“Ha. Yeah. I guess.”
We spent a lot of time together that weekend. That’s the good thing about being a social outcast: your schedule opens right up. Dee doesn’t seem to have a lot of demands on her time, either. And we join up in those wedges of time between school, before bed, on the weekends. I have my part-time job, but Dee doesn’t have a job, so she just goes with me and waits in one of the booths writing in her journal.
“What are you always writing in that thing?” I ask her one night when we’re walking back to our neighborhood after one of my shifts. The days are getting longer, but it’s dark by now, and the streetlights are like bright teeth in an open mouth.
“All kinds of stuff. Notes. Observations. Lists. Goals.”
“Like, you look at me making a soft serve and are all, like, ‘hashtag goals,’” I say, turning my fingers into a hashtag.
“Oh yeah,” she jokes, “and the hairnet is ‘hashtag fashion goals.’”
“Of course, the hashtag written in the notebook doesn’t have quite the same effect.”
“Right. It’s more of an homage or a reference to our digital age, if you will.”
“Haha. Okay, there, Pete,” I laugh.
“Yes, I think I might be securing myself an A in Media Studies this term.”
“Oh God, don’t remind me. I haven’t even started to think about that final assignment yet.”
Dee jumps up on a curb beside me and walks along it, her shadow looming above mine. “Oh please, that assignment was made for people like us. ‘A new interpretation of a classic film or TV show’? Honestly, I think Pete might have actually written that for you.”
“I don’t think that’s how teaching works.”
Dee deadpans with her fingers crossed. “Hashtag ‘teaching goals.’”
I groan.
“Well, I’m going to do something completely over the top,” she says, jumping down from the curb. “I’m already planning it. Go out with a bang.”
Our friendship is easy and exciting and a little risky, only because Dee could give literally zero fucks. She is fearless. Maybe it sounds weird, but it’s like we have known each other for years. It’s different than with Lottie, because we weren’t thrown together as children just because we lived close by and were in the same class. We’ve actually chosen to be friends. She gets me. She never tells me to calm down or take it down a notch. It’s the opposite: she draws me out, pushes me. She likes the same movies and books and music, and we make each other laugh so hard we cry. We loop arms and entwine legs and are so comfortable in silence, sometimes I forget she’s there. It all went from zero to two hundred so quickly, but just having a friend at all in these troubled times is a win for me. All the other shit, the everyday nightmare of high school, is starting to feel like something I can take on, that we can take on together.
* * *
Our school doesn’t have a track, so during gym we run through the streets of town: a long line of joggers in matching T-shirts and varying degrees of athleticism ritually winding in and out of neighborhoods and past people picking up their mail or gardening. Our teacher, Ms. Kwan, young and peppy and excitable, leads the pack, her ponytail swinging to her steps, then loops back like a border collie to make sure she doesn’t lose the stragglers, the uninspired and asthmatic members of the herd who pull up the eventual rear.
Dee and I are about midway in the line, slightly out of breath but keeping a good pace. There’s a big gap between the people ahead and behind us. The sun is busting out the big guns today, bearing down on us, making us squint and sweat.
“I can’t wait until we don’t have to do this anymore,” I say, my feet slapping the pavement.
“No shit,” says Dee. “A few more weeks. I bet Kwan can’t wait until she has a whole summer of unadulterated running. I can just see her”—she holds her arms out in ecstasy—“‘Yes! Yes! Running! My one true love!’”
I grin, then look around as I hear someone coming up behind us. It’s Aidan, jogging alone, and looking the worse for wear in spite of what would appear to be a body made for sports. He is covered in sweat and wheezing as he makes his way toward us.
“Oh great,” I mutter.
He gets closer, and I notice that Dee is picking up the pace.
“What are you doing?” I ask, alarmed, as I try to keep up.
“Getting in shape,” she growls, faster now. We put some distance between us and Aidan, and I hear him coughing but matching our pace. We pass a few other kids, who look at us, surprised; Aidan’s feet are still rhythmically hitting the sidewalk behind us, closer now. I laugh nervously but keep going.
“Shit!” I hear him grumble as he begins to close the distance between us.
“Stevie, come on,” Dee urges me, speeding up.
I look nervously behind us. Aidan spits and shakes his wet hair out of his eyes; he looks like he’s going to puke. I turn to Dee, who stares ahead with grim determination. People are moving to the side, slowing down to watch us now. The school is in sight. Faster now. My lungs are aching, but I feel the urgency; I tap into something. I have to beat him. I notice Ms. Kwan now, lifting her head and turning, running backward, watching what has become a race. Dee is falling back, behind me, but I have gained a second wind.
“Come on, Stevie!” Ms. Kwan shouts as I start to lag, as I feel like my heart will burst, as I hear Aidan hissing you cunt, you bitch behind me. “Push yourself! Go! Go! Go!”
And we’re almost there, and I hear Dee’s laugh now, because suddenly, listen—Aidan’s feet have taken on a fainter sound, and he swears loudly as we cross through the school gates, and at the very least Ms. Kwan is clapping. She slaps my back and I stumble forward, gasping but smiling.
“Nothing like competition to fill your lungs, hey? Sorry McPhearson,” she calls to Aidan, “she beat you fair and square.”
I lift a water bottle to my mouth and close my eyes against the sun.
“I knew you had that in you,” I hear Dee say, and I can tell, even without look at her, that she’s grinning. Something that had long gone to sleep flickers its eyes open inside me: pride.
* * *
There’s a new me, better than the old me, and it is because of Dee, who is bigger, brighter, bolder than Lottie, than all of them. She is rubbing off on me like a marker you write on a birthday card, and realize too late that it won’t dry, leaving backward salutations on your fingers. She’s imprinted on me. It’s not sexual—it’s more, better, stronger. It’s best friendship. I am returning to myself and becoming more. She has less patience for the fools around her. It seems she doesn’t want to just watch anymore.
Other people are noticing her, too. I’ve never been friends with someone like this: someone so unafraid, someone people see. Just when I think she’s embarrassing, she passes that point and moves into the bizarre, and I watch, in wonder, as people are surprised and then become caught up in her momentum. She speaks out when she’s not supposed to, moves when she should be still, says nothing when she’s meant to speak. When people make fun of her, she joins right in the laughter or sends a zinger back, and then it seems like other people defend her also, call out the assholes who try to take her down. Sometimes before class starts, she stands on a chair and does a little dance, and when anyone tries to talk to her, she calls out in a really loud voice that she can’t hear them over the music. She does the boogaloo, whatever that is. She parades around the cafeteria like she doesn’t know the rules: she walks past tables of popular kids, like Breanne and Paige, Aidan, and sometimes Lottie, tapping them on the head, saying, “Duck, duck, duck,” but never “goose,” which secretly drives everyone a bit crazy. People are talking about her, laughing when she sings loudly in the halls. She tells rude jokes about nuns having sex, pinches her own butt and howls in outrage, shakes and shimmies while she’s opening her locker. People are being pulled into her orbit.
For me, she takes the edge off my worries. She’s changed the conversation. When the trolls come for me—on the
way to school, after, in class under the radar of teachers—Dee sticks up for me. She shuts them down, tells them to fuck right off, laughs at them, and more. The other day, Luke tried to pin me in front of the water fountain and turn it on. Dee managed to get between us and kick him in the nuts. On the way home from school, some kids I didn’t recognize got really close, heckling me. Dee was right there, rooting around in her bag and then suddenly pulling out pepper spray and threatening them. They scoffed but left us alone.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked her as she threw it back in her bag.
“I’ve had reason to be prepared,” she answered, cryptically.
They still find me online, and there isn’t much Dee can do about that, but I feel her, like a kind of shield.
Other, different people are noticing me too, and it’s not entirely bad. I get the occasional smile of recognition, a wink of association, like they’re in on Dee’s jokes. It feels good.
Today, for now, it is lunchtime.
In the cafeteria, I’m with Dee and a few other kids who have started sitting with us—or at least near us. I don’t know them all that well, but they’re all right. I see Lottie come in. She looks right at me, and there is a moment: she raises her eyebrows like a question. I turn, like I didn’t see her. I laugh like Dee just said the funniest thing. It’s a relief not to be so worried. If I crank up the volume, I can’t hear the whispers in my mind.
“What’s her problem?” Dee asks me between mouthfuls, gesturing at Lottie.
I shrug. Lottie sits at the end of the table with Breanne and Paige and their popular puppets, but she pulls out a book and starts to read. Breanne is laughing at someone at another table. I follow her eyes to see. There’s a girl in our grade with a skin condition, and Breanne has it out for her. It’s stupid; the girl is beautiful and nice. Her skin is white and brown in spots and patches, like she’s been splashed by a magic potion, from her cheeks going down into her collar and coming out her sleeves onto her wrists and hands. Her name is Michelle, and now she is staring back at the girls with her own group of friends backing her up, but I can tell by her eyes that she’s scared. There’s a silence. Breanne opens her eyes wide, bats her eyelashes, and lets out a low mooooo. Michelle turns away, her cheeks red, and one of her friends puts a hand on her back. She brushes it off.
“I can’t stand that girl,” says Dee, looking at Breanne.
“Yeah, she’s the worst.”
Lottie and I make eye contact again briefly. She turns away, and there is a little pang in my gut. Soon I see her get up and leave the cafeteria with her book under her arm. Paige calls something to her, and she turns her head and nods briefly. I wonder if she still likes Paige, if she sees what they’re like now. Maybe she’s just hanging out with them out of self-defense. I wish we could talk about it.
“Someone should teach her a lesson,” Dee says quietly.
“Well, good luck with that,” I say. “She’s got a monopoly on meanness.”
“You don’t have to be mean to fix a problem. You have to be just.”
“How very gangster of you,” I laugh, nervously. But actually, she is like a gangster, like Tommy from Goodfellas, that guy who goes from laughing to losing his shit in seconds. She’s like characters from all of my favorite movies.
* * *
Dee and I walk home together, which is the norm now. There is no one else to wait for. It feels like a lifetime ago that Lottie and I were friends, like someone else’s life, the memory of a dream. As we pass her house, I can see part of the treehouse in the backyard. There are faded blues and reds of paint from when Lottie and I decorated it one summer. That feels like eons ago now.
Pete knows, I can tell. He made a comment today when I was gathering my things at the end of class.
“Haven’t seen you around the house in a while, Stevie. I know that you and Lottie are kind of going in different directions these days. I’m not crazy about the kids she’s hanging out with, just between you and me.” He paused while I rooted around my backpack like it was the most interesting thing in the world. “But honestly, that is par for the course at your age. You two will find your way back to each other. You just have to give it time.”
I looked out the window and he continued, “But is everything okay with you? Have things improved, you know, with the kids giving you a tough time?”
“Oh yeah, for sure; everything is fine.” I forced a smile, stuffing my binders into my backpack. I was thinking about how he is planning on moving out of Lottie’s house, how he is leaving that family, leaving the school—and me by extension—and I could feel the color in my face rising a little. “How are you?”
Here’s the thing. Pete has been like a mother and a father to me my entire life. He always made me feel like he had time for me, which is, though not a lot of adults realize it, the most important thing you can give a kid. And you can’t fake it. Parents try to fake it all the time. They say, “Yep, I’ll be right there” when you’re little and ask them to play Lego with you, but then they never come, or they’ll pretend to be watching when you are practicing handstands underwater, and even though you’re holding your breath, you’re not holding your breath that they’ll still be looking when you burst out of the water to see their reaction. They’ll be looking at their phone or at a book or at another grown-up.
But Pete never made me feel that way. He was like a kid, fun and adventurous, but would also sit at the kitchen table and ask me what was wrong even before I knew anything was. He treated me like I was his second daughter.
I remember, just after I turned eleven, I slept over at their house. On that particular day, Lottie was doing her thing, just had her headphones on in her room, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, fiddling with a pad of Post-its.
“How do you feel being eleven, Stevie?” Pete asked me, pulling up a chair.
I thought about it. I felt weird, kind of.
“Nine felt like ten,” I said. “And ten felt like eleven. But eleven feels like ten did … and I think that twelve … twelve will feel like one.” I meant that it felt like a galaxy away, a lifetime. Because I knew that I was on my way out of being a kid.
But he knew what I meant. He took the Post-its out of my hands and wrote down what I said and put my name and the date. He folded it in half and put it in the case of his phone to carry around with him. He was always doing stuff like that. We cooked dinners together, made birthday cakes, laughed about how solitary Lottie was sometimes while she just sat at the table reading while we gabbled away together. He was my friend, of a completely different kind.
Look, I have my own mom and dad. Lots of people do. But not many people ever get to have a Pete. And at least I did, if only for a time, even if that’s over. Now he doesn’t know how I feel; he doesn’t know what’s going on with me or Lottie or anyone else. And I’ll just add him to the list.
“I’m fine, kiddo. Thanks for asking.” He rapped my desk with his fist and told me I’d better get the lead out so I wouldn’t be late for class.
* * *
Dee and I are rounding the corner, and I can see, from the end of the street, that Reg’s car is in the driveway. Dee loops her arm into mine and gives me a buck up, soldier squeeze.
She comes in with me like a shadow, and I feel stronger.
I can hear them in the kitchen, laughing and flirting.
“Hey! Stevie!” Reg calls out as we try to go past. “Come try my world-famous barbecue chicken!”
“No thanks,” I mumble, glancing at Mom and wondering why our little family of two wasn’t enough anymore, and why he seems more comfortable in our kitchen than she does. I look at her face—beautiful, overly made up, her mascara making stamps on her eyelids—she’s a bowling alley queen, a mall debutant, and I love her and miss her. I’m always missing someone.
It makes me tired, and my shoulders sag, but then Dee gives my hand a tug and we go hide out in my room, which expands and is more interesting and full of potential just because she waltze
s in. We watch The Goonies, and when Reg hears what we’re watching and yells, in his trying-too-hard voice, “Heeeey yoooou guys!” I have someone to roll my eyes with.
13
It’s been a couple of weeks since Dee arrived on the scene, at least for me. And then something happens that make everyone stop and pay attention.
First, Breanne makes fun of Michelle again at lunch, who runs out of the room, clearly crying. Breanne and Paige put their manicured hands over their open mouths in mock surprise, giggles slipping out like the barks of tiny dogs with sharp little teeth. I notice that Lottie is scowling at them but says nothing.
And then, a loud and laughing crowd bears witness when, after lunch, Breanne discovers that her locker has been defaced. Taped to the door is a set of headgear: one of those medieval teeth straighteners that evoke mortal embarrassment for anyone with a sadistic orthodontist. Her name is on a label taped to the band that goes over your head. Written above it, in red lipstick, are the words BACK OFF, BITCH.
Under this, a scrawled heart:
LOVE, HEATHER
“Who did that?” someone asks. “Who’s Heather?”
There’s laughing as Breanne yanks the thing from her locker, her face beet red, her eyes brimming with pretty tears. The crowd disperses as the bell rings, and I see Dee at my side.
“You stole that from her house, didn’t you?” I whisper, as we walk away with the herd.
“Did I?”
“Why?”
“Be the change you want to see, Stevie.”
“Haha, ‘how very,’” I mutter, a quote I know she’ll recognize.
We bump fists.
Heathers, that queen bee of high school films, of righting the wrongs of the high school popularity machine, by any means necessary.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I whisper.
“Well,” she says, grinning, “the meek shall inherit the earth and all that.” She opens the door to our science class. “But sometimes they need a little shove.”
Love, Heather Page 10