Someone I Wanted to Be

by Aurelia Wills

  “Sorry to hear it. I have to go.” His face was in shadow. We were between the brick wall and the chain-link fence, and it was late and dark, and it had gotten cold. The darkness felt thick and heavy, like something I’d have to fight to get through.

  He stepped toward me. He breathed on my forehead, and his hands touched my hair. No one in my whole life had ever touched me that gently. My nose brushed his chest, and I could smell him. It was like life had snatched me up and thrown me into a boiling river.

  “You got to tell me a secret,” he said into my hair. “Fair is fair.”

  I had so many secrets. My mother got drunk on wine every night. I lived in a crappy little apartment. My dad was dead. I weighed 182 pounds. I was in love with Damien Rogers. I both loved and hated Kristy. I disliked lots of people but I hardly ever showed it. I usually smiled. I didn’t have Internet access. I missed Anita Sotelo. I loved Dr. Seuss. I wanted to be a doctor.

  I closed my eyes. Kurt King was rocking me back and forth like we were dancing.

  “I want to know where she lives.”

  Kristy, Kristy, Kristy. It always came back to Kristy. She was like a radioactive substance that had contaminated the entire world.

  I pulled away. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Why don’t you just tell me? I know you know.” A chunk of streaked bangs hung between his eyes and made him look crazy and cross-eyed. “Man, don’t take offense that I’m into her. She’s a beautiful girl. I even got her on my phone.”

  He pulled a cell phone out of his front pocket. He had a cheap flip phone just like mine. He opened it, the screen lit up, and there was Kristy, one inch tall, standing under a streetlight in the parking lot at Torrance Park. She was wearing her pink spaghetti-strap tank. Her hair swirled in a crazy white cloud around her.

  I touched the screen. There was tiny Kristy lit up with electricity. “You have her picture.”

  He snapped the phone shut. “The girl just does something for me.” He ran his hand over my side and pinched my stomach. “Just like your boyfriend’s into fat girls.”

  My face felt icy, then boiling hot.

  “You’re a creep.”

  He spit over his shoulder and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Whatever you say, fat girl.” He shook back his bangs and reached for my arm. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride.”

  I jerked away. I ran with my arms tight across my chest. After two blocks, I had to quit — my lungs burned and I couldn’t breathe. Every block, I stopped and turned back to see if he was following, but there were just lights, parked cars, empty streets, and shadows. He never even asked me my name.

  The only sound in the building was the sizzle from the fluorescent tube lights. The door to #3 was ajar.

  The lights were blazing. Mrs. Martin and Cindy sat together on the couch with their knees touching. They looked up at me.

  Mrs. Martin got to her feet. “I’ll go and let you two work this out.”

  “Thank you for your concern, Frances.” Cindy blew her nose.

  Mrs. Martin walked out of the apartment without giving me another glance.

  Cindy had a long red crease on her left cheek, and her makeup was smudged in grainy streaks under her bloodshot eyes. Her hair bunched on one side. The living room reeked like wine. “Close the door. Lock it,” she said through her teeth.

  I mechanically turned around, pushed the door shut, and rotated the dead bolt. The lines in the fake wood were too even, too regular. It looked so phony.

  “Turn around! Look at me!” She stumbled to her feet, her hands in fists, and screamed in a whisper, “Where were you?”

  “I was on a walk.”

  The crazier she acted, the more numb I felt. When my face got vacant and expressionless, she became even more psychotic.

  “I am so embarrassed.” She cupped both hands over her face and swayed. Her robe came open. She was wearing a black T-shirt and purple underwear. She had such skinny legs, such pointy, bony knees. “You left the door unlocked! Mrs. Martin came in and woke me up. I have never been so humiliated! Where were you?”

  “Nowhere. I went on a walk.”

  “You went on a walk? Bullshit! Were you drinking? Were you smoking pot? I want to smell your breath!” She tried to tie her robe, but her hands were shaking too badly.

  “Mom, I was walking! I wanted to clear my head, so I went on a walk.”

  “A walk at eleven thirty at night? I never heard such crap!” She staggered and hiccuped a sob like Jimmy did when he was exhausted. “I called three times and you didn’t pick up! Who were you with? Are you slutting around? Were you meeting a boy?”

  “No!”

  “You could be killed! You could be raped or murdered. Give me your phone! You are under house arrest!” The people in the apartment above ours banged on their floor.

  “No way.”

  “You are grounded for two weeks! Two weeks! And I promise that I will be calling on the hour to make sure that you are here. Now give me your phone! It’s confiscated!” She lunged at me, her eyes blazing and insane, and snatched at my phone. “Give me your phone! I am the parent! I am in charge here!”

  She was not in charge, and there was no way in hell that I was going to let her see the texts from Kurt King. And find out about Ashley. I jumped over the coffee table, ran into my room, slammed the door shut, and locked it. She hammered on the door. “Leah, open this door! Open this door!” The door wobbled against its loose hinges. It was hollow and already splintered at the bottom from a kick. She was gone for a minute, then hit the door with what sounded like a saucepan.

  “Don’t you defy me!” she shrieked. Bang, bang, bang went the ceiling.

  She whapped the door a few more times, then leaned against it and cried. I sat against the bottom of the door and listened to her. After a few minutes, she moaned, “Oh . . . the hell with it.” She shuffled across the hall. Her door shut.

  My phone blinked with messages. I turned it off and sat on the end of my bed like I was waiting for a bus, listening for the total silence that meant Cindy was passed out. It took forty-five minutes, during which I barely moved. My head crackled with static.

  I snuck out of my room and then out of the apartment, up the stairs, and back down the orange carpet under the fluorescent lights, past Mrs. Martin’s door, and out through the entryway, where someone had dumped a hundred flyers for a pizza company.

  In the dark parking lot, I wedged the phone under the rear tire of a red truck. I knew the owner left for work at six. He’d run over my phone and destroy it. The calls and texts from Kurt King would stop, and no one would ever find out what I’d done.

  I opened Cindy’s door. She was asleep on her back with her legs bare, but I didn’t go and cover her. I fell asleep in my clothes with my head buried under pillows.

  It was all over. My phone was mashed into black plastic shards and wires in the Belmont Manor parking lot on Tuesday morning. That night I’d tell Cindy, “Mom, I accidentally dropped my phone in the parking lot and it got run over.” She’d be pissy about it, but she wouldn’t be able to read my texts, and I would never have to talk to Mr. Corduroy again.

  In second period, Carl Lancaster was waiting for me. I brushed past him, dumped my books on the lab table. “Carl, I don’t get this lab at all and I’m tired. Can you just do it?” He stood quietly, waiting for me to look at him, but I stared at the floor.

  “It’s really easy, Leah. It’s just a titration.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just really tired.”

  “Sure,” he said finally. He did the lab and explained what he was doing, and I wrote down what he told me to. I didn’t learn a thing, but it was restful — it was very peaceful, sitting nearby while Carl Lancaster worked. “Done,” he said.

  “Thanks, Carl.” I dropped my lab report, we both bent down to pick it up, and our hands and heads touched. We stood up and didn’t look at each other. Kristy made a noise and wiggled her tongue at us.

  At the end of class,
Kristy skipped out, cackling with Victoria Miller. Carl said, “I’m going this way, anyway,” and began walking with to me to language arts. I knew his next class was in the opposite direction. I didn’t look at him but felt him beside me. It felt like pressure building up, a chemical reaction, something about to explode.

  I stopped in the middle of the hallway. “What are you doing, Carl? No.” I stared straight ahead until I felt him disappear.

  I walked the rest of the way alone, pushed, jostled, my insides burning and hollow, and whispered to Carl inside my head. I’m sorry, Carl. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just can’t do this.

  I sat down in language arts. Dan Manke breathed into my hair with his chewing-tobacco breath. “Saw you in the hallway with Lancaster. Ooooh, Fat-Ass has a boyfriend.”

  Mr. Calvino read an excerpt of The Odyssey out loud. He read slowly, pausing and stretching out words, like he’d fallen into the story and we weren’t even there. He looked up and found thirty kids staring at him like he was insane. Only LaTeisha and I didn’t stare. I fiddled with my pencil.

  “Oh, my apologies,” he said. “I got a little carried away by the language. Let me check my pacing guide and see what my instructional best practice should be.”

  Mr. Calvino jumped off his desk, and his striped oxford shirt came untucked from his orange pants. He popped open a Diet Coke. He guzzled the entire can, and his huge New Jersey Adam’s apple bobbed up and down on his unshaven neck.

  He swung around and raised his fist. “That was a literacy event, kids. An act of literacy, as the Colorado Board of Education likes to phrase it!”

  “You’re so cute, Mr. Calvino,” said LaTeisha. “Can I read the class my favorite passage? It’s from Book Twenty-Three, when Penelope and Odysseus reunite after twenty years, but she doesn’t recognize him at first because he looks so nasty.” Mr. Calvino was giving us thirty extra-credit points for reading the whole book.

  “Yes, LaTeisha! Bless you, LaTeisha. Yes, please read.”

  LaTeisha serenely smiled as she paged through her text. She had dozens of Post-it notes stuck between the pages and an emerald chip on a gold band on her ring finger.

  Before lunch, I stood with Kristy at her locker. It felt like a hundred years since I last saw her, but it was only Tuesday and yesterday had been Monday, and that was the day Kristy’s mom unzipped her PJs and showed me her scar, and that was the day that Kristy drove to Damien Rogers’s house and screamed that I wanted his body, and the same day I met Kurt King in the parking lot of 7-Eleven at 10:45, but that was like a dream.

  It was like a dream, except that he had her picture on his phone. It was a picture from the night she wore her tank top and no jacket, even though it was cold. Every time he turned on his phone, he saw Kristy.

  I lifted a tangled curl of Kristy’s hair. “You’re getting a rat’s nest.”

  “God, don’t touch me.” Kristy jerked away and smoothed her hair. It was flat and snarled. Since I’d seen her the day before, she’d painted her fingernails a bright metallic blue and put on thick blue eyeliner that made her eyes look even smaller. She had purple rings under her eyes. Her face looked skinny and her nose even bigger than usual. Her camisole was inside out.

  “My God, just look at them.” Kristy squinted across the hall. “He’s using her. If he really liked her, he’d ask her to be his girlfriend.”

  Corinne stood with her head tipped back as she smiled up into Jason Coulter’s sunburned face. He had a long scrape on his arm from the last baseball game. The video shot of him sliding into home plate had played on the school’s daily news show in a repeating loop both mornings that week.

  The crowd in the hallway suddenly opened up. Kelsey Parker and her friends made their way through the mob.

  Kristy stiffened. Her chest and neck got splotchy. “Hey, Kelsey,” she said, waving her little hand.

  Kelsey glanced at Kristy. “Skank,” she said, and continued with her friends down the hall.

  “Wow, I wonder what’s up with her. Hope everything’s OK. She’s usually so sweet.” Kristy tore at the lacy neckline of her camisole and stared after Kelsey and her friends.

  “Are you kidding? She’s always like that.”

  “Not to me, bitch. She and I are actually pretty close.” Kristy yanked open her locker door and all her stuff slid onto the floor. She crouched down and picked up a folder. “Damn it! Could you help?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But I don’t want to be late for lunch. They ran out of pizza yesterday.” I set down my books, tugged up the back of my jeans, knelt, and started packing the stuff back in. Kristy stood up.

  “Kristy, I’m not doing this all by myself.” I picked up purple pens, broken pencils, notebooks with glittery covers, the backs scribbled on in purple pen in her huge, messy handwriting. She dotted her i’s with circles, sometimes hearts. Candy wrappers, candy-flavored lip gloss, a pink comb, hair bands, a bottle of dried-up green nail polish. It was all little-kid junk.

  “Quit looking through my shit!” said Kristy. She glared at Corinne and Jason Coulter. Jason bent over Corinne, who was pressed against the lockers. “Jesus, get a room!”

  “Come on, Kristy, leave them alone. I closed her locker door and stood up with my books. “You’re welcome.”

  Corinne pulled herself out from under Jason and trotted over with her hands folded under her chin. She joyfully clicked her nails together. “He wants me to go to his game a week from tomorrow and then we’ll hang out afterward. I’ll probably be able to go!”

  “Great. Fantastic. Wonderful for you, Corinne.” Kristy turned, unsmiling.

  Corinne immediately adopted a serious expression, though her face was still rosy with happiness. “Kristy, is everything OK? You look really tired. How’s your mom?”

  Kristy coughed, opened her locker door, then kicked it shut. “Not great, Corinne. Not great. They put her on more pain meds, and now she’s doing really inappropriate behavior. I’m like, Mom, I know you’re really sick and everything, but could you please try to keep it together when my friends are around?”

  I dropped my head down. “Yeah, yesterday when I was over, Kristy’s mom unzipped her pajamas and showed me her surgery scar. It goes from here to here.” I put one hand on my neck and the other on my stomach. “It looks really painful. . . .”

  “Why are you lying, you dumb fat bitch?” Kristy stared at me.

  Keeping her eyes on me, she said, “Don’t listen to Chubs, Corinne. For whatever reason, maybe because she has such a boring life, Leah loves making up stories. But she doesn’t bother to stick around and see if my mom is OK when she goes to the emergency room. That shit is sick, Leah.”

  There was a tile missing next to my foot. Gravel, hair, and the shreds from the edges of notebook paper were stuck to the dirty adhesive. Heat spread over my body. My face felt like it was boiling. But what could I say? The scrawny little bitch’s mom was dying, and this was my punishment for pretending to be a skinny girl with long blond hair. Kristy shoved her face into mine. She obviously hadn’t brushed her teeth because her breath was terrible. “Keep away from my mom,” she said. She took off at a jog down the hall.

  Corinne covered her face with both hands. “God, she’s so crazy! Can’t we have one day of peace? Leah, she’s losing her mind. I just feel so sorry for her. . . .” She gave me a hug and trotted after Kristy.

  “I’ll talk to her!” she called over her shoulder.

  Kristy was just turning the corner with her hair flying. She yelled, “We’ll save you lots of pizza, Fatty!” Corinne caught up with her, and they disappeared.

  I stood as if paralyzed and studied the cover of my notebook until everyone in the hallway was gone. A fluorescent tube sizzled and popped over my head, and the light went out.

  The assistant principal came winging around the corner and blew his whistle. “What are you doing in the hall? You’re either supposed to be in class or at lunch.” He stared up at the ceiling. “When did that damn thing go?”
r />   The assistant principal had a beefy face with a thin topping of carefully combed brown hair. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning and he already had a five o’clock shadow. His white polyester shirt had yellow sweat stains in the armpits. The shirt stretched so tightly over his chest and belly, you could see his nipples through his sleeveless undershirt. He had one thing going for him — dark-blue eyes with black lashes. The story was that he’d once been a track star and prom king at our high school.

  “I have lunch now, but I feel sick.”

  There was a ripple in the blue of his eyes; possibly it was sympathy. “Grab your stuff. Let’s go to the office. We can try to get ahold of a parent.”

  “My mom can’t be reached except in an emergency. Maybe I could just lie down for a while.”

  I followed him down the dingy pathways of hell and became mesmerized by the jingle of his keys and by the jaunty movement of his butt in his black polyester pants. He walked like a jock.

  He led me into the office. The office lady looked at me over her bifocals. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “I found her in the hall. She said she’s too sick to eat lunch. She looks a little off to me.”

  It was the office lady with the drawn-on eyebrows, orange hair teased in a fluffy cloud, and armloads of silver jewelry.

  “Follow me, sweetheart,” she said. She led me to the nurse’s room and frowned at her tiny turquoise-studded watch. “The nurse will be back from lunch in twenty minutes. Lie down until she comes.”

  I set my backpack on the floor and lay on the cot. I closed my eyes. Faint noises came through the half-open door — the phone ringing, the whir of the copy machine, a blur of voices. Maybe if the nurse documented what an incompetent mother I had, the authorities would let me live in this room, at least temporarily.

  I’d put up Bruno Mars posters. I could eat breakfast and lunch here and just skip dinner and get skinny. The toilet always worked in the teachers’ bathroom, and they brought in lotion and antibacterial soap. There was junk food stashed in the teachers’ lounge. After all the sports and clubs and community ed meetings had ended, I’d run up and down the halls and sing Bruno Mars songs at the top of my lungs.