Lemon Lavender Is Not Fine

by Elle Pallmore

  She tugs on the frayed tassels of the panda hat I gave her for Christmas last year. “I don’t think you should hide anymore. If people want to talk about you, let them. They’ll talk about you if you’re with Graham or if you aren’t. That’s all I was trying to say last week.”

  “It’s just—I don’t want anyone to talk about me. At all.”

  “I know, but they are, and you can ignore it. That’s why I didn’t tell you about the party at Shannon’s. I knew you wouldn’t go, but you have to be out there, showing your face. Acting like it doesn’t upset you.”

  “But it does upset me. How can I pretend it doesn’t?”

  Her mittens flatten a wrinkle in the tarp. “I’m not saying to toughen up or anything. I know it hurts. But I also know it’ll hurt less if you don’t seclude yourself. Like with Graham too. You can still be with him.”

  My paintbrush hangs mid-air. We’re back to that again. It isn’t that easy, though . . . at least, it isn’t as fixable as she thinks. She’s dangling a present that isn’t hers to give.

  “I don’t think trying to see him . . . is a good idea. Madeline would just love an excuse to extend the story for her devoted fans.” I’m joking, but not really. Even standing near Graham is a risk to my tattered reputation.

  “What can they say that hasn’t already been said? If you let them decide what you do, you’ll always be trapped. But if you ignore it, they’ll move on.” She hands me the next piece of wood. “And besides, you don’t have to do it in front of everyone. Talk to him alone.”

  She doesn’t understand how tight the marionette strings are. When I tug in the direction I want to go, they pull even harder, wrenching me back into place. It’s exhausting, never getting anywhere.

  “Maybe,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”

  I start painting again, and eventually we find our way to a new subject. By the time Isabel leaves, neither of us has said we’re sorry, but at least we’re speaking again.

  twenty-one

  AFTER DINNER THAT NIGHT, I chuck Isabel’s idea to talk to Graham around my head. I heave it from the “maybe” pile to the “no way” pile and back again. He probably won’t talk to me. At least if he refuses, I don’t think he’ll tell anyone I tried.

  After an hour, I finally decide to do it.

  Even though it’s late, I find my phone under the bed and turn it on. The screen takes forever to light up, so I keep reciting that this is a good idea and Isabel wouldn’t steer me the wrong way. When my apps appear, before I can talk myself out of it, I rapid-fire text him.

  Can we talk tmrw?

  I barely breathe as the seconds pass. I shove my phone under my pillow and roll over, stuffing my face into the other one. A full five minutes later, a buzz sounds.

  When?

  I didn’t think that far ahead. I didn’t even think he’d respond.

  Tmrw B4 school? Ur car?

  A response appears immediately.

  K.

  I toss my quilt aside, suddenly hot, and stare at the ceiling for a script of what I want to say to him. We can be friends, right? And maybe if we’re friends, the gossip will stop. Everyone will finally see I’m not doing all the things Madeline says. She and Chelsea might still target me, but if I can disprove some of the lies and get my life back, it’ll be a small victory.

  After a restless night of practicing, I pry myself out of bed the next morning and drive to school. I park at the back of the lot extra early, next to a protective snow pile, and guzzle the coffee I probably don’t need since I’m already bouncing with nervous energy. As I wait, a voracious wind whistles through the window, blowing crystals off the tops of the snow drifts that have been pushed to the edges of the lot by plows. Time creeps, each minute feeling like five. I finish my coffee. I clean all the receipts out of my cupholder. I check my teeth.

  Fifteen minutes later, a steady stream of cars fill the empty spaces at the front of the lot. Graham still isn’t here.

  When the first buses pull in, I start to panic—the likelihood of a clandestine meeting is over. Still, I want to talk to him, since Isabel convinced me that repairing our relationship is the first step in making all this go away. I’ll tell him I still care, even though I walked away on the night he asked me if I did. I’ll explain how hard it’s been since the videos started, why it’s so risky to be seen with him. Why it still is. I teeter, gravitating toward telling him I need him, but I’m not sure I want to go there.

  I rehearse while the buses depart, growing more sick when it’s only stragglers coming into the lot, taking the spots around me that I’d hoped would remain empty. All at once I’m terrified that he lied to me or that this is some sort of prank. I turn off my car, ending the warmth from the vents. I promise myself I’ll only stay until the warning bell rings.

  Finally, five minutes before homeroom, his blue Toyota enters the row of cars and claims a spot a few spaces down from me. I wipe my clammy hands on my coat and get out of my car, ready to go to his. I swallow a gulp of cold air, but it’s promptly knocked out of me when Chelsea opens Graham’s passenger door and adjusts the tiny skirt she’s wearing over cable-knit tights. Graham follows a second later. She says something to him, and he laughs.

  The wind whips, lashing me where I stand. He slings his bag over his shoulder as his head swivels around, searching, then finding me. We assess each other over the tops of the cars between us. I glance from him to Chelsea, who follows Graham’s line of sight. Her mouth gapes slightly, but she pops on a pair of aviator sunglasses and stands, arms folded, not going anywhere. Go ahead, her stance says. I dare you.

  I can only do what any sane person would do in this situation: I drop between two cars, cutting them off from my view. It’s a childish move, but Chelsea’s stare is like a slap stinging my cheek. This isn’t how it was supposed to go down, and now that it has, here I am, hovering above the cold pavement in a squat, willing my wobbling knees to hold me up while I hide. The thought of Graham being with someone else is a bitter pill to swallow, but this is worse. Chelsea is violent asphyxiation.

  The burn in my thighs escalates to full muscle tremors, but I can’t very well roll under my car and wait to spontaneously self-destruct, though it’s my most preferred option. I close my body over my legs, as if trying to cover a bomb that’s about to explode. When Graham rounds the car next to mine, he finds me that way. Chelsea isn’t with him.

  “What are you doing?” he asks. “I thought you wanted to talk.”

  Everything I’ve prepared to say blows into smithereens. I look up from my near fetal position. I know I’m supposed to stand upright, have some dignity, but I’m completely knotted up inside, like my intestines are tied into a balloon animal.

  My voice quivers despite my attempt to control it. “Her? You show up with her?”

  He shrugs. “I gave her a ride to school.”

  “Of all mornings. That’s very convenient.”

  Ignoring my sarcasm, he replies, “You wanted to talk. Say what you have to say.”

  I did want to talk, but that was before he decided to play dirty. There’s nothing to declare anymore. No salvaging, no apology. I stand on aching legs.

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Good. Then I guess I can go.”

  He starts to walk away, but I’m not satisfied. There are things to say, just not my original script.

  “You didn’t answer me. Why her? Why did it have to be Chelsea?”

  He turns around, facing the fierce wind. His coat is open, and his shirt flattens against his body. All those muscles. Unfortunately, I think about Chelsea flattened against him as well, which is a lit match on my already gasoline-soaked mood.

  “We aren’t together anymore,” he says. “I don’t have to explain anything. You of all people should understand that.”

  “Yeah, well it’s still a dick move, and you know it. I hope you’re happy with her. I’m sure you have tons of fun brainstorming new ways to torment me.”

  He propels in
my direction. His eyes are narrow and angry, his neck red. “I’m not with her. She needed a ride to school, so I gave her one. You don’t get to say whether that’s okay or not.”

  “You’re right, I don’t have a say. Not about who I am or what I do or what everyone says about me. Thanks to her and Madeline. Thanks to you.”

  He doesn’t like that. Not at all. We’re shouting now, just like the day it began in the library.

  “You told me you wanted to handle your problems on your own. So don’t expect me to do anything about it now.”

  I flush. If he can’t see how fraternizing with the very girl who’s at the epicenter of my doom is just plain wrong, then there’s nothing else I can say. I shove my way past him, but he catches the edge of my jacket. The wall of his body blocks the frigid air, and I feel the angry heat emanating from him. In all the conversations we’ve had in my head, when I talk to the phantom him, this is missing. I can’t replicate his presence, that high feeling, because memory is never close enough to the actual truth. It provides you with words and expressions, but not the chaos caused by physical proximity. It’s completely disorienting, as if I blinked and woke up in another country.

  “Lemon,” he says softly.

  It’s just a name, but from him, it’s more. Neither of us moves; my anger deflates into utter confusion. I wish I could put his hand on my heart so he’d understand the complicated alchemy that sparks when I’m near him. I search for a way to voice this feeling, but he’s standing so close, my brain seizes. I tilt my head upward, risking a look into his troubled face, but my eyes unwillingly trail to his mouth, to the scruff I remember against my chin, along my neck. He leans in, and my lashes are about to flutter closed. I forget about fighting, forget about Chelsea.

  A blast of wind cuts between us, lashing my hair in a thousand directions. Blinking, he backs away, breaking free of whatever magic just flared between us. We both look at the pavement. My breath feels siphoned from my lungs.

  “Don’t ask me to talk again,” he warns. “I don’t have anything else to say to you.”

  I don’t follow him as he stalks toward the school. With each step he takes, the parking lot comes back into focus, as if a blinding white flash temporarily blotted out my surroundings. Everything speeds up, sound filters in. People lean against their cars, some in groups, watching. When the warning bell rings, they reluctantly trickle into the building. The show is over.

  twenty-two

  VALENTINE’S DAY AT Westmoore escalates the war between the loved and loveless. The loved act like the sun shines out of their asses, causing the unloved to deteriorate into bitter beasts pawing the ground, anxious for a fight. Tension swirls; tempers are short. Mine is down to a nub.

  Since everyone is self-absorbed in their own relationships (or lack thereof), I hope they’ll forget my sins for one day and leave me alone. With that, I force myself out the door and into the seventh circle of Hades, which is decorated in shiny hearts and cupids and contains the ear-piercing shrieks of girls I can barely stand.

  Evidence of all my sleepless nights shows up as grinding aches in my shoulders and knees, making me feel downright geriatric in addition to depressed. I concentrate on counting the steps it takes to get from Westmoore’s lobby to my locker, sucking myself into a trance so I won’t react to the ripple of laughter and taunts slinging like arrows at my head.

  I survive the walk and spin the combination dial on my locker door. It isn’t until the last number that my senses perk up, registering the sharp cleanser scent burning my nose. I freeze, hand cupped around my lock, ready to pull it free. I think better of it and look down to where my sneakers are leaving patterns in a puddle seeping out from under my locker door. My first thought is someone peed inside, or at least on it, but it isn’t that type of acrid scent.

  I keep my head down.

  Stare at the puddle.

  Try to not to have a panic attack.

  If I turn and run, I won’t have the books I need, and then I’ll have to explain to every teacher why I’m not prepared, which will only draw more attention in class. No, it’s better to face it now, to be a “good sport,” laugh it off. Whatever it is.

  I pull the lock, remove it slowly. I lift the latch and instantly regret it. The door barrels open, vomiting a bushel of yellow onto my shoes as I jump back. The sour scent intensifies as I stare at the rinds and seeds, trying to figure out what the hell is happening. Belatedly, I understand.

  Lemons.

  More specifically, crushed lemons crammed inside my locker, now unleashed all over my sneakers and the floor. I look closer; my books are coated in juice, my notebooks warped and wrinkled from their acid soak.

  I risk a glance around and find Rob Frost doubled over, hands on his knees. He’s been watching and waiting. The laughter expands—his friends, people I know from my classes, people I don’t know. It echoes, growing louder as cameras pop up, filming from all angles.

  My next thought, aside from passing out, is Madeline.

  I slam my locker door on the whole mess, once, twice, finally succeeding at catching the latch even as lemons gape out of the bottom. I can’t do anything about the load that’s already gushed onto the floor, so I shake off my shoe and kick the rest aside. The news starts to travel down the hall, and soon a crowd knots behind me, trying to get a look at the carnage. I push through them, heading toward the bathroom for paper towels, but Rob sidles up close, shoulder to shoulder, and says, “Happy V Day, babe.”

  That word. Babe. From him, it’s as bad as the worst expletive for the female anatomy I can think of. I want to punch his face in, but I imagine his mouth opening wide and swallowing me whole, like those giant anacondas that can consume an entire human being. He breaks away when I swing open the door to the bathroom.

  Inside, my brain shifts to automatic. I can’t let myself feel the pain of this, not yet, not here, so I shove it down and keep moving. After I rip an industrial roll of brown paper towels out of the dispenser, the homeroom bell blares. I return to the hallway, which is emptying, and drag one of the rolling trash cans from the janitor closet with me so I can get to work on cleaning my locker—and essentially conceal that this ever happened.

  I scoop up the lemons on the floor and chuck them. A tree’s worth of paper towels soaks up most of the juice. Acid seeps into the collection of cuts I’ve gotten from Mom’s renovation projects, but they barely register as I inspect the rest of the damage. I know I can salvage my textbooks by placing a paper towel between each of the sticky pages. My notebooks are another story—their soft covers didn’t offer much protection, so most of them are ruined. After my locker is lemon-free, I press more paper towels to the soles of my Converse, which are sticky. There’s nothing else to do but hope I can keep my emotional breakdown at bay until the end of school.

  Except, it doesn't stop with my locker.

  In every one of my classes, a lemon perches on my chair or on top of my desk. I don’t make a big show of it. I toss them in my bag without emotion. No huffing, no scowl. The soles of my shoes squeak with leftover residue, but I pop in my earbuds between classes so I don’t hear it.

  The grand finale happens at my car at the end of the day, where I find a dozen more pulverized lemons dumped onto the hood and wedged under the windshield wipers. I know I’m being filmed and that it’ll be posted on Lady W. tonight or tomorrow. She’ll have me driving away, bouncing lemons across the parking lot to a wacky soundtrack. Shame courses through my bloodstream as I swipe most of the mess off my car with my arm, get in, and floor the gas pedal.

  When I’m out of Westmoore’s parking lot, I go directly to a car wash in East Branch. I’m worried about what the acid will do to the car paint; if Dad sees any body damage, he’s going to cause me bodily damage. I lift each windshield wiper and clear the final few lemon rinds, then squeegee the bottoms of my sneakers until I’m satisfied the stickiness is gone. I put the car in neutral and putter through the car wash just to make sure there’s no evidence.
>
  Darkness envelops me as velvety rags swirl over my windows, swishing the suds around. For the first time all day, I feel safe. The problem with safe, though, is that it’s a gateway to feeling.

  As shots of water pulse away the foam, I bite my lip, holding back a solid cry. Tears loiter, pressing against my eyes and at the base of my throat, but I refuse to let them out. I replace it with anger, allowing it to sap me of all other emotion.

  This prank took thought and planning, to figure out my lock combination, squeeze lemons into a pulpy mess all over my stuff, then head out to my car and do the same. To know my schedule and recruit someone to leave a lemon in every class. More than just one person is responsible, operating like a sleeper cell, striking without so much as a whisper. For them, it offers a few hours of entertainment, another opportunity to get clicks on Lady Westmoore. The impact on me will reverberate for years, though, since I can’t imagine ever opening my locker without worrying something is inside. I can easily see myself cringing at the scent of anything lemon for the rest of my life.

  The message they wanted to send echoes in my head. You are worthless. Your feelings are worthless. You are nothing except a funny story we can tell.

  WHEN I GET HOME, I go straight to my bedroom. All I want is to sink under the covers and wallow. But when I whisk open my door, I succumb to an immediate head rush. My room has been ransacked. Dresser drawers are empty and stacked against the wall, the mattress is upended on its side, and across the floor, a scatter of half-full boxes hold my clothes. The desk is the only thing that remains in the same place, but the surface is bare. Squeezing my eyes shut, I give in to the wave of madness that’s been threatening all damn day.

  “Mom!” I bellow. “Mom!”

  A minute later, she scurries into my room with a paintbrush in her hand. “What’s wrong? You’re screaming bloody murder.”

  I gesture to my room.

  “Oh,” she shrugs. “I got a head start, but then I got distracted by those flower pots I wanted to paint.” She whirls the brush around like some sort of evil fairy godmother. “I emptied your dressers so we can sand them down to get that rustic look. Your father will have to help me move them into the garage when he gets home. And the rest is in boxes.” She pauses, assessing. “I’m thinking eggshell for the walls.”