Hole in the Middle

by Kendra Fortmeyer

  olgagarchy: I’m just saying, assuming this is actually a genetic condition, and not body modification or a hoax: is it our place to classify her as “freak”? While the stigma of being born with a differently abled body certainly hasn’t gone away in the 21st century, it’s less pervasive than it was in the days of Chang & Eng–style “circus freaks.” We wouldn’t classify Iraq veterans who are missing limbs as “freaks.”

  I sit up, starting to smile.

  amerika2012: Yeah, but she’s missing a liver not a limb

  benderlvr: if she’s missing a liver she shouldn’t be at a bar.

  amerika2012: lol

  janeyz: Why is it any of our business what she’s missing? She’s not asking for our permission. She’s just out dancing with her friends.

  olgagarchy: I’m just saying, who are we to panic about the differently bodied? It shouldn’t be our place to tell her to hide her body if she doesn’t want to hide it. If she thinks her body is beautiful enough to bring it out in public, more power to her. I’d say the same thing for a dwarf, or someone in a wheelchair, or whatever.

  slingshot87: Amen olga, that’s pretty fucking brave.

  The thread goes on a few comments further (spankymod66: POWER TO THE FREAKS!), and I read to the end, feeling a blush of warmth that curls down to my toes. The comments fill me the way hot cocoa does when you come in from the snow—the low and quiet, yellow-kitchen warmth of being safe and loved. I click on their screen names, hoping to pair them with faces, but the profiles reveal nothing significant: olgagarchy posts often, slingshot87 mostly comments on music-related stories, janeyz has been a member since October 2016. I doodle the names onto a sheet of paper, wondering who these people are who have said these true, generous things; who have taken me seriously and said, Yes, just being who you are is brave.

  I screenshot the page, then pull out the old Sea World T-shirt.

  The world feels new as I lock the apartment door behind me. I step out like a foal, trembling past earlier terrors. I step into a night rich with kindness.

  * * *

  1 said.

  2 In Ab Destroyers: Walk the Plank

  14

  I shed my sweater (oversized, navy blue, covered in little country geese) and slip onto the dance floor, fending off the usuals: the endless spin cycle of college students and hipsters and lonely adults looking for a thing they can’t name and not finding it here, either. My skin hums with self-consciousness. It’s strange being here and knowing that I’m being watched and recorded—that tomorrow, a dozen new photos of me will go up on a website I have no control over. It makes me want to be careful at first—to never get caught in a sneeze or a yawn or a moment where one of my eyes is half open—but I feel cradled by the knowledge that at least some of the Public Scrutineers will treat me kindly, generously. I smile into the music and feel my body melt away.

  But a tap on my shoulder pulls me back to earth. I shrug it off at first, but there it is again, a gentle knock-knock-knock. As if to say, I know you. I turn.

  The guy is cute, cuter than I usually pay attention to or trust. He’s older, too, probably in college. He shouts something that I can’t hear, and I ignore him. But he leans down and tries again, directly in my ear.

  “Buy you a drink?”

  I shake my head. I try to keep dancing, but the guy’s chest is in my face. He leans over me, and I clip his throat with my shoulder.

  “Water?” he shouts.

  I blink up at him. “What?” I shout.

  His breath is hot on my ear, steam in a room full of steam.

  “Do you want a water?” he shouts. “Or, like, a Coke or something?”

  “No,” I shout.

  “What?” he shouts.

  “Don’t buy me anything,” I shout.

  “Why?” he shouts.

  “I can buy my own drinks,” I shout.

  “That’s boring,” he shouts.

  I shrug, exaggerated. It is a shout-shrug. “I guess I’m boring,” I shout.

  His eyes flicker to the Hole. My eyes flicker away: to the wall, to the stage, to the ceiling—to some other space where a cute college guy is not looking at this part of my body I can’t change and thinking that it tells him anything about who I am.

  I feel a rush of warmth on my right ear and glance up, too late, to see his jaw at my cheek. “Too sexy to be boring,” uncurls in a breath, like a kiss. And then he’s gone.

  I feel a hiss around my ankles as I stand there dumbly, the rest of the dance floor bouncing on without me. It’s such an obvious line, obviously meaningless. But nobody but Caro has ever called me sexy before.

  The smoke machine fog curls up around my waist, and my eyes sting with frustration and particulate matter. I try to keep dancing, but my heart’s not in it. A glittering girl next to me is trying to get a shot of me on her camera phone while her friends flail up and down like sexual rag dolls. All of a sudden I know I can’t do it anymore. I’m so tired of being the Girl with the Hole.

  I turn to go and smack right into the cute boy. He’s holding two cups. He bows, extends one with a flourish.

  “A boring drink,” he shouts in my ear, “for a boring girl.”

  This is the number one rule of being a Vulnerable Young Woman Alone at a Party, or a Club or In Public Anywhere at Any Time: Do not drink a drink handed to you by a strange man.

  But I’m so, so tired of being a vulnerable young woman. I’m tired of having to be afraid of life.

  I take a sip. It tastes like Coke.

  “Did you put drugs in it?” I shout.

  “What?” he shouts.

  “Drugs,” I shout.

  “Nope,” he shouts. “Drugging chicks is objectively shitty.”

  I flash him a smile. The Coke simmers acidic around my molars.

  “Thanks,” I shout.

  He grins at me. “It’s cool,” he shouts. He reaches out with his free hand, squeezes my shoulder. Dance floors are all about skin on skin, being jostled and stepped on and grabbed. But this touch is intentional, his hand strong and soft. Warmth roils my stomach.

  “Hey,” I shout. “Did you say I was sexy? Before, I mean?”

  He grins. It is a beautiful thing, ruler-straight and dimpled. I always thought the concept of dimples was fundamentally weird. Little pockmarks in people’s faces, attractive? But now I understand: these are places where surprise tenderness lies. Dimples you could curl up and go to sleep in.

  “I call it like I see it,” he shouts. Then he waves to somebody over my head and says, “Hold on.”

  I try to keep dancing, but it’s difficult with the Coke sloshing around in the cup, and I feel irritated and flattered and dumb. I wander off the dance floor, stash the cup on a table. I wonder if the cute guy is watching from somewhere, or if Public Scrutiny is, or nobody. I wait awhile and then wander toward my car, the memory of that word, sexy, wrapped around me like the sweater that I’ll realize I forgot later.

  Safely at home, I creep past Caro’s room, close and lock my bedroom door, check and double-check the shades.

  Then I approach the mirror, which hangs, dusty, inside my closet door, where it dutifully spends its days reflecting my winter coats back into the dark. I don’t spend much time with mirrors. I’m not afraid of the self-esteem damage that inevitably comes of staring into a two-dimensional pane of glass and wishing you were somebody three-dimensionally different. It’s just kind of boring. (I tried covering them all last week, while I was working on a self-portrait in black and white and wanted to see if I’d start unconsciously picturing my face in gray scale, but Caro came home and delivered an hour-long lecture titled This Had Better Be Because You’re Sitting Shiva and Not Because You Have a Fucked-Up Self-Image, Because You’re Gorgeous, You Idiot.)

  Alone, now, I study my reflection: yep, still stick skinny. Yep, still dusted wi
th freckles that Caroline calls “adorable” and I call “sun damage.”

  But I feel the bright joy of that word racing beneath my skin. I stare at my face, my body, the Hole, wondering where the sexy is that he saw. I’ve never felt capital-S Sexy, that tidal wave of power and invulnerability and infinite cleavage. Sexy was, as defined by my childhood viewings of Grease—a thing to grow into, to do a dance number about; a thing that all teen girls could access if they had the right lip gloss and Victoria’s Secret PINK cheekies and convertibles driven by the right boys. A thing that happens to girls who aren’t cripplingly unhappy in their own skins. A thing that never happened for me.

  I know, after a lifetime of aborted romances and crushing social failure, that after humiliating days like today, you’re not supposed to hope anymore. That some part of you is just supposed to shut down.

  But there is that terrible little piece inside that still hopes, even when the rest of your brain is shouting, You idiot, give it up, you know more than anyone how love is a steamroller that will crush you to a pulp of human mess on asphalt and never look back. And it is that stupid little part that flings me back on my bed to stare up at the ceiling, heart pounding, wondering if maybe this time, maybe.

  15

  The next few nights I haunt the edges of the crowd at the Mansion, trying to look for the Coke guy without seeming like I’m looking for him. But when the next weekend rolls around and he hasn’t reappeared, I lose all hope.

  “I am going to be alone forever,” I announce to Caro at Java Jane that Saturday evening. The coffee shop, which borders the NC State campus, is popular with my classmates, and I crept into the warm, brightly lit front room only after verifying that the coast was clear. I’ve been trying to keep a low profile at school all week. Nothing has happened, per se. Nothing that I can put my finger on. Just a certain way the conversations die when I enter a classroom. The way people look at me in gym, in the caf, in line for the bathroom—too closely, or not at all.

  Caro laughs, looking up from her watch. “You’re not going to be alone forever,” she says.

  “I’m hideous, and I’m going to be alone, and I’m going to die a virgin.”

  Caro tucks a slim pile of flash cards into her apron pocket. “Morgs, you’re beautiful. I know it. You know it. Cute boys at clubs know it.”

  “One boy.”

  “A stunningly handsome boy.”

  I groan and drop my head to the counter, knocking a few points off Java Jane’s sanitation rating. “You’re right. He’s definitely out of my league.”

  “He bought you a Coke. It’s very charming.”

  “I don’t trust charming.”

  “Dear Morgan, how did I end up with a best friend who is such a cynic?”

  I stare into the space between us, casting about for some truth to fling into it. Maybe because I’m a freak. Maybe because guys are always after something. Maybe because I’m seventeen, and I’ve always thought I was going to die alone, and it is too intoxicating and painful and wonderful to believe that after a lifetime of hiding who I am, somebody might like me for exactly that.

  “Must be my dazzling good looks,” I say at last.

  “Seems right,” she says. “Hey, do you have a quarter? I want Mike and Ikes.”

  “Take one from the tip jar.”

  “I am,” she says. “It’s called ‘the tip jar of our friendship.’”

  “You’re the worst,” I say, fishing in my pocket. “I’m a starving artist, did you know that?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “My tax dollars support people like you. Twist the handle extra hard; it’ll give you more candy.”

  “My mother supports people like me,” I say, cranking the dial. A small, bright cascade of candy pours into my palm like rain. Caro leans forward, begins picking the reds and pinks out of my palm, leaving me the greens, yellows and oranges.

  “Well, she’s a taxing woman,” she says. “So hey, I was thinking—”

  The bell chimes, and she dumps the candy in my hand, putting on a customer-service face as she wipes her palms. I scoot farther down the counter while Caro takes a sandwich order, asks about somebody’s divorce. Annoying Thing #211 about my best friend: she takes a genuine interest in other people.

  I sigh and settle in as the guy begins explaining who’s going to keep the dog. I start rearranging the to-go cups in order of aesthetic pleasingness. Underneath the bottom cup is a small stack of flash cards: Neophyte. Rococo. Vexation.

  The customer goes and Caro washes her hand at the sink. She turns, and I wave ignominious at her. She turns off the water.

  “So yeah,” she says, as though continuing a conversation we’d both been a part of. “I’ve been looking at applying to college.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. “A year from now.”

  “This year,” she says.

  There’s a pang in my chest, a quick fizzle of anxiety.

  “Oh,” I say. “Wow. That’s awesome.”

  “I’ve been reading up on financial aid,” she says, drying her hands. “And if I get my SATs up, I qualify for merit-based aid at Northeastern.”

  “In Boston,” I say, stupidly.

  She nods, face glowing.

  “Like, seven-hundred-miles-away-from-here Boston.”

  “Yeah,” she says, like it’s obvious. “They have one of the best sociology programs in the country. Also, like, a Dunkin’ Donuts on every corner. It’s win-win.”

  “Okay, first of all, Krispy Kreme for life. Second, we are on a semipermanent doughnut hiatus, you traitor.” She winces at that, and I feel cruelly, momentarily justified. Because, “Third, we have a plan. Our gap year.” The year we’re supposed to spend together between high school and college, hitchhiking and doing guerrilla art projects and—I don’t know. Being Morgan and Caro, I guess, for one last little piece of forever, before real life comes and sweeps us away.

  “I know,” she says. “But I’ve just been thinking. Why wait to get started on living our lives? I mean, look at you. Your world has expanded by a factor of ten in the last month alone. And literally all you did was change your shirt.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You can change your shirt, too. You don’t even have to finish high school. I’m pretty sure small children can do it.”

  “I want that,” she says. Her face glows down at the counter as she runs a cloth over it. “Not the shirt thing. I mean, I want to grow. To be something. I can either spend the next two years making people coffee and scanning coupons for family-sized boxes of Easy Mac and scraping together enough change to go to the two-dollar movie on weekends, or I can knuckle down this year and then go do something bigger. Meet people who are making things they’re excited about and doing things that might change the world a little so that maybe someday I can, too, instead of spending the rest of my life working part-time jobs that make me want to jump off a bridge.” She pulls a quarter out of the tip jar, rolls it across her knuckles. “I’ve been reading all of these articles by these amazing, super-smart women about being more than society gives you permission to be,” she says. “And then we changed Jane today, and it made me think, you know? It kind of seemed like a sign.”

  I follow her gaze to the mannequin, Java Jane, sitting in the front window. The employees change its (her?) outfit once a month, in accordance with holidays, or the seasons or for games against NC State’s archrivals, UNC and Duke. Today, Java Jane is sporting a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform and a backpack, wearing a bright yellow button that reads #1 teacher.

  “Java Jane’s pervy back-to-school outfit made you want to go to college?”

  “Yeah, kind of.” Caro turns to me, a challenging eyebrow lifted. “Plus, all day long I hear State students talking about classes, and registration and what dorm they’re in, and I feel like I’m missing out, you know? It’s already starting to feel weird, having Todd start college while I’m st
ill in high school. I can’t imagine a year where I’m doing nothing . . .” She focuses back in on me, taps her pen on the counter definitively. “Look, everyone is starting to talk about college visits and SATs.”

  “Not everybody.”

  “Almost everybody,” she says. “Don’t you ever feel weird about that?”

  I stack and restack the cups. I don’t say, Only my entire life.

  Because the thing is, I have thought about it.

  Of course I have.

  As last summer stretched on, the conversations at the YYS shows turned to majors and mini fridges. One by one I watched the healthy, happy, sun-kissed people around us turn to the future. I know it’s long past time to start thinking about joining the real world.

  I just can’t ever imagine the world feeling ready for me.

  “You should come with me, Morgs,” Caro says. “It’ll be great. We can sign up for feminist film theory courses and learn Russian and ironically rush a sorority together.”

  I open my mouth to reply, but somebody comes up to the counter for a refill, and Caro ducks to fill it. Then the bell chimes, and there’s a bright burst of customers through the door. Then another. The line stretches on and on. I unstack all the cup sleeves and pretend they are bubbles underwater, and I am drowning. I wait for Caro to be free so I can breathe again.

  When the line of customers becomes so deep that Johnny the Androgynously Sexy Tattooed Dishwasher has to emerge from the back to help take orders, I blow Caro a kiss and drop the rest of the Mike and Ikes into the tip jar with the pennies and bills. I flick on my bike lights and cycle slowly home, away from campus. The late evening sun lingers warm on my neck, but the air is crisp, summer shaking its wet dog hide and creeping, remorsefully, under the porch to make way for autumn. I try to imagine my life without Caroline in it as I weave through the tangled construction on Hillsborough Street, past the building with the old yellow bulldozer on its roof and the Reader’s Corner toward home.