by Brett Cooper
Chapter Three
“No feel good?” It was the voice of Peter, the custodian.
Christine lifted her face from her hands. It took a moment for her eyes to focus. She felt half-dead. Or more like five-sixths. Everything seemed far away. She felt so strange. Her body felt filled with sand and her head felt filled with water. In front of her on the library table sat her backpack, unopened. She must have been parked here, just parked, accomplishing nothing, for close to ten minutes now. Shouldn’t have come early today. No point. She couldn’t possibly study. Her mind was mush. The brain can only take so much stress, so much worry and anger, before it shuts down. Add an unscheduled all-nighter to the recipe, throw it all in the ole Easy-Bake Oven, and soon you get a perfectly cooked Zombie Grrl. Yeah, like a superhero.
“You need something? Maybe go home?”
Oh, right. She hadn’t answered him. “Umm.” She should probably have said a bit more than that, but no words would come.
“I help you up,” Peter offered. “I take you to nurse.”
“No,” Christine sputtered, the prospect of a trip to the nurse and a phone call home sharpening her senses and her limited powers of reasoning enough to pull her partially out of this mental sinkhole she’d found herself in. “No, I just need another minute.”
Mercifully, the custodian shuffled away, garbage can in tow.
She let her face fall into her hands again. And she began to cry quietly. Not for the first time today.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. Peter again. He’d gone; he was supposed to stay gone. She’d made that very clear. She knew he meant well, but his unwelcome touch triggered a chill that coursed through her body. She felt a primal disgust. She wanted no one touching her. Not now. Reflexively, she shrugged in defense and snapped her head back and heard herself shout, “No means no!”
As he disappeared, Christine dissolved in a pathetic display of laughter and tears. Laughter because what she’d said was ridiculous. “No means no” is what you’re supposed to yell to prevent a rape. This nice man had only tried to help, and for that he’d been made to look like a rapist. Tears because her life, which she’d thought was pretty close to perfect, wasn’t. And she didn’t feel at all like herself. And she didn’t know what to do about that.
The three librarians were all rushing over to her, looking alarmed. Oops.
“It’s okay,” Christine said, trying to wave them off. “I’m all right. It’s nothing.”
Mrs. Breitenreiter, who was youngish and more fashion-forward than the other two librarians yet oddly sported an old-fashioned beehive hairdo such that most kids referred to her behind her back as Mrs. Beehiver, knelt beside Christine, looked into her tear-filled and surely bloodshot eyes and took her hand gently. “You okay, dear? Tell us,” she said.
“Nothing,” Christine said. “I’m just, I’m having a bad day.”
“It was the janitor, right?”
“No, I overreacted. He put his hand on my shoulder because I was crying.”
The librarians exchanged concerned glances.
“It wasn’t creepy or anything. It wasn’t – I just need to apologize.” And she grabbed her backpack and took off in the direction he’d last went.
She found him collecting supplies from a utility closet near the library’s rear entrance.
When he saw her coming, Peter shook his head and held his hands up as if trapped and hoping for mercy. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I stay away.”
“No. It came out all wrong, what I said. I can’t think. I can’t talk. I haven’t slept.”
“It’s okay.”
“See, that was my lame apology. All wrong.”
“It’s fine. It’s okay.”
“It’s not fine or okay.” Christine slumped against the locker and let her knees buckle under her. She collapsed in a heap, hugging her backpack. “My dad might be having an affair.” This hung in the air as she waited for a couple of other early-bird students to pass by. “I haven’t actually seen it, you know, actually, but… Anyway, it’s like the end of the world, right? Like my dad is the only one who’s ever had an affair. I know supposedly, what, half of all men cheat. No, wait, that was disproved. It’s like twenty-eight percent. Still. Oh, I’m a basket case.”
Peter cleared his throat. Christine peeled herself away from her backpack, craned her neck to look up at him. “I think,” he said, “maybe you feel helpless.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“So maybe you need help.”
Well, duh. When you put it that way. Hmm. Maybe she did. “I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“I tell you a story.” He leaned on a mop handle. “I have boss, yes? One day he call me into his office, say, ‘Peter, you no do good job in bathroom.’ I say, ‘How?’ ‘You no clean toilets right way.’ ‘Not true,’ I say. I know I clean toilets extra good everyday. My wife tell me I am best toilet cleaner in world. Okay, maybe not in world, she talk sweet to me, but pretty good, yes? Now I wonder myself, why boss say this? Next day boss call me again. ‘You no throw trash in dumpster. Leave next to instead.’ ‘No no,’ I say, but he no believe, get mad, tell me watch out or lose job. This make me scared and sad. I ask wife, what to do? He no good, your boss, she say. I can smell this, she say. You, Peter, go watch, look, listen. Find out. You know? That’s what I do. I watch, I look, I listen. Find out boss he is lying. He tell man on phone he will get job. Custodian job. Well, no job open. He must think give man my job, take job from me. Aha. Now I see.”
“You were being framed,” Christine said, forgetting her problems for a moment, feeling sorry for this poor man.
“Framed, yes.”
“What’d you do?”
“Record boss voice. On iPhone. Show to his boss.”
“Awesome!”
“Yeah, I watch TV too.”
“Right,” Christine said, smiling in spite of herself.
“Your turn now,” Peter said. “Not watch tv. Not iPhone. Your turn watch, look, listen.”
“Ha, like a detective? You watch those shows?”
“No. Sometimes. I like Bachelor.”
Christine giggled.
“Yeah,” he continued. “Bachelor good show. I notice who is good, who is not. Tell him, you pick her.”
“Me too. I yell at the tv.”
“I teach you maybe, if you want. One day after school. Teach you how I do this.”
Christine imagined what the librarians might think if they could hear this conversation. The man she’d just branded with a “No means no!” was now offering to stay after school and help her watch, look, listen. This wouldn’t look good to them. But she really did trust him.
“You are strong,” Peter said. “You don’t see, maybe, but I see.”
sRight on one count at least. She didn’t see it. Was she really strong? In some ways, yes. In academics. In gymnastics. But in the ways that counted most? Was she strong of heart? She didn’t know, but she nodded to Peter: yes, okay.