If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say

by Leila Sales

  We galloped through every aisle, screeching back and forth about the treasures we found. “Cheetos!” Zeke said. “I am getting a bag of Cheetos! Look at this bag of Cheetos, everyone!”

  “Make it two bags of Cheetos!” Kisha shrieked back.

  I grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, in honor of Mackler. “I am going to score all the honeys with this Gatorade!” I yelled. This didn’t mean anything to anyone, but I was punchy.

  Kisha laughed loudly. “You crazy!”

  Jazmyn bought a king-size bag of Peanut M&M’s (“Like a king!” she informed us), and Zeke bought a disturbing number of Cheetos, and the two of them ran outside to wait with the car. I paid for my Gatorade and then got distracted reading gossip magazine covers while Kisha asked the cashier for a pack of Marlboros.

  “Let me see your ID,” the cashier said.

  Kisha pulled out her license and handed it over. The cashier reviewed it carefully, sucking on her teeth. She seemed to decide that everything was in order, because she turned around and pulled a pack of cigarettes off the wall behind her. She put it on the counter, then nodded toward Kisha’s bag and asked, “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Kisha asked.

  “That shiny thing you got in there.”

  “This?” Kisha pulled it out. “A pack of gum.”

  “You get that here?” the cashier asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Kisha replied.

  “’Cause if you got it here, you got to pay for it,” the woman told her.

  “Yeah, obviously,” Kisha said.

  “Don’t you sass me,” the cashier warned. “Now, you gonna look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t just take that gum?”

  Kisha opened the pack to show her. “I got this weeks ago. See? I already chewed three pieces.”

  The cashier scoffed, as if to say, Any thief knows the trick of doing away with three squares of gum in order to make herself seem innocent.

  Kisha put down some bills on the counter to pay for her cigarettes, but the cashier did not immediately take them. She muttered something under her breath, and I couldn’t quite make it out, but it sounded like she’d said, “Oh, I know your type.”

  Kisha clearly heard this too, because she replied hotly, “Excuse me? My type? What the hell do you mean, type?”

  The cashier pursed her lips and shook her head. “All I’m saying is, we got security cameras everywhere. So if you took that gum, we gonna know it.”

  “I didn’t take anything from here, you stupid cow!” Kisha snarled.

  Everything froze for a moment. Even the fluorescent light seemed to pause in its flickering as we all took in what Kisha had said. Both her face and the cashier’s wore matching expressions of horror. What was the cashier going to do?

  But then I saw a change in Kisha’s eyes. It took her just a moment, but I could practically see her going through the Revibe process. And before the cashier could get in another word, Kisha began her Repentance.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told the woman, her tone once again as sweet as syrup. “That was completely out of line. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You shouldn’t’ve,” the cashier agreed. “I could—”

  “I feel terrible,” Kisha plowed on. “I’m a horrible person, and I really regret that you had to suffer because of that. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. And…” I saw her throat muscles working as she swallowed, then managed to spit out, “I’d like to give you an extra two dollars to cover the cost of the gum.”

  She threw down two more one-dollar bills.

  “That’s a good girl,” the cashier said.

  And Kisha walked stiffly out of the store.

  I ran after her. “What the hell was that about?” I demanded once we were both outside.

  “Nothing,” she said. “That bitch thought I stole a pack of gum.”

  “But you didn’t,” I pointed out.

  “Yup.”

  “So why did you apologize? She should be apologizing to you for being rude and patronizing and—”

  “Well, she wasn’t going to do that, was she?” Kisha snapped.

  “She didn’t accuse Zeke or Jazmyn or me of stealing anything.”

  “I know that,” Kisha said. “God. I hate that woman.”

  “Why did—”

  “Shut up, Winter,” Kisha barked. “Do you get questioned about stealing shit? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Get in the goddamn car.”

  I shut up.

  We got in the car. Kisha slammed her door.

  Zeke and Jazmyn were still delighting in our daring escape from Revibe and our brief encounter with the real world. As the car pulled away and got back on the road, they were chattering over each other about how badass we were. “And,” Zeke said triumphantly, “check out what I grabbed while the lady there wasn’t looking.” He moved his sweater aside to show off the six-pack of beer nestled inside of it.

  We all stared at it. “You just took that,” I said, to make sure.

  “Hell yeah.”

  “And the cashier didn’t even notice.”

  “Did not bat one single eyelash,” he confirmed, flashing a winning smile of shining white teeth.

  “Well,” I said, “screw you, Zeke.” He looked offended, and Jazmyn gasped, but Kisha gave me a very tiny, very tired smile.

  Zeke started protesting, but I tuned him out. I leaned my head against the window, and I thought about Kisha and the way that cashier had treated her—treated her, and not the other three of us, because of how she looked.

  And I thought about Abe and the way the rest of the group had been talking about him earlier—or not talking about him—because of how he looked.

  And I thought about the way people went through life like they had a full handle on everyone else’s deal. How they could know one side of you and be so convinced that there were no more sides to see. Jason was dangerous, Jazmyn was a slut, Emerson was a bimbo, Mackler was a clown, I was evil incarnate, and that was that. Everyone knew.

  That girl Jessie, back at the teen shelter, had said, “When I don’t know someone’s deal, I just try to be nice to them.” How had she managed to figure that out when somehow it seemed to elude the rest of us?

  To the majority of the world, you are nobody in particular. They will see the color of your skin, or your weight, or your username, or your GPA, or how much money your parents make, and they will look no further. They will explain you immediately, and they will never forgive you.

  I thought about all of this as we drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, along the ocean, and back to Revibe. I thought about all the things we don’t say and don’t do because we know that some people wouldn’t like them.

  And I thought: I don’t want to shut up.

  28

  During Repentance the next evening, I sat down with a piece of paper and a pen. Lisa Rushall had told me I had something to say. I wanted to see if she was right.

  It was hard to start. It was so hard. Even once I’d started, I would take any opportunity to get sidetracked, and then find it hard to keep going. Although I felt like I had a lot to say, it all seemed to go skittering away as soon as I sat down to commit it to paper, as though my ideas were cockroaches running for cover now that I’d turned on the light. And every word I wrote was nearly drowned by the voice in my head that never stopped screaming, If anyone reads that word you just wrote, they will hate you. They will hate you for that word, and for the next word, too. You are giving them reason after reason to hate you. I did it anyway.

  I started out with an introduction of myself, and a warning:

  I am Winter Halperin. I’m the one who went online after the National Spelling Bee and posted, “We learned many surprising things today. Like that dehnstufe is apparently a word, and that a black kid can actually win the Spelling Bee.”

  That’s what I wrote. And I put it online for the whole world to see.

  You can stop reading now, if you want.

  I went on from there. I skip
ped my one-on-one session with Kevin, because I had too much to say and didn’t trust myself to stop. I described those terrible and dramatic first few days, as nearly everything and everyone I valued was systematically stripped away from me. I kept getting tripped up there, because I didn’t know how to fully explain how devastating it felt. But I tried. I described Surprise I Can Spell and the panic attacks; the look in Kim’s eyes when she told me her parents no longer trusted me to tutor her, and in that DMV agent’s eyes when she told me I hadn’t earned my driver’s license; the tears my family cried when we found out I wasn’t going to college anymore; the way I wanted to just give up when I read online that my best friend wasn’t my friend anymore.

  Did I do something wrong? Yes. Unquestionably, yes.

  Did I deserve this level of hatred in exchange for what I did? I don’t believe I did.

  You may think otherwise. You may think I deserve every bit of my punishment, and then some. You are entitled to your opinion.

  But I will say that I have spent many months believing I am a bad person. And now I’m finally starting to hope that maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just like everyone else out there (yes, even you): a generally good person who sometimes does bad things.

  But if that’s true, then how do I move past the bad things I’ve done?

  I can’t say that because I didn’t mean them, it’s as if I didn’t do them.

  I can’t forget about them or pretend they never happened.

  I can try to do good things to outweigh the bad. It might take a lot of good things to even out the scales, but I can keep trying.

  I can listen to the people I hurt, really listen, not just to defend myself or to tell myself they’re wrong or crazy, but to understand why and how I hurt them so I can understand how to not do it again.

  I can apologize to the people I hurt without making excuses.

  I can start to forgive myself, maybe.

  I can do all of that alone. But for the rest of it, I want to ask for your help.

  I need you to believe that people can do something wrong, or even do a lot of things wrong, and not be ruined for life.

  Can you do that?

  Can any of us do that?

  When I was a kid, parents and teachers told me all the time that “everyone makes mistakes” and “no one is perfect.” Probably you got told that, too. But then you grow up and you discover that there are some mistakes you can’t ever recover from, and some imperfections that are permanent and unforgivable. You thought there was room for experimentation and error, but you were wrong.

  I learned that truth when I was still a little girl, competing in spelling bees. I learned that I couldn’t afford to ever say one single letter wrong. I learned that life is all or nothing: it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done something right; all that matters is the one time you do something wrong. And the only champion is the one who is always, always right.

  It’s too late for me to always do the right thing.

  But I would really like if there were other ways to be a champion.

  I went on to write about Revibe. I didn’t name it, and I didn’t name any of the other guests there. Their stories were not mine to tell. But I talked a little about the process, finally writing:

  The part I’ve had trouble with is Repentance. Because there are some people to whom I feel very, very repentant, and I want to apologize to them, and I still don’t know how.

  And then there are some people to whom I don’t feel sorry at all. I know that it would make them feel better, or keep the peace, if I could apologize to them. So maybe I should do that. That’s what I’ve learned to do here. But it doesn’t feel right. It seems like it’d be ruining the apologies that I really do mean if I mix them in with apologies that I’m just saying to try to get people to like me.

  I’m not sorry to strangers who took to the internet to call me names, or swear at me, or dissect my physical appearance, or describe all the gruesome punishments I deserve, or crow about how great it was that now my opportunities were gone and my dreams were ashes.

  I’m not sorry to people who preferred to write irate public posts bashing me rather than explaining how they felt.

  I’m not sorry to anyone who used me as clickbait, who jumped on the train of attacking me because that was the fun news story of the day.

  I want all those people to like me. It would be so great if you all would like me! It would feel so amazing!

  But wanting you to like me is not actually the same feeling as being sorry.

  Here are some of the apologies I do mean.

  I’m sorry to African Americans whom I hurt by implying that they’re not as smart as other people. I thought I was being funny, but I wasn’t.

  I’m sorry to the people whom I brushed off when they actually tried to help me understand what was wrong with what I said. I grouped you in with the people who were being mean to me just for the sake of being mean, and I was wrong.

  I’m sorry to Jason McJasonFace Shaw. (Did I guess your middle name yet? Am I close?) Whether you feel the same or not, you’re still one of my best friends. When you told me that you felt hurt by my post, I shouldn’t have argued with you. I should have simply believed you. I should have tried to understand why. I lost a lot of people over this, and it turns out that some of them I can do without. But I don’t like doing without you. My life is worse without you in it, and I want your help to try to make myself worthy of being your friend again.

  And I’m sorry to Sintra Gabel. You won the National Spelling Bee fair and square. That’s hard, and it’s rare, and nobody—including me—should ever undermine that.

  I kept going from there. I wrote for a long time, until my hand cramped and the entire side of my pinkie was smeared with dark blue ink. I filled page after page, and I don’t know if the words were right or wrong or good or bad, but they were all, all of them, mine.

  29

  When I finally put down my pen, I looked at the time. It was nearly two in the morning. I had written all through Repentance, all through evening snack and bedtime, and well into the night. I knew that I ought to go to bed at last, to try to get in at least a little sleep before Rehabilitation kicked off yet another early morning.

  But that’s not what I did. Instead, I walked down the hall and knocked on Abe’s door.

  “Coming,” he called quietly. A long moment passed, and I pictured him on the other side of the door, probably getting out of bed, transferring into his wheelchair, coming across the room to open the door for me.

  “Did I wake you up?” I asked when we were facing each other.

  “Of course not.”

  It was wrong that we’d both spent the past three nights awake and alone when we could have spent them awake and together.

  “I want to talk to you,” I said. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.” Abe gave me a tight smile. “Do you want me to leave the door open, so nobody gets the wrong idea about what we’re doing in here?”

  I blushed as I recalled saying that to him when he’d been in my room. I’d been so worried that someone would think I was doing something illicit, when really that hadn’t been the right thing to worry about at all. “I don’t care what ideas they get, actually,” I replied, and I closed the door behind me.

  What was more relevant, actually, was that being behind a closed door with just Abe and a bed was giving me ideas. But I wasn’t going to go into that.

  “So what do you want to talk about that can’t wait until the morning?” he asked. Even with his door closed, he kept his voice quiet, and I did as well.

  “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry,” I said.

  “That’s very Revibe of you,” he said. “Let’s hear the rest of it. You’re a terrible person, hardly worthy of being alive; you wish I’d never had to suffer through being exposed to you—”

  “None of that,” I said. “Screw that. I wanted to explain myself.”

  “Well, that’s not very Revibe of you,” he said.
“Who said you’re entitled to explain yourself?” But I could tell he was teasing.

  “Me,” I replied. “I said I’m entitled to it. The other night, Abe, I panicked, but I swear it had nothing to do with your wheelchair or your dad and everything to do with you. I like you. I like you a lot, actually. But I don’t like myself very much. And I was scared that I’d ruin you somehow, the way I’ve ruined so much else. Enough bad stuff has already happened to you. I didn’t want me to happen to you, too.”

  “Winter,” he said, his clear blue eyes so full of sadness.

  “Literally just last night,” I went on, “I started to believe that maybe I’m not predestined to destroy everything I touch.”

  He bit his lip, then said, in a voice even quieter than before, “It would be a pleasure to be destroyed by you.”

  I felt shaky.

  “My sister has this theory,” I told him, “that people are like houses. Some are fixer-uppers, some are trophy homes, some are that stifling childhood house that you grew up in. And I want you to know that you are…”

  “A broken-down hovel made of metal?” he suggested.

  I looked at him. Abe’s house was like a little doorway that almost everyone walked right past. Maybe it hadn’t always been that way, but it was now, since the wheelchair. But if you opened the door and went inside, you’d find a beautiful room, and then another, and then another. And if you stayed there, you’d discover hidden stairways and crawl spaces, enormous attics and basements. The house would expand around you, and no one on the outside would ever think that so much richness could lie behind such a small door.

  “You’re like a home,” I told him. And then I kissed him.

  Abe sighed gently against my lips and made a wordless sound in the back of his throat. He kissed me back carefully, slowly, in the way that one might taste a very small and very strong piece of dark chocolate. I rested my forearms on his shoulders and leaned in closer, deeper.

  “This can’t be comfortable for you,” he murmured, opening his eyes a little bit.