by Misa Sugiura
“So let me get this straight,” says Caleb in a low voice. “You’re a lesbian. You thought your girlfriend was going to break up with you, so you got together with me because—what, your friends told you to? Because I was better than nothing? And then it turned out she wasn’t breaking up with you after all, so you’ve been getting ready to dump me and get back together with her this whole time? And it doesn’t matter? And you feel sorry for me? Because you can tell that I like you a lot?”
Ouch. “You make it sound like I used you, like I don’t even care about what I did.”
Caleb considers this for a second. “That’s about right.”
“But you make it sound like I’m this horrible, self-centered bitch.”
“Not a bitch. Just horrible and self-centered. And conceited.”
I look at Jamie. Caleb was totally innocent, but Jamie had a part in all of this. Plus I just told her that she’s the one I want to be with. Maybe . . . but she shakes her head.
“I was honest with you. I told you everything. And you totally played me. You cheated on me, you lied to me—why would you do that, Sana? How could you act like that?”
“Jamie—”
“I liked you so much, Sana. I trusted you.”
“Jamie, please—”
“I gotta go to class.” And she walks away.
“Fuck.” Caleb exhales and says quietly, “You know, I thought you were different. I thought you were honest about who you were, not like all the other girls. What a load of bullshit. I’m so fucking stupid.” He turns and wades his way through groups of kids standing in aimless, eavesdropping clumps, drops into his chair, and stares dully ahead.
I stand there, frozen. This can’t be happening.
The bell rings, and Mr. Green appears and starts herding everyone toward their seats. They fan out across the classroom, murmuring to each other and stealing glances at Caleb, and at me. Reggie, Hanh, and Elaine are the only ones looking directly at me. They look stricken—Reggie actually has her hand over her mouth.
Mr. Green is leaning over Caleb, his face etched with concern. Caleb appears to be ignoring him. When Mr. Green looks up at me, it dawns on me that I’m still rooted to the spot where Jamie and Caleb left me. I’m going to have to walk all the way across the classroom, through a thicket of stares and whispers, and sit for the next eighty minutes right in front of a guy who hates me.
I can’t do it. I turn and walk away.
My throat feels like someone’s punched it. My eyes are burning. “Sana!” Mr. Green is at the classroom door, calling me. I keep going. If I turn around, I’ll cave and go back. Or start to cry. Or both. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. “Sana!” He tries one more time, then gives up. He’s probably calling security.
I have to hide before I fall apart. Before someone finds me and drags me back to class. I duck into the girls’ bathroom and shut myself in a stall. I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears. Don’t cry. But they come anyway, a torrent of them, along with ragged gasps and whimpers that I’m terrified someone outside will hear, but it’s like those awful words that came pouring out of me earlier, I can’t control it, they just come, and I can feel my mouth making that grotesque crying-face frown, and the tears and gasps keep coming, and my shoulders keep shaking, and I wish I were home in my bed instead of this ugly, smelly, little stall, I wish I were anywhere but here, doing anything but this, remembering anything but the last horrible, humiliating minutes of my horrible, humiliating life.
How did I end up here? Why, why, why didn’t I just trust Jamie? Why did I have to go and kiss Caleb? Why did I have to say all those things I said? In front of all those people? Stupid, stupid, stupid me. And now everyone thinks I’m a slutty, lying, lesbo bitch. Oh, no—a slutty, lying, conceited lesbo bitch. And it’s only October.
Eventually, thank God, the tears slow down, my breath comes easier, and I regain enough presence of mind to rip some toilet paper off the roll and blow my nose. I try a couple of calming breaths, blowing the air out slowly. My face feels numb and my teeth are tingling. But I’m okay. And no one heard me crying. I check my phone and realize that the last miserable hour of my life has actually only taken a few minutes. There’s still over an hour left before the end of first period, but I can’t go back to class, not after what just happened. Don’t think about what just happened. I don’t want to start crying again. I stay in the stall for a few more minutes, breathing and not thinking, waiting for my eyes to un-puff and my nose to un-redden before I go to the nurse’s office—sanctuary of the sick and the cowardly.
The rest of the day, predictably, sucks. Mrs. Hernandez, the nurse, says I’m not sick enough to go home, so I go to Spanish, where half the class has witnessed my humiliation and the other half gets the news via under-the-desk text messages by the end of the period. I don’t know what I’m going to say to Reggie, Elaine, and Hanh, so while everyone is getting started on their homework at the end of class, I go up to Señor Reyes and say weakly, “I don’t feel well. Can I go to the nurse’s office?” When I show up, Mrs. Hernandez gives me an exasperated look but lets me lie down, since there’s only ten minutes left in the period. Halfway through lunch, I decide a little friendship might be nice, after all, so I head out to the quad. But my friends are sitting with Caleb and Thom. So much for friendship. I go back to the nurse’s office. Practice is terrible. Jamie stays far away from me, and most of the other girls won’t even look at me. Are they mad at me? Afraid of me? The boys, on the other hand, stare at me like I’m a new animal at the zoo, except for Arjun, who comes over and whispers, “Hey, I heard you got outed this morning!” and puts his fist out for me to bump.
When I get home, Mom is furious with me because the school office has already called home and told her that I have to schedule a detention for skipping class—looks like Mr. Green told them what actually happened. “Why did you skip the class?” she keeps asking, but of course I can’t tell her. Dad comes home early, for once, and looks at me with grave disappointment—as if he’s a shining example of ethical behavior.
I can’t eat dinner. I can’t do my homework. When I give up and go to bed, I can’t sleep. All I can do is what I’ve been doing all day: relive that awful scene, re-see Jamie’s face, re-see Caleb’s face, and feel my heart slowly breaking into a million pieces.
POETRY JOURNAL, HONORS AMERICAN LITERATURE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 25
“One Art”
by Elizabeth Bishop
This poem is about losing someone. I wonder who Elizabeth Bishop lost? The poem’s kind of singsongy, so if you don’t listen to the words, it almost sounds happy. Except that practically every other line ends in the word “disaster.” I thought at first it was going to be funny, because Bishop talks about misplacing things as an art, which is kind of funny—losing things on purpose, for practice. But she goes from misplacing keys, or wasting an hour, to bigger stuff—her mother’s watch, houses, cities, and even a continent—“losing farther, losing faster” and “vaster.” Then she talks about “losing you (the joking voice, a gesture / I love).” Since it’s after all the other stuff, it makes losing the person worse than losing everything else, even cities and continents. She didn’t misplace the person. It was a real loss, like maybe someone left her, or someone died. And then she says it looks “like (Write it!) like disaster.” Like she’s making herself say something hard, like she’s trying to pretend that losing that person isn’t a disaster, even though it is.
This poem makes me really sad.
34
MY PHONE WAKES ME AT SIX THIRTY, AND FOR THE sleepy second that it takes me to turn off the alarm, I think it’s just a regular day. Then I remember what happened yesterday and a heavy fog gathers itself around me. I squeeze my eyes shut under the covers, as if that will somehow magically make it all go away. I wish I could stay down here forever. I wish I didn’t have to go to school; in fact, I wish I hadn’t gone to school yesterday, because I don’t know how else I could have avoided that debacl
e. Where did I screw up? Or more to the point, where did I first screw up?
There are a ton of texts from Elaine, Reggie, and Hanh that I don’t even bother to read because I can’t face their questions or their judgment. None from Jamie or Caleb. Well, what did I expect?
It’s a testament to Mom’s good parenting, I suppose, that I drag myself out of bed and get myself to school. Either that, or the fact that the only way she’ll believe I’m sick enough to stay home from school is if I have a fever, or if she witnesses me throwing up.
The fog follows me to school. Reggie, Elaine, and Hanh are waiting for me, as usual. Minus any guys, thank God. I can see them watching me as I make my way up the sidewalk, and the horror of yesterday’s humiliation sinks in anew and the chill around me deepens. Each step is an effort, a battle against my desire to turn around and run home. They were all rooting so hard for Caleb + Sana. They’re probably mad at me for screwing things up.
Finally, Elaine steps forward, impatient. Here it comes. To my surprise, she opens her arms and hugs me. “I feel awful,” she says. “I never should’ve told you to go out with Caleb. I just wanted you to be happy.” Reggie and Elaine take their turns hugging me and gazing intently into my face as if I’m an injured baby bird they’ve found on the sidewalk.
The fog around me clears just a little, and I almost start to cry again out of sheer gratitude. But I’ve had enough drama queen scenes to last me a long time, so I brush away the tears and turn up the corners of my mouth to simulate a smile. “I’ll be okay.”
“Poor Caleb,” says Reggie, shaking her head. “He’s been a total wreck.” The fog settles back down again.
“Don’t remind me. I feel horrible.”
“Hey, Reg,” says Hanh, “sisters before misters.”
“I know, I know. Sorry. It’s just. He was miserable yesterday at lunch and after school.”
“But think about Sana. She got broken up with twice in the same day!”
“I know. I’m sorry, Sana.”
I shrug, muster up another smile, and start walking to class. The fog, heavy with the weight of Jamie and Caleb, is pressing down on me so hard it’s all I can do to stay upright.
I zombie my way through physics and P.E. The morning fog burns off, but I can’t ditch the one that’s settled around me. It hovers over my head and shoulders and goes with me everywhere, cold, gray, and wet. It drains my energy. It makes everything pointless. A girl from the Anderson Queer Straight Alliance comes over to me in the locker room after P.E. and slips a card into my hand, printed with the club’s URL and meeting times—Tuesdays during lunch, how convenient. I wonder what they’ll be talking about today. How not to lose your girlfriend by cheating on her with a boy? How not to screw up a friendship with a guy by kissing him even though you already have a girlfriend?
I walk by Jamie’s table at lunch, knowing it’s hopeless, but hoping nonetheless. It seems I’m just desperate like that. I hope that maybe something miraculous will happen and I’ll have the words to apologize and explain without making things worse—that Jamie will even want to listen. But once I’m there, it’s clear I’ve made a bad call. She won’t even look up from her food. Christina, however, looks at me like she wants to kick me. As if I haven’t been kicking myself for the last twenty-four hours.
I spend a long, lonely free period pretending to do homework in a corner of the library. Then history class drags by. Then another awful practice. It should be festive—it’s the last week of practice before league championships next week—but the fog around me filters out all the color, fun, and excitement that everyone else seems to be enjoying. Finally the day is over and I trudge home so I can finally be wretched in peace. It’s the happiest I’ve felt all day.
The week passes, somehow, and then the weekend. I’ve been grounded because of ditching trig, so I don’t have to explain to everyone why I don’t want to hang out. I spend every free moment obsessively checking Jamie’s social media pages. On Sunday, she posts a short poem called “Still Start” by Kay Ryan. It’s basically about how impossible it seems that a heart could go on beating after it’s been broken. A few people have posted comments. I consider posting one, too, but what would I say? I close the window.
On Monday, I walk to trig with Reggie, Elaine, and Hanh. Exactly like we did a week ago. Funny how life can look like everything’s normal when really it’s a huge mess. But when we reach the classroom door, I see Caleb at his desk, head resting on his folded arms.
“He’s been like that since last week,” says Reggie, as if I hadn’t been in class since last Monday and seen it for myself. She glances at me. “What are you going to do?”
I shake my head. I don’t know.
“You could try apologizing,” she says. Right. Okay. Better than nothing.
I walk over to my desk, sit down, and turn to face Caleb. “Caleb?” I say, my voice quavering. Please talk to me.
All I get is a muffled, “Fuck off.”
“Caleb, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About last week.”
“I said fuck off.”
I look over at Reggie, who shrugs, and at Elaine and Hanh, who smile mournfully: You tried.
The league finals come and go. I don’t cheer for Jamie because I’m afraid she’ll hate me for it—and I don’t hear her voice when I go to the starting line. I have a great race, with a final half mile that is the most painful I’ve ever run, but somehow I manage to hang on to the end. Gaman, Mom would say.
Gaman. I’ve fought my whole life against it, but looking back, it’s all I know how to do. I used gaman when I saw that first text to Dad when I was twelve. I used gaman with Trish when she got popular and made all those new, popular friends. I used gaman when I had a crush on her. I thought I’d changed when we moved to California and I finally made real friends, finally kissed Jamie, finally started to live a little. I thought I was done with gaman.
But I was wrong.
I tried to do something about Dad, and I failed. I tried to tell Mom the truth about me, and I chickened out. I tried to take action when I thought Jamie might leave me, and I screwed up. So I’ve resigned myself to my fate like a good Japanese girl, and I’m doing my best to pull myself together, squelch the complaints, and endure, endure, endure. Gaman. This is what Mom has been training me for since I was born, and it’s clearly what I’m best at.
The days pass. I become like a boulder on the beach in a time-lapse video. The sun and moon and stars cross the sky again and again, shadows lengthen and shrink, the tide rushes in and out. The sea heaves in the background, crabs and seabirds flicker in and out of view. Meanwhile, the boulder sits there, stolid, unmoving, all alone, as life whizzes past. Dad continues to disappear on weekends. Mom continues to pretend it’s not happening. Elaine and Jimmy earn themselves a nickname: Jimaine. Reggie splits her time at lunch between Caleb and Thom’s group, and our group.
When it gets too painful, I start sneaking my lunch in the library. It’s not so bad. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. In the beginning, the girls ask me how I am, if I’m okay. They ask me if I’ve talked to Jamie at all, as if she’d ever want to hear from me. Reggie mentions a couple of times that Caleb has been bummed out, as if I need reminding what a terrible person I am. But eventually they stop asking. The sun slides across the sky, the moon waxes and wanes, and I endure. I survive.
POETRY JOURNAL, HONORS AMERICAN LITERATURE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23
“Elliptical”
by Harryette Mullen
This is one weird poem—just a paragraph of a lot of unfinished sentences about “them,” like, “They just can’t seem to . . .” and “They never . . .” and “Certainly we can’t forget that they . . .” connected by ellipses. It doesn’t look like any other poem I’ve ever seen, but I found it on a poetry website, so I guess it’s a poem.
Either way, it says a lot to me. Someone’s talking about regrets, I guess. The speaker is trying not to blame “them” outright, but it’s pretty clear that “the
y” are guilty somehow. Maybe “they” were in a relationship and people are gossiping about them. Or maybe the speaker is saying “they” instead of “he” or “she” and it’s really about one person and what that person did (or didn’t do).
To me, the ellipses represent the unknown and the undone, as if there were a lot of things “they” could have done differently, but we don’t know what they are, exactly. Like, after reading the phrase, “They ought to be more . . .” you could finish it with, “. . . honest” or “. . . forgiving” or “. . . trusting.” But we don’t know for sure what would have worked best.
I think this poem is about guilt and misunderstanding and confusion. Confusion, especially, because of all the unfinished sentences, like the speaker doesn’t know what to say.
35
ANDY CHIN’S PARENTS ARE LEAVING TOWN for two weeks, and he’s having a party this weekend. The girls are staging an intervention and trying to get me to go.
“It’s not healthy to stay at home and obsess by yourself,” says Reggie. “Thom and his friends already have plans, so you don’t have to worry about Caleb.”
“You have to start trying to have fun again,” says Elaine.
“Don’t be a loser,” says Hanh. We’re gathered around Reggie’s locker, and Elaine and Hanh are pushing for a repeat of the homecoming plan.
“Jimmy wants me to be there,” Elaine whines. “We have to go!”
“Talk to your cousin! See if she’ll let us crash after the party,” suggests Hanh, adding hopefully, “maybe the boys can come over.” She means Jimmy and his friend Bao, who she’s been texting with a lot lately. But Reggie is worried about what will happen to the apartment with all of those drunk and drug-addled teenagers around, and what if someone calls the cops? Or worse, a parent?