Nice Try, Jane Sinner
Page 12
JS
I know.
The buzzer sounded. I shot him in the heart. I didn’t linger to see his reaction.
As soon as I was alone again, I took off my long-sleeved shirt. I wore a black tank top underneath. I put my hair in a messy bun and hoped I looked different. At least at first glance.
I thought I did well that round, but I came in third. The last and final round was make-or-break for me. I played my heart out, desperate to win.
The final scores came in as we gathered in the lobby, sweaty and tired and sober with the knowledge that not all friendships escaped this ordeal unscathed. I came in second overall. I don’t know who Topher M. is but I hate him with the intensity of a thousand fire-breathing dragons. I did win immunity, though. Hurrah.
Second place is a letdown. I wanted to be the best at something, even something as stupid as laser tag. I wanted that tiny bit of recognition from others. I just wish wanting it didn’t make me feel so small.
WedMay4
Chaunt’Elle called a Basement Alliance meeting between classes today. I showed up right after Bio, hungry despite the smell of formaldehyde lingering on my clothes, and annoyed with the red marks the goggles had left around my eyes. Robbie showed up a minute later, with chocolate milks for all of us.
CHAUNT’ELLE
We need to discuss strategy, now that Jane has the immunity idol.
ROBBIE
Okay.
JS
Sure.
CHAUNT’ELLE
. . . So?
JS
So, Marc is going home.
CHAUNT’ELLE
Well. I was thinking we could vote off Holly instead.
JS
(Are you thinking with your feelings again?)
Ugh. Marc is the worst.
CHAUNT’ELLE
He’s not that bad!
ROBBIE
But he’s not that great.
I slurped my chocolate milk noisily, waiting for Chaunt’Elle to make her argument.
CHAUNT’ELLE
But that’s the point. Holly is super nice. Everyone likes her. What if, in the end, the public votes for the winner? I mean, when it’s just two people, we can’t just vote ourselves. It wouldn’t work. Right?
ROBBIE
It might come down to one final challenge instead. Marc seems to be lucky at those.
JS
Lucky people are the worst.
CHAUNT’ELLE
I don’t think that’s how it will end. I’m pretty sure Alexander wants to get the public involved at some point. And I know Holly would get more support than Marc would.
Chaunt’Elle was being rational. It didn’t make sense.
CHAUNT’ELLE
Well?
I scrunched my eyebrows together. Robbie looked to me.
JS
All right.
I wasn’t entirely convinced, but Marc made a convenient scapegoat. And I had a psychology experiment to finish.
Carol was devastated when she found out I’d played laser tag without her. She called to ask where I was the night before, because I had forgotten to show up to her school play.
CAROL
Janie, you promised!
JS
I know! I know. I completely forgot. I’m sorry, Carol.
CAROL
You can’t just promise someone something and then not follow through on it. It’s not right.
JS
Thanks for the wisdom, Mother Teresa. But you weren’t actually in the play, right? You were a stagehand?
CAROL
Supportive roles are just as important!
JS
That’s the spirit.
CAROL
I’m serious, Janie. I barely see you anymore. You promised.
I did promise I’d be there for her. Not just for the play.
JS
You’re right. And I meant it. So how can I make it up to you?
CAROL
You could come live at home again.
Carol had really gotten the short end of the stick with this whole situation. The Event had hit her harder than anyone else. Then I moved out as soon as I could, and left her alone with the parents.
I can’t live there again, though. Not even for her.
JS
Or I could just buy you an ice cream cone.
CAROL
Really, Jane?
JS
How about a round of laser tag next week? Just you and me. I’ll even let you win.
CAROL
Yeah. We could do that.
JS
I’m not actually going to let you win, though. You know you don’t stand a chance.
CAROL
Just watch me!
ThuMay5
I made supper with Chaunt’Elle this evening because she asked me and I couldn’t come up with an excuse not to.
CHAUNT’ELLE
What do you want?
JS
Um. Fettuccine alfredo? I think if we combine our food supplies, we have the ingredients to make it.
CHAUNT’ELLE
What about the sauce?
JS
. . . We make it.
CHAUNT’ELLE
But I don’t know how!
JS
Come on, Chaunt’Elle. The internet exists. There’s no excuse for ignorance.
Marc heard us talking and came into the kitchen and asked if he could have some.
JS
Do you have any ingredients to contribute?
MARC
Uh, no.
JS
(We have enough food for three people, but you eat for two.)
Do you want to go pick up some?
MARC
Uh, not really.
JS
Then . . . no.
Marc pouted. I bent down to reach my mini-fridge, and as I opened it, a beautiful thing happened. Marc flinched. I almost peed myself, I was so delighted. I told Chaunt’Elle I’d be right back and ran to the garage. AP was there.
JS
Did you see that?!
AP
Yes! I can’t believe it worked!
JS
I can.
AP
I need to use this in the next episode. If you have any other fridge shenanigans planned, I suggest you use them before it airs.
JS
I’ll think of something.
AP
Good.
JS
. . . Alexander?
AP
Yes?
JS
I’m so happy.
AP
Me too.
FFAFFMay6
This afternoon I hung out in the kitchen, washing dishes and waiting for Marc. He walked in with his eyes glued to his phone, then spent a minute rummaging through his cupboard.
JS
Can I see your phone? I’m thinking of getting a new one and yours seems cool.
MARC
Yeah, sure.
He handed me the phone, and I looked it over, walking back to the sink.
JS
By the way, I think I still have yogurt in my fridge. You can have some if you like.
MARC
Oh really? Thanks, Sinner.
He bent down and placed his hand on the door. I held a small plate above the soapy water. When he opened the door, I let the plate fall.
JS
Oh shit. I dropped your phone in the water.
Marc spun around frantically.
MARC
What?!!
JS
Just kidding! Here it is. It’s super nice, by the way.
MARC
Don’t do that to me, Sinner!
His pupils were dilated and his face was flushed. I had already succeeded with the experiment. I didn’t need to keep messing with him. I felt bad, until he walked out of the kitchen with the entire container of yogurt.
SatMay7
Bonnie wanted to see the new exhibit at the
art gallery, I wanted to see Bonnie, and Tom wanted to see me, so the afternoon kind of fell into place. Bonnie knows I still haven’t told Tom about the show, so she couldn’t bring it up.
BONNIE
Remember the last time we were here?
JS
When you got so excited about that photo of Céline Dion, you nearly broke down in tears?
BONNIE
Passion is not something to be afraid of, Jane.
JS
I’m not afraid of passion.
BONNIE
You’re super awkward around it, though. Do you ever get excited about anything?
JS
Well, I got a call from an American number this morning. Turns out I won a cruise. That was pretty cool.
Tom’s laugh echoed through the gallery.
BONNIE
Relax, Tom. You’re being loud.
TOM
So, Jane, the youth group is doing a fundraiser later. A bottle drive. You in?
JS
No.
TOM
Why, are you busy? I thought we could grab a bite or something after. I mean, all of us. Bonnie too. If you want.
JS
I’m not busy. I just don’t want to.
TOM
Come on. The old Jane would be up for it.
Yeah, well, the old Jane would have felt guilty if she didn’t go.
BONNIE
Jane can do whatever she wants. She doesn’t owe you anything.
She might never fully understand what I want (which is only reasonable, if I’m not sure myself), but Bonnie will always defend my right to want it. I found that photo of Céline on a magnet in the gift shop and bought it for her. She teared up.
SunMay8
I decided to tell him today.
Robbie and I went to the playground across the street to get a break from the cameras. It was one of those rare evenings that feel like a stretched-out afternoon, with the orange sun low in the sky and the air warm and thick. The sort of evening that reminds you of being a kid with a sunburn and the taste of dirt in your mouth, and something about that makes you feel sad, but you can’t quite figure out why. Robbie didn’t want to sit on the swings at first, but I spent a good five minutes wiping down the seats and chains with my sleeve. I sat down and looked at Robbie until he sat down too. I watched the light hit his dark Roman nose and turn his face into a sundial while he waited for me to speak.
Then I told him I tried to kill myself in high school.
He asked me why, and that was a bit harder to say.
I wish I could blame it on something easily identifiable—like divorce or a death in the family or a traumatic childhood experience—something I could point to and say this is what went wrong. But it’s not that easy.
Last October I sat with my parents in church. Everyone was singing. It was a contemporary worship song, one of those three-chord power ballads designed to manipulate the congregation into feeling emotion. A blandly attractive woman with knee-high leather boots stood at the front, mike in hand, arm outstretched, and sang:
My everything, I give to you
My whole life is yours
I love you more than life itself
My whole life is yours.
The parents stood on either side of me, staring at the woman and her boots, singing. I couldn’t tell what they were feeling. I sang too. Then I realized I didn’t mean it. I had never meant it, and there was no point trying to convince myself of something I didn’t believe. I couldn’t look at the woman on the stage, I couldn’t look at my parents, I couldn’t look at the lukewarm sea of half-raised hands. And just like that, I was different. Insincere. A hypocrite.
It took me a few days to realize what that meant. I didn’t believe in God. Everything I knew about who I was and what was true became irrelevant. It felt like I was on a roller coaster, sitting at the peak and waiting to drop. Like my chest was a hole and my heart was falling through it, indefinitely. I kept waiting for it to hit the bottom. I wanted it to land, to splatter on something hard and be done with it, but it didn’t. It kept falling.
I didn’t tell my parents. I knew it wouldn’t make sense. I argued with myself instead, telling myself what they would have told me. They would have fallen back on theological catch phrases, trying to reassure me that everyone went through “spiritual dry spells.” That God “tested our faith.” That God recognized two types of people, saved and unsaved, and that the saved went to church, and the unsaved went to hell. I tried to understand the argument, tried to see the black and white. I just couldn’t. And I couldn’t respect a God who damned the majority of humanity to eternal suffering for questioning him.
I kept to myself for a few weeks, thinking. All the questions I’d managed to avoid until then came crashing down on me, prying my mind awake at night. If I never really believed in God, what did I believe in? Was I broken, defective, falling apart? Or was my entire family delusional? I didn’t see the point anymore, of going to church, of studying and playing by the rules and never being brave enough to speak my mind. Of being Jane Sinner. That person was a shell, a pretender, empty and drifting.
I knew I was clinically depressed, but I never thought I was actually suicidal. I didn’t look forward to death, and I didn’t hate my life, though I wanted to. Hatred or love—either would have been enough to keep me going. But the slushy indifference I felt for everything and everyone wasn’t on the hate/love spectrum. The indifference is what I couldn’t stand. And buried somewhere in all that indifference was a tiny black crevice I could never bring myself to look at, because I knew if I did, I’d get sucked down into an infinite void and never find my way out. I told myself life was either all or nothing. At the time it made sense.
I jumped off a small cliff on an acreage at a New Year’s Eve party, a spur-of-the-moment decision, thinking the rocks below would be enough to kill me. In retrospect I was tired of being the girl who sat quietly in her best friend’s shadow, who didn’t know what to do in social situations, who behaved herself and bored herself, who now had trouble getting out of bed and eating and being decent to her own family. I wasn’t thinking of any of that on the cliff, though. The only thought I had was “I wonder what would happen.”
I never did have good depth perception.
I hit the water instead, or at least most of me did. The chinook saved my life—if it hadn’t been so warm that day, the cold water would have done me in, even after I half crawled up the bank. They told me Ben Hwong’s dad found me and drove my limp body back to his house in his one-person tractor while shouting at quasi-drunk stragglers to get off his property. I would have liked to have been conscious to be amused by it all. Instead I woke up in a hospital bed a few hours later.
I remember the anger I felt when I woke. Not just anger: hatred. Hatred for the sterile hospital bed, hatred for the numerous hands that had touched my unconscious body, hatred for screwing up something as simple as death, hatred for the inevitable pity and compassion I knew I’d have to face. The hatred made my muscles quiver, and I felt stronger and more alive than I ever had before. It was beautiful. It didn’t last.
Next came the parents, the flowers, the visitors I refused to see, the rumors I imagined spreading beyond my room. I spent a few days there, frustrated and bored. Carol was too angry with me to visit, at least the first couple days. Once I saw my dad almost cry. His eyes were red and wet, and as I looked at him, something sharp poked a tiny hole in my numbness. A little bit of pain leaked out. I don’t think I’ve ever believed in regret, but that moment I came close.