Someone I Wanted to Be

by Aurelia Wills

  Mrs. Baker was dying and maybe actually dead. Her heart might have stopped. They might have taken her off a respirator. My throat throbbed. I forced the thought of Mrs. Baker out of my mind and considered instead my complicated love life — I was still pretty much in love with Damien Rogers, but the memory of Kurt King’s scratchy voice made me woozy. He was calling later. The windows of the 7-Eleven, the Safeway, the check-cashing place, the car wash, and EZPAWN all shone like gold in the morning sun.

  On the corner of Santa Fe Street and Tenth Avenue, a lilac bush covered with cones of tiny purple flowers hung over the sidewalk. The air reeked of lilacs. Every spring, Kelsey Parker and her friends walked to school with armfuls of lilacs like they were beauty queens in a pageant. I had never walked to school with an armful of lilacs before. I reached into the bush and twisted off a branch. I walked the rest of the way with my mouth buried in cool, purple flowers.

  I left the flowers on the steps as a memorial to Mrs. Baker. Above the doors stretched a new red-and-white Coke banner with WEST HIGH SCHOOL in small white letters. I climbed the rest of the steps and entered the building at ten after eight. Duct tape covered a new sunburst of cracks in the front window.

  I said good morning to the cop who stood by the door all day with a Taser, club, and gun strapped under his belly. He was heavily armed but a sweet old guy who’d never squash a fly. The back of his spotted, bald head flattened into his neck; the kids called him the Iguana. “Good morning, Sergeant Motts.”

  “Morning, Leah,” he said in a low croaky voice; he’d smoked way too many cigarettes. I walked into the office and waited for the office lady to look up.

  “I need a pass, please. My ride didn’t show.” I was calm and sad. Soon my role in the tragedy would be revealed.

  “Can a parent or guardian vouch for that?” The office lady drew her eyebrows on with an orange pencil. She wore silver and turquoise bracelets on her skinny freckled arms.

  “My mom’s at work. I can only call if it’s an emergency.” I tried to be patient with this old lady; she didn’t realize that I was part of something bigger than her little day.

  She rolled her chair to the computer. “Who was supposed to be your ride?”

  “Kristy Baker.” I tried to assume an appropriate solemn expression. The only dead people I’d known were my aunt Peg, whom I’d met once, and my dad, but I was two years old when he died.

  She scrolled down the screen. “Kristy Baker is not absent today. You, not Kristy Baker, are responsible for getting yourself to school on time.” She scribbled on a pad. “Here’s your pass. Automatic detention after school.”

  I got to my locker just as the bell rang. Kids burst out the doors and flooded the hallway. Kristy, Corinne, and a girl named Victoria pushed through the crowd without looking at me. Kristy’s arm was hooked through Victoria’s. Two days before, Kristy had said that Victoria Miller was an incredibly stupid, diseased skank.

  Corinne hung on to Kristy’s shoulder with one hand. When they were farther down the hall, Corinne looked back and mouthed, “Call me.”

  In chemistry, second period, Victoria sat in my seat next to Kristy. Mrs. McCleary called me to the front. She blinked slowly like a cow and explained that she’d decided to switch a few lab partners around. I would be working with Carl Lancaster.

  I walked to my new seat with humiliating flames on my cheeks. Some guy said, “Porker,” as I passed him. Lard-Ass, Porker, Cow, Fat Pig. It usually sounded like the chirping of crickets, but that morning it felt like a sharp blade aimed and thrown hard.

  “Hello, Leah,” Carl Lancaster whispered. “I’m glad we get to work together.” Mrs. McCleary was fiddling with the laptop and overhead projector, trying to get them to work.

  “Whatever.”

  Carl had what Cindy called excellent bone structure. His cheekbones were covered with a mash of light-brown freckles and a little acne. He had thick, brushy hair the color of an old penny. His breath smelled like tangerines.

  He glanced at Mrs. McCleary. She bent over, checking plugs and swearing under her breath. He said, “Our sink doesn’t work, but Andrew and Kevin said that we were welcome to use their sink when we need to.” The laminated LAB SAFETY poster behind him had holes in it from being splattered with acid. Carl leaned over to get a pen out of his backpack and poked me in the boob with his elbow. He closed his eyes and said in his low voice, “Oh God. Pardon me.”

  We were starting a new section in chemistry : Acids, Bases, and Solutions. Mrs. McCleary dimmed the lights and turned on the overhead. “OK, heads up, key vocab for this section: Solution. Solute. Solvent. Solubility. Insoluble. Can anyone give me a clear working definition of the term solution?”

  Carl glanced around the room, waited ten seconds, then raised his hand.

  “Carl!”

  “A solution is a homogeneous mixture of . . .” Carl leaned forward and answered Mrs. McCleary in his deep man voice. He was famous around the school. In December, he’d played classical music on the school piano at an assembly for a South Korean official. No one had forgotten or forgiven him, and people still tripped him in the hallways. At least once a day, a little paper football ricocheted off his back or neck.

  Just then a paper football flew across the room and hit him in the shoulder. He didn’t flinch.

  “Carl, can you tell us the definition of solute?”

  “Yeah. A solute is the substance that gets dissolved. . . .”

  I looked back. Kristy and Victoria Miller slouched on their stools and stared at me.

  My favorite teacher — everyone’s favorite teacher, Mr. Calvino, language arts — was even more depressed than usual. He was young and would have been good-looking except for the black pits from insomnia under his eyes. He was addicted to Diet Coke. Though he never said it out loud, I suspected he cursed himself for having left New Jersey.

  For the first few minutes of class, he sat on the edge of his desk and stared out the window at the mountain. Suddenly, he clapped and scared the crap out of us. “So, kids! What standards do you think we should meet today? Any competencies you feel like working on?”

  LaTeisha Morgan laughed from her front-row seat. “Mr. Calvino, you’re a trip.”

  He shook the Diet Coke cans on his desk until he found one that swished. He tipped back his head and poured the brown liquid straight down his throat.

  Mr. Calvino wiped soda off his chin. “OK,” he said. “Let’s get started. First, did anyone do the extra-credit assignment? Just one page, imagining your life in ten years, your educational and career paths, relationships, travels, technological changes, shifts in society? It was worth ten points! Anyone? LaTeisha? Wonderful! Leah?” I shook my head.

  LaTeisha and I were Mr. Calvino’s best students. We were the only ones who paid attention. LaTeisha should have been in AP. She was even bigger than me, but she didn’t seem to know it. She moved around like a queen. She had straightened hair with bangs, dark eyes and skin that glowed with vitamins and happiness, and a huge, fantastic smile. She wore shiny red lip gloss. Her dad was a minister, and she was Ray Ramirez’s longtime girlfriend. They got dressed up and went to church together.

  Mr. Calvino liked LaTeisha for obvious reasons, and for some reason, he liked me. He would look for me in the crowd of faces. He’d smile when he handed back my papers. He’d gaze at me in the middle of class, shake his head, and say, “Leah, you belong in AP.” Me and LaTeisha. LaTeisha was moving up the next year, but Cindy wouldn’t let me. She said, “Don’t fly too high. You’ll crash. It’s better to get good grades in normal classes.” I was also the only kid in the school without a smartphone or Internet — Cindy wouldn’t pay for them, and Cindy wouldn’t let me get a job until I turned sixteen. Cindy was deranged.

  On the way out of the room, I stopped at Mr. Calvino’s bookshelf, his famous lending library. He’d been called in front of the school board twice by Christian parent groups because he lent out books about being gay. He lent out all kinds of books, not just fi
ction, because he said literature was about the world and being alive. I’d borrowed a couple books from him about becoming a doctor.

  There were new books on the top shelf, but the titles blurred. “Go on, Leah. Take something,” he said behind me.

  “Nah.” I didn’t look back and walked out of the room.

  I hadn’t been feeling very well. I couldn’t concentrate. I forced myself through my homework but, other than that, only felt like reading magazines and little-kid books. Simple things you could read in a kind of daze and not have to think or feel. How to lose ten pounds in four days on a raw-food diet. The hairstyle that is best for your face shape. What kind of personality do you have? Little House on the Prairie. Ma and Pa and poor blind Mary and Laura and Carrie, and Farmer Boy and all the cakes and pies and fried chicken Almanzo ate. I was apparently regressing. Not AP material, after all.

  After third period, it was time for lunch.

  I stood by the pop machine at the edge of the cafeteria. The windowless room was lit by long, thin rectangles of fluorescent lights. It was a sea of chewing, talking faces. There were a couple of tables of black kids, a third of the tables were Mexican kids, and the rest were white. With a few exceptions, each group sat together. At each table, everyone wore the same shoes, jeans, jackets, had the same hair and the same expressions on their faces. Everybody laughed on cue, especially if someone was being made fun of. The tables were like petri dishes of almost-indistinguishable bacteria.

  The saddest thing about the cafeteria was that you pretty much knew where someone would be in five years just by their lunch table: jail, working at Walmart or the auto-parts store, community college, their parents’ basement, state college, residential treatment for the fourth time, alone with two babies in a dirty apartment, private college, potentially Ivy League. The potentially Ivy League kids never ate school lunches. They brought homemade granola and Italian ham on focaccia in reusable lunch bags.

  Victoria sat in my place at our table. A state-college table. Kristy and Victoria smushed their heads together and took pictures with Kristy’s phone. I felt disoriented, like a planet that had been rudely kicked out of its solar system. I had a very brief fantasy of calling Cindy and saying, “I feel sick. Can you pick me up, Mom?”

  LaTeisha Morgan would have let me sit at her table, where all the black girls sat, but it would have been too pathetic to ask. Especially since all the seats were taken. The girls laughed, stuffed their mouths with french fries, and played with their phones. LaTeisha smiled like a tolerant camp counselor, probably daydreaming about getting into Stanford. Ray Ramirez stopped by with his tray and kissed her cheek. The other girls squealed and beamed up at him. Ray looked like a tall Bruno Mars. His clothes were always ironed, his shirt tucked in. His dad was on city council and running for mayor. His big brother went to Boston College.

  Kelsey Parker and her best friends — Kaylee, Brianna, Maya, and Alexis — arrived at the double doors. The five girls dressed identically in suede boots, black leggings, and black fleece jackets. Each had a blanket of long highlighted hair she’d curled that morning. They kicked two nerdy girls off a table and sat down with their phones, all of which had matching striped purple cases. Expensive private college.

  I became self-conscious just standing there all alone, so I got in line. The pushing and shoving, the roaring voices, the smells of deodorant, acne cream, BO, aftershave, conditioner, and the heat from all the bodies almost made me throw up. The cafeteria lady snapped at me because I didn’t hear when she asked if I wanted nachos or pizza. I was distracted by the black hairs growing above her upper lip — they also made me want to throw up. I bought nachos with extra cheese sauce and two chocolate milks and carried my tray to the end of a nearly empty nerd table.

  Down from me, the tall, skinny guy known as Stork and his only friend, a boy with bright-red cheeks and a big stomach, hunched over their trays. Jamie Lopez sat down by himself at the end. Jamie had dark-blue eyes and caramel skin, and was by far the best-looking guy in our grade. He had shaggy, dyed-black emo hair and wore thick eyeliner. He’d been lifting weights and kept his arms curled like a boxer’s. He was the only kid in our school who admitted that he was gay, and he’d been jumped six times.

  I stared down at the greasy chips soaked in shiny yellow goo. It had started as a good day. I’d had a dream about Damien Rogers. The night before, I’d talked for fifteen minutes on the phone with a guy. On Saturday, Cindy had taken me to Marshalls and bought me three tops and a pair of jeans.

  That morning as I pulled on my new top, I’d felt hopeful, as if good things were possible because of my new shirt. The week before, Kristy had worn the same shirt in a different color, but it didn’t work on her — she was too skinny. The lacy neckline looked good on me, and the deep-blue color made me look thinner. I breathed in the brand-new chemical smell. Thrift store clothes smelled different — weird, like other people’s gross laundry.

  I was choking on a chip and coughing when Stork got up and stood next to me. Stork had freakishly long skinny legs. My eyes were level with a black belt pulled tightly through the belt loops of rumpled brown corduroys. He held out an unopened container of juice. His thumbnail was chewed halfway down.

  “Do you want this?” he said. “I’m not going to drink it, if you want it.”

  Usually, I would have looked up and smiled. I’d have said, “No, thanks.” Or I would have taken it just to be nice. But instead, I finished coughing and stared across the table. “No, Stork. Get away from me.”

  The person next to me vanished. And after a moment of shock, the shock of being a total jerk, I felt even worse, like I was full of broken ribs that were cutting into my heart. I forced myself to look over — Stork and his friend were carrying their trays to another table. Jamie Lopez considered me, picked up his tray, and headed for the garbage cans. There was a long stretch of shredded lettuce, wrappers, and milk puddles. I was sitting alone at an empty table in the middle of fourth-period lunch. Kelsey Parker and her friends were two tables over.

  I began sweating on my forehead and in my armpits, and got chills up and down my back. My vision got fuzzy. I thought I’d lose consciousness when something black moved into my field of vision.

  A girl wearing a black leather jacket stood holding her tray. We’d ridden the same bus before Kristy started driving. The girl said, “OK if my friends and I sit with you?” She was followed by two thin girls dressed in black.

  “I don’t care.”

  The three girls sat down. I started to breathe again; my skin dried up; the buzzing went away. The cafeteria slowly came back into focus. The girl across from me had long hair dyed black, bangs that were cut in an angle across her eyes. She’d lined her eyes in black and wore three shades of purple shadow. She had a sharp, tan face. She looked at me and didn’t smile, but not in an unfriendly way. We didn’t have any classes togther but I knew her name was Anita Sotelo.

  She shoved her tray into the middle of the table, opened a sketch pad, and hunched over it. As she drew, she held her bangs away from her face. The bell rang and I stood up with my tray. “You didn’t even touch your lunch.”

  She looked up at me with calm brown eyes. “It’s slop. Anyway, I’m vegan. If you want it, help yourself. I practically get it for free.”

  I walked away without answering. She was the only person I’d ever heard admit that they got a reduced-price lunch.

  My last period was study hall in the library. I sat at a table and opened my chemistry text to the chapter “Acids, Bases, and Solutions.” We were having our first quiz on Thursday. I couldn’t concentrate. The words, formulas, and equations dissolved into black squiggles.

  Across the room, Carl Lancaster sat alone at the end of a table. He leaned over his books and took notes in a notebook. Carl always wore cotton shirts that buttoned down the front, open at the throat, with button-down collars, very preppy. He had a pretty nice throat for a geek. Muscular, like a wrestler’s throat.

  I watched him
for a long time. I picked up my books, walked over, and stood there.

  Finally he looked up, startled, then not startled. He waited.

  “Carl, can you explain the difference between molarity and molality? I’m sorry, but my brain’s not working. . . .”

  “Have a seat. It’s really simple, Leah.”

  I sat down across from him.

  After study hall, I had detention. Mr. Balke, the teacher on duty, ignored us and graded math tests. He scratched his scalp through his thin, frizzy hair as he stared with disgust at a test. He shoved his aviator glasses up with his thumb and madly marked the paper with a red pen. He wore a baggy gray sweater so big that the shoulders hung down to his elbows.

  When I got tired of observing Mr. Balke, I doodled in my notebook. I wrote Kristy is a bitch fifty-eight times. I wrote D and L in different styles of handwriting. Very, very small, I wrote the name Kurt King. It sounded like the name of an actor.

  Mr. Balke suddenly thundered, “Go home, future leaders of America!” Everyone jerked up from the desktops where they’d been sleeping or playing with their phones. Dan Manke yawned, lifted his leg, and farted.

  Mr. Balke raised his eyebrows and smiled as if we’d lived up to his expectations. He put his hands behind his head and his feet up on the desk. He was wearing cheesy red-striped athletic shoes. As we filed out, he said good-bye to each of us by name. “Good afternoon, Mr. Manke. Good afternoon, Miss Lobermeir. . . .”

  Stork, Carl Lancaster, and a few other boys were standing outside the biology room. Science Club had just let out. Stork was talking excitedly, but Carl Lancaster wasn’t listening. He watched me walk down the hall.

  I left the building at the same time as Dan Manke. Dan Manke had a flat freckled face and wore a cowboy hat and boots every day. He lived in Mountain View Estates and had never ridden a horse, as far as I knew.