From Where I Watch You

by Shannon Grogan

  “I know. Guess I’ll have to schlep bags of food after all.”

  “Maybe accidentally sneak some Trojans into your purse for me, too? Really hate paying for those suckers.”

  Some people turn to look at us in the crammed hallway. I stare at the floor because if I say anything back about condoms it will lead to yet another discussion about my virginity. No thanks.

  A pair of too-skinny legs in too-big leather boots stop in front of us. Jen Creighton offers a paper to Noelle. “Since I don’t have your number, here you go.” Jen’s eyes flick to me, only for a second. “Of course, Kara’s invited, too.”

  That’s bullshit and she knows it. She’d never give me an invite if Noelle wasn’t around. Her eyes tell me she knows it’s bullshit, too. Her eyes tell me that she might even be doing this on purpose, to set me up somehow.

  “Gee, thanks,” I reply.

  But then Jen does that eyelid flick thing she used to do when she was nervous. Back when we were friends.

  “I’ll consider it,” Noelle tells Jen. “On second thought . . .”

  Noelle takes her gum out of her mouth, real slow, and sticks it in the middle of the flyer, squishing it in for extra emphasis. Then she folds and unfolds it to see the pink wad stretch from both sides of the paper. She hands the little flyer gum package to Jen. “Thanks, but I don’t think I can make it.”

  I hate that I feel a little bad for Jen. She totally deserves that. But I know her and I know right now she’s mortified. Of the three of us—me, Gaby, and Jen—Jen wanted the attention, the popularity. So I know she’s lying awake at night obsessing about her party and who might show and who won’t. I know she spent hours making her little flyer perfect with just the right wording so people won’t think she’s too desperate, even though I think a fancy flyer says it all.

  Jen gapes at the paper mess. And then down at her big boots. Gaby always teased her about not having calves or a butt. Part of me still wants to put my arm around her shoulder; that little part of me who remembers spending the night in the bathroom, feeding her Kleenex and Junior Mints because her crush didn’t show up to her seventh grade swimming party.

  Noelle grabs my arm. “We’re late for third period.”

  I know she doesn’t care about being late for class. People stare now as we walk. Everyone stares when I walk through school with Noelle. She doesn’t give a crap about anyone here but Mason and me. And Mr. Hoyt. When she fights with Mason she flirts heavily with Mr. Hoyt, who is only one year out of college.

  Mason comes up behind Noelle and winks at me.

  “Hey! Asshole!” Noelle whirls around and fake punches him before stripper-pole hugging him.

  “See you guys later,” I say.

  They’re already making out.

  My sixth period class is at the back corner of the campus in the Arts building. I step outside and the wind stings my face with a mix of rain and snow. There’s not a single person with me in the small courtyard. Before I started getting notes, I never noticed the bushes everywhere; thick evergreens, holly bushes, and rhododendrons that never lose their leaves.

  Hiding places.

  I can’t walk through this part of school without wondering if the note writer is watching.

  I exhale and feel my anxiety vanish when I get through the Arts building entrance. When I reach for the door, I turn. I feel like I’m being watched. At first I think I’m being paranoid, but then I see that boy from the kitchen shop window the other day, the one wearing the Mariners cap. I know him, don’t I? It’ll drive me crazy for the rest of the day because he seems familiar but not because of school.

  He turns and saunters off down the hall.

  Mr. King smiles at me as I walk in. “So, will your parents let you enter?”

  Today he wears the tie with tiny bottles of Jack Daniels. The man must have a tie for every bottle of liquor ever invented. You’d think the school administration would have something to say about his choices in neckwear.

  “My Dad has no say in my life until summer, and I haven’t asked my mom yet.”

  “Kara, you need to ask her, since you aren’t eighteen. You’re driven and talented and you could win. You could get yourself into La Patisserie, plus the prize money. Become a famous pastry chef,” he says with a wink, “and give all the credit to your favorite teacher.”

  “I started sketching designs.” I feel the same sudden high I feel every time I talk or think about cookie baking. It’s a sugar rush without eating actual sugar.

  “Good for you, maybe you can show them to me when you’re ready. And I trust you’ll take care of the permission part soon.” He pats me on the back before heading to the front of class.

  When I turn toward my station, Kellen is there.

  I blink twice and look around the room. Everyone’s already at work.

  When I turn back Kellen is still there, her green eyes sparkling, clearer than I have ever seen her since she died. Granted, this has been happening for a few weeks now. But every time she visits, she becomes more real. I see her. Her black hair is pulled into a tight ponytail. She wears a crimson Washington State University hoodie and those stupid brown and pink monkey pants she lived in. She kicks her legs back and forth. The dirty pink Uggs she relentlessly begged our father to buy her pound the cabinets, yet make no sound. I peek down at my own battered Ugg knockoffs from Target.

  I don’t want to look up, because I know she’ll make fun of me.

  I’m a skinnier version of my dead sister. Where she had boobs and curves, I have flat and flatter. If Kellen had starved herself and shrank half a foot then I’d be looking up at myself right now. Except that my hair is a duller shade of black, and she always tanned.

  Why can’t she bug me in math? I live for this class and my dead sister always harasses me here.

  I wonder if I’m going crazy like Mom. Without a word, I run to the bathroom, hoping she’ll be gone when I get back. For five minutes I stand in a stall facing the latest gossip, etched into industrial gray paint. Below an unidentifiable smear, I read about Noelle and all the horrible things she’s doing all over school. Man, she’s busy. I wonder if she knows what she’s doing in an alternate bathroom-stall universe. If she comes to this stall, she must.

  When I get back to class Kellen is gone. I pour sugar over the two sticks of butter in my bowl. Granules accumulate on the top and spill off the sides like icy snow. Butter, sugar, and vanilla. Butter at the right temperature makes the perfect cookie dough. Screw up the butter, and you have to start over. Or expect less.

  Mr. King lets me in before first period on dough-making days. He knows I like to get the butter out so it’s at room temperature by the time I work with it later. For everyone else he tells them to microwave it.

  Heather Greenwood studies my bowl, as if our assignment is a chemistry test. She does this every day, but never asks me a thing. She used to talk to me. Now it’s habit and I wonder if she remembers why she stopped talking to me in the first place.

  After my sister died, no one knew what to say. It’s not like I was paying a lot of attention—I was ignoring everyone when school started, that month before she died. But I do remember how they would look away if I made eye contact. Looking away meant they didn’t have to deal with me, and I didn’t have to tell anyone what happened. I could keep my secret.

  Or maybe they remembered me from a few months before—June of eighth grade, when I still talked and still had friends. When I told them every lunch hour about how much I hated my sister and how horrible she was and how I wished she would die. And then voilà, in October, four months later, my wish came true.

  My sister died and I became the freak who made her sister die by wishing it. Or at least that was the rumor Katy Morgan started.

  While I mix dough, a tiny part of me misses her.

  What I miss is the sister that used Ted Ryan’s baseball bat
to smear dog poop on his bike seat. It was the night after he told everyone I was gay because I wouldn’t French-kiss him. His mom obviously never told him not to leave his toys out in the front yard.

  Now my sister is gone and still causing me misery, and when I think of what she did to me, I don’t miss any part of her.

  June: Thirteen-Year-Old Carrot’s

  Summer Fun Before High School

  I finish my mascara and sneak out of the house before I run into Kellen again. Ten minutes later I’m in the locker room of Hillside Pool to meet my best friends, Gaby Navarro and Jen Creighton. School’s just let out and we have lots planned. There’s no freaking way Mom and Dad can send me to summer camp! I’m sure Kellen is lying about overhearing them say it.

  The crowd in the locker room makes me wish I’d changed into my one-piece at home. I hate the locker room. The reek of chlorine burns my nose. Wet swimsuits worn too long smell like Fritos to me, so the whole locker room stinks of chemicals and corn chips.

  Jen and Gaby were supposed to meet me in here. I see Gaby’s yellow flip-flops. I only know they’re hers because the daisy on the left one is half-chewed off, thanks to her dog, Tinker.

  When I walk out to the pool I see them. Gaby’s fake butterfly tramp stamp rises above her bikini bottoms as she sits on the edge of the pool with her legs dangling in the water. Gaby and her sisters give each other fake tats in areas they can’t reach. You couldn’t pay me a million bucks to get that close to my sister’s butt crack. Jen kicks her legs back and forth, her curly hair piled up on top of her head. The concrete burns my feet so I walk in the wet spots that haven’t dried up yet. This grosses me out because who likes walking in other people’s wet spots?

  I sneak up behind my friends and push their shoulders.

  “Ouch! Sunburned! Watch it!” Gaby hollers as she turns around. “Oh hey, Kar!”

  “Hey yourself, scoot over.” I bump her so I can sit in the corner, sticking one foot at a time into the water. “Thanks for waiting for me in the locker room.”

  “Sorry but we had to get out here,” Jen says. “We saw Nate in line ahead of us at the cash register.”

  “Yeah, Kar,” Gaby adds, “you know we can’t miss the first bone dive of summer.”

  I have to laugh. We noticed last summer that some of the boys on the diving board have boners. We don’t know why. Gaby won’t ask her sisters because she likes to pretend she knows everything in the universe, so she dared Jen to ask her lab partner, but Jen chickened out. We even Googled it, but Jen’s mom came into her room at that exact moment.

  Nate Hansen has the longest boner of all the boys that get up on the diving board. We always have our sunglasses on so it’s not obvious we’re staring.

  “I wish I could just see what it looks like, sans swim trunks.” Gaby whispers. Sans is Gaby’s new word. It’s really annoying.

  “Eww, Gabs,” Jen hisses. “You’re such a pig.”

  “Shh,” I whisper. “There he goes!”

  Nate steps out onto the board. At school, we never pay any attention to Nate because he’s kind of boring and geeky, but he’s nice. So I feel bad when we talk about him.

  There it is—the front of his swim trunks looks like a sideways tent. All three of us hold our breath at the same time. Gaby sits way back, popping her gum while she smiles, watching him.

  5. Squeeze with both hands.

  ..........................................................

  My first day on the job at Crockett’s Market has me seriously reconsidering Mom’s offer to work for her. She pinned me in a booth before I left for my first shift.

  “Kara, why would you want to work there when you could work here with me doing the Lord’s work?”

  I left out the main reason why I needed money. I wasn’t ready to tell her about the contest yet. Maybe when I get on the plane.

  “Mom, I’m sixteen. Don’t you think I should get some experience working for someone else? In the real world your mom is not your boss.”

  “You’ll not gain any favor with God working at Crockett’s, Kara. That place is Satan’s handiwork. Everything is organic or handcrafted or whatever heathen label they can stick on it to defend their ungodly prices.”

  I bumped against her but she wouldn’t budge. “Mom! Let me out! I don’t want to be late for my first day.”

  She clasped her hands together and bounced them off her lips for a second, boing, boing, boing before scooting out. “Fine. Be home right after. I’ll be watching the clock.”

  Now I’m bagging groceries, taking them out to cars, and hauling ass back into the store as soon as I’m done because “walking” is forbidden. A Crockett’s bagger must run. Every time I take carts outside, my boss stands in the doorway, arms folded, sniffing. The checkers are all bitches, and the customers all bring their reusable bags lined with dollops of nasty, oozing crap with hair stuck in it.

  I just need to focus on why I’m here: to get to the contest, to get out of here, to get away from memories and keep my secrets hidden forever.

  “Honey,” a customer says to me. “Stick the tomatoes on top please? If I’d wanted them pureed I’d-a-bought them canned.”

  “Sorry.” I mumble. She embarrasses me, so when she opens the passenger door to put her purse inside, I drop the bag with the eggs in it hard onto the pavement. Really hard.

  I ride the cart on my way back into the store, smiling over tiny victories. Then I jump. Kellen peeks out from behind one of the trees.

  When I look again, she’s gone.

  I don’t remember ever seeing Kellen outside before. And she disappeared so fast.

  Later I see Hayden across the street outside the smoothie bar. I act like I don’t see him because of the dorky apron and bow tie that I’m wearing. When his skanky girlfriend walks out carrying two large smoothies, I feel a tiny stab of approval for her. Maybe Babe actually cares about his health. They start walking down the Ave, and Hayden turns and smiles. Or maybe it’s just a laugh over my uniform.

  When my shift ends, my body hurts. But I have to say one good thing about Crockett’s—they have a kick-ass selection of sprinkles, so I reward myself for a hard day’s work by buying a jar that I destroyed earlier: cerulean blue sanding sugar. The head cashier frowns at me, probably because I stare at the jar as if it were filled with diamonds.

  I tuck it into my coat pocket as I head outside. Smoky gray clouds sail above the Olympic Mountains, and the wind off the bay lashes my face. It feels like the temperature has dropped twenty degrees since I was last out.

  Halfway home, I see Charlie Norton.

  Charlie walks with purpose down the Ave instead of crossing the street to Soul Soup, so I follow him for two more blocks before he disappears into the old, brick Catholic church.

  For some reason this depresses the hell out of me. He’s going to church in the middle of the week. Who does that? Oh yeah, Mom does. Nice.

  I walk faster because the Ave seems too quiet and the words on the last note are ticking across my mind.

  always watching you.

  That night, I have nightmares. One hundred cans of organic pork and beans roll down the Crockett’s checkout conveyor belt. They spill out onto the floor, I run out of bags, and then I fall, naked, into a gargantuan shopping bag covered in cat hair and oozing crap. Mom and Charlie yell at me to repent. Hayden peeks into the sack and gives me a thumbs-up.

  I better make enough money for that plane ticket soon.

  Fourteen-Year-Old Carrot Kara

  I pass Katy Morgan’s locker, and a Playgirl magazine falls at my feet. “Kar-a McKin-ley!” Katy squeals, looking around the entire hallway. She points at the magazine and then wags a finger at me. “Who knew she was such a perv!”

  It’s the first week of high school and I ignore her because I always ignore Katy.

  But when I look up, there they
are. My friends. I expect them to put Katy in her place, or at least stand next to me, or something. But both of them act like they don’t even know me. Gaby stares right at my face, and Jen stares at the floor and neither of them does anything about Katy and her friends laughing at me.

  And then I hear a voice behind me.

  “You’re such a bitch, Katy.”

  Noelle Butler is an even bigger bitch than Katy. Me and Jen and Gaby always thought so, and Gaby was always coming up with new rumors to spread about her.

  Noelle picks up the magazine, sticking it in Katy’s face.

  Katy backs up, flinching, while Noelle runs her finger in circles around the guy’s crotch on the cover. “Kara doesn’t even wear lip gloss. And, Katy, why the fuck are you carrying this around? I thought you were into girls.”

  Noelle sticks the magazine into her backpack and strolls away, leaving Katy pale-faced and everyone’s mouths hanging open.

  Noelle didn’t talk to me again until December. Things changed when I skipped class to go to the mall and saw her cram a T-shirt from Hot Topic into her purse. Two days later I caught her smoking weed in the bathroom on the far end of campus, where I went for privacy.

  “God, you’re like my ugly shadow these days.” She inhaled long and slow, keeping her eyes on me. Then she blew a cloud of smoke in my face. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  The next day I saw her waiting for the school counselor. She stared at me as I sat down and tried to focus on one of the stupid posters in the office.

  “Why are you in here?” She asked. “Does your Mom always have her mouth on a bottle or a dick that doesn’t belong to your father, too?”

  I said nothing, because she’s gross, so I waited quietly for my turn with Ms. Phillipe. She replaced the old counselor in November and it was December and I guess she’d gotten to the M section in her case file reading. Damn.