“They’re pulling her out,” I said as she set the tray between us.
Roxanne pushed my plate toward me and held out a fork.
“Her parents are coming this afternoon to pack her things.”
She nudged the plate closer. “Eat. They’ll be cold in a minute.”
I didn’t give a crap what temperature the eggs were, but I managed to fork up a bite, chew, and swallow without gagging.
“Comfort food,” Roxanne said, picking up a piece of toast and slathering it with butter.
Nothing comforting about it, I thought as I forced myself to take a second bite. There was no getting out of eating—Roxanne was on me like a hawk. I felt like a little kid with a plateful of lima beans as I choked down my breakfast.
“Good,” my roommate said as I took the last bite. “Now you won’t pass out from lack of calories.” She pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “On to first period. Need me to get you there?”
“Do I look like I’m in preschool?”
“Only your hairdo.”
My hand flew to my head—I hadn’t even looked at myself in the mirror before I left our room. “Shit. Really?”
Roxanne said nothing as she carried our tray to the dish drop.
“Hey, Josie,” Steve greeted from behind the counter. He stopped spraying dishes for a minute and leaned toward us. “You okay?” His voice was quiet, concerned.
I nodded while Roxanne pulled me toward the main hall by my elbow—what was it with her and elbows?
“Why did he ask me that?”
Roxanne hesitated. “Because he’s a good guy, and he knows about Annette,” she said. “People are worried about you, Josie.”
I could feel panic starting to bubble up. “People? What people?”
“Let it go, Josie. Focus on getting through the day. That’s plenty to deal with.”
I could see Becca and her posse up ahead, walking so close together they looked like Siamese triplets, joined at the shoulders. I almost envied their united front.
“I’ll find you before assembly,” Roxanne said as we came to the junction. I was going up to English, and she was going down to French. “Now get in there.”
“Right.” I waited for her to leave, but she wasn’t having it.
“Second door on your right,” she said. “Go.”
“I am in preschool,” I muttered as I turned to walk up the stairs. Waving like a toddler, I ducked through the door as the bell rang, and immediately regretted my slowness. Professor Drake was already scribbling notes on the board, and the only empty seat was the one next to Penn.
I walked around the table, feeling everyone’s eyes on me and keeping my own on the ground until I’d pulled out my chair. Penn’s copy of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter sat facedown on the table, marking his page, and a second regret bubbled to the surface of my feeble brain. I hadn’t even cracked the book, which basically meant I’d have no idea what the discussion was about. Which meant I’d be sitting here completely lost for the next forty-five minutes. And if I was exceedingly lucky, nobody would find out.
“First impressions?” Professor Drake asked over his tortoiseshells, a green dry-erase marker at the ready. His polka-dot bow tie was unusually askew. “Favorite characters?”
“Mick,” said Macy. “She’s got spunk.”
Note: Mick is female despite having an assumed male name.
“Dr. Copeland,” Jake Flemming added. “For his strong ideals.”
Brownnoser.
“Antonapoulos,” Penn piped up, tapping his pencil on the table. “He’s basically a pig, but Singer is completely devoted to him. That’s an impressive accomplishment.”
Pot calling the kettle.
Professor Drake’s scrawl started to fill the board.
“Anyone else?”
“Singer. Everyone loves him,” Becca said.
“But it’s based on nothing. People pour out their souls to him, but he can’t hear a single word they say,” Sam said.
Professor Drake nodded. “Themes for discussion, people?”
“Loneliness.”
“Miscommunication.”
“Self-delusion.”
Great. The book is basically about my life, I thought miserably.
“Isolation,” Becca said. “Everyone talks to Singer, thinking he can understand them, but everything they say literally falls on deaf ears. It goes nowhere. The characters are like tiny islands in a giant ocean.”
“But they don’t feel like islands when they talk to Singer,” Macy pointed out. “He connects them.”
“They think he connects them, but that’s not actually true,” Becca countered. “It’s all an illusion.”
“It doesn’t matter that it’s an illusion,” Penn said. “The characters all believe that he understands him—that they are simpatico. For them, the bond is real.”
Truth versus belief.
Penn crossed his foot over his thigh and touched my knee, and I pulled my leg away so fast I whacked my knee against the corner of the table leg.
“Josie, do you have anything to add?” Professor Drake asked, his telepathic beam landing squarely on my head.
I looked up from the sepia-toned cover of my book, painfully aware that I should be able to come up with something clever and intelligent at the drop of a hat, even though I hadn’t read the assignment.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter that Singer can’t hear what they tell him,” I said slowly. “Maybe all anyone needs is the opportunity to say it, to feel heard. Maybe being heard isn’t the point. People don’t listen, anyway.”
Becca stared at me from across the table, her perfectly arched eyebrows knitting together in a rather imperfect way. Next to me, Penn’s leg jiggled under the table.
“That’s ridiculous. Of course being heard is the point,” Becca finally said.
A look of empathy flashed over Professor Drake’s face. Then he waved his copy of Heart in the air. “Interesting,” he said. “Anyone else have something to add?”
Penn’s leg stilled and he leaned back in his chair heavily. “It’s depressing as hell.”
I tried to pretend he wasn’t sitting next to me, ignored my urge to drag him out of the room so I could scream at him in the hall. Because really, I told myself, what’s the point?
Your friendship, came the answer almost immediately. Your friendship is the point. And then, as the bell rang, What friendship? It was more confusing than trying to have a literary discussion about something you hadn’t read.
I got to my feet with everyone else and shoved my book and notebook into my pack, taking my time so I was the last person to leave the room. Out in the hall, though, Roxanne was nowhere to be seen. Was I supposed to go to assembly without her? Jeez, I really was like a little kid. I waited, watching the masses of students move down the hall to the auditorium. When the throngs gave way to smaller clusters and finally individual stragglers, I knew she wasn’t coming and started for the auditorium.
“Josie!” a female voice called.
I turned, ready to rebuke Roxanne like a child whose mom was late for preschool pickup. But it wasn’t Roxanne who had called my name—it was Lola No.
Uff-da, I thought as she strode toward me, her wool A-line skirt falling gracefully around her knees.
“Josie, I—” She looked away for a moment, hesitating and tugging down the sleeves of her cashmere cardigan, as if reconsidering. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about Annette.”
Her blue eyes were softer than I’d ever seen them—almost unrecognizable.
“Brookwood isn’t the right place for everyone, and I think maybe it’s good that she’s going home.” She paused, shifting her feet. “But I know how hard it can be to be the one left behind, to lose a girl you cherish …”
My mouth dropped open slowly, as it dawned on me that (1) Lola No was a lesbian and (2) she knew I was, too—had probably known since the day I arrived. Did she also know what this felt like? Probably. Maybe not all of i
t, but a lot. Way more than I could’ve imagined.
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly feeling like I was going to cry. Lola No, of all the freaking people, understood. How was this even possible?
“I can see how much it hurts.”
I gazed down the hall through the stone archways and bit the inside of my lip to keep my eyes from welling. “I’m afraid everyone can,” I admitted.
“That’s not the worst thing, Josie—even if it feels like it is.”
I turned back to her, to her unexpected kindness. Her face was a mixture of empathy and encouragement. “It will get better,” she said.
I wasn’t the slightest bit sure about that, but like I said, Lola No understood a lot more than I could have imagined. “Thank you.”
She reached out and touched my arm just as Roxanne’s head appeared, coming up the side stairs. “Any time.”
“Oh good, you’re still here,” Roxanne said, shooting me a “what’s this about?” look.
Lola No cleared her throat, her authoritarian air returning in an instant. “I suggest you hurry inside and take your seats, ladies,” she said. “Assembly has already started.”
Finally, classes were over for the day. I’d survived and could retreat to my room and avoid the world—even Roxanne, who was assigned to weekly cleanup in the art studio—until dinner, three whole hours. I was pondering my brief conversation with Lola No, as well as everything I thought I knew about her, but obviously didn’t, as I skirted a red sedan parked in front of my dorm. Yanking open the door, I walked head down and fast to the stairs. Too fast, apparently, because I ran right into Shannon rolling one of Annette’s massive suitcases to the door.
“Oh,” I said, coming up short and feeling like an imbecile. I was so close to her I could see the broken capillaries on her nose. “Excuse me.”
Shannon raised her head, a polite response on the tip of her tongue. But when she saw that it was me, her expression shifted into one of revulsion, and she stepped back as if I had some nasty, contagious disease. “There could never be an excuse for you,” she spat.
I recoiled as if she had actually struck me. I was accustomed to Shannon’s venom, but it was usually aimed at Annette, or occasionally the both of us. Facing her now, by myself, I felt the astounding power of her hatred.
She had always hated me, I suddenly realized, hated me with every bone in her lanky body, and had been waiting all along for something terrible to happen so that she could blame it—no, blame everything—on me.
Annette’s dad came out of Annette’s room with her backpack and another suitcase, and the moment I saw him, it occurred to me that it wasn’t his support that had gotten Annette off the Brookwood waiting list and on the plane—it was Shannon’s plan to prove once and for all that I was the one Annette needed to get away from. Could she be that calculating? Yes, absolutely. I thought Annette and I were escaping her, but in the end, they were both going to escape me. I gulped. Her plan had worked perfectly.
Annette’s dad put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Shannon,” he said, “it doesn’t matter. We need to focus on Annette now.”
Shannon shook him off with a fierceness I rarely saw. “Don’t start with me,” she hissed. “I’ve been telling you this for years. Years! But did you listen? Did anybody listen? Can anybody even hear me?” She was shouting now, and the few students who were in the dorm dashed quickly past, heading into their rooms, so they could listen behind their doors, no doubt. “And now …” Her face crumpled in on itself and she started to sob. “Now she’s … she’s …”
In need of some serious help, I thought sadly while Michael grabbed his wife by the shoulders, half holding her up.
“Can I help you get her things to the car?”
“No!” Shannon wailed. “I don’t want you to touch anything of hers.” She hiccupped, dropping the suitcase handle.
Michael let go of one of her shoulders and took the handle. His expression was a collage of emotion: sadness, embarrassment, pity, and, way back behind his eyes, regret. “We just need to get to the car.” His shoulders sagged. “We need to get back to the hospital.”
I wanted to help them, to take Shannon by the arm and lead her out to the vehicle (How could I not have known that the red sedan was theirs—hadn’t Dean Austin told me just a few hours ago that they were coming this afternoon?) that was parked in front of the dorm. But I knew she wouldn’t let me touch her, and I didn’t want to make things worse for Annette. So I nodded ever so slightly and stepped around both of them, pausing at the foot of the stairs to listen for the sound of the car motor and waiting until it was just a whisper on the air. Feeling like barely a whisper myself, I started the climb to the third floor, looking forward to lying on the top bunk and doing nothing for as long as possible.
The phone was ringing when I pushed through the door. “Hello?” I said, picking it up without thinking.
“Josie, is that you?” said my mom’s worried voice. “Thank goodness.” Oh crap, I forgot to call, I thought. And then a second, terrifying thought seeped into my gray matter: She knows about Annette.
“Yeah, hi, Mom, it’s me.”
“Josie, are you all right?” I didn’t even know how to begin to answer that, so I didn’t try. I let her keep talking instead.
“Because you didn’t call,” she said. “We waited all weekend and you didn’t call. I’ve been trying your cell all day.”
“You have? Oh. I’m not allowed to have it outside my room.” I checked my screen—eight calls from HOME. I set my backpack on the floor and prayed she didn’t know what had happened. “Sorry, Mom. It’s just been really crazy here with Halloween and everything.”
“Right, Halloween,” she echoed tiredly. “I barely got Toby’s astronaut costume done, and they came home with an entire pillowcase full of candy. Your little brothers have been having a fun-size fest for three days running.”
“I believe it,” I said, exhaling my relief. She didn’t know.
“They’re like a pair of sugar maniacs.”
I pictured my brothers littering their bedroom floor with candy wrappers as they devoured their haul. I’d always loved that my parents let us pig out on Halloween candy until it was gone. “No one piece a day for the Littles,” my dad would say, helping himself and laughing. “If you’re gonna gorge, gorge big!”
My mouth watered, and I reached for my own, nearly depleted Halloween stash. All that was left were a couple of Three Musketeers and a Laffy Taffy. I ripped open a Three Musketeers and bit into it, my saliva mixing with the nougat, providing necessary sustenance. I was going to tell my mom the truth.
“Mom?” I said, hesitating. “Actually, I have some stuff to tell you.”
Silence. Did she suspect anything?
“Mom?”
“Yes, I’m here. I was just sitting down.”
Is that good or bad? I wondered feebly. I didn’t know where or how to begin, so I just started talking. “It’s Annette,” I said. “She’s on her way home with her parents.”
“What? Oh my God. Why?”
I forced myself to keep going. “She got into some trouble with drinking. A lot of trouble, actually. She ended up in the hospital.”
My mother’s inhale sucked the air out of the phone line, and I could picture her anguished face with regrettable precision. I felt my eyes well up. “I wasn’t with her when it happened—things haven’t been so great between us.” My voice wavered. Nougat drool dripped from the corner of my mouth, and I wiped it with the back of my hand. “I didn’t know she was in trouble.”
“Oh, Josie.”
“But I should have helped her—I should have—” I shuddered.
“Try to breathe,” my mom said. She waited for me to catch my breath, and then asked, “What happened to you two?”
So many things, I thought, closing my eyes. So many, many things. “Everything just sort of fell apart, I guess. It’s really different here.” I leaned my back against the wall and opened my eyes to Turtle Lake,
which looked completely different from this angle. “Shannon thinks the whole thing is my fault.”
“Shannon should take a good look in the mirror,” my mom murmured, and then, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. It’s all so complicated.”
“Life usually is.” My mom was silent for several seconds. “Are you okay?” she finally asked. “Do you want to come home, too?”
Yes! I screamed in my head. I wanted so badly to bolt—to go back to Virginia Falls, sleep in my own bed, harass my brothers up close. To go back to my Minnesota life. But deep inside I knew that was impossible—that the life I so desperately wanted to go back to was no longer there. “I’m not sure my coming home would help,” I said as my chest folded in on itself.
“Oh, Josie.” The sadness in her voice was palpable, and I rubbed my temples, fighting back tears. “I’m proud of you. You’re hurting, but you’re sticking it out, and that takes something.”
I threw the Three Musketeers wrapper in the trash. “Insanity?”
My mom half chuckled. “No, guts.”
“Right. Guts,” I replied, “Toby’s favorite.” I tried to smile, but it was useless. I was too busy feeling totally, completely, utterly wrung out.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” my mom said.
“Yeah, okay.”
“You’re a brave girl, Josie Little.”
Brave, or stupid? I wondered as Roxanne pushed open the door, her arms full of pieces of painted paper of varying sizes. She stepped into the middle of the room and laid them gently on the floor.
“We’re hanging the subway,” she told me the second I hung up. The new cutout pieces were familiar blues and greens and grays, and I noticed for the first time that the giant pieces were no longer stacked against the walls.
“The what?”
“The subway, also known as my new project à la Monsieur Matisse.”
“What happened to cleanup duty in the art room?”
“Lucky for me it wasn’t dirty.”
“Yeah, lucky.” I watched her start to arrange and rearrange the larger pieces with dismay. I was exhausted and just wanted to lie there doing nothing, but there’d be no getting out of helping her. It was the right thing to do.
Without Annette Page 21