Most of the talks were dumb, some weren’t. On rare days, kids actually said things worth hearing. I secretly admired that.
The courage.
On this day I was stressed that I’d be too nervous to speak. That I’d be sweating, stammering, unable to look anyone in the face.
But I was fine.
Better than fine. It felt good. For the first time since all this happened.
Sure, I was anxious before the speech. All day in school I felt tense, jittery. I was there and not there. Until the moment when I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure if I’d have the guts to go through with it. I didn’t know how I’d say it. I just had to trust the words would come out okay, that I’d make sense. That maybe somebody would understand. Or not. Who knows.
Maybe I wasn’t saying it for my peers in the classroom anyway. I was saying it for myself—my sense of self—and for her.
First period dragged into second period, then third, and fourth, and on through the day. Time marches like a good soldier, stiff-legged, chin up, a weapon on its shoulder. Finally it was time for me to stand up, speak out.
I had an 800-pound gorilla to get off my chest.
I began:
“My name is Sam Proctor. You guys know that already. I’m standing here in front of you, looking at your faces. You can see me, and I can see you.”
Their faces were puzzled, borderline bored. I was losing them already.
“On the internet…,” I said, and momentarily the power of speech halted within me. I saw that one or two pairs of ears had perked up. Everybody liked the Internet. Paula Ligouri’s face turned pale, as if she sensed something in the air. Like she sensed where I was going with this.
I tried it again. “On the internet, you don’t have to show your face. You don’t have to give your name. And you can be as mean as you want to be…”
FACE MEETS FIST
In retrospect, I don’t think getting punched in the face was that bad. I kind of liked it. I mean, I’m not recommending it. “Oh yes, you simply must try the Punch-in-the-Face, it’s divine. Far superior to the Knee-to-the-Groin and half the calories!”
Fact: Fergus Tick went blam and I went boom. Hitting the ground was worse than the punch—no disrespect to Fergus, who packs a wallop, but that concrete was hard.
To my surprise, I did not see stars. Pretty little birdies did not circle my head, chirping tunelessly. None of the typical things I expected after a lifetime’s education watching Loony Tunes cartoons. I got hit, I fell, and my coconut throbbed but didn’t crack. That was it. Fergus’s fist caught me on the right cheek below the eye—Fergus was a lefty, who knew! Maybe a tougher kid staggers back but keeps standing. Not me. I flopped like a spineless jellyfish.
One punch and done.
Message received, loud and clear.
Surprisingly: Fergus was the one who looked frightened, and so did Athena, who stood watching. My confession in speech class shook them up. I had broken the code of silence. I said out loud what I had done to Morgan Mallen. I spoke the unspeakable. I owned the thing that nobody else wanted. And even though I didn’t point fingers at anyone else, I could see that it scared Athena to the core.
She didn’t look so pretty from my viewpoint on the ground. She looked like she’d just swallowed a poisoned apple. There was something evil in her soul, and she was rotting from the inside out.
The fallout after Morgan’s suicide had not been a good experience for Athena Luikin. She’d become damaged goods, like an expensive glass vase dropped to the ground. If Morgan was the dead girl, Athena was the one we blamed. At first, Athena put on a brave face, the tough girl who didn’t give a hoot. Over time, cracks appeared. Everyone knew Athena was the one most responsible for harassing Morgan. In a way, she fell victim to her own game. Athena was tagged too. Her tag read: BULLY. One by one, Athena’s friends faded into the background until she stood virtually alone, if not for the unwavering loyalty of Fergus Tick.
Rumors went around that Athena was transferring to a private school in another town. “Good,” we said. One morning, a FOR SALE sign appeared on her front lawn. There was talk of a lawsuit, damages and courtrooms. The reign of the queen was over.
So there I sat on the ground, head going boom-ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, fuzzzzzz.
“Get up,” Fergus demanded.
(So you can punch me again? I don’t think so.)
“Leave him,” Athena said. “Come on. Let’s go, Fergus.”
And go they did.
I waited for my head to clear. It wasn’t so awful. It felt like waking up any school morning, that torturous distance between head-on-the-pillow and feet-on-the-floor.
I needed a hot shower. Or maybe a long hot bath. Morgan once said, “Baths make everything better.” It was time to find out if she was right.
Despite all that, deep down, I felt fantastic. Like a million bucks. Terrific, awesome, happy.
(How weird was that?)
I wasn’t on the wrong side of life anymore. I was now an enemy of the bad guys—and it felt great. I tasted something sweet in my mouth, a new flavor, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until I spat.
Oh, blood.
I KNOCKED
I decided to do it. I had to.
I stood at her front door yesterday.
I breathed in and out, in and out.
Steady as a willow in a hurricane.
And I knocked.
Bark, BARK, barkbarkBARKbark!
I’d forgotten about Larry. The lunatic mop.
I suddenly, fiercely, insanely wished I had a mint. I breathed into my open palm. Yuck, gross. How was my hair? What was I doing here?
Time passed.
And the door creaked open.
The mother was standing there, wheezing slightly, sizing me up. The expression on her face said, What now, dear Lord, what now?
THINGS I LIKE
This is a list of random things I like.
I like baseball games that last extra innings. “Free baseball,” we call it. I like weekends without homework, watching my little sister sleep with her puffy lips and the saliva dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. I like my bed made with the blankets folded down nice and perfect, just right. I like the cold, numb feeling of a package of frozen peas on my swollen face. I like the last bell of the school day and the sound in the hallways of a hundred lockers slamming joyously shut and the big hum of let’s get outta here, let’s go. I like funny videos with absurd cats (I realize it’s a big joke to some people, but I do). I like memories of old vacations, camping trips and card games and nickel antes. I like the stars in the sky when the night is warm and silent. I like the sound of a swing and a miss on the baseball diamond, the absence of sound followed by a fastball popping into the catcher’s leather glove, the whoosh-and-pop combo. I like that feeling when you see a girl and think, wow, that’s all, just WOW, and you know you have to find a way to stand next to that girl somewhere, somehow. I like a brand-new box of my favorite cereal, when I know it was bought just for me. I like turning on the radio and a great song comes on that same instant. I like laughter, and promises kept, and friendly waves across open fields. I even like Morgan’s lunatic dog that barkbarkbARKed with the soul of wolf.
I like being alive, and today I am, right now, saying yes to life. Yes, yes, and yes.
WORDS
Larry pounced on my shoes, barkbarkbARKing!
“You remember me, don’t you, Larry?” I said.
“And you are?” the mother asked.
I didn’t have a good answer. And in fact, I never expected to see the mom. That wasn’t my plan. Yet here she was, a fairly gigantic woman in a huge floral housedress. She might have weighed three hundred pounds. She smelled of butterscotch and a scent that reminded me of Morgan, the faint whisper of booze.
She eyed me suspiciously, the door only half-open, ready to slam shut.
(I am Sam, Sam I am.)
All I had to do was open my mouth. It’s all anybody ever wante
d me to do, my parents, Mr. Laneway, Morgan. “Just talk,” they said. “It’s easy. Try it. Say one word. Start with your name…”
Seriously?
What good would that do? My name is …
Use.
Less.
Ness.
READING
Morgan had marked up The Bell Jar here and there, little checkmarks and passages underlined.
I never found my name in it. There was no secret message. Believe me, I looked.
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead” was underlined in red.
There was a loopy star next to “I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.”
(Oh, Morgan.)
Another star: “I had nothing to look forward to.”
It was that kind of book, and I guess Morgan was that kind of girl. There was a sadness inside her, a darkness I couldn’t touch. Strange as it seems, all the while I imagined her reading those words, dragging her pen under important sentences, drawing stars in the margins.
Reading is the most alone thing in the world.
But she was with me the whole time.
Weirdness. The book brought us closer, across time and impossible distance. We shared this.
YOU ARE
“And you are…?”
I stood rooted before the door. My mouth twitched.
“And you are…?”
She wanted me to identify myself. I was tempted to say, “I don’t really know anymore.” But what I said was:
“Hi, I went to school with your daughter—”
“Sophie? She’s up—” the mother said, momentarily confused. Then her face changed, she heard it, went to school, the past tense. A shadow fell over the mother’s distrustful gaze. She steadied herself with a hand on the doorjamb.
I stood watching her, not knowing where else to look.
“Come in,” she said, not smiling. “And you are?” she asked again.
“Sam,” I said, for lack of a better answer.
(Guilty as charged.)
I wished that I could peel the skin off my fingers. Here, take my prints, analyze what I’ve done, and you tell me.
Sophie appeared behind the mother, standing a few stairs above the ground floor.
“Sam?”
She looked good, shorts and a T-shirt. Sophie had no idea why I was there. Or, I don’t know. Sophie was pretty smart. Maybe she knew all along.
“Hi,” I replied.
THE APOLOGY
After opening the door, the mother returned to a large upholstered chair in the front room. She sank heavily into it, facing a large television set, a dish of hard candy by her side, a basket of knitting by her swollen feet. Music trilled, some kind of opera. She never again looked at me.
She scooped up Larry into her lap and with a thick finger scratched the dog’s ear.
It was all a little weird.
Sophie said something to the mother that I didn’t catch, and led me to a small back room she called the den. The room had dark paneling and drawn blinds, sunlight filtered through in dusty streaks. It smelled musty. We sat on the couch, facing an old TV that looked like it didn’t work.
Sophie seemed out of place inside her own home. I wondered if that’s how Morgan felt, like a stranger passing through.
“I’m shocked you’re here,” Sophie said.
“I know, I should have called. I’m sorry, I’m an idiot,” I explained accurately. “Should I leave? This was a bad idea, wasn’t it? I should leave.”
I began to rise. Sophie placed a hand on my thigh. Stay, it told me.
I sat back, looking around. It was not a happy room, absent of art, photographs, even books.
“So,” she broke the silence. “Why did you come?”
“I needed to talk,” I said, “about Morgan.”
She swallowed and her shoulders stiffened, as if preparing for a blow. “Okay.”
“Remember I said to you that day, about how if you ever needed to talk? What I realized later on was that I wasn’t doing it for you,” I said. “I was doing it for me. You’re the only person I know who knew her.”
Sophie’s fingers went to her ring, squeezing it, squeezing it, making sure it was still there. I couldn’t read her face, didn’t know what she was thinking.
“We were friends, I think, but the truth is that I was not a good friend to her,” I began.
“You don’t have to—”
“No,” I interrupted, “I think I do.”
And I told Sophie the entire story, all of it.
To her credit, Sophie listened to every word, the good times and the cruelties. All the while she sat quietly, hands folded on her lap, legs crossed, uncrossed, crossed again, a stricken look on her face. I noticed that as I spoke, she leaned farther and farther away from me. It felt like an invisible force field rose up between us, and I was Doctor Doom.
I don’t know if I finished or just ran out of gas, like a car on a lonely road. “I came here to apologize,” I said. “I needed to tell you that I’m sorry.”
I looked to her face, hoping for mercy.
Sophie stood, rising with the exaggerated care of an invalid. She turned her back to me, spoke to the wall. “Is that what this was all about? You’re here to ask for forgiveness? Will that make you feel better?”
“I’m not … asking … for anything,” I said.
She turned and snorted contemptuously. “Can your apology bring my sister back?”
Her voice grew bitter, vengeful.
“I don’t accept, Sam,” she continued. “Do you understand? I don’t accept your weak-ass apology. It’s not good enough. It’s not okay. It will never, ever be okay.”
I sat in defeat, my palms open. All words failed me. Another horrible mistake. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I only made things worse.
I found I had nothing, nothing at all, to say.
“I need you to leave now,” Sophie said. Her tone was calm, controlled, but ice-cold. “And Sam,” she added, “I don’t ever, ever want to see your face again.”
OH WHY
She liked to sing. Have I mentioned that yet? Not that she had a good voice. But when Morgan sang, she did it joyfully and hysterically. Like any bird on a branch, Morgan was happiest with a song in her throat.
I like to remember her that way, singing loudly and badly in the cemetery—to the sky, the clouds, the gathering stars. She sang the hits on the radio, the crappy Disney stuff, rap, anything that caught her ear. But the song she loved the most was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” you know, from The Wizard of Oz. Listening to her, I gradually got the words. Troubles melt like lemon drops.
I loved the ending, especially that pause in the last line, “Why—oh why—can’t I?”
It was just an ordinary song until I heard Morgan sing it. That’s when I first heard the ache in her throat.
WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE
And she will find
peace, and she will …
Forgive us.
I HATE THE WORLD
Falling, fallen, fell.
More than words
can ever tell.
THE ONLY ONE
A week after Sophie told me that she never wanted to see me again, she stood waiting by the main entrance of the school, like a vulture on a tree limb.
I tried to swing wide to avoid her, but Sophie stepped in my path. “Come with me,” she said.
“Where?”
“Away from here.” She started down the steps, away from the school.
I hesitated. “Wait, but school—”
“You’re going to be late this morning. It’s not the end of the world. The office doesn’t start calling home until ten, so as long as we check in before that, nobody will know,” Sophie replied. “Besides, you owe me.”
The last stragglers entered the building. The doors closed. “Where are we going?”
“The coffee shop.”
“That’s five blocks…” I began to protest. She wasn’t hearing me.
We walked in silence. Her pace was purposeful, all business. Sophie stared straight ahead, and I followed like a sad puppy. Inside the café, she exchanged greetings with the curly-haired guy at the counter. “Hey, girl. Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asked.
“Fire drill,” Sophie said. She ordered a complicated coffee. Asked me, “You want anything?”
I patted empty pockets. “I don’t have any money.”
“Figures. I’ve got it,” she said.
The guy at the counter looked me over, not impressed. Eight thirty and he was bored out of his mind already.
(I could hear my father, “Go to college, kids.”)
“Okay, um, I’ll take a hot chocolate, please.”
“Size?”
“What? Oh, um, small’s fine. Tall, whatever.”
“Whipped cream?”
“Yeah, yes.”
We took seats at a table in the lounge area, which was sort of a fake living room deal—for that homey feeling—which was empty except for a few coffee-clutching types staring at their flickering laptops and cell phones.
Sophie sipped her coffee. “I never drank the stuff until I started working here part-time, nights, weekends,” she explained. “Once you get hooked on coffee, it’s impossible to wake up without it.”
I tasted my hot chocolate. It was pretty awesome. I didn’t get the appeal of coffee. Said nothing.
With a flick of her finger across her nose, Sophie signaled for me to wipe whipped cream off my face.
(Sigh. I’m a clown.)
“I’ve been thinking about your visit to my house,” she said. “I appreciate that you were trying to do something…,” Sophie paused and surprisingly offered up a crooked smile. “Something … noble … the other day.”
She cast her eyes downward, drawing her lips into a line, as if regretting the smile.
The expression, those downcast eyes, gave her a familiar quality. Then it hit me. I’d seen that same expression on her sister’s face.
The Fall Page 8