High School

by Sara Quin

  * * *

  In the morning when my alarm went off, my hair was tangled in the headphones. Taya, the oldest of our three cats, was curled by my hip under the blanket. I let the dread of the day ahead foam up in my chest. In the bathroom I jerked a brush roughly through the knots in my hair before dropping it on the counter with a sigh. I grabbed my backpack and coat from my bedroom.

  “Let’s go,” Bruce shouted up the stairwell.

  “I’m coming!”

  Downstairs Tegan was rushing around in the same disorganized panic as I was. Her feet were wedged halfway into her purple sneakers; the sleeve of her jacket dragged behind her on the floor.

  “Feed the cats!” Mom yelled down the stairs.

  “We’re late!” Tegan shouted.

  “Whose fault is that?” she answered, annoyed.

  I grabbed my shoes and swung the interior garage door open, jumping down the stairs onto the cement in my stocking feet. Bruce had already pulled his pickup truck out onto the parking pad, and I could hear U2 blasting from the stereo. He leaned across the seat and swung open the passenger door. I slid to the middle—the worst spot, because you had to keep his leather briefcase between your knees—and balanced my backpack and shoes on my lap. The silver wrappers from the Wendy’s burgers he ate daily were balled up near the pedals on the floor. The dashboard and seats were dusted with grit from the construction sites he managed, and the whole car smelled of onions and his musky cologne. Tegan swung her backpack onto the seat and climbed in next to me. Before she’d even closed the door, Bruce backed into the street and joined the trail of red taillights headed for the highway. It was a ten-minute drive to the bus stop, just enough time to hear three songs from Bruce’s mixtape. The three of us sang the chorus of “Where the Streets Have No Name” in full voice as Bruce hammered his large hands on the steering wheel to the beat of the snare. His work clothes mostly consisted of Springsteen and U2 T-shirts that he hacked into tank tops with scissors. His biceps were the size of my thighs and his skin carried a deep tan from working outside. When we’d first met him as kids, we’d been impressed by the long scar that ran between his shoulder and elbow. Drawing his fingers across the gash, he’d told us that the doctor who delivered him at birth was drunk and had nearly cut his arm off.

  Bruce took a squealing left turn into the neighborhood of Abbeydale, where we caught the charter bus to Crescent Heights every morning. The small bungalows and split-levels were interchangeable with the houses we’d grown up in; I knew each floorplan like the back of my hand. The patch of yard outside our house in Monterey Park was laid with fresh strips of sod. Every driveway had a basketball hoop planted in it like a flag. The kids who lived in Abbeydale thought that living in Monterey Park made you rich.

  Bruce pulled a U-turn across the intersection, stomping hard on the brake pedal in front of the bus shelter, where a group of kids was smoking and kicking at a pile of glass.

  “Have a good day, girls.” He pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet.

  I took it from him and smiled. “Thanks.”

  * * *

  The money Bruce gave us wasn’t enough for the new Smashing Pumpkins album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but Tegan and I agreed that we’d go downtown after school anyway just to get a look at it. In the months leading up to the album’s release, I had carefully cut any mention of the band from the pages of Rolling Stone and Spin magazine and pasted them to the wall of my bedroom. I suffered a hunger to consume every new song in one giant helping. This would be my album, dislocated from the trauma of junior high and the disappointment of being ditched by Matthew. When the bus arrived at the stop, I pulled Bruce’s headphones from my bag and disappeared into my own world.

  * * *

  When Tegan and I got home after school, Mom’s Jeep was parked in front of the house. Her shift at the Distress Center started after her university classes in the late afternoon. Most days we didn’t see her until after midnight, if we saw her at all.

  “Shit,” said Tegan. “Why is she home so early?”

  “Maybe she’s downstairs working in the office,” I said as Tegan punched in the security code beside the garage door.

  We slipped under the garage door and into the house. The water was running in the kitchen: busted.

  “Hi,” we both said.

  “Where were you?” she asked as she stood by the sink, loading the dishwasher.

  “Downtown at A and B Sound. The album was already sold out. I told you it would be,” I said, opening the refrigerator.

  “What a shame,” Mom said.

  “Sara . . .” Tegan stammered. I turned. Sitting on top of the kitchen table was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

  “Oh my god!” I rushed to grab it, holding it against my chest, laughing, nearly crying. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “You’re going to pay me back,” Mom said, smiling. “And clean the goddamn litter box before you listen to a single note of that!”

  Upstairs I unwrapped the package in my lap. The case squeaked open to reveal a bubble-gum pink disc inside. It was epic. I pulled it out, placing it carefully into the tray of my stereo. I pressed Play. A simple piano progression started. I removed the lyrics booklet and opened it across my lap. My face was wet with tears. Nothing had ever sounded more important to me. Billy’s words spoke directly to the places inside of me that were hurt. His suffering reflected my own, and briefly, I felt less alone.

  3. TEGAN EVERY BUS RIDE’S A GAMBLE

  A cluster of guys pushed in front of Sara and me, knocking us into each other as we waited in line to board the last charter bus in front of the school to go home. I recognized two of them, Felix and Joseph, preps from my science class, who slicked back their short hair and wore ironed polo shirts and boot-cut jeans.

  “Fuckers,” Sara said under her breath.

  “Great,” I moaned quietly. Felix and Joseph were the kinds of guys who were offended by girls like Sara and me: girls who wore baggy, secondhand clothes from Value Village and paid little or no notice to guys like them. The girls I saw them with at school wouldn’t be caught dead in Value Village. Though Sara and I were content to ignore their existence, they seemed obsessed with ours. In the science lab, Felix liked to edge his desk forward ever so slowly, trapping my long hair between the back of my chair and the front of his desk so that when I stood at the bell, I was yanked back down into my seat. He’d laugh every time it happened, and I’d have to pretend not to care. Outside the lab I did everything I could to avoid him. But he lived in Abbeydale, and there were six buses that went between Abbeydale and school. Our odds each morning were one in six that we’d have to see him. That day we’d bet on the wrong one.

  “Do you know you have gum in your hair?” Sara asked as we took seats as far from Felix and his friends as we could.

  “What? No. Where?”

  “At the back.”

  “Shit.”

  “And it’s pink.”

  “It’s pink?” I whispered. My fingers searched frantically in the mess of my long, thick brown hair.

  “Can you help me get it out?”

  “It isn’t coming out right now, trust me. Ask Mom when we get home.”

  Sara was annoyed, but I could also see she was embarrassed. Had she been the one with gum in her hair, I’d have reacted the same way. We carried each other’s wins and losses, fair or not. Even a month into school, we were still impossible to tell apart to anyone who didn’t know us well. The gum in my hair might as well have been in hers. The subtext to Sara’s embarrassment was What did you do for us to deserve this?

  I sank deeper into my seat, and my eyes welled up. “Fuck.”

  Earlier that day, I’d scoffed at Felix for snickering when I got an answer wrong in science class. I’d spun around to shoot him a dirty look, to stand up for myself, and he’d lurched forward and snapped, “Loser.” As he laughed with Joseph after, I’d seen a pink blob of gum spinning in his mouth like clothes inside a dr
yer. Now, on the bus, I watched as Felix flicked his lighter near the hair of some girls in front of him and knew definitively the gum in my hair was his.

  “Prick,” Sara said.

  “Douche,” I agreed as I picked at the gum self-consciously. The flame of Felix’s black Bic lighter got closer to the girl’s hair as the bus banked around a turn. The girl squealed, but in a way that made it clear she liked the attention he was paying her. My empathy diminished with every giggle. Finally, another girl standing nearby, small and blond, dressed like Sara and me, lashed out and knocked the lighter out of Felix’s hand. She was from a crew of kids who waited at the same bus stop as us every morning, a group I was curious to know, though I’d yet to work up the courage to say hi. They were always laughing and making jokes, and I’d seen them share a joint a few times as they walked toward the bus stop. I had no classes with them, rarely saw them unless I cut through the smoking area outside the student center, which I rarely did. But in the mornings and on the bus, I watched them from afar wishing they’d become friends with us. Felix snarled at her after his lighter hit the floor. He slapped his hands together, trying to make her flinch; she and her friends only laughed. Inside, I cheered.

  “Fuck you, bitch.”

  “Fuck you, asshole.”

  “Fucking trash.”

  “Fuck you. You’re the trash. You prep piece of shit.”

  Using their backpacks as shields, the girl and her friends created a circle, locking themselves together. I wanted nothing more than to fuse to their protective shell. I slid deeper into my seat and tried not to think about the gum.

  Mom managed to get the gum out, freezing it with ice cubes. The following morning, I stalled outside the wide door to science class to steady myself. I took a few deep breaths before I stepped across the threshold of the sterile science lab toward my bullies. Immediately I saw Kayla was sitting in my seat under the burn of fluorescents above her. She exploded in laughter in response to something Felix said, and my heart sank as I trudged toward them. But when I reached my desk, Kayla stood up and threw her arms around me. “Hi!” she practically screamed. “It’s my best friend. I missed you.” She introduced me to Felix and Joseph, and as she did it was as if she were drawing an invisible line in the small space between our desks. Joseph and Felix swung their chins out in greeting, mumbling hello sheepishly. They seemed diminished in the presence of Kayla, who actually held some power in the school. I nodded and mumbled back a similar greeting, keeping my eyes mostly trained on Kayla. She bid us farewell and raced off as the second bell rang, driving us all into our seats—my back to Felix and Joseph once again. I wasn’t so naive to think that would be the end of the teasing I took daily. Felix was just one prep in a school with hundreds of them, one bully of many. I wasn’t about to change how I dressed or looked, and he didn’t seem on the precipice of a change either. But I was grateful, and something had shifted slightly that day in the lab, I could feel it.

  I found Kayla by her navy-blue locker at lunch. “How did you know about Felix?” I asked. “And thank you.”

  “Sara came and found me this morning before first period,” she answered. “She was worried. Said she thought I might know him.”

  I swelled with appreciation for Sara. She’d protected me, and in doing so, herself also.

  “With guys like that, you just need to tell them to fuck off and they will,” Kayla said as we walked toward the student center. “They bug you because you let them. You have to stand up to them. And if they bug you again, tell me. Seriously, I’ll come fuck them up.”

  We both laughed. But I honestly wouldn’t have put it past her. She was slowly integrating into a tougher crew of older kids who probably would fuck someone up for her if she asked. She was my secret weapon, but I hoped never to need her again.

  After school, Sara and I got in line to board the bus. We were next to the girl who’d knocked the lighter out of Felix’s hand the afternoon before.

  “You’re our hero,” Sara told her.

  She laughed. “That fucking piece of shit? Please, Felix doesn’t scare me. He went to my junior high. He’s a fucking pussy.”

  I immediately liked her. Felix was no pussy, and her lack of fear meant she wasn’t either.

  The next morning when she and the Abbeydale crew strolled up to the bus stop, I waved.

  “Hey,” she called out. They flanked the bench where we were waiting, shivering. “I’m Veronica.” She introduced us to her friends: Emma, Jasmine, Corrine, and Spencer. As we followed them up the back stairs of the bus, I recited their names in my head again and again so I wouldn’t forget or mess them up. Every morning I’d watched them, every morning I’d waited for this moment. I hesitated at the top of the stairs, unsure if we should follow our new friends or not. I saw Felix and his crew in the back corner. I stalled. “Come stand with us,” Veronica called out.

  Sara pushed me toward them as the bus lurched away from the curb. I grabbed hold of the pole; Felix caught me looking toward him as I did, but he just nodded and turned to his friends. I relaxed and let myself laugh at the jokes that Jasmine and Veronica, the chattiest in the group, told as we headed toward school. It was the first enjoyable bus ride I’d taken all year. Even Sara seemed happier.

  A few mornings later, someone yelled our names as we waited in the cold at the Abbeydale bus stop. We both spun around.

  “Come hang out,” Veronica yelled from across the street, where she stood on the steps of the house where her crew waited for the bus.

  “Is this your house?” I asked as we approached.

  “It’s Emma’s,” she answered. “I live next door. Come on.”

  Emma’s kitchen was small and cramped. Around the kitchen table, Spencer and Corrine were smoking and sipping black coffee. Spencer’s hair was dyed black and cut bluntly. He had a square jaw, and a low voice that didn’t match his baby face. Corrine was sweet, almost silly, but biting, too; she had the posture of an athlete but she was no jock. None of them were. Slinking around us in their off-white tube socks, Veronica and Jasmine argued over a TV show they’d watched together the night before; they opened and closed drawers as if they lived there. I wondered where Emma’s parents were. Everyone spoke over one another constantly, tossing four-letter curse words as they riffed and moved around us.

  “Two minutes,” Emma announced, her head cocked with the tan receiver of the wall phone pressed into her shoulder. I watched her brush her blond hair back from her face and stare out at us all with protective amusement. This was her crew; that much had become evident in the ten minutes we’d been there. And if we wanted into this group, and I did, it was Emma I’d have to get to know, Emma who’d grant me entry. I fell in next to her as we walked the fifty yards to the bus stop and gushed my thanks for welcoming us into her kitchen.

  “Sure,” she said. “Anytime.”

  I smiled and felt myself blush. I looked down at my shoes as we boarded the bus with our new friends. Ahead of me Veronica and Spencer cheered; at the top of the stairs I saw why—the bus was empty. We claimed the back bench and sprawled along its length, crisscrossing our limbs, expanding into our good fortune.

  4. SARA ACID

  “It’s freezing out!” I protested.

  Tegan just shrugged. “I’m still too high to sleep.” She pulled herself through the window in my bedroom and out onto the roof of the garage. She was sneaking out to go smoke a joint with a new friend crush, Emma, who lived forty minutes away. I went to the window and watched as she crab-walked across the shingles. At the edge of the house, she sat on her butt and swung her legs over the gutter. She pushed off and I watched her drop out of view. I heard her feet on the shed below and then the slap of her shoes hitting the sidewalk a few seconds after that. I kept my eyes focused on the street, waiting for her to reappear, and when she did, she turned and waved up to the window where I was standing. I imagined the headline: A fifteen-year-old girl on acid was last seen walking alone at midnight along the highway. The cold air
from outside felt like an intruder. I turned the crank on the window slowly, leaving a space for Tegan to pull it open when she got home. I climbed back in bed to wait. What if she died? What if she got lost and froze somewhere in the dark next to the highway? I should have gone with her. If something happened to her it would be my fault. I brokered with the universe: If Tegan makes it home alive, I’ll never get high again.

  * * *

  Tori Manis sold me my first tab at an amusement park on the outskirts of the city six months earlier. I remember the drug taking effect from beyond my periphery, closing in on me from all sides. I spent the long days of summer in the blacked-out basement watching films with story lines heavily influenced by drugs: Kids, Dazed and Confused, Rush, The Doors. Some part of me wanted to be scared by these stories, but what they inspired in me was entirely the opposite. Tori had warned me that I’d end up with a “spine full of the shit” if I did acid too often, but I couldn’t stop plotting the next time. You have to try it, I told Tegan dozens of times over the summer, but she remained adamant that she had no interest, retelling our mom’s story about a friend who’d done the drug only once and had a schizophrenic break. I wouldn’t let up, and when Tegan finally gave in, we agreed that I would stay sober to ensure nothing went wrong while she took her first hit.

  I watched Tegan put the paper square on her tongue in Naomi’s kitchen. A flush spread across her cheeks and neck. The moaning and chewing of her hands started quickly after that. Don’t bite, we kept telling her, pulling her knuckles from her mouth. I felt like a villain in an after-school special, guilty of peer pressuring my innocent sister. After she peaked, she stretched out on the carpet, so captivated by the sound of her own voice that she recited to us for hours the plot of The Clan of the Cave Bear.

  On our next acid trip, I dropped first, and when the world around me turned to rubber, so did my defenses.