by C. J. Skuse
I acted like I’d forgotten about it when I saw Jason pushing his lawn mower up the lacrosse field a few days later. I had this stinging sensation behind my eyes like I wanted to cry, but there was no way I was gonna. There was no way I was gonna punch him, either. Why would I waste my calories on that son of a bitch? No, I would not be conquered, not by a guy. I took my big black boot sole and stamped down hard on any feelings I might have had for him. I wrote myself some angry poetry and this little story about a woman who cut the dicks off her former lovers to make necklaces and then sold them on QVC and made a fortune. It helped. I concluded Jason was merely a “get-me-through.” Like when you’re forced to watch a really boring movie and it’s numbing your brain, so you develop a little crush on one of the stars, just to get you through it. A get-me-through. That’s all Jason had ever been. That’s all any guy would ever be.
Apart from Beau. And Dad.
But even though I’m a vegetarian, I still have a meat-eater’s incisors, so naturally I wanted revenge. And it was while I was thinking up how to wreak my revenge on this little douche bag that I got a letter from Beau. And this letter, this little one-line letter, put the whole stupid Jason incident into perspective.
Beau usually e-mailed me, but since I’d been banned from all computers for making fake IDs, he had to go old school and write. When I first saw the letter, I immediately thought it was bad news. A long ramble about a beating he’d gotten from the O’Donnell gang at his school, written by his nurse. A wordy speech about how he was finally at the end of his “infinite tether” with the Skankmother and was planning to run away for sure. But it wasn’t. It said just six words.
Paisley, Dad’s been in touch.—Beau x
I read it again and again. And it came screaming at me like one of those magic eye posters that your brain has to unscramble before the hidden picture comes into focus. I stopped reading and held it to my chest. Dad. What? Dad’s been in touch. Our dad? My dad? I had to say it a couple of times before I wrapped my brain around it.
Over the years, Dad had become this god to me. I constantly thought about him, wore old rock T-shirts that reminded me of the ones he used to wear, watched his favorite movies until they became my favorite movies. Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Bonnie and Clyde, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Assault on Precinct 13, Psycho. I never stopped wondering why he didn’t contact us. Wondering if his brown eyes still twinkled like Beau’s did when he smiled. If it would still feel the same to hug him. If he was still as big. At school I’d fantasize about him in class. Him breaking out of jail and stalking across the country to look for us. Putting a bullet through the head of the first guy who stood between him and his kids. Bursting through the door of fourth-period Latin, sunlight flooding in from behind, and saying in his gravelly Dad voice, “Come on, Paisley, I’m gettin’ you outta this dump.” The fantasies were always killed when the bell rang. I hadn’t been stupid enough to think any of them could come true. Until now.
I went from lying in a pit of stinking, slashed-heart despair to being thrust up into the sunlight, like a beach ball held under the water and then bursting up into the sky. I paced up and down our dorm like some crazy-assed bear in the zoo. I had an open-ended plane ticket back to LA, so I could easily get a cab to Newark and be on my way back west within twenty-four hours. But the principal—or Super Turbo Bitch, as I knew her—would never let me leave without the Skankmother’s permission. And there was no way Skank was gonna give permission. It meant all the stops would have to be pulled out.
I needed to get myself expelled. ASAFP.
And a week after the traumatic event with Jason, four days after receiving Beau’s letter, an occasion presented itself to me.
The whole school lined up for lunch in the long corridor outside the cafeteria. Jutting off at various intervals were our classrooms and the fiction and reference libraries. Right at the end was the school chapel. This was where we’d meet every morning, give praise for stuff, get freaked out by the tall plastic Jesus figure on the altar, and kneel on uncomfortable cushions till the woven imprints of crosses were tattooed on our knees. On the occasion in question, my favorite cheerleader, Mandy Fugazi, aka Sluttina Fug Face, had the misfortune of standing right outside the chapel, and therefore at the end of the lunch line, just as I joined it. The corridor reeked of meat and onions.
“Hey, Mandy,” I said.
“Oh, hi,” said Fug Face, curling her upper lip at me, then turning away.
I knew exactly what I was gonna say. I’d played it over and over in my mind to get it right. I took a few breaths before delivering it: I didn’t want to stutter or mispronounce anything. I wanted it to be just right.
“Mandy,” I said, “I’ve got this great book if you ever wanna borrow it. I know you’re into that kinda stuff.”
She looked blank, predictably. Fug Face didn’t read—she could barely spell out the monosyllabic words in her moronic rah-rah chants. A fluorescent light flickered above our heads among the wooden eaves and cobwebs. She had so many zits under her makeup, I could have played connect-the-dots.
“Kama Sutra, it’s called. Yeah, it shows you all these different sexual positions you can get into with your boyfriend.” I leaned in closer. I could smell him. Grass cuttings and gasoline. “You looked kinda stiff on the floor of the toolshed the other day.”
Fug’s face turned scarlet. The low mumbles of conversation stopped as the others listened in. I could see some of the girls giggling behind their hands. But I wasn’t finished. Yet.
“It’s okay if that’s what the guy likes. But one day you might want to be a bit more adventurous. You know, try opening your legs a little?”
She stared daggers at me. No, not daggers. Swords. Swords with flaming blades and poisoned tips. She lunged at me, pushed me back against the bulletin boards, and grabbed my hair, pulling it any way she could.
“You bitch!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “You were spying on me! You perv, you complete psycho perv!” Her voice echoed, ricocheting off every wall as we grappled. That’s all she could do: grapple and pull hair. She was such a girl. That’s how girls fight: They go for the hair. I had never fought like that. Hair-pulling was foreplay to me. I pushed her back and swung, clocking her across the left side of her face. Thwack!
Whoomph, down she went. I can still see her eyes close as my fist caught her cheek, the slow-motion jet of blood shooting from her mouth like a little red fish.
My arms were pinned back.
Cries of, “Oh my God”—“Is she dead?”—“What happened?”—“How awful,” echoed in my ears as I floated along the corridor, propped up by two teachers, Miss Randle and Mr. Patrick. Every pair of eyes was on me, from the usually jaded seniors all the way down to the freshman in their burgundy and gold jumpers, gawking at me as I passed them. Some had their hands over their mouths, others tried to pretend they were suddenly very interested in their regulation penny loafers. Soon there were no more giggles, no more murmurs of disapproval. Just big eyes. And me, desperately trying to kick and wriggle out of my restraints, screaming at the top of my lungs: “Go ahead, make my day! Do it, you assholes. Put me out of my fucking misery!”
And then bam, I was in the principal’s office, standing tight-lipped before the massive wooden desk with its row of paperweights and picture frames. Super Turbo Bitch, that day in a gray pantsuit and sad new bob haircut, glared at me all the way through her lecture.
“I’m not tolerating it anymore, Jane Argent,” she said finally in her fake English accent, her nose all pointy and high in the air. “Over the past few semesters, your behavior has become progressively worse. Our school motto encourages us to give everyone a fair chance to fit in. But you are an example of everything that is wrong with girls today and everything I want Immaculate Conception to be rid of. I think you’ll agree I’ve given you more than enough chances, spent more than enough of our limited resources to provide you with counseling, and you have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to im
prove.”
Here we go again, I thought. So come on already, do it. You know you want to. Rub this dirty little stain out of your clean little school.
She stood up and faced me, leaning over the desk. “Punching a student?” The p of punching was packed with enough spit to spray my entire face. I motioned to wipe it from my eye.
She huffed on. “How am I going to explain to Mandy’s parents that she’s been punched? By another student? That she may have a broken jaw? Hmm?”
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. “What can I say? Made the bitch famous. They’ll be talking about it for years to come.” My heart was thumping in my ears. This was my chance. Four schools down, one to go. She was giving me all the right buttons, and I was pressing them all like a little kid on a keyboard.
STB snarled. “Disobedient, arrogant, rude, insolent …”
I sucked the tips of my numb fingers in an attempt to give them the warm kiss of life. Every word was a shout. A criticism. An order. As though saying it at maximum volume and spitting it at me like a cobra was gonna make me bow down to her. It wasn’t. Nobody could make me do anything.
“… ruthless, obstinate, rude …”
“You already said rude.” I picked at my teeth with the tip of my long purple nail. I’d had enough by that point. I couldn’t look at the woman anymore, so I concentrated on the greige wallpaper and tall, dark wood bookcases all around me. I don’t know if it was my near-hypothermic state in that freezing office or the putrid waft of stale coffee I was getting off her breath, but it all seemed to be closing in on me. Like the garbage crusher in Star Wars. Or was it Empire Strikes Back? The one where they rescued Princess Leia, anyway. It used to be Beau’s favorite movie, up until he saw that French one with the chick on the bike. Now he likes that one better. Thinks it makes him look more intelligent.
“Look, I get the point,” I said finally. “I’m crap. Can I go now?”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she roared, sitting down on her swivel chair and folding her arms, her too-tight jacket straining at the shoulders. “And that’s what you got from all your other schools. They couldn’t handle you, so they just let you go. I know you too well.”
“You don’t know me at all!” I shouted. “Most of the time you people ignore me. And when you’re not ignoring me, you’re whining about me not joining in or not being good enough for this or that … and it’s ‘waaah, waaah, waaah’ in this ear, ‘waaah, waaah, waaah’ in that ear. Is it any wonder I’m so goddamn ANGRY?”
I’d used this same speech when they’d kicked me out of Rambuteau. There were two of them then. I’d managed to bring one to tears and pull off the other one’s toupee. STB wasn’t a crier. She didn’t wear a rug, either.
“With a family history like yours, I’d say your behavior was written in the stars.”
Mee-ow. Okay, I thought, let’s try this….
“You can’t honestly tell me I’m single-handedly … bastardizing the entire private school system. I’m a drop in the ocean compared to some of the things that go on here.”
“Such as?” she said, hands searching for things to do on the desk—papers to shuffle, pens to put back in their cup, a stapler to realign so it was perpendicular with the edge of the desk. Everything had to be perfect.
I counted them off on my fingers. “Your highly decorated student council president has her own strip show on YouTube; half the tenth graders are bulimic; I’m pretty sure our drama teacher smokes crack; and your lawn boy has been screwing most of my class.”
She looked like she was waiting for a golf ball to drop into her mouth. Her whole body rose and fell with her breath. She picked up the phone.
“I suppose the piano incident wasn’t your fault, either?” she said, dialing.
I thought about it for a second. “No, that was me.”
She spoke into the phone. “Morrie, send Jason to my office, please…. I don’t care, it’s urgent.” She put down the phone.
I leaned in for the kill.
“And since I’m spilling all these unfortunate beans, I don’t suppose you’ve sat in on any of your husband’s German classes recently, have you?”
“Don’t you—”
“The man can suggest things with a long ruler that would make your eyes bleed.”
“—DARE! You HORROR of a girl!” she bellowed, squinting the words out as if the force was hurting her eyes. “I could charge you with slander!” Drawn up to her full height now, she rounded the desk and marched over to the office door. She opened it, turning to deliver her parting shot.
“Get out of my school.”
Mission: Accomplished.
“You are a bad seed, Jane Argent. Your future looks very bleak to me.”
I stepped into the hallway and turned to deliver my final blow. “My name is Paisley. And at least I have a future. I wouldn’t give a bucket of piss for yours.”
I’d heard that line in a movie once, and I’d been dying to use it. Luckily my great brain managed to bring it to my attention at the perfect moment. The door slammed in my face, the bang echoing around the stony hallway.
“Yeah, thought that’d do it,” I said.
I stood there for a moment, blinking myself firmly into reality. Done. I was outta there. My heart still thumped in my ears. I couldn’t think about it anymore. I couldn’t dwell on it. Five schools. Five schools and not one of them could deal with me. I didn’t even know if I could deal with me. All I knew was I had to get to Beau and we had to get to Dad. Life would be better then. I would be better then, I was sure of it.
There was a school brochure on the table outside the principal’s office. All the pictures inside were of happy, fresh-faced girls: a shiny blonde in a pristine tunic lighting a candle in the chapel; a girl sprayed in achievement badges playing the flute in the music room; a circle of cross-legged Girl Scouts sitting around a playground toadstool, listening intently to a fat woman reading a book. I was never the girl in the brochure. I was always the back-of-a-head in the science lab or the out-of-focus blob in the bleachers. I took the brochure in my hands and tore it straight down the middle.
As I started walking up the staircase to the dorms, the front door opened and Jason lumbered in, scraping the dirt from his boots on the doormat. For the splittest of split seconds, I felt that disgusting pang in my chest again, like I still loved him. It was a relief when the anger came back and I remembered what he had done to me. What I had seen.
He looked up and saw me.
“What have you told them?” He glared.
“Everything, darling.” I kept on walking.
He came up behind me and grabbed my hand.
“If you told them about us sleeping together …”
“Sleeping together, screwing together. Eating Chunky Chips Ahoy together …”
“I’ll tell ’em it’s all bullshit. You’re a kid. And you’re a kid with a bad rep. They’ll never believe you.”
At that moment, Super Turbo Bitch appeared in the doorway to her office, behind Jason. She must have heard us. He didn’t see her.
“But it did happen, Jason,” I said, raising my voice so STB could hear every word and fake crying, lip quiver and all. “You said you loved me.”
His hand felt rough and sweaty on mine. “Give it up, Paisley. It won’t work. I got a good gig here. You’re not gonna blow this for me.”
“That’s not what you said before!”
“Stop it, all right?” he whispered, leaning closer. “I’m just gonna tell them you’re lying, then you’ll be out of here and that will be that.”
I stopped fake crying and looked at him. “But that isn’t that, is it? I got proof. I kept our first condom. A souvenir to remind me how much I meant to you.”
“Shut up! You know we never even used a condom!” he couldn’t help shouting at me, and it wasn’t until he turned that he saw Super Turbo Bitch glaring at him with nostrils like caves.
He turned back to me, as gray as a cliff face.
I smiled and whispered, “Don’t that just stick it in and break it off?”
In the dorm, I packed up my stuff and found my plane ticket and passport. I threw off my school shirt and tie, replacing it with my AC/DC For Those About to Rock T-shirt, an exact copy of the one Dad wore when we were little. I kept my school skirt on and hitched it up another inch. It actually went really well with my chunky socks and boots. I kept my stripy tie, too; it made a cool cuff. Everything else—the blazer, the yellow sweats, the white button-ups—could burn for all I cared.
I could hear them all in the cafeteria as I walked to the school entrance. The echo of, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us TRULY thankful, amen.” The eager scraping of chair legs and clank of metal kitchen utensils.
I strode on. “Assholes,” I said. “All of them, assholes.”
BEAU
FOUR
9976 CAHUENGA BLVD EAST,
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
I was sitting at my desk, awaiting Paisley’s call to pick her up from the airport. I couldn’t wait to see her. I didn’t want to wait to see her. I had been waiting too long. I opened the lid of my hibernating laptop and clicked on the “TVArchivia” link in my favorites, then logged into my account. All my most-watched videos came up as thumbnails. I clicked on Oprah’s face.
“They’re doing marvelously, yes,” said my grandmother in an odd Madonna-esque English accent. Ever the actress, she was rehearsing for a play in London at the time. “Beau’s very good at baseball, and he’s taken quite a keen interest in art.” She sat beside us on this huge, squashy lemon couch. Paisley had her hands folded in her lap and her feet crossed at the ankles; I was wearing some kind of lederhosen. Our grandmother retrieved a piece of paper from a nook in the couch and showed the cameras. It was a painting I had done of myself and Paisley playing in the backyard. I remembered doing it at school.