by Barry Lyga
Rich White Kid Trying to Be Black—double can’t tolerate.
“What’s it like making pizza for Jihadi Jane?”
There’s an oceanic roar that starts in my ears and grows to envelop me. It picks me up like a child’s doll, buoys me dizzyingly, turns me, aims me. Before I realize it’s happening, I spin around, grab Mark by the shoulders, and slam him against the lockers. My own voice is strangled and drowning but still audible to my ears as I shout, “Shut your fucking mouth! Shut your fucking mouth!”
Hands grapple me, pull me away. There is a glimmer of bravado in Mark’s eyes, swamped by shock and fear. I struggle against the hands on me. They’re Evan’s. He’s tugging me away from Mark.
“Come on, man, you know that shit ain’t cool.”
I don’t know if this is directed at me or at Mark. I don’t care, either.
“Just making a joke,” says Mark, miffed. “So fucking sensitive. Jesus Christ. Or should I say Mohammed?”
Evan’s grip on me tightens again to hold me back, but it’s not necessary. I’ve burned through the adrenaline rush.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” I tell Mark, slamming my locker shut.
“At least I never shot anyone,” he fires back. There’s a communal gasp, but I don’t even turn to look at him, marching off instead.
“Someone should have shot you in your fucking crib,” I toss back at him.
On the bus ride home, I deliberately sit away from Evan. I’m not sure if I’m angry at him for stopping me from pummeling Mark or for being Mark’s friend in the first place. I just know that I’m still angry, that the rage smolders under there. Mark’s comments about Aneesa, about the shooting—they are the tinder. Ms. Benitez’s assignment is the spark.
Aneesa tries to engage me in conversation. I do my best to be polite, but she can tell something is wrong.
I can’t tell if I’m angry or grateful that she doesn’t ask what.
At home, I throw my backpack into the corner, hurl my body onto the bed. Time passes. I’m not sure how much. I can’t imagine how to write this essay for Ms. Benitez. I can’t imagine what she was thinking telling me to write it in the first place.
My phone buzzes, and I flip it over to see the screen.
Aneesa: DON’T LOOK AT THE COMMENTS!
Aneesa: Coming over RIGHT NOW
Time disappears. It vanishes and slides. It’s gone slippery and slick, threading through my fingers like oil.
Aneesa is standing in front of me. I don’t know how she got into my bedroom. I don’t remember the doorbell, and Mom isn’t home yet.
It feels as though ten centuries have passed, but it must have only been fifteen minutes.
Her face is twisted in concern, her eyebrows cresting above her eyes, crashing on either side of the crease stitched by worry above the bridge of her nose.
“You looked, didn’t you?”
Yes. Yes, I did. I looked at the comments.
Specifically, at the fifteenth comment posted to the archive of our livestream.
Before then, all anyone knew about me was my first name and what my hands looked like. I never really thought about it before. I was anonymous without even trying.
A few days ago, for the first time, they saw my face.
The fifteenth comment.
“hey I know this kid. he goes to my school and he KILLED HIS BABY SISTER. don’t take my word for it—” and a link. I didn’t click on the link. I don’t need to click on the link. I know where it goes.
There are many, many comments after the fifteenth. They’re all basically the same.
“Sebastian,” she says.
“I am so sorry,” she says.
I can’t think of anything to say. Except: “Our subscriber count is down.”
“Don’t worry about that now.”
“We’re losing subscribers,” I say.
She puts her arms around me. “Don’t look. Don’t read.”
It starts to happen—I feel myself melt against her. My eyes flutter closed.
Her lips against my hair, pressing against my scalp.
“I’m so sorry.” Her breath. The sound of it.
I wallow in her.
She absorbs me. Arms around me. Cradling me.
I pull back, just enough. Lean up. Crane my neck.
There’s a question in her eyes and on her lips. I blunt it with my own lips, pressing them to hers, doing it at last, at last doing it.
I’m kissing Aneesa. My body dissolves into a burst of color.
And she pulls away, pushing at me at the same time.
“What are you doing?” she asks gently.
I don’t know how to answer. Isn’t it obvious?
“You can’t do that,” she says.
Fumbling for words, still coalescing from my explosion into color, I manage to say, “Is it a Muslim thing?”
“That’s not…” She backs away a little bit. “It’s a me thing. I don’t feel that way about you.”
The words are standard English, arrayed in appropriate syntax, but they make no sense. This is Aneesa. She’s spent the summer with me. Introduced me to her family. Spent Fourth of July watching fireworks with me on her deck. Held my hand. Held my hand.
“But you do,” I tell her stupidly.
“I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know—I had no idea you felt this way. I’m sorry.”
And the worst thing is this: She really is sorry. I can read her; I’ve spent the summer reading her. She really, truly is sorry.
It’s true and impossible.
“What the hell, Aneesa? You held my hand—”
“I was trying to comfort you!”
“—and you spent your whole damn summer with me, making pizza. What the hell is that about?” My voice hasn’t risen, but it’s become tighter, tauter.
“I did that because you’re my friend and because it was fun, you idiot!” She’s gone brittle. There’s a tension along her jaw I’ve never seen before. “I liked it! It’s possible for me to like doing something without being in love with you!”
“You led me on—”
“No. I never said anything. I never said we were anything but friends. Not once. I can’t help what you—”
“Why did you let me think you liked me?” It comes out a whine with bristles accrued to it.
“I didn’t do anything except be your friend,” she says quietly. “I’ve always been honest with you.”
“Yeah, now.”
“No, always,” she says firmly. “But, yeah, especially now. I could have lied to you. It would have been a lot easier. I could have told you I was gay. Or blamed my dad, or my religion. I could have said that I had a boyfriend back in Baltimore. Because guys will listen when you tell them you belong to someone else. Like, you’ll respect some made-up guy, but not me. I thought you were different. I trusted you. I told you the truth.”
“Get out,” I tell her, my voice dull. Lifeless.
“Look, we should—”
So now I scream it. I feel cords standing out in my neck, cords I’ve never felt before. I feel a sharp, almost painful tug deep in my throat.
Aneesa leaves.
She leaves.
She leaves me alone.
Which is right.
Which is how it should be.
I read every last comment. A part of me is amazed at how many different ways people can misspell murderer.
The roar of the ocean is back. The buzz in my ears intensifies. I close my bedroom door and turn out the light and crawl under the covers. The comment thread flickers and scrolls on the backs of my eyelids.
Murderer.
I don’t want to go to school in the morning, but Mom will ask questions, so I force myself out of bed and into clothes and onto the bus, where I sit in the front, away from Evan and Aneesa.
Evan approaches me when we get off. “Dude, are you still pissed about yesterday?”
“I’m fine. I just had to finish my algebra homework.”
Aneesa does not approach me.
I walk through school, certain that everyone knows, that everyone has seen the video and read the comments. They’ve all known, of course, forever. They’ve all known. It’s not like it’s a secret. But it’s always been unspoken. And now someone has spoken it. Someone here, in my school.
It could be anyone. Safely ensconced within the anonymity of a YouTube screen name, it could be anyone around me, even a teacher cloaked in the rhythms of online teenspeak.
At the end of ACAS, as everyone else gathers up their books, I approach Ms. Benitez at her desk. At least there’s one thing I can fix. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“‘May I speak with you?’” She doesn’t allow herself a moment’s distraction or distance from the paper she’s reading.
Of course. Idiot. “May I speak with you?”
She looks up at me and smiles. “Of course you may, Sebastian.”
I’m not sure where to begin, so I just plunge in. “It’s about the essay assignment. The semester-long one. I know you want us to learn to do something like this for college applications, but I’m a sophomore. I’m wondering if there’s a substitute assignment I could do. Or maybe some kind of extra credit to compensate.”
She narrows her eyes.
“I’m not saying it’s too difficult,” I hasten to add. “It’s just that it… it’s difficult… in other ways.”
Her expression is flat, unreadable. Blank paper; blank screen. “Sebastian, you volunteered for this class. You requested it. No one made you take it.”
I regroup. I take a breath. Not a deep one, just a breath. Just a quick moment to gather myself.
“Look, you know who I am. You know about my past.”
Her expression flickers momentarily, a soft expression of grief and compassion before returning to stone. I’m used to this. It happens all the time around me, this unconscious projection of sorrow.
“You don’t have to write about that,” she says. And then dead stop. She thought it would be easier to say than it was. She thought if she said that and didn’t use specific words referring to specific events that she could do it and not feel awkward, but she’s realized that the awkward is a part of it, no matter what words you use.
“What else important has happened to me? What else can compare?”
The class is nearly empty now, a few stragglers lingering at the door. The room is quiet enough that I can hear the sharp, sudden increase in my own volume. I clamp down hard, tell myself to lower my voice, but my voice has become its own independent entity in my throat, and it wants to be loud.
“Sebastian—”
“I just want to try something else,” I say, too loudly. The stragglers have begun to mill. I can’t stop myself. “You can’t ask me to do this. You can’t tell me to write about this.”
“Well, look, the project—”
“And you make it for a grade?” I’m heating up, but it’s at a remove, as though it’s happening to someone else and is, therefore, only mildly interesting. “For a grade? What kind of a sadist are you?”
She exhales slowly and nods. “I understand your reaction. I really do. This is supposed to help you learn to think critically. Logically. This doesn’t have to be emotionally difficult for you, Sebastian. I’m sure there’s another area you could explore, but… if you insist that there’s only one thing for you to write on, we can discuss ways to handle the topic of your sister delicately—”
“Don’t—”
Don’t talk about my sister!
And then there’s static everywhere.
I know I said Don’t talk about my sister.
No. That’s not true. I didn’t say it.
I yelled it.
My hand throbs with leftover pain. I hit something.
Something. Not someone. The flat of my palm, smacking against Ms. Benitez’s desk. Now I remember. Her stapler jumped.
So did she.
Don’t talk about my sister.
I blacked out. Went into a fugue state. Sank deep into the static, where sound and light and memory could not find me.
As the static clears, as the world filters in, as the ache in my hand diminishes, I realize I’m in the assistant-principal’s office, and he’s hanging up the phone, saying, “…of course, thanks,” and he looks up at me with eyes like black olives sunk into raw dough. Roland Sperling, the corpulent mass of assistant principal known throughout the student body as the Spermling, regards me like an old hand grenade that has not been deactivated.
“Sebastian, how are you feeling?”
His voice buzzes. Static still clusters at my ears. Zzzebazztian, how arezzz you feelingzzz?
“I’m fine.” It takes a moment for my jaw to work properly. It, too, is sore, and I remember like a frame of film: Me, screaming until my voice cracked and then shattered like a wineglass hurled against concrete.
“Are you zzzure about that?” he buzzes.
I claw at my ear to knock away the filter, as though it’s a physical thing. The motion accomplishes something, though—the static in my ear goes away, and I can hear normally again.
I screamed at a teacher. I assaulted her desk. These are not things that get wiped away, things ignored and forgotten. I am in serious trouble.
“I’d like to apologize to Ms. Benitez for losing my temper, if I may,” I say as calmly as possible. Which, truthfully, is extremely calmly. With the adrenaline out of my system, I’ve entered a nearly Zen state of relaxation. I am fully aware of my situation, but I can approach it and appreciate it clinically. “My actions were inexcusable,” I continue, “but I’d at least like to say I’m sorry to her and offer an explanation. Not an excuse or a justification—just an explanation.”
Mr. Sperling steeples his fingers before him. He’s been listening to me with the same regard a big-game hunter gives to a full-tusked elephant.
“I’m sure she’d be receptive to that,” he says after a moment’s thought, “but first we’re going to have you speak to Ms. de la Rosa. I think that would be a good idea. Don’t you?”
I think it’s actually a terrible idea, but I nod and say, “Of course.”
I’m not given a hall pass and sent on my way—Mr. Kaltenbach, one of the gym teachers, escorts me. He just happens to be in the office. It’s possible this is a coincidence. It’s also possible he was on the receiving end of Mr. Sperling’s of course, thanks.
We do not speak. We go down the hall, up the stairs, and down another hall, and he wordlessly gestures me into the guidance office before vanishing to wherever it is gym teachers go when not coaxing sweat, regret, and shame from their students.
Ms. de la Rosa, the school’s new guidance counselor, is young and right out of college. She has hung around her office a series of ironic posters, spoofing popular magazine covers with confidence-building headline remixes. Such as a Cosmopolitan cover that blares WHY YOU’RE PERFECT JUST THE WAY YOU ARE and a Maxim that shouts IN THIS ISSUE: HOW TO RESPECT WOMEN! In short, she tries too hard.
Last year, soon after she joined the administration, she summoned me to her office for no obvious reason, though the nonobvious reason screamed like her unsubtle magazine covers.
After a few minutes of meaningless small talk, I asked her, “Why did you have me come down here?”
To her credit, she was ready for the question and airily responded, “I’m just trying to get to know the student body, since I’m new.” Almost making it sound as though I’d won some sort of student lottery, my number drawn from a hat or selected by computer.
But we both knew what she was doing. Familiarizing herself with the troublemakers, the troubled ones, the troubles, period. Forewarned, forearmed. The best defense and all that.
Give me the kid back from rehab at noon, the girl who had the baby at Homecoming right after lunch… and to cap off the day, let me get some face time with the guy who killed his baby sister and blocked the whole thing out. That sounds like a full day, right? I’M PERFECT JU
ST THE WAY I AM!
Now she smiles at me with a calm learned in years of higher education and practice sessions. No worry lines wrinkle her forehead. Her eyebrows are smooth like an undisturbed pond. Ms. de la Rosa exudes a preternatural sense of self-possession, a force field of Zen. It truly, genuinely disturbs me. No one should ever be this relaxed. It’s inhuman.
“How are you feeling, Sebastian? Right at this moment?”
“I’m fine.” I give her as little as possible. “I would really like to apologize to Ms. Benitez for my behavior.”
“Of course.” The smile widens and deepens at the same time. “I think that’s a great idea, and you’ll get to do that. Keep that one in your back pocket for now, okay? We’ll get to it. But right now, I want to know how you’re feeling.”
“I’m fine,” I say again, employing every reserve of willpower I have to keep from adding, “Like I already said.”
“Good. Good. No problems with your hearing? Your vision?”
“No. Everything’s fine.” Fine again. It’s not nice, but its linguistic nutritional value isn’t much better. “I feel fine.”
“Do you remember yelling at Ms. Benitez? Hitting her desk?”
“I remember enough.”
She nods at that. “Enough. Does this happen to you a lot?”
I think of vomiting at Mom’s bringing up Lola. Of the rage that picked me up when Mark said “Jihadi Jane.” The time that vanished when I read the YouTube comments. And other times in my past. Times when I go away, but I’m still here.
I dodge. “I think it would be appropriate to apologize to her. Don’t you?”
“Not yet. Look, we’ve gotten in touch with your mother, and she’s on her way. But I thought maybe we could talk a little bit before she gets here.”
Translation: I drew the short stick, and I get to keep you occupied until your mother gets here with the net and tranq gun.
A thought occurs to me: Is Ms. Benitez now afraid of me? Is she going to sue me or press charges or something like that?
“I didn’t mean to scare anyone. And I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I’m a very peaceful guy.”