Y in the Shadows

by Karen Rivers

  Aurelia is still talking. Hasn’t she noticed that Michael isn’t responding? She is saying something breathlessly, something she must think is important. Michael listens. The Girls have a new “thing.” A mission: getting rid of Yale. Getting her off the gymnastics team. She screwed up, so she’s out. Not that she was ever really in with The Girls, but she was always around. She wasn’t so blatantly outcast. It’s like that show on TV, Survivor. They want to vote Yale off the island.

  “We’ll all do it together,” Aurelia says confidently. “She won’t even know what hit her.”

  It makes Michael feel tired. “Oh,” she says.

  So incredibly, heavily tired that she lies down on the mat. After all, what did Yale really do that was so wrong? She must be humiliated beyond anything imaginable. She must die a bit inside every time someone brings it up again. All the jokes and the never-let-it-drop-mentality are starting, frankly, to embarrass Michael a bit by association.

  She’s having a really hard time hating Yale for something that’s nothing to do with her, having a hard time even listening to Aurelia or Sam or Madison rambling on and on about it. She does not want to talk about how Yale got her period anymore.

  She wants to — needs to — focus on herself, if she’s being honest. She’d rather Aurelia and Sam and Madison came over to have a break-it-down conversation about Tony, about what she must be doing wrong. Really, she just wants — needs! — their reassurance that it’s not her, it’s him. There’s something wrong with him.

  Not her.

  She must have PMS or something because she feels overwhelmed. Weepy. Even feels a bit like crying right now, listening to Aurelia spill the details of the “plan.”

  “I have to go,” she says. Michael hangs up the phone, sits up straight on her mat, concentrates on her meditation. Hope has told her that she’s doing well with it, although how she knows Michael has no idea. Maybe that’s why, lately, she has felt like she’s been watched. Maybe Hope has installed some kind of camera in her room, to make sure she’s really doing her therapy homework. To make sure she’s really breathing.

  Well, she’s not. The joke’s on Hope. Meditating is just time for her to obsess. When she closes her eyes, she can easily see a visual compilation of all her flaws. For example, she’s getting a cold sore. Gross. She probably gave it to Tony. She knows that cold sores are herpes, so she gave him herpes. Great. He’ll love that.

  No wonder he didn’t call.

  The phone rings and rings. Sam. Aurelia. Madison. Again. She doesn’t pick up. Can’t stand any of them, not right now. Not when she feels this way.

  The jeans she wore today were too tight. All day she was aware of the small fold of her belly sticking out over the top. She was so anxious about it she literally felt like her head was going to explode if she didn’t change, but there was no way to come home and do that. Besides which, her punishment for being such a fat pig should be to wear gross, uncomfortable, ugly jeans that make her look terrible. Her hair is a disaster; split ends are waving around the top of her skull like tiny antennae.

  “Breathe,” she reminds herself, out loud, forcefully. She can hear Sully smashing around in her closet. What is he doing in there? Should she go check?

  Her sisters are nearby though. If he were in trouble, they’d hear. She needs this time to meditate. She can hear Angene singing in the hallway. There, she’s taking care of it. Maybe. Hopefully. The song stops. There’s the sound of someone mock tap dancing. Well.

  She shudders at the reminder of how weird her sister is. But at the same time, she’s glad her sisters live here sometimes. Like now, for example, when Mum and Dad are away at some kind of horrifying animal-stuffing convention in Boise. The idea of being alone in the house gives her nightmares. When it does happen, which hasn’t been very often, she lies awake all night. Eyes glued open by her completely crazy and irrational belief that the animals’ ghosts will come for her. Animal zombies, risen from the dead.

  “Too many of those stupid movies,” she says out loud.

  “Talking to myself,” she adds.

  Somehow saying it out loud makes her feel worse, so she stops.

  “Breathe,” she says again. “Breathe.” She concentrates on the in and out. In (garlic and mung bean grossness fills her nose). Out (she feels her exhalation on her cold sore and it stings).

  Tears fill her eyes. She stares at the phone. Ring, goddamn you, she thinks.

  Angene — or maybe it’s Chelsea, their voices are impossible to tell apart — shouts at her for dinner. Everyone is always shouting, she thinks. This house is too big.

  She shouts back, almost drowning out the ringing phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Michael?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Tony?”

  She’s confused. The call display shows a name she doesn’t recognize right away. “Matti?”

  He laughs. “No,” he says. “It’s Is. I’m using Matti’s phone.”

  “Is,” she says. Like he calls all the time. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself,” he says. “Wondering if you wanted to hook up this weekend.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Sure. I mean, okay.”

  “Cool,” he says. “Bunch of us going up to the lakes.”

  “Bunch of us?” she says.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Me and Matti. Jason and his girl. You.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Not Tony?”

  “No,” he says. “Problem?”

  “Oh,” she says. She’s saying that too much. “No problem. Cool.”

  She hangs up.

  What is that? she thinks. What is that about? Israel has never paid much attention to her before. They have the same friends. She was with Matti for about ten seconds last year. So their paths crossed at parties.

  Matti was a jackass. He always drank so much. He almost always threw up. Disgusting. His breath always smelled like Doritos. He liked to grab at her chest in a way that made her want to scream at him. Always grappling with her clothes, like they were impossible to remove. Still it was somehow okay. She felt like she was wrapped in cellophane when she was around him. Like she was protected by a barrier that he couldn’t penetrate. Mostly because he probably didn’t want to. Likely it was all for show. He never ever kissed her, which — now that she thinks about it — was pretty weird. She’s almost sure he’s gay. Spends more time on his hair than she does and that’s saying a lot.

  Oh, well, she thinks. She looks at herself in the mirror. “You’re pretty,” she says. She feels prettier somehow. At least someone wants her. Maybe not Tony, but Israel Santiago. Well, everyone wants him.

  She’s somebody.

  Not that she really wants... well. There’s something about Israel that unsettles her. His eyes. The way he moves. The way he always has a girl sticking a tongue in his ear, touching his lap. The way he seems to need that, like it feeds him. Like the girls are clothes he’s wearing to look cooler. But more than that, it’s like he’s sexually overcharged. He’s too much.

  Especially for her.

  Don’t be stupid, she tells herself. He’s just another boy. Besides, she thinks. Maybe Tony will be jealous. Maybe he’ll care. In any event, it’s just one weekend. Just for a night. She can keep Israel off her, she’s sure of it. And it will sure make Tony wonder. It will make him want her more. She’s almost — almost — sure of it.

  ****

  Yale

  Chapter 10

  This class won’t end. Maybe ever. Maybe this is going to go on for all of eternity, with the cedar chip smell of the urine-soaked hamster cage making my mouth pucker with nausea. I watch the rodents run through their Habitrail. The stench feels like it’s clogging up my brain. Tony isn’t here today. Neither is Israel.

  Michael has a hickey on her neck. I find my eyes keep sliding over to her, staring at the bruise. I heard that she and Tony hooked up. Is that Tony’s hickey? Probably. Who cares?

  I do. It makes me feel
funny. Nervous, somehow. A bit sick. Michael keeps touching it. Tipping her head to the side. Smiling, texting back and forth with Samantha, obviously, both of them alternating typing and laughing. Flicking their hair. That way that they have gets to me, that “Look at us, we’re such good friends; everything is funny to us because we’re protected by the bubble of each other.” The smugness.

  If I were being honest, I guess I’d say I was jealous.

  Michael’s hand reaches up again. Rubs the mark. Okay, okay, we get it. You have a hickey. Big deal. Her fingers feather her neck again. Highlighting, pointing, showing off. I force myself to look away. Concentrate on twirling my pen between my thumb and forefinger. My cuticle is raw and sore.

  Mr. Eggerton is handing back our papers. He holds each one up before returning it, inspecting it in the light as though it’s one of those children’s stickers that change when you angle them just so. It’s taking forever.

  I stretch my legs out under my desk and back again. So taut. My muscles in a constant state of aching from the disappearances. I jog them up and down. Somehow it’s a relief to do this, like the jittering of my limbs relieves some of the jittering inside of me.

  “Stop fidgeting, Miss Grant,” says Mr. Eggerton. He’s standing over me. He’s so close I can see the ring around the collar of his shirt. Dirt. Sweat. Disgusting.

  Still, one thing about Mr. Eggerton is that no matter how strange he is, he has kind eyes. I’d never admit to anyone how much I actually like Mr. Eggerton because of this. “If you need to visit the bathroom,” he says, “please go.”

  “Need a tampon?” someone says from the back of the room. A girl. Who was it? I swing my head around to see, fast enough to blur the laughing faces. Everyone thinks it’s hilarious.

  It’s always hilarious when it isn’t you, I guess.

  That particular embarrassment probably won’t end. I concentrate on Mr. Eggerton’s eyes so I don’t accidentally fade. I’m getting so that doesn’t happen. Not now. Not from embarrassment. Not accidentally. I have more control now. I’m figuring it out. I’m figuring out a lot of things. Like Michael. Not like we’re friends or anything, but somehow ...

  This morning, I bumped into her in the bathroom. She was frowning at herself in the mirror and I could almost hear her voice saying, “Fat pig.” So I said, “Those jeans make you look so thin, you’re so lucky.” Big deal, right? Wasn’t hard for me to say. But she lit up. She did. She smiled at me like she genuinely liked me.

  “Your paper,” Mr. Eggerton says. It kind of floats toward me, jars me back into the room.

  “Tampon, tampon, tampon,” someone chants.

  “Quiet,” snaps Mr. Eggerton. “One more idiotic comment and everyone gets detention.” He gives me a sympathetic look.

  I blush hard. My eyes are watering. Why do I let them get to me? I hold my paper in my hands like it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

  I got an F. I can’t believe it. Quickly, I flip the paper over so no one sees it. I feel sick, like I’m actually going to have a heart attack. I’ve never got an F on anything before. Suddenly, I can imagine myself flunking grade twelve. Having to stay an extra year. No future. Another year of maxi-pads stuck to my locker door.

  Another year of humiliation.

  I swallow hard so I don’t cry. I know it’s extreme. I’m overreacting. It’s just a paper. Who cares?

  Mr. Eggerton has moved on. “Miss Hyde-Smith,” he says. “Terrible work, as usual.” There’s more laughter. I smile, too. Fake a laugh. It feels like I’m choking on a wasp.

  “Ha dee ha,” says Michael. “You’re funny, Mr. E.”

  “It’s Eggerton,” he says.

  “Okay, Eggerton,” she says.

  “Miss Hyde-Smith,” he says, like he’s going to get mad. But then he laughs. Laughs? She’s flirting. I feel wronged. His laugh sounds underused, rusty.

  Everyone loves Michael.

  It’s not fair. Miss Hyde-Smith. Even her name sounds better than everyone else’s.

  In big red letters on the back page of mine, I can see through the paper, it says, SEE ME. Why does it have to be in block letters? Is it that serious?

  I can’t remember writing this paper. Through the back page, above the SEE ME, I can see words that I must have typed.

  My hand is shaking. Well, that’s normal.

  I start to draw on the paper, to steady it. I sketch Michael, quickly. Then Aurelia and Sam. Sort of caricatures, I guess. Like they’re lollipops. Soon I can’t see the writing through the whiteness anymore. I concentrate on the drawing. There’s more laughter, I don’t hear why it’s funny. As long as it’s not about me, I don’t care.

  I have a crazy urge to follow Mr. Eggerton home tonight. See where he lives. Spy on him in the bathroom or something equally twisted. Maybe I should start taking pictures or something. Blackmail. I can make him change my grade.

  No, no, no.

  That isn’t me.

  That would definitely be wrong.

  I won’t go that far. I know it as clearly as I can smell the hot lamp of the overhead projector, the smell of the erasable markers that Mr. Eggerton uses, the mixed smells of soap, perfume and Lysol that backfill every classroom.

  I am not evil.

  Someone taps me on the shoulder. Michael.

  “I got an F, too,” she says conspiratorially.

  “Oh,” I say. I can’t read her expression. It’s either bitchy or friendly. Vindictive or shy. “Too bad.”

  But my tone is all wrong. It comes out sarcastic. Harsh. Mean. I don’t know why that happens. Why do I do that? Her face closes up, just like that, like an anenome closing over a crab.

  “I mean, that sucks,” I add lamely, but it’s too late, she’s already turned away again, her hair sleekly falling toward me like a blade. I back away so it doesn’t touch me. Suddenly it looks dangerous.

  I almost say, “Breathe,” but I don’t.

  The bell rings, loudly. So loudly that I jump. Stuff my paper into my backpack. Head for the door.

  “Miss Grant,” says Mr. Eggerton, in front of me suddenly. “See me, please.”

  “Practice,” I mumble, pushing past him. “Gymnastics, can’t be late.” It’s not a lie. It’s Monday, gymnastics right after school Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. It’s true that I’ve missed practice before but in this school, sports rules everything. “Practice” can get you out of anything.

  He’s so close that I can smell his Tic Tacs, orange flavour. Smell his shampoo, it smells like tar, some kind of dandruff stuff I guess. A haze of body odour, sweat, cheap deodorant with some kind of harsh metallic tang. “Tomorrow, then,” he says. For a second, it seems like he’s going to actually put his hand on my shoulder. I flinch. Someone pushes past me from behind.

  “Sorry,” Aurela says. She always spits when she talks. Her breath smells like roasted chicken. “You’re kind of like standing right in the door.”

  “I know,” I say. “I was just ...” but she’s gone.

  My arms and legs feel heavy. Anika smiles at me as I go past her locker, but it seems too hard to smile back. Down the end of the hall, I see Tony and Israel in a huddle by the water fountain. Nice of them to show up for class. For irrational reasons, I feel like shouting at them. Tony glances up at me, and I swear that he winces. I glower at him for good measure. So what if his skin smells good? Who cares? I don’t need him. I don’t have a crush.

  I don’t.

  I don’t need anyone. I don’t need for him to like me back. I just like him because of the singing. Because he was so sad. He had a brother who died, you know? So maybe I just like him because he would understand about the absence, I think. I think he would get how much I miss the other Yale, even though I’ve never even seen a picture of her.

  There’s a knot in my stomach like hunger or sickness. I chew a piece of strong mint gum that I can taste in my nose as I exhale. It burns. I can’t miss practice. Today we’re setting our routines for the next meet, the nationals. It’s imp
ortant.

  Is it?

  Suddenly it doesn’t feel important.

  I feel almost like turning left, going down the stairs and running out into the rain. It’s pouring — spring rain saturating everything, warm water hitting the ground like a shower and the scent of everything green bouncing back in the cleansed air. I can almost feel the water on my skin. Smell how fresh it must be, the water so thick coming from the sky that all the foul odours are temporarily tamped down, muffled under the rest.

  There aren’t nearly enough windows in this school, but through the funny narrow slits cut high in the walls near the ceiling, I can see nothing but water, water, more water.

  The school is sinking.

  I wish. I take a deep breath, mostly of sweat and musty books and hair products, all overwritten by the ubiquitous smell of Lysol. I don’t have time for fresh air.

  I trudge on through the seething halls to the gym. The volume is incredible now that school is over for the day. It’s like people are exploding out of themselves to escape. I wonder if everyone hates it here as much as I do.

  Maybe I’m not so unique, after all. If I spied on everyone here, would I see that everyone was just as freaked out as me?

  I don’t want to believe that. I want to think everyone is happy. Everyone. Even the people I don’t like. Even the people I don’t know.

  Someone trips in front of me, dropping a Math book on my foot. I keep going. All over the place cell phones are ringing and beeping and playing songs. Kids are listening to iPods, hunching over, acting invisible. Some are hugging each other, shouting, dancing.

  Idiots, I think. I feel more comfortable hating them for their entitlement; I don’t want to feel sorry for them for covering up.

  The Girls are already in the change room when I get there. Laughing loudly in that obnoxious way that makes me lonely.

  Aurelia is pretending to kiss Madison, a scene that would send most boys in the school into some kind of orgasmic hysteria. They’re shrieking with laughter in a way that suggests that kissing girls is somehow gross, yet also risqué and daring and sexy.