by Paige Rawl
My turn.
I put my hands on the girls’ shoulders and lifted myself up, standing on the base their hands had formed. The third girl gave me an extra boost from behind. Then she quickly moved her hands into place below the others’—an extra bit of support, just in case.
This all happened in a few seconds.
It was important to concentrate. It was important to pretend that none of the other stuff was happening, that nobody was making fun of me, that the smiles in the bleachers weren’t terribly twisted. I just really, really needed to concentrate.
I have done this before, I told myself. I have practiced it so many times. I placed all my weight onto my arms, balanced myself on their shoulders, my feet still resting on their interlocked hands.
The girls bent their knees, and I felt myself being lowered into position.
Here. We. Go.
We had only a second, and precision was everything.
Then, in an instant, it happened. The girls sprang up straight and pushed up with their arms, releasing me into the air. At the exact moment, I used my arms to power myself off their shoulders with every bit of strength I had.
It happened: I flew.
All I needed now was get into a pike position—stretch both legs out in front of me, knees locked. Then I would fall back into their arms. The two girls at my side would catch my legs with their arms, and the girl behind me would gently catch my head and neck, and just like that, I would be lowered safely back to earth.
It all looks so light and so effortless when you do it right.
“PAIDS!”
And perhaps it was because I heard that name and failed to pike correctly. Or maybe it was that the girl behind me, the one who was supposed to catch my head and neck, was distracted, too. Or maybe it was as simple as this: sometimes one bad thing follows another bad thing, even on a sunny, picture perfect kind of day. Whatever it was, something went wrong.
I felt it almost instantly. Something went terribly wrong.
I felt hands catch my legs, but something else was wrong. My head was in the wrong place. It was closer to the ground than it should have been, and my whole body was tilting backward. My head angled toward the earth.
It couldn’t have been more than a fraction of a second, but it was long enough to register this thought: This is bad. Out of pure instinct, I tucked my head toward my neck, away from the ground.
There was a loud crack as my back hit the ground.
It is a strange thing when you find yourself unexpectedly helpless on the ground. It takes a few moments to reorient yourself. A person becomes so accustomed to looking straight out at the world, to seeing only those things that fall into narrow space that is our normal field of vision—faces and blackboards and GIRLS signs on bathroom doors and EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH plaques in fast-food joints. But suddenly, when you’re least expecting it, those things give way to other things—clouds, blue sky, a tiny jet plane overhead. Then faces at all the wrong angles, a little circle of faces crowding above you and saying, “Paige, Paige, are you okay?”
And that’s when you become aware of other things—the commotion in the stands, the murmurs of “Is she okay?” and “Heard her head hit” and “. . . maybe has a concussion.”
And also the pain. My back hurt so much I wanted to puke.
I tried to stand up, but someone pushed me down, and said, “No, don’t move.”
The school nurse came over, looked at my eyes, asked me where it hurt. I was still flat on my back. Then she directed people—some group of people, God only knows who—to lift me up and transport me outside the chain-link fence that borders the football field.
They got me out of sight, I suppose, out of the way of the crowds, making it possible to see me only if someone turned around and really watched.
The whistle blew. The game on the other side of the fence began. Somebody must have called an ambulance, because a little while later I heard a siren—distant, at first, then getting closer, and then suddenly there it was, lights flashing. It backed into place, and all the while I was just lying there, the world blurry on the other side of tears.
If you are wondering whether I was crying from pain or shame or disappointment, the answer is yes.
Strangers in black—EMTs, I guess—lifted me onto a stretcher, and loaded me, headfirst, into the ambulance.
As I disappeared into the vehicle, I saw two things. First, against the afternoon light, I saw the silhouettes of Kyle, Michael, and Devin, still high in the bleachers. They weren’t watching the field. Their shoulders were still rounded, the shape of boys who are totally relaxed and at ease. They were half turned in their seats. I knew they were watching me go.
I turned away from them then, turned my head in the opposite direction. There, I caught a brief glimpse of Ethan. He stood there, totally expressionless, his eyes on me, on this whole horrifying scene.
The doors closed behind me, and Clarkstown disappeared.
I wished it would disappear forever.
Don’t Let Them Get to You
When you have HIV, you get used to people paying extraclose attention to your health. A cold is never just a cold the way it is for other kids—there’s always that worry that HIV has killed off enough immune cells that it will be harder to heal. That’s why my mother watches me closely and asks me constantly how I feel. When a fever comes along, she often calls the doctor. I’ve gotten used to that by now.
I missed a few days of school after my cheerleading fall—I was sore, with a bruise on my back, but otherwise okay. The school sent a poster-sized card to my house that had been signed by a whole bunch of kids. I scanned the names and saw the names Michael Jepson, Kyle Walker, and Devin Holt.
“Throw it away,” I told my mom. When she asked why, I left the room, went into my bedroom, and slammed the door.
I didn’t want to go back, I didn’t want to go back, I didn’t want to go back. But I was in seventh grade. When you’re in seventh grade, you have to go back.
Then, a few weeks after returning to classes, I missed a few more days of school. It was nothing at all—a sinus infection, runny nose, headache, mild fever. It could have happened to anyone.
Honestly.
But when I returned to school, I noticed that kids moved around me in a wide arc as they passed in the hallway.
Pulling books out of my locker, I noticed a group of girls watching me, speaking quietly to one another. They weren’t even trying to pretend to look away. They stood there, staring. They looked totally indifferent.
I remembered Amber snapping at us on the day of the Colts parade. Can I help you? she had barked. I tried to imagine myself saying that to these girls, being feral like Amber. I couldn’t picture myself doing that. I placed my books neatly in my bag, feeling a bit like an animal in a zoo.
“What the heck is with everyone?” I muttered.
Mariah sighed. “Yasmine told kids that you were, like, really sick.”
I shut my locker. “Arrgh,” I growled. “She’s just so . . .” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.
I mean, okay, Yasmine had made it crystal clear that we weren’t friends anymore. But if we weren’t friends, couldn’t she just leave it at that? Why did she have to go and talk about me, too?
That’s when a kid I barely knew—a chubby boy in a gray T-shirt, who wasn’t even in any of my classes, came up to me.
“Is it true?” he asked. “Are you actually dying now?”
“It was just a sinus infection,” I said. I frowned. “Everyone gets sinus infections.”
“Can you back off, please?” said Mariah to the boy.
He shrugged. “Whatever you say . . .” And I could tell he did not believe me.
As he walked away, Mariah said to me, “It’s pretty bad, actually, how much people are talking about you. You should tell someone. Miss Fischer, maybe. Or Miss Ward.”
“Maybe.” I thought about the last time I saw Miss Ward. I thought about sitting there waiting for my mom in M
iss Ward’s office, looking at her bright red fingernails.
“Paige, they can’t help you if they don’t know what’s going on,” said Mariah. “You know?”
“I guess,” I said.
So I knocked on Miss Ward’s door. For the second time, I sat down in her chair. Miss Ward folded her hands on her desk and blinked at me with her mascaraed lashes.
“Paige,” she said. “What brings you to see me today?”
I told her about what was said during my absence. I told her about the note—No AIDS at Clarkstown. I told her about the instant messages Lila had sent me at home, about my new nickname, PAIDS. I told her that Yasmine, my former best friend, even told other kids—she told Mariah at least—not to be friends with me.
I told her I felt like I was walking through a minefield. Miss Ward looked at me blankly, so I tried to explain: it wasn’t so much that I was being bullied twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s that I was constantly afraid that at any moment, everything might suddenly go wrong. That some new passing comment, some new note would appear out of the blue. I told her I was starting to feel frozen in place, that I dreaded school—that every day, my stomach hurt as I got ready. That Clarkstown was beginning to feel like hostile territory.
I told her that this was new, that I’d never felt like this about school before.
I told her I just didn’t know what to do.
I genuinely wanted her to help me. I wanted her tell me how to make this better, how to make it go away. I wanted her to say something like: Okay, I will take care of things, so I could just know that it would be over.
But instead, Miss Ward just sat there. She didn’t say anything for a long time, and when she did, her words were not what I expected.
“Paige,” she said. “I think this is enough drama, don’t you?”
Her words were so different from what I thought they would be that for a moment I didn’t understand what she was saying. She must have thought it was obvious, though, because she did not offer any more explanation.
I sat. I waited.
“You know, Yasmine is a straight-A student,” she said.
Again, this was not what I expected. I turned these words over in my mind. Yasmine is a straight-A student.
So am I, I thought. But I didn’t dare say it. Instead, I just looked down.
She shook her head sadly. “Yasmine could have been a good friend, you know.”
I blinked, looking at my own hands in my lap. I realized they were folded, just like hers. I unfolded them. She could have been a good friend. What did that even mean? She could have been, sure. If . . . what? What was the end of that sentence? If I hadn’t had HIV? If she were a better person? If I were?
“This is your warning,” Miss Ward said. I could hear the displeasure in her voice. “Do you understand?”
I nodded, even though I didn’t.
For just an instant, I tried to see what Miss Ward saw when she looked at me. This woman had hundreds of kids coming in and out of her office. My mom was probably correct—many of them were the kids who got in trouble. To Miss Ward, Yasmine probably looked like a model student. I mean, Yasmine got straight As. She played the viola, she played sports. She came from a hardworking academic family.
If I was complaining about Yasmine, who was better behaved than most of the kids Miss Ward saw, then surely I was the problem. I must be seeking drama.
I even dared to ask the question of myself. Was I just being dramatic?
Almost instantly, the answer came back to me.
No. This wasn’t drama.
It wasn’t drama, because this was something that could defeat me completely. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. This thing, whatever happened, could kill me if I let it.
I had no idea how to make that clear.
“Thank you, Paige,” Miss Ward said. “You may return to class.”
I stood up and walked to the door.
“Thank you,” I said. And of all the things I wish I’d done differently—all the moments of that time that I’ve since replayed in my mind—those two little words are among the things I most regret. Thank you.
Maybe Miss Ward didn’t mean it this way, but here is what I took from that: my reporting incidents was the problem. That my telling her what was happening to me was causing drama. For her, I guess. And that I had to stop.
I had to stop reporting incidents.
By now, it was clear that everyone knew about my HIV. I could tell by the way kids sometimes shoved their friends into me as a joke, as if we were in second grade and I was the girl with cooties. I could tell by the whispers—“. . . the girl with AIDS . . . don’t touch her”—in the hallway.
One afternoon, I walked into show choir rehearsal. Our trip to Walt Disney World was getting closer and closer, and we spent our practices getting ready. Mrs. Kay was at the piano working with some of the boys from the 73rd Street singers. Michael and Kyle were among them. They sounded pretty good, actually. The other kids, including the Bluettes, were sprawled out all over the stage.
As I approached the stage, one of the eighth-grade girls grinned at me. Molly was blond and blue-eyed, a member of the student council, the kind of kid that any parent would’ve been thrilled to have their own daughter be friends with. A nice girl, they’d say about her. Molly’s such a nice girl.
Except hers was not a nice grin at all. It was a mean-girl kind of grin.
“Well, hiiiii, Paige,” she said, drawing out each word. Around her, a bunch of girls started snickering.
“Hi,” I said quickly. I looked away.
Molly glanced at the girls and turned back to me. “So how are—”
But before she could get one more word out, Amber stood up. “If you’re just saying hi to her to entertain your bitch friends, then you better shut your mouth.” Amber stepped closer to Molly, so close that Molly took a step backward. “Paige doesn’t care about you, and neither do I.”
The girl glanced quickly at her friends. The room was silent now. Even Mrs. Kay looked up from across the room. I felt Michael’s and Kyle’s eyes on me, too.
“No response, huh?” Amber asked. Her voice dripped with disdain. She shook her head. “Fuck you, Molly.”
“Amber.” Mrs. Kay’s voice was sharp.
“What?” Amber flashed her eyes at Mrs. Kay. She was in fighting mode now.
“We don’t use language like that at Clarkstown.”
“Okay, Mrs. Kay,” she said. “What the hell ever.”
“Amber . . .” A last-warning voice now from Mrs. Kay.
“Yes, Mrs. Kay,” Amber said, quieter now. “Okay, sorry.”
And then under her breath, to me she whispered, “Totally worth it.”
I smiled at Amber and tried to ignore the fact that everyone in the room was staring at me.
I sat down and pulled out my phone. I started texting Mariah, How are you, not because I had anything I particularly wanted to say to her, but instead just to have somewhere to look other than around this room, with all these eyes staring at me.
After rehearsal, I walked out into the hall with Amber.
“Thanks for before,” I said.
She made a face. “I just can’t stand people when people are two-faced, you know? I mean if you don’t want to be friends with someone, don’t be friends with them. But don’t talk shit about them and then try to make people laugh by saying hi to them like you’re best friends.”
I let that sink in. “They’ve been talking about me?”
Amber shrugged. “You know what I mean.”
I guessed I did.
We walked silently for a bit, and then I took a deep breath. “Amber?” I asked. “Are you ever embarrassed about your mom?”
She stopped walking and looked at me—I worried she might be angry, but instead she just looked surprised. “You mean about her MS?”
“I guess,” I said.
“Hell no,” she said, and she started walking again. I could tell by her voice tha
t she really meant it. “My mom’s my mom. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
Then, after a pause, she added quietly, “She gets embarrassed, though. I tell her she shouldn’t, that she can’t help it, but you know how it is.”
I nodded. I did know. I knew exactly.
“Anyway,” she said. “Paige, just don’t let those idiots bother you, okay?”
“I won’t,” I said, and I stuck my chin out as if to prove I wouldn’t.
And I was trying. I really was trying. I was doing my homework and practicing my cheerleading jumps and smiling as I walked in the hallway, just as I imagined a seventh-grade cheerleader was supposed to. And on weekends, Mariah and I painted our toenails, and we tied ridiculous ponytails all around our heads, and we laughed and laughed and then ate cheese puffs from the bag while watching television. And I smiled at Ethan when I passed him in the hallway, and we even texted sometimes in the evening—What are you doing? Homework, you?—and I let my mother hand me pudding cups and remind me to take my medicine, and we still sometimes sang country songs on karaoke, and on the surface, it all looked so normal.
I swear, I was doing everything I could do to keep it normal. I was doing everything I could to keep those kids from bothering me.
But the next day, as I walked into the cafeteria, a boy came up to me, walked right up to my face, and said, “Hi, PAIDS,” and I just wanted to crawl into a hole.
He stood there grinning at me. It was like he was daring me to do something about it, to say something in return. Or maybe he just wanted to prove to me that he could do this, that he had this power, and that I lacked the power to stop it.
I wanted to say something, to shout something, but didn’t know what to say. Just like I didn’t know what to say when I heard “PAIDS” in the hallway, “PAIDS” as I walked to science, “PAIDS” by the lockers, in the gym, sitting down in math class.
Amber would have known how to respond. Amber would have said something like, “Hello to you, too, ass-hat.” Or she would have taken one step toward him and said, “Do you really want to do this now?” And I swear it would have been enough to make him step back nervously. Or she would have said, “Just get the fuck out of here,” and he would have.