New Girl

by Joan B. Flood

  Tommy got fitter, and my own times went up from all the training. Things were looking good for the next big meet, which was just before summer break.

  My birthday was coming up, too. About once a week I planned my party, made lists of who I would invite. Now that there were some people to invite, I was still not certain who would, in fact, come. I couldn’t even count on Jane to be there. We were getting along well at the moment, but only because I was careful about what I said. I still hadn’t mentioned to her that I was coaching Tommy.

  One afternoon after we’d had a hard workout, Tommy and I stopped for a pop on the way home. Even after just a few weeks, Tommy had slimmed enough that he slid into the booth in front of me a lot more easily. We had run out almost to the Acres that day. Maybe that was what was in my mind, and gave me the courage I needed.

  “Tommy, why don’t you and Jane get along?” I asked.

  “Old history,” he said and buried his nose in his glass, the ice clinking against the sides.

  “Old as in you went out?”

  “No, old as in from a while ago.”

  A few smaller kids came into the café, shuffling and scuffling, and talking way too loud. They were cute in their soccer gear; the shin guards in their socks making their legs look too big for the rest of them.

  “What was it about?”

  Tommy looked me in the eye for a moment, and then studied the kids at the counter.

  “Told you before, talk to Jane about it. Doesn’t seem right for me to tell you.”

  He looked uncomfortable. Shifty, almost.

  “Look, Tommy, I like you, I like Jane. It’s hard that you two hate each other.”

  “I don’t hate Jane.”

  “Do you have a crush on her then, is that why you are uncomfortable with each other?”

  He chuckled, in an ironic way.

  “Nope. That I do not. But I like her. She’s cool.”

  No matter how I wheedled, I couldn’t get anymore out of him, so I just gave up on the subject of Jane.

  “How well do you know Bart?” I asked, shooting in the dark.

  He sat stock still for minute. Bingo! Something going on there. Oh my God, all these people were just so uptight and weird and all mixed up with each other.

  “I know Bart well enough.”

  He didn’t sound too thrilled about it. Next thing I knew he was gathering his stuff to go.

  We walked down to the bus stop. It was getting late, the sun almost down. The little kids from the café scrambled past us and stood on the corner in a clump. A station wagon pulled up and they all piled in.

  “Tommy, I’m trying to fit in here, make friends, but I keep bumping into all this stuff between people. It seems like everyone is mad at me all the time about things I don’t know, couldn’t know, even. I talk to Jane about you, and she gets mad. I talk to you about Jane, and you get all cold and clam up.”

  “It’s not pretty, Carly. That’s the thing. It’s just not pretty.”

  “Well, everyone seems to know except me. Jane, you, Corinne and probably everyone else in Astoria.”

  Tommy’s breath whuffed out, in a long, slow, sad sound.

  “I guess you’re right. Best hear it from one of us. Mind you, Jane has her side, I have mine.”

  He told me that a while before his dad died, he had linked up kids looking for drugs with those who sold them. He didn’t sell any himself, he said, just steered people to certain sources. Bart was one he steered, ages ago, and then Bart started dealing. Jane blamed Tommy for that. They’d had a huge fight about it. Jane was really mad, and said that if it were not for Tommy, Bart wouldn’t be into drugs at all, and that she knew for a fact that he had been the one to get him dealing. Nothing Bart said could convince her it wasn’t like that.

  “Do you still do that, steer kids?”

  “I’m not doing it now. Haven’t since my dad died. But I’m under pressure to keep on, or even start dealing. From one of the dealers. It’s a long story, for another time.”

  He kept his eyes down the road where his bus was coming.

  “Still friends?”

  I watched the bus grow bigger, the gears whining as it came closer.

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure we are.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Tommy’s confession haunted me. In my bed, staring up at the sky as it dimmed to indigo, I went over the way he trawled the yard, stopping to say hello to almost everyone and moving on. Could I believe him that he had stopped?

  That line Jane said I should figure out, the line between good and bad stuff, good and bad people, seemed to get fuzzier every day. The thing was, nobody talked about anything, it was just there in all this tension and feelings passing between people. Jane and me, Jack, Kendra and Corinne, Tommy and Jane, Bart and Jane, Bart and me, Bart and Tommy, even Bart and Corinne, in that he was the only one I ever heard her be negative about.

  And then I realized there was something between Kendra and me, the way she sat with me in the afternoons sometimes and asked me all about what Corinne and I were up to. The way she was so sweet, but flicked her ponytail in my face when we were sorting the designs. That was on purpose, not just some accident. I really wanted to talk this out with Jane, but I knew by now that if she didn’t want to talk about something, she wouldn’t, that’s for sure. I dialed up Corinne’s number, but she didn’t pick up.

  Ryan’s door slammed, and I got off the bed.

  “Come in,” he called to my knock. His hair was a mess, his face naked without his glasses on.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he said.

  For a moment I could think of nothing to say, just didn’t even know where to begin, so I just looked at him as my eyes filled up with tears.

  “Aw, come on.”

  He took my hand and led me in.

  “I’m such a baby,” I sniveled.

  Ryan sat me down on the edge of his bed.

  “Tell me what’s wrong. We’ll sort it out.”

  He listened while I told him about Jane. That she was my girlfriend. That she hated Tommy. That I liked Tommy. He said nothing as I told him about what Tommy used to do, and about Bart. How he had walked me home and was nice, and how I took a different way home now so I didn’t run into him. And that Bart and Tommy were nice to me, and that Jane wouldn’t talk about some stuff I needed to talk about and how confusing it all was, who was good, who wasn’t. What I never told was about the phone calls and notes. I tried, but the words just wouldn’t come out.

  I stopped talking and we just sat for a while. The room grew dark enough that our faces were white blurs, our eyes hidden in shadows. Sitting with him was good.

  “Well, Carly, nothing you can do about Jane not liking Tommy, that’s for sure. You gotta just ride that out. If she is your girlfriend, you gotta be able to talk. Bart—stay away from him, that’s my advice. I know kids into him for money, and he’s not nice. Not nice at all. Do you believe Tommy’s given up on the drug thing?”

  “I don’t know for sure. He says so. I want to believe him. See, that’s the thing. I’m just confused. About everything.”

  “Not about everything. You haven’t taken drugs from Bart, or anyone, so you’re not confused about that. You like Jane enough to be her girlfriend, so you’re not confused about that. You know you two have stuff to talk about, not confused about that. So, just stick with what you know and follow your instinct. You’ll be okay.”

  Whether I would be okay or not I had no idea. Talking to Ryan did make me feel better, though.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Saturday, I went downtown alone and picked up a pair of purple high-tops and a few other things. I put a distinctive ring on Jane’s, Corinne’s, Tommy Mack’s, Ryan’s, and Mom’s numbers and didn’t open any message from anyone else. Monday, I went straight to my locker and stuck a “Queer and Proud” sticker on the outside. Strictly speaking we weren’t supposed to stick anything on the outside, but most of us had something. Now I had this. I pinned a “Queer�
� button on my knapsack.

  Corinne was surprised.

  “Wow. That’s a statement. Bitchin’.” She gave me a thump on the shoulder. “What brought that about?”

  “Dunno,” I lied. “They’re fun and true. Besides, ‘Queer’ is anything these days, right?”

  Corinne and Jane both knew about Aunt Louise and that I didn’t need to be scared of Mom and Dad knowing about Jane and me. School was cool with it too. We even had a group, “Outright Queer,” that met once a week. Everyone knew and was pretty much okay with it. That was what was so weird about getting those texts. It wasn’t like it was a huge big deal here.

  “Didn’t figure you for a crusader,” Jane said, “just goes to show. Awesome.”

  “I’m not really crusading.”

  “Sure, sure. Everyone puts ‘Queer and Proud’ stickers on their lockers. Right!”

  Explaining wasn’t on my agenda, so I just shrugged and let it go. If it stopped the texts, that was good enough for me. If anyone wanted to make an issue of it, I’d deal with that face to face. One or two people went out of their way to say “hi” after that, but mostly it made no difference at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The sun cut low and long-shadowed across the fields. Tommy and I had started even before the first bird announced the start of another day. As we often did, we ran in silence, the scuffle of our feet and huffing of our breaths, just a hair offbeat with each other, the only sounds we made.

  With sun at our backs, we headed toward the city again.

  “Why did you start connecting kids up with drugs?”

  Tommy missed a step, but then got back in stride.

  “Because I was stupid. Look, it’s a long story. Or maybe it isn’t. I didn’t know any better.”

  “I mean, it’s easy to find out who sells drugs, but with you it was more than that, right?”

  “Yep. Sort of, in that I made it my business to know who wanted to buy. I didn’t just wait for them to come to me. I found them.”

  I glanced at him. His eyes were on the road ahead, his face blank. His arm-swing shortened as his shoulders tensed.

  “Loosen up your arms. Shake them out, let them swing loose.”

  We settled into our light jog again. It was fully light now, the morning clear, fresh. Spiders’ webs shone moist like tiny intricate wheels on the fence.

  “It was my dad. That’s what started it. Not that my dad wanted me to do it, not that. I don’t even know if he knew I did it.”

  A truckful of men heading off to work on the farms passed us. They gave us a friendly wave as the driver swerved out to give us room.

  Tommy said his dad fought in the Persian Gulf War and came home a heroin addict. Not a crazy, burned-out one though. He held down a job, got married, and had Tommy. Things were okay until Tommy’s mother died of lung cancer a few years ago. She got sick and died in a couple of months. His dad’s habit escalated.

  One night Tommy had come home and found his dad and all his drug gear at the kitchen table. That was the first time he actually saw his dad do drugs. Not long after, he got laid off, let go in one of those massive layoffs that were happening all over the country at the time.

  “He probably deserved it by then,” Tommy said. “He was so far gone.”

  After that, a couple of guys had approached Tommy. They wanted into the school trade and threatened to cut off their supply to Tommy’s dad if Tommy didn’t help out. At first they’d wanted him to sell drugs, but he refused. No way would he do that.

  By then his dad had owed them a lot of money. One night Tommy came home and found his dad shaking and sweating. He’d asked Tommy if he had any money, said he needed it for a fix. A couple of hours later, he’d begun to puke.

  “He begged me. My own dad begged me to get him a fix,” Tommy said. “So I called the dealer. Told him I’d do it if he gave Dad what he needed. That’s how I got into it. It was dumb, just dumb.”

  “Did he find out you agreed to steer?”

  “Don’t know. I hope not, but sometimes I wonder if that’s why he…you know, shot himself.”

  My ankle twisted and I had to stop and shake it out. I hobbled a few steps. Tommy slowed to my pace.

  “You think it was your fault he died?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Wow, Tommy, that’s awful. Did he leave a note or something?”

  “Yep. It just said he was sorry and he loved me. That’s it. So I don’t know. Maybe he found out. Maybe his dealer told him.”

  “Hardly. If he told your Dad, then you’d have no reason to keep on doing it, right?”

  “Wrong. I was doing it for my dad. Anyway, I don’t know if he knew. But when he died, I got right out of it. Carly, I am out of it.”

  “But you said they still want you to do it, right?”

  “Not them. Someone else. But it’s okay. I’m done with it. No matter what happens.”

  We had slowed to a walk. Another five minutes or so and we’d be back at the bus stop. A million questions spun around in my head that I couldn’t sort out fast enough to ask.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  School went by in a blur. Since the evening before, all I could think about was Tommy and his dad. I thought about my own dad too. What he did for a living bothered me, but I loved him anyway. Mostly I just tried not to think about his work. He wasn’t responsible for every layoff in the country, was he? Once, when I asked him about it, he said that this stuff would happen anyway, and sometimes he could actually help save jobs by showing how skills could be used elsewhere.

  “There’s no cure for profit-seeking and downturns of the economy,” he said.

  Seems there was no cure for lots of things, like Tommy and his dad. At least I didn’t feel that anything I did might have caused someone to lose their job. Tommy would never know why his dad killed himself, and that gnawed at him like a rat. At least I didn’t have that.

  Bart lounged by the gate after school. Preoccupied with Tommy’s story, I didn’t see him until it was too late to change my track. After my talk with Jane, I realized he and I didn’t run into each other by chance. I had made a habit of going home by different routes if I walked so Bart and I wouldn’t bump into each other.

  He wiggled his fingers hello to me when he caught my eye.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He straightened up and gave me his killer smile. The thing about Bart was that he could blend into the crowd when he wanted to, and boy, when he turned on the charm, it was like a light went on in him. He had that in common with Jane. He managed to look cool, manly, and soft at the same time. In spite of myself, I smiled at him.

  “Think I’m going your way again. Of course, if that’s okay with you?”

  “Sure. But I’m in a rush. You’ll have to keep up.”

  “I can do that.”

  He fell in beside me, and even though I walked at a fast clip, he stayed right there in step with me.

  As usual, he asked me how my week was. At first I just gave short answers, but soon he was making me laugh, and I slowed as we chatted.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Me? Sure.”

  “Haven’t seen you for a while. You sure?”

  Just then Tommy turned the corner. As he came toward us, I was happy to see him. Relieved.

  “Hi, Tommy,” Bart and I said in unison.

  Tommy just gave that quick salute of his and kept on going. I turned and saw him walk away as calm and measured as always.

  “You two friends?” Bart said.

  “Well, I know him from school and track.”

  Not sure about whether Bart knew, I didn’t want to tell him about coaching Tommy. Maybe Tommy was telling everyone, but I didn’t think so. When we didn’t run out past the town early in the morning we used the community track across town to keep out of people’s way. Besides, I wasn’t sure Tommy and I really were friends. Yet. And seeing Tommy reminded me about drugs and Bart. When we reached the next bus stop I made excus
es and jumped on the bus, leaving Bart behind.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Jane took my breath away. She was wearing slim pedal pushers and one of her light gauzy blouses with her hair pulled back into a teeny ponytail at the nape of her neck. But my breathlessness wasn’t about how she was dressed. It was just her, how lovely she was. She glowed like she had a two thousand-watt bulb burning inside her.

  Corinne was with us as we headed over to the park. It started out as a sunny day, but some tall thunderclouds were building up in a line at the edge of the city, advancing like an army. It was hangout day at the park with whoever showed up. Jack and Kendra would be there, and Tommy, and a whole gang of guys and girls I didn’t even know.

  Ever since I pasted the sticker on my locker and the badge on my bag, no horrible texts had come. Every three or four days I checked my phone just in case someone sent me something I didn’t want to get, but there had been no ugly messages. So I was in a really good mood as I headed out on Saturday afternoon with my friends.

  From half a block away Jack’s lanky figure was easy to pick out of the small crowd that had already gathered. The reds, blues, and yellows of T-shirts and skirts popped against the green of the park, and the pulse of music from a boom box set up on a bench carried the sound to us before we even stepped onto the grass.

  A few track team members crossed from the other side, and we all arrived together. Jack gave Corinne a peck on the cheek, and someone handed me beer in a coffee cup. The last thing I wanted was to be caught breaking the law by drinking under age and also drinking in the park. A quick look around showed me just about everyone else was doing it, so I took the cup. Another girl from the track team said “hi” and we chatted about the next meet. When someone dragged Corinne off to dance, Jane and I danced too. Then, to catch our breaths, we settled under the oak tree. I sipped my beer. The day had grown sultry, and my shirt stuck to my back. I fanned myself with the cardboard from a six-pack.