Cycler

by Lauren McLaughlin

  Ramie.

  “Mom,” I say. “Drive past. Drive past!”

  “What?” she says.

  But it’s too late. Both Ramie and Dad have spotted us.

  Mom pulls into the driveway and turns off the ignition. “It’s okay,” she says. “We went to the mall and had your hair colored and cut. That’s why it looks different. Don’t worry. We can do this.”

  But it’s not the wig that worries me. It’s Ramie.

  “Honey,” Mom says. “What’s wrong?”

  Her face morphs into slow understanding. “Oh,” she says.

  “Do you remember? Are you remembering what they—”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t remember. It’s just . . .”

  Ramie stands up with her jam jar and waves, her short flared skirt blowing all the way up to her thighs.

  “I feel sick, Mom.”

  “It’s okay,” Mom says. “You go inside. You don’t stop. I tell her you’re not well. She goes home. End of story.”

  “I think I’m going to puke,” I say.

  “Good.” Mom grabs her purse and puts her hand on the door handle. “Then you won’t have to act.”

  Dad stands up next to Ramie with a dumb smile on his face, as if Ramie’s arrival were good news. He’s such an idiot sometimes.

  Mom opens her door. “Not a word to her, understand? Just go inside and let me handle it.”

  We get out of the car and close the doors in near-perfect synch. Mom heads up the walkway in front while I try to hide behind her. Ramie twists and turns to catch a glimpse of me.

  “Hey, sexy!” she yells.

  My stomach flips over. Reaching back, Mom grabs my wrist and pulls me up the stairs, keeping herself between Ramie and me.

  When we get to the top of the stairs, Dad’s still smiling his idiot grin. “Don’t you look elegant,” he says.

  Mom stops, placing her body directly between Ramie and me while dragging me by the wrist toward the door. Keeping my eyes on the blue and pink flagstones at the top of the landing, all I see of Ramie is her bony ankles. I fumble with the sticking screen door and slip inside. From inside the vestibule, I hear Mom say, “Jill’s not feeling well, Ramie. She needs to lie down. Richard?”

  I turn to face the door and Ramie peers around my mom’s formidable buffer of a body with a perplexed look on her face. The brief second our eyes meet feels like a swarm of hornets stinging me all at once. I turn and run up the stairs.

  When I get to my room, I’m afraid to go to the window, because I know Ramie can see me from the front steps. So I drop to my knees, crawl to the wooden chest and peer over the windowsill between the bars. Mom ushers a chastened Dad inside while Ramie heads down the stairs. She pulls her rusty old ten-speed from the bushes where she always dumps it, stands it upright and looks up at my window. I pull back and hide. A breeze blows her hair as she stares up at me, surprised, probably, by the bars on the window. Then she turns the bike around, straddles it and rides off, her flimsy skirt fluttering up to reveal a black lace thong.

  My stomach flips over again.

  Having redeposited Dad into his yoga hole, Mom comes to my room and hovers in the doorframe. “Shake your head,” she says.

  “What?”

  She demonstrates by shaking her head side to side.

  I do it.

  “Feel secure?” she says.

  “I guess.” I tug at the ends of the bob. “I don’t know if it’ll survive gym class.”

  “I’ll write you a note,” she says. “You can forget about gym class for the rest of the year.”

  “Really?”

  She nods. She hovers.

  “What?” I say.

  “Do I even have to say it?”

  “Say what?”

  She steps inside and leans against my desk, arms folded businesslike across her chest. “Look,” she says. “You’ve always been a loyal friend, but I think it’s time to reexamine your relationship with—”

  “Mom.” I press my fingers into my eye sockets. “Please. Let’s not talk about Ramie.”

  Mom doesn’t say anything, but she keeps staring at me like she can’t wait to use this latest humiliation to banish Ramie from my life. Right now, I’m not inclined to defend Ramie, but I don’t want to talk about her. Even the sound of the word “Ramie” nauseates me in a deeply unfamiliar way.

  “I’m going to lie down for a while,” I say. “I think I need a nap.”

  “Sure,” she says. But she keeps hovering.

  “What?”

  She presses her lips into a neat little smile. “Dad’s right, honey. It is elegant.”

  I glance in the mirror again. “Really?”

  She nods, then leaves.

  As soon as I lie down, my cell phone rings. It’s Ramie. She’ll keep calling until I pick up, so I shut the phone off. Then I stare at the calendar, where the word “PROM!” appears in red letters at the bottom of the month.

  When I get to school on Monday, instead of going to homeroom, I hide out in a stall in the girls’ room. The last thing I need on my first day back is to face Ramie and her lie-exposing mind probe. The only lie I’ve ever told her is the Big One about my “blood transfusions.” We made a “pinkie promise” back in middle school to tell each other everything. She, of course, responded by unloading a catalog of perverted sex stuff and I told her about how I let Christopher Defoe touch my boob in sixth grade. We’ve been BFFs ever since. But right now, the thought of Ramie makes me feel all creepy inside, like I’ve done something unforgivably wrong. And though I have no direct memory of her pervy gropings with Jack, Ramie’s descriptions have been gut-wrenchingly explicit. What’s more, I think somehow my body remembers it, even though my brain doesn’t. Does that make sense?

  So anyway, I hide out in the girls’ room until I hear the bell for A Block; then I pop my head into homeroom and wave at Mrs. Schepisi.

  “I’m going to have to mark you late, Jill,” she says.

  When I’ve recovered from the shock of that threat, I slip back into the hallway and speed walk toward history class.

  “Jill,” Ramie yells. “Wait up.”

  The hallway fizzes with the usual crush of students, so I can reasonably fake not hearing her. I feel bad about it, but cut me some slack because I have a lot to deal with today, okay?

  About ten feet from the Jed Barnsworthy vortex, Tommy appears, his face registering surprise at my new “haircut.” Stopping at the intersection, he waits for me. I take a deep breath and try to psych myself up for acting nonchalant. When I reach him, he brushes his fingers down my arm.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he says. He checks out the back and the sides. “I like it. It makes me want to kiss your neck.” He pulls me close.

  “Get a room,” Jed Barnsworthy says.

  The dirtbag holding up the wall next to him sniffs and says, “Yeah, get a gay room, you gayer.”

  Tommy ignores him. So do I. It gets easier to do this all the time.

  I grab the back of my exposed neck. “What? You hate it.”

  Tommy shakes his head very slowly, then steps up to me and whispers in my ear, “You want to ditch school?”

  I pull back. “Are you serious?”

  “Come on,” he says. “What are they gonna do? Expel us? We can go to the beach and cram for calculus. It’s the only class I’m worried about. And you? You’re straight A’s, right?”

  I shrug.

  Behind me, Jed and his toady boys giggle like hyenas. Then the shadow of Jed himself looms over me. Tommy pulls me away down the North Wing, but not soon enough. With a rough swipe, Jed whacks the back of my head. “Nice do,” he says. There is a painful tug of hairpins and a sudden shadow over my right eye. But it’s the shock on Tommy’s face that confirms the worst. I reach up to center the wig just as Sammy Burston—one of Jed’s toady boys—peels himself off the wall and lunges for me. In a swift and brutal motion, he yanks the wig clean off my head.

  “Ow!” I scream. The breeze from an air-cond
itioning vent chills my head through the mesh skullcap.

  “Holy shit!” Sammy snorts.

  He tosses the wig in the air and it lands on the shoulder of some freshman girl, who squeals and brushes it off like a spider. Frantically, I try to cover my scabby head with one hand while lunging for the wig, but Sammy gets to it first.

  “Yo, Barnsworthy,” he says.

  “Please,” I whimper while trying to disappear completely.

  Holding the wig behind his back, Sammy laughs, showing yellow teeth. “Barnsworthy,” he says. “Check this out.” He holds the wig above his head as I make pitiful and fruitless attempts to grab it.

  I can hear the whispers and stunned exclamations of my fellow students, but Jed stands stiffly, mouth opened. In place of mockery is something else, something far worse.

  Finally, Tommy regains his senses, steps between me and Sammy Burston and says, “Hand it over, you little turd.”

  Sammy thrusts out his chin. “Make me, you homo.” He searches out Jed Barnsworthy. But Jed’s still looking at me, his eyes flicking between my face and my skullcap. The sneer has vanished. The smirk, the snark, the ever-present snide chuckle are all gone. In their place is the shadow of the Jed I used to know, the sad, shy, chubby Jed from the neighborhood, the Jed who made me promise not to tell anyone about Barbie Dress-up Treasure Hunt. I want to kill him.

  Tommy lunges for the wig, but Sammy pulls it away.

  That’s when Ramie makes her appearance. Shoving her way through the knot of mute onlookers, she charges past Tommy and knees Sammy Burston in the nuts. Everyone gasps in unison.

  Sammy gurgles painfully, then doubles over and releases the wig. Ramie snatches it, grabs my wrist and drags me to the girls’ room around the corner. Stunned cries of “Oh my God!” and “Did you see her head?” trail us like flies until the heavy steel door banishes everything.

  “The little monster,” Ramie says. “Somebody owes that ass hat an ass kicking.” She pulls me toward the big mirror above the sinks. Behind us, a tittering swarm of girls pushes the door open to peer in. Ramie hands me the wig, lunges at the door and slams it shut.

  I try to put the wig on with shaky hands. Ramie stands with her back to the door, pressing it shut against the swarm outside. “Jill?” she says. “Hold on.” She opens the door and shouts, “Get away from this door or you’re all going to die.” She slams it shut.

  My fingers shake as I try to slide the wig on, but it keeps slipping down over my forehead.

  “Jill?”

  “Don’t.”

  She walks over to me. “What happened to your hair?”

  “Ramie,” I say. “This is hard. I need to concentrate.”

  She hangs back for a few seconds while I struggle to position the wig before pulling it back over the skullcap. Then she leans against the sink next to me. “What’s going on, Jill?”

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath, hoping stupidly that she’ll disappear. When I open them, she’s looming over me with her big stupid hair and her bony shoulders stretching the fabric of her practically see-through Tinkerbell T-shirt. She pulls herself up to sit on the sink, her long fingers gripping the edge of it like talons. “Jill,” she says. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Ignoring her, I get the wig fixed over the front of my head and try to guide it back over the rest of my head.

  “Here,” Ramie says. She puts her hand on the front of the wig to help, but I yank my head away.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” she says.

  Holding the wig perched on the top of my head, I stare at her from a few feet away. She looks so confused, so scared.

  “Is it . . .” She looks down. When she looks up again, there are tears in her eyes. “Is it chemo?”

  I hold her gaze for a few seconds, then stare into the mirror and pull the wig all the way on.

  “Jill?”

  Chemo? Can I use this? Is this the lie I need to escape Ramie’s mind probe?

  “I’ve got to go,” I say. Shouldering my backpack, I head to the door.

  Ramie hops off the sink and follows me. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m late,” I say.

  Whipping the door open, I rush down the mercifully empty hallway.

  But I don’t go to class. Instead, I sneak out through the goth door into the harsh bright sunlight of the parking lot. I stare at the pavement as I head to my car. The wig charade is over. Now I have to decide whether to go with the chemo story. Is it too depressing? Will I have to lose weight and wear pale makeup to sell it? Would that be offensive? I think it might be offensive to pretend you have cancer when all you have is a penis once a month.

  When I get to my car, I spot Tommy leaning against the bumper.

  “I had a feeling you’d run,” he says.

  I stop a safe distance from him, my backpack heavy on my shoulder. “Tommy—”

  “I won’t,” he says. “Run, I mean.”

  I let my backpack drop with a thud. “Tommy, it’s not chemo.”

  “Really?”

  In the distance, by the Dumpsters, the goths laugh at something and stomp out their cigarettes.

  “Really,” I say.

  He doesn’t believe me.

  “I have to get out of here,” I say.

  “Did you join the marines?” he says.

  Is it possible to mock someone while still being incredibly sweet?

  Yes.

  “You still want to go to the beach?” I say.

  He nods.

  It’s only a fifteen-minute drive down Argilla Road to Karn Beach, but the silence stretches it out. I can’t figure out a way to disprove the hastily formed but apparently universally agreed upon “Chemo Theory” without blowing the lid off the even worse truth.

  Karn Beach’s huge parking lot, packed during summer vacation, is empty but for two cars parked on opposite corners. I pull up near the entrance to a little-known boardwalk that snakes into the dunes. Silently, we get out of the car and I retrieve a blanket, which has been in the trunk since last summer. There’s a ketchup stain on one side of it and I can’t remember which.

  Tommy eyeballs the boardwalk entrance, which is partially obscured by an overhanging tree. “Isn’t there supposed to be a psycho living back there somewhere?”

  “Yup.” I close the trunk. “And a nudist colony and the Karn Beach rapist and I think the Unabomber at one point. Scared?”

  He laughs, then follows me under the tree.

  The boardwalk creaks beneath us, and the overhanging trees create a welcome chill against the hot sun. When we emerge from the trees, the rolling dunes spread out in all directions, but only a sliver of ocean is visible in the valley between two of them.

  “Wow,” Tommy says. “I didn’t know it was so big.”

  “Yeah.” I take off my gold flats and step barefoot into the still-cool sand. “It stretches for miles, you know. Gets pretty hot back here in the summer.”

  “I bet.” He steps out of his white Adidas and joins me barefoot in the sand. “Where to?”

  “This way.” I head off toward my favorite dune.

  When we get there, I spread the blanket out and sit on one corner. The ocean is just visible over the top of another dune, and the rhythm of crashing waves reaches us. Tommy puts one shoe on each corner to secure the blanket, then sits next to me.

  “So,” he says.

  I reach over him and pull his heavy backpack onto the blanket. Unzipping it, I pull out the calculus book.

  “I hate math,” he says. “Can’t I just resign myself to not being a numbers person?”

  “It’s not about numbers.” Sitting cross-legged, I open the book. “It’s about nature.”

  “Nature?”

  “Yeah.”

  He sits directly across from me, mirroring my cross-legged position. “All right. I’m listening.”

  The breeze unsettles the ends of my wig, and I keep checking to make sure it’s secure. “All right, well, everything in this book is
proof that all of this . . .” I gesture to the surrounding dunes. “That everything around us works the way it should.”

  He smiles suddenly, but the smile fades.

  “It’s a way of describing the natural order,” I say, “and the relationships between things in an abstract way.”

  The smile won’t return.

  I close the book. “Go ahead,” I say. “Ask me.”

  “So it’s not from chemotherapy?” he says.

  I stare at the cover of the book with its nerdy geometric drawing. “No. It’s not.”

  He traces the blue line in the drawing on the book. “So how did it happen?”

  I realize at this moment how reckless it was to rely solely on the integrity of the wig. I should have brainstormed a backup story.

  Tommy’s elbows rest on his knees as he leans forward, anxious for my answer.

  Stalling, I lean back and drop onto the blanket. “I guess this is my fate.”

  Tommy hovers above me, his face blocking the sun. “What fate?”

  “Always having to explain myself,” I say.

  Pulling myself up, I grab my sunglasses from the backpack and put them on.

  Tommy lies on his side with his head propped on his hand. “Explain what?” he says.

  I want to join him, to stretch myself out in his shadow, but I’m too scared.

  “You know,” I say. “This condition I have.”

  “The blood condition?” he says. “The transfusions?”

  I turn my mirror shades to him. Feeling suddenly safe behind them, I fantasize for a nanosecond about spilling the whole truth. “Yeah,” I say. “That. It sucks. It deeply sucks. And sometimes at the hospital . . .” I face the crest of a distant dune.

  “They make mistakes.”

  Tommy sits up. “Mistakes?”

  I feel him studying me.

  “Yeah.” Now I can’t look at him. Not when I’m lying like this.

  “Are you telling me they cut off your hair by accident?”

  It’s only when he says it that I realize the full extent of its malness. But now I’m committed.

  “Hard to believe,” I say. “I know.”

  He scoots closer, takes my sunglasses off and places them on the blanket. “Jill,” he says. “You can tell me anything. Or you can tell me nothing. But please don’t lie to me.”