“I didn’t. She talked to me first,” Kirby mutters.
Javier’s fingers dig deeper, and I wince on Kirby’s behalf. “Seriously, Javier, it’s cool. Just leave him alone,” I say.
My boyfriend snorts. “He can’t touch you.”
“He didn’t.”
“Tell him, Lore. Tell him he’s nothing.”
Kirby hunches deeper as he waits. His face and neck turn red.
“You’re . . .” I look down, shake my head.
“Tell him he’s nothing. Tell him he’s a crappy little turd. Tell him if he ever touches you again, I’ll pound his face in, and nobody will care, because he’s a nothing little pussy.”
“I’m not saying that,” I say quietly, because now the entire caf is silent, staring, waiting.
Javier’s face swivels from Kirby to me, staring daggers.
“Kirby.” My mouth is dry, all acid and bile. “Don’t touch me.”
“Tell him he’s nothing!”
“I . . . You’re nothing.” I put my head down, and Javier releases Kirby and sits beside me.
But I’m the one who feels like nothing. More than usual.
What’s the point of being at the top if you still feel like nothing?
Kirby gets up and leaves. The chocolate bar is still on his table. No one touches it. Tyler smacks Javier on the back, and they bump fists and laugh and laugh and laugh.
* * *
I drink my Diet Coke and eat my tuna because Mia is right: if I pass out again, Coach won’t let me fly. I don’t eat the egg because farting is social death. I save the celery and carrots for later, just to have something in my stomach for practice. It’s funny how throwing up because you want to and throwing up because you’re scared are entirely different. I have to stay on top, for me and for my mom.
Next period is my only class that doesn’t include a single cheerleader or football player: Art. I love it and I hate it. I love it because I get to be myself. I hate it because I always worry that myself isn’t who I’m supposed to be. It’s easier with Elsa and Mia and Javier and Tyler around, reminding me how to act.
I sit on a low stool between an emo girl named Kat and a pretty girl named Morgan. Mrs. Recupido hurries between the tables, handing out paper towels and lumps of clay. A chunk lands in front of me with a splat.
“That wasn’t nice, what you said to Kirby,” Morgan says under her breath as she rolls up her sleeves.
I ignore her, like she’s not even there.
“Today we’re merging current technology with one of mankind’s oldest forms of self-expression. Take a selfie. It’s up to you whether you smile or scream, but use it to express who you are in a photo of just your face. Then e-mail it to me. I’m going to print them out, and you’re going to sculpt what you see into a mask.”
I take and discard several images before settling on my most practiced smile, the one that will win Best Smile in my senior yearbook. My mom taught me how to plaster it on until I didn’t need the mirror anymore. I dutifully e-mail it to Mrs. Recupido and quickly check my texts.
MOM (10:55 a.m.): Appt. at tailor 5 p.m. Hurry home after practice. Prom pictures are 4ever!
MOM (11:32 a.m.): Remembr to smile at practice. Top of the pyramid is top of life!
Javier (1:15 p.m.): Cum over tonite? DTF? Basement door. Don’t let my folks c u.
I delete them all.
Mrs. Recupido slides a piece of paper in front of me, and I’m staring at a beauty pageant contestant. My lips are smiling and wide, carefully covering my teeth. My cheeks are sucked in, my head cocked at the right angle to make me seem both innocent and sexy. It’s perfect. Perfectly pretty, perfectly posed, perfectly empty. I want to wad it up and throw it in the trash.
As everyone goes quiet and starts working, Mrs. Recupido turns on her boom box, some band from Norway that sounds like snow and ice. All her music is in another language. She says it’s to help open up our creativity, but it just makes me feel strange, like the singers are talking about me behind my back, too low for me to hear.
The directions are on the whiteboard, the supplies on the table. I hang my jacket up and put a towel over my uniform skirt. Only then can I touch the chocolate-brown clay, and I immediately hate it. How it’s cold and slick, then dries to powder. How my gelled nails make half-moons in the places I’ve smoothed again and again with wet fingers. I glance from the printed photo to the clay, trying to make a piece of mud match what I see. But no matter what I do, it’s monstrous. Wide clown lips, a bulbous nose, perfect swoops of hair that coil at the end like Medusa’s snakes. And the eyes—the eyes are dead.
But the eyes are dead in the photo, aren’t they?
I end up using a clay knife to cut them out. Because isn’t that what you do with a mask? You cut eyeholes so you can see.
So you don’t bump into anything and get bruised.
* * *
Practice is wonderful. I’m flying. Coach is happy. All the stunts are flawless. Everyone tells me I’m amazing. Some senior asks if I lost weight.
The only thing I know about the future is that we’re going to rock tomorrow’s pep rally.
* * *
“Right there. Smooth that line.”
My mom’s long, rhinestone nail points to a wrinkle at the curve of my back, and Mrs. Cho hovers, pins in her mouth. She shakes her gray bob. “I can’t. Need room to move. Room to dance, yes?”
She does a little shimmy and flaps a hand at me. I try to imitate her, but I can barely move. I’m all butt and no hips, and the dress is a cage. If she takes it in any more, I’ll have to walk with my legs pinned together, my posture flawless. I would walk like a doll.
“It’s pretty tight,” I say, breathless.
“You try sit down,” the tailor says, and I tiptoe to the bench and lower myself down. I can feel the pins tugging, the fabric taut.
“I have to be able to get into the limo.” I look to my mom, pleading. “And we’re doing dinner at the fondue place.”
“I bet they use peanut oil, and that’s always got traces of tree nuts. You can’t—”
“I’m not going to eat. Obviously. But I have to be able to sit in the booth and drink water, at least.”
My mom taps her chin, turns to the mirror, and smooths her hair. Her weave is the same color as mine. My stepdad prefers blondes. “Fine. But no tuna tomorrow, right?”
“Right.”
Mrs. Cho snaps her fingers and holds out her hand, and I turn my back to my mom, who unzips the beaded white sheath. It’s almost heavier than I am and thumps when it hits the ground. I wobble out, and my mom hands it to the tailor.
Mrs. Cho frowns, her mouth turned down as she looks at me. “She need a nice meal. Look hungry.”
“Damn right she looks hungry,” my mom says, a mixture of pride and irritation.
When Mrs. Cho leaves, my mom stands behind me and pulls back my shoulders to inspect my body, hunting for fat. I feel small and wrong and awkward, both proud and embarrassed in my sagging panties and a strapless push-up bra. “You can’t listen to people like her. They don’t know what it’s like. Being special. She’s never been beautiful, never stood on a stage in a tiara. She didn’t have what it takes. Most people don’t.” She strokes my hair, gives me her pageant smile. “I did, and you do. Because we take care of ourselves.” She steps beside me and puts her arm around my bare waist. With her size-two jeans and boob job, she looks more like a fellow cheerleader than a former Miss South Carolina who keeps her tiara in a glass box in the den.
“Mrs. Cho seems pretty happy,” I venture, gesturing to a line of photos tacked to the wall. Mrs. Cho with her husband, grandchildren, a fluffy white dog. She’s always laughing, her chubby cheeks pink and her eyes wrinkled.
My mom snorts and shakes her head. “You know what they say. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. You want to aim low, you go on and eat everything you want and pop out a bunch of children and live in a single-wide like my mama did. You think Mrs. C
ho’s ever going to live on a golf course in a house with six bedrooms? You don’t know where I came from. What it’s like. I’ve done my best to make sure of that. You’ve got to fight for what you want. You’ve got to fight to keep it.”
I shrug away and pull on my oversize sweater and size-zero skinny jeans.
“Baby girl, trust me. You don’t want to be on the bottom of the pyramid.”
“I’ll never be on the bottom of the pyramid,” I say, stepping into the front room of the dry cleaner among a forest of white wedding dresses.
I’m not strong enough to hold anyone else up.
* * *
I text Javier that I’m going to Elsa’s. I text Elsa that I’m going to Javier’s. But I don’t want to do either of those things, and I don’t want to go home. I wish I were still at practice. The thing about flying is that you can’t do cheerleading alone—you need a team. I need something else that makes me feel that good, that free.
I pull down my mirror to check my makeup. It’s dark out, and I’m all strange angles. I don’t recognize myself sometimes. Something about that stupid clay mask really got to me. It felt good cutting out the eyes. When I held it up and looked out through the holes, breathing in the clay, I wondered if that was what it’s like to be a ghost, surrounded by grave dirt and seeing everyone around you clearly, everyone who can’t see you.
I liked it.
I mean, I like when people look at me, when the crowd is cheering and the kids in the hall stare. But it seems like if everyone stopped staring, if they couldn’t see me, everything would be better. I think . . . I might like to be a ghost.
And ghosts get to fly all the time, don’t they?
No one has to hold them up.
Being hungry has become a part of me. Being empty. I wonder what it would be like to be completely full. We used to have pizza parties after band practice in middle school, and I would eat slice after slice until I couldn’t eat any more, laughing with Kirby and Jenny. They probably still do that. They’re probably at Brothers Pizza tonight, gorging before the big game. Band uniforms are a lot more forgiving than cheerleading uniforms. That’s why they sell chocolate to raise money and we sell kisses in a kissing booth.
I love being a cheerleader, but I miss being in band. Back then, I only wanted this, and now it’s like I’m clutching it so tight that it doesn’t mean anything.
I feel like two people who don’t add up to one. Is that nuts?
An idea comes to me then—a horrible, wonderful, insane idea. I’ve got to be smiling like a lunatic. I screech into a convenience store before I lose my nerve. Inside I walk to the candy aisle, inhaling deeply. So much forbidden treasure that I’ve never even tasted. All chocolate is made in factories with tree nuts, and that means that even before I started watching my weight, I couldn’t eat chocolate. I get a basket and grab Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a Hershey’s bar with almonds, a Baby Ruth, a Snickers. Standing in front of the cash register, I feel more alive than I’ve felt in years.
“You’re Lauren Hamby, right?” the guy behind the counter says. He looks familiar, like maybe he was one of the football guys who couldn’t get a scholarship after graduation.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know cheerleaders could eat like this.”
I hand him cash, and he hands me a bag. “Oh, it’s not for me. It’s for my boyfriend.”
“Of course,” he says. “I mean, I know.”
Outside in my car I crank up the heat and breathe in the chocolate. I know where I want to go. Where no one will find me until it’s too late to stop me.
* * *
The school parking lot is almost empty, but not quite. The asphalt is wet and sparkly, the oil slicks reflecting the Christmas lights they’ve strung up around the streetlights for the dance. It reminds me of Mrs. Recupido’s music from art class today. I grab my paper bag, tuck it under my arm, and hold my face up to the soft patter of drizzle, letting the rain settle into my brittle bones and drop onto my eyelids. I blink a few times, reach up, and rip off the fake eyelashes and throw them in the gutter.
The doors are open to accommodate all the work that goes into winter formal weekend. I pass the basketball guys running drills and blow them a kiss. From the hall, I see a dozen kids decorating the cafeteria with cut snowflakes and twinkling white lights as Mrs. Recupido looks on. The band door opens, and kids hurry out carrying beat-up instrument cases and uniforms in plastic bags. They’re so easygoing, laughing and elbowing each other. One of them carries a pizza box. Another has a liter of Coke and a bag of red plastic cups.
“Hey, Lauren!” says some stranger, and I smile and wave like a robot.
Everyone knows me. I don’t know anyone.
None of us know anyone, not really.
Once they turn the corner, the hall goes eerily silent. The art room is dark but the door is unlocked, and I slip in and find the light switch. The fluorescents flicker on, washing everything in a cold bluish white. I close the door, place my bag on my usual table, and head for the plywood board in the back, where all our masks are drying on piles of rolled-up newspaper.
It’s kind of amazing, how different they all are. You can tell which ones belong to guys—they have jagged scars and pointy teeth like wild animals. The girls’ masks are smooth, small features and lots of eyelashes, like they’re afraid to mess up or take up space. Mine is . . . kind of terrifying. Scarier than I remember making it. The lips are too big, the eyes gaping holes, the eyelashes spearpoints, the hair curling up like snakes poised to strike.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever made before, and I slip it out from under the plastic and take it to my seat. Pulling the candy out of the bag, I line up the bright paper wrappers in alphabetical order beside the mask.
I’ve always wondered what chocolate with peanut butter tastes like. But considering that even a touch of almond flour can send me to my EpiPen and the hospital, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup is suicide.
That’s why I’m going to eat that one first.
But it doesn’t feel right yet. Something’s missing. I go to Mrs. Recupido’s boom box and hit play. The sound of sparkling snow fills the room, and I turn it down to background noise.
Back on my stool, I pick up the mask and hold it over my face, letting the clay settle and stick to my skin. I can’t breathe, but that doesn’t really matter. Through the eyes, the room is different, the lights brighter and framed in black. With my fingernails, I rip off the clay lips and open up a gash where my mouth is. Fingers wet and sticky, I pick up the orange wrapper and open it slowly, salivating when I smell the chocolate and peanut butter.
“What are you doing?”
I drop the mask and plaster on a smile.
“Nothing.”
Kirby Matheson stands in the doorway holding his sax case. His eyes—God, they remind me of a beaten dog, scared and angry but still hopeful.
“Uh, aren’t you allergic to nuts?” He gestures at the exhibit of candy on the table.
“How did you know that?”
He puts down the sax case and ventures into the room, leaning his butt against a table and crossing his arms. “Everybody knows that. Everybody knows everything about you.”
I shake my head and my eyes start to burn. “Not everything.”
“I thought that was why you gave me that chocolate today.” He looks down and swallows hard. “Because you couldn’t eat it.”
Shame rushes back to me. I stare at the candy, at the mask, now twisted from when I dropped it. “Look, Kirby. I’m sorry about that. I really am. I didn’t mean it. But you know Javier . . .”
“Yeah, everybody knows Javier.” There’s a broken pencil on the floor, and he moves it around with his white Chucks. “Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Whatever Javier says. And Elsa and Mia and Coach Castle and . . . whoever. You used to be fun. And nice.”
“I am nice.”
His eyes meet mine. “You’re nice when they let you be nic
e.”
I roll my eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like. Being popular. It’s this thing you want, and once you get it, you can’t go back. It’s social suicide.”
Kirby laughs, kinda crazy. “Yeah, I don’t know what that’s like.” He steps closer, picks up the Baby Ruth. “So what’s this, then? Un-social suicide?”
My mouth is dry now, and my stomach roars so loud that Kirby looks at my torso with concern. “I just wanted to try it,” I say softly. “I just wanted to . . . know what I was missing, you know?”
“Do you at least have an EpiPen?”
I shake my head.
“That’s so stupid. Everybody wants to be you, and you’re just going to eat yourself to death? And be found on the art room floor, all swollen and purple and gross?”
The way he’s looking at me . . . with pity? Does he pity me? Does Kirby freaking Matheson pity me?
“Don’t do this. I hear anaphylaxis hurts. Like you suffocate, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t get enough air. That doesn’t sound like Lauren Hamby’s style.”
I laugh, but it’s half a sob. When he puts it that way, it’s so horrible. “So what is Lauren Hamby’s style?”
His eyes burn. “If you’re going to go, go out with fireworks. With a bang. Make them see who you really are. You don’t need some dumb clay mask to do that. You don’t have to do this. Just . . . say no. Be a rebel. You don’t have to do what they tell you to do. Do you even play oboe anymore? I bet you don’t.”
I shake my head again. Kirby grunts, opens his sax case, and slides all my candy bars into it. “This is my fee,” he says. “For today in the cafeteria.”
Tears are pouring out of my eyes now but he won’t look away, and I’m sick of looking down, so I just nod. “Are we even?” I ask softly.
“We’re even. Just . . . look, will you do me a favor?”
“If I can.”
“Just don’t come to school tomorrow, okay? Tell your mom you’re sick and eat something nut-free and sit in bed and watch bad movies all day. Order pizza. Pick up your oboe. Play ‘Memory’ like we used to in sixth grade. Will you do that for me?”
He picks up his sax case and leans against the door, waiting. Staring at me like I matter, like I’m not Lauren Hamby, cheerleader and winter formal queen, but an actual person. Like he needs me to say yes.
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