Thousand Words

by Jennifer Brown

  DAY 20

  COMMUNITY SERVICE

  Dad had a meeting, so he picked me up right after school the next day to drop me off at community service. I was early, but I didn’t really mind all that much. When we pulled up, Mack was sitting on a concrete bench out in front of the double doors, the collar of his jean jacket pulled up over his ears against the chilly fall wind.

  I joined him, dropping my backpack between my feet.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Mack nodded. I could hear music blasting through his earbuds, but somehow he could still hear me. The wind gusted and I pulled my jacket tighter around me. I liked the cold against my cheeks. It woke me up. In some ways it was the most awake I’d felt all day.

  “You been here long? Your cheeks are red,” I said.

  He shrugged. “A while,” he said.

  “Can I listen?” I held out my palm and after a hesitation, Mack pulled out an earbud and placed it in my hand. I put it in, tapping my foot along with the music, which was some dubstep song I’d never heard before. We sat together through the whole song, neither of us needing to say anything, neither of us acknowledging the cold.

  The song ended.

  “How’d it go yesterday?” Mack asked, thumbing the volume down. He didn’t look at me, but instead focused his eyes off across the bus yard, which was next door to the Central Office building. Buses were pulling out of the parking lot, their engines roaring.

  “Terrible.”

  He chewed his bottom lip, and for a long moment I thought that was going to be the end of it, but he simply watched another bus pull away, then said, “So I take it his apology didn’t make you feel any better?”

  “That’s the thing,” I said. “He didn’t apologize. Not really. He said he was sorry for how things turned out, and he talked about how bad it’s been for him, but he never really said anything specific, you know?” And I realized that was probably what bothered me about my meeting with Kaleb the most. You could have plugged that apology into pretty much any situation and it would have worked. It was as good as saying nothing at all.

  “You wanted him to apologize for something specific?” Finally, Mack turned to me. The gray sky reflected in his eyes and made them darker.

  I pulled the earbud out of my ear and held it in my lap, staring down at it. “No. I wanted him to apologize for everything specific.” I shook my head. “I know that doesn’t make sense. I just…” I watched the buses some more, trying to come up with the right words. “I just wanted him to say it. To say what he’d done. It was like he admitted nothing.”

  Mack turned his gaze back to the bus yard, where two men were talking animatedly beside a bus that had its hood propped open. He nodded, as if he was mulling over what I’d said.

  “Hearing him say it wouldn’t make it go away, though,” he said after a moment.

  “No, I suppose it wouldn’t,” I agreed.

  He turned up the volume again, and I put the earbud back into my ear, and we sat and listened to music until Mrs. Mosely walked past us on the sidewalk, hugging a book in her arms, her purse slung sideways across her chest.

  “You better get inside before you freeze to death, you two,” she said.

  We watched her push through the front doors, and we sat there for a few minutes longer. And then, without speaking, I handed the earbud back to Mack, and we both got up and walked in behind her.

  SEPTEMBER

  Message 107

  Slut up for grabs! Ashleigh Maynard! 555-3434

  I pushed a piece of pancake around on my plate, making a design with the butter and syrup streaks it left behind.

  My father’s voice, which had been droning on and on for what seemed like forever, drifted in and out of my consciousness. “… man’s a pompous ass… thinks the whole world owes… ought to tell him…”

  My mom made conversational noises to show she was listening. Little “uh-huhs” and “mmms” and soft gasps while she nibbled on bites of oatmeal.

  Dad had been going on about this for days now. Something about the board president, who Dad had never gotten along with, ever. The guy had taken to publicly calling out my dad for doing a poor job with some recent budget cuts. Dad had been moping around the house, snarling at the TV, barking things into the telephone, drinking glasses of wine at record speed, and griping at every meal, especially breakfast, as he faced another day of dealing with the fallout of the board president’s words at work.

  “… going to have to talk to the newspaper yourself, I suppose…” Mom was saying. I sipped my orange juice and eyed the clock, trying to rally myself into wanting to go to school. After breaking up with Kaleb, I was so depressed I barely wanted to move, much less go listen to teachers for seven hours. But thinking about Kaleb only made my tears begin anew, and I was so tired of crying. I did not want to be one of those girls—the ones who shuffle through school sniveling into a tissue and tearfully announcing their latest breakup to anyone who’s unlucky enough to get in their path or dumb enough to ask what’s wrong.

  “I have to get to school,” I finally said, standing and taking my plate to the sink.

  Both of my parents looked up, Dad’s rant temporarily forgotten. “You didn’t eat anything,” Mom said.

  “I’m not very hungry today. Plus, we’re eating doughnuts in math,” I lied. “For passing some test.”

  “Oh, congratulations, honey!” Mom said, but Dad bellowed over her, pointing his fork in my direction, “See? They blame me for the budget problems, but as long as the teachers are cramming food down the throats of every kid who gets an A on a test…”

  I edged for the door, picking up my backpack and sliding into my flip-flops.

  Mom tilted her head and sized me up, ignoring Dad. “You fine?” she said. She looked suspicious.

  I willed a smile. Tried to look casual. “Frog fur, Mom, I promise. I just ate a lot last night, I think.”

  “Well, you call me if you feel sick or anything, okay?”

  “Of course.” Vonnie’s car horn honked two short beeps and I jumped. “Von’s here.” I took two steps back into the kitchen and kissed Mom on the cheek. “Have a good day at school,” I said.

  She smiled. “Hey, that’s my line.” Another of our goofy inside jokes.

  I raced outside and immediately heard music coming from Vonnie’s car. Cheyenne and Annie were in the backseat, and they were all talking over each other and the song, which was turned up so loud the thumping bass was bouncing off the sides of my neighbors’ houses. I saw Mrs. Donnelly sitting in a rocker on her front porch, her pink robe cinched tight around her middle, a coffee mug pressed against her lap. I grinned at her and waved; she nodded grimly.

  When I opened the car door, noise spilled out like I’d opened the door into a rave. Vonnie was laughing so hard she was dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, trying to keep mascara from running down her face.

  I plunked into the passenger’s seat and held my backpack in my lap. Cheyenne and Annie were singing at the tops of their lungs, their Starbucks cups sweating in their hands. It was hot outside, the kind of day that made you wish it was still summer break and that they waited to start school until after the crappy gray weather rolled in for the season, rather than in August.

  “Yo, Buttercup!” Vonnie shouted. “Sorry, we hit the fraps without you. We’re draggin’ ass big-time this morning.” She eyed the backseat through the rearview mirror, and they all cracked up.

  “No problem,” I said, not getting what was so funny. I looked back and forth between them. “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Vonnie said, too innocently. “I swear.”

  We pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the highway.

  “Dude, I seriously think I pulled something in my knee last night,” Annie said, leaning forward and turning down the music. “I fell right into that ditch. I had grass stains on my skin, for real. Not on my clothes, but on my skin.”

  “I still have shoe polish on my right ha
nd,” Cheyenne said. “You were so lucky that neighbor pulled right into his garage, Annie. He’d have seen you for sure.”

  “I know. That’s why I ran into the ditch. I was freaking out.”

  “What?” I asked again. “What did you guys do last night?” Again, they all met eyes in the rearview mirror, but nobody said anything. After a beat, they broke into a new round of laughter. “No, really,” I said. “What are you talking about?” I was starting to get irritated, even though their stupid smiles were making me smile, too.

  “Vigilante justice,” Vonnie said.

  “More like knee rearrangement,” Annie said.

  I still didn’t get it. “Whatever. Don’t tell me.”

  Finally, Vonnie turned off the radio and glanced at me as she navigated the morning highway traffic. The turnoff to the school was backed up, as usual. “Vigilante justice,” Vonnie repeated. “We righted a wrong.”

  “Totally,” Cheyenne said around her straw, then belched. Annie called her gross and threw a wadded-up napkin at her.

  “Spill it,” I said, a smile creeping in. Whatever it was, it must have been crazy, from the sound of things. I felt a little pang of jealousy that they hadn’t asked me to do it with them.

  My phone buzzed. A text. I looked at it and my breath caught. It was from Kaleb. Part of me was angry that he was already texting me after saying he never wanted to talk to me again, and part of me hoped he was apologizing and asking me back. I opened the text, barely breathing.

  All it said was: WTF?!

  I was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to text me, because I had no idea what he was talking about. Probably he’d meant to send it to Holly or whichever college girl he’d broken up with me for.

  I texted back: ???

  Vonnie inched forward behind a van, which we were pretty sure belonged to one of the sophomores’ mommies.

  Car stratification was very important in our school. You could always tell who was who by what they drove. Minivan or Volvo? A sophomore driving his parents’ car. Old-fart car with bumper stickers that said stuff like MY OTHER CAR IS A TRUCK, half ripped off? A junior with her first wheels of her own. Brand-new Mustang parked way out by the art modular? Totally a senior’s car. And a beater, half rusted, half spray-painted, all four tires were spares? Dopeheads. You stayed away from those cars. Unless you wanted administration searching your locker during pot busts.

  “We exacted justice for you,” Vonnie said.

  “For me? What are you talking about?”

  “You shouldn’t be mad. It was all out of love,” Cheyenne said, patting me on the shoulder.

  “I don’t even know what to be mad about,” I said, though I was getting there. Whatever they’d done, they were acting totally sketchy about it.

  Annie leaned forward. “We told the world what’s what.”

  Vonnie inched forward some more, hitting the brakes in little taps that made us all look like we were moving to the beat of a song only we could hear. The van in front of us took too long to turn and she laid on her horn.

  She glanced at me. “You’re going to love this, Buttercup. We got him back.”

  “Him who?”

  As if in answer, my phone buzzed again. I glanced down. Kaleb. Oh, no. They didn’t. I opened the text.

  SHAVING CREAM? REALLY? GROW UP.

  Things clicked into place. “You shaving-creamed Kaleb’s house?” Spraying shaving cream onto someone’s window screens was big when we were in junior high. The cream was hard to get out, because it liked to foam up when you washed it, plus it cleaned the screens, so whatever you’d written stood out even after you’d washed it off, and the person who got creamed ended up having to scrub their whole screen. It was a big pain in the butt, which made it hilarious, but we hadn’t done it since we were twelve.

  The girls burst into laughter once again as the van in front of us finally inched out onto the road toward the school and Vonnie whipped around him and flung her car into the parking lot.

  “The front windows at his parents’ house,” she said between guffaws.

  “And we shoe-polished his truck windows,” Cheyenne added. “Though we have to give Vonnie most of the credit for that one. She’s quite the artist, especially when it comes to drawing penises.”

  More laughter, during which my throat felt stuck together, it was so dry. It was all seriously funny, true, but I could tell from Kaleb’s texts that he was not feeling it. And I couldn’t say I could blame him. “You drew penises on his truck windows?”

  “She also wrote ‘I love dicks,’ ” Annie said, but she was laughing so hard she had to pause several times before she could get the word “dicks” out.

  “And we wrote ‘small penis inside’ on his window screens. Nothing major. It will all wash out. Don’t look so mad, Buttercup. It was the least he deserved after what he did to you.”

  “I’m not mad,” I said, but my voice felt very small, and my hands were sweating.

  I texted Kaleb back: WASN’T ME.

  They continued talking, telling me about their mishaps and close calls, and the laughter would not stop and I was getting a headache trying to keep my mouth pulled into a grin like I thought this was the funniest thing ever, all the while hoping Kaleb didn’t hate me too much, and knowing that he probably did. Wouldn’t I have hated someone if I’d thought they’d done something like that to me?

  Finally, as Vonnie pulled into her usual parking space, my phone buzzed for the last time that morning:

  PYBKS R HELL.

  SEPTEMBER

  Message 111

  Whoever keeps sending this around needs to stop. I don’t want it on my phone because it’s disgusting. I don’t want to see a picture of this girl’s boobs every time I turn my phone on.

  Message 112

  ur boobs sag lol

  Message 113

  I wld freakin die if I was ash maynard

  Message 114

  I FEEL LIKE PUKING EVERY TIME I SEE THIS!

  I knew cross-country was the place I was going to miss Kaleb the most. Running sort of belonged to us, in a way. It was part of who we were. We met during a 5K, we sat together on the bus to every meet, we ran side by side in practice, racing, and we cheered each other on during competitions. When Coach Igo gave me a hard time for being slow, Kaleb rallied for me. And when I wanted to quit—which was about every other day—Kaleb talked me down. We both had other friends on the team, but we’d built our own little cocoon within those friends, and that was where we hung out the most, just the two of us. When Kaleb went to college, he took with him my biggest reason for wanting to stay on cross-country. Without him it was hot and sticky and I was winded and tired and sick of doing the same sport I’d done since eighth grade.

  But with the two of us broken up, it was even worse. Before, I had hoped he’d drive home to see me run in a couple of meets, but now I knew that would never happen. I imagined him stretching out in another field with another girl, a college girl, looking at that girl’s shorts as she pulled ahead of him in a race, holding her gym bag for her.

  It didn’t help that his last text was a threat and he’d sounded so much like he hated my guts. I’d texted him back, telling him that it wasn’t me, that someone else must have done it, that I hadn’t even known anything about it until I’d heard this morning. He never responded. No way would he believe me; not with the timing of it happening right after our breakup. Even if I could convince him that it was Vonnie, he’d only think I put her up to it. I even called him during lunch period, slipping out the performing arts center doors, where all the smokers hid behind the bushes, but he didn’t answer.

  Part of me was really angry with Vonnie, even though I knew her heart was in the right place.

  In between classes and at lunch, she kept telling me I was too quiet. I know you’re mad, Buttercup, she’d said, but you’ll get over it, and then you’ll thank me. Totally. Come on, admit it. It was hilarious what we did.

  I’d smiled, told her again that I wa
sn’t mad, that it was hilarious, and that I was sad about breaking up with him, that was all. But on the inside I felt like she’d ruined everything, and wished she’d just stayed out of my business.

  I dressed in my running clothes and used the bench to stretch my calves, then headed outside into the heat, squinting and shading my eyes with my arm.

  “Glad to see you could show up,” Coach Igo said, standing at the gym door. “I thought you’d given up on our team. You’re late.”

  “Sorry, Coach,” I said. “I’ve got a lot going on.”

  She frowned at me. “I can guarantee you the Washington Springs girls’ team doesn’t have a lot going on,” she said. “The only thing they’ve got going on is practice. First meet’s next week. You can’t afford to have a lot going on. At this point, I’m not sure if you’ll be running against them.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said miserably, bracing myself for more punishment. I’d seen Coach Igo make teammates run bleachers for being late, even when they had a good excuse. I had nothing.

  She stared me down for a minute longer, then sighed. “First group took off a few minutes ago. You can run with Adrian, Philippa, and Neesy. We’ll gather on the track for a talk when everyone’s back.”

  “Okay,” I said, and gratefully ducked into the small cluster of senior girls shifting from foot to foot, gathering their hair up in ponytails, retying their shoes. They were our fastest runners. I’d be huffing and puffing to keep up with them, and Coach knew that. But at least I wasn’t running up and down the bleachers until my quads practically burst through my skin. She was definitely going easy on me.

  We ran through the parking lot and took a left into the residential neighborhood that surrounded our favorite running trail. It was shaded in the hot weather, like today, and we sweated less there. In a month or so, all those leaves would be dropping to the ground and making the trail soft underfoot. I loved the muted whup whup whup sound my sneakers made on it in the fall; as if I weren’t running so much as I was bouncing on a cloud.