Weightless

by Sarah Bannan

  Sometimes, they’d ask students to do an “issue” announcement. Some day near the start of November, Shane Duggan was waiting outside Mr Overton’s office to make a PSA. At 9.15, we listened to our quarterback tell us how to behave:

  “Technology is changing the way we communicate with each other in lots of great ways. But, sometimes, we forget that what we write can have an impact on other people. We need to treat texts and emails and Facebook updates as we would face-to-face communication – we should never say anything over the internet we wouldn’t want someone to hear in real life. And if we think that somebody is using the web, their phone or Facebook to bully somebody, then we need to try to stop that. If you get an email, a text or a message on Facebook that’s ugly or mean, don’t reply to it. Try not to engage. Take a screenshot or make a copy and show it to a teacher, or a guidance counselor, or to your parents. It’s easy to set up filters on your phone or on Gmail or on Facebook that will block people from sending more messages or texts and, if you think somebody is trying to bully you, go ahead and set up a filter. But also report things to a trusted adult. Whoever that may be. We all need to work together to stop this kind of stuff. Online or in person, if somebody is hurting you or trying to hurt you, there are things you can do to make this stop.”

  Some girl from Lincoln High had threatened to commit suicide over Facebook a while back. The Adamsville Daily and the six o’clock news said she did it because some kids had sent her mean and stupid texts. All of our parents were going crazy about it and some journalists had been in town from New York and DC to do a story. It made us laugh how ser­­iously everybody took this – they were so fucking clueless. And the girl was still alive.

  Shane smiled when we passed him in the halls later and we told him good job. Shane was always called on to do things like this, even when we were in elementary school. He had been selected to represent Adams at the Lincoln Race Integration Seminar three years ago, and he was the Alabama Leader of Tomorrow. He was good-looking and his voice was almost like a radio presenter’s. Ryan Seacrest. Only taller. And hotter.

  The Homecoming Court was announced over the loudspeaker that same afternoon. In our year, it was Brooke and Gemma and Taylor and Carolyn. We listened and we texted congratulations and for the next few days we would give hugs to the girls who got in and give hugs to the girls who did not. Behind their backs, we would talk about how lame it was. We would talk about how they would ride on a float and walk into the center of the field during half-time and they would wear a formal dress to the semi-formal dance. They would have their photographs in a special section of the yearbook. They would be in the paper. They would wear crowns, and tacky corsages, and every year the dresses got more and more ridiculous, long and sequined, like Miss America or My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Adamsville was like a fucking time warp, we said. We made fun of the dresses but inside them the girls were always beautiful. They were special.

  The night the Court was announced Brooke posted on her Facebook wall: “Swim team is full of ugly dykes.”

  Two people liked this. One of them was hidden and the other was Gemma Davies.

  And then Taylor called up Carolyn and told her that she should call Brooke and tell her off for being a bitch, that that comment was directed at her. But Carolyn didn’t do that, not as far as we knew.

  We had to share the locker room with the cheerleaders on a Friday – something to do with the pep rally schedule, we never fully understood – and we hated this, mostly because their bodies were tanned and perfect and they had Victoria’s Secret underwear and their skin wasn’t all messed up by chlor­ine and when they gave you a compliment you weren’t sure if you should say thanks or contradict them. Brooke and Gemma were always the loudest – and the Friday after the Court was announced, Brooke was really loud. Taylor and Tiffany changed quick and got out of there before we’d even gotten out of the showers. We wished they’d taken more time, that they’d stuck around.

  When Carolyn went into the stall to change, the way she’d been doing since September, Brooke put out her arm, hand against the locker opposite her. She put her leg up on the changing bench. It looked like it would be uncomfortable to stand that way, but she made it look really casual, and Carolyn couldn’t get through. Carolyn turned around, to go the other way, only Gemma was sitting on the other side, legs stretched out in front of her, pressed against the lockers. Jessica Grady was changing on the other side: Carolyn couldn’t really get through, not without somebody moving, not without it being really fucking awkward. Carolyn stopped. She asked to pass. We kept changing, and we listened to Brooke and Gemma. They were smiling as they spoke.

  “Um, Carolyn? Why do you change back there?”

  “Is it because you’re a LEZ-bian?”

  “You can’t be trusted around us? Right?”

  “Or is it ’cause you’re so hot?”

  “Are you worried we’re all dykes?”

  “Is that what people in New York – sorry, New JERSEY –do?”

  “We don’t think you’re that sexy, Carolyn.”

  “But maybe she’s a DYKE and wants us all to be dykes too.” Brooke put down her hand. Carolyn looked around at us.

  We looked away and we combed our hair and tried not to look like we thought it was mean or funny or even that we were listening at all.

  Brooke laughed. Carolyn looked toward Gemma.

  “What?” Gemma asked. “God. Can’t you take a joke?”

  After we changed, a few of us were waiting outside for our parents to pick us up. Carolyn was waiting too.

  “I’m not a lesbian.”

  “We didn’t say that.”

  We looked at each other.

  Lauren spoke first. “Did you say that?”

  “No,” we answered, not quite in unison.

  “See? Nobody said that.”

  “Anyway, people were, like, kidding.”

  “You need to learn to take a joke.”

  We stood still. It was dark and it was getting cold, our hair was still wet. We could hear the football players practicing in the field, grunting and yelling and doing drills.

  Carolyn stared at us. “Anyway. I’m not. In case you cared.”

  We didn’t know what to say.

  A couple days later, Adam Simmons got written up for smoking in the parking lot and he was waiting in Mr Overton’s office for his punishment when Carolyn came in. Brooke walked in the door a few minutes later. He said he was surprised to see both of them; he figured they were getting some kind of award or something, only they looked too pissed off for that. Carolyn’s skin was blotchy and she had eye make-up on one eye but not the other. Like a Before and After picture, he said, but on her face. Brooke sat with her arms crossed and kept rolling her eyes. At what, Adam didn’t know. He told us he tried to talk to Brooke – he didn’t really know Carolyn.

  “’S up, Brooke?”

  She ignored him, he told us, and he thought that was kind of bitchy and he said he was about to tell her he regretted voting for her for the Homecoming Court, but then she spoke.

  “Hey.” She looked at Carolyn, looked at him and rolled her eyes. “What are you here for?”

  “Usual.” He pressed his thumb to his pointer finger, brought them up to his lips, squinting his eyes. “You?”

  “For some bullshit reason.” And as she said this, she glared at Carolyn, who stared at her hands. Adam watched Carolyn as she pushed her sleeves up and he told us he could see these dark marks all up and down her forearms – and he said she was digging into them with her fingernails, so that one of them started to bleed. And then Miss Simpson came out of Mr Overton’s office.

  “Would you two ladies join me in here? Mr Overton’s asked me to attend this meeting.”

  Adam said he was tempted to push his ear against the door but he got a text from his brother telling him about a party at Cullman Community over the weekend. And he got distracted. Guys sucked at these kinds of things.

  Later, we heard that it was about
the thing in the locker room: either Miss Simpson overheard the conversation, or it was reported to her – nobody was totally clear – but it wasn’t one of us that said anything, not as far as we knew. If it had been one of us, we would have included Gemma – she said some stuff too – but she never got called to the office. She was too good.

  Later, when the school was under investigation, Mr Overton talked a lot about this meeting; he wanted people to know that it had taken place, that they, the faculty, cared. The school administration couldn’t punish the girls for just talking to each other, but the reports later said that the “language used in the discussion caused concern” and that “the faculty were eager to see the dispute resolved.” They went on and on about this meeting in the end, but Adam said they were in there ten or fifteen minutes tops.

  At the time, we couldn’t believe they paid so much attention to it – this kind of shit happened every day – and some people said it was just because of Carolyn and her being new and needy. Reporters asked us later if we still thought the meeting was unnecessary. “Yes,” we told them. “What difference did it make anyway?” This was rhetorical. We were never sure they understood that.

  Chapter 14

  Our church doesn’t look like churches on TV. The building – or the complex – was meant to be a Lowe’s with adjoining office space and a gym. Lowe’s had gotten a bigger site, though, further down the Stripline, and our church had been given the building by the city. That meant that the nice church in the old part of town could be renovated or something, so we all went to the same one. And it was big enough to accommodate people from other counties and the parish’s new website let the service stream directly from the church – Reverend Davies wore a microphone on a headband, like an aerobics instructor. Our church was global, Reverend Davies said.

  Our church was big but the parking lot was bigger. When you pulled in from the Stripline, the church was a tiny dot, a speck in the distance. If you got there early, you’d see lines and lines and lines, mapping out the parking spaces, white and yellow crosses on the gray cement. But if you got there late, or even a few minutes before preaching started, you saw a sea of cars. In the summer – actually, for most of the year – the mirrors caught the sun and you’d cover your eyes or you’d be pushed off the road. The cars swayed in the heat, and the tar on the pavement was liquid paint, and you’d be afraid your car could be swallowed up by it, quick sand mixed with tar. As you pulled further into the parking lot, the church got bigger – if you weren’t from here, you’d reckon it was a Walmart or a Kmart or a Winn-Dixie or a warehouse or something. But it was our church. And even if you weren’t Baptist, you ended up coming here for something or other – on Sundays and Wednesdays we were all believers.

  We always stayed outside in the parking lot as long as we could – watching to see who we could see, trying to stand near the guys we liked, talking about what we’d done the night before. Inside, it was still a warehouse, and it didn’t matter how much stuff they put on the altar, how many tapestries they hung: it was a warehouse. It smelled of cars and candles, and it was a theater in the round, with the altar and the lectern in the center, pews all around, white and plastic and bolted into the ground. The morbidly obese people had to sit in the back, in chairs that had been donated by the Ruby Tuesday’s across the Stripline. There were 124 pews, each one holding five to ten people, depending on how fat they were. That’s what we had counted, and on Christmas, people still had to stand.

  We went every Sunday, and every Wednesday. It was part of us, something we never debated, never questioned. We never minded it, if we were honest, not really. Church was something to do, a place to see people, a chance to dress up. Later, when we went to college, we would miss this. We would go to church on campus, of course we still did that, but it was never quite the same. It felt different, colder, more strange. We missed the safety of our own church, the famil­iarity of the service, the closeness we felt with one another. We even missed the smell – on a Sunday, you could smell coffee, mixed with the perfume and cologne of the young, the old and the very old.

  The church was bright. The lights were dimmed on Christmas morning, and sometimes when we first came in, but eventually they went on full blast, and when you looked up, you could count hundreds of lights, most of them directed toward the pulpit, giving Reverend Davies a spotlight, a glow. There were lights coming up from the ground, too, blue ones, and we heard that the lighting technician from the Regal Theater had been kept on a retainer to ensure that the lighting for services was to a high standard.

  When they first moved, Carolyn and her mother didn’t come to church – they were Catholic or something – but after a few weeks, and when Carolyn and Shane had started hanging out, and maybe after Reverend Davies had ground them down, Carolyn and Abby made the odd appearance. They didn’t get there early, they didn’t sing or shake hands, they didn’t hang around afterward. They closed their eyes a lot and some people complained that they shouldn’t be there, if they weren’t believers, if they hadn’t been saved. But nobody stopped them, and they came more regularly over time and then not at all. You’d think, with so many people, we wouldn’t notice if they were there or not. But we did. Especially with Carolyn.

  One Sunday in November – close enough to when Carolyn had been put on the Homecoming Court – we had a special youth service, some thing that Dave Dillon, our “Youth Action Leader” or “YAL,” had come up with to get us more involved. We’d do the readings, a senior would give the sermon – something Reverend Davies had prepared, he wouldn’t trust us that far – and they’d change up the music, play some cheesy ballad that had been on the radio four years ago that could vaguely be made to be about Jesus, and bring in some Cullman Community reject to play guitar while somebody sang along. It was lame, we knew this, only we planned it for months, held auditions, our parents taped it, we cared about it a little too much.

  We got to the church early that day in November, and we remembered seeing Brooke and Gemma talking when we came in, near the altar, Brooke’s face a little blotchy, Gemma’s hand outstretched and stroking her hair.

  “You just need to ignore her.” Gemma’s voice was a whisper, but the altar was so heavily mic-ed, we could hear them, just a little.

  “I know, I know.” Brooke’s head was turned away from us now and we stayed far back, not wanting to look like we were spying, but wanting to hear what we could hear.

  “She needs to be put in her place, you know?” Gemma’s voice went even lower. “She’s a slut is what she is.”

  Brooke, or maybe it was Gemma, let out a cough, and the microphone squealed. They turned their heads. We walked up the aisle, waving at them as we got closer.

  We took our seats near the front – we’d be taking the first collection – and we sat and we waited as the church filled up; mothers and fathers and cousins and second cousins and neighbors and teachers and coaches and everybody we knew, or had ever known, filed into our church and shook our hands and gave us hugs and kisses and we hugged and kissed them back, because that’s what we did in Adamsville, that’s what we did in church.

  Carolyn and her mother were there, sitting on the side near the front, maybe three or four rows back. We could make out their faces, could recognize Carolyn’s outfit from the Anthropologie catalogue we had seen in her bedroom weeks before. Both of them – Carolyn and her mom – their hair was still wet, their faces almost dewy, like they’d just been for a swim. Maybe they had. We wondered what it would be like to have hair so perfect you could do that – just let it air dry, skin so immaculate you only needed mascara and lip gloss, a body so toned even a white, over-sized sundress could make you look perfectly proportioned. We tried not to stare.

  Music filled the auditorium and we rose to our feet, and Reverend Davies walked down the aisle, shaking hands, giving hugs, salutes, kisses. A group of freshmen guys and girls followed him in, wearing purple t-shirts that said “CROSS” – “Christians Reaching Out in Selfless Service.”
Shane Duggan walked a few paces behind them, in a novelty football jersey that read “Doing it for Jesus” on the front. As he walked further to the front, we read the back: “John, 3:16.” Some parents started clapping as he walked through – Coach Cox gave him a fist pump, Shane gave one back.

  Somebody told us later that when Shane walked down the aisle, he gave Carolyn a wink. Somebody else said the wink looked like it was directed at Abby. People laughed at that, and we heard from other people that Carolyn had actually blown Shane a kiss. But we hadn’t seen any of this, not from where we were standing.

  We joined hands as the service began, and we looked around us, clocking what people were wearing, making notes to ourselves. We sized ourselves up, pulled cardigans around our shoulders as we felt the air-conditioning stream down on us. We prayed.

  About halfway through the service, Reverend Davies invited Shane to come up to the altar, handed him a roving microphone so that he could “say a few words.” As Shane climbed out of the front row, making his way across the purple-shirted freshmen, a spotlight came up, and followed him to the altar. If you took a picture of him, he would have had a halo.

  He cleared his throat, the sound boomed through the auditorium, and Shane began to speak: “I’m real humbled to be here, to speak to y’all, to represent all my friends, all us students at Adams.” His face had started to redden; we thought that his hands were shaking.

  “You read a lot these days about how things are for teen­agers, how hard it is for kids to fit in, to make friends, and to do all that while staying away from temptation, keeping clean of sin. In other towns in America, this is really tough. Folks don’t know each other, the church isn’t something that matters – in Moulton, just a few towns over, they’re not even allowed to pray before football games. They can’t think about Christ before they take the field, can’t talk to Jesus and feel His love, the love that gives them the strength to play, to be the best that a person can be.