The Most Dangerous Thing

by Leanne Lieberman

  “I didn’t mean to scare—”

  “It’s okay.” I cut him off before he says anything embarrassing. I’m backing away, stuffing my books into my bag, but I’m moving too quickly, and I can’t get the zipper around my binder.

  Paul leaps up from the couch and passes me my pencil case. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, no.” I hide my face in my hands. “I’m glad I came, but now I need to go.” I grab the rest of my stuff and rush up the stairs. Paul runs behind me, trying to keep up.

  He hands me my coat at the front door while I shove my feet into my flats. “Please don’t leave like this. I don’t want you to think I was too…” Paul lets the sentence trail off.

  “It’s not you. You were good.” I hesitate. “I wanted to kiss you.”

  Paul exhales. “Okay, good.”

  I shove my arms into my jacket. “But now I need to leave.” I let myself out the front door without saying anything else. I can see Paul watching me from the front window, so I resist the urge to bolt down the street. I wish I had my bike. I wish I had wings. I wish I could fly away and leave my burning skin behind me. I wish I could cry a little to relieve the tension pulsing inside me.

  The walk home is twenty minutes of nothing but sidewalk and drizzle and side-street traffic, enough time to try and walk away from the scene I have caused. I sweat in my rain jacket, and a blister forms on my heel from my silver flats as I try to walk everything out of my head. The rain slides off my jacket and soaks my leggings.

  When I get home I pull off my sweater and sit in my tank top and leggings in the living room, flicking through channels on the TV. Then I unload the dishwasher and organize the mail Mom’s left in a messy stack on the counter. I check my phone. Sofia has texted, I saw you leave with Paul!

  I type back, Yes.

  And?

  Call me.

  A minute later my phone rings. “I need details,” Sofia says.

  “There was kissing,” I confess.

  “I knew you could do it!”

  I groan. “Nah, I kinda freaked out.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “I had to leave.”

  “Did you, like, say-goodbye leave or run-away-screaming leave?”

  “A bit of both. I said goodbye, I said I had to leave, but then I felt like screaming.”

  Sofia sighs. “That’s not so bad. You can fix that.”

  “How?”

  “Send him a text. Say thank you. Say see you tomorrow.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes. That’s it.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Tomorrow will be weird if you don’t.”

  I rub my forehead. “Okay. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

  I hang up. Should I write I had fun at your house? That sounds ridiculous. How about thanks for the good time? I flop back on the couch and take a few deep breaths. What did Sofia say? I type, See you tomorrow.

  Paul writes, OK. Until then.

  I clutch my phone. Until then sounds good—romantic even.

  I call Sofia. “I texted him and he wrote back.”

  “So you’re good now?” she asks.

  “I think so.”

  “Syd, this is so exciting!”

  “I don’t think I can handle it,” I wail.

  “No, wait,” Sofia says. “You can do this. Just think of Paul as a third friend. You have me and Fenny and now Paul.”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  I struggle to find the right words to describe the things I want to do with Paul, and how surprising this is to me. I settle on “I don’t think I can make the kind of eye contact I’ll need to be with Paul.”

  Sofia sighs. “Keep your eyes closed.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It’ll be okay,” she says softly. “Paul is a good guy—he gets you.”

  I want to say more to explain what’s bothering me, that it’s not only what Paul wants, but what I might want, only I don’t know how to talk about this. It’s still muddled up in my head.

  Sofia and I say goodbye, and then I close my eyes and lie back on the couch.

  What I want, these feelings, they may be new to me, but not to Sofia. Last year she had a thing for this guy Carlos, and she was always sighing about how “in lust” she was.

  You mean in love? I would ask.

  No, in lust, she insisted.

  Carlos was an exchange student from Mexico in her drama class. We had to follow him around, look at his posts on social media and go places to catch glimpses of him hanging out with his friends. It was boring and occasionally embarrassing, but Sofia does lots of things for me, so I followed along. I totally didn’t get why she was interested in this guy. He has the sexiest accent, she would say. Sofia also spent a lot of time obsessing over his complexion, which, I have to admit, was a really beautiful olive color.

  Eventually Sofia hooked up with Carlos at a party for her drama class. She called me the next day to tell me all the gross details about what she did with him in some corner of a basement. I just knew he would have sensual hands, she moaned. Unfortunately, Carlos never had anything to do with her after that. He didn’t respond to her texts or say more than hi at school. When she sent a picture of herself to him—luckily, just a head shot—she overheard some boys in her drama class snickering over it and saying porny things about her. Sofia freaked out and ended up dropping drama. She had to go to summer school and pick up another course instead of going to Croatia to visit her family with her mom. I’m so off guys, she groaned. Which isn’t really true. Now she claims she’s interested in men instead. She’s got what she calls a lust-crush on an older guy in her building, and she is always talking to one of the young male teachers at school.

  And me, am I in lust too? I shake my head as if to get rid of the thought. Then I stand up and start pacing around the room. I need a plan to cope, to visualize being successful. It’s something Dr. Spenser said I could use for situations that freak me out. Okay, here goes. I am at school, and Paul and I are sitting in front of my locker, eating lunch or listening to music on his phone. We’re sitting close enough that his arm is around me. I can feel his heat. Sofia is smiling and waving as she walks away from us to go to art club. Paul whispers “Until now” in my ear, and his breath is warm on my neck. Other kids are looking at us in the hall because they’ve never seen us together like this before, and this makes me hang my head, but it’s okay because Paul kisses the back of my neck, and little shivers are running down my spine and he’s squeezing my shoulder, but we’re in public, so that’s as far as it goes.

  I open my eyes. That wasn’t so bad. And I’m smiling now and more relaxed than before. I feel like calling Sofia back and telling her not to worry. Instead I text her. Feeling better. Shy girl thinks maybe she can do this boy thing. She sends me back a smiley face.

  Then I notice Paul has sent me a picture of a cherry tree in bloom. Beautiful, I write back. Take me there.

  Paul writes back, Anytime.

  I’m feeling much better by the time Abby comes home. She storms by me, an angry look on her face, and heads down to the tent without even saying hello. I follow her downstairs and watch her throw herself onto the tent cushions.

  “What’s with you?” I ask.

  Abby lifts her head to glare at me. “Our school is a rat hole of misogynist freaks.”

  “Did something happen today?”

  “Yes!” Abby says emphatically, rolling her eyes.

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  Abby kicks a leg in the air to sit herself upright. “You won’t believe it, but the school has decided our vagina play can’t be part of the drama festival.”

  A moment of relief surges through me, so strong that I have to lean on the wall for support. I won’t have to change my name or go to a different high school after all. I try to look sympathetic. “Was it your cunt monologue they had an issue with?” I can’t help smirking.

  Abby gl
ares at me again. “They didn’t name a specific monologue. They just said they didn’t think it was appropriate for a high school audience. Have you ever heard such bullshit? How can the state of women’s bodies, our safety, our health and well-being, not be appropriate for a high school audience? Fifty percent of the school has a vagina, including that bitch of a vice-principal.”

  “Did they give more details than that?”

  Abby sighs. “Apparently there are religious kids at our school who would be offended by such a frank discussion of sexuality, especially the premarital kind.” She sits up and rakes her hands through her hair. “What the fuck? Are we living in the 1950s? Do they think we’re not having sex? Do they think girls aren’t being raped at our school? Are our bodies so unspeakable, we can’t talk about the parts we all have?”

  I’m still hung up on her comment about kids at school having sex. Of course, I know some kids are having sex, but when I think about the details—about Abby having sex, or Sofia, or, god forbid, Fen—it feels different. Uncomfortable. I push the thought out of my mind. Everybody is having sex except me (and maybe Fen). I can barely kiss Paul. I stop and think about this. I kissed Paul. And it was good. And I want to do it again. At least, I think I do. Wait, who is Abby having sex with? She hasn’t mentioned any particular guy. Abby only talks about girls. I turn to Abby, who is still waving her hands and going on about the stupid vice-principal. Is Abby having sex with girls? Wait, I don’t want to imagine Abby with anyone, male or female. Unfortunately, a picture of Abby making out with her friend Sunita takes over my mind. I push it away, but it comes back again. Sunita has been at our house a lot—and in the tent a lot.

  Abby declares, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to plaster this all over social media. I mean, right now. There are feminist organizations that are going to freak when they hear this. And the mainstream media—they need to know too.” Abby stands up and heads toward her room.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have work to do,” Abby calls without looking back.

  I head upstairs to start dinner without Abby—a fish stir-fry with slivered almonds. I cut up the broccoli and the other vegetables, make the sauce and start the rice.

  By the time we eat, Abby is like a phoenix newly risen. She has shaken off her anger and frustration and moved on to pure passion. Throughout dinner she describes her complete action plan—her social-media strategy, the videos she’s going to make, the song she wants to write, the protest dance she and her fellow “cuntsters” will perform. I keep hoping Mom and Dad will tell her it’s only a play or suggest that perhaps they should do High School Musical instead. They seem just as amused as when I asked if I could invest my university fund with Zeyda, which pisses me off. Clearly, my investment plans should have been taken more seriously than Abby’s silly play. Perhaps it would have been better if Abby had put on the play at school after all. It would have been one day of torture, and perhaps I could have been sick that day. I could have run away for twenty-four hours until Abby’s freak show of a sex play was over. Now it’s going to be a whole social-media campaign, a protest march with a candlelight “vagil.” Perhaps I’ll have to go live with Zeyda and attend some west-side high school. Or maybe I’ll just hide out at Sofia’s for a while.

  Mom and Dad clean the kitchen, since I cooked. In the basement I find Abby typing away on her laptop at the desk in the rec room. “More ‘vagil’ planning?” I ask.

  “No, I’m in guerrilla theater mode now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re going to put on the play anyway.”

  I grip the wall. “Even though the school said no?”

  “Yep.”

  “How much trouble will you be in then?”

  Abby grins. “It’ll be the ultimate protest.”

  “How are you going to sneak a whole play onstage in the middle of the festival?”

  Abby cocks her head. “I think it’ll have to be on during school, maybe lunch hour. We won’t tell anyone until the day of.”

  I exhale noisily. “If I was planning to do that, I wouldn’t sleep until the play was over.”

  “It is exciting.” Abby grins. “I think we’ll do it before the festival. Maybe if we raise enough of a stink, we’ll get to be in the festival after all.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking.”

  Abby looks back at her screen. “Yeah yeah. I know it’s not your thing. But scaredy-cats don’t get shit done.”

  I feel myself bristle. It’s not that I’m scared; it’s more about being embarrassed. Do we really have to talk about girl parts in public? “You know”—I tap my nails on the wall to get Abby’s attention—“if you took out the words cunt and vagina, the school would probably be okay with the play. You could call it The Girl Monologues and talk about birth control and menstruation but leave out all the stuff about body parts.”

  Abby spins around in her swivel chair. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I am. People are uncomfortable with those words. Think about health class, about tampon commercials, about any public discussion about women’s bodies. You can discuss women’s health without making people uncomfortable.”

  “Getting people to say vagina”—she draws out the word to make me squirm—“is the whole point. It’s like women’s bodies, the actual parts, are too shameful to even discuss. And if we can get over that shame, maybe we can have a real discussion about what women need.”

  I shake my head.

  Abby groans in frustration and pushes past me into her room. “I have to call Sunita.”

  Sunita. I think about the noises I heard the other day, the giggling. I almost ask Abby about Sunita, but she’s already closed the door to her room.

  Seven

  A LOW MIST HANGS OVER the city on Tuesday morning, threatening rain. I lie in bed and take stock of how I feel. Not quite as elated as yesterday, but still good. An upswing, I think. I still sense the fog, but it’s at the corner of my eye. When I turn my head to look at it, it moves farther away. And there’s no need to chase it. It’s the kind of fog that will burn off once I get moving. Yes, a definite upswing. I decide to wear leggings, my brown boots and a long beige sweater, nothing too colorful, but not drab either. I pack some biking clothes to wear after school.

  When I get to school, Paul is already in chem class, sitting at our usual spot. A smile spreads across my cheeks when I see him, and I want to hide my face because I must look ridiculous. I try hard to keep eye contact, but when I get close enough to sit down, I have to look away. I focus hard on getting out my books.

  Paul wraps one arm around my shoulder and whispers in my ear, “I wanted to say sorry about yesterday.”

  There are only a few other students in the room, but still my cheeks heat up. I lean into him and whisper, “You don’t need to say sorry.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  Paul exhales and pulls away from me. “I feel better now.” He runs his hands through his hair. “Do you want to go see the cherry tree today? It’s not far.”

  “I need to go see my grandfather. I didn’t go yesterday.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Maybe tomorrow?” I say.

  Paul breaks into his smile. “Yeah, that would be good. Something to look forward to.”

  I smile shyly. “Okay.”

  The chem teacher and the other kids start coming into the room, so we move apart. I want to wipe the silly smile off my face, but I can’t. Paul tousles my hair and then squeezes my hand below the table. I squeeze back until class starts.

  At lunch Paul comes by my locker and sits down next to me. And it’s just the way I imagined. Sofia leaves for art club. Fen is at a rugby meeting. Except I don’t know what to say to Paul, and he seems equally tongue-tied. “I play soccer Wednesday nights,” he tells me.

  “Cool,” I say.

  We endure another awkward pause. Then Paul pulls out his phone. “Let me play you this song.”
We share his earbuds, and Paul plays me a dance mix. We’re sitting close enough to touch, and Paul reaches for my hand. I grasp it—too hard, probably. I keep my head down because I’m sure people are staring at us and because I’m breathing quicker and louder than I usually do, and I don’t want Paul to hear and wonder what’s up with me. I want to enjoy sitting here with him, but I also feel like drumming my fingers on my lunch bag, on my math binder, anything to relieve my anxiety, and that makes me frustrated. When the song ends, I stand up.

  “I have some other homework I need to do now, for my writing class.” It’s true. I haven’t made any headway on my poetry assignment.

  Paul stands up. “Are you going to send me something you’ve written one day?”

  “Maybe.” My toes are tapping anxiously.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I nod.

  I watch Paul saunter off, one earbud still in his ear, and feel a mixture of relief and disappointment. As soon as he’s out of sight, I pull on my jacket and head out to the big willow trees at the edge of the field. The mist has turned into a light rain. I pull out my phone and play some rapid-fire Sudoku to quell my nerves until the bell rings. Then I force myself to get up and go to writing class.

  I’m glad I promised to visit Zeyda after school. I change into my bike clothes and get out of school quickly so that I’ll have time to bike past Zeyda’s house and chug up the hill to UBC and then coast back down. Being on my bike feels good, to sense only my heaving lungs and aching quads as I grind up the steep hill, the ocean glinting through the trees. At the top of the hill I do a quick loop through the campus and then surge down the hill, the wind rushing past my ears. I arrive at Zeyda’s damp from rain and sweat and drained of the nervous energy that has dogged me all day.

  Crystal lets me in, pours me a large glass of water and tells me Zeyda’s outside on the balcony. I pull open the heavy sliding door and find Zeyda wrapped in a blanket, staring out at the sea from a deck chair. From the balcony you can usually see the downtown skyline and the mountains. Today everything is swathed in low fog, just the mountain peaks poking through the clouds, barely visible against the whiteness of the sky.