The Window

by Amelia Brunskill

  I shrugged. While I’d signed up at the beginning of freshman year and had continued to receive their emails and newsletter, I had yet to attend a meeting. Which was probably for the best, since I didn’t, technically speaking, know how to play.

  “You could do some community service,” Dad suggested, moving his eyes up from his hands with some effort. “Or debate, maybe? I’m sure you’d be good at that. You’re very—” He paused. I could see words spinning through his head like pictures of fruit in a slot machine. Argumentative? Combative? Unyielding? He settled on “Rational. You’re very rational.”

  “Yes,” Mom said, her voice filled with false cheer. “Debate could be good. Community service…The important thing is just that you pick something and really give it a chance. It could take a while, but in time you might find that you enjoy being part of a group.”

  “ ‘Enjoy being part of a group’?” She couldn’t possibly believe that. No one who knew me at all, let alone someone who’d lived with me for the past fifteen years, could believe that.

  Her face reddened, but she nodded. “Yes. In time, I think you might.”

  It’s hard to respond when people resort to blatant lying.

  Then it occurred to me that this might in fact be an opportunity—a chance to do something that would usually seem suspiciously out of character.

  So I looked at my parents, both so intent on turning me into a well-adjusted person by forcing me to engage with my peers.

  “Okay,” I said. “Fine.”

  Mom’s shoulders dropped, as if she’d been relieved of some great burden. “Wonderful. You can take a while to think about what to join. Just let us know sometime in the next week or two—”

  “Actually, I’ve already decided,” I told her.

  “Oh,” she said. She sounded both pleased and surprised. “Great. What would you like to do?”

  “Track,” I said.

  When we tried again, at another bar farther outside town, we expected the same thing to happen as before. Expected them to take one look at us and tell us to head right back out.

  I don’t know which of us was more surprised when they let us stay and order a drink.

  ON THE BUS THE NEXT day, I stared at the seat in front of me, focusing on the spot where someone had carved their initials deep into the plastic. The lines were clean and sharp, and I wondered what they’d used to make them. Maybe an X-Acto knife? A switchblade? While I admired the neatness of their work, it was unnerving to consider how many people on the bus might have something on them that, in a pinch, could be used to kill someone.

  There had again been no empty seats, so Sarah sat beside me, nodding in time to her music. Boom, boom, boom. Nod, nod, nod. As the nodding increased in intensity, I had a flashback to seeing her doing this before, at one of the cross-country meets my parents had dragged me to in the fall. She’d sat at the top of the bleachers, headphones on, her eyes trained on the field, her head mapping out a beat audible only to her. A thought occurred to me.

  “Hey, do you do track?” I asked her.

  “Sorry?” she said, lowering her headphones. “Did you say something?”

  “Do you do track? Once it starts, I mean? I know you did cross-country.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Cross-country kind of blows, honestly—it’s so boring—but track I actually like.” She began to raise her headphones again and then stopped. “Wait—are you doing track? I don’t remember you being on the list.”

  “I’m thinking of signing up late.” I paused. “What’s Mr. Matthews like?”

  She shrugged. “He’s fine.”

  I kept looking at her, hoping she’d elaborate.

  She seemed to interpret my stare as disbelief. “No, honestly, he’s okay. He and my dad are both big basketball fans, so they go out for beers occasionally and watch games, so he’s maybe a bit nicer to me because of that, but he’s really okay. I know some people get all bent out of shape because they think track is going to be an easy way to get out of gym and it’s not, but that’s on them.” She said the last part with surprising forcefulness, as if their laziness were a personal affront.

  “No, that’s not it. I heard…”

  That he’s a pervert who had a thing for my sister. And I’m wondering if she was in love with him.

  “…that he’s kind of a flirt.”

  She frowned. “Mr. Matthews? I don’t know, I wouldn’t say that. He’s definitely not like Mr. Richards or anything.”

  Mr. Richards, the shop class teacher, was fifty if he was a day and had a huge potbelly and a receding hairline. “Who on earth would be flirting with Mr. Richards?”

  “Oh, no one’s flirting back, but trust me, you do not want to wear a low-cut shirt in his class. And if he asks if you want help using the circular saw, the answer is always, always no.”

  I shivered at the thought. “Good to know.”

  “Yeah. I recommend turtlenecks around that guy. Or chain mail if you have any.” She tucked her legs up against the seat and put her headphones back on.

  I leaned back and tried to read my book, only to find myself rereading the same sentence over and over. I wondered if it had been a bad call to say I’d join track. Maybe Lauren didn’t know what the hell she was talking about and I’d be stuck taking part in an exhausting, sweaty sport for absolutely no reason. It would be awkward, but I could still go for debate or something else less physically taxing instead. Before I signed up for track, I should see if there was any other reason to think something might have been going on between Mr. Matthews and Anna. Anything tangible.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN I TRIED THE DOOR of Mr. Matthews’s classroom, it eased right on open.

  The walls were plastered with large posters of literary figures with inspirational quotes about the power of the written word, and the air smelled like dry-erase markers and peppermint, a strange but not entirely unpleasant combination. The whiteboard was covered with notes from his last class, his handwriting displaying the kind of perfectly formed letters typically associated with kindergarten teachers or amateur calligraphers.

  The precision of his handwriting was in notable contrast to the complete shambles of his desk. His ancient PC monitor barely peered above the surrounding piles of paper, and his keyboard was swamped on all sides.

  I carefully opened the shallow drawer underneath his keyboard, hoping there’d be something personal and enlightening inside, but there were only three pens, a mechanical pencil, and a pack of Mentos with the foil partially peeled back.

  I shut the drawer and opened the deeper one underneath it.

  Here there were stapled papers sorted into hanging files. Not labeled, unfortunately. I took the papers out of the first file and began to look through them, curious to see if there was anything left from last quarter, anything from Anna. Flipping through them, I noticed that Mr. Matthews kept his comments brief, almost clipped:

  Good job!

  Nice work—a real improvement from last year!

  Decent start, but needs a good edit.

  After looking through the stack, I returned the papers to the file. In the back of the drawer was a thin file. I pulled the whole file out this time. There were only four papers in it, all from the fall. Two of them were Anna’s. One she’d only turned in the day before she died. It was unmarked. I held on to it briefly, wondering if he’d held it in his hands after learning what had happened to her. Did you read it? I wondered. Did you want to? Or was it too hard to look at? I slipped it back into the file and pulled out her second paper. This one had been graded; she’d received an A. That, in and of itself, was hardly suspicious—while her science grades had been mediocre, she’d typically done well in humanities.

  I flipped the pages until I reached his comment at the back.

  Beautiful work, Anna—you really captured
the heart of the issues at play here. You are growing into a wonderful writer. I’m so very glad to have a student like you in my class.

  I stood there quietly, looking at his words.

  So very glad.

  Student like you.

  Like you.

  You.

  I slipped the paper back into the folder, holding it by the cold metal of the staple, the paper itself feeling too personal all of a sudden, an object they’d both touched.

  I don’t want to believe, I thought. But I do want to know.

  “I’M THINKING OF BUYING A new table,” Mom announced at breakfast the next day, throwing the words down like a gauntlet.

  Dad lowered his newspaper, and I tried to refocus my thoughts, which had been trained on planning when to ask Mr. Matthews about signing up for track. Lunch, I’d thought, might work best.

  “A new table for the living room?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Although maybe we should replace that one too. I meant this one.” She tapped her finger on the square kitchen table we were all sitting at. “A round one might be nice.”

  All three of us looked over at the empty fourth side of the table, where Anna had always sat. Where none of us had been able to bring ourselves to sit since.

  “Right,” Dad said. “Sure. A round one sounds good.”

  * * *

  —

  I’D PLANNED TO EAT MY sandwich quickly in the bathroom at lunch, as usual, and then try to find Mr. Matthews in his classroom. At 12:01, I was about to turn into the bathroom when I heard someone call out, “You heading to the cafeteria?”

  I turned to see Sarah close behind me.

  “Yes,” I said, conscious of the weight of my lunch bag in my hand. “Just heading to the bathroom first.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I need to grab my lunch from my locker, but could you save me a seat?”

  “In the cafeteria?” I hoped there was some other interpretation for what she was saying. Not that one really sprang to mind.

  “No, in the bathroom,” she said, with a laugh. “I’ve been eating backstage so I can listen to my music in peace and not smell like the caf for the rest of the day, but now the drama kids are doing rehearsals there during lunch. Anyway, it feels like maybe I should just suck it up and eat at a table, you know?”

  I thought about how I’d been eating, cross-legged on a closed toilet seat, balancing my lunch on my lap.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll save you a seat.”

  * * *

  —

  IN MY HEAD, I’D BUILT up the cafeteria as this huge, imposing space, loud and intimidating. In reality, it really wasn’t that big or that loud. I did wish Sarah hadn’t mentioned the smell, though. I’d never noticed it before, but now the weird meaty smell assaulted my nose, leaving me a tad nauseated.

  I claimed an empty table at the edge of the room and began to relax. This wasn’t so terrible; plus, it was nice to be able to lay out my lunch in front of me on a flat surface, rather than crouching over it like a dog guarding a bone.

  Sarah arrived a few minutes later. “God, it smells terrible in here,” she said as she sat down. “I should bring an oxygen tank into this place so I don’t have to actually breathe the air.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to eat, though,” I pointed out.

  She gave me a quizzical look.

  “With an oxygen tank,” I added.

  “Right,” she said. “I suspected there might be some flaws with that plan.”

  With that, she unzipped her bag and pulled out a large paper bag, which held a seemingly endless number of small containers.

  “What is all that stuff?” I asked.

  “My mom’s an amateur nutritionist,” she said, with a roll of her eyes. “She goes on these kicks about different ‘super-foods,’ freaking out about how junk food—like anything with carbs or actual flavor—will rot my insides, and this is the result.”

  “Is any of it good?”

  “Good is a strong word. I’d say that some of it’s at least relatively normal, like blueberries and yogurt. But other stuff is vile—like wheat germ and cold, unseasoned tofu.”

  I looked at my apple and sandwiches.

  “Guess I should be glad my mom doesn’t take that active an interest in my diet.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You should be very grateful.” She opened one of the containers, which contained a substance that looked like seaweed. Then she looked over at my lunch.

  “What’s with the two sandwiches, though? You one of those people with the hummingbird-style metabolisms?”

  “No, it’s just that the one my mom made is less than appealing.” I lifted one of the pieces of bread on the one Mom made, showing Sarah the slick coating of bright yellow against the white bread.

  “Ugh,” she said.

  “Yeah. Though I should pack more food in anyway—halfway through the afternoon, I’m usually starving.”

  “Poor you,” she said. She paused and looked down at her own lunch. “Well, could I interest you in some kale chips?”

  “God, no,” I said without thinking.

  Her eyebrows shot up and I worried that I’d offended her.

  Then she broke out laughing.

  * * *

  —

  SARAH PROVED TO BE A slow eater, so I ended up going to Mr. Matthews’s class only after calculus ended, hoping that he hadn’t headed right out as soon as his last student left. Luckily, he was still there, sitting at his desk, head down, straightening papers.

  For a few moments, I stood watching him. Was he someone Anna had actually found attractive? I tried to see him through her eyes, tried to see him as a random guy rather than as a teacher. There was a certain wiry energy to him even as he sorted papers, and he had nice hair, I decided—dark brown and wavy—that was longer than you’d expect for a teacher, and it made him seem younger, more approachable. At the same time, his ears were on the large side, and while there was nothing wrong with his face, there wasn’t anything terribly memorable about it either. Overall, he definitely wasn’t ugly, but he was hardly a Greek god either.

  I coughed to get his attention. “Mr. Matthews?”

  He started and glanced up. When he saw me, he looked confused, even upset, before he managed to plaster on a more neutral expression.

  “Jess. How can I help you?”

  “I would like to join the track team,” I said. “Please.”

  He looked at me blankly. “You want to join the track team?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Actually the sign-up time is over….” He trailed off.

  I kept standing there quietly. The sign-up period was indeed over, and yet here I was.

  He straightened himself in his chair and rubbed his forehead. Stalling.

  This was unusual. If anything, I’d found people had been more accommodating of me recently, more likely to bend the rules in my favor. I began to wonder if his apparent unease with my joining the team was an indication that something really had happened between him and Anna. Maybe he felt uncomfortable with me being around. Maybe I was an unpleasant reminder of what he’d done, what he’d lost.

  Then again, maybe he just didn’t want to deal with the logistics of a late sign-up.

  Finally, he nodded. “Sorry, of course. I can make it work. We’d be happy to have you.” He paused. “Uh, do you know what events you would be interested in?”

  I did not. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might need to feign some interest in and understanding of the whole thing.

  “No,” I said. “Maybe running?” Running and shot put were the only trackish things I could think of, and I couldn’t even pretend to be interested in shot put.

  “Five-hundred meter? Hundred meter?”

  This time it was my turn to give h
im a blank look.

  He backed off. “That’s fine. We can see what suits once you get started.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, practices start in two weeks.” He furrowed his brow and fingered the worn fabric at the elbow of his sweater. “You can pick up the athletic forms from the main office. Once we get those back, we can order you a uniform—I guess you can wear your own stuff until it arrives.”

  I nodded again.

  He attempted a smile. “Great. It’ll be good to have you on the team, Anna—” He froze. His face turned white and then bright pink.

  My eye twitched. Other than that, I remained perfectly still.

  “Jess,” he said carefully. “Good to have you on the team.”

  It felt like we were in control, sneaking out and going to the bar—just far enough out of town where we wouldn’t be recognized, but close enough that we could get back home before morning.

  Usually we wouldn’t even have more than a drink or two.

  Sometimes I slipped coasters into my pockets, as proof to myself that it happened. That I wasn’t as boring as everyone thought.

  OCCASIONALLY, I’D SEE IT COMING. The grief. Not the constant version, which always hummed in the background, like white noise, but the gut-pummeling, breath-stealing kind. Sometimes I could see it rolling in toward me, growing larger, feeding on itself, like a wave hurtling toward the shore.

  Once the grief was on the horizon, all I could do was wait for the worst of it to pass, wondering all the while if maybe this time it would pull me under long enough that I wouldn’t surface.

  Today it happened in English class. A simple thing triggered it: the girl in front of me playing with her hair. She’d been twirling it around her hand and letting it fall back down to bounce over her shoulders. Finally, she’d picked up a pencil and twisted her hair with it, fixing it tidily into place with a last decisive thrust. Anna used to try to do that, biting her lip in concentration as she worked the pencil into her hair, only to have it all come tumbling back down. For one moment, the girl in front of me was Anna: Anna, who’d gotten the best of that stupid pencil. In the next moment, she wasn’t anything like her.