by Sarah Bannan
Carolyn nodded.
“GREAT,” Miss Simpson said. “That’s GREAT.”
Carolyn started to get up. To gather her things.
“Oh, Carolyn?”
She picked up her bag, put it on over her head, across her body.
“How are things going otherwise? You’re getting along all right with the other girls?”
And Carolyn looked at Alyssa – and Alyssa said she couldn’t tell if Carolyn was pissed or amused. Carolyn looked back at Miss Simpson and she nodded.
“I hope so. I think you’re very special.” Miss Simpson smiled and Carolyn walked out the door.
Chapter 9
In the cafeteria, trays clanked and crashed and we yelled across the room and threw apples and roast beef sandwiches when the teachers weren’t looking. Some days we brought our lunches and some days we bought our lunches, and we sat in the same seats, day in, day out. The cafeteria smelled of hot dogs and curly fries and lasagne and chicken fried steak and gravy. It smelled of disinfectant and freshmen just out of PE and girls who have just reapplied their perfume. At Carolyn’s old school, and on every school we’d seen on TV, kids got to go out for lunch, leave campus and go to the mall or a restaurant or a gas station or home. Carolyn used to go for sushi, that’s what she told us, or to Whole Foods, where she and her friends would get a green juice. “It’s weird you don’t get to leave,” she would say to us. “Yeah,” we would agree, and we resented her, just a little, for making us feel backward again. Not everything different is better.
A low wall ran around the cafeteria, making a square in the middle, and lunch tables that seated six were arranged on either side, grid-like. Brooke was at a table in the center, Gemma Davies and Andrew Wright sitting with her. The rest of the seats were empty. At our table we talked about the nominations and how lame it was and how it was weird that Carolyn was nominated in so many classes. We said we thought Brooke was probably still bitching about Carolyn’s place on the list and we watched her as she broke off tiny pieces of her sandwich, chewing slowly, hand in front of her face.
We looked at the table where the other cheerleaders sat – Amber and Bridget and Emma and Tiffany and Taylor and Carolyn with Shane. Shane had his arm around Carolyn. When Coach Cox passed their table, Shane dropped it real quick – and Coach Cox smiled. And then we watched Shane’s hand grab Carolyn’s underneath the table, and he rubbed their hands against her leg. We imagined all the things they talked about: her friends back in New Jersey, maybe, or how Shane was doing in football, or maybe they bitched about their teachers like the rest of us did. We didn’t know. At the table, all eyes were on Carolyn, and most of the eyes in the rest of the cafeteria, too. We couldn’t help it.
At the time, nobody was surprised that Shane was so into her, that the cheerleaders linked arms with her as they walked down the hall, that she was invited to every party those first months, even the ones for only the popular kids. She was just so cool.
Janitor Ken mopped as we ate. He was slow or maybe handicapped or maybe just aloof – some of the guys liked to high five him when they saw him in the halls, liked to try to get him to talk about how Alabama had played over the weekend, or who he thought was hotter, Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift. When he answered, they almost always laughed and then repeated back what he’d said and then tried to get him to say it again, only louder, and we weren’t sure if they were being nice or making fun of him or what they were doing. It made us feel queasy, want to look away, that much we knew. But then maybe we were the assholes, ignoring him every time we saw him – pretending we couldn’t see him or, worse, that we could see right through him. We watched him now and we could have sworn Shane threw something in his direction – a curly fry or something – and it landed on top of Ken’s head. And it stayed there as he bent over to pick up an empty milk carton.
Miss Simpson sat at a table with Mr Ferris and Coach Cox and Mrs Matthew. We never thought about whether or not they even liked each other, we just laughed at Miss Simpson’s and Mrs Matthew’s outfits, nearly crying about their excessive use of scrunchies. That day, we were laughing most at Mrs Matthew: she was wearing a brown and orange sweater, a giant cornucopia of vegetables embroidered on the center. Nicole said she wasn’t sure that Mrs Matthew was cut out to give us guidance after all, if these were the life choices she was making. “That sweater makes me want to hurl. Extreme motivation to keep me out of trouble.”
Lauren’s dad gave a lecture once a week at Cullman Community College about leadership in middle management and had told her that he’d seen Mrs Matthew there, along with Miss Simpson. He thought they were both doing cake-making – Miss Simpson was carrying a box of edible flowers, but Mrs Matthew was carrying two volumes of Freud. And Mr Brink was intrigued and asked her about it. Psychotherapy, she had said, and Mr Brink told Lauren and Lauren told us. Psychotherapy. We just thought she was psycho. Every day, we watched her eat a sad-looking salad out of a sad-looking piece of Tupperware. And we looked away.
After we’d eaten, we watched Brooke Moore walk into the bathroom. We waited one, maybe two minutes, and then we went too. We hadn’t followed her, not exactly, but we liked to be near Brooke, no matter what people said. She was popular, she was cool – if she liked you, this mattered. Things happened around Brooke, this was a fact. She was there when Blake Wyatt made his first bong, when Dylan Hall scored his first keg, when Alyssa Jennings got so wasted she walked in topless to the 7-Eleven. Brooke was there for all of that stuff, and every other thing that had ever happened in our town. We walked into the bathroom after her and went straight into the stalls. We read the walls, covered with Sharpie marker, bubble letters, hearts, crosses.
“Jesus Saves!”
“Alicia Cooper is a SLUTTY SLUTTERSON.”
“I get high on LIFE CRYSTAL METH.”
We heard gagging and coughing. We knew it wasn’t one of us, the noise had started before we’d closed the stall doors. And it continued after we’d all flushed, after we’d all come out to wash our hands – always washing them a few seconds longer when with each other, to show that we were clean but not OCD. We stood in front of the mirror and shared our lip gloss and hairspray and Viva La Juicy perfume. If Brooke had come out, we would have shared our stuff with her, shown her what brands we used, let her tell us if our eye shadow was right for our skin tone. But she was slow today – the gagging and coughing was louder, longer than usual, the splash into the toilet heavier than most days. We didn’t say anything to one another, not then, not other days either, but we looked at each other wide-eyed in the mirror until the toilet flushed. And then we went back to what we were doing, looking in the mirror, brushing Bare Escentuals loose powder on our noses, smoothing cream blush on the apples of our cheeks. Brooke emerged from the stall, her face flushed and eyes red. She smiled and we told her congratulations. “No big deal,” she said. “No big deal.”
Trig was after lunch.
Mr Ferris didn’t greet us as we walked in but we greeted him. He was hot. We looked forward to this class, even if it was crazy hard.
“So I’ve got a little competition for y’all today.” He smiled and, when he did, he had a dimple on the right side of his mouth. It was cute.
He smiled as he looked around. He was easy to please, Mr Ferris, and when we could please him, we wanted to. He’d been in the military or something, but was teaching now – it was kind of sad. We heard he and Miss Simpson had gone on a date in August or something, which surprised everybody, mostly because she was a total lesbian. Blake Wyatt had seen them at the movie theater once – seeing X-Files 2 – and Nicole Willis had served them nachos and Diet Cokes at the Blue Bistro afterwards. Dylan Hall worked at Sonic and said Miss Simpson got herself a large order of fried pickles at 11.45 that same night – comfort eating, he said, and that seemed about right.
Mr Ferris was the most popular Math teacher in the school, though, and if you went to RateMyTeachers.com, you’d see hundreds of comments about him – “Mr Ferris is su
per nice and even though he is not easy, the class is pretty fun” – and if you stayed on long enough, you’d see something obscene – about his ass or his tongue or about his stamina – before the moderators came in to clean it up.
He cleared his throat: it was all he had to do to get our attention. “Homecoming shouldn’t be the only thing y’all care about.” He looked around and he told us to get up out of our seats. Some of the guys groaned. We did what we were told: we loved to look at him. He was wearing dark khakis and a blue button-down shirt and a red tie. He had gel in his hair, or something, but not too much – enough to make him look like he’d just gotten out of the shower. His face was tan and his nose was just a little sunburned. His eyes were pale blue and when the light hit them, they kind of sparkled. Lauren sent a text: His ass is sooooo fine today.
Dylan Hall stayed in his seat. “I’m not getting up until you tell us what we’re doing.” He was kidding, we thought, but it annoyed us. We didn’t want him to piss off Mr Ferris.
“I’m going to seat you according to your averages. Report cards are out next week.”
He wasn’t the only Math teacher who did this – Mr Scott and Mrs Kuby and Mr Ford did it, too – and it was a something that you either loved or hated but everybody said they hated it – you’d look like a total geek otherwise.
We groaned a little. We looked over at Carolyn, her eyes flashing around the room. She had her pinky finger in her mouth and she was chewing on a nail. She hadn’t heard about this.
We stood against the blackboard and we waited for Mr Ferris to call the names. He started with the lowest averages first. This was like American Idol, we said later, only stupid and not entertaining.
When Mr Ferris got to the last five, it was only girls left. We were there, of course, but so was Carolyn. Of course she was. We waited by the blackboard, careful not to lean against it, you didn’t want chalk marks on your ass, the imprint of a reciprocal function on your back. Mr Ferris got slower towards the end – we wondered if he’d even seen American Idol, or if he’d just picked up this kind of suspense thing – and we took our places one by one. Carolyn was last, highest grade – she had taken Trig already at her old school, and she hardly studied at all, or at least that’s what she said. When her name was called, her eyes got all wide, she looked like she could explode, and she put her head down and walked to the desk in the far right-hand corner, her hair covering her whole face. We were already seated, but we wanted to jump up and tuck her hair behind her ears, so her eyes could see the way in front of her, so she wouldn’t knock over the desks, fall on her face. We wanted her hair out of her face so she could see, but also because it looked like she was showing off: nobody cares how thick and long and shiny your hair is, shut up about it already.
Mr Ferris smiled. “Homecoming Court AND highest average in Advanced Trig. Somebody’s having a good day.”
Chapter 10
We practiced every day after school, from 3.30 until 5 p.m., in the Aquadome – a glass globe with the pool inside, the only thing like it in the state. Natural light streamed through the ceiling, and when we did the backstroke, we looked up at the sky, watched the sun, the clouds, flocks of birds. If there weren’t any clouds, the sun would shine so bright we had to close our eyes. Our parents said that the Aquadome was the brightest building in Adamsville: they wore their sunglasses while they sat on the bleachers and watched us swim.
We were surprised when Carolyn joined the team – popular girls did cheerleading or soccer or, worst case, track. Swimming was nearly the same as band at Adams, and there weren’t any cool kids on the team, had never been. Butterfly was Carolyn’s strongest stroke, the same as Nicole Willis. She was a little bit faster than Nicole, we noticed, and her flip turns were amazing. Coach Billy made us get out of the pool and watch her:
“Look at Carolyn’s form. The power in her kick comes from her hips, not her knees. That’s what you should be doing.”
We rolled our eyes.
Coach Billy turned back to us. “Cut it out. Watch.”
We were put in the same lane for practices. During drills, when we were hanging onto the walls and resting and watching the clock, Jessica noticed a pattern of incisions on Carolyn’s right arm. “Like a cat scratch, or something,” she told us later. “But deeper and weirder.” We tried to get a look later, when we had moved on to the kickboard drills, but she caught us looking at her. She dropped her right arm and she began to tread water. Her head and shoulders stayed completely still, but underneath her legs were kicking and cycling like crazy. When the clock hit sixty, she pushed off the wall and kicked. She moved so fast but barely made a splash. The marks on her arm were visible then and they looked deep; they looked like they would hurt, sting, ache.
She could swim two laps without taking a breath. Her butterfly was beautiful. When she dove into the water, she barely made a splash, and when she swam breaststroke, her first pull and first kick lasted for almost fifteen yards. She was talented, for sure, and after practice sometimes we would talk to her a little. Sometimes, we wished she could have been a little bit slower. Now Carolyn was first in the lane and we were used to swimming in the same order. Changes like that sucked, but we liked to watch her swim, liked to watch her glide through the water, never making a splash.
When we were in our caps and in our goggles and in our swimsuits, we all looked the same – boys and girls – maybe some of us a little fatter and some of us skinnier, but, really, we were the same. At meets, our parents would mix us up when they were cheering; they’d call for Lauren when they meant Nicole. And it was same with us: you’d would start talking to someone, thinking it was someone else, and then mid-way through the conversation, when the goggles were pulled down around her neck, you’d realize you’d gotten it wrong – and your mind raced back to remember what you’d said.
When we were younger – five and six – our team was the Mighty Minnows, and then we graduated to Blue Dolphins when we got to middle school. We said that now we were in high school, we must be Whales, and we laughed, just a little, even though it never seemed very funny. Not when we were looking at our stomachs and our breasts, or the guys’ muffin tops starting to form over their Speedos. Whales, every last one of us. But when we were in the water, that seemed to disappear. We went fast and long and we turned pink and hot and sweaty under the water, as sweaty as the track team, we’d say, only you just couldn’t see it. We’d groan at the drills, the sets of five hundreds, then two hundreds, then hundreds, then fifties, then twenty-five sprints. We’d groan and we’d complain and we’d see if we could pull the lane rope on the backstroke to make things easier – we’d do all of this but we knew that when we swam we were alive and we were invisible all at once. And this was how we wanted to be.
The locker room was dark, one fluorescent light flickered in the center, but mostly we changed in shadow. When you walked inside, after an hour and a half in the brightness of the Aquadome, the darkness was almost frightening. Lockers lined the walls, old wooden benches in the center, with carving and graffiti all over them. This was the part of the Aquadome that was old – one set of doors led to the pool, another to the Adamsville gym, where the cheerleaders practiced, where the basketball players did their drills. An old-fashioned scale – like the kind in the doctor’s office – sat beside the door to the gym. We heard that the cheerleaders weighed themselves every day, that Mrs Coker took down the numbers, threatening to kick them off the squad if they went over 125. People said Brooke Moore had adjusted the scale over the summer, to ensure that she stayed put. We didn’t know how that was possible but, still, we believed this was true. We weighed ourselves once or twice a year, more than that was too painful, and we watched the number creep up every time, and we promised that the next year would be different, that we would work to make the numbers smaller, like they were when we were freshmen or, better still, in eighth grade.
Carolyn dressed in the bathroom stall, not out in the open like everybody else. We’d watch her g
ather her bag and try to walk silently away, but we still saw her. She was the skinniest of all of us, for sure, so we thought it was weird, even though we might have wanted to do it ourselves.
We talked later about the marks on her arm. And maybe we should have asked what was wrong, but we didn’t and, plus, Carolyn wouldn’t have answered anyway. When we were waiting outside for our parents, she was all covered up and we wouldn’t want her to think we were looking at her body, so we talked about practice, about how much we hated the butterfly drills, about how pruned our fingers had gotten in the pool. Looking back, we realized these were the only times we really got to speak to Carolyn, and we didn’t say anything that mattered, nothing that counted. Our parents eventually arrived and we got in our cars. Carolyn was still standing on the curbside when the last of us left.
She waved. “’Bye.”
“’Bye.”
Sometimes, we wished we’d said more.
Carolyn left her messenger bag in the locker room the following Tuesday. It was a blue JanSport one, with CEL monogrammed on the front – we spent a while guessing her middle name.
Lauren said it must be Esther. We laughed.
“Or Evelyn?” Nicole guessed. “That would be kind of cool.”
“EUGENE,” said Jessica, her eyes wide and flashing. We laughed some more.
Nicole said it was probably Elizabeth. And we all agreed. That seemed the most likely.
We stood in a circle around the bag, as if it were a living thing, as if it might bite us or talk to us or walk away. We thought about bringing it to Mr Overton’s office, or texting somebody who might have her number, but we went into the handicapped bathroom stall and opened it up.
Two three-ring binders, new and clean and with handouts inside them from Trig and English. The pages were lined up straight against each other – like textbooks or something you’d buy – they were perfect and looked barely used, even though they were full. Her notebooks, one for every class, labeled in her handwriting – handwriting so neat it was kind of scary. We skimmed through these – afraid to say anything out loud in case somebody walked in. We were ready to find her secrets, notes about Shane or other guys or the boyfriend back home. But, instead, we found notes from class. Everything verbatim, exactly what our teachers had said. So mostly we talked about her handwriting. It was like a font – Times New Roman or Arial – just perfect or anal, one or the other. In the front pouch, she had make-up – Lancôme Juicy lip glosses, Maybelline BB cream, a bottle of NARS body glow. (Lauren told us that these ran from around sixty bucks on the Sephora site.) We found tampons. We found a skinny package of meds: Yasmin. We weren’t surprised she was on the Pill, but we said we were – somebody said that we should steal them, see how long it would take before she got pregnant. But we put them back where we found them.