You Must Not Miss

by Katrina Leno

  Magpie took the yogurt tube and turned it over slowly. The flavor was bodacious blueberry.

  “You think it’s disgusting, but you want me to have it?” Magpie asked. She’d been trying to make something of a joke, but it ended up just sounding a little rude.

  “I’ll take it,” Brianna said, and plucked it out of Magpie’s fingers.

  “What about that short story for Mr. James? Fucking dark, huh?” Clare said.

  “I would read whatever Mr. James wanted me to read,” Luke said. “I would read his grocery list.”

  “Gross, you can have him,” Brianna said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t see what the fuss is about.”

  “You can’t deny the smolderiness of those eyes,” Clare said, sighing into her container of applesauce.

  Magpie didn’t contribute; she didn’t really have much of an opinion about Mr. James’s looks. He was just another teacher who assigned homework she didn’t do.

  “You should eat something,” Ben whispered to Magpie, leaning closely. “Mrs. Henderson is on the prowl.”

  Magpie looked around the cafeteria; sure enough, the school guidance counselor was walking from table to table examining lunch choices.

  Magpie took an exaggerated bite of her sandwich.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled to Ben.

  “You’re welcome. How’s your day so far?”

  Magpie looked at him. Ben had one of those open, honest faces. Everything was laid out on the table with him. Magpie liked that.

  “I’m tired,” she responded. She hadn’t slept much the night before. She had lain in bed for hours and stared at the ceiling and felt the weight of the night as if it were something you could put on a scale and measure.

  “You look tired,” Ben said. “Here.” He handed her the rest of his coffee. Magpie hadn’t really drunk coffee before meeting Ben, but now he often shared his with her. She had a sip and felt the warmth flow almost dramatically down her chest into her stomach.

  She had sat at this table and known these people for only six months, but in that time, she had become comfortable with them. They were acutely aware of the unfairness of the world, of Farther High, of their own unique circumstances. They didn’t know Magpie’s full story, but they had all heard the whispers that followed her down every hallway: slut.

  “Thanks,” Magpie said again, about the coffee. Ben knocked his shoulder into hers.

  “You’re welcome, Mags,” he said.

  Different names for different people.

  To teachers: Margaret.

  To this table: Mags.

  To herself, her mom, her dad, her sister, Allison:

  Magpie.

  Ben and Magpie both had history after lunch, so they walked together, taking a very roundabout way that Ben never questioned (to avoid Allison’s locker). Magpie hadn’t known Ben well before she’d switched lunch tables, but now she might call them friends—even though they generally saw each other only in the cafeteria and the hallways that connected the cafeteria to history class.

  They walked in silence for a minute until they reached a water fountain where Ben paused to have a sip.

  When he straightened up, he said, “Have you thought about Ms. Peel’s assignment?”

  Magpie hadn’t paid attention in history for six months; she couldn’t confidently say whether they were in World War I or World War II or the Cold War or maybe no war at all, maybe just the California Gold Rush or something.

  “Assignment?” she repeated.

  “The final project,” Ben said. He waited a moment, but Magpie’s eyes showed no recognition. “She’s been talking about this since January, you really don’t…?”

  “Oh, yeah, of course,” Magpie said. It was the safest answer. Ben looked relieved.

  “Well, I was wondering if you wanted to be my partner?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Did you have an idea for the topic?”

  “I dunno. Maybe you should choose.”

  “How about… Amelia Earhart? It fits the criteria, you know, women who’ve positively impacted history.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “Cool,” he said. And then—quietly enough so she almost didn’t hear him—he added, “Hey… is something going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re usually quiet. And that’s fine! It’s just today you seem a little quieter than usual.”

  He stepped to the side as a senior boy Magpie didn’t know paused to use the water fountain. He took a sip, pulled away, looked from Magpie to Ben, then said, “I wouldn’t drink after her if I were you.”

  Magpie felt her cheeks grow hot as the boy melted away into the crowded hallway. Ben looked as if he wanted to say something else but didn’t know quite where to start.

  Finally, he cleared his throat, and said, “That was… I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s fine. It’s totally fine. That was tame.”

  “Really? People are still… saying stuff?”

  Magpie laughed quietly, a laugh that was more like a scoff. “I know you hear them,” she said after a second.

  “I don’t listen,” he said earnestly. “I learned a long time ago not to listen.”

  “But you still hear.”

  He smirked a little at that. “Fair enough,” he said. “I still hear. But I don’t listen.”

  “You might as well,” she said with a shrug. “Everything they say about me is true.”

  Ben tilted his head. As if he was looking at her from another angle. Then he frowned slightly, and said, “Well. I don’t believe that for a second.”

  When the last bell rang, Magpie waited thirty full minutes in her algebra classroom, then went to her locker. As usual, she left all her books at school. Her backpack was mostly empty; it contained only her house key, the yellow notebook, and her cell phone, a pay-per-use thing she hadn’t used in weeks.

  She walked to the grocery store.

  There were two grocery stores in town, Baker Farms and Kent’s.

  Allison worked at Baker Farms.

  Magpie went to Kent’s.

  She had her mother’s credit card in her back pocket. She knew exactly how much was on the card because she opened the bright-red bills that came in the mail every month. She paid the minimum with money stolen from her mother’s wallet, just enough so they wouldn’t turn off the card. There were many little obstacles to figure out now that Ann Marie had given up all her responsibilities, but Magpie was navigating them deftly.

  Her sister, Eryn—

  Magpie didn’t like to think about her sister.

  But Eryn hadn’t been interested in navigating those obstacles anymore. Eryn had told Magpie once, a year or so ago, how bad it used to be. Eryn was six years older than Magpie, and Magpie had been too young to remember the last time her mother had been drinking.

  Eryn had said that if their mother ever started drinking again, she would leave.

  Eryn, true to her word, had left.

  She wasn’t physically that far away—she was a senior at Fairview College, barely thirty miles from Farther—but it felt as if she were in another country, on another planet. It felt as if Eryn had died and nobody had thought to tell Magpie when the funeral was.

  She didn’t know what was worse.

  Her father calling every night at six o’clock to remind her of his naked pink body standing up with everything hanging everywhere, how he had tried to hug her after he’d finally put his clothes back on, his shirt clinging to his damp skin, his hair falling limply around his face, tears pouring down his cheeks and apologies pouring from his mouth.

  Or her sister, who never called.

  Or her sister, who changed her phone number.

  Or her sister, whose last words to Magpie were: “I’m sorry, okay? But I cannot sacrifice my mental health just because you’re not old enough to leave yet. Call me when you’re eighteen.”

  Magpie consulted the mental list of groceries that she kept folded up in some easily acces
sible part of her brain. A dozen or so boxes of macaroni and cheese, milk, butter. Dish soap.

  But how was Magpie supposed to call Eryn when she was eighteen if Magpie didn’t know Eryn’s number? Would Eryn come back for her?

  She remembered the wilted, smelly broccoli in the otherwise bare refrigerator. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d eaten something green. She vaguely heard some employee ask her if she needed help finding anything, but she ignored him until he shrugged and walked away.

  She gathered up the few things she needed, already forgetting the broccoli, then grabbed a tiny orange to eat on the way home, so she wouldn’t get scurvy.

  Scurvy? she thought. All the shit you’re swimming in and you’re worried about scurvy?

  It was not warm enough that evening to go in the pool, but Magpie went to the backyard anyway and tended to it, skimming drowned and bloated bugs off the surface and sprinkling more chemicals in to shock all the winter germs away. She dumped the contents of the filter into the grass and dragged the dead swan to the trash cans around the side of the house.

  She gave the garden shed a wide berth. It was filled with things that belonged to her father, the things he hadn’t had time to pack: lawn mower and camping equipment and ski poles, all linked together by an elaborate network of spiderwebs.

  She did the dishes while her macaroni cooked. Her mother was semilucid and had even gone to work. She kissed Magpie vaguely on the cheek and asked her about school.

  “School is great,” Magpie said.

  “How is Allison?”

  “Allison is great.”

  “She hasn’t been around in a while.”

  “She was here the other day; you were out.”

  The delicate ecosystem of the house was maintained only if Magpie carefully avoided certain truths: She had not spoken to Allison for six months; her mother was an alcoholic; her father had slept with her aunt.

  This was easy to manage because her mother generally lost interest in talking to Magpie after a few minutes.

  “I think I’ll order pizza,” Ann Marie said. “Would you eat some pizza pie, little Magpie?”

  “Yeah, Mom, that sounds great,” Magpie said, knowing that her mom would not order the pizza, knowing that her mom would pass out soon, knowing that if she actually did want pizza she would have to order it herself.

  Magpie tended to her macaroni and cheese; it was marginally better this evening because of the milk and butter. She ate standing over the sink, looking out the little window at the backyard, the pool, the pizza float she’d pulled onto the pool’s platform so it wouldn’t get too soaked in chemicals, the little shed just beyond the pool that contained all her father’s things.

  Maybe one of these days she would burn it down.

  On Tuesday morning Mr. James arrived fifteen minutes before class instead of his usual five, and he sat down at the desk next to Magpie’s and asked her if she’d read the story yet.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Forget I’m sorry,” he said. “I need a little more than that from you, Margaret. Do you realize you’re looking at repeating sophomore year? I’m trying to help you out here, but I’m getting the distinct impression you don’t want to be helped.”

  Magpie was very practiced at giving the bare minimum of information to satisfy the questions of a nosy entity. “I’m sorry. I mean—my father left a few months ago. It hasn’t been easy on my mother and me. I’m trying my best. I really am trying my best.”

  Mr. James let out an enormous sigh; maybe he was thankful she’d given him something to work with. “All you have to do is ask for help; I guarantee you there are plenty of people willing to give it to you. Let’s see… Why don’t you go home tonight and do the reading? The Joyce Carol Oates story. Read it, and then tomorrow I’ll get here a little early and we’ll talk about it. Sound good?”

  “Thank you,” Magpie said.

  Mr. James nodded.

  Then he saw the yellow notebook that she had hurriedly closed when he had walked into the classroom. He touched its cover and Magpie felt the touch on the inside of her body. That notebook was as much a part of her as her blood, her soft tissue, her large intestines. It was as if he’d run his fingernails across her heart. It wasn’t a nice feeling.

  “I always see you writing in this,” he said.

  “It’s nothing,” she replied quickly.

  “Are you a writer, Margaret?”

  Was she a writer? Only if you could count writing about make-believe worlds.

  Well—one make-believe world.

  A place she knew as intimately as the real town she lived in.

  A place she returned to again and again and again.

  The only place she knew she belonged.

  “Not really,” she replied.

  “It’s none of my business,” he said. “But if you ever want to share anything, I’d be honored to read it.”

  Before he had gotten to class, Magpie had written one new line in the yellow notebook.

  In Near I will be able to protect myself from the people who have hurt me.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  But what she meant was something closer to:

  In a thousand million years, no.

  At lunch everybody was talking about the end-of-the-year party that Brandon Phipp was throwing at his parents’ house.

  Magpie’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch when his name trickled through the cafeteria and reached even their table, the lowest of the lows. Only Ben noticed her pushing her tray toward Brianna, suddenly unhungry. He offered her a small Tupperware of baby carrots. Ben’s mother still packed him lunch every day; she sometimes even wrote him little notes that made him smile and made Magpie’s heart break into forty-seven million pieces inside her chest. She took a carrot and smiled weakly at him. He pushed the rest of his coffee toward her.

  Everything they say about me is true.

  Why had she said that?

  Why hadn’t he believed her?

  Because he’s a nice guy, she realized.

  “I think it’s pathetic that everyone is so excited about a party,” Brianna was saying.

  “I think you think it’s pathetic just because you won’t be invited,” Clare said, laughing. Brianna threw a potato chip at her.

  “I’m definitely going,” Luke announced. “It will be fun.”

  “Brandon Phipp once bought me a powdered donut. The kind with jelly inside,” Brianna said.

  “See, that’s nice!” Clare said.

  “With a note that said, Next time you bleed through your pad, you can blame it on this,” Brianna finished.

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” Ben chimed in.

  “I mean, the jelly wasn’t even red. It was purple,” Brianna added. Then she shrugged. “I still ate it.”

  “So Brianna’s a no.” Luke laughed. “Clare’s a yes. I’m a yes. What about you, Mags?”

  Magpie looked up from her coffee. She stole a quick glance across the cafeteria.

  And there they were, sitting together as usual: Allison and Brandon. In the split second she allowed herself to look at them, Brandon was drinking from a can of soda. Allison was inspecting a fingernail.

  Magpie turned back around, and she made herself smile.

  It was a trick she had learned from Allison, actually.

  How to act like you didn’t care about anything in the world.

  You smiled but not too wide. More like a smirk. And you tilted your head a little, as if you found something vaguely entertaining.

  And you took an idle sip of coffee, and said, “I’m probably a no.”

  And you tried to ignore the memories of that night. Of the last party you had been to at Brandon Phipp’s house. When you were so drunk you could barely see straight. When you were so drunk you had to rely on other people’s version of events. When you weren’t sure you trusted your own memory enough to contradict them.

  Luke shrugged. “Suit yourself
. I think it’ll be fun, though. Ben, what about you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ben said. “I mean, Brandon’s house is enormous; I heard he has an indoor swimming pool and everything. It would be sort of cool to see it. But on the other hand…”

  “On the other hand, it’s Brandon Phipp,” Brianna interjected. “And let’s not forget that donuts aren’t the only things he gives girls.”

  Nobody had to ask what Brianna meant; everyone had heard the rumors about Brandon slipping things into girls’ drinks.

  The rumors about how, between Brandon and his college-age brother, a girl couldn’t set her cup down at a Phipp party.

  “So we watch our drinks,” Clare said a little impatiently. “And we go and have a fun time. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.”

  But Magpie knew—sometimes it was more complicated than that. Even if you didn’t want it to be.

  Magpie went to sleep late that night and woke up hours later to an enormous crash. She lay motionless in bed listening to someone attempt to pick up what they had knocked over and then to another crash as they dropped it again and then to a sort of stumbling, shuffling sound as whoever it was knocked up against various furniture.

  Ann Marie, home and drunk.

  Magpie crept quietly out of her bedroom and down the short hallway that led to the living room. Her mother had turned on a lamp, but it lay overturned on the floor, along with the phone, a stack of dirty dishes, and the end table that had held it all.

  Her mother sat on the floor now, cradling the phone. The dial tone was muffled against Ann Marie’s shirt. Magpie took it from her mother’s hands. Ann Marie looked up and blinked.

  “I fell,” she said.

  “You’re bleeding,” Magpie replied.

  Ann Marie had a thin cut that ran the length of her forehead, as if someone had gently pressed the tip of a knife into her skin and dragged it a few inches. She raised her fingers to the cut now, pressing gingerly, her face revealing no pain.

  “I don’t remember,” she said.

  “Just go to bed, all right? I’ll take care of all this.”