Someone I Wanted to Be

by Aurelia Wills

  I shuffled toward the bathroom. She said, “Please don’t slam the door. And don’t leave your towel on the floor. Did you remember to take out the trash?”

  I locked the door and showered until the bathroom was fluffy with steam. She hammered on the door. “Let’s give a little thought to the environment!”

  I wrapped up in a towel and rushed from the bathroom to my bedroom so she wouldn’t have to see my obesity. I crammed my fat, scalded body into my baggiest sweats.

  When I came out, Cindy was wound up in the afghan like a mummy. She clutched the wineglass beneath her chin and scrabbled around in a saucer of pretzels with her other hand. She stared through me while I cleared the dishes and picked wrappers off the table.

  I threw away the trash and wiped down the counter and stove. As I washed the plastic plates and cups, I stared at the picture of the meadow. A Screamo song I didn’t even like went through my head. I dropped a plate and looked over at Cindy. She glared at the TV.

  Cindy stared feverishly at the TV like she wished she could live in TV-land forever and never have to come back to our ratty little apartment and her teacup collection and especially me.

  I got the orange juice concentrate from the back of the freezer. I scraped off the ice crystals, scooped a spoonful into a teacup of water and carried it to her.

  “Here, Mom. You’ve got to eat something more than pretzels. They don’t have any nutrition.”

  She craned her neck so she could see the TV around my legs. “I can’t see, sweetheart.”

  The landline rang and Cindy snatched it up. “Hey, Corinne! How you doing, honey? Yes, she’s here. Yes, she made an amazing recovery. She’ll definitely be back at school tomorrow.”

  I took the phone to my room. Corinne said, “Did you run out of minutes again? I texted you, but you never answered. I was going to call yesterday, but Jimmy threw up.”

  “I lost my phone.” It felt like hundreds of years since I’d last talked to Corinne.

  “Sorry about yesterday. When Kristy gets like that, there’s no talking to her. But I think she’s already feeling bad.”

  I shut my door. The sound of Corinne’s voice made me feel stiff, injured, and pathetic. “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, she talked about you. After lunch, she said, ‘Where’s Leah?’ And I said, ‘I heard she’s sick. She went to the nurse’s office. She has the flu or some such shit. She had to go home.’ And Kristy had this look in her eyes, and she just looked kind of worried.”

  “Oh, really. Wow.” With one hand, I opened my notebook and wrote Yertle is a psycho bitch.

  “Leah, I feel so bad for her. Her mom is doing really horrible. She’s really, actually dying. I talked to my mom about this, and she said there’s no way I can abandon Kristy, not with her mom dying and everything. My mom said she’s lashing out at you because she’s stricken with grief.” Corinne’s words began to echo, as if she was calling from Mars, from ten million miles away.

  Like a sudden memory of a dream, I heard Kurt King’s voice in the dark parking lot. His Mustang turning toward the school. Over and over and over. “Do you know if Kristy’s talked to Mr. Corduroy?”

  “Leah, I can hardly hear you. What are you talking about?” said Corinne. “Leah, I’m sorry, but I can’t abandon Kristy. My mom won’t even let me. So, it may look like I’m taking Kristy’s side, but I’m not. I’m still your friend. I’m just trying to help her.”

  “OK, gotcha, Corinne. You know what? I’ve got so much homework to do and my mom’s sick. . . . Yeah, sure. See you tomorrow.”

  I put down the phone. I wanted to fall into the blackness of sleep — that was my escape hatch — but I’d slept all morning. I had to lie there and be alive with my obese self. A faker. Frenemy to all.

  I stared at a white page in my notebook. And then I closed it. And then I opened it — and closed it.

  I finished my homework at 10:45 and opened my door a crack. Cindy was asleep on the couch with her face squashed into the couch cushion. I turned off the TV. She usually curled her toes like something was biting them. She’d just given herself a pedicure, and her toenails were painted with sparkly purple polish. Her bunion looked sore. I pulled the blanket over her feet.

  She let out a little snort and drooled onto the cushion. Cindy didn’t have a boyfriend or a husband. She was just Cindy with her double-pierced ears and auburn hair that was gray at the roots, her nail polish and boxes of wine, and her lonely nights in front of the TV. She was the old broken Barbie with her head on backward.

  Every time she breathed out, Cindy let out a little moan — wooooo. Music, laugh tracks, and garbled voices from TVs seeped through the walls and ceiling. The shiny beige lunatic walls of #3 crept closer.

  I put on some mascara and a hoodie, scooted into the hall, and locked the door. Ever since Kristy had driven us by Damien Rogers’s house, I’d been thinking about the shortest way to get there on foot. He only lived about four miles from my apartment building. I could walk there and back, and burn four hundred calories each way.

  Outside the Belmont Manor, wind shook the tops of the trees. I walked through an ocean of swaying shadows. I pulled up the hood of my jacket and headed down Vargas toward Tenth.

  When I got to Tenth, my heart thumped my ribs as if I were walking toward my execution. But I deserved it. If I saw Kurt King, I would tell him: It was me. She never talked to you. Leave her alone. Take her picture off your phone.

  No one was at the 7-Eleven, except the guy behind the counter who swayed as he stared at the bags of chips. I kept walking, cutting through the dark cool air with my head down. I ran across the empty highway and crossed a bridge onto Costilla Street.

  A creek ran alongside Costilla. All the buildings had flat roofs. There were old craggy trees, yards full of rusted junk, dogs tied on chains. Aladdin’s House of Treasures, a tiny white building with bars over the windows, was closed. The lights were on at Dragon’s Lair, where Anita had gotten her nose stud. Three bikers with fat pink arms sat reading magazines in the lobby. Water rushed over the rocks in the creek.

  When a dog leaped, barking, against the fence of a black yard or a car door creaked open behind me, I bolted to the next shadow. If I’d thought about what I was doing — walking alone through a bad neighborhood at eleven at night — I would have been paralyzed with fear. So I didn’t think. Instead I imagined Dr. Seuss books in my head, like I was turning the pages, the pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them, and all of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! I’d come to a place where everything was dark.

  I passed the empty fields and dark parking lot of Arapahoe High School. The nail salon’s broken sign squeaked in the wind. I turned down El Paso Boulevard. A car slowed. Its engine hummed in the darkness. I hid behind a Dumpster that reeked like rancid cooking oil until the car drove off.

  From then on, I ducked behind bushes whenever headlights approached. I finally reached the end of Damien’s street. The driveways were cluttered with tricycles and broken cars. Everything was silent and motionless.

  I stopped at the end of his driveway. The security light over the front door flashed on. I stepped back into the street and looked up at the split-level house with faded blue siding. The basketball hoop’s net was torn. The light went off. The dark windows shone like metal.

  Damien Rogers lived in this house with paint peeling off the fake shutters and oil stains on the driveway. I dropped onto the ground at the end of his driveway, hugged my knees, and sang “Grenade.” I closed my eyes and suddenly knew, knew for certain, that Damien Rogers would be my boyfriend. He and I would double-date to prom with Corinne and Jason Coulter.

  I crawled across the cold grass to what might have been Damien Rogers’s basement bedroom window. He was sleeping ten feet from me.

  A truck door slammed. The air was smudgy gray, and there was spiky grass next to my eyes. My clothes were clammy. For a second, I didn’t know who I was, or where. I was stiff and cold, curled in a ball.

 
The sky was orange over the roof. A man fumbled around in the lit cab of the truck. He wore a gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head. He twisted around and rummaged behind the seat. His mustache was black and brushy.

  He held a wrench up to the light for a second, turned off the light, and backed the truck out of the driveway. Damien Rogers’s dad did not notice me lying on his lawn.

  Once the sound of his truck engine faded, I crawled across the grass toward the street. I got to my feet, then tripped and fell onto a yucca plant that stabbed my stomach through my shirt.

  I stood up again and took off at a stiff jog, praying the whole time: Please, Jesus. Please, God. Please let me get home before anyone finds out I slept in Damien Rogers’s yard. Please don’t let anyone know that I was stalking Damien Rogers.

  The soles of my Vans were thin, and I felt extremely heavy, like I’d gained a hundred pounds and had rocks in my pockets. I thudded along, running, then walking, then running again. I could hardly get any air, and my lungs felt like they were tearing apart. Halfway home, yellow light exploded on the east side of town. The air turned orange-pink. It was like running through apricot jam. By the time I got back to my building, I was wheezing and coughing up cigarette gunk.

  A middle-aged man with bags under his eyes and comb tracks through his greasy hair held the entryway door open for me. “Good run?” he asked.

  Cindy was in the shower. My door was shut. I went into my room, pulled off my sweats, and tugged on my robe. When the bathroom door opened and Cindy’s door banged shut, I headed for the bathroom. I said, “I need a note,” through Cindy’s closed door.

  She made a noise that sounded like a cat coughing up a hairball. “I’m not in the mood for this kind of last-minute demand!” she said in a high-pitched voice. Two minutes later, I heard the door slam.

  I sat at the kitchen table, drank a cup of instant coffee, and read Cindy’s note:

  Per the school nurse’s instructions, Leah Lobermeir stayed home sick yesterday. She has made a quick and full recovery.

  Kind regards,

  Cynthia Lobermeir

  Life preservers of cereal floated in the milk in my bowl. I swiped a couple of bucks from Cindy’s hope jar and headed out.

  In chemistry, I was so tired that my eyes wouldn’t focus. The cabinets and tables and chairs and people blurred into a bad fluorescent-lit dream. Kristy stared at me from the back row, and Carl Lancaster swiveled on his stool and pretended not to look at me. I couldn’t cope with either of them. I pretended Carl Lancaster was not there and Kristy had never been born. Mrs. McCleary was giving a lecture on oxidation numbers. “The last quiz showed me that you guys really do not get this!” she said.

  I stuck a magazine inside the chemistry book and read.

  “Leah . . .”

  “Leave me alone, Carl. I cannot deal with anything today.” You don’t exist. I don’t exist. Kurt King doesn’t exist. I will never be a doctor.

  We had a new instructional unit in language arts. In the next two weeks, each of us would have to present a piece of original writing to an authentic and intended audience, and then be judged as to whether our writing had the effect we’d intended it to have.

  “In other words, you have to write a commentary on our society and make a presentation to our class,” said Mr. Calvino. “You can write about anything you want as long as it’s not racist, violent, threatening, homophobic, obscene, or bigoted.”

  Everyone groaned. “That’s not fair!” someone said.

  “Write about something you care about! Write about something you feel strongly about!” Mr. Calvino paced back and forth in front of his desk and waved his hairy hands around. “There are so many fantastic, amazing things to write about. Obscenity and violence aren’t actually very interesting.” He stopped walking and looked us. He really, really looked at us.

  Dan Manke farted, his on-demand specialty, and said, “Bulllllsheeeeeet.”

  LaTeisha whipped around in her desk. “Please, Dan! That is so disgusting.”

  Mr. Calvino gazed sadly at Dan Manke. His shoulders slumped as if he’d lost all his wind. He picked up a Diet Coke can and shook it.

  He’d lost weight since he started at West. He was picking up weird mannerisms. When he graded our five-paragraph essays, he held his fingers against his mouth as if to keep from screaming, and his head ticked like a woodpecker’s.

  The bell rang. Mr. Calvino stood near the door and watched our faces as we crowded out. He caught me by the shoulder. “Stop by after school. I’d like to talk to you, Leah.”

  After Mr. Calvino’s class was fourth-period lunch.

  I turned away from my locker. Kristy stared at me with her glassy blue eyes. Corinne stood behind her. They both smiled. Kristy’s earlobes sparkled in the fluorescent lights — she was wearing the diamond studs she’d gotten for her thirteenth birthday.

  I did not allow any expression to form on my face. I waited silently, prepared for an insult, possibly a physical attack. I protected my chest with my books.

  Kristy and Corinne looked at each other, then turned back to me. “Hey,” they said in unison.

  “What do you want?”

  “What do we want?” Kristy raised one of her white eyebrows. “Come on, Leah, let’s let it go. I can’t even remember why we’re not talking.”

  I allowed my mouth to fall open and stared at this girl with white curls sprouting out of her little skull. She squinted back at me. She was there, behind the blue, hiding from me.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. But it was too dangerous to get into again. Kristy had the ace in the hole — her mom was dying.

  She stretched her arms over her head and scrunched up her face. “Come on, Leah!” She swung her arms down and opened those eyes again. “Let it go! Come have lunch with us. We’re going down to the park Saturday night. . . .”

  “I probably can’t go. I’m grounded.” Anita and I had planned to eat lunch together.

  “You’re grounded? How come?” said Kristy. We began to walk down the hall. It was disgustingly comfortable to fall back in step slightly behind Kristy and Corinne, sort of like lighting up a smoke after you’d quit for a week. Something massive pounded in the back of my head. Every wall we passed was decorated with a Coke poster or banner, but I had no money for a Coke. “God, I’m thirsty.”

  Kristy stopped walking, grabbed my arm, and held me. “Why. Are. You. Grounded?”

  “Uh . . . the other night I was out late and got busted. I’m dying of thirst.” We began walking again. The water fountain was covered with a black garbage bag and a hand-printed sign: DO NOT USE.

  “What the hell were you doing out late?”

  “Sometimes I go for walks at night.” I was so tired. I just wanted to topple over and disappear.

  “How weird. OK.”

  Kelsey Parker and her friends approached, heading straight toward us. An army of five, the girls wore tiny crosses on gold necklaces, string friendship bracelets, fleece jackets unzipped to the same point on their chests. All five girls stared at their phones.

  Suddenly, Kelsey stopped and grabbed Corinne’s arm. “Corinne, I need to talk for a sec. Meet you at our table,” she said to her friends, who’d stopped in a pack and swiveled their heads.

  Kelsey pulled Corinne over by the lockers. Kristy and I trailed behind.

  “Corinne, did you hear about the game yesterday? It was horrible.”

  “Yeah. Sorry, Kelsey.”

  “Hey, Kelsey.” Kristy stood at Kelsey’s elbow. She was practically trembling.

  Kelsey squinched up her face like she had a bad headache. “Can I just talk to Corinne for a second, Kristy? We had a really horrible, shitty game yesterday. There’s something else that’s totally stressing me out.”

  Corinne wore her zoned-out look of concern. “What’s wrong, Kelsey?”

  “I heard”— Kelsey lowered her voice —“that Dean and LaTeisha sat together on the band field trip yesterday and were talk
ing the entire time. I’m like, what the fuck? I heard LaTeisha and Ray Ramirez are breaking up ’cause he’s going to college. Dean hasn’t asked me to prom yet. Corinne, have you heard if Dean likes LaTeisha?”

  Corinne started to yawn and quickly hid it behind her hand. “Um, no . . . not at all,” she said.

  “There’s no way. No way, Kelsey!” Kristy was standing on tiptoes, jiggling up and down. “First of all, he acts like he really, really likes you. Plus, I heard LaTeisha and Ray aren’t breaking up. They’re going to try it long-distance. LaTeisha was probably trying to turn Dean into a Christian. Everyone thinks that Dean’s practically in love with you.”

  Corinne started to hum and stared down the hallway. I leaned against her and put my head on her shoulder.

  “Seriously, Kristy?” Kelsey finally looked at Kristy.

  “Yeah, and, Kelsey” — Kristy cautiously took Kelsey’s arm — “I’m pretty sure you and Dean were voted cutest couple in the yearbook. First or second place, for sure.”

  “That would be cool. We should go to Tea Garden sometime. . . .”

  “I’d love to. Anytime. Text me,” said Kristy.

  “Sure. I’ll text you. Gotta go.”

  I stood by, taking up space but invisible, while Kelsey, Corinne, and Kristy all shoulder-hugged. Kelsey plunged into the crowd, her blond head bobbing as a path to the cafeteria opened up for her.

  “Oh my God,” said Kristy. Her nose turned pink. “Cool. I always knew Kelsey and I would start hanging out.” She pulled out her phone and maniacally tapped with her thumbs. “Maybe Kelsey and I can go to Tea Garden today after her practice.”

  The next water fountain was full of lumpy black liquid, as if a squid had been massacred in the bowl. The pounding in my head was getting louder and louder. I could hardly hear anything but the pounding. “I saw Mr. Corduroy. I talked to him at 7-Eleven.”