Suffer Love

by Ashley Herring Blake

  “She’s gone,” I tell Josh as the warning bell rings.

  “Oh. Thanks, man.” He turns around and rakes a hand through his hair. “Only for the moment, though. She’s in my next class.”

  We start down the hall. “Who is she?”

  “Hadley. And don’t even think about it, dude.”

  “Think about what?”

  He just smirks at me. “Yeah, she’s hot.”

  Hot? Hot is not the word I would’ve used. Unsurpassed. Magical. Wistful. But you can’t say that kind of shit to guys without being called a pussy, so I keep my mouth shut.

  “But she also gets her kicks out of rendering your junk completely useless for half an hour, if you know what I mean.” Josh clicks his tongue as he pops into a classroom, which, as it turns out, is also mine.

  And hers.

  I hover in the doorway like a dumbass for about ten years before the teacher, Ms. Artigas, finally calls me in to sit down. Josh grins as I slide into an empty desk behind him near the door. The room separates us from Hadley, who sits near the windows with her arms folded. All her previous softness is gone and she’s staring machetes at Josh again.

  “What did you do?” I whisper as Ms. Artigas calls roll.

  “Nothing you wouldn’t do.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Mr. Bennett?” Ms. Artigas’s voice cuts through the room. Hadley flicks her eyes to mine before I can look away.

  “Ma’am?” I ask in my best compliant-southern-boy voice.

  She tosses her clipboard onto her desk and sits on its edge. She’s sort of plump and pretty, with that kind of relaxed, satisfied look of teachers who know they’ve got you by the balls.

  “All right, everyone, this is Sam Bennett,” she says, gesturing toward me. “He’ll be joining our merry band of fools for the rest of the year, so try not to embarrass yourselves.”

  “Don’t you mean try not to embarrass you, Ms. A?” A huge guy, who I can only assume is some sort of wall on the football team, winks at Ms. Artigas.

  “That too, Mr. Cone.” She picks up a stack of papers from a file box on her desk. “Before we continue with act two of As You Like It, let’s go over the unit projects. You and your partner will rewrite an act of your choosing from the Shakespeare play you are assigned.” She starts walking up and down the aisles and I breathe a sigh of relief that she didn’t make me stand up and tell three truths and a lie about myself or some crap like that.

  A girl in the back with glasses and two pencils stuck through her hair raises her hand.

  “No, Miss Kendall,” Ms. Artigas says, “you may not choose your own partner.”

  The girl puts her hand down and a few other kids grumble, but I’m relieved. Not knowing anyone, I’d have probably been left picking my nose for five minutes while everyone paired up with their friends.

  “Your partner’s name is listed next to yours at the top of your packet.” Ms. Artigas heads down my row. “Pick up a copy of your play from my desk, get with your partner, introduce yourself if need be, and set a time to meet. Remember, this assignment is about interpretation, theme, setting, characterization, and creativity, not about how many times you can refer to various body parts in one monologue.”

  Josh snaps his fingers like he’s disappointed as Ms. Artigas drops a packet on my desk. I pick it up and read my fate.

  Sam B./Hadley S.

  I stare at our names for a minute, not sure if I feel excited about the prospect of getting a closer look at this girl or a little nervous about her clear disdain for the male species. Then again, maybe it’s just Josh.

  “Aw, dude. Good luck with that.” Josh smacks me on the back of the head and walks down the aisle to join Pencil Girl. “You might want to bring your strap and cup next class,” he whisper-yells over his shoulder.

  “Get moving, Mr. Bennett,” Ms. Artigas says from behind her computer.

  I grab my stuff, a copy of the right play, and find Hadley across the room, scribbling furiously into a neatly divided notebook. I slide into the desk next to her and wait while she writes. And then I wait some more while I try not to look at her lips, which proves to be more challenging when she pauses in her writing and slicks on some shiny stuff, the palest shade of pink. Now I’m trying not to think about all the ways I could find out if her mouth tastes like a strawberry Starburst.

  Finally, she caps her pen and meets my eyes. Hers are large and the lashes are thick. And her skin is really smooth. But her eyes . . . Jesus, they’re like—

  “Hello?”

  Oh, God. “What?” I ask, shaking my head to clear my brain.

  She twists her mouth. “I said, Are you Sam?”

  “Oh. Yeah. You’re Hadley, right?”

  She nods and looks over her paper. “We have Much Ado About Nothing. Ever read it?”

  “Yeah, I read it last—”

  “Are you friends with Josh?”

  “Huh?”

  “Josh Ellison. Are you friends with him?”

  “Um. I just met him about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Because he’s an ass.”

  “Okay.”

  “I realize you’re new here and everything, but just so you know, Josh Ellison is a dick.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He lies.”

  “Did you guys just break up?”

  She recoils back into her chair like I called her mother a whore. “What? No. I never dated him, I just . . .” She shifts her gaze away and her shoulders droop a little as she tries again. “He . . . I didn’t mean . . . he just—”

  She flinches and looks down, because my fingertips are resting on her hand. I’m not sure how the hell they got there, but I’m definitely touching her skin and she’s staring at me, her mouth parted and eyebrows lifted.

  I force myself to stare right back, pretty damn sure she doesn’t really want to talk about how Josh broke her heart or didn’t say hi to her at lunch or whatever. “So, Shakespeare?”

  She pulls her hand back and scratches the place where my fingers rested, like I made her itch or something. “Right. Sorry.”

  “No problem.” I flip through my copy of Much Ado. “I like this one. It’s really funny and has all these crazy misunder­standings.”

  She looks at me for a moment longer before sliding her eyes down to her own book. “Yeah, I’ve read it. Benedick is kind of a jackass for most of it, right?”

  “Hence his name. Love gets him in the end, though. Sucker.”

  She laughs. It sounds like that wind chime that used to hang from my grandmother’s front porch. God, I am a pussy.

  “He and Beatrice both,” she says.

  We scan the play in silence for a while. I try to keep my eyes on the page, but my brain’s not registering a word. Hadley keeps crossing her legs and letting out these sighs and twirling her long hair around her slim fingers. This is so not going to work.

  I snap my book shut. “Okay, what act do you want to—”

  “Do you think that’s true?” Hadley blurts, her head tilted, mouth pursed.

  I stare at her for a few charged seconds, trying to get my brain to catch up with whatever the hell she’s talking about now. “Do I think what’s true?”

  She points at my T-shirt.

  I look down. I don’t even remember putting this one on. My room is a cardboard landscape right now. I’m lucky I found something that didn’t smell like the inside of my cleats. I pick at the gray cotton and the black block letters etched across my chest. APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH.

  I bought this shirt to piss off my mother. It’s the first line from her favorite poem, “The Wasteland” by T. S. Eliot. She did her graduate thesis on it, which is so ironic, it’s almost amusing. Or maybe it’s just incredibly depressing. April is the month she defended her thesis at Vanderbilt. It’s also the month that everything came out, everything fell apart. Dad didn’t leave until the summer, but I’ll never forget the afternoon of April fifth.

  “Yeah, actually, I do thi
nk it’s true.”

  “Why?”

  I open my mouth to give her a lame answer, maybe even some deep spiel about Eliot’s meaning that will impress her, but the way her chocolate eyes narrow softly on the text of my shirt like it’s a living thing makes me not want to lie. I’ve lied enough this past year.

  “Because sometimes life shits all over you when you’re expecting sunshine.”

  She lifts her eyebrows. I know she’s about to ask for a more coherent explanation, and I don’t really have one to give her. Luckily, Ms. Artigas raps on her desk with a ruler.

  “Five minutes, people,” she calls.

  “Oh.” Hadley shuffles through her notebook. “I guess we should meet sometime this week to get organized. Are you busy after school?”

  I exhale slowly. “I have to pick up my car today, but I’m free tomorrow.”

  “The library?”

  “Sure.”

  I try not to breathe as she leans over and writes her number in my notebook, but then I give up and just inhale her clean, gingery scent.

  “In case there’s a change of plans,” she says as she draws back.

  I give her my number as well and she treats me to a genuine, death-ray-free smile. The bell rings and she slips into the hall. I’m putting Hadley’s number in my phone when Josh joins me.

  “How’d it go with Maneater?”

  “Maneater?”

  “Yeah. Hadley. Chews ’em up, spits ’em out. Maneater.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “As you can see, I’m still in one piece.” I sling my bag over my shoulder and fall in step with Josh toward the door. “Hey, what’s her last name?” I type her first name into my phone.

  Before he can answer, the hallway explodes into an uproar of “Oooh!” and “Damn!”

  Josh and I reach the doorway at the same time to see a small crowd standing around Hadley, who’s staring at her locker with a shocked expression on her face.

  “That’s her last name, dude.” Josh points toward her locker. He shoves a hand through his hair. “Damn, Sloane is pissed.”

  Scrawled over the dingy metal in thick red marker are the words St. Clair—Patron Saint of Sluts.

  Hadley clenches her jaw and throws her shoulders back. She pulls her locker open, slides her books in, slides a book out. A short blond girl joins her, eyes huge as she reads the writing. Wordlessly, they link arms and walk robotically down the hall, disappearing into a thick throng of goggling eyes and snickers.

  I should probably be wondering about the whole slut thing or who Sloane is or how it’s not even a good insult. It’s basically saying Hadley takes cares of sluts, which seems pretty charitable, if you ask me. But one thought crowds out all the others as I stare at that red writing.

  “St. Clair?” I turn around to face Josh. “St. Clair is Hadley’s last name?”

  My voice must sound tight or squeaky, because Josh frowns at me and backs up. “Yeah.”

  I rub my forehead. That can’t be right. I know it’s a pretty rare last name, but there’s no way she’s that St. Clair. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. A twisted, evidence-that-God-is-one-sick-son-of-a-bitch coincidence.

  “You’re sure?” I ask. “Has she gone here since her freshman year?”

  Josh twirls a pencil over his knuckles. “Nope. She moved here before this year. Sometime in the summer.”

  “From where?”

  “I don’t know, man. Damn. Nashville, I think.”

  I feel my mouth fall open.

  “Hey.” Josh shakes my shoulder. “You look like you’re about to hurl. You see a ghost or something?”

  I blink, forcing myself out the door. I’m not sure if I’m about to crack up laughing or find a padded room and curl into a ball.

  “Yeah, man,” I say. “Something like that.”

  Chapter Four

  Hadley

  The minute I walk through the door, I wish I could turn around and leave. I used to love coming home. My house in Nashville always smelled like cinnamon and clean cotton and paper from the books in my dad’s study. As soon as Dad saw me he would bellow, “Daughter, what cheer?” or “How now, sweet Hadley?” Even if I was just coming home from swimming laps or a trip to the grocery store with my mother, he always treated my return with poetic fanfare. It became a sort of game to see how he could twist his greeting into something creative and theatrical, and we kept a running list of all the phrases on a magnetic pad on the refrigerator. But ever since that day I came home to a front door peppered with fluttering strips of paper screaming at me in thick black marker, I get nauseated just thinking about being in the same room with my parents.

  In this house, there’s no cinnamon or Elizabethan welcome. Just a whole lot of quiet and averted gazes.

  This afternoon, I taught three swim lessons at the Y’s aquatic center and then swam laps until my fingertips turned pruney and my limbs felt like jelly and my mind cleared of those ugly red words on my locker. I would’ve stayed in the pool until I dissolved, but my parents expect me for dinner every night, and not even six months’ worth of strained conversation will persuade them to let me out of it. These dinners are part of the “homework” their therapist assigns every week. It’s supposed to increase a sense of interfamilial community and empathy, but the only thing it really increases is my mother’s acerbic tone of voice and the frown lines around Dad’s mouth.

  I walk into the dark kitchen. The only one to greet me is Jinx, the mottled calico cat my dad got me last month as a painfully obvious peace offering. She slinks between my legs. I sit down on the tile floor against the dishwasher, pulling Jinx into my lap and nuzzling her fuzzy head. Her purring mingles with the old clock in the living room tick-tocking toward six-thirty.

  The side door connected to the garage creaks open. The light flicks on and Dad walks in, clad in slim gray dress pants, skinny tie dangling. He slaps an armful of papers and notebooks onto the granite island. Then he disappears, returning with a couple of paper bags, grease stains leaking up the sides.

  “Oh. Hadley.”

  I blink into the now bright kitchen.

  “Why are you sitting on the floor, sweetheart?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He starts unpacking Chinese food. “Okay. Where’s your mother?”

  “Again, I don’t know. I just got home too.”

  “She’s not here?” He frowns and checks the clock on the microwave. “Huh.”

  Yes. Huh. Mom works at Sony Music in Nashville. It’s her job to bring in new songwriting talent and then connect the songwriters with recording artists and producers. In the past, she operated on a strict nine-to-five schedule with a little traveling dropped in here and there throughout the year. She loved her job, but she loved my swim meets and cooking with Dad and trading funny stories about their day even more. But for the past few months, her own boundaries are blurring on both ends of the clock. Half the time, Dad and I start dinner without her.

  Dad sighs heavily and pulls down three plates. Jinx wanders off and I get up to set the table while he rifles through the stack of notebooks. One is red, like the journal he used to write in every Sunday morning. He started it when I was born, and one of my first memories is of him tucked into a big leather chair, pen scratching over the creamy paper as he wrote down things he thought I needed to know about life. About myself.

  I couldn’t wait to read that journal. Now the very thought of it makes me want to scream. I haven’t seen that thing in six months. Squinting at Dad’s collection of junk, I see now that the red notebook is bigger and newer than the journal about me. Breathing out, I force my eyes to my task. Fork on the left. Knife on the right. Napkin folded into a triangle.

  A few silent minutes later, Mom glides through the door. Even at the end of the day, she’s pristine in sleek black pants and heels, tailored blouse and blazer, her dark hair in a flawless ponytail low on her neck.

  “Hello,” she says. She flicks her eyes to me and gives me a tired smile before setting her bag
on the corner desk and flipping through the mail.

  “Hi, honey,” Dad says, pressing a dry kiss to her cheek. She barely moves, keeping her eyes on the bills and her latest Real Simple magazine.

  From there, all our movements fall into a well-practiced routine. Glasses are filled with ice and water. A wine bottle is uncorked. A family gathers around a table. “How was your day?” is thrown around without any expectation of a real answer.

  “Nothing too out of the ordinary about my day,” Dad says. He doesn’t elaborate, and neither Mom nor I ask him to. We don’t want to hear about his classes and graduate students at Vanderbilt any more than he wants to tell us about them. “How about you, Hadley?”

  I feel Mom’s eyes on me, but I don’t remove mine from my cashew chicken. I’m almost positive Kat’s mom, Jocelyn, called her and told her about my locker, expressing her concern. Jocelyn, as luck would have it, is the guidance counselor at Woodmont High, which means she’s constantly trying to get me into her office to talk about my feelings while I squeeze all my stress into one of those squishy balls. Jocelyn is also the only person Mom still talks to at any length or depth.

  “Fine.” Standard answer. Mom moves her steamed broccoli around her plate, drawing lines in the brown sauce. She actually looks bored.

  “How’s your English class going?” Dad asks. “Your teacher—what’s her name?”

  I sigh. There was a time when small talk was a four-letter word in our house. Dinner used to look like a game of Trivial Pursuit, filled with questions that actually mattered and bizarre facts my parents had picked up from their respective jobs. Now small talk is the bread and butter of St. Clair repasts, full of empty calories that leave a sour aftertaste on the back of my tongue and a cavern in my stomach.

  “Ms. Artigas.”

  “Right. She went to Vanderbilt for her bachelor’s. I hear she’s excellent. A real Shakespeare aficionado.”