by Lindy Zart
Jocelyn shakes her head, the scent of expensive perfume filling the vicinity as she does. “Don’t look at me. I hate writing. I’m doing as little as possible on this project.”
“As if that’s anything new,” I snap. I saw her talking to Jeff this morning. She was standing too close, smiling too wide, laughing too loud. I wanted to claw out her eyes. The urge hasn’t lessened all that much.
Her gaze narrows on me. “Something bothering you, Mel?”
Just your face.
“We have to be way behind everyone else.” Casey looks around the classroom split into small groups, gnawing on her lower lip with her teeth. Her nude-toned top completely washes out her pale complexion, and seeing that immediately after Jocelyn and Jeff, put me in a better mood.
“All the more reason to decide on what to write about, and get writing.” Realizing my jaw is clenched, I work at loosening it.
“How about a story about shopping? That would be fun, right?” Casey suggests, her enthusiasm fading as I turn my attention to her. She shrinks in her seat.
“That’s lame,” Jocelyn announces.
“We could write about the hideous zit taking over your chin,” Lexie says to me in a bored tone.
Jocelyn snorts, clapping a hand over her mouth to keep the laughter contained.
My mouth drops open, even as my fingers reach up to cover the blemish. If I had bullets for eyes, she’d be dead.
Looking disinterested in my rage, she focuses on Jocelyn. “Why are you laughing? Your lipstick makes you look like a clown.”
Jocelyn’s eyes widen, and I fight a smile.
Lexie looks at Casey, who freezes in her chair with a tiny squeak.
“Too easy,” Lexie mumbles.
I slap a palm against my desk, and Casey jumps. Leaning toward the short-haired girl with an obvious death sentence, I hiss, “I don’t know who you think you are, but you are not allowed to speak to me the way you are.”
“Really?” Her blue eyes flash and she straightens in her seat. “Do you think you control everything and everyone around you? Because I can talk to you however I want, just like you talk to me and everyone else however you want.”
The bell sounds as she gets to her feet. She drops a handful of papers on her desk and leaves. An unusual feeling shrieks through me at the sight of them, and I practically dive for the papers, thinking it’s another hideous drawing of me, or worse, multiple ones. Ignoring the looks from my friends, I glance down. Relief streams through me, as potent as the other unnamable emotion I had when I saw the papers. It’s just words.
“What is it?” Jocelyn demands, reaching out a hand.
“She started the project,” I say slowly, my eyes skimming along the first page before moving to the next. Jocelyn grabs the pages from me as I read them.
“About what?” Casey works at putting the desks back in their proper places.
“A girl tries to kill herself and ends up in a mental institution,” I tell her, more disturbed by the words than I understand.
I look up, and find both of my friends staring at me.
“She’s a total nut job,” Jocelyn says with a shudder. Her eyes go back to the piece of paper she’s holding, her expression riveted as she reads.
“Did you ladies decide you’d like to have two English classes today?” Mr. Walters asks with a pleasant smile from the front of the room.
“Oh. No,” Casey supplies.
His smile disappears. “Then I suggest you leave.”
Realizing I’m the only one still seated, I get to my feet and walk up the aisle.
“Melanie,” Mr. Walters calls.
I shift my gaze from the last page I hold in my hands to my teacher.
“Your desk.”
With an eye roll as I turn my back on Mr. Walters, I quickly backtrack and shove my desk in line with the rest. Jocelyn and Casey wait for me at the door, and I wordlessly take the pages from Jocelyn’s hands. When she opens her mouth to protest, I silence her with a cutting look. I’m keeping the papers. I’m dealing with Lexie. I’m not letting Jocelyn have anything—not the papers, and not Jeff. It’s all there in my look. She understands, flipping her hair over her shoulder and strolling toward her next class. She understands, but she doesn’t accept it.
Jocelyn and I may end up enemies yet.
After suffering through my art class, I make a beeline for the girls’ restroom. First checking that it’s empty, I then go to the mirror and study my face. To be popular, you don’t necessarily have to be good-looking, although that definitely helps. What you have to have, more than anything, is confidence. If anyone knew I was in here, self-conscious about a pimple, my social status would take a dive. Because when you’re popular, even if something upsets you, you have to act like it doesn’t.
Turning my face side to side, I decide the zit really isn’t that noticeable. I’m letting Lexie get to me. An unpopular girl who has nothing going for her. Nothing to make her even the smallest bit interesting. Why am I making her more intriguing than she is? That isn’t acceptable. I wipe the scowl from my face, stiffen my spine, and stride from the restroom, my poise restored.
But when I meet up with Jeff, I swear he’s staring at my chin the whole time. I try to cover it up with my hands, becoming flustered the longer we talk, to the point where I flee the conversation in the middle of asking him to come to my party in three weeks. This isn’t me. I don’t like feeling this way. And when I walk by Lexie in the hall before lunch, unease trickles through me at the thought of what she might do or say. I avert my eyes; I hurry my steps. As if I can outrun her. As if I can make her not exist. If only.
Finally, as I make my way to the lunchroom with paranoia as my companion, I realize what I felt when I saw the papers: anxiety.
Eight
Alexis
IT HAPPENS SLOWLY.
A smile from someone who wouldn’t look at me last fall.
Being included in conversation where I was previously excluded.
Noticed when I used to be invisible.
Should I be happy about it?
Should I welcome the attention?
I’m not, and I don’t.
Because I was here, in this school, just a few short months ago, and I was never given a chance. I meant so little that no one even remembers me. Cut off my hair and I’m unrecognizable? Is that how it works? No. They never saw me, and so, they can’t see who I am now. Why should I give them a chance?
How have I changed since then? I’m bitter, to be sure. Is that what they see? Is that what makes me remarkable to them? A jaded girl with an immovable chip on her shoulder. Maybe I remind them of themselves now. I unclench my jaw and stare at the white ceiling of my bedroom. Being at that school makes me scream on the inside every second that I’m there, and every second feels like a lifetime. I want to let it loose on all of them. I want to tear down the school, and all the kids inside it. I also want to hide, and never step foot inside it again.
I want to cry.
And I want to forget.
Forcing my thoughts from the turmoil of my mind, I get up from the bed and move to the window. I push back the curtain that matches my turquoise bedding, and stare out at the dark blue sky as it fades to black. Lights from houses and businesses join the stars, making Enid bright, and seemingly beautiful. I can’t think of a single person here who was kind to me, and that’s sad.
I look in the direction of Live, and wonder what Nick’s doing at this very moment. When I want to obliterate everything from my mind, I think of him, and it all becomes bearable. His careful smile, the sound of his surprised laughter. How his eyes shine when he looks at me. I focus on that now, and calmness descends.
My path to get to Nick has been wretched, but all the same, I wouldn’t know him if things had gone good instead of bad. I guess I should thank my old self for trying to kill herself.
I move from the window and turn off the softly playing music at the sound of my dad’s voice on the other side of my bedroom
door. I hate to tell him, but I prefer the sound of Sia’s voice to his. I walk across the room and open the door. My father’s pepper and soap scent fills the hallway as his large form overtakes the doorway to my room. The faint light in the hallway catches his bare scalp, making the skin gleam. After a nearly silent meal of burgers and fries from a fast food restaurant, I escaped to my room. I spend a lot of time in my room.
“What’s up?” I ask in a voice more cheerful than I feel. It’s pretend, like we pretend everything is okay.
My dad looks at me and away, offering the cordless phone. “It’s for you.”
I assume it’s Jenna, who calls me almost every week. It has to be her, or Nick. My stomach flutters. Either possibility makes me happy, but the thought of it being Nick makes my pulse spin.
“A boy. Nick.” He forces his gaze back to me. “Who’s Nick?”
Fireworks explode in my chest and I grab the phone. “Uh, just a boy. From the center.”
His expression tightens. “Do you think it’s wise to continue to be in contact with kids from there?”
“Why? What’s wrong with the kids from there?” Yes, there is a mocking quality to my tone. No, I don’t care that it is there. As recently as a week or so ago, I was a kid from there.
“You’re back in school. Why aren’t you hanging out with your friends from there?”
I almost laugh. We both know I don’t have any. “There are just too many to choose from, Dad, so I choose none. I wouldn’t want to make any of them jealous. That would be mean.”
Lips thinning, he studies me, and then he wordlessly walks down the hallway.
It takes me a moment to drag my eyes from the spot where I last saw him. If I had succeeded—if I wasn’t here, would anything be all that different for him, I wonder. My father and I, we live in two different worlds, side by side. It takes me another moment to remember Nick is waiting on the other end of the phone line. Taking a deep breath, I close my door as I bring the receiver to my face. It’s been three days since I’ve seen Nick, and waiting one more seems like an eternity. Before I hear him talk, I’m smiling.
“Hello, Nick.”
“Hello, Alexis.” His voice is warm, missed.
I glance at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It’s ten to eight. “You’re cutting it close, aren’t you? No phone calls after eight.”
“It took me a considerably long time to work up the courage to call.”
His honesty enamors me to him more. As if he needed help. “Why do you need courage to call me?”
Nick doesn’t answer for a long time, and when he speaks, I struggle to breathe. “Because I want to be fearless for you, and that scares me.”
I exhale loudly. He’s stolen all words but one from my thoughts. “Nick.”
“I’m just a boy, huh?” he quickly asks, telling me he wants to move on from his confession. There is a self-deprecating smile somewhere in there.
I freeze, and then fall onto my back on the bed. “You heard all that?”
“I did. I especially enjoyed the large dose of sarcasm directed at your father.”
Sighing, I close my eyes. “My dad is clueless.”
Nick laughs softly. “What do you expect when you never really mean what you say? That would confuse anyone.”
“I mean what I say. Usually.” Opening my eyes, I silently count to ten, pulling forth any shard of mettle I can find before saying my next words. If he’s going to be frank with me, he deserves the same from me. “And you’re not just a boy. You’re the boy.”
A sharp intake of air is the only reply I receive.
Feeling nervous, I tug at a short lock of hair. Did I say too much? Did I say it too soon?
“Say something,” I demand, listening to the pounding of my heart. Its beat is too hard, and too loud.
“I want to be that boy,” Nick finally says. His tone is careful, subdued. Possibly regrettable, like he’s telling me that in spite of wanting nothing more than to be that boy, he cannot.
Be that boy then, I silently urge.
I sit up, holding the phone hard against my ear. There is a framed photograph of me, my dad, Jenna, and my mom on my dresser. I blink at the image. My hair is long and wavy around my shoulders. The smile on my face is the kind I haven’t felt the need to express in a long, long time. Jenna and my dad are on either side of me, with Mom on the other side of Jenna. I’m hit with three pairs of similar blue eyes, happy and crinkling at the corners. Mom’s eyes are brown. That seems significant, for some reason. One more way she was separate from us.
“Do you ever have bad dreams?” Nick asks quietly.
“Sometimes, I think I’m living them,” I admit.
I was ten in the picture, and it was before things went bad. Before I knew they were bad anyway. We’re sitting on the steps to the porch of the dark blue house we lived in until Mom left. It is in that house that I had all of my sister Jenna, before she moved to begin her own life. It is in that house that I had what I was allowed of my mom, before she decided we weren’t enough. It is in that house that I had my father, before he lost his wife and turned into an unresponsive stone. In that moment, at that house, in that picture, we were a family.
Nick takes a shuddering breath. “Me too. All the time.”
Tearing my eyes from the captured memory, I pick at the blue-green bedding that looks like Nick’s eye color. It helps me sleep at night, imagining I’m adrift in the depths of his ocean eyes. “What’s the matter, Nick?”
“I had a dream about you.”
I frown at the caution covering his words, my hand stilling. “I can tell it was an awesome one.”
“No.” Nick sighs. A tapping sound starts, like his fingertips are drumming against something. Probably the wall next to the phone. “It was scary as hell. It just—I just wanted to hear your voice quick. That’s why I called.”
“Okay. But that’s not why you sound the way you do.” When he says nothing, I press, “What happened in the dream?”
“Alexis.” Pain echoes from my name.
“Nick.”
“I don’t want to say.”
“Say it anyway.”
Time ticks off the clock. I watch it pass, seeing the numbers get closer and closer to eight. When Nick finally speaks again, his voice is hollow. All the life is gone from it.
“You died.”
THE GYMNASIUM IS PACKED WITH hot, sweating bodies. An array of scents permeate the air, more so bad than good. I linger off to the side, watching the bleachers fill. The noise level is excruciating to anyone with sensitive ears. It’s an end of the year pep rally, and an excuse to miss the last class of the day.
I remember standing here last November for a guest speaker, near the doorway, alone, seeing masses of students and not having a single one to sit beside. I remember Casey stopping beside me, and telling me I should find a seat. I remember telling her I had no one to sit with. I remember her walking away like I never spoke. I remember sitting by myself in a room full of people.
You died.
The words echo through me, more powerful than they should be, bringing chills and apprehension with them. I don’t know why they bother me as much as they do—it isn’t like I didn’t try to achieve the very thing Nick dreamed. Am I not writing the story of my almost demise even now, with the purpose of having it read aloud under the guise of an assignment to an entire classroom? The thing that makes it that much better is the fact that Melanie, Jocelyn, and Casey will have to read it. They are the villains, and they will tell their own tale. It might be sick, but at the same time, it feels good. Really good. Maybe too good.
Not that any of them would have cared if I had died.
And maybe I did die, in a way. Because that girl who lived through six months of hell in this school—that girl vanished.
I pull back my shoulders and stride toward the bleachers, finding a spot behind Melanie and her sidekicks. I swear she stiffens when I walk past, and a part of me wants to smile. Another part of me, though,
tiny and almost nonexistent, feels guilt that I’m making someone suffer like I did. Even if she deserves it. Even if she’ll bounce right back whereas I did not. I had no one here, and I had no one at home. I had no one at all.
You have Nick now.
Do I? I’m not sure.
“H-hi,” a small voice greets.
I turn my head and meet a pair of wide brown eyes. Mistrust tells me to be careful. This school is full of vipers camouflaged with smiles. I must always wear my armor. “Hi.”
The girl is frail-looking with fine brown hair and small red lips. She’s dressed in a pale pink top and jeans that seem a size too big. “You’re, um…you’re Alexis Hennessy. Lexie,” she amends.
“I am.” I wait for her to say more.
Her head bobs as she looks around the gymnasium. Forcing her gaze back to mine, the girl smiles. It looks like it’s difficult. “I’m Anna. Anna Robertson.”
I nod and look toward the center of the floor where the principal and other staff are forming. She slides closer, and I go still, wondering why she introduced herself, and why she’s talking to me. What is she up to? Is this some trick of Melanie’s? Did she tell Anna to harass me somehow?
I glare at the back of Melanie’s silky brown head, loathing her like I’ve never loathed another. I didn’t think it was possible to feel this way toward another human being. I want her to feel like I did. I want her hopeless, and tormented, and sobbing. I want her broken.
“M-my dad…”
My eyes snap to Anna and she goes quiet. She blinks and fiddles with her wavy hair, looking conflicted. Her gaze darts to mine and away, her mouth opening and closing. The whole thing is odd, and I instinctively know her interaction with me has nothing to do with Melanie. Anna is struggling to tell me something. You can’t fake this kind of awkwardness.
“What about your dad?” I don’t look from her.
When Anna seems like she’s finally about to speak, the principal’s voice overtakes the room with the help of a microphone. I stare at the girl, watching as she shrinks. She won’t look at me. As the principal talks about stuff I have no interest in, curiosity pulls my gaze to her, again and again. Her lips are pressed together to keep her words locked inside, and she looks straight ahead.