The Substitute

by Nicole Lundrigan

  At that point, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes again. I felt agitated, slightly vertiginous, and I did not want to reveal this to anyone. As the teacher droned on about the thrill of being a scientist, my hazy mind drifted out of the classroom and into a dream. About Button. She was taller and had borrowed my friend’s yellow dress, and every time she swirled, the hem of the fabric hitched on a hidden nail. I ran my fingers along the walls, reaching upwards, crouching down, touching baseboards and trim, but I could not find the offending piece of metal. The dress was being destroyed. Snarl by snarl. I was seething, though as Button spun around and around, she did not seem to notice, did not seem to care.

  From the first day of school, my one and only friend had a target on her back. Circles of red and white, a bull’s eye in the middle. At first, she skillfully ignored the multitude of tiny arrows pinging off the target. Then, gradually, as September came to an end, those slender arrows began to wheedle their way in. Cutting through the fabric of her clothes, through her skin. Pricking her soft heart.

  I took notes inside my mind. Though many taunted her, that biggest bitch had the largest quiver, her arm always drawn back, ready to fire.

  “I don’t understand.” We walked through the drifts of dead leaves on our way home. “What I’ve done.”

  “Ignore that idiot,” I told her. “Ignore them all.”

  “I can do that.” She sniffed, swallowed. “I’ve got practice.”

  “Good. Because being nice won’t change anything.”

  She kicked the leaves, a burst of orange and red and brown flying through the air in front of us.

  “It’s the same, isn’t it? Same here as it was there. No matter where I go in the world. Everything will always be the same. I’ll always be a weirdo. I’ll always be an ugly freak who can’t shut up.”

  I wormed my fingers in through hers. Squeezed her tiny hand. The world is a shitty place, I wanted to tell her. It is so mired in its own filth, it’s unable to see something that is beautiful.

  As each day passed, I did my best to shield her, but I could not watch her every moment. Besides, she insisted, time and time again, not to bother about it. She was fine.

  “Just leave it alone. It’s no big deal. I’m used to it. I’m good. I really am.”

  Okay. Okay.

  And she seemed good. At first. Then gradually, my friend grew more and more silent. Her words, her verbal outbursts, diminishing day by day. She started shrugging and shaking her head. Saying nothing. I soon realized her happiness and her intelligence were a threat to those around her. Especially that one particular girl. She mocked my friend, prodded her, tripped her in the hallway. Wrote lies about her in permanent marker inside bathroom stalls. Pedestrian teenager bully shit. She was attempting to destroy the one person she feared.

  Her name was Amanda Fuller. The stupid slut did not realize I was in the shadows, witnessing each transgression with growing understanding.

  As always, I was patient, cautious, but something happened to push my hand. Near the end of October, I came around the corner and my friend was there. She was wearing her yellow dress again with the long zipper down the back, even though it was too cold for summer clothes. Her brown shoulders were bare and smooth. I imagined she was cold, but I also knew she had very few clothes hanging in her closet. I saw that loser from the wharf was talking to her, with his scarred-up shit face, and my friend was actually smiling. Laughing. I did not trust the congenial appearance of the interaction, and I stopped, hyper-focused.

  “Can you help me?” I heard him say. My ears perked up, as his tone was warm, friendly. “I’m sorry about back awhile. You know, in the summer?”

  “Are you?”

  The blinded crabs.

  “Yeah. It was dumb.”

  “We all make mistakes. It’s just good to learn from them, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s for sure.” Frowning.

  “What do you need help with?”

  “I don’t know. Stuff.”

  “Oh. Okay. Um. Well.” She swung her body from side to side, pulled a strand of hair into her mouth.

  I leaned against the locker and continued my observations. That jerk kept looking behind my friend, as though he were watching something else. I squinted my eyes. I suspected the asshole was up to something, but he was too stupid to do anything on his own. Someone jostled me then, and I twisted my head. A giant girl, her hat pulled down over her eyebrows, was hovering above me. “That’s my locker, dork. Move it.” She was easily six inches taller than me, and I could not see through her.

  “Yeah,” I said, annoyed, but I shifted my body left. Refocused.

  “Okay,” I heard my friend chirp. “I’m happy to help. Thank you for asking me.”

  And then, everything happened in a single moment. An event I had not predicted. Amanda Fucking Fuller was behind her, slamming her in the spine, knocking her forward. I witnessed Amanda’s hands jumping, up, down, up again. Metal teeth ripping open. A sudden flash of fabric, and my best friend’s bright summer dress was crumpled around her feet.

  She stood there. Not moving. A crowd of bubbly scum circling around her. People pointing and gasping and whooping and laughing. For a moment I wondered if she realized she was naked. So much skin, a concave stomach, her white bunched underwear with worn elastic, toothpick legs holding her up. Each rib was visible, as though slender fingers were reaching around, gripping her torso. I saw her chest. An unnatural plumpness there, pale pink nipples. I admit I stared at her. I could not help myself.

  She did not lift her arms to cover her body. Did not grab her dress from the floor. She simply continued to stand there.

  Then I caught her eyes. She looked at me, without a single sound. Her expression just like my sister’s, that afternoon by the pool, as she sought my permission to run away. There was no anger or fear or embarrassment. The only thing I could identify was disappointment. A penetrating disappointment.

  “Hey, squirrel face, you forget your clothes?”

  Finally she gathered the ball of fabric, and rushed out through an emergency door, the alarm whooping. I followed, and found her tucked in between two cars, hauling on her dress. Arms cricking, fixing the zipper behind her. When she was covered, she bolted out into the parking lot, running toward home. I did not know what to say, and I called out the first thing that came to my mind, “In a while, alligator?” but she did not turn. Did not yell out some idiotic phrase about a crocodile. She did not even slow down.

  After school, I knocked on her door. She would not see me. Her mother said she was sick, in bed. “Could be contagious. You don’t want to catch anything.” Days went by, and when I went to her door again, her mother asked me, “Has something happened? Did something happen to her at school?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. No.”

  I could not stop thinking about her expression when she stared at me. I played it over and over again in my mind. Was she disappointed in the shittiness of the world? Or was she disappointed in me? That I had not stepped forward? I had not protected her?

  I decided then that I would act. Sooner than anticipated. I would not stay seated on the deck above, waiting behind dying geraniums, picking splinters from the wood. I would not take small steps. There were no lessons my friend would learn from suffering. I realized that now. And before anything worse happened, I would rush down. Rush down from up above, and control the ending to our story.

  [54]

  He stepped onto the wharf, and when the wooden planks creaked, the girl looked up. “Libby?”

  “Oh hi, Mr. Botts.”

  “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “Well.” Shrugging. “I’m here.”

  “I mean I didn’t expect to see anyone. It’s cold.”

  “Yeah. I come here sometimes. Take the trails through the woods.” She was seated on the edge of the grey wooden plan
ks, her legs dangling over, swinging. “It’s a good place to stop and think.”

  “Am I interrupting you?”

  “No. I can think somewhere else.”

  Warren put up his hands. “No, no. I’ll leave. You stay.”

  “I meant in my head, Mr. Botts. I can talk to you and still think. Just need to shift things around a bit.”

  “Interesting.” He walked to the end of the wharf, sat down beside her. The wood was damp, and a chill moved up through his spine. “I can do that, too. Different things happening on different shelves. But sometimes I give the thinking a rest, and I count instead.”

  “Count? Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Raindrops. Buttons. Snowflakes. The number of steps I take. Stairs. Cupboards. Cracks in the sidewalk.”

  “Like a blind person. Keeping track?”

  “Sort of. But I guess a blind person has a purpose.”

  “Your counting has a purpose, too, Mr. Botts. A blind person might count to understand the world, but you count to distract yourself from it.”

  Warren laughed lightly. “Very smart response. You’re probably right.”

  “Anyway, it gets kind of boring,” she continued. “Thinking all the time. So many ideas no one else would understand.”

  As she spoke, Warren could sense a weight in her tone. A hard sort of sadness. Shifting toward her, he said, “Do you ever think about getting a job? That’s a wonderful distraction, too.”

  “Too young. No one would hire me.”

  “Babysitting?”

  She put her hand over her mouth.

  “Well, you could start your own business.”

  “Seriously, Mr. Botts. I know you’re my mother’s person, and all that, but sometimes your thoughts are a bit off.”

  “Not really,” he said. “I managed it. Just find a job no one else wants, and do that.”

  “Like what.”

  “My first job was Nest Destroyer.” He stuck his index finger in the air. “Hornets, wasps, that sort of thing. I wasn’t afraid and I wasn’t allergic. I didn’t care if I got stung.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I stuck a little filing card up in the supermarket, and these women would drive right up to my house looking for me.”

  “Popular guy.”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “I remember one of the first calls I had. A woman noticed hornets flying in and out of a hole near the roof of her house. She was one of our neighbours, and she said her son was afraid of them, wouldn’t go up and look. Sure enough, I climbed the ladder into her attic, and found an enormous paper nest. It’s kind of a beautiful thing, you know, in its ugliness.”

  “I get you.” Nodding. “That must’ve been a surprise.”

  “No, the surprise was the doorknobs. Dozens and dozens of doorknobs in a pile. Brass, silver, dull metal, gold coloured. New ones and antique ones. Some shiny. Some rusty. Every kind you can imagine.”

  She frowned, tilted her chin. “Doorknobs.”

  “She was embarrassed when I mentioned them. Her son, she said, steals. Can’t help himself, he’s been taken with doorknobs since he was a small boy. She didn’t know he kept them up there.”

  “Strange.”

  “Yes, but I guess he had his rationale.” An icy breeze ruffled Warren’s hair, and he lifted his hand to smooth it. “Maybe he liked them because they opened doors?”

  “Or locked them up.”

  “Good point, Libby. I like the way you think.”

  She nudged him with her elbow. “I was just joking. We are projecting too much intention into his mind. He probably just enjoyed stealing.”

  “Most likely.”

  “Did you manage to get rid of the nest?”

  “Actually, no. She decided to leave it, leave the hornets. They weren’t bothering her, said they were probably doing something good for someone somewhere.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “She told me not to tell on her son, and I never did.”

  “Until now.”

  Nodding. “Yes, until now. But I suspect you are a trustworthy person.”

  “Ha! That’s a weird story, Mr. Botts. Weird kind of funny.”

  “But that’s what makes life interesting, isn’t it? Everyone is different. Experiencing the world in different ways.”

  “I guess so.” She sighed, knocked her sneakers against the swollen wood beneath her feet.

  “Everything okay, Lib?”

  He waited, counted to forty-one before she spoke.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes things never turn out the way you imagine they might.”

  “Are you arguing with your mom?”

  “Always. But it’s not that.”

  He spoke gently. “What, then?”

  “Sometimes I feel alone. That sounds lame to say, I know.”

  “No, not lame at all.”

  “I’m just getting tired of it, Mr. Botts.”

  “I understand. It’s not easy being your age. I remember it. And then you lost your friend this year.”

  “My friend?”

  “Amanda. It takes time. To process.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. You’re right. I lost my friend.”

  The cold burned his ears, his eyes. Warren blinked, said, “My father died, too.”

  “He did?”

  “Not like yours, you know, after an illness like that, but he still died.”

  She bit her lip, lowered her head. “Mmm.”

  “I don’t want to upset you by talking about it. Your mom told me. About the complications with lupus. You were young. I know.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Though I don’t think it matters how, does it?”

  “No. You’re probably right. In the long run, an end is still an end. Though it mattered to me at the time.”

  “How did he die? Your dad.”

  “At home.” Warren coughed. “He. He hanged himself.” Warren had never said those words before, and his throat was suddenly powdery dry.

  “Wow, Mr. Botts. I never knew.”

  “How could you know? I was a little younger than you are now. I will never forget how lonely I was.”

  “And then with Amanda. You know. Hanging herself like that. No wonder you’re acting a bit buggy.”

  He pressed his glasses onto his face. Felt cold plastic against the bridge of his nose. “Have I been acting buggy?”

  “I don’t know. Buggy-er might be a better word. You were a bit buggy to begin with.”

  He laughed again. “Libby?”

  “Yes, Mr. Botts?”

  “I think I might be leaving.”

  “What do you mean, leaving?”

  “I mean going back to my old job. At the university. Continuing my research.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t decided. I need to talk to your mother about it. But if I do, I’ll come back. I will. She means a lot to me.”

  “She does?”

  “Yeah.”

  Libby frowned. “Why?”

  Warren looked out over the lake. Even with the breeze, the water was mostly still, except for the occasional bubble that emerged from the depths, burped through the surface. They were pleasingly random, impossible to time.

  He did not know how to respond. He did not even know if his statement was entirely accurate. A woman named Nora did mean a lot to him, but he had a developing suspicion the Nora he adored only existed inside his mind.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Botts. Sometimes it’s hard to put things into words. And it’s what you do that matters. Not what you say.” She tucked her hands into her armpits, shivered. “Words are easy to fake.”

  “Do you want these?” He said, wriggling his fingers.

  She nodded, and he slid his hands out of the wool gl
oves, handed them to her.

  “You can keep them. I have another pair.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Botts.”

  “It’s okay if you call me Warren.”

  “That’s all right. I’m already used to calling you Mr. Botts.”

  “That’s good too.”

  She stood up, shook her arms. “I got to go. Homework.”

  Warren smiled. “I understand.”

  Then, rolling her eyes, “Yeah, you’ve met my mother.”

  “Can you not tell her I’m leaving? I should tell her myself.”

  “It’s for certain, then?”

  “I think so.”

  Warren watched as Libby stood up, walked off the wharf, up over the embankment. She paused there in the tall yellow grass, but did not turn to look at him. She just stood there with her head lowered. Perhaps it was the bend in her narrow shoulders that reminded him of himself when he was a boy. He remembered standing in the neighbour’s field hours after his father died. The dried wheat, like skinny fingers, scratching the bare skin on his legs. Everything seemed so small, the house, the car. In miniature. And he had the sensation that he could scoop everything up in his palm, his entire life, and if he closed his fingers around it, it would disappear inside his fist.

  Though, when he reflected on that moment, it was not the distorted appearance of his surroundings that he remembered most. It was a soreness tucked in behind his ribs. That warm, dry afternoon, as unseen cicadas called for their mates, he had the acute sense he was unloved. Or perhaps unlovable. Which was even worse.

  When he returned home, the air smelled like a beach. Salty water, seaweed washed ashore, bloated fish. When he opened the front door to his house, he felt cold air moving through, as though the back wall had vanished. He paused, heard the sound of filters straining to function without water. Warren’s heart began to strike, and he rushed toward the kitchen, slipped on the skin of water pressing against the door jamb. Pain shot through his hip, and his left leg kicked outwards, leather shoe sliding through the debris. Shards of glass, sand, neon gravel, slimy clumps of green, a ceramic pirate’s ship broken into pieces. And dozens and dozens of tiny fish. Lying on their sides. Still and silent.