by Dan Josefson
Ellie took the shampoo from the wire basket hanging from the shower nozzle. She had an inclination to believe she was too good for him. She hated that about herself, but it wasn’t something she could unthink. It was only by staying with Roger, by humbling herself, that she could wear away that ugliness in herself, Ellie thought. This was one of the things she could learn, as long as she had to stay at the school. The school’s lawyers were dragging her case out the way Roger had told her they would. They assured her this was the best way. But she wondered whether she wouldn’t rather accept the court’s judgment than spend any more time at Roaring Orchards. Ellie stared at the water stains on the bottom of the shower. She twisted off the water and dried herself with a thick white towel she had brought from her parents’ house. Her parents had found a lawyer they wanted her to talk to. Ellie went back to Roger’s bedroom, where she sat on the floor to pull on her clothes so that she wouldn’t be seen through the bare windows.
The first plum blush of dawn outlined the farthest mountains as Ellie crossed campus toward the Cafetorium. Phys ed was held there in the winter to save the cost of heating the Gym. The frost that tipped the grass disappeared as Ellie dragged her feet through it, leaving two crooked lines of darker green to mark where she passed across the silvered green of the lawn.
I and the rest of the students waiting outside in the cold pushed our fists deeper into our pockets, sleepily stomped our feet, and huddled together. It was one of the only activities I was required to attend while on Reciprocity Detail. Our stomping feet and the steam rising from our mouths and noses always made me think of a pack of animals. Which I suppose we were. Ellie pulled open the cold metal door and let us in. Our cheeks were flushed as we filed past. We bumped gently into her and one another, walked with small shuffling steps, our eyes closed. Our coats were bulky and soft. My eyes were tired and stung from the cold.
Ellie followed the last of us into the building. Inside it was dark except for the light from the kitchen, where Floyd was busy. The Cafetorium was full of the sluggish smells of breakfast and the ticks and scrapes of Floyd at work. After piling our heavy winter parkas and down jackets on one of the round wooden tables, some of us curled up on the floor for a few more minutes of sleep before Ellie brought the AV cart from the storage room. On her way she flipped on the lights, to our vain protests. She paused and looked back at us lying on the floor and shading our eyes, but only for a moment.
When Ellie got the thing into the Cafetorium and plugged it in she asked, “Which one do you guys want?”
There wasn’t any answer from the students lying around the Cafetorium. We were intent on slowing things down. She read out loud from the stack of videocassettes piled on top of the VCR. “There’s this Oldies ’n’ Aerobics one, Stretching to the Classics, Flexercise, Christmas Carol Ab-Workout—”
“Not the ab workout,” someone said from the carpet.
“Play the war one,” Pudding said.
Ellie looked through the stack but didn’t see anything like that.
“It’s in the machine,” Pudding said. “Dedrick played it yesterday.”
She turned on the TV and hit play. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through the Jungle” blared as a group of people in camouflage shorts and army fatigues flickered onto the screen behind the tracking lines. They ran in place and waved their hands over their heads. Some wore elastic headbands. Some had red handkerchiefs tied around their heads.
“No, let’s do Flexercise,” someone moaned from the floor.
“Everyone up,” Ellie said. “Everyone up or I’m not signing your checksheets.”
We slowly stood and arranged ourselves in front of the AV cart, mimicking the exercises in the video. Ellie dropped into a plastic chair to our side. She stared out at us while we aerobicized, but as the first song ended and the second began, Ellie noticed that Beverly Hess wasn’t exercising. She just stood still in the crowd with her eyes closed.
“Bev, let’s see you moving please.”
“You can’t talk to her,” Carly Sibbons-Diaz called out. “She’s ghosted.”
“Excuse me?”
Carly stopped exercising and turned to Ellie. “Bev’s neediness was getting beyond all proportion. The dorm voted to put her on a structure. We’re not supposed to talk to her or look at her really.”
“Until when?”
“Until she gets unghosted.”
“But you’re talking about her,” Ellie said, sounding juvenile.
“Well, we can talk about her as long as we do it as if she’s not here. We can’t acknowledge her.”
Other students had stopped to watch Ellie and Carly, but Bev was still facing the television with her eyes shut. “You know what,” Ellie said, “everybody back to exercising. You too, Carly. If I need to talk to Bev to get her to behave, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Okay,” Carly said, “but you’re kind of splitting.”
“Bev,” Ellie said, standing up. “Bev.” Bev didn’t respond. Ellie walked over and leaned down so that her face was inches from Bev’s. “Bev.” Bev kept her eyes closed.
Ellie sighed deeply and stepped behind Bev. She grabbed her forearms just below the elbows. As the pipes and drumrolls introducing “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” came on she said, “Bev, you’re going to do these exercises even if I have to do them with you. Do you understand?” When Bev didn’t respond, she began.
She swung Bev’s arms back and forth and then from side to side, like the people in the video were doing. She thought she felt Bev laughing. The rest of us began laughing as well. After a few moments Bev went limp and collapsed backward into Ellie’s arms. Ellie caught her under the armpits and slowly let her down onto the ground. Leaning over her, Ellie watched to make sure she was breathing. She couldn’t tell if she saw a slight smirk.
“Oh God,” Carly said.
“Everyone leave her alone,” Ellie said. She rolled the AV cart a few feet to the left. “Guys, move over here so you don’t step on her. No, just leave her there.”
Bev lay on the green carpet as we continued to exercise beside her. Ellie checked on her occasionally, less because she was worried than because she didn’t want to let Bev go to sleep. Once or twice she pulled Bev’s eyelids open and looked into her eyes as though she knew what she were doing. Bev continued to pretend that she was passed out. But when the tape was drawing to an end and we were cooling down to Donovan’s “Universal Soldier” Bev began to shake and spit. She spun about on the carpet and opened her eyes wide. Ellie ran over and kneeled by her. Bev looked terrified. She looked over Ellie’s shoulder and shook her head. “No,” Bev yelled. “No!”
Ellie looked back over her shoulder to see what Bev was looking at. She didn’t see anything. Now Bev’s eyes were squeezed shut and she was slapping at something a few inches in front of her face. And she was shouting. Ellie grabbed her by the wrists and pinned her hands to the ground.
“Bev,” she said, “Bev. Look at me. What’s wrong?” Bev only struggled to turn her face away.
Floyd had stepped out of the kitchen and was standing tentatively at the other side of the Cafetorium, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. “Everything okay?” he called.
“I don’t know,” Ellie said. “Bev? Are you okay?”
“Don’t let them get me,” Bev said. She seemed genuinely frightened. Despite knowing better, I felt my skin go cold.
“Who’s going to get you, Bev? No one’s there.”
“They’re coming at me, from the vents. They’re spirits!”
Ellie let go and stood up. She looked again at where Bev had been staring and noticed a heating vent high on the wall near the clock. Bev was still writhing on the floor and shrieking. Floyd walked over to better see what was going on. He stood next to Ellie with his hands on his hips.
“I see them, I’m seeing them,” Bev said. “Help me!”
“Should we do something?” Floyd asked Ellie.
“I don’t know. She’s faking, I�
��m sure.” Ellie didn’t sound entirely sure. She turned to the rest of us. The exercise tape had finished and we were getting our coats on. “Wait there, everybody. You can’t leave without Bev.”
“We need you to sign our phys ed cards,” Eric Gold said. “And we need to go back and shower so we can get to breakfast on time. Couldn’t just New Girls stay?”
“We’re supposed to ignore her,” Carly said. “That’s the whole point of her structure.”
Ellie looked down at Bev, who seemed calmer. She was still staring at the heat vent and breathing heavily. “Has she done anything like this before?” Ellie asked.
“Not really like this,” Carly said. “But she’s said stuff about spirits.”
“Recently?”
“Uh-huh.”
Ellie kneeled next to Bev and helped her sit up. “Honey, are you all right?”
Bev blinked at her. “What happened?” she asked. “What am I doing on the floor?”
Ellie just looked at her. “Bev, do you think you can stand up?”
With Ellie’s help she stood and looked around herself curiously. Ellie handed Bev her coat. Bev staggered to join her dorm and the rest of us. Ellie initialed the small squares of paper we each held out. “Could someone please put the AV cart back in the storage room?” Ellie called as we were hurrying out. No one did, and she was left to roll it back to its corner, over the tangle of extension cords and the long cords of old vacuum cleaners.
7
It was at a Campus Community meeting that Aubrey broke the news that Doris had left and introduced Ken. The students were all shocked that Doris was gone—we were used to faculty members disappearing, but Doris in particular had seemed like someone without anyplace else to go. That, and her resigned oddness, had made her similar to a lot of us, and we’d grown to like her.
After Aubrey said a little bit about Ken, Ken took the opportunity to say he hoped no one would hold Doris’s leaving against him. “I’m sure there are many of you who are going to miss—”
“Don’t do that,” Aubrey said.
“I’m sorry?”
“There’s no need, Ken. Look,” Aubrey said, turning to the students in the room. “No one here is more disappointed than I am that Doris couldn’t handle her responsibilities. I hired her, and I relied on her, and I’m very hurt by her. But for those of you who were close to Doris, or those of you who have been abandoned in the past by women you relied on, this brings those feelings up and gives you the opportunity to deal with them. And that is a lot of what Ken’s brand of therapy, psychic mending therapy, is about. It’s very much like what goes on here every day, the way that different people on campus will take on different roles in their various relationships. And we observe how we react to one another, and we talk about what feelings that evokes and try to figure out why. Well, Ken’s workshops do very much the same things but in a more formal way. Ken, you’re laughing. Why are you laughing?”
“Because I’d forgotten quite what it’s like around here, Aubrey. I hope you students understand what an exceptional teacher you have in this man. To take something like a headmistress’s departure, and rather than seeing it the way I think we all did, as a negative, you manage to see what’s healing about it. That’s just wonderful.”
Ken told the students and faculty members at the meeting that he was looking forward to getting to know us. That he wasn’t going to jump right in with his system, but he was going to hang back and do a lot of listening and soon would hold some workshops so everyone could see what he was all about. Until then, he’d just be around. We could call him Ken or Dr. Ken, whichever we felt more comfortable with. As Aubrey went around the room, each member of the faculty and each Regular Kid took a turn at welcoming Ken to Roaring Orchards. Jenna also announced that on a Saturday in a few weeks’ time, we would be having a square dance.
Tidbit and I got our schoolwork done early. It was our day to mop the floors in the Classroom Building, so when the other students finished classes we went to do our Reciprocity Detail. Roger had also asked that we dust the shelves in the library. It was one of the things he felt had slipped through the cracks when Doris had been in charge.
We were in the back corner of the library, cleaning the encyclopedias. Tidbit sprayed the books with cleaner, and I wiped them down.
“You have a zit,” Tidbit said, “on your nose.”
I kept cleaning. “So? I have one by my ear, too.”
Tidbit stopped spraying books and looked at me. “I don’t see it.”
“My other ear.” I nodded for Tidbit to move down the aisle so we could clean the books farther down. She slid a little way down the carpet, and I followed.
“Can I pop it?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t pop them.”
“What, never? Why not? That’s the only good thing about having zits. Sometimes I put it off, to save them for later, but I always eventually pop mine.” She was talking slowly, drawing this out to get a reaction. “And every night before bed, I squeeze out the blackheads around my nose.”
I just looked at her and then back at the encyclopedias.
“C’mon, just let me pop the one by your ear. I’ll let you do one of mine.”
“No.” I couldn’t help laughing a little. “I don’t want to pop any of yours. Besides, the one by my ear hurts.”
“Oh, then you have to pop it.” She dropped the spray bottle and crawled around to my other side. “Lemme see.” She took my head in her hands. I squirmed some but let her look. Her hands felt cold against my face. “Oh yeah, this’ll stop hurting if you pop it.”
“Don’t.”
She pinched the zit above my ear, and I flinched.
“Stop moving,” she said, sitting up on her knees and pushing my head against her thigh. I smelled the all-purpose cleaner we were using on the books and the detergent scent from her jeans. I felt her lean over me. She was humming some song.
“Ow, ow!” I said. “Quit it!” The pain was sharp. It didn’t feel like a zit that was going to pop.
“Is it hurting less or hurting more?”
I twisted my head each time Tidbit pinched, rubbing against the texture of her jeans. “More, more, more.” My right eye was closed and pressed against her thigh. My left was looking directly at one of her rivets. Under her breath, Tidbit sang the song she had been humming, “Babe, your love’s got me retarded, the way Heloise was Abelarded.” It hurt enough where she was pinching me that I wondered whether she might actually do some serious damage.
“Oh, hold on,” Tidbit said. She slid my head down her leg and onto the floor. I felt the carpet against my cheek and her breast against my shoulder.
“It’s about to go,” Tidbit said, more to herself than to me. She seemed almost out of breath.
“Stop it, it—”
But with a sudden rush it was over. My whole head stung. Tidbit said, “Ooh, that was a bad one,” and wiped her hands on the carpet, letting me up.
“See? I bet it hurts less now.”
I rubbed the side of my head. “It hurts less than when you were squeezing it.”
“You’ll see. It’ll feel better.”
“You didn’t make it bleed, did you?” I took my hand off my ear and looked at my palm.
“No,” she said, but she had to look to be sure.
Before we began mopping, Tidbit and I wandered around the Classroom Building to try to figure out what we had missed being on Reciprocity Detail. We didn’t discover much, but we did find the masks we had made in Brenda’s class, Expressions. We put them on. The empty rooms looked different through the eyeholes. I hadn’t noticed before that the floor tiles were in a checkerboard pattern in maroon and black. There was chipping paint on bookcases. There was a door connecting two classrooms that I somehow hadn’t known was there.
I was thinking to myself, You go first, I’ll follow you. It didn’t scare me, although I wondered if it should. I didn’t know if I was saying
it to myself exactly or if I was imagining saying it to Tidbit. But it was another decision I was trying to make. Or, rather, a decision I had made that I was trying to get myself to act on.
“Come on,” I said. “We should start mopping.”
Tidbit took her mask off. “We should put these away.”
“No,” I said. “Let’s wear them.” She put hers back on and placed her folded glasses in the pocket of her flannel shirt. We walked down to the atrium and into the small mop closet.
It was when we were filling up the bucket with soap and water that I told her, “I’m going to run away.” I couldn’t tell if she paused or not. “But I need you to come with me. I haven’t done it before.”
Tidbit lifted up her mask, but I touched her hand to stop her. She took it off anyway but left it on top of her head so the duck bill pointed straight up. “No,” she said. “I told you, I’m not going to run away again.”
“But you told me about the times you did, and someone always went with you. I don’t have anyone else to go with me, and I don’t want to do it alone.”
“Well, that’s your problem.”
We took two mops and the mop bucket upstairs and began work on the landing. She put her glasses back on. We worked in silence. It had never occurred to me that working with Tidbit could be uncomfortable.
“Don’t you want to get out of here? This place is so fucked up. I’m so bored I’m going crazy.”
“You’re not going crazy. And hell yes I want to get out of here. That’s my point. If I keep running away I’ll be here for fucking ever. And there’s nothing more boring than acting out and getting cornered and acting out and getting cornered all over again. Everyone thinks they’re doing their own thing and that they’re the world’s original badass, but it’s just the same tired shit over and over. Following the process is the first really new thing I’ve done since I’ve been here.”