Someone I Wanted to Be

by Aurelia Wills

  His hand in my hair and the name Ashley tangled together. He twisted my hair around his fingers. I couldn’t speak.

  A police cruiser slowed as it passed. Kurt King watched it. He pulled his hand out of my hair and lifted his arm off me. He reached down and started the engine. “Let’s head out.” He moved slowly, delicately, as if trying not to wake someone. He held his cigarette between his teeth and steered with both hands. “We’ll just go on a little drive. Shit. Cop’s still watching. . . .” He slowed at a stop sign.

  Beyond the stop sign, the houses ended and the hills were covered with scrub oak. Pine Avenue turned into a dirt road that wound up into the mountains. The summer before, I’d gone to a keg party up there with Kristy. She went off with a guy and ditched me, and I was stranded with people I didn’t know. She finally came back, completely wasted and hanging on a different guy. I rode back with them even though they were really drunk, and it was terrifying because there are sharp turns on that mountain road where you can’t see what’s coming. . . .

  I opened my car door and jumped out.

  “What the fuck,” he said.

  “Bye. I’m sorry. I got to go. . . .” I waved like an idiot, pulled up my hood, and ran down the sidewalk toward Mr. Zimmerman’s house.

  He did a U-Turn and passed me, slowly, but I had my hood up and was Leah again. I didn’t look. By the time the sound of his engine faded away, it was a dream.

  The next afternoon, when he called, he said, “Guess what, Ashley? I seen your friend. The one, she’s got thick dark hair.”

  “Oh, yeah? What do you think of her?” said the Kristy voice.

  “She’s all right. Big girl. Not as pretty as you, of course. . . .”

  I started giggling, kind of hysterically. I laughed so hard, I was crying.

  Cindy stuck her head into my room. “Who are you talking to?”

  My phone had died.

  It was Monday, the first of May. Anita and I had planned to meet early in front of my building and walk to school together. The craggy mountain stretched threateningly up through the smog into the pale-blue sky, but the air felt fresh. Little plants were growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk.

  Anita and I had now been friends for two weeks. It was one of those cases where you and someone else are instantly friends — there’s no doubt, no mistaking it. My phone was out of minutes, I had no money, and Cindy was keeping her purse in her room. For two days, I’d been just Leah, not Ashley. I spent the whole weekend in bed reading Roald Dahl.

  Anita and I walked along Tenth Avenue and discussed our future careers. She was now pretty certain that she wanted to be an anime illustrator. Acting and screenwriting were both too risky. She kept having major breakthroughs in her art.

  “I could totally see you as a doctor,” she said. “Not a dermatologist, for sure. All those skin conditions are gross. Maybe a family doctor? You’d get to see a lot of different —”

  Kristy’s red Civic pulled to the curb ahead of us.

  Anita and I stopped walking. Kristy’s car whined back to where we stood in front of EZPAWN. The black metal grate was still locked over the glass door.

  Kristy leaned over Corinne’s lap and smiled at me, not at Anita. Her eyes were blank and blue as the morning sky. “Hey, Leah! Hop in. Leah, come on! I’ve got to tell you something.”

  Corinne, whose eyes had glazed over the day before when she passed me in the hallway, smiled sweetly and showed her dimples.

  Fruity perfume poured out of the car. K103 was playing on the radio. Both Kristy and Corinne were wearing short-sleeved sweaters and tight jeans. Their hair looked shiny, and they had put on matching rose-colored blush and lip gloss.

  I stood there stupidly. Anita stood beside me. Her face was locked into a weird frown. She pressed the giant guide to drawing manga against her chest.

  I actually considered saying, “Can Anita come, too?” but one glance at her fringy leather jacket, the studs going up her ear, and her chewed, black-polished fingertips pinching the spine of her book killed that idea. Her black eyeliner curled up the outside corners of her eyes. I’m sorry, Anita. It was a silent little prayer.

  “I’ve got to talk to Kristy. See you later, OK?” I said to her chin.

  “You’re going with Yertle?” she whispered. I pulled open the back door to Kristy’s car and threw myself in. Kristy hit the gas and we sped away.

  It was a sickening kind of relief to be back in Kristy’s car. I didn’t return her smile in the rearview mirror. She started whistling “Teenage Dream.” I pictured Anita walking alone in her leather jacket, hanging on to her book like it was a life preserver, her face tight and serious.

  Kristy continued to watch me in the rearview mirror. “Hey, Leah!”

  I said nothing.

  “Leah, come on. Talk!”

  I stared out the window.

  Kristy turned into the school lot and parked in her regular spot. She unbuckled and curled sideways in the seat with her back to the door.

  “First of all, I am sick to death of Victoria Miller! She’s an annoying, stupid cow. Leah, let’s talk. I’m sorry about what happened over the past couple weeks. Corinne explained to me that you didn’t mean to leave without asking how my mom was. Corinne says you didn’t know my mom went to the hospital. For a long time, it was just hard for me to understand because my dad said he told you. But, anyways! I’ve just been in a really weird head space with my mom and all.”

  Kristy squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She picked out a curl and wound the hair around her finger.

  “I’m sure it’s really difficult for you to understand what it’s like for me because your mom isn’t sick. Your mom just comes home and says, ‘Leah, what do you want for dinner?’ or ‘Leah, let’s go to the mall.’ For me, you know, it’s a little different. Corinne, you understand because your mom had ovarian cancer. When was that, Corinne?” She squinted at Corinne.

  “It was Derrick’s aunt,” said Corinne, crossing her legs. “It was, like, three years ago.”

  “Well, Leah, it’s just really, really hard for me.” Instantly, Kristy’s face was streaming snot and tears. Her nose turned bright red. “My mom is very, very sick. I need you to be there for me.”

  I felt nothing but dull horror. “I’m sorry, Kristy. I didn’t mean to leave without asking. I didn’t know. I thought your mom was asleep when I left. Your dad said they were just making a quick trip to the emergency room.”

  “God, Leah, I forgive you. I forgive you. It’s all right. Here, give me a hug.” She reached between the seats, grabbed my head, and mashed it into her crinkly, green-apple-shampoo hair.

  I started crying, too. “I’m sorry, Kristy.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” said Kristy. “I treated you like shit, like shhhhhhheeeeeit.”

  Suddenly Kristy shoved off me and leaned back against the door. She closed her eyes, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and left a shiny streak. Corinne stared at the dash with a philosophical expression.

  Kristy ran her fingertips under her eyes. “What are you doing hanging out with that weird chick? Anita Sotelo! She is so bizarre. Watch out! It might be catching.”

  “She’s not that bad.” How weak. “She’s smart and she’s pretty nice.”

  “She’s OK,” said Corinne. She flipped open the mirror on the visor and applied more liner. “But her clothes and hair and makeup suck.”

  Kristy widened her eyes. She shrieked. “Leah, check this out! Saturday, Corinne and I went down to Torrance Park for a few hours — sorry we didn’t call you; it was in the middle of that weird head-space thing — and, anyways, guess who we saw on the way home? Mr. Corduroy! He drives a sweet black Mustang. We were driving back on Torrance Avenue, and suddenly he was right next to us. He yells, ‘Pull over, girl! What’s with your phone, sweetheart? Come on, let’s party, girl! Let’s do it! You are so beautiful, baby. . . .’”

  “Really?” I said. My heart banged so hard it almost blocked out her voice. “Weird.”<
br />
  Kristy ran her tongue over her teeth and shook her head. “I’m just like, ‘OK . . .’ You know he’s kind of intense, but he’s so freaking good-looking.”

  “Kristy.” Corinne pinched the bridge of her nose and leaned forward as if she had a sinus headache. “He is so gross. This is bizarre. He’s old! Please don’t.”

  Kristy snorted and rolled her eyes at Corinne. “Bullshit. The dude’s hot. He got pulled over by a cop, so we didn’t see him again. I’m still kind of in trouble and promised my dad I’d be home by ten. That’s the only reason he let me go out.”

  Some lettered jackets appeared by Kristy’s window. A lanky football player named Dwayne Lewis yanked her door open. Kristy screamed and fell laughing into his arms.

  Tuesday. “OK, let’s do this thing,” said Carl Lancaster in his deep, manlike voice. Mrs. McCleary said no one could change lab partners again for the rest of the year. I was stuck with Carl Lancaster. “Where’s your lab book?” he asked.

  “What? This?” I waved my lab book around. I’d lent my first one to Kristy so she could copy my notes, but she never gave it back. I had to buy another from Mrs. McCleary. Cindy was incredibly pissy about it. A kid tripped over an extension cord and knocked over a five-foot-tall stack of old textbooks. I ignored Carl and observed the chaos.

  “Leah. Leah! Look at me. Yes. That is your lab book. OK, let’s open it up to a fresh page. Today is Tuesday, May second. We’re measuring pH in acidic and basic solutions.”

  Kristy was watching Carl. She leaned over and jerked her body as if she were throwing up into her sink.

  “Carl, back off.”

  “Come on, Leah.” He leaned very, very close; I could see his excellent bones and all his distinct freckles. “We’re lab partners. We have to do this together. Your work is going to affect my grade.”

  He was so close I could smell his tangerine breath and his neck. His neck smelled faintly like fresh bread. I could feel warmth rising off of him. I wondered if I stank like cigarettes.

  He studied me with his calm green eyes. Half the people I knew had green eyes. Carl’s were ocean-colored — at least what I imagined the ocean looked like in real life. I never got to see it when we lived in Florida. In my mind, the ocean was green, sparked with little flecks of blue. Carl didn’t look mad, even though I’d blown him off in study hall the day before. He looked at me like he knew something. He looked like he was about to kiss me. Carl Lancaster! I was going to throw up.

  But he didn’t kiss me. He pulled back and looked down at his lab sheet. We put on our goggles. He said in his radio voice, “OK, first we have to label these test tubes. How about you write the labels? First tube: distilled water . . . Second tube: dilute sulfuric acid.”

  Something about his deep, steady voice and the long, slow way he said sulfuric made me relax. I leaned on the chipped lab counter. He put twenty drops of Solution A into the watch glass with a pipette. I moved a little closer to him.

  I lay on my back, staring up at the picture of Damien Rogers and thinking that the muscle in his arm looked like an apple. He would be my boyfriend someday. I skipped lunch sometimes and did sit-ups in the tiny space at the end of my bed, because even if he thought I was beautiful just the way I was, like LaTeisha Morgan was beautiful, and our personalities were an excellent match, I wanted to be thin and look good for Damien. I wanted to look good next to him. It was the only way I could imagine myself with Damien — me being thin. I wanted to be ready.

  I’d corralled Anita into a walled-off section of my mind. She was fine, I told myself. She had Iris and Maria to eat lunch with. I liked her, she was a great kid, but we were destined for different ways of life. I could not spend my high-school years with the members of the Anime Club. I still wanted to be a doctor but did not want to discuss that fact in public. I ignored her stares in the hallway, though sometimes the look on her face haunted me when I was trying to go to sleep. I constantly talked to myself, rationalizing and explaining so that it all made sense, because if I stopped and thought about it, it didn’t make sense at all and it felt terrible, like I was letting something die.

  I found a twenty in one of Cindy’s old purses and bought some minutes. Ten minutes later, my phone vibrated. When I saw who was calling, the phone vibrated all the way through me. I flipped it open and held it to my cheek.

  “Ashley. What happened with your phone? You got to keep in touch, girl.”

  I closed my eyes and became another person. I was like a girl drifting through space. It was like being pure me. Nothing holding me back, no Cindy, no Kristy, no thunder thighs, no puke-green walls or black bars. I could feel his hand in my hair. Had I dreamed that?

  “I ran out of minutes. I can only talk a little while.”

  “Why didn’t you stop the other night when I was trying to talk to you? I ran a red to catch up and got pulled over by the cops. That was a goddamn close call. Girl, you need to —”

  “Sorry, my friend wouldn’t let me stop.”

  “Girl, you keep that phone topped up.”

  “I’m sorry, but sometimes —”

  “I want to be able to get ahold of you. Tonight I want to know how much you weigh.”

  “What? No way. That’s creepy. I’m going now. . . .”

  “Wait. Hold on, Ashley. Come on, little girl. Tell me how much you weigh.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can imagine holding you.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at the clippings on the wall. Damien Rogers weighed 171 pounds in his socks. It said so in the newspaper.

  “Ninety-three pounds.”

  “Ninety-three pounds? That kills my heart. You’re so tiny. You’re such a little girl. So delicate.”

  “I got to go now.”

  “OK, sweetheart. Sweet dreams. How’s your mama?”

  “Not good. Got to go.” I hung up and lay on my back.

  My heart pounded like someone was inside knocking, wanting to be let out. Kristy, Ashley, and I were locked in a tiny room together, and the room was getting smaller.

  I turned off the lights, put in my earbuds, and turned up Kid Cudi. I floated on the darkness.

  The next weekend we didn’t go out. Kristy was grounded because she had a D in language arts, and Corinne had cramps. I didn’t answer Kurt King’s calls; I just listened to his messages. He left six voice mails and eleven texts. He said, “I need to see you, little girl.” He texted: thinkin bout u babe.

  Kristy was bored and kept calling. Saturday night, she rated the boys in our grade. “Carl Lancaster is gross. It’s just weird to like piano that much. He’s barely a two.”

  Sunday night, I was getting calls and texts from Kurt King and texts and calls from Kristy. It stressed me out — sometimes their texts came in at the same time. I was paranoid that somehow their texts or calls would cross in my phone, or I’d hit some kind of reply-all, and suddenly Kristy and Kurt King would be talking to each other. When I finally fell asleep, I had a dream about a phone vibrating and lighting up on a table. I couldn’t answer, and I couldn’t turn it off.

  Monday, we had a lecture in chemistry. I pulled my chair to the farthest end of the table and didn’t look at Carl. I was exhausted. I emptied my head of every thought and feeling and sat there as close to not existing as I could manage. Mrs. McCleary droned on for fifty minutes, but I didn’t hear one word. I would never be a doctor. Every ten minutes or so, Carl turned his head and gazed at me.

  Mrs. McCleary announced that there was a test on Friday. The bell rang. Carl stood up and waited for me to go first.

  In study hall, I sat with my head down on my book, my cheek against the silky, dirty page. All the kids around me stared at their phones.

  That morning, for some stupid reason, I’d said, “Mom, I think I might want to be a doctor.” Cindy smirked at me over the top of her mug, then swigged down her coffee. “Pretty big for your britches, aren’t you, Leah? Pardon me, but I need to go to work.” She grabbed her red leather purse and slammed out the
door.

  I was stupid, I was fat, I was a loser. I lived in a hideous basement apartment that didn’t even have Internet. Nothing I hoped for would come true. Becoming a doctor was a stupid idea, a ridiculous fantasy. That’s what Cindy thought. That’s what almost the whole world thought.

  Across a landscape of heads and tables, I saw Carl sitting alone. He was bent over his textbook. I studied his hair, his neck, and his shoulders.

  Dan Manke shoved his phone in my face. He was playing a video titled Four-Hundred-Pound Woman Pole Dances. “Fat-Ass, check it out — you might have a career after all!”

  The woman looked over her shoulder at the crowd. She was smiling, but her face looked dead. I knocked Dan’s hand away. “Get that shit away from me.”

  “Oooooh. Fat-Ass is feisty today!”

  I stood and picked up my books. I walked across the library to the table where Carl Lancaster was sitting. I didn’t even decide to do it. It was like taking a breath. You just breathe. He looked up, and we looked at each other for what felt like a long time, though it was probably just a few seconds. We just looked at each other. It was weird.

  He waited for me to say something. “Can I sit here, Carl.” It came out like a statement, kind of challenging, as if I was afraid he’d say no.

  He shrugged and waved his hand at the empty chairs across from him. He got back to work.

  “Carl.”

  He raised his face. There was something about the way he looked at me that was unnerving. He looked at me and saw me — he saw all of me, a person, with an inside and an outside, alive all the way through. Almost no one else did. Most people looked and saw their idea of me: fat girl, Chubs, problematic overweight daughter.

  “Carl, why aren’t you in AP chemistry? All your other classes are AP.”

  Carl’s cheeks flushed. He bit the inside of his cheek and squinted over his shoulder at the window. I’d never seen Carl lose his cool before, not even when paper footballs were pinging off the back of his head.