Draw the Line

by Laurent Linn

  She turns from the mirror. “Now, do not tell me you lost a phone again.”

  “No! Not lost.” From my pocket I pull out my busted phone. “It wasn’t my fault! These guys were bumping people at school and this old phone hit the floor. There wasn’t anything I could—”

  “Adrian.” Mom closes her eyes and presses her forehead. “I don’t need this right now.”

  “I know that. I had nothing to do with it!”

  She takes the phone, inspects it, and hands it back. “You’ll just have to make do.”

  “It’s, uh, well, dead. Completely. I tried everything, but it won’t—”

  “That’s it.” She applies her lipstick in quick strokes. “You have to pay for your next phone, Adrian. I can’t.”

  “How am I supposed—”

  “You can get a job, like we’ve talked about,” she says, twisting her lipstick closed. “It would sure help.”

  “Well, like we’ve talked about, when would I be able to work with all my chores here? And you always have the car—”

  “Excuse me? I happen to own the car—”

  “—and so how am I supposed to get to this magical job—”

  “—because someone has to keep us in this house!”

  “It’s not—”

  “Enough!” She shoves the cap on the lipstick with a snap and tosses it in her purse. “Look at me.”

  She’s wearing heels today, so we’re at the same eye level. I grip the phone tight.

  Mom takes a breath. “Honey, I do the best I can. Until your dad gets better—now, hush. Listen to me. Until then, we have to make do. We cannot afford extras. You know that.”

  I look in her eyes. “Mom, it’s not extra. I really need a phone.”

  She glances at her watch, pulls her jangly keys out of her purse, and zips it shut. “Not every teenager needs a phone.”

  “I do.” My heart speeds up. “For safety.”

  She checks her lips and teeth in the mirror, then grabs her briefcase from the hall table. “I don’t have time to go through this again.”

  I clear my throat. “But I’m . . . well, there’s stuff happening, and . . . I don’t know.” My chest tightens. “Last Friday night—”

  “Adrian, I am not buying you a new phone. Period.” She opens the front door. The sunlight floods in, making me squint. “Now, hurry up and get yourself to school.”

  In the bright light, Mom’s makeup looks like she’s wearing a mask.

  “Good luck,” I say, “with that home.” For other people.

  “Thanks.” She heads to the car. “I’ll need it.”

  I slowly push my body against the door to close it, then look in the mirror at the pathetic kid clutching a dead phone. How the hell am I supposed to buy a new one?

  “Ade?” Dad’s shuffling from their bedroom.

  What now?

  “In here.” I don’t need to be grilled on what just happened.

  With his cane, he limps into the hall, barely dressed in that saggy old robe. “Has your mom left yet?”

  How’d he not hear all that?

  “Yeah, and I’m about to head out too.”

  He starts toward the living room. “Before you go, son, I need some breakfast.”

  I walk to school, fast and hard. It got cold out. Bizarre being in the world again after four days. Like I’ve just been ejected from a space-time continuum.

  The school security guard is outside the front doors, laughing with some senior. I focus on the concrete as I pass by.

  “Such a crappy play,” the guard says. “Referee got it straight, though, when . . .” He stops.

  I glance up and he’s squinting at me. Then his face hardens. He turns back to the senior. “Yeah, so, game got sloppy there at the end. But our guys pulled it out.”

  As I push through the front doors, my head pounds as if my heart has moved in between my ears. That guard is a retired cop. He must—oh, god. He must know Doug’s father. What has he been told?

  The halls are deafening with lockers and laughing and babbling. I need to keep my head down and just move along.

  BAM! I’m slammed against the lockers. Pain shoots through my left arm.

  “Dude—whoops!” It’s a sophomore football kid with a big grin on his face. He holds up his hands. “Accident.”

  I don’t move a muscle.

  His buddy looks around, then rips down a Halloween Hoedown flyer taped to the wall and balls it up. “Quit shovin’ the homo, bro!” he says, beaning his friend with the wadded paper. “He might squeal at you.” They elbow each other down the hall, laughing.

  People stare. I keep going and act like I’m not hurt. I want to reach over and massage my shoulder, but I can’t show any weakness.

  A teacher strolls out of her classroom. Where were you a minute ago?

  On full alert, I navigate through these rat tunnel–like halls and reach my locker. I spin the lock back and forth so fast I can’t get the combination right.

  “There you are!” Audrey’s at my side.

  I practically leap to the ceiling. “God! Don’t do that!”

  “Do what?”

  “Sneak up on me!”

  “Really?” she says. “Two days of recuperating and you’re still this jumpy? I was hoping a break would make you more focused.”

  “Focused?” I scan the hallway, rub my shoulder, and lower my voice. “I’ve already been sideswiped. And Doug’s prowling around here somewhere, he and Buddy both. I’m wearing a target, remember?” I try my combination again.

  She crosses her arms over the notebooks she carries. “Listen. I’ve been thinking more about this, and I have a plan for how you should proceed.”

  Oh, god, really? “Let’s not go through this again.”

  I pop my lock at last and yank open my locker. Something falls to the floor. I reach down and it’s a folded paper with my name on it. I don’t recognize the handwriting. Besides, no one writes notes to me. I look around, but everyone’s rushing to class. What the hell?

  “Who’s that from?” Audrey says.

  “No clue.”

  “Well, open it.”

  Two girls pass by, one saying, “Oh, yeah, that’s definitely him. Check out the hair.”

  I slip the note in my pocket. “Not here.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to them,” Audrey says. “Give it to me. I can be subtle.”

  “No,” I say. “Let’s take it outside.”

  Since I’ve missed homework in every class, I load practically all my books and folders into my beat-up backpack. It’s heavy as hell now.

  “What are you . . . ? Why are you doing that?” Audrey asks.

  I zip my bag closed as much as I can. “No way I’m coming back here until the end of the day. Just gonna cruise from one class to the next.” I close my locker and heave my backpack onto my unhurt shoulder. Without making eye contact with anyone, I survey the hall. “Where’s Trent?”

  She shrugs. “Haven’t heard from him yet today.”

  I inhale. “C’mon.”

  My first-period French class is just across the outside courtyard, not far from Audrey’s AP English. We head for the door, but as we get there, the staring Wrestler Guy comes through it. Audrey looks straight ahead and picks up speed, catching the door before it shuts and flinging it open again. I follow as Staring Guy squints at Audrey, then does a double take at me. I hustle outside.

  “Don’t rush ahead of me like that! Did you see the way he—”

  “Just ignore him,” Audrey says. “He’s obnoxious and people are noticing you today, okay?”

  “No. Not okay.” I check over my shoulder. He doesn’t come back out. “They’re more than just ‘noticing.’ ”

  Even though a few groups hang out in the courtyard before class, being outside is slightly safer, less trapped. But about forty classroom windows surround us, and you can see right through the big glass cafeteria doors where people cluster.

  I lead us over the crunchy dead gras
s to one of the sad, skinny trees planted off to the side. It’s a good vantage point to view all around. I slip my backpack off my shoulder and drop it on the ground.

  “Well?” Cradling her notebooks, Audrey loops her purse on her arm.

  The note. I check around again to be sure no one’s watching, then pull it out of my pocket. It’s just a square of folded lined paper with Adrian in blue ink. I subtly hold it away from us and unfold it. “You don’t know what could be inside,” I say.

  Audrey rolls her eyes. “What, like anthrax?”

  Nothing falls out.

  Scrawled in blue ink, in letters so sloppy it has to be someone disguising their handwriting, is this:

  You know me but you dont know me.

  Is your friend ok? I saw what happened. I was there.

  He ok?

  Huh?

  I reread it.

  And again.

  Audrey puts her hand on my arm. “Hold it steady. I can’t read it.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  I flip the paper over, looking again for a name. “I don’t get it. What does this mean?”

  I check around us. No! I freeze. It’s Doug, inside the cafeteria doors. “We gotta go.” My chest tightens as I crumple the note and shove it in my pocket.

  “Hey, I wasn’t done yet.”

  I bend down for my backpack. “Turn slowly.” My voice cracks. “Doug, over there, in the cafeteria with that group.” I struggle to lift my bag onto my shoulder, my head dizzy.

  She eyes him, then me. “All right. Let’s get to class.”

  Without drawing attention, we make our way through the far door and inside. “Listen,” she says. “I’ll fill you in on my plan at lunch. I’ve got it all figured out. Text me if you . . . oh, yeah.”

  “Exactly.”

  She gives me a little hug, then leaves.

  I hightail it to French and arrive just after the bell rings. Hoping to quietly slip in, I instead bang the door with this stupid backpack as everyone, including hot Lev, turns to me.

  THANK OBI-WAN, BUBBAS DON’T TAKE French.

  After a bit of muttering and gawking, everyone quiets down as I ease into my chair-desk. Has the whole freaking school heard about idiot Adrian already, or seen that video? I don’t even glance at Lev, though I feel his eyes staring at the back of my plastered-down helmet hair. Oh, god, he and Kathleen must’ve seen everything Friday night.

  Other than getting out my notebook and pen, I keep still and focus on the desk.

  I’m so screwed. Audrey had better have a real plan, not like what she said at my house.

  Fifteen minutes into this class and I’m just now calm enough to breathe normally. Or try to. It’s hard when you have to repeat Je voudrais me promener sur les grands boulevards de Paris a hundred times. It takes a lot of breath.

  “Tray bee-yayn, class,” Madame Pauline says. “Tray bee-yayn.”

  Yes, indeed. Madame Pauline. My grasp of this amazing language has already been seriously jeopardized by this woman’s horrendous accent. I mean, I’ve lived in Texas all my life but I don’t have too strong a drawl. But with Madame Pauline, dang!

  She says her name like “Muh-dayum Paw-leeen.” I swear, if I hadn’t taken French last year from a different teacher, I’d probably think this was how French people really talked. Like farm-raised Texans. Madame Pauline says she’s been to France a few times. As soon as she opened her mouth, they must have thought she was having a seizure.

  At least everyone’s focused on her now and not me.

  “On-cohwer,” she says.

  What she’s trying to say is encore. So we repeat that same long sentence again. It means I would like to walk along the boulevards of Paris. Can you imagine? Wandering the streets where the Renaissance got its name? Seeing Michelangelo’s masterpieces at the Louvre? I’ve studied these posters she has on the walls so many times, even copying some of them in my sketchbook, that I feel like I know Paris already. But what would Paris think of me?

  Well, dreaming of getting away from Rock Hollow is like dreaming Graphite is more than a stupid cartoon. I used to think . . . Oh, hell. Who cares what I used to think?

  Madame Pauline picks up the textbook and leans on her desk. “Everyone open to chapter fourteen.”

  I shift in my seat to get my book and feel that note wedged in my pocket. Who the hell wrote it? I so need to text Audrey and Trent right now. I hate this. And what does that mean, You know me but you don’t know me? Who the hell are you?

  Has to be a joke, someone screwing with me, trying to scare me even more. Confreakingratulations, jackass. It’s working.

  But they ask if “my friend” is okay. Oh, god, now everyone thinks Kobe is my—

  “Adrian?” Madame Pauline stares at me.

  “Uh . . . oui, Madame?”

  Am I supposed to say something? What did I miss?

  “Page one thirty-seven, please.”

  All eyes are on me again. Guess I’m supposed to read from the text. So I do. It seems to be the right thing. Gotta keep my voice steady. Madame Pauline continues to amble through the rows of desks, here and there correcting my pronunciation from across the room. Some nerve, her correcting me.

  I finish at last and she calls on the next reader. Lev.

  Damn I love his voice. Kinda gravelly. I twist just a teeny bit to get a glimpse of him. Oh. He’s looking right at me.

  “Sorry,” he says, “can I borrow your book? Left mine in my locker.”

  My face burns. Holy crap, he’s so freakin’ cute. Those eyes.

  “Adrian?” Madame Pauline says. “Lev needs your leever.”

  “My liver?” I squint at her. People laugh. Oh, livre. “Ah, my book, my book.”

  Her mouth pinches, holding back a smile.

  I hurriedly grab the textbook and, without thinking, close it. Oops. I lost our place.

  As I turn to Lev, I try a friendly little laugh.

  HaAA-a-aww!

  My throat’s so dry. A raspy squawk comes from my mouth like a loud donkey in pain. What the hell was that?

  Lev jerks back, eyes big. He gapes at me like, well, I just imitated a farm animal. I catch his eyes and we both start laughing. The book slips from my hands and hits the floor with a thud.

  The whole class cracks up. Just makes me lose it more.

  And more.

  I bend down to get the book as I gasp for air. Then I really let loose. Oh, man. What’s happening?

  “Okay, Adrian, enough,” Madame Pauline says.

  Can’t control it. I fumble with the book.

  “Here.” Lev reaches out. “I’ll take it.” He puts his hand on my shoulder.

  It’s just a slight pressure.

  I’m still sore from that locker slam. But instead of pain, a warm streak shoots through me. Deep inside.

  I can’t breathe.

  I’m not laughing now—I’m crying.

  He pulls back his hand.

  “Adrian?” Madame Pauline is next to me.

  Why can’t I stop? My chest heaves. I cover my face—it’s wet.

  “You all right?” she says softly.

  Her voice makes me cry more. Stop it, Adrian! Stop. This.

  I tame my breath, slow down, and stuff it in. Wiping tears from my face, I glance up at Madame Pauline.

  The room is silent.

  “Sorry.” I wipe my hands on my jeans.

  She leans down. “What do you need? Should we go out in the hall for a minute?”

  I shake my head and stare at my desk.

  Then I swallow. “Well, maybe I’ll get some water.”

  She nods.

  Reaching back without looking at him, I put my book on Lev’s desk. Then I slide out of my chair and, staring at the floor tiles, make it out the door.

  The hall is empty. I lean against the wall, cover my face, and exhale a few more silent sobs.

  What just happened?

  I still feel where Lev touched me, the same shoulder that hit the lockers. It’s the o
nly part of me that isn’t numb.

  What the hell is happening to me? I fall apart right in the middle of class? I have to be more careful. Get it together, Adrian! Don’t be such a wimp.

  I gotta try to shake off this freak-out and come back to earth. The water fountain isn’t far, so I dash over in case anyone comes around. The squeaks from my shoes echo off the walls. At the fountain, the cold water burns my throat.

  Come on, pull it together.

  Okay. Here we go. I make it back to the door, put my hand on the handle, and inhale. Heart thumping, I slip in and ease into my seat. My book is back on my desk in front of me.

  Breath by breath, I come down to earth. It’s not until after three more people have read out loud that I risk glancing around. Everyone’s focused on their own stuff again, but they eye me from time to time. Especially Madame Pauline. But she doesn’t ask me any more questions.

  I always thought most kids in this class seemed pretty cool, but what do I know? Maybe someone already texted the world about me losing it, about how weak I am. Easy prey.

  Graphite Boy my ass.

  Near the end of the period, Lev taps me on the arm. I tense up and look over my shoulder.

  “Thanks for loaning me your book,” he whispers.

  All I can do is nod.

  As Madame Pauline writes our assignment on the board, I realize I’ll have to hang back and talk about whatever homework I missed the past two days. So when the bell rings I stay in my seat and slowly pack up.

  Lev stands and puts away his stuff, including a huge pile of Halloween Hoedown flyers he passed around during class.

  “Your knee okay?” he says.

  “My knee?” Oh, from running into his table at Boo. Like a moron. My face flames up again. “Wow. Sorry about that. I was . . . uh, yeah. Fine.” Voice squeaks.

  We kind of half-look at each other for a moment.

  “So,” he says. “Did you see my note?”

  I BLINK. DID LEV JUST . . . No. Must not have heard him right. “Did you say your note?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Did you see it?” He’s acting so calm. Even smiling. At me.

  He shifts his bag. “Well?” he says.

  “Um, I think so?” Still in my seat, I check around to see if anyone’s listening. “That note was from you?”