A More Deserving Blackness

by Wolbert, Angela

  I have several hours still before she’ll be home from the newsroom. Plenty of time to toss my belongings through the door of the blue guest room– my room now – and slam it shut, locking them away from sight. I’m getting good at that.

  Trish comes home at eight, spilling through the door with a spray of apologies and immediately disappearing into her bedroom, changing into her customary sweatpants and t-shirt before reemerging to set some water on to boil for pasta. Tugging the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my wrist I watch her silently from my spot at the table where a nearly full mug of mint tea had long since gone cold in front of me. There’s a magazine on the table and I pull it toward me and flip it open, taking an icy sip of ghastly over-strong tea – I’d forgotten about the teabag and had left it in - because it seems like something normal to do.

  Unlike sitting alone at the kitchen table in silence for the past few hours.

  Trish looks similar to me in color only. Our hair is the same shade, somewhere wandering lost and confused between brown and auburn. Our skin is the same freckled pale, our eyes the same brown edging toward gold. But that is where the similarities end. Where I am short but curvy Trish towers over mere mortal girls, usually topping off the goddess look with simple closed-toed spiky heels and sleek, dark pencil skirts. Her hair is curly where mine is stubbornly straight and years back she’d cut it short just below her chin.

  Her springy curls bounce as she shakes the uncooked pasta into the pan, and I’m washed with a sudden and heavy wave of guilt. Working the hours she does, letting me stay here after my parents had lost all hope of ever getting me back, the least I could do is cook her dinner so she wouldn’t have to do it once she got home. For the first time all day I wish I could speak, if only to say I’m sorry. But the effort of finding a pen and paper to write those two words feels exhausting, so I let the wave blast over me until it’s just a mild tugging at the bottom of my stomach.

  I blink and see Trish leaning back against the slate countertop and staring at me. She’s waiting for something, obviously, and I raise my brows, sending her what I hope is a carefree-looking smile. I feel like a blind person trying to draw a tree.

  “How was your first day?” she asks, and by her tone I can tell this isn’t the first time she’d said it. I shrug. No need to be overly enthusiastic. Even before . . . I was never as chipper as the force that is my older sister.

  “Did you . . . talk to anyone?”

  I stare at her.

  “Okay,” she sighs. Then, with that inextinguishable optimism, “Did you meet any friends?”

  That I can’t even justify with a shrug and her lips twist into something like a guilty smile. “Right. Teenagers.” She walks over to me, leaning her hands down over the top of the chair adjacent to mine. “They’ll come around, Bree. Just give ‘em time, all right?”

  Time. Of course. The magic eraser. Just give it time, Bree. You’ll feel better, Bree. You just need some time, Bree. Time heals all wounds.

  After long enough, people just stopped saying it.

  But I nod anyway, because that’s what she wants, and it will make her feel better, give her something to tell my parents when she sends off that biweekly email she’d promised them she would. Just one more way I was the sliver in the eyeball of her fast-paced, successful life. And the heartbreak of my parents’.

  She reaches to squeeze my shoulder and I mentally brace myself for the stabbing impact.

  “Hungry?”

  Not even remotely, but I nod anyway.

  Chapter 2

  The next day, Trish takes me to school on her way to work, a major sacrifice for a news reporter accustomed to her feet already aching in those professional superwoman heels long before the sun even comes up. I follow her out onto the driveway, stifling a yawn. She doesn’t need to know how little I really sleep, though more than once when the suffocation of insomnia or a nightmare had forced me out of my room I’d found her still seated cross-legged on the floor with her computer open on the coffee table in front of her, her face washed of makeup so the bluish glow of the screen illuminated her freckles.

  Day two.

  Her silver Honda is glistening with dew and I run the tip of my first finger over it as I round to the passenger side. The metal is cold and feels good.

  I drop into the seat, closing the door behind me and she backs cleanly down the drive. The car hums as it rolls to a stop while Trish shifts into drive, and I look out the window as we head away.

  On the other side of the road is a simple brown house; square, indistinct white wooden porch at its front devoid of any chairs or pots or other symptoms of humanity. The yard is well-maintained but with only a few sporadic bushes at the edge of the drive along a short fence of slightly dirtied white color. No other flowers or gardens. Taken care of, but at the same time, kind of . . . forgotten.

  What catches my eye is the bright red paint scrawled across the entire front of the garage door, little crimson drips having dried like blood seeping from a fresh wound. As I stare at it I hear Trish mutter something about it being terrible as we roll past.

  I crane in my seat a little, staring at that one grisly red word.

  Murderer.

  My second day is very much like my first, and in many ways, very different. Of course I speak to no one. I’m a little less lost. I even manage to avoid the scene in the bathroom, though I find myself absently rubbing at the inside of my wrist on more than one occasion.

  I don’t see the guy from the hall yesterday until his boots appear next to my desk in health class again, heavy footfalls announcing his arrival. He makes his way to the back of the class and slips into the same seat across the aisle from me without ever being acknowledged by another living soul, and for a second I wonder exactly how crazy I really am. What is the difference really between hearing phantom screams in your mind and seeing a talking, breathing ghost walk through the halls of your high school?

  I jump when the chair on the other side of me screeches, sliding across the dirtied linoleum floor as a tall, lanky, smiling boy drops into it, complete with dimples and spiky black hair.

  “Hi,” he says brightly. “I’m Erik.”

  I stare blandly at him, no idea what to do. Does he expect me to answer him?

  “No, it’s okay,” he assures me with a vague shaking of his hand in the air between us above the table, like a dj at a beat box. “I know you don’t – don’t talk. You’re Bree, right?”

  I manage to nod.

  “I’m Erik.” An awkward pause. “I already said that.”

  I don’t smile, even though he’s being nice and he’s talking to me and there’s no reason not to act like a normal girl to this decently cute boy next to me except that I’m not normal and I’ll never be normal.

  He seems unruffled by my reluctance, and grins a quarterback kind of grin at me, though I have no idea if he even plays football, know nothing about him at all other than his name. Twice.

  “All right if I sit here?”

  I shrug and he takes that for a yes, unfolding his long legs and making himself comfortable in the seat.

  When the bell rings I glance over to my right, and the ghost is sitting perfectly immobile, leaning on his elbows and staring at his desk with impossibly dark eyes.

  More than once I see heads come together, whispers a shrill static between them as they glance back at the quiet fixture to my right, not even bothering to hide the looks. A few are mocking, some angry, but all with widened eyes, like elementary kids at a zoo, when the gorilla beats on the glass with his massive fists and scares the shit out of them. A little too close, a little too real. And I find myself studying him, searching for what it is in his calm, expressionless demeanor that scares the shit out of all of them.

  In pre-calc, my Disney Prince – Dylan is his name - is ludicrously nice to me, holding open the door and leaping out of his seat to get my pencil when I drop it. He grins at me with perfect white teeth and calls me “Beautiful,” but at least he doesn’t try
to get me to talk to him again.

  Over the next few days, it doesn’t take long for both of them to fall into habit. Dylan, being overly nice to me, heavy on the endearments in a sweet but obnoxious sort of way. Even sharing a bag of skittles with me one day that I politely eat some of before dumping the rest into the bottom of my bag. And Erik, casually choosing the seat next to me in health every day. He never has any trouble finding something to talk about, despite my failure to respond. It’s nice, in a way. He has an easy smile, dimples that don’t quit. Erik acts a buffer to the rest of the class, and I don’t see them staring as much. Word of me had spread around the school quickly, and I’m fairly certain there isn’t anyone who doesn’t know of the new girl who refuses to speak.

  One day it’s, “Where are you from?”

  I just shrug. Erik doesn’t really expect an answer, and I know that even if I was Oprah fucking Winfrey, getting paid millions to sit around and talk all day, I still wouldn’t tell him that.

  “You know, there are other colors besides grey,” he teases me another time, as he slides into the seat next to me. “No, seriously. I’ll introduce you sometime.”

  The next day it’s, “So, Bree, huh? Are you Irish?”

  And on and on, innocent questions that I never answer but that keep the air full of vibrant words flitting on weightless wings between us.

  He starts beckoning me over at lunch as well. The first time, after I’d just gotten through the line with that same sympathetic grandma look from the lunch lady who was barely older than Trish. Having just paid the overpriced three dollars for the bottle of V8 that I hold in one hand, I’m struggling to pin my bag against my body with my elbow as I zip it closed.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” Erik says with those dimples flashing, smoothly removing the bag from my hands and zipping it for me, setting it back on my shoulder once he’d finished. I put on a smile for him, because he’s being nice in a sea full of distrustful stares, and anything else would be just plain bitchy.

  Regardless of how his touch makes me want to shove him away from me with both hands.

  He adjusts his own bag on his shoulder, an army-green messenger type bag, grabbing his brown plastic tray from atop the milk cooler behind him where he must’ve stashed it to come to my aid. There’s a purple Gatorade bottle wobbling precariously in one corner and a white Styrofoam plate piled high with nacho chips, a gelatinous meat-like substance, and hot, radiation-hazard-yellow cheese.

  “That’s all you’re eating again?”

  I blink up at him.

  “Sorry, I’ve . . . noticed you a few times. You don’t really eat much.”

  I spin the cold bottle around in my hands.

  “And you always sit alone.”

  When I look back up at him he laughs, scratching the side of his nose self-consciously. “I’m . . . really not as creepy as I sound. I just meant to ask if you wanted to sit with us and it’s coming out all One Hour Photo.”

  The Robin Williams movie?

  He’s waiting for an answer, and though the “us” part concerns me a bit, I put Trish’s overjoyed face in my mind and gesture that he should lead the way.

  He does. My stomach sinks when it’s to a long, rectangular table overstuffed with chairs, everyone talking and joking with each other loudly. He elbows into the mix of them and pulls two more chairs to the end, offering me the corner, furthest away from everyone else. I sit and give him a small grateful smile, and he returns it before offering a short introduction.

  “Everyone, this is Bree, of Apligian’s health class.”

  A collected hushing spreads in a wide circle over the crowd of them.

  “Be nice to her,” Erik continues loudly, “she already thinks I’m creepy.”

  “He is creepy,” a thin girl with straight black hair jokes, and he throws a chip at her.

  The conversation picks up again, and though a few of them glance at me once or twice, mostly they ignore me. And I have a place to sit. Almost normal.

  I discover, listening as I pretend to belong, pretend everyone so close together and so loud doesn’t bother me, that Erik was recently dumped by his on-again-off-again girlfriend. And that he is, in fact, part of the football team, but not the quarterback, though I can’t seem to stop thinking about him that way. And because he smiles or winks at me every now and again, without pushing me into a more active role in their camaraderie, I also discover that he is genuinely nice, which, in my limited experience, is rather rare.

  The day after, Erik just waves me over, saving that end seat for me again, and I take it. He offers me some of his fries, which is nice, but I shake my head, my stomach rebelling at the sight. Food would taste horrible.

  It becomes a routine, seeing him twice a day, something I can live with, as long as he doesn’t expect me to ever speak to him. As long as he doesn’t touch me. He’s pleasant enough, in a Quarterback Cutie Ken doll kind of way, and utterly harmless.

  It’s on my way into the building my second week of school that I find myself following a huge group of guys, a flock of overly inflated testosterone encased in red and white varsity jackets. I’m not paying any attention to them, they’re just another object filling up the meaningless space around me, until all of the sudden they stop walking all together, with the same unspoken synchronicity of a murder of crows.

  My nose smashes into a red leather-clad back, right under the bolded, arcing felt letters of a name. Carter.

  “Whoops.” He spins, catching me at my elbows but immediately releasing as I flinch back. “Hey. Sorry. You okay?”

  He’s smiling down at me with a young-looking round face that doesn’t fit his massive shape and I’m nodding back at him, at his warm brown eyes, when I suddenly jump at a loud, jarring clang.

  Around his bulk I see the reason they’d all stopped – that guy from health. The ghost. He’s standing, facing an almost empty open locker I assume is his and he whips his dark head back, his face hard and furious. He’s standing in a perfectly motionless rage, fists clenched and shaking at his sides, and I realize that had been his face I’d heard a second ago, clanging into the metal lockers.

  Carter glances away from me, behind him as a few of his buddies step back, and he smiles oddly at me before he spins and slaps his huge palm against the face of the lockers just shy of the guy’s ear. The metallic clap makes my eyes blink automatically, and I’m standing there, stunned, as Carter leans over the guy.

  “Watch yourself,” he says in a low voice. “Not everyone is scared of you.”

  The guy is just glaring straight ahead, jaw tight, and then I barely even see him move but the locker door slams shut and then bounces back open, wobbling on its hinge, and Carter howls, curling his body around his left hand.

  The flock swoops instantly, bloodthirsty red leather crows slamming him violently, face-first into the metal wall of lockers. He growls with fury, his palms slapping to either side of his face, fingers white claws, and I flinch as his cheek crunches against the cold door, lips pulled back over teeth in a gritted snarl.

  “Enough!”

  Still wrapped around his wounded hand, Carter is glaring murderously as his friends ease back, jostling the guy enough to rap his head against the lockers again as their muscled circle widens.

  The guy straightens, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. Slowly he turns to the bulky man standing just outside the crowd of red.

  The man ignores him. “Guys, get to class,” he commands with easy authority. “Carter, get some ice on that hand.”

  I hear a few mutters of “Yes, Coach,” and they dissipate, shooting testosterone-laced glares over their thick shoulders as they do.

  The guy named Carter is the last to leave, experimentally stretching the reddened fingers of his crushed hand at his side, his fuming brown eyes fixed on the guy they’d left standing there. Finally he moves completely out of view, still glaring.

  The Coach turns coldly. “Keep a lid on that temper, boy,” he spits at hi
m, clearly meant as an insult. “One phone call. That’s all it would take. One phone call, and we’ll see how quickly you slip those cuffs a second time.”

  Then he turns and disappears back into his classroom, leaving the guy to seethe, vibrating in impotent wrath before slamming the locker shut and storming away.

  And I’m alone in the empty hall, still staring after the dark shape of him, when the tardy bell cuts like a scalpel, straight down my spine.

  “Hey, Bree?”

  I look up from the six thousand pound tiger shark charging the screen in front of me when Trish pokes her head into the living room, sunglasses pushed up on her head and her purse in her hand. She’s not wearing her usual uniform, though, but a pair of high-heeled brown boots and a green sweater dress, so I already know what she’s going to say.

  “I was going to meet a couple of the girls for drinks tonight. Do you mind?”

  I shake my head, giving her my best encouraging smile.

  Trish hesitates, her stalwart, lipstick red smile faltering slightly. “Honey, I don’t have to go. If you’d rather . . .”

  But I shake my head vehemently, and I mean it. I like that she doesn’t hover around me, just waiting for something to break off that she could scoop up and glue back into place.

  “Will you be all right?”

  Nod. Like I’m following a script.

  But Trish sinks onto the couch cushion next to me, propping her purse in her lap. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt for you to get out sometimes, either.”

  She reaches over, and I press my thumb between the tendons in my wrist, just testing it, as she readjusts a chunk of my long hair. Her lips twist at the corner, and I can tell she’s debating with herself. She takes a breath.

  “What happened – you can’t live through something like that and not be . . . changed. I just don’t want you to let that take your whole life away from you.”