by Dean Gloster
If you also had poisonous fangs, he sent back, you’d fit right in with some of the girls at my school.
I hoped he was talking about Tracie and her followers, not me. Darn. You’re already marked with girl wounds? Aren’t there any nice girls at your school?
Thoroughly wounded. There is one great girl, though, who I’m probably crazy about.
For about ten seconds, I went to fantasy dream-park land, and imagined Evan meant me, Kat. But it was a scary topic, while I was flirting with him as Cipher—especially given how into Tracie he’d been last year. I almost certainly did not want to hear him gush about some other random girl at school he liked. Humph. Skinnyboy, free advice: Never tell a girl you’re flirting with that you’re crazy about another girl. Tacky.
Maybe I’m not crazy about another girl. Maybe I’m crazy about you.
Now I got annoyed. It was always so heart-bending when I flirted with Evan as Cipher. What I really wanted was for him to like me as Kat, not go into full-court flirt with Cipher, an imaginary girl he’d never met. Yeah, right. Me with the poisonous tentacles. Then you’re crazy, period. And I don’t date the deranged. TTFN, Cipher. (Ta-ta for now. And, technically, that was (1) game, (2) set, and (3) match, as a drive-by flirt.)
There was a ding of an incoming email. I had Cipher’s email open in a different window on the monitor. I clicked over. The new message was from Drowningirl.
Can’t take it anymore. On top of everything, BFH is being a total bitch.
BFH is Drowningirl’s sister, Brat From Hell. Since my sister Rachel also mostly behaves like a bitch from hell, Drowningirl and I have a lot in common.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, Drowningirl went on. And the self-control not to kill BFH or myself.
As Cipher, I emailed back and forth with her for twenty minutes, trying to type-talk her down from the ceiling, or maybe even the ledge. She sent a poem.
Shrew’ed
An axe whacks, when chopping wood.
The bite of steel into something softer, cut, then broken,
Once alive.
I’m struck, struck, struck by the noise.
Struck, struck, struck.
How like her words.
Drowningirl finally signed off with be well, promising to email again later in the week. I signed off too, as Cipher with 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433). Then, back in my real world identity of Kat, I typed Evan a private message: Thanks for standing up to the Tracies for me, less flirty than what I’d sent as Cipher.
I sat, giving the computer monitor a kind of dreamy gaze. I was worried about Drowningirl, but had the warm tingly feeling that Evan—even if just out of pity—had my back. That tingly feeling faded as I thought about the Tracies. They’d been unfriended, by hot, popular awesome musician Evan, for lowly me. Somehow, they’d make me pay.
• • •
I hadn’t managed to get any actual homework done, so the next morning I peeled off the label from my Yoplait container at breakfast, blotted off the pink strawberry yogurt spillover glop, and stapled that label to a sheet of binder paper. I wrote my name at the top, with the heading Culture Française.
In afternoon French class, I set it on Mme Yves’ desk. “Voilà!”
Mme Yves even looks French—dark-haired and skinny, wearing a belted black dress that made her look like she was headed to a cocktail party instead of serving her latest nine-month sentence with bored high school students. “Quelle?” She knitted her brows.
How do you say stroke of genius in French? “Un coup de brillance!” I announced. “Un bon idée, n’est pas?”
“C’est quoi?”
I gave up on French entirely for the rest. I needed to sell this. “Yogurt is cultured milk. And Yoplait is a French name. And the wrapper is thin, a symbol of shallow American consumer culture.” I gave her what I hoped was a winning smile. “By comparison.”
She crossed her arms and frowned.
“See,” I babbled on. “You’re essentially French, Mme Y.” Although, technically, she was born in Montreal. “And you’re looking down on the wrapper right now—that’s exactly how the French view American culture and our limited understanding of theirs.”
“Je suis Canadienne.” She shook her head at my little offering. “Une grande difference.”
She lifted the paper, holding it disdainfully with two fingers as if it were still dripping pink yogurt blobs, and dropped it in the trash. “Zero.” She pronounced the no credit—or, I guess pas de credite—the French way, all gargled in the back of the throat with derision.
Well, merde.
Tracie was scowling at me from her seat, like I was trying to deliberately wreck my grade, instead of desperately trying to save it. “Imbécile, I’ll get you for this,” she whispered as I passed.
I stopped and leaned down like I had a secret to tell her. “Merci, cochon égoïste avec le ballon.” (Thanks, ball hog.)
She just smiled back, like she had already figured out some payback.
Great.
• • •
By that night, Beep looked like a zombie from one of his videogames. His lips were the ash-gray color of dust from a vacuum cleaner bag.
He’d spiked a fever of a hundred and three Fahrenheit. Even scarier: Beep, of all people, was too listless to play videogames.
They started an antibiotic drip and made the call to transfer Beep to the PICU. All the ICU beds were full, though, so they scurried around over there, figuring out what kid could be stabilized enough to move out to the step-down unit or the floor to make room.
Probably, when they put the Broviac line in Beep and flushed it with saline, they blew some germs into his chest vein, where there wasn’t much immune system waiting, thanks to the blood-cancer. So now he had sepsis—a blood-system-wide bacterial infection. Before the hospital even got serious about poisoning Beep with chemo again, those little germs were spreading, trying to send him home early, in a bag.
It was 7 P.M., and I was visiting, in semi-useless hover mode, trying to keep Mom from destroying medical equipment as she bounced off walls. She called Dad, who—of course—was only now on his way from work.
“Hank!” She barked it with an urgency that made his name an accusation. “Should I threaten to sue, if they don’t move Beep this minute?”
Right. This minute. They didn’t have a bed to move him into.
I could hear Dad yelling at her, through the phone, even across the room. “Never threaten to sue. They’re already paranoid because I’m a lawyer.”
Mom held the phone away from her ear and winced, he yelled so loud. Except when it involves things that cut into his work time, Dad usually lets Mom have her way, because otherwise she’d drive everyone crazy rethinking decisions. For once, though, Dad stood up to her. “Don’t even use the word ‘sue’ at a hospital, except as someone’s name.”
“Mom,” I said, after Dad hung up on her. “Sit down, be quiet, and let the nurses do their job. Or I’m calling hospital security on you, before someone else does.” Even Beep looked over at that.
It’s possible I was exaggerating, but I doubt it.
5
I was mostly out of it the day after they moved Beep to the PICU, from stress, worry, and lack of sleep. It had been 10 P.M. when they’d finally gotten a bed for him, and even later when we got him settled. Then I’d had to take Muni and BART and then bicycle home, where I’d had trouble falling asleep.
I share second-period Algebra 2 with all five of the Tracies and three of the Tracie-Wannabes. While I yawned—even more than usual—there was whispering and giggling and glancing over when Ms. Clarke turned her back. Why? Giggling wouldn’t be the news about my brother’s returned cancer making the rounds. Tracie looked over at me with a satisfied smirk. Was she just trying to make me feel worried?
• • •
After fourth-period English, Evan met me at my locker. “You, uh, still want to eat lunch together?” He had his scrunched brown paper sack in han
d, but for some reason was making eye contact with the locker below mine instead of with me.
“Of course.” After carpool that morning, Evan had asked if we could have lunch together. I’d jumped at that, a chance to go back to how things used to be, and a lot less lonely than the end of last year. But now Evan’s shoulders were slumped, and he looked unhappy about it. I retrieved my sandwich and fruit from behind my books, with a sinking feeling. I followed him out toward our old spot by the tennis courts. Why did Evan look like he was shuffling to a funeral? “Why? You get a better offer?” It would be just like Tracie to invite him, trying to sink her hooks into him again.
“No. I thought you might not want to, now that you have a boyfriend.”
“What?” I stopped. We’d just gone out the back door into the concrete by the steps. Was this some joke? “Who?”
Evan turned around. “I heard you got back together with Curtis Warren—”
“Back? I’ve never been together with Curtis.” My mood exploded in a ball of anger. “Wait. You believed the slut-shaming fiction Curtis wrote about me?” That wonderfully detailed little note had circulated last year, just before Evan got together with Tracie and abandoned me the first time. Evan opened his mouth to say something, but I kept going. “He even made up half the spellings.”
“No!” Evan said. “’Course I didn’t. But I heard you kissed him . . .”
I put my hands on my hips, one of them holding my now-squished lunch. “I did not—and will not ever—kiss Curtis Warren.” I was glaring at Evan so hard, it was amazing that his straight, perfect teeth didn’t catch fire. “Who told you that?”
“Ashley said you got back togeth—”
“Ashley. Tracie’s friend. Who hates me. Who is mad that you unfriended her and Tracie on Facebook. Who always does what Tracie tells her to do. Hello? She lies.”
“Oh,” Evan said, like this was the first time he’d thought of that. Guys. So dense. I don’t know why we let them run anything when they grow up, let alone whole companies.
Great. This is just what I need. More talk about me and Curtis. “I hope you didn’t pass on that wonderful rumor.”
“I’d never do that.”
“Excuse me?” I was breathing hard, and somehow my eyes were wet at the fresh memory of a sharp hurt. “You did. Last year.”
“What?” He gave me a blank stare.
“When you became your own wreck-my-life-media? When—better than telephone and television—the best way to get my snarky comments to everyone was tell-an-Evan?”
“Oh. Right.” His shoulders sank. “I don’t know why Tracie passed those on—”
“That’s what she does, Evan. Getting people excluded is the Tracies’ team sport.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked miserable. “I didn’t mean to mess up your life. I know you’re mad at me.”
It wasn’t just that. “I thought I could count on you.”
To be my friend. To be my BFF. Or maybe actual boyfriend. Or all of those. I’d thought I was important to Evan. More important, anyway, than holding hands or swapping spit with Tracie. Or even his constant flirts with online Cipher, who he didn’t even know.
“You can.” Now he was making those big eyes at me. “Count on me.”
Humph. I shook my head, thinking about the stupid lies about me and Curtis Warren. “I’m probably the only slut-shamed girl in America who’s never even been really kissed full on the lips.”
“You’ve never been kissed?”
“No, Evan,” I said tiredly. “Or anything. At least if you don’t count a game of spin the bottle in sixth grade, which I don’t, because it wasn’t exactly romance. Once Curtis lunged at me with his tongue out. But if that counts as a human kiss, I’m dating outside my species.”
We shuffled over to our old lunch spot and sat on the bench, but in silence. When I pulled it out, my peanut butter and jam sandwich was mashed so hard from my clutching it through my lunch bag, it was oozing purple jam from four finger-dent wounds.
Evan finally broke the silence. “I have a chocolate bar. You should eat it instead. It has your name on it.” He set a Kit Kat bar next to me, a peace offering.
I laughed. That wasn’t a cure-all, but it was something. Which was nice, because the day got worse from there.
• • •
After lunch, while Evan went off to his class, I was opening my locker when my phone rang. It was Mom, who thinks it’s rude to call during the school day, so this was bad. “Beep’s doing terribly.” Her voice was urgent. Beep was in the PICU, but not responding to the antibiotic. They’d stopped the chemo, to give him a chance to beat the infection before they poisoned him more. One of the docs had told Mom to consider having a priest give Beep last rites, in case. So I should probably go there right after school. Even Dad was on the way, leaving work early.
My locker is outside in a hallway, next to Kayla Southerland’s. If it wasn’t for my homework holiday, Kayla would be the official screw-up girl of our class. She gets in actual fights, and once showed up with a black eye. I used to think she and I might become friends, but when she gets cranky, I get cranky right back. Now she’s especially mean to me, since I’m the only girl who’s more of a social outcast than she is. Also, I might have commented a few times on her makeup.
I froze, after hanging up from the call. I couldn’t remember what book I was supposed to be pulling out, and I guess my open locker door was in her way. Kayla banged it hard to shut it, but it bounced right back, off my arm.
She glared at me through her hand-trowel makeup. “Move it, Crazy Kat.”
“What?” That nickname just never got old. When I turned to her, she must have seen I was crying, but it’s probably harder to tell without a smudgy giant river of running mascara.
“What’s your problem, freak?” This, from the girl whose look was scary clown.
“My brother’s sick with cancer.”
“Ooh.” She shrank back and wiped the hand she’d used to shove my locker door on her pants, like she’d catch it, from skin contact.
“Cancer’s not contagious.” I grabbed her by the shirt and stepped so close she flinched. “And it’s not like bad manners and bad makeup.” I let her go with a push. “You don’t already have it.”
I closed my locker without getting whatever stupid book I was supposed to grab. Ignoring Kayla’s hostile squawks, I walked home, so I could get my bike and go to BART and Muni and UCSF to see Beep. And so I wouldn’t beat Kayla stupid. Or more stupid.
Not yet, anyway.
6
With over a hundred copies fluttering around the halls last year and others passed in class for reader comments, almost everyone at my school had had a chance to read the extended slut-shaming fiction about me by Curtis Warren, complete with creative spelling and even more creative description of my supposed moaning.
Here’s what really happened:
Freshman year, just before Evan got together with Tracie and before the Evan-and-the-Tracies friendship meltdown when everyone started hating me, I got invited to a party at Cindy Cruller’s. I went, because Evan might be there, and I somehow thought it was a good idea to show up to a party he was invited to. Except he never showed up. Being popular, I guess he already knew those things were dull.
The point of parties at Cindy’s house, which I didn’t know back then, was that her mom’s idea of “supervision” was to wander around with a tall glass of vodka, pretending it was water. Then pretend she was still in high school, refill the glass, pretend that she wasn’t laughing too loud, pound down a third, and then finally stagger upstairs to hide, embarrassed. Which, for the record, is pathetic.
Evan wasn’t there, so while I waited for him to not show up, I talked to Curtis Warren, who was at least sometimes funny. I used to think Curtis and I were in a friendly competition for class clown, about who was funniest (which I totally win, since most of my jokes don’t involve fart noises). I also thought Curtis sort of liked me, because of my sense of humor
. With some guys, though, when they say they like girls with a sense of humor, they mean they’d like a girl who laughs at their jokes, not tops them. Curtis hunches with his shoulders rolled forward, and his ears stick out so much, they look like they’re mounted sideways. Coupled with his prominent front teeth, the look is skinny gerbil. Not ideal for attracting the ladies, even without the fart jokes, which he managed two of, while we were talking.
Anyway, I was making Curtis laugh, feeling awkward, clutching a red plastic cup of Hawaiian Punch and looking around for Evan. Curtis finished his rum and coke and asked if I wanted to go to the back yard, “to see Cindy’s fountain.”
That sounded slightly less stupid than craning my neck around her living room, looking for Evan until I pulled a back muscle, so I said sure. On our way out, Curtis stumbled down the back steps, which made me wonder how much he’d had to drink.
Okay—I had never before (or, let’s face it, since) been invited to a party at Cindy’s. I had no idea—at all—that wandering out to the dark back yard was code for being willing to have Curtis try to tickle my tonsils. With his tongue.
We were outside in the semi-dark back yard for fifteen long, awkward minutes of halting conversation, while I came up with various ways to make fun of the gurgling fountain and Curtis got even more fidgety, as if he was nervous or scared. Was he afraid of the dark? I wondered. Then I wondered if Evan had arrived at the party and was somewhere in the house behind us, while I was out here babbling bad jokes about fountains. “Uh, should we go back in?” I asked.
“Kat,” Curtis said, with stress in his voice. I looked at him, and he grabbed the back of my head, pulled my face down toward his, and tried to kiss me, with his tongue already sticking out. Eww.
I turned my face away, so he mostly got the side of my mouth, with his slimy tongue pressed against my cheek like a slug. I tried to pull away, but he was holding the back of my head and trying to press my face into his, trying to lock lips again, his breath smelling like rum and corn chips. The grabbing, pulling thing crossed over into way not okay, and I took a step back, but his hand was tangled in my hair and he was still trying to pull me toward him for the kiss. He got the footwork wrong, so my move pulled him forward and off balance. He tripped and fell.