Most of the time I preferred it that way—preferred that people didn’t look at me. Didn’t look at the hideous birthmark on my face. But fuck, it was lonely sometimes.
The purple birthmark started at the inner corner of my right eye, pooling out down the side of my nose and the top of my cheek like spilled wine—which was probably why they were called “port-wine stains.”
It wasn’t raised or bumpy; it wasn’t a rash or an infectious disease. It was just something I was born with. Something I couldn’t escape. Something I hated. Most people stared. Some clearly thought it was contagious, shrinking away from me. The kids at school just used it as fuel for their ridicule.
I took a quick shower, then brought my lotion out to the balcony. As soon as the sliding door was closed and I’d settled myself on the little chair, I heard movement on the other side of the bamboo.
“Neighbor?” There was that ocean voice, immediately making me smile.
“Hey, stranger,” I called back, propping one foot on the railing so I could rub lotion into my leg.
“I was just about to head to bed. Glad I caught you. Long day?”
“Yeah. I pulled a double shift.” I didn’t say where I worked—there was still a chance he was an axe murderer.
“That’s rough.” He sounded unsure; some of the ease of our banter from the previous night was gone.
“It’s OK.” I fought to keep my tone casual. “I only work part time, so I’m happy to take the extra shifts when I can.” I moved on to my other leg.
He sighed. “I gotta get a job.”
“Yeah? What do you do?” This was the part where he told me he was a professional whatever and way too old for me.
He laughed. “Whatever I can. Although it would be nothing if it were up to my dad.”
“Really?” Hope blossomed. Most adults didn’t let their parents dictate what they did for work, right?
“Yeah. He’d prefer I focus on . . . other things.”
I frowned. Neither of us spoke. That was vague and weird.
“It’s getting late. I better go.” As he moved, his balcony light threw his shadow over the bamboo screen. He was tall, broad shouldered.
When I didn’t speak, he did. “Cute toes.”
And then he was gone. The sound of his sliding door closing made me shake my head at my idiocy. Why hadn’t I told him good night or something? But hey, I sure was glad I’d let my mom paint my toes that deep red on the weekend. They did look cute.
The next day, I got home just after lunch. Mom and Dad were both at work, and there was nothing to stop me from racing through the apartment like a maniac, changing out of my work uniform and into a T-shirt dress, and launching myself onto the balcony. He wasn’t there. I waited all afternoon, going inside only for snacks. The sun was setting and I was packing up after my second makeup look when the slide of a balcony door made me pause.
Someone settled in on the other side of the bamboo screen. My heart leapt into my throat, and my hand froze over my makeup bag, several brushes clutched in my fist.
Then I rolled my eyes at myself and let the brushes drop with a clatter.
“Hey, stranger.” This time, I let the smile show in my voice.
“Oh, hey!” He sounded a little surprised. “You’re early tonight.”
“Didn’t work this afternoon. Been sitting out here for hours.” Shit! I cringed. Now I sounded like a creepy moron who’d been waiting for him all day.
But he didn’t skip a beat. “I would’ve come out sooner, but the smell of feet has finally vacated the premises, and I got dragged into a particularly frustrating campaign on Halo.”
“Well, I’m glad to know the stink is gone, but, er, what’s a Halo?”
“Oh!” His laugh this time was a little nervous. “It’s a video game. But not, like, a kid’s game or whatever. It’s got a parental advisory and everything. It’s super violent, actually. Not that I like it for the violence! It actually requires strong problem-solving skills and . . . I’m rambling.”
“Yeah, a bit.” I laughed.
“Sorry. I just didn’t want you to think I was a kid or anything.”
Fuck. How old was he? I was so damn confused.
“I still watch SpongeBob SquarePants on Saturday mornings,” I blurted, “if I’m not working. There’s just something comforting about cartoons and cereal, ya know?”
“Yeah. Takes me back to a time when everything felt right with the world and I didn’t have so much to worry about.”
“Yeah . . .” I was a little surprised he understood so immediately. What heavy shit was he dealing with? Was it as bad as the reason I was dreading going back to school? Was it worse?
The following day I had the late shift and was kicking myself for not telling the boy next door I wouldn’t be home in the evening. Then I was rolling my eyes for assuming he cared enough to notice I wouldn’t be around.
Work was busy—the Saturday night dinner crowd keeping us on our toes, especially considering it was the last weekend before school started. I didn’t get home until almost eleven. The apartment was dark and quiet, and my dad went straight to bed after picking me up.
I didn’t even bother changing—I just went straight out to the balcony.
“Neighbor?” His voice came as soon as I closed the door. It was softer than usual.
“Hey.” I smiled, matching his quiet tone. I guessed we were both aware of the thousands of sleeping people in close proximity. “You’re still up.”
“Yeah . . .” He didn’t sound as happy as he usually did. Maybe it wasn’t the late hour keeping his voice muted. “I’ve been sitting out here for hours. I’m kind of avoiding my dad—he’s in a mood. I wanted to hear your voice.”
That warm feeling in my chest intensified even as my brows drew together. His ocean-deep voice had dropped even further, hinting at tumultuous currents underneath.
I pushed aside the chair I usually sat in and lowered myself to the ground, leaning back against the wall. This was where he usually sat—they’d only just moved in, and I had a feeling there was no patio furniture on their balcony.
We were practically shoulder to shoulder, only the flimsy bamboo between us.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
Silence.
I pressed my hand against the bamboo.
After another beat of silence, I felt pressure against my palm, then, slowly, heat spread through the thin screen. He was pressing his hand against mine.
“What’s your name?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.
He’d ignored my question, but that was OK. Some questions were too hard to answer.
I chewed on my lip but didn’t want to keep him waiting too long. Even though I hardly knew him, the urge not to disappoint this boy was strong.
“Mena,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell him my full name. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but I was more myself with him than I’d ever been with a new person. The only people I could remotely consider friends called me Mena, and they were the only ones I could truly be myself with. I wanted to be myself with him.
“Mena,” he repeated.
“What’s yours?”
He didn’t hesitate for a second. “Turner.”
I opened my mouth to tell him we weren’t strangers anymore, but the sound of his sliding door cut me off.
His hand disappeared, and I curled mine into a loose fist, as if trying to hold on to the warmth.
“Turner?” an older, gruffer voice said. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one.” He shuffled away.
I tried not to feel hurt.
“I heard something,” the older man—probably his dad—said.
“Maybe it was the neighbors.”
The door opened, then closed, and he was gone.
I wrapped my arms around my legs and leaned my head back against the wall. Goose bumps rose on my arms in the chilly night air, but I couldn’t seem to make myself move.
Chapter 3
I didn’t want to feel like this.
I growled and made myself stop, closed my eyes tight, and forced a long breath in through my nose and out through my mouth, gripping the straps of my backpack until my knuckles were as white as the stars swimming in my vision. After a few moments, I steeled my resolve and moved forward at a steady pace, trying to distract myself by counting the steps in my head.
The tail end of summer meant another perfectly sunny California morning, but I wished it was cloudy and cold so I could have an excuse to hide inside a hoodie all day. I hoped I would go unnoticed regardless, that it would be the silent treatment. Being ignored was much better than how the first day of junior year had gone down.
I tried to push the memory away, but it forced its way into my mind, as insistent as the hot sun on the back of my head.
First day of school had been hot last year as well. I’d fought to slow my steps then too, but there had been a hint of excitement, a tiny sliver of hope, driving the nervous energy that day.
I’d spent all summer—every moment I wasn’t working or hanging out with the girls—learning how to do makeup. I’d watched countless hours of YouTube videos and spent half my pay on new products, brushes, pallets, and all kinds of things I hoped would make me more normal in the eyes of my peers. By the end of the summer, I’d gotten pretty good at it, even practicing on Donna, Harlow, and Amaya.
That day, I’d applied an understated look. My birthmark was covered, my lashes accentuated, my lips natural. I thought I looked pretty good.
I was a fool.
I should’ve known—in high school, the only thing worse than being different is making an active effort to change the thing that makes you different.
I’d walked into school with my head up, smiled, made eye contact; I even gave Jessica Miller a little wave as I stopped at my locker. Most people shot me surprised looks, not really knowing what to make of the new me. A few even reflexively smiled back.
By lunch, word had spread. No one had said anything to me, of course, but they’d all been talking behind my back. Oblivious, I went into the girls’ bathroom off the science wing corridor.
I came out of the stall to find four girls leaning against walls and sinks, watching me with amused smiles. Madison and her friends.
I froze, like a gazelle that had just wandered into a circle of leopards.
“Been holding that all morning?” Steph chuckled, tilting her head. “Sounded like an elephant pissing in there.”
“Or a man,” Bonnie added, crossing her arms and leaning against the tiles next to the mirror. “Do you pee standing up like a man?”
“Her name is Phil.” Steph giggled. It would’ve been a cute sound if they all weren’t looking at me with promise in their gazes.
No, no, no, please no. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This year was supposed to be different.
I dropped my gaze to the stained beige tiles and walked to the sink, drawing my shoulders forward to make myself as small as possible. All I could do now was be quiet and hope I could get out of there fast.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Steph giggled again. “We’ve been calling you Phil this whole time, but you really are a man, aren’t you?”
“Those tits must’ve cost a fucking fortune, then.” Kelsey spoke for the first time, her tone bored, her eyes on her phone. I was dying on the inside, and she was double tapping pics on Insta. Bitch. Her comment probably came from jealousy. She was super-model thin but flat chested, and I was comfortably filling out a D cup. Not that I’d ever say that to her out loud. It was easier to silently wait it out. They’d get bored eventually.
“Oh my god.” Bonnie giggled, and the others all laughed with her. “Did you—”
“No,” Madison cut her off. The laughter died. No one dared interrupt Madison. “She’s not a man.”
I shut the water off. Steph was blocking my access to the hand drier. I decided to just leave with my hands wet.
Each girl took a step closer to me, as if they’d practiced it, as if they instinctively knew I was about to bolt.
I froze again, tried to calm my breathing so my boobs would stop heaving. I didn’t want any more attention on them.
Madison kept speaking. “Can’t you see Philomena’s turned into a woman? Look how beautifully she’s done her makeup.”
Her voice was so steady, earnest even, that my eyes snapped up in surprise. She gave me a warm smile, her own makeup impeccable. Her linen shorts and V-neck hung on her perfect frame as though they’d been made for her. She tilted her head slightly and took a strand of my hair, gently twirling it between her fingers. I’d gotten up half an hour early to put a slight wave in my usually dead-straight hair.
I cleared my throat. This had never happened before. I had no idea what to do. My instincts were screaming to get the fuck away from these monsters, but Madison was saying nice things with a perfectly straight face.
“Your hair is so soft,” she whispered, twirling more of it around her manicured finger.
After an extended silence, I cleared my throat again and managed to croak, “Thanks?” It came out sounding like a question.
Madison gathered more of my hair into her hand, tangling her fingers in it, and a heavy dread settled in the pit of my stomach. Her fingers scraped my scalp, and she yanked, making me wince.
The others shifted—predators scenting blood.
Madison laughed. It started out as a light chuckle and quickly turned manic, her wild eyes inches from mine as she laughed literally in my face.
“Thanks?” she mimicked. “Fucking pathetic.” She punctuated her words with another yank. I cried out and instinctively reached up to wrap my hands around her wrist.
The others moved, pulling my hands behind my back.
Tears stung my eyes.
“You’re not a man, Phil.” Madison shook her head, her eyes narrowed. “But you’re not a woman either. You’re fucking nothing. And we can’t have you walking around, lying, pretending to be something. You think covering up that hideous thing on your face makes you better? You’re a fucking joke. And we can’t have anyone forgetting that, can we?”
No one said anything. My labored breathing echoed off the old, chipped tiles. The side of my head where Madison was still pulling on my hair stung like a bitch, and my neck was starting to hurt from the odd angle. A tear slid down my cheek.
“Can we?!” Madison shouted into my face.
“No.” I closed my eyes—the next best thing when I couldn’t move my head to lower them.
“Good.” She released my hair and patted my head as if I were a dog.
My eyes flew open as the bitches holding me pushed me against the sinks.
Madison walked to the back of the bathroom slowly, calmly. She gripped the handle of a mop that had been left in a bucket in the corner and turned back to face us. What idiot of a janitor had left that out? Bonnie giggled again, as if someone had handed her a puppy. Kelsey took a break from her scrolling to snap a picture as Madison raised the mop out of the bucket.
It splatted on the tiles. She dragged the sodden thing across the bathroom.
“No. Please.” I started to struggle, but I had no chance. There were four of them, two of them holding me down. The edge of the sink dug into my lower back as my shoulders pushed against the mirror. “I’ll take it off. Just let me go, and I’ll take it off right now. Please, Madison, please, don’t do this.”
She stopped in front of me and flipped the mop so the shaggy, dripping head was level with my face. The abrasive smell of bleach hit the back of my throat.
I sobbed, pleading with them to stop, to let me go, but it was pointless.
The mop clattered to the ground moments before they released me, and I collapsed next to it, sobbing, pushing away from them. But I had nowhere to go; the sinks were already at my back.
On their way out, someone dumped the rest of the filthy gray water over my head.
I gasped and spluttered again, the smell making me gag.
The door closed behind them, and I was alone once again.
I refused to look at myself in the mirror when I finally gathered the strength to pick myself up off the floor. I just wrung out my ruined hair and washed up with clean water, splashing it onto my face over and over.
As I turned the tap off, the door opened again. I flinched and turned to face it, chastising myself for stupidly not getting the fuck out of there before they came back.
But it wasn’t them. Jessica Miller stopped in her tracks, her eyes widening as they took in my appearance, the mop and bucket, the water all over the ground.
She’d smiled back that morning, but now the status quo had been reestablished. She lowered her head, turned around, and walked back out of the bathroom without saying anything.
In some ways, that hurt even more than what those bitches had done to me.
I knew in that moment that nothing would ever change. Not until I left.
Last year, I’d had hope that if I tried hard enough, I could fit in, make people forget why they hated me.
This year, I’d given up.
With a heavy heart, I rounded the corner, and Devilbend North High School came into view—patchy dry grass and cracked pavement framing the low brown building with bars over the windows.
I arrived with just enough time to go to my locker and get to my first class. Keeping my head down, my hair draped over the birthmarked side of my face, I sat off to the side about halfway back—not in the back with the assholes who thought they were cool and rebellious, and not in the front with the kids who were constantly called on to answer questions. I didn’t speak to anyone or look at anyone who wasn’t a teacher. I did my best to remain invisible, and I managed to get to lunch unnoticed and unscathed.
Bully Me: Class of 2020 Page 44