by S. L. Naeole
And so the week went by rather quickly, Robert remaining distant yet never far away, and Lark, Graham, Stacy, and I somehow finding a balance that allowed for us to enjoy the trappings of high school life without having to discuss the morbid topics of cancer, archangels of death, or cafeteria food.
When Friday arrived, I quietly asked Lark if she had spoken to Stacy yet about what was going on. Her quiet response told me that she had not, and I immediately made up my mind to tell her myself, ignoring the protests that sprang up instantly out of Lark’s mouth and mind.
I decided to avoid revealing everything in homeroom, the classroom being too crowded and too nosy for any private conversation, and instead chose to tell her during third period when we were in the library. Erica’s suspension had only lasted for three days, an eternity according to some of the students who happened to mention it in not-so-casual conversation as I passed by, but I did not worry that she’d be lurking in some dark corner somewhere, just waiting to shove me down another flight of stairs.
There was no need to worry. Lark’s promise that I’d never be left alone could only have been said if it were true, and it was. I turned around to see Robert’s dark form standing several feet away, his grey eyes focused intently on me. I looked away before I could see the hardness in them soften, knowing that if I did, I’d probably forget where I was going in the first place.
The back tables behind a row of bookshelves sat empty, and I gladly waited for Stacy to arrive, rehearsing what I was going to say several times. I became anxious the closer it came time for the bell to ring, Stacy having always been punctual. When she finally arrived looking out of breath and quite pallid, I changed my mind about telling her. Lark had been right; it wouldn’t do to tell Stacy anything when she was growing weaker and less Stacy-like by the day.
“I think I’m going to need to visit one of those fake and bake places in the mall soon—I’m pasty,” she huffed as she let her bag drop to the ground and sank into a cold chair. “I attempted to put on some makeup this morning and the color was too dark on me, so I had to borrow some of my mom’s. I feel like I’ve got the body of an eighteen year-old, the energy of a newborn, and the face of a fifty year-old woman.”
I giggled nervously and began to fidget with a deep scratch in the table. “You do look tired. Any word on that trial?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I won’t know anything for a while. My next blood test is on Monday morning; I won’t be in school so you’ll just have to endure a whole day without me.”
“I think I’ll manage,” I laughed before falling into an uncomfortable silence.
“So, what’s up with you? How are Janice and the baby?”
I had never felt more relieved or grateful to talk about Janice before, and I relished telling her about how Janice was faring during her hospital stay.
“I spoke to her last night on the phone—Dad’s starting to annoy the nurses, but he refuses to leave her side—and she says she’s gained almost ten pounds just by being in the hospital. The baby is doing well, but she’s still having contractions, which the doctor said could bring along labor at any time. She’s on some kind of medicine to stop the contractions, but it doesn’t seem to be working very well. The obstetrician told her that if she makes it one more week, they’ll allow her to progress naturally which basically means that Matthew will probably be born in a week or two.”
Stacy’s face lit up with excitement. “Oh a baby, I can’t wait to see him! You must be so looking forward to meeting him!”
“I am. I mean, when I first heard that Janice was pregnant, the last thing I ever wanted to do was know the little germ in her belly, but now I have to admit that it’s nice knowing that I’ll have a little brother running around, wanting me to pick him up and give him hugs.”
“Don’t forget change his diaper and clean up his baby-barf,” Stacy added, laughing at my reaction.
“It’s a good thing I’ll be leaving soon then, I suppose,” I said, my laughter joining hers. “As he gets bigger, the messes get bigger too.”
“Are you going, you know, alone?”
I felt my shoulders hitch up. “I don’t know. Part of me doesn’t even know if I want to. But I just need to get away from here, from Ohio, and hey, Berkley actually wants me, go figure.”
“I’d love to join you. I’d love to travel the entire world, to be honest. But, baby steps. I want to do this trial drug treatment thing first.”
I nodded enthusiastically and pumped my fist into the air. “It’ll work, Stacy. I know it will.”
“Well, my mom says that if it doesn’t, it’ll be my fault for not listening to her about taking better care of myself,” she said in an almost sardonic tone.
“What?”
“Yeah. The oncologist told me that I had been spending way too much time doing stressful things. You know, like school and crap. He said that if I didn’t take it easy that I’d end up helping the cancer along, instead of fighting it. Mom had a fit, said that what I was doing was going to kill her and me and every ancestor we’ve ever had. It was pretty morbid a tantrum if you ask me, but she wouldn’t let it go.
“For dinner, she served, with great fanfare mind you, ‘succumb to cancer stew’ with a helping of ‘Stacy is a disobedient and dishonorable daughter salad’. It was, to be quite honest with you, one of the best dinners we’ve ever had at my house.”
“Oh Stacy, I’m sorry! I know your mom’s kinda neurotic but geeze!” I exclaimed, already imagining in my head the severe stares of disapproval her mother must have given after receiving that call. “Is she still going to let you do the trials?”
Stacy smirked as she answered. “She has no choice. I’m eighteen, remember? I might not be allowed back in the house if they work, but I’m not exactly going to be prevented from leaving either.”
“I wish I had your fearlessness,” I said as I stared at her in amazement. “I can’t even tell my dad that I’m staying at Lark’s house, I’ve got Graham pretending that I’m staying there so he doesn’t freak out.”
“Why are you staying at Lark’s house?”
I looked at her, her question not connecting with me. “What?”
“You said you were staying at Lark’s house. Why?”
“I…” I tried to recall what exactly I had said and kept drawing a blank. “Um…”
Stacy’s expression went from confused to annoyed and then angry in less than two seconds.
“You’ve been there all week, haven’t you? With the way things are between you and Robert, there’s only one reason you’d be there—something happened. Something happened and you didn’t tell me.” It was a statement more so than a question and I could do nothing but nod, suddenly feeling incredibly foolish for having opened my mouth without thinking about the words that came out.
“I don't believe this. What happened? Was it Sam?”
“Yes. He was in my room,” I answered, the fear from seeing his face still so potent, my words wavered.
“He was in your room? What did he do, did he try to hurt you? Did he attack you or say something?”
My head shook with my answer. “He was just there, standing there watching me. I was asleep and I was dreaming of him, dreaming of what he did to me. When I woke up, he was there, and he was…not the same. The last time I saw him, he looked like an old man, his hair was white, his skin all wrinkly and dry.
“But when he was in my room, he looked much younger. His hair was blonde again, his body was young. Everything that had happened to him in that field was reversed,” I said in a low voice. “It was like nothing had ever happened, and that’s what scares me the most.”
Stacy’s expression wasn’t one of sympathy or fear, and her body language didn’t seem to exude any sort of compassion. Instead, the anger that had been there only seemed to condense, getting thicker and more intense.
“So let me get this straight. I’ve been watching your back, keeping your secrets—basically being a good friend—and when som
ething important happens to you, I’m suddenly not good enough to tell? You tell Robert, but not me?”
“That’s not it, Stacy,” I tried to explain, ignoring the rolling of her eyes. “We didn’t want to tell you because we didn’t want you to worry. You’re already going through so much and Lark was worried about what all of this would do to your health. We didn’t want to set you back any, didn’t want you to somehow get sick or anything like that.”
Stacy sneered at my attempt at justification, her eyes narrowing with irritation. “You’re telling me that you kept something from me because you were afraid it would hurt me or make me sick?”
I nodded vigorously, the motion exaggerated by my need for her to believe that we had never intended on hurting her.
“I don’t believe this. You know what, Grace? You’re a hypocrite. A big, fat, lousy hypocrite.”
Her accusation stung and I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, or why. She shook her head in disgust and started to gather her things. I made a grab for her bag and surprised myself when I yanked it from her hands quite easily. She was stunned as well.
“Stacy, don’t leave. I’m sorry; we never intended to upset you. We care about you, you’re our friend—all of this is too much for even me to take in, I thought…we all thought that it would be better for you this way. That doesn’t make me a hypocrite,” I tried to explain, the reasoning sounding right in my head.
Stacy obviously didn’t agree when she reached for her bag and successfully pried it from my fingers. “No, you’re right. It doesn’t make you a hypocrite. There isn’t a word to describe what you are.” She stood staring at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly with the building emotion that I had instigated.
“Tell me why it’s okay for you to keep secrets if it means keeping me safe but it’s not okay for Robert to do the same thing for you?”
I stood there, my feet rooted to the floor as she stormed off. I couldn’t say anything to her, couldn’t argue, couldn’t even call her name. I simply stood in the back of the library, surrounded by books that held descriptions of every emotion one could feel, and I was fairly certain that none of them could describe just how low I was feeling.
When the bell rang for lunch, I couldn’t find it in me to leave. I didn’t want to face Stacy, didn’t want to see the looks of disappointment on Lark and Graham’s faces when they learned how I’d foolishly admitted the truth. And I didn’t want to have to face Robert knowing that I had been complicit in hiding something from Stacy in the same manner as he had with me.
One of the school’s librarians made her rounds throughout the aisles, ushering out student after student in a mad dash for some peace and quiet during lunchtime. She reached me fairly quickly and wagged her finger at me.
“You know the rules, Grace. It’s time to leave.”
“Couldn’t I just sit here?” I asked, not caring how cowardly that made me. I couldn’t go out there and face the people I cared about the most, I just couldn’t do it.
“Not today. You’ll just have to find some other dark corner to occupy. Now get going.”
She handed me my backpack and pointed towards the exit, as though reminding me that any other direction I took was out of the question. I sighed and trudged past her, finding my way out of the library and into the empty hallway.
The aroma of something pungent and overwhelmingly garlicky was assaulting my senses and my eyes watered from it. The sound of students’ voices echoed as they traveled from the cafeteria and I had never dreaded a sound so much in my life.
“You don’t have to head to lunch, Grace.”
I turned my head to see the red-headed teacher standing in front of me, a plate of food in her hand. “I’m heading back to my class. Want to join me?”
I nodded, thankful for her offer. We walked in silence towards her classroom, her heels clicking against the linoleum flooring like a stopwatch, each step another second passing by that I wouldn’t have to face the consequences of my big mouth.
“So, why so afraid of the cafeteria? Is it the food?” she asked as she held the door to the room open for me. “If it is, I don’t blame you. I’m fairly certain that they give you guys the failed dog food recipes.”
As I sat down at a desk in front of her own, I eyed her plate suspiciously. “So why are you eating it then?”
She looked at the mess of food on her plate and smiled. “Because I can’t cook to save my life and anything’s better than starving.”
I knew I couldn’t disagree with her. Hadn’t I witnessed Graham shoveling away at the same slop-like cuisine almost every day prior to moving in? “I guess you’ve got a point, but I’d like to think I’d chew off my own arm than eat half of what the cafeteria dishes out.”
A bubble of laughter rose from her throat and a broad smile crossed her face. “I’ve actually had moments like that. Today, however, masochism and whatever this stuff on this plate is wins.”
As she began to sift through the contents on her plate I looked around the room, taking in the changes she’d made since I had last been inside. Several movie posters and albums covered the walls, an unusual sight for a psychology class.
“What’s with the posters?” I asked when I turned to face her again, almost gagging at the amount of food she had already consumed.
She quickly swallowed the contents in her mouth and then pointed towards the closest. “These are all psychological thrillers; movies that mess with your head. It helps me to get you guys to understand some of the other applications of psychology.”
I nodded in understanding. “As in something other than a couch and some bearded guy with a notepad in his hands, right?”
“Exactly. That one right there is my favorite,” she said, her hand still pointing at the closest poster. “A movie that makes both men and women think about what they’re doing and the consequences of their actions is very hard to come by; usually, the guys think about the action scenes or the girls, while the women empathize with the female leads and swoon over the male ones.
“That one right there gives you no choice but to appreciate the lessons since no emphasis has been made on the attractiveness of the actors, and there are no significant action scenes. It’s all dialogue and imagery.”
The poster was a rather innocuous one compared to some of the others, with just the image of a woman’s face, her mouth silenced by moth. “I enjoyed the book much more than the movie, but I get why you use movies.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, since most kids my age really don’t enjoy reading, especially if a book’s good, it’ll be turned into a movie anyway,” I explained. “I just happen to prefer reading.”
She placed her fork down onto her empty plate and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I do, too, but your generation is just so…visual. You need to be able to see things before you’ll believe it. Movies make it easier for me to get an idea or a point across.”
“Do you really think that? That we need to see things in order to believe that they exist, or that they’re real, true?”
Her head bobbed down once, her eyes studying me as I watched her. “I have seen it with my own eyes. For whatever reason, your minds require proof that’s visually tangible. I suppose it’s a trust issue, but it can get quite unnerving when dealing with something like psychology.”
“What did you do to my sister?” a sharp voice demanded from the doorway.
Mrs. Deovolente turned her head towards the direction of the voice and smiled. “I’m sorry; I think you have the wrong classroom.”
I shook my head and stood up. “No, he has the right one.”
I faced the inquisitor, saw the pain and anguish in his face and instantly felt the guilt inside of me balloon. “Sean, this isn’t exactly the time or place to discuss this.”
He growled at me, his face mashed up in anger. He stood in an offensive stance, one that I recognized from the few classes I had attended at their father’s Tae Kwon Do school, and I held my hands up in suppli
cation. “Sean, what’s wrong? What happened to Stacy?”
He jabbed his finger into my shoulder and hissed. “You made her sick, that’s what. You know what’s going on with her and you didn’t care, you just had to do something, say something to her to get her upset and now she’s on her way to the hospital. I always knew you and that friend of yours were no good, and now I’ve been proven right.”
He began to walk out and I rushed after him, grabbing his arm and pulling him around. “What happened, Sean? Tell me what’s going on. What’s wrong with Stacy?”
“It’s none of your business, you stupid honhyol. You’ve done enough,” he shouted before yanking his arm free and storming off.
I stared after him and frowned. A comforting hand rested on my shoulder and I turned to see a concerned Mrs. Deovolente standing next to me, her gaze following Sean as he turned a corner.
“That was an impassioned outburst if I ever heard one. What’s a honhyol?”
I turned my head down and whispered the answer, a prickling heat creeping into my face, traveling upwards and stinging my eyes.
“Half-breed? He called you a half-breed? How do you know that’s what that means?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I just do.” I returned to the classroom and grabbed my backpack. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Deovolente, but I’ve got to get going. I need to find out what’s going on.”
She had followed me inside and stood in the doorway, impeding my path. “I think you’re making a mistake, Grace. If your friend’s brother feels that way about you, chances are the rest of the family does as well. It might actually upset your friend a lot more if you showed up there and angered her family.”
I looked past her and felt a slight rush of relief flow through me as I caught the silver stare of Robert looking back at me.
“I appreciate your concern, but I know Stacy. She might be mad at me, but she’s not going to let her family dictate her life.”
