and more importantly, my own.

  It had bolstered her. If I hadn't known who she was, what she was capable of, I would have thought her to be the most approachable person in the world. But I knew exactly what type of person she was, and she had demonstrated in black and white just what she was willing to do in order to get her way. What exactly she was trying to get, I wasn't quite sure yet, but I knew that after today I would definitely find out. She had already embarrassed me, and planted seeds of doubt amongst the people who had witnessed my reading. What else was left?

  I heard someone cough, and realized that the no one had uttered
a single sound other than the few gasps at the tearing of my script. Erica had herself a captive audience, and she liked that.

  I held my breath as I saw her take a deep one to start. And then her voice began to read the words that I had agonized over for what had, at the time, seemed like a lifetime but now felt as though I had rushed through it instead.

  "He loves me. There is no doubt that he loves me. The way he smiles at me, the way he listens to me and the things that I say; there couldn't be any more proof necessary to convince me that he feels so deeply for me.

  "In my own little tea party of life, he is my ultimate guest; one who never needed an invitation, and who has always been and will always be welcome. He enjoys my crooked, funny little mixed up world. He accepts me for who I am, and that's an amazing, beautiful, incredible thing. But, most importantly, he sees behind the mask that so many people like me wear to protect our real selves.

  "But, what if the me he knows isn't the real me? What if it's just another mask that I wear as well? Two masks, one underneath the other, both hiding the me underneath; Victor, Victoria, and Erica.

  "Everyone sees the first mask. Cold. Mean. Angry. Beautiful Erica wears that mask very well. People fear me, rather than respect me. But, cracked, cold, mean, and angry, I still fit into this mask wearing world like a round peg in its equally round hole. And, as cracked as that mask is, it still doesn't let the second mask beneath it show through. No one knows what's under that except him.

  "That second mask shows me off as someone softer, more vulnerable. He sees me as sweet, caring, and loving. He sees the part of me that could be kind. He's seen it be generous, and he's enjoyed it. It's helped to justify so many of his actions; it made him believe that all of it was worth it. And even that mask, soft and sweet, giving and loving, has allowed me to be as much a part of everyone and everything as anyone would want. I'm just as accepted as anyone else.