“Not even a little?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Can you come by later? I want to show you something. I promised to pay you back, didn’t I?” I had spent the day veering between intense guilt and self-pity, and it was a relief to have someone be nice to me.
“Fine,” I said.
I was pretty sure a silence fell over the halls as I walked toward the exit, though maybe I was just out of it after my confinement. I was looking for my friends, hoping they would tell me I was only being paranoid, that nobody was actually talking about me. I saw Nicole and the twins leaving Mrs. Davis’s classroom and caught up to them. They confirmed my worst suspicions when they looked at me like I was personally responsible for the death of Kurt Cobain.
“What a shitty day,” I said anyway.
“We’re on a tight schedule here,” Melinda said.
“Yeah,” said Bridget.
“I love you, but I can’t afford to be associated with you right now,” Nicole said. “I have an election to win.” They walked by my SUMMERS ALL YEAR LONG poster without acknowledging it. Nicole looked back just to show how much it hurt her to hurt me.
* * *
—
Sammy’s tiny house stood about two inches from the houses on either side of it, but a house was still a house, and there was no way a neighbor’s shelf could make it through its walls. His kid sister and her friends were doing weak cartwheels under a plastic basketball hoop, and his mom smoked on the porch. Sammy wore his practice jersey and there was mud on his forearms. I looked around for Fat Jack, though I was pretty sure he didn’t live all that close by.
“All right, Konnikova, it’s time to show us what you’ve got,” Sammy said, rubbing his hands together as I approached.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve seen you doing flips with your girlfriends at recess. So come on, give us an education.”
“We don’t do that anymore.”
His sister gazed at me so hopefully that it seemed easier to do stunts than to protest. I did a roundoff to warm up, then an aerial, followed by a roundoff–back handspring, which didn’t feel right, something I hadn’t done for too long, something I would one day forget how to do completely. I then went for something a little easier, walking on my hands. I could see my upside-down shadow in the waning sunlight.
Kelly laughed aloud, and some of the boys even whooped a little. I felt pretty good, so I did what I wouldn’t have the chance to do for Nicole: I walked in circles and clapped my feet. It was fun to ham it up for a change. Sammy cheered for me. I came down, not because I couldn’t hold my balance but because my forearms were starting to ache.
“Not bad,” he said. He shooed the other kids away. It was time to get down to business. “I said I would pay you back. Are you up for a potentially dangerous mission?”
He gave me a soulful glance through his bangs. I could feel the sweat pooling at the back of my neck.
“What do I have to lose?” I said.
He grinned. “I knew you were all right, Konnikova.”
I hopped on my bike and sped after him—he rode fast. We zoomed down his street and past the middle school, where we’d be forced to go the next year. It looked like a square submarine and didn’t even have a playground. The houses got bigger and farther apart, until we got to Nicole’s. We crouched in the woods across from her house, facing her bay window.
“Peterson should be here any minute,” Sammy said, producing his Polaroid.
“Why would he be here?” I said, and he snorted.
“You really are clueless, aren’t you? He’s fucking Nicole’s mom.”
“Principal Peterson?” I said, and he nodded gravely. “How do you know?”
He shrugged. “I know a lot of things.”
A car pulled up a house away from Nicole’s. At first, I didn’t think the man who emerged from it was the same one who’d doled out my punishment. This version looked excited, confident. But Principal Peterson tilted his head enough for me to recognize his apologetic presence. Nicole’s mom opened the door and Sammy snapped a picture before the house swallowed them up. I imagined what they would say to each other in bed. “My penis in your vagina is like a stone dropping to the bottom of an ocean,” he’d tell Mrs. Summers. “So exciting!” she would reply.
Sammy inspected his photograph and handed it over.
“What should I do with it?” I said.
“You’re supposed to be smart, aren’t you? You’ll figure something out.”
“Gifted,” I said, “is not the same as smart.”
As we pulled our bikes out of the woods, I wanted him to kiss me, or at least to hold my hand or promise to call later, but he seemed above all that, maybe because he was so much older. At the end of the block, he gazed back at Nicole’s mansion.
“Private property,” he said, shaking his head. “How can you own woods?”
* * *
—
Nicole looked unsteady as she approached the podium in tiny heels, drowning under the bright lights of the auditorium. I sat in the back, flanked by Sammy and Principal Peterson. Principal Peterson looked like he was holding in a big shit. It must have hurt him to look at Nicole, since she looked so much like her beautiful mother. Her beautiful mother, in fact, was sitting near the stage with her handsome husband, who had his arm around her. If I didn’t know better, I would think they were happy together.
“If I am elected president,” Nicole began, her voice shaking, “I promise to bring change to our school. I promise….” I could barely listen as she stumbled over her words, having cut all of my witty phrases. I pictured how it would play out if I had walked on my hands behind her and saw how stupid that was, how it would make her look even worse.
She seemed so scared that I forgave her everything. My heart heaved when she said, “Remember, a vote for Nicole is a vote for…” and struggled before adding, “…a better place for everybody! A stronger community!” She looked up like she was lost and waiting for someone to give her directions. Her parents clapped heartily up front.
Sammy laughed. “You didn’t help her with that nonsense, did you?”
“Tried to.”
“Should have tried harder.”
“That’s enough,” Principal Peterson snapped. He was talking to us, but he was looking at Nicole’s parents.
Isabelle Lee trotted onstage and was as competent and on point as a stapler. Then the vice president and secretary candidates spoke, but nobody cared about them. The only thing I paid attention to was that Sammy and I were sitting with our arms insanely close together but not touching, reminding me of the neighboring houses on his street. The hairs on my arms sizzled.
The moment was wrecked when I spotted Fat Jack as the front rows filed out. His cheek was puffy and looked like it had a hideous black caterpillar crawling along it. I was scared by how scared he was when we locked eyes, as if I were someone to be reckoned with. He walked past me, almost running, really, before I could figure out what to say. He looked back, horrified, and nearly tripped before he disappeared into the crowd.
* * *
—
“Your mother is resting,” Papa said when he picked me up from school on the final day of my punishment. I was glad to have time alone with him, though he didn’t say much as the car pulled away. Dark Side of the Moon was playing in his Honda. The car was his sanctuary. After work, he’d go on long drives by himself, or park by the creek, where he would smoke and read my grandmother’s letters from Florida, which he kept in the glove box. I only noticed that he had been crying when he turned down the music.
“Your mother will need time to recover,” he said. “She has lost another baby.”
“What do you mean, another?”
Papa sighed. “Her fourth. And her last. We were so hopeful about this one—none of the othe
rs had made it this far…” he said as his voice broke. “But it is too dangerous now. We aren’t going to try anymore, do you understand?”
I nodded and tried not to cry. Why did he have to tell me the truth? It all made sense—all those years when I thought Mama was puking just because she was just sick, my parents whispering late at night, secrets I assumed had to do with how broke we were. I had always thought I was enough for them. I felt the tears stinging my eyes, not because I was mourning my last chance to have a brother but because my parents had tried, again and again, to have another child, to replace me. But now the child was erased, like he hadn’t been resting in Mama’s belly at all. “Like a stone dropping to the bottom of an ocean,” I thought but knew better than to say.
“I understand perfectly,” I said.
“The important thing,” he said, “is that you be kind to your mother.”
He looked away and rolled down the window. He lit a cigarette without asking if I minded, for once. He looked so helpless that I did not want to stop talking to him. I opened my mouth, but when I tried to form words I began to cry, which was exactly what I’d wanted to avoid.
He squeezed my hand and said, “We are only children, you and your mother and father. Lone soldiers in the universe. No brothers or sisters to call our own. Rogue warriors.”
* * *
—
This rogue warrior cast a vote for Nicole Summers at the beginning of class the next morning. Mrs. Ferguson picked up my ballot and told me she was glad to have me back, though her face said the opposite. I tilted my head toward her sexual bathroom to show she didn’t have one up on me, but she didn’t notice. I thought of Nicole on the other side of the wall, getting nervous, sucking on a strand of hair. I marched to Principal Peterson’s office when the recess bell rang.
“I have something that might interest you,” I said.
“Is that right?” he said. He looked tired, even for a principal.
I slid the photo of him and Mrs. Summers in his direction. His face drained of color, just like Fat Jack’s cheek after the stick had ripped through it.
“What do you want?”
“I want Nicole to be president. You don’t want this picture in the wrong hands.”
He stood and adjusted his tie. “Get out of my office, Ms. Konnikova.”
“But—”
“You must be accountable for your actions. You can’t un-ring a bell. What lesson would I be teaching you if I took the bribe? I am a role model,” he said, his voice quaking. “Don’t you understand that?”
“Some role model,” I said, and he flinched at this, like he was bracing against a cold wind, but I did not let myself feel sorry for him. “Besides,” I tried again, “don’t you want to make Mrs. Summers happy?” But he just looked angrier, so I returned to my original approach. “If she doesn’t win, I’ll tell everyone your secret,” I said.
“My my,” he said, regarding me with near admiration. “I didn’t think you had it in you.” When he turned away from me, toward the window, his shoulders heaved. There were creases all over his suit, around the elbows and down his back. There were creases in the skin at the back of his neck too. He was creased everywhere.
* * *
—
Principal Peterson announced the results of the election over the loudspeaker at the end of the day. Isabelle Lee had wrested victory from Nicole’s hands in what he assured us was a very close election. “As close as…” he began, but he could not think of an adequate metaphor and told us to have a good afternoon as the class snickered. After the final bell rang, I heard a stuck-pig sound emanating from Mrs. Davis’s room, followed by a shuffling and slamming, which told me that Nicole had run into the sex bathroom, and I ran in too, from the Gifted side.
She sat on the toilet and the twins crouched on either side of her, rubbing her shoulders. She looked like an overwatered flower. I felt terrible for her. This was the worst thing she had ever had to deal with, and it would only get worse from here.
“I can’t believe this,” she sputtered.
“I really thought you would win,” I said.
“Same,” said Bridget.
“Leave her alone,” Melinda told me, but Nicole pushed her away.
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you onstage,” she said.
“It’s all right. I’m over it,” I said. I couldn’t believe it had ever mattered to me.
“What am I supposed to do now?” she said. “What am I supposed to do?” She hiccupped madly. This had been her last chance to be on top and she saw it as clearly as a comet shooting across the night sky. Maybe she wasn’t as dumb as I thought.
She cried louder as I looked around the room where the teachers supposedly did their illicit deeds. There was a periodic table, a map of Paris, a few rolls of toilet paper, and the teacher pay schedule for the 1996–97 calendar year. It was hard to imagine anything remotely wild or spectacular going on in here.
“Chin up,” Melinda said.
“Try to smile,” I translated, but Nicole wasn’t listening. “You go home. I’ll tear everything down,” I told her.
She nodded gratefully, and the four of us emerged from the non-Gifted side to face an unhappy Mrs. Davis. I could see her deciding whether or not to punish us.
“Just get out of here,” she said. “I have a lot of work to do.”
The twins led Nicole to the lobby. She had an arm around each of their shoulders and hobbled forward like she had sprained an ankle. I was left to tackle a wall of lime-green signs that read NICOLE 4 PREZ—lazy mind-farts of the twins, no doubt. For the first time, I walked down the halls without being afraid of seeing Fat Jack. I tore down rows of uninspiring signs until I reached Principal Peterson’s office. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t caved. I hadn’t even asked for that much.
Just before I turned the corner, I saw Sammy leaving Principal Peterson’s office with his mother. When he saw me, he told her to wait outside for him and she walked out the front door. I peeled Nicole’s last poster off the wall, ripping it in half for dramatic effect. It said, NICOLE IS YOUR GOAL! That had been my handiwork.
“Tough loss today,” he said with a smile. “My condolences.”
“She’s devastated.”
“She’ll get over it,” he said. “Anyway, I’m glad I caught you. I’m leaving town tomorrow.”
“For how long?”
“For the foreseeable. My mom’s shipping me off to my grandma’s in Cleveland. She hopes she’ll whip me into shape,” he said with a dark laugh.
“What did you do this time?”
He shrugged and held up a bloody knuckle. “Thanks for everything, Konnikova. You’re not so bad.”
I knew it was the last time we’d see each other, that Cleveland might as well have been in Alaska when you were eleven. I tried to find a decent way to say goodbye.
“Are you really thirteen?” I said.
He threw back his head and laughed. “Twelve, actually. And only because I have an early birthday. I wasn’t held back, if that’s what you’re asking.” He put his non-bloody hand on my shoulder. “You can’t believe everything they tell you.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
In the space where he was deciding whether or not my question was rhetorical, I kissed him. I felt the tip of his salty tongue before I pulled back, because I got scared, and because I didn’t want him to pull back first. The small bit of his tongue had lodged into my mouth and stayed there like the corner of the neighbors’ bookshelf that lingered in our wall. I wanted more of him, though. I wanted to lick his bloody knuckle. I wanted him to say, “You’re sucking my blood,” and for me to say, “Yes, yes, I am.”
He gave me a sleepy, lazy, sweet smile. He pulled out his camera and snapped my picture before I could figure out how to pose for it.
“Did you use what I gave you
yet?” he said. It took me a second to realize he was talking about the photograph.
“Soon,” I said. “Still waiting for the right time.”
* * *
—
Nicole called late that night with devastating news. Principal Peterson had stormed her mansion and told her father everything; he said he was tired of keeping secrets. “I can’t help who I love,” he said. “No more than a snake can help shedding its skin.” I was happy to hear Nicole laugh a tiny bit when she reported this, glad she had a moment of relief before her world came crashing down. Apparently Principal Peterson had spewed romantic nonsense until Mr. Summers punched him in the face, at which point he left; Mrs. Summers stood in the driveway as he drove away—filled with dreadful longing, I imagined.
My parents had fallen asleep hours ago. They were holed up in the cavern of their bedroom with the radio on, men cheering for faraway goals in my native language, so getting to Nicole’s was not a problem. As I climbed on my bike, I saw our next-door neighbors walking into their home, looking even older and more tired than my parents, hardly capable of passion.
The mansion was a wreck. Nicole’s mother was raving in the kitchen and her father sobbed with his head in his hands. I had never seen Mrs. Summers with even a bra strap showing, but now her face was puffed up and she was holding an empty wine bottle like she planned to break it in a million pieces and stab herself with the shards, and it was all because of me.
“I don’t know how it happened!” Mrs. Summers was shouting. “I’m so sorry….” She gave me a weak nod as I passed her. It was a shame they were so far away from their neighbors that no one could hear them. I hated being so close to ours, but right then the idea of someone else being there was kind of nice, some nice rich neighbor coming over with a casserole or just words of comfort to distract them from their pain.
The white carpet leading to Nicole’s room was suddenly the dumbest thing I had ever seen, a bright space to showcase your messes. Nicole was in bed, holding her brother in her lap. The Lion looked too big in her arms and he was trying to wriggle out. She released him when she saw me. She sat in the center of a stuffed-animal mountain, oblivious dogs and cats and Beanie Babies flanking her like soldiers awaiting instruction. For once, her mother didn’t need to call her personal landline for Nicole to know what was going on downstairs.
Oksana, Behave! Page 5
