Be invisible
Raising her head to look further down the hall, she sees a boy, his head a mass of dark curly hair, leaning against a locker. He plays a trumpet, adding its brassy noise to the chaos around him. As he plays, he claps a dome-shaped object against the end of the instrument, varying the trumpet’s tone from a clear blast to a vibrating squawk. Another boy, younger and wearing a heavy coat and baseball cap, approaches the trumpeter from the far end of the hall. “Nice toilet plunger, dude,” he shouts to the curly-haired trumpeter.
Taking his mouth away from the trumpet, the player responds, “It’s called a mute, you fuck.” He stares at the other boy in disgust, takes a moment to lick his lips, then returns to his instrument.
The younger boy passes Mary and she can feel his eyes moving over her body.
This stupid shirt with the stupid cat
She pulls her notebook a little tighter over her chest.
When she at last approaches her classroom, she finds the entrance blocked by four boys. They fill the doorway, fooling around, shoving each other and laughing. They turn as she nears them and again she can feel the staring, appraising looks. She turns to squeeze through them but one boy, wearing a devilish grin on his long face, blocks her way. He stares at the cat that covers her chest and says, “Nice pussycat.”
She is mortified; blood rushes to her cheeks. She hurries into the room and finds a seat as far from the door as possible. From the corner of her eye, she can make out the boys. One boy, tall, heavyset, and wearing red canvas running shoes, slaps the first boy soundly on the side of the head. She can still hear them from the far side of the classroom.
“Jordan, way to go, you asshole,” he says.
“What? I was just joking around!”
“Don’t be ignorant! You can’t just go around saying shit like that to girls.”
“Whatever. I’ll say what I want!”
“You pull crap like that around me again and I’ll put you down.”
“Just try it, Nate.”
“Huh, a tough guy!” Nate grunts. “You’d last about five seconds in a fight with a girl scout.” He moves into the room and sits at the desk beside Mary. He leans in her direction, close enough that even facing downward she can see his stubbly cheeks flushed red and his short dark hair. “Hey, I’m sorry about Jordan. He can be a real asshole.”
Mary says nothing, simmering in her embarrassment and anger.
Don’t talk to me, leave me alone
I’m Nate,” he says but she does not reply. “Don’t worry about Jordan. I’ll make sure he doesn’t do it again.”
Without turning to face him, Mary says, “Thanks.”
Now leave me alone
Nate waits for her to say more but, getting no response, he leans back over to rest in his seat.
Their teacher, a thin, serious-looking man in gray cords and a sports coat, clears his throat, indicating that it is time to sit down. His name, “Mr. Woods,” is on the board.
“Hello class. My name is Mr. Woods and I am your English teacher for this semester.” His voice is high, his tone that of one who has said these same words many times and has become infinitely bored by them. “The theme for this class is 'Studies in Ambition’ and we will be reading Billy Budd, Macbeth, and All the King’s Men. All of this is in the handout you will now be receiving.”
He hands a small stack of paper to a student at the head of the class who takes one and passes it along to the person behind him. “Shortly after you receive your course handout, you will also receive a class attendance list. Please mark your name on it, last name first, first name last, and pass it along.” He repeats his earlier motion, this time with a single piece of paper. “Many of you are wondering, ‘How can I do well in this class?’ The answer is simple.”
“Four simple rules,” she hears Nate murmur to himself.
“Four simple rules,” Mr. Woods continues. “They are, and you may wish to write these down: one, come to every class; two, pay attention in class; three, properly complete all of the assigned work; and four, hand all of your assignments in on time. Four simple rules. So, before you come to me, upset because you’re unhappy with your mark, ask yourself, ‘Could I have received a better mark if I had followed the four simple rules?’ If the answer is yes, then I would reconsider asking me to change your grade.”
The teacher’s voice recedes as the events of the morning threaten to submerge Mary. Her hands have taken on a small trembling that won’t go away. When the attendance sheet is passed to her, she can barely handle the act of placing pen to paper. She quickly scratches an “M” in lieu of her first name and passes the sheet forward to be rid of it.
The first student in Mary’s row hands the attendance sheet to Mr. Woods. One by one, he calls out the names of the students. When he says “Nathaniel,” she can hear Nate call back “Here,” sounding displeased at the full reading of his name. “A pleasure to have you back, Nathaniel,” the teacher says, although his tone does not have a wisp of enthusiasm. As the teacher moves through the list, up and down the rows of the class, Mary tenses as he nears her name. “Now, who is M?” he asks the class.
Leave me alone
She hates these situations, the attention, the staring, the inevitable judgment. Reluctantly, she raises her hand. He looks at her, then flicks his eyes downward to consult his class list. “Well, I don’t have an M listed here,” he says mockingly.
“It’s Mary,” she replies. Her face tilted downward, avoiding his gaze. He turns to his desk, grabbing another sheet of paper and comparing the two.
“I don’t have a Mary here, either, but I do have a ‘Mariposa.’ Would that be you?” Snickers come from the class at the sound of her true name. She nods, head still down. “If we were en España, that would make you a butterfly. Maravilloso.” Receiving no response from her, or the class, he carries on checking his lists. She is shaking as Nate leans over once again.
“Are you okay?” he asks. He seems to be genuinely concerned.
She nods, pressing her palms to her eyes.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s an asshole,” Nate whispers. “He wears the same pair of pants every day.”
As class drags on, Mary does her best to put the earlier encounter with Mr. Woods out of her mind and concentrate on class, but she finds it so hard. And this boy Nate, he seems so friendly …
Remember the last one that seemed friendly
He wasn’t all bad
Bad enough
Movement catches her eye and she glances over to see Nate stretching, his hands clasped together and his arms extended over his head. As he does this, his t-shirt pulls up across his belly, revealing a vertical line of dark hair that leads down to the waist of his jeans. With the barest turn of her head, she stares at it out of the corner of her eye. When she realizes that she’s been looking too long, she moves her eyes away, up to his face, which is in the middle of a long and rubbery yawn. Relieved at not being caught, she relaxes.
He’s cute, like a teddy bear
The other one was cute, too
He’s nicer
His yawn stops and he scratches the stubble on his chin. He looks around sleepily, catches her eye, and smiles at her. She turns away, unable to suppress a small smile of her own.
After class, Mary senses Nate following her out of the room. “Well, that was a bucket of laughs,” he says. Mary’s nerves begin a frenetic buzzing at the thought of trying to hold a conversation with this friendly boy.
I can’t, I can’t do this again
Just say something
I’m frozen, I can’t say anything
Nate continues. “When I found out I had Woodrow again, I just about killed myself.”
Say something, ANYTHING
She finds the strength to say a single word: “Woodrow?”
“Yeah, Mr. Woods, you know …” She stares at him blankly. “It’s just a funny nickname, I guess. I’m Nate. Did I say that already?”
She nods.
“You’re Mariposa, right?”
“Mary.”
“You don’t like Mariposa?”
“I hate it.”
“I think Mariposa is a cool name!”
“It’s too weird.”
You can do this, you can talk to him
“I wish I had a cool name. My name’s boring. There’s at least four ‘Nates’ in this school. I could go by Nathaniel, but I think that sounds gay.”
“Mr. Woods likes it.”
“Yeah, well, enough said. Your name really stands out, though.”
I don’t want to stand out
“So, uh, Mariposa is Spanish for butterfly, right? Are your parents Spanish? You don’t look Spanish.”
“My grandmother was, I think.”
“You should be lucky your grandparents aren’t German like mine. You know what the German word for butterfly is?”
She shakes her head.
“Schmetterling.”
She releases a tiny laugh.
You CAN do this!
“Terrible, right? 'Oh, hey, check out that pretty Schmetterling!’ German sucks. I had to take lessons when I was a kid. So, you’re new here?”
Mary nods.
“Where you coming from?”
“Just from, um, the south end of town.”
“The ’burbs?”
“I guess.”
“How you liking it?”
“Okay. It’s a lot different from my old school.”
“I thought all schools were pretty much the same. You know, like, shitty and terrible.”
“I was in private school.”
“The girls’ one? With the uniforms and all that? Was it all right?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. It was smaller. Quieter, I guess.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a zoo here, but you get used to it. What classes do you have?”
“Um … I’m not sure.”
Stop this before you get in over your head
Be quiet
“Do you have your timetable?” he asks. She fishes it out of her notebook and he takes it in one beefy hand. “Hey, we have biology together after lunch, so I’ll guess I’ll see you then.”
“Okay, I, uh, I guess I should get going.”
“Okay, see you in bio.”
“Bye,” she replies and leaves quickly. She feels him watching her as she walks away.
He’s just like the other one, I told you
No, he’s not. He’s nicer
He’s going to find out about you
But I talked to him and he didn’t try anything
He will
Nothing bad happened
Not yet, not yet
CHAPTER
Seven
“What about this one?” Mary’s mother says, holding up a magazine. Framed in a tight box on the magazine’s left page is a photo of a celebrity, a leggy woman with long, sinuous hair and a short dress.
“It’s all right, I guess.”
“Every moment you’re not doing something with your hair is an opportunity wasted, in my eyes. If we started growing it out right now, you could have a cut like that by the start of school next year. And you wouldn’t have it hanging in your face all the time.”
“I like it the way it is.” In all her arguments with her mother, this is as close as she ever gets to talking back. She is so very tired of this.
“You’ve had that same haircut since you were eight years old! When I was your age, I loved to get my hair done.”
I’m not you
“I know it’s hard, Sweetie, but I want you to see just how beautiful you can be.” She pauses, turns the page, and points out another star. “This ’do is fabulous but you’d probably need hot rollers …” She continues flipping, pausing again a few pages later. “Now this one here with the layers is quite pretty. You could pull it off, and it wouldn’t be too much work. It’s only a little longer than yours is now.” She holds up the page to show her daughter.
“It’s all right,” Mary concedes, sick of arguing.
I could do it, it would make her happy
People would notice, you’d stand out
Is that so bad?
You know it is
She feels a sudden familiar and unwanted twinge in her lower abdomen. This time it’s her period.
Another curse
She heads to the bathroom, leaving her mother to pore over the glossy lives of others. Inside the bathroom, she pulls down her dark jeans and sits on the toilet. Reaching under the sink, she pulls out a pad, sets it in place, and tosses away the garbage. She rests her elbows on her knees, cradling her chin in her upturned hands. Everything seems to pile up inside her: school, Van, her mother, her father, that boy Nate, the move.
What’s the point?
Tears are coming and she tries to fight them back. She thinks of the boy Van, alone with her, here in her own home, leaning forward to kiss her.
I can’t let something like that happen again, even if I want it to
She can feel herself losing the battle against her emotions, can sense the shadows beginning to stir within her. Using all of her frustrated will, she lashes out at them.
I hate you! Stay away!
She can feel them trying to push through, to worm their way out of her. She leans forward, clasping her head in both hands.
Stay in!
They are right below the surface now. She can feel them squirming in an effort to release themselves. Her fingernails dig into her scalp.
Stay in!
She focuses all her energy into a silent scream.
STAY IN!!!
And then nothing like a balloon suddenly released of air, she can feel the shadows fly away, not into the room around her, but back inside her.
Gone?
In shock, she lowers her hands from the side of her head. As she does so, she yelps in surprise, her whole body jerking. A thin layer of shadow surrounds each hand like absurd mittens. These shadows are not the distinct black forms she is so used to seeing. They are like living smoke, wafting around her fingers. Instinctively, she drags one hand over the other, pulling the shadows away. She continues this motion, frantically squeezing the blackness until it lies like a dark snowball in the palm of her hand. Desperate to be rid of the thing, she squeezes her palms together, feeling the shadow begin to collapse under the pressure.
At the final moment, she stops. Some strange and irrepressible urge compels her to look once more. Opening her closed hands like clamshells, she sees the remaining shadow resting within her palms like a smoky black pearl. She rolls it from one palm to the other. She picks it up between thumb and forefinger, intending to crush it but, before she has the chance, it silently pops. The blackness turns to fine filaments before disappearing completely.
Gone
Abruptly, she realizes that she is still sitting on the toilet with her jeans around her ankles. Working quickly, she pulls up her pants and goes to the sink.
She gasps once again. There is a stranger looking back at her from the cracked mirror. No, not a stranger, the reflection is her own, but subtly changed. A drapery of shadow covers her hair, billowing around her face, rippling like seaweed in a gentle current. The image in the mirror is so strange, the movement so hypnotic, that she’s as fascinated by it as she is shocked.
… I look like I’m underwater …
Mary closes her eyes tightly, thinking that she could be imagining it, that maybe it will all be gone in a moment or two. She takes a careful breath, reopens her eyes. The shadow is still there. With the initial shock now gone, she marvels at how the shadow changes her appearance. It’s no longer the reflection of a young girl that she is seeing in the mirror, but of a young woman. She has the same face, the same clothes, the same bathroom behind her, but …
… I look like a different person
Cautiously, she raises a hand to touch the shadow. It feels silky and cool. With newfound confidence, she runs both her fingers through the darkness that fra
mes her face. The shadow hair is so insubstantial that her fingers flow right through it. She tries to pull at it, to manipulate it, picturing in her mind the image from her mother’s magazine, but it’s like trying to sculpt smoke. She lowers her hands in defeat.
At once, she becomes keenly aware of the time she has spent locked in the bathroom.
Mom’s going to ask if I fell in
She raises her hands to pull the shadow away from her head, but is unable to get a firm grip. She begins to feel panic rise within her.
What if it won’t come off?
She claws at the shadow, eventually tearing it away in wisps. She crushes the ribbons of smoke between her hands until she can feel nothing left. Although her palms are bare, she rubs them together to remove any lingering traces. She washes her hands just to be sure.
She opens the door and moves toward the center of the apartment. Her mother raises her head as Mary enters the living room.
“What took you so long? Did you fall in?”
“Mom?”
“Yes, Sweetie?”
“I’ll change my hair.”
CHAPTER
Eight
Mary could sleep forever. When she finally rouses herself late Saturday morning, her mother is, once again, already gone. With the barest parting of her eyelids, she can see a few remaining shadows circling around her. She lets herself stay in bed, waiting for them to disappear. Twenty minutes later, she opens her eyes just in time to see Inky fading into nothingness. “Bye Inky,” she says quietly.
She closes her eyes to think, wondering what it is about Inky that makes him so different. She hates all the other shadows, finds them repulsive; they squirm and shift like jellyfish, like worms. She doesn’t even know if they’re individuals. But Inky, he’s the only one she recognizes, the only one who always comes back for her.
Rather than torment herself with questions she can’t answer, she pushes them away, and conducts her morning routine at a leisurely pace. She has promised to meet her mother for lunch, making an official appearance at the dress shop on the way.
M in the Abstract Page 4