Out of Order

by A. M. Jenkins

  “Grace, I want to talk.” She glances at me—and just keeps walking. I have to hustle to keep up. “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry about everything.” Now that I’ve started, I’m going to keep going till she says she missed me and she’s not mad anymore. “I guess it was my idea to put the cat in the freezer. But I was just joking, so when Gutterson really did it, I went back and got it out. It’s not dead—it’s alive. It’s still around somewhere. I’ve seen it. Do you believe me?”

  “I don’t know,” she says offhand, not even slowing down. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does.” My voice sounds faraway to me, even though I’m right there.

  “There’s nothing I can do about it one way or the other,” she says, shrugging. “All I know is something good came out of it. My eyes have been opened.”

  “The cat is fine, Grace.”

  She looks annoyed. “Come over here, Colt. Let’s get this over with.” I follow her over out of traffic, closer to a wall where there’s no lockers. When she gets there, when she turns to face me, I get a chill.

  She’s looking up at me the way the kid in the movie looked at Old Yeller right before he shot him.

  Or maybe not. The kid who shot Old Yeller at least was sad about it.

  “I’m never going to go out with you again, Colt,” Grace says. “I don’t even want to see you. We have absolutely no rapport.”

  Rapport? “Jesus.” I can’t be bothered trying to keep things clean now. “Will you quit throwing words at everything?”

  “I’m not even going to try to discuss this with you if you use that kind of language.”

  Deep breath. I nod: Agreed. No bad words, not even if those are the only words that are in my head.

  “Let me see if I can put this a way you’ll understand: We have no…connection.”

  “You got to make a connection, Grace. You can’t just talk.” She frowns, which gives me a chance to jump right in. “We do have a—a—we belong together, okay? I told the truth that time when you let me touch—that time in the car. About how I feel—I love you, Grace. Even though I’m not anywhere near the kind of guy I should be, at least I’m trying. It’s all right if you don’t believe me. I don’t blame you. But I want to work things out. And I don’t know about connections, but I do know one thing.” I take a deep breath. “There isn’t anybody but you. For me, I mean. I don’t ever want to be with anybody but you.”

  “It just doesn’t work.”

  “It does. It will. I’m going to try harder.”

  “It doesn’t matter how hard you try.”

  “Don’t say that. It does matter.” I say it firmly, to show her how right I am. “Look, do you think it’s easy, telling you this? You think it’s easy to tell you I love you? The last time you didn’t speak to me for two days.” On the word days my voice cracks, just a little. “I’m not asking you to say you love me back. I’m not asking you to do anything at all. All I’m asking is for us go back to the way we were and let me try again.”

  “I’m sorry, Colt. I’m with someone else now.”

  All my insides start slithering down into the pit of my gut. My Grace, with her soft hair and her soft lips and her green eyes.

  “You can’t go out with Jordan Palmer,” I say desperately. “He’s a jerk. He’s screwed about a million different girls. He cheated on his girlfriend with her best friend. He even videotaped—”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “It’s true. And he talks about whoever he’s screwed. He doesn’t always name names, but he always tells the de—”

  “Like you don’t?”

  “—tails. What?”

  “Jordan told me how you slept with that girl in the Bahamas this summer. Someone you didn’t even know.”

  Okay, now, sometimes I’m not too bright. Sometimes I don’t hear things too clearly the first time.

  “What?” I say again.

  “I see it on your face; don’t even bother trying to deny it. I made myself believe you about a lot of stuff—I was stupid enough to give you the benefit of the doubt. So don’t go telling me how we have to work at a connection. Or a bunch of garbage about how you’ve always loved me. Jordan”—she pauses over his name like it’s a drop of honey—“doesn’t have to lie. He doesn’t have to pretend. The connection is there. We didn’t force it. It’s not something we had to work at. It just happened. It was meant to be. Which is not something I could explain to you, Colton Trammel. How everything about two people can just…just…click”

  “You do not click with Palmer. He just makes you think you do. No, don’t say anything. Will you stop talking for just one second and listen to me? Just listen to me, will you?”

  She crosses her arms and glares up at me. Okay, Colt, let’s hear your words of wisdom.

  Of course my brain goes completely blank.

  She’s standing there and I’m standing there, and all I can think is that she believes Palmer is like one of those guys in those stupid films she likes, Boy meets Girl, click click click, and the very next moment they’re naked and—

  “Oh my God,” I burst out. “Please tell me you didn’t let him fuck you!”

  Grace’s mouth is an open O of shock. Then her face closes up. “I should have known you’d put it that way. You’re disgusting.”

  “Jesus, you just went out with me a week ago!”

  She’s looking at me like I’ve turned into a maggot. “There is a world of difference between…what you said, and making love. What you said—it’s demeaning. It’s nasty. You’re so shallow, Colt. You’re a shallow little boy. You’ll never understand that two people can have things in common; deep, beautiful things. Yes, like the human body—but you’ll never understand that there’s more to it than that. Books and poetry and wondering about—well, about life. About ideas. Like whether there’s order in the universe, or what people are really like on the inside, or the true meaning behind a piece of art.”

  She let him fuck her! My head feels like it’s going to explode. I’m a lot bigger than she is. I could hurt her if I wanted. I could scare her, too, scare her into crying and make her say she lied and she didn’t mean it.

  I’d almost like to see her cry, right now.

  “Face it, Colt. You aren’t capable of a relationship that has any kind of depth to it.”

  She whirls around and walks off. The bell rings, but all I hear is this tremendous sucking sound as Grace Garcetti removes herself from my life.

  Down at the end of the hall I shove the heavy bathroom door open. I wish I could stay in here until the school empties out. The room stinks of bleach and cleanser and old urine. It’s brighter in here than the hallway, because of the lights and the windows. A whole row of windows, up above the sinks and the mirrors.

  I don’t really need to go. I figure I’ll wash my hands, just to prove I belong in here. I step over to a sink and turn on the water.

  I take a good look at myself in the mirror while I’m washing my hands. Hair looks good, like always. Face looks okay, not upset, not mad. It’s a little pale, maybe, but nothing that advertises the whole story: This is a guy whose life has cracked open beneath his feet.

  “Trammel, you stupid bastard,” I tell the guy in the mirror.

  The guy in the mirror doesn’t say anything.

  “Look,” I tell him, “I just, you know.” I want to explain something, but I’m not sure what it is. Something about myself, I guess. But I can’t, because like I said I don’t know what it is.

  I take my time scrubbing my hands. Then I bend over, splash some water on my face. But when I shut my eyes to keep the water out, pictures rise up on the back of my eyelids.

  Where were they when they did it? Did she go home with him? Did she touch him? Did she like it?

  Did she make any sounds?

  God—the sounds Grace used to make with me! The soft sounds; her lips touching my lips, the way her breath got deeper when I touched her—most of the time through her shirt.

  Thro
ugh her shirt. Jesus.

  I brace my palms on the cold, hard rim for a second. I stare down into the sink. In that bright bathroom that stinks of bleach and urine, I think how I gave my heart away to somebody who never wanted it.

  And not just once—I gave it to her over and over again, every day, every time I saw her, every time I thought of her, like a dog panting and begging and hoping for just one tiny pat on the head, I gave my whole heart every single day.

  There’s no paper towels in here, just blow dryers. So I pull my shirttail up and dry my face on that. When I look up again at the guy in the mirror, his eyes are a little red rimmed.

  It’s so unfair. I’ve wanted her since seventh grade. Four years I worked to get her. I tried so fucking hard to be whatever it was she wanted.

  And all Palmer had to do was just be.

  I brace my palms on the edge of the sink again and bow my head, like I’m praying. Only instead I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself what an asshole I’ve been.

  You’re an asshole, Colt Trammel. I tell myself that over and over, hoping the edge will wear off the idea.

  Big surprise: It never does. And when I walk out of the bathroom and head toward fifth period, there’s a big black hole where my heart used to be.

  I want to go home, to creep out of the building, into my car, speed home to go to my room and be alone.

  But the only thing that’s ever between a guy and total humiliation is pride. I’ve got to act like it doesn’t matter.

  Hell, it doesn’t matter. It’s just some chick. Who cares?

  That’s what I tell myself.

  I get into assistant somehow and I don’t have my English book—maybe it’s in my locker, maybe it’s on the floor in the hall somewhere—and Chlo’s already there, but I don’t look at her or say anything. She doesn’t say anything either.

  I sit down and I keep my head turned, like I’m looking out the window. I don’t figure she’s stupid enough to try to talk to me. Chlo will see that I’m not in the mood to hear anything today.

  She doesn’t say a word, but after a few moments she gets her stuff out and goes into the same routine she had before the Romantic poets turned up. Reading. Marking stuff with her pencil.

  I put my head down, like I used to do back before my heart got broken.

  We sit like that for a while. Her reading and marking. Me trying not to think. Especially not about how I’m supposed to go to sixth period, how I’m supposed to get all the way through that last class in the same weight room as old Pepe LePew Palmer in all his stupid handsome seniorness and his poems and his discussing who won’t put out and who will.

  The door that leads to Miss. A.’s classroom opens, and I hear Miss. A. come in. “Would you two collate and staple these pages into packets? The pages are numbered, one through seven.”

  I don’t even bother to lift my head.

  “Sure,” says Chlo. I hear Miss. A.’s heels pock-pock-pock back into the other room while Chlo shuts her books and piles them up. Then for a long time, all I hear is the swish, swish, swish of paper as Chlo arranges the papers into packets.

  “So, Trammel,” Chlo asks after a long time. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I’m hidden inside the circle of my arms. And then, I don’t know why, I ask, “You?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Swish, swish, swish.

  “Chin up, Trammel,” she says. “Whatever it is, this day is almost over.”

  “Almost. God.” I groan and raise my head. My brain feels like it’s eating itself from the inside out.

  Chlo’s got about half the packets done, crisscrossed in a stack.

  Aw, fuck it. Working—anything—is better than sitting here thinking. “Gimme the stapler and I’ll help,” I mutter.

  “It’s not in here. You’ll have to get it from Miss. A.”

  So I get up and trudge into Miss. A.’s classroom to get the stapler.

  “Alicia’s got it out in the hall,” Miss. A. says. “Go check; she’s probably done with it.”

  I go out in the hall, and old Doghead is standing on a chair in front of an open display case, one of those flat ones for posting announcements and lists and that kind of shit. When I walk over, I see my reflection in the glass, and my face has this half smile, half smirk on it, which is weird because I don’t feel like I’m smirking. What I feel like is I’m standing on the beach, and the tide is coming in, washing the sand out from under my feet, and no matter how much it knocks me off balance, I’ve got to look like I’m still standing straight.

  Doghead is still using the stapler; she’s fastening a sheet of paper to the cork board inside the case.

  “I need the stapler,” I tell Alicia. She staples another corner, and I wait for her to finish.

  But after the last corner is stapled, Alicia just places the stapler sideways and starts going around the edges of the paper, as if she’s got all the time in the world and nobody’s waiting.

  “Come on,” I add. “Hurry up.”

  “Please,” says Alicia, without looking at me. She smoothes the paper with her hand and staples it again.

  Very slowly.

  Puh-dunk.

  Please? She wants me to say “please” to her? I wasn’t rude. I didn’t call her any names. I’m not asking for any personal favors. I’m trying to do a job for Miss A.

  A tiny little spot inside starts burning.

  “Give me the fucking stapler,” I tell Alicia.

  Alicia carefully places the stapler against another edge of the paper and pushes it down. Puh-dunk! Then she stops.

  The hall is suddenly quiet and still, but even though Alicia’s stopped stapling, she doesn’t turn and acknowledge me, she just stands there staring at the cork board, breathing hard through her nose.

  “Stape-ler,” I say the words very slowly. “Give. Me. The. Fuck-ing. Stapler. Doghead.”

  At the word Doghead Alicia turns to me, and I see her pale face, and her eyes burning at me from behind her glasses, and then her hand’s coming at me and the open stapler hits me in the forehead.

  There’s this sick muffled sound, pa-chung!—it feels like she punched a hole in my skull—and my head pops back. I hear myself give a gasping little grunt. Alicia’s hand pulls back and then I’m bent over in pain, trying to cover my forehead without actually touching it, because there are now two metal prongs sticking into my brain.

  “Oh my God,” I hear myself moan.

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” Alicia’s trembly voice says from above. “Don’t ever talk to me like that again.”

  “Shit. Shit.” I squinch up my eyes to keep them from leaking tears of pain right there in front of Alicia and anybody who walks by.

  I hear Alicia get down off the chair and she walks away, the psycho, and I kind of turn to the wall so nobody can see, and I’m thinking I’ve got to get to the bathroom so nobody finds out what just happened.

  “There you are.” It’s Chlo’s voice, annoyed. “I figured you’d ditched—what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing!” I’m all bent over, covering my eyes too now, so Chlo can’t see whether I’m crying or not, because I’m not even sure whether I am. “Go away!”

  “What is it? What happened? Hey. Are you okay?”

  “Fuck no, I’m not okay!” I roar through my hands. “That psycho bitch just stapled me in the head!”

  Silence.

  “Oh my God,” Chlo says, “you’ve got to go to the nurse.”

  “No!”

  “You might have a concussion. You might need stitches.” I feel a hand on my arm. “I’ll walk you down.”

  “No. I just need to go in the bathroom for a minute, that’s all.”

  “If you don’t come with me, I’m going to get Miss A. right now and tell her what happened. And she’ll tell Coach Kline, you know she will.”

  “All right! Fuck. All right. But first, swear you won’t say anything. Let me do all the talking.” Stapled in the head by Alicia Doggett. Good God. I’d never hear
the end of it.

  She promises, and so, finally, keeping my hand over my staple and my body bent over like Igor, I let Chlo lead me away.

  Now I’m sitting on the white cot in the nurse’s office, waiting for the nurse to come back from wherever she is—because wherever that is, it’s not here where she’s supposed to be. Chlo stands next to me, but I don’t want her to see my face so I’m sitting all bent over with my hands cupped around my forehead, and all I can see of her is her shoes. My eyes are dry now, but my nose is a little runny. My head has died down to a dull throb. There’s still a staple in there somewhere, though.

  Chlo doesn’t say anything—she’s just standing there.

  Because there’s nothing else to look at, I stare at her shoes. Today they’re black leather. Her jeans cover most of them, so I can’t tell if she’s wearing socks.

  She’s so quiet, I can hear what she’s thinking. She’s thinking I probably did something to Alicia, to deserve this stapling.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I tell Chlo. “I just went out to get the stapler, and she got mad because I wouldn’t say ‘please.’”

  At that, Chlo clears her throat. “When I came looking for you,” she says, and her voice is a little shaky, “she was just walking into the classroom, like nothing had happened.”

  “She belongs in a mental institution.”

  “You need to tell somebody what happened.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “God! Why don’t you leave?” I tell her. “Why don’t you go back to class?” There’s a drip forming inside my left nostril, and I sniff without thinking. Then I realize how stupid it sounded, and I wish I’d just let it run down my lip.

  Chlo’s quiet for a minute. When she speaks, she doesn’t sound sorry for me, thank God. She just sounds normal. “You were already having a bad day, huh, Trammel?”

  “No shit.”

  “I’ve noticed that when you have a bad day, everybody around you has to have one, too.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her! I asked her for the stapler, and she hit me with it.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Well, I guess I might have told her instead of asked her. But that’s pretty much it.”