The Tension of Opposites

by Kristina McBride

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the arm of my chair.

  Child pornography? I pictured a twelve-year-old Noelle posing in front of the mirror in her room, reciting lines from her favorite movies as she experimented with different facial expressions. Her goal in life was to make her way to a stage, to feel the heat of a spotlight shining on her face. She didn’t care if that dream led her to a fashion runway, a television studio, or a movie set. She’d even talked about auditioning for a reality show when she turned eighteen. I had always hated that her kidnapping was the way she had become famous. I looked at Charlie again, right into his dead eyes.

  “No,” I said to him. “You will not be the last thing I see tonight.”

  Clutching the mouse, I maneuvered the arrow across the screen and stabbed the red X in the top right corner. Charlie was gone.

  With a jerky hand, I clicked on the folder holding my pictures and flipped through them until I found the one I’d taken of Max. He’d been sitting next to me, and I’d snapped the shot quickly, hoping he’d see it as some joke instead of what it really was: my need to study his face. When I came to the picture, I just stared, wondering how he could get better-looking each time I saw him. He had these super-thick eyelashes, and a few random freckles dotting the top of his cheeks.

  I was unprepared to deal with the wild feelings Max was sparking to life. I had told myself for two years that if Noelle couldn’t experience that giddy, falling-in-love sensation, I wouldn’t, either. Yet here I was, unable to push Max from my mind. While Noelle was struggling to experience one minute of normalcy, I was totally losing control over the new guy whom every girl was gushing over, and who was this completely … What? Beautiful, nice, strange new complication in my life. In addition to that—

  A light tapping pulled me back to my bedroom. I listened for the noise again, wondering if it had been real or imagined. It came quickly, sounding like a small pebble bouncing off the pane. Could it be him? He’d followed me home from school the other day to borrow a photography book I’d told him about. But how had he figured out which room was mine?

  I felt like I’d been plunged underwater again. As I walked toward the window, every piece of me was thick and sluggish. I pulled at the curtain, ready to see Max standing in the dark grass.

  I parted the blinds.

  The moment I’d dreamed about for the past two years had finally arrived. But I couldn’t jump-start my body—nothing would move.

  Standing in my side yard, the moonlight silvering her skin, was Noelle.

  With her head tipped toward my window, her face absolutely glowed. If I hadn’t been aware of her homecoming, I’d have been sure her ghost was visiting me for a midnight chat. What got me moving was her raising her hand and waving me down. My pajama pants whispered to the dark house as I ran down the stairs, avoiding the two creaky spots in the floor, because the last thing I needed was to wake my mother, who, since Noelle’s disappearance, seemed to have gained superpowered hearing abilities. I sucked in a deep breath as I tiptoed through the kitchen and turned the lock and handle to the back door.

  The steps were cold against my bare feet, the grass damp and slick. The chill that enveloped me was instantaneous, but nothing bothered me as I swam through the darkness. I felt detached, like I was watching the scene from just outside my body.

  When she heard my footsteps, she turned toward me. I slowed, watching as a wave of unfamiliar blue-black hair swept over her shoulder and swung to rest over the right side of her chest, hanging almost to her belly button.

  “Wow,” I said. “I haven’t seen your hair that long since kindergarten.” And then I felt stupid. That was the first thing I said after two years?

  Awkwardly, I walked to Noelle and held out my arms to embrace her. Her body was stiff as she allowed me to hug her for a moment. When she pulled away, it was with force.

  “I guess everyone’s doing that, huh?” I asked, wanting to hear her voice. Needing to know if that had changed, too.

  Noelle looked to the ground and then at me. I stared into her blue-gray eyes, the eyes that used to be more familiar than my own gazing back at me when I looked into a mirror. Those eyes were the same. Almost. They held a hint of something new, like sadness or fear, but they were hers.

  “I’m being totally suffocated,” she said, her voice as rigid as her body.

  “I bet.” I shifted my weight on my bare feet. “This must be the first time you’ve left the house.”

  Noelle surprised me by shaking her head from side to side. “Huh-uh. I’ve been out almost every night. I can hardly breathe in that house.” She turned her face to the sky again, closed her eyes. “Out here, I don’t feel like a caged animal.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. How could her house feel like a cage after the past two years?

  “Look,” Noelle said to the backs of her closed eyelids. “Coop tells me every time you call.” She finally opened her eyes and looked at me again. “And the picture … it was really nice. I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it.” She swept some hair behind her ear. “I just … don’t care. Okay?”

  “I wanted you to know—”

  “You never forgot me. I was always there with you. Coop told me. It’s sweet, really.” Noelle sighed. “This just isn’t my life anymore, Tess. I’m not that girl you knew all those years ago.”

  “Noelle, I’ll always be—”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Her hand shot out at the darkness, aiming to hit something that wasn’t there. “I’m not Noelle anymore.” She breathed heavily through her nose and clenched her jaw.

  “Of course you’re Noelle. Who else would you be?”

  The girl who was not Noelle looked directly into my eyes. Her stare was hard and cold. “Noelle is gone. And she’s not coming back.” She blinked. “My name is Elle.”

  As Noelle turned on the balls of her feet, her hair whipped around her body. I didn’t move as she walked away with an even stride, her back straight and tight, her arms swinging.

  In those few moments, a lifetime of friendship flashed before my eyes. Licking brownie batter from a glass bowl, sledding down Killer Hill in a foot of snow, whispering in the darkness during sleepovers, having giggle fits over prank calling the cutest boys in the high school, raiding her parents’ liquor cabinet late at night.

  Most of all, as she walked away from me, I pictured the excited look that sparked a person’s face just from being near her. She had always pulled people in, cast some strange and immediate spell. She used to shine brighter than anything I had ever known.

  But the girl who walked away from me was dark. Dull. Somehow, strangely rough. I didn’t know her at all.

  Tuesday,

  October 27

  7

  A Matter of Perspective

  When they walked in, I was standing in a bathroom stall, buttoning my jeans and debating whether to discuss the whole Noelle problem with Max over lunch. As their heels click-click-clicked against the tile floor, I heard the first voice.

  “I can’t believe he’s being so weird,” someone said.

  “He’s not worth it, Jess,” a different voice offered.

  I peered through the crack in the door and saw three girls staring at the large wall mirror, talking to their reflections instead of to one another. Kirsten Holmes and Tabby Lock stood on either side, both applying shiny lip gloss. In the middle was Jessie Richards. It was hard to be sure, but her eyes looked red and puffy, and her hair was missing its usual luster.

  “He’s a prick,” Kirsten said.

  “I don’t get it.” Jessie’s voice was soft. Her eyes started roaming, finally settling on something near her feet. “I mean, I didn’t do anything.”

  Tabby and Kirsten stared at each other. Tabby widened her eyes. Kirsten shrugged. Tabby mouthed a few words, and Kirsten nodded. Then the two turned and faced Jessie.

  “I might know something,” Tabby said.

  Jessie’s head snapped up. She grabbed Ta
bby’s hand.

  “What?” Jessie asked. “Is it bad?”

  “I saw him,” Tabby said. “It was this weekend, after Tom’s party, so … pretty late. I’d just dropped Carrie off and was stopped at a four-way in her neighborhood when he passed me coming from the opposite direction.”

  “So?” Jessie shook her head. “Maybe he was going to—”

  “There was a girl in the car,” Kirsten said.

  Jessie startled at the words. Then she stood very still.

  “Who?” Jessie asked.

  “I didn’t get a good look at—”

  “Who was it?” Jessie pulled her hand from Tabby’s grasp. Tabby shrugged, squinted her eyes. “It kind of looked like Shelby Stadler.”

  “Are you for real?” Jessie sucked in a breath. “After everything I did to help her make varsity this year, she’s—” Jessie tapped her foot on the floor, fast and erratic. “Doesn’t everyone know he’s mine? We’ve been together almost four years.”

  “Off and on,” Kirsten said.

  “Kirsten,” Tabby said.

  “I have to figure out who was with him. You guys’ll help, right?” Jessie’s voice lifted up at the end of the sentence, this sweet and juicy sound. There was a pause as the two girls nodded at her. “One thing I guarantee, when we get this bitch, we’ll destroy her.”

  I listened as one set of shoes, crisp and quick, exited the restroom.

  “Why’d you even say Shelby’s name?” Kirsten whispered. “I thought you had no idea who—”

  “Jessie had to have something to go on,” Tabby said. I peered through the crack in the door and watched Tabby comb through her shoulder-length hair with the fingers of one hand. “Besides, Shelby was a total snot about my haircut last week.”

  “But Jessie’s really pissed.”

  “I know.” Tabby giggled. “This year has been way too boring. Something needs to happen, doncha think?”

  “Oh,” Kirsten said. “You are such a bitch.”

  “Yeah.” Tabby smiled. Flitted her eyelashes. “I am.”

  “Are you guys coming, or what?” Jessie called from the hall. “I thought you were right behind me.”

  “We are,” Tabby said.

  Both girls laughed as they click-click-clicked out of the restroom, leaving me with an answer to the question I’d been asking myself for days. I couldn’t trust anyone enough to talk about Noelle (Elle, Elle, Elle—get it straight: her name is Elle), not even Max.

  “So, what’s up?” Max asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, looking at my peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich instead of at him.

  “I thought you said you had something you wanted to talk to me about.”

  “Yeah, I just…” I could practically feel Max’s eyes on me, and it made me want to hide under the table. Like he would have any clue as to how I could crack through the icy layers surrounding Elle? “I think I figured it out.” I looked up.

  Max’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Okay,” he said. “If you say so.”

  The silence that fell between us as we ate was uncomfortable, and it dragged out in these long stretches. I don’t know if it was sheer boredom or a way for both of us to avoid the strange vibes passing between us, but we became focused on things happening around us, ignoring each other almost completely.

  “Just to let you know,” Max said halfway through the lunch period, “I’m pretty good at figuring things out.”

  In my peripheral vision, I could see him looking at me. I ignored him. By then, I was too intent on Jessie—who had planted herself right next to Shelby Stadler—and her friends. It was like watching one of those old silent movies; I had to pay close attention to facial expression and body language if I was going to determine what was happening in the middle of the lunchroom.

  Max cocked his head to the side and turned to follow my gaze. “You’re certainly into something over there.”

  “You can’t look.” I smacked his arm. “They might see.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Max rolled up a ball of cling wrap from his ham sandwich. “You sound like you’re some secret agent.”

  “I’ll tell you about it later, okay? I just need to see what’s going to happen.”

  Max looked at me. “I thought you weren’t a gossip girl.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not, okay? But there’s a potentially explosive situation over there. Forgive me for hoping it ignites and takes some focus off Noelle.” I turned my eyes to the girls and shook my head. “I mean Elle.”

  “Okay, then,” he said with a shrug. “Here’s to hoping for a major scandal.”

  Not much happened while the girls were eating. It wasn’t until the last ten minutes of lunch that I noticed Jessie turn her body, sliding her knees up against the side of Shelby’s chair.

  They were both laughing, and part of me wanted to run to Shelby and warn her that Jessie was about to bring the whole world crashing down on her head. But that wouldn’t give the students of CHS anything tantalizing to gossip, text, or IM about, and I was hoping for a full-scale blowout. So I didn’t move.

  Jessie reached up and tapped one of the pencils that secured a twisted bun on top of Shelby’s head. Shelby ducked away and shook her head back and forth. Then Jessie spoke, and the smile that had been saturating Shelby’s face dried up to nothing. I watched her squint and the lines on her forehead pull tight. She shook her head once again, harder now, and her lips mouthed the word no several times.

  “Here we go,” I said.

  Jessie looked at Tabby. Shelby’s eyebrows shot up, and her mouth started moving quickly as she glanced at all the girls seated at the table. Next, she looked at the girl on her right, who started nodding and moving her hands as she spoke. The girl across from them nodded as well.

  Then everything stopped. Jessie’s chest puffed up with a few deep breaths. She looked at Tabby, who shrugged as she crunched on a carrot stick. Jessie nodded, and Shelby’s body hunched forward, the tension streaming from her like the air from a too-full balloon.

  “Damn,” I said, stomping my foot into the ground.

  “Crisis averted?” Max asked.

  “Unfortunately.” I planted an elbow on the table and propped my chin in my hand. “It would have been perfect. A breakdown in the highest rung of senior-class popularity.”

  “People will move on,” Max said. “That is, once the news coverage dies down.”

  I tried not to think of how the media had grabbed hold of Elle’s story and couldn’t seem to let go.

  “You heard the latest about the kidnapper?” Max asked. I looked into his eyes, the caramel color reminding me of melted brown sugar. “That he changed his plea?”

  I shook my head. “He did?”

  “Yeah. Saw it this morning while I was eating breakfast. He’s going with guilty.”

  The noise around us faded away as I focused on Max’s words.

  “The reporters were saying tons of money will be saved because now there won’t be any trial. All I could think about is how much your friend Noelle will be relieved that she doesn’t have to testify.”

  “Elle,” I said. “She wants to be called Elle now.”

  “Okay. Elle.” Max nodded.

  I didn’t know how to feel. I should have been happy. But I was scared. Somehow, Elle’s being so different, keeping herself from me, had made some kind of sense. I’d been telling myself that our distance was due to her need to hold everything in while she prepped herself for the trial. But now, if there was no trial, if all of that was over and she still stayed away, I would have to start facing the fact that she just might not want to have anything to do with me.

  “Have you seen her yet?”

  It came back in one quick flash, my need for another opinion, the utter confusion that swelled whenever I thought of Elle these last few weeks. I almost let the story of my late-night encounter with her tumble from my lips. Instead, I slowly shook my head.

  “Hey.” Max pointed to something over my shoulder. “Isn’t
that her brother?”

  I turned, following his gaze.

  “Four tables away. There’s a kid wearing a shirt with a red skateboard. Next to him, the one in the green hoodie. Isn’t that him?”

  I found him right away. It was definitely Coop, sitting there with his freckled hands on the table. He was with three other guys, and they were all cracking up about something.

  “You want to see her, right?” Max asked.

  My brain fumbled over the question. I knew what I was supposed to say. But the encounter I’d had with her three nights before had been so awkward. I took a deep breath and nodded.

  Max stood from the table, grabbing his trash. “Come on,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” I stood and grabbed my lunch.

  “Do you trust me?” Max asked over his shoulder.

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  Max stopped walking, and my foot skidded into his heel. He turned. Looked me in the eye. “Fine,” he said. “Maybe this’ll help you start.” He walked toward the trash can near Coop’s table.

  I followed, the trail of his soapy scent wafting into my nose, mixing everything up even more than it already was.

  “What if I don’t want to?” My words were hijacked by the voices of others around me and never reached Max’s ears.

  Max stopped and pitched his trash. Leaning against the brick column next to Coop’s table, he grabbed my arm when I reached out to dump the remains of my own lunch.

  “Say something to him,” he said. “Start a conversation.”

  I shook my head. Max gave me a little push, and I bumped into Coop’s table. I looked down and pretended to see him for the first time.

  “Hey, Coop.” I smiled. He raised his head and nodded. “I, eh, have a question for you.”

  Max walked up beside me and suddenly our legs were touching. I was already having trouble with what to say next, and the warmth of Max’s touch garbled my thoughts even more.

  “Well, not a question exactly.” I was totally blank. I couldn’t think of one thing to say.

  “What’s up?” Coop asked.