When I dart into the girls’ bathroom between classes, I sit on the lid and tuck my feet up so no one can tell I am in the stall, listening to random voices talk aboutthe accident.
The only good part is my teachers. I feel guilty for taking advantage of them, but they refuse to ask me about homework assignments. Every quiz I’ve been given since Thanksgiving has come back to me marked in regular blue ballpoint pen (no bright red felt tip) with a note along the lines ofWill retake after the first of the year, even the tests I scored 80 percent or better on, as if I could’ve done differently under ideal circumstances.
I want to turn the quizzes back in with my response scrawled next to their remarks:Do you really think things will be better by then?
The school newspaper comes out every Wednesday, and this week the story about Barry finally makes the front page. My first-period teacher slides me an early copy as morning announcements come through the overhead speaker. The students sitting around suddenly become remarkably rigid, pretending I am not there, eyes forward, as if they are in drivers’ ed.
Barry’s senior photo is blown up so big that it runs above and below the fold, his name and the bracketed dates—year of birth, year of death—serving as the headline. Inside, there is a four-page insert covering every possible topic from coping with the death of a young peer to safety precautions when fishing on the ice. The editor of the paper is a feisty senior named Justine Huse who’s had her eyeglasses perched on top of her head every-time I’ve seen her. She’s already received word of early acceptance to Northwestern’s journalism program and makes sure to announce this within the first few minutes of all conversations. She has also left three messages for me, two at home with my mother and one with my school counselor, requesting an interview for this special edition of the paper. I sent my handwritten decline directly to the journalism adviser, Mr. Bozzi, sneaking into the faculty office and sliding it into his mail slot. Regardless, I notice aSpecial Thanks to Presley Moran tagged on the end of the main story.
The journalism students normally leave copies of the paper in bundles outside the cafeteria and other classrooms for the teachers to pick up and distribute. I skip third period and gather as many bundles as I can carry in my arms, taking them outside behind the bleachers. With a matchbook left over from my smoking days, I throw lit matches at the copies until there is nothing left but a pile of black soot, kicking snow over the ashes just to make sure the fire is out.
Betsi has been camped out on our couch since the funeral. All traces of her tan have disappeared, and each day when I get home from school, it seems like she is in the same position as when I left that morning. Every second or third day, while the rest of the family is eating dinner, Betsi drags herself upstairs to take a shower or at least run the water. Sometimes when she comes back downstairs, she’s in the same clothes and her hair is still dry, so I’m not sure what she actually does up there.
Since Barry’s funeral, my mother has been insisting that we all sit down and eat as a family every night, not just at the kitchen table but in the formal dining room, with place settings. Apparently Betsi is excused from this declaration, but the rest of us are expected to be in our spots promptly at 6P.M . Mom explained that it was important to spend time together and talk about our days, but most nights we’ve just been passing dishes and listening to my mother fill the empty air with stories that have nothing to do with our family—the steaks on special this week at Kroger, the new wire-and-lights reindeer decorations available at Meijer, how long it took to get a parking spot at Lakeside Mall during the holiday shopping season.
Tonight is Taco Night, and there are tiny bowls of garnish on the table for our creations. Peter is using the soft shells and making tortillas, carefully adding each layer in a precise order: refried beans, rice, ground beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and one dollop of sour cream directly in the center. My father keeps his tacos simple, hard shells with lettuce only, scooping the other items onto his plate as separate side dishes. Mom has combined the ingredients to make a taco salad of sorts that sits nearly untouched on her plate. She takes a breath after her recounting of an article in the Sunday paper on how people celebrate New Year’s Eve across the globe. Before she can move on to the next subject, I jump at the opening.
“Mom?” I say, sprinkling extra shredded cheddar cheese on my taco to make it look like I am eating.
“Yes, Presley!” she exclaims, relieved that someone else is taking a turn.
“Why is Betsi still here?”
Dad pauses midbite with a forkful of Spanish rice but then continues eating, leaving Mom to respond on her own.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s staying here again, right?” I ask, as if I don’t know.
“Just for a little while.”
“So what about her apartment?”
“Well, right now she’s still paying rent there, but she’s staying with us…for the company.”
“What about her job? At the dealership?” I’m really on a roll now.
“She’s on bereavement leave,” my mother says, moving her fork around her plate, rearranging her food but still not making a dent in it.
“For how long?” My taco has become a base for the cheese mountain I’ve built over it.
“She’ll probably go back to work after Christmas.” Her responses are quieter now.
“That seems like a long time.”
“Yes, well…” Her voice trails off. I wonder what story she’s trying to come up with next.
“I don’t know why she’s getting special treatment. She’s not even really related to Barry, you know.”
My father finally speaks. “Presley.” His voice is stern and even. “Stop playing with your food.”
I look up from my taco project and notice the tears tracing my mother’s cheeks. She sets her fork down on the edge of her plate and pushes her chair back from the table, mumbling, “Excuse me,” before fleeing the room. My father sighs and tells me to clear the table and clean the kitchen before I go to bed, my punishment for asking too many of the wrong questions.
The next day Jack is waiting for me outside of the girls’ locker room after seventh-period gym class. Unfortunately, Mr. Lyndon isn’t one of the teachers giving me a break right now; we just finished indoor sprints across the waxy basketball court for the last forty-two minutes. I didn’t even try to shower or fix myself up after class, just throwing my street clothes back on with my cheeks still flushed and my hair plastered against my forehead. I wrap my scarf around my neck and throw my backpack over one shoulder, hoping I can make it from the locker room to the school doors without another round of awkward hellos or silent stares from people I don’t know.
“Presley,” Jack calls out after I walk right by him.
I jump. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry,” he says, his eyes darting back and forth. “You got a minute?”
“Yeah, but I have to get out of here. Walk with me?”
He nods, fidgeting with his brown wool cap.
“What’s wrong with you?” I ask as we shove through the doors, the stark air making my sweaty face instantly cold and clammy.
“Nothing,” he says, keeping up with my pace. We’ve walked three blocks in the direction of my house before he speaks again.
“I think we should go together to the winter formal tomorrow night,” he blurts out, fast, like a tongue twister.
I stop walking.
“Really,” he says.
I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Jack look embarrassed.
“Look, I need to get out and do something, or I’m going to go crazy. If I go with anyone else, they’re either going to act completely strange or too nice. Do you know what I mean?” he asks.
“Yeah, actually, I do—I know exactly what you mean.”
“So you’ll go?” he says again.
“Is this like a date?” I can’t believe I just asked that.
“No! It’s…a thing we�
�re going to do.” His response comes a little too quickly, and I’m surprised at the bubble of disappointment that breaks over me. I throw out my next thought to cover any signs of my reaction.
“I…I don’t have anything to wear.” It’s the closest thing I can come to saying yes.
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
Jack shuffles down the street quickly. During the rest of the walk home, as I’m trying to figure out what just happened, I remember that Betsi will be there when he arrives. I daydream about tying my bedsheets together and throwing the makeshift rope out of my window as a means of escape so Jack won’t see her and I won’t have to explain the look he has in his eyes when he does.
“Oh, Presley! Your first date!”
My mother’s reaction to my news about the dance is more like I just won the Miss Teen Michigan crown.
“It’s not a date—it’s just friends going to a school thing together. A bunch of us are meeting there,” I lie. There was no way to avoid telling my parents about the dance. I’ll be missing Friday dinner and out later than usual, which meant getting permission for an extended curfew.
“Did you talk to your father?” she asks, rinsing the chicken cacciatore off of our plates. I had waited to approach her until after dinner, making sure I ate every bite and nodding more than occasionally during her monologue to butter the path.
“Not yet. I wanted to tell you first.” I put the pitcher of iced tea back in the fridge.
“Well, I’m sure it’ll be okay. As long as you two aren’t out too late.”
“It’s just Jack, Mom. It’s not a big deal,” I tell myself as much as I am telling her, rearranging the magnets on the fridge. My mother still uses the neon alphabet magnets she first bought when I was maybe three years old, to help me learn how to spell and read.
“What will you wear?” she asks. “I guess we don’t have time to shop for anything new, do we?”
“I’ll find something,” I say, arranging the letters: X—M—A—S.
“You know, you could ask Betsi to borrow something of hers.”
“No.” I spell the word as I say it. N—O.
“Why not?”
“We’re not even close to the same size,” I blurt, arranging the three I’s to make a triangle.
“Oh, of course you are. You two are almost exactly the same build.”
“What are you talking about? Betsi is much skinnier than I am. And at least two inches taller.”
“Pres, you can’t see yourself the way everyone else does. People tell me all the time how alike you two look. You’ll probably look even more like her the older you get. It’s not such a bad thing to be compared to the girl you said you always wanted to be.”
I disconnect the triangle to borrow one of the I’s.
G—I—R—L.
“I’m not like her at all,” I mumble, breaking apart all of the plastic words on the fridge, the letters once again becoming nothing but a random clutter.
I end up raiding Hannah’s closet after school on Friday. She pulls out at least fourteen different combinations, spreading them out on her bed and hanging some of the possibilities off of her curtain rod for evaluation.
“I think it’s nice,” Hannah says quietly.
“This?” I ask, holding up a white blouse.
“No. That Jack is taking you.”
“Oh. Yeah well…we’re just trying to do something that feels normal.” I slip my arms into a dark green dress, running my hands over the shiny fabric and wondering if it’s too much. Hannah is still looking at me. “It’s not likethat, ” I tell her.
“Okay, okay,” she says, standing up to help with the zipper. “But I think he’d be glad you two were going together,” she adds. We’re both becoming experts at avoiding the use of his specific name.
I settle on a simple black skirt that swings a bit when I walk and a red cashmere sweater. When I get home, I shower and leave my conditioner in for an extra five minutes to help make my hair as soft as possible. I settle in front of the dresser mirror, wrapped in towels and examining the lines on my face and the circles under my eyes.
“I could help you, if you want.”
Betsi hesitates in my doorway, pulling on a lock of her hair that has fallen free from the short, messy ponytail holding the rest together. She’s wearing boxer shorts and a white tank top with a light orange stain near the collar.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask her, ignoring her comment.
“No,” she says, examining her bare arms and legs as if she just realized she had them.
I turn back to the mirror and start squeezing the water out of my hair into my towel. She waits in my doorway as I drag a comb through the snarls.
“Why don’t you let me dry your hair? I can get it really smooth and straight, the way you like it.”
“That’s okay, I can do it myself.”
“Please,” she says. “I want to.”
When I look at her, she is shivering in the doorway, so I nod, extending the comb her way. She approaches slowly at first, as if waiting for me to change my mind, but then takes the comb and finishes pulling through the tangles. Betsi rubs styling cream through the ends and then plugs in the hair dryer behind the dresser. She tackles my hair in sections with a large round brush, pulling each segment tight and running the heat of the dryer right up against the roots. The lamp on my dresser flickers occasionally as it struggles to share the current with the dryer, but Betsi stays focused, stopping momentarily to step back and assess each section before moving on to the next one. I watch her reflection in the mirror as she moves around me, trying to remember how to make things look perfect.
I keep watch from the living room window, and when I see Jack’s car coming down the street, I throw out a quick “Bye!” to my family, racing out the front door before they can respond. Jack is pulling into the driveway as I scamper down the sidewalk, not caring if I fall on the ice.
“I was going to come to the door,” he says as I slide into the passenger seat.
“That’s not necessary,” I say. “Let’s go.”
“Your parents are going to think I’m a jerk. I need to go inside and at least say hello.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” I argue. “Really!”
Jack turns off the ignition.
“Betsi’s still there. She’s staying with us again,” I say.
He pauses, then starts the car again and reverses out of the driveway.
I exhale with my victory, rubbing my hands together for warmth and thinking about the gloves I left behind on the kitchen table.
“You look nice—” he starts.
“Shut up, Jack.”
He laughs for a minute, short and nervous, and then mumbles, “Well, you do.”
We drive in silence the rest of the way, listening to the traffic and weather report.The southbound lanes on I-75 between downtown and the Ambassador Bridge are closed for overnight maintenance; chance of flurries, sixty percent.
The dance is set up in the school cafeteria, tables cleared and chairs stacked in the corner, with plastic punch bowls and cookie trays sitting out in the spot where they usually scoop lunch onto our trays. It’s a schoolwide dance, so there are students from all grades clustering underneath the colored Christmas bulbs strung from the corners and ceiling, burning across each end of the room. The DJ has two poinsettia plants on his table, and he is playing a Madonna record to, as he announces, “get this party started.” It works, at least with some of the girls, who squeal and start bouncing frantically, singing along with every word.
“I’m not sure if this is my scene,” I lean over and yell into Jack’s ear over the music. We are standing in the back of the room, side by side like cardboard cutouts.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Jack yells back. “Your scene right now sort of sucks.” He’s wearing a red tie with a blue button-down shirt and gray slacks. When I find Hannah, she will probably tell me he looks cute. I’d agree with her but never admit it.
This is not a date, I remind myself. This is a distraction.
“Are you thirsty?” he asks.
“Not really.”
“Do you want to sit for a while?”
“Not really.”
“Maybe we should dance,” he suggests.
“But it’s a fast song,” I point out, mortified at the thought of fast-dancing with him—or anyone—right now.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be.” Jack takes my hand and leads me right into the middle of the crowd, pulling me close and turning me in slow circles with him. I turn my face slightly toward him, smelling the traces of menthol shaving cream left over on his cheek and neck. Our timing is completely off from what’s going on around us, and I know we’re making everyone stare more than they already were, but right now all I care about is having someone else take charge of things, even if it’s only until the end of the song.
Jack parks a few houses back from mine, per my request, but I can see my parents’ bedroom light is on. They’re waiting up to see whether or not I will make curfew.
“Thanks again,” I say.
“For what?” he asks, flipping the stations to try and find something other than Christmas carols.
“For letting me hang out here and run the clock out. I’m trying to take advantage of the extra thirty minutes they gave me.”
“So they upped the ante on the curfew, huh?” he says, settling for a Commodores song on 100.3 FM.
The Girl I Wanted to Be: A Novel Page 13
