Handcuffs

by Bethany Griffin

  Like me. I nearly don’t exist at this school, and that’s okay. If I had brought attention to those guys teasing me I might have dropped to a lower level of the social hierarchy. I might have become a victim rather than a nonentity. That’s why I try not to read Marion’s blog. She’s constantly bringing me up. People probably don’t even know who she’s talking about. I hope.

  I’m walking down the hall, lost in my own thoughts, the same thoughts that swirl around in my head and keep me awake sometimes at night. They’re all mixed up with straightforward anger. I’m a mess. When I hear a few skeezy girls whispering about me it jolts me out of the unpleasant thoughts and into my unpleasant reality. I hold my head high and make eye contact. Things like this make people think I’m stuck-up, in an ice princess sort of way, but how else am I supposed to deal with it?

  In case you don’t have skeezy girls at your school, skeezy girls are cheap. Not like Kandace Freemont. She’s a certified whore who’s been with every reasonably hot guy in the school (except for one, and I’m not going to speculate about that right now), but she is also desirable. I think I mentioned her enviable assets and her wavy chestnut hair? My guy might have a weakness for dark-haired girls. Anyway, these ladies are the type of girls who are only desirable for their willingness. Kinda ugly and kinda slutty, like fat girls wearing body glitter, you know? I don’t usually have a problem with that type, but right now as I walk down the hall they’re cackling and I hear one of them say something about doing it in a hot tub. I ignore them. If Raye were here she would say something to make them shut up. I walk fast and look right past them.

  The next group to look me over is a group of ultra-popular girls lounging by the library. They make me feel awkward and a little bit tongue-tied. Plus, even though they’re nice enough when I see them, they’ve never said “Hey, Parker, come to this party” or anything. If I were invited, I might go. Paige says that nobody sends you a damn invitation in high school, but I don’t like to show up places without being asked—it makes me feel weird, awkward.

  Sadie Collins, this major social butterfly, grabs my arm. “Damn, Prescott, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Had what in me?” I’m not dumb enough not to realize by this time that everyone knows about the hot tub, but why is this such a big deal? I guess it’s because Marion is always calling me a stuck-up ice princess. I don’t get why they care. See, the in-crowd makes me incapable of normal thought patterns. I know that technically they aren’t any different than everyone else, but somehow, just like my perfect sister, they are.

  “All I can say is way to go. Your boyfriend is totally hot.” Camille Singleton elbows Zara Thorpe.

  “Parker’s pretty hot too. Did you have a good look at those pics?” Zara asks. Pictures? There are pictures? I am going to have a heart attack right here in front of the popular girls. I don’t want to pass out in front of Zara Thorpe, she always makes me nervous anyway. She has this reputation.

  Zara goes both ways. The guys totally dig it, and if you want to know the truth, she is incredibly hot. So hot I can’t admit how I feel about her or even put it into words. I mean, it’s attraction, but not sexual, not like I’m going lesbo or anything. She’s just so comfortable with herself that everybody has to accept her. It’s fascinating.

  I look her straight in the eye. She has pretty eyes, but it’s her mouth you notice. Okay, I look her in the eye, remind myself that I am too frozen to be intimidated by this girl who can do and say anything and not care what people think, and I ask,

  “What pictures, Zara?” I can almost see myself throwing up in the middle of the hallway, right on Zara Thorpe’s black shoes, that’s how bad my stomach feels.

  “Oh my God, you didn’t know?” They are all staring at me, and I hear someone laugh, an ugly derisive laugh. I feel a sinking shame that I didn’t know something, that I wasn’t aware of something I should have been aware of. This is stupid, but it’s how I am. “Oh, Parker, you have to see them! They are so totally hot,” Zara continues, and when she smiles at me, I have to relent and smile back just a little, no matter how bad I feel.

  “Let me guess, Marion Henessy?” I say. She nods, and the other girls laugh again.

  “You’re lucky, Parker. That one shot she got of Amanda, she looks like she’s picking her nose.” They all laugh again.

  “I was totally scratching it,” Amanda says, untroubled. She’s kind of the jester of the popular girls, the funny one.

  “Anyway, at least they look good. You should check them out.”

  “I will.” The realization hits me, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. It wasn’t him. He didn’t tell. No matter how bad things are, there is still that. I stand there thinking about it and they watch me. They’re waiting for me to move on. I guess I’ve stayed beyond my welcome.

  “Your boyfriend’s already in the lunchroom,” Cecelia Danly says. I start to correct her—ex. Ex-boyfriend. But what’s the point? Cecelia Danly was the first person who ever told me (this was in kindergarten) that my initials were the same as what people do in the potty.

  He’s in the cafeteria. Everybody in school has seen pictures of us together. I feel light-headed and I know suddenly that I can’t go in there right now.

  I turn around and head back the way I came, past the giggling socialites and the glaring skeezers, past the skateboarders who are wearing black eyeliner and who mutter a few suggestive things, nothing over-the-top because there’s a teacher coming down the hall from the other direction.

  The guy who helped me earlier is long gone, probably sitting in advanced rocket science class or something.

  “Has Rachel Tannahill signed in to school yet?” I ask the receptionist.

  She looks into the red pleather-covered ledger and shakes her head. “Sorry, hon, no Rachel Tannahill.”

  “Okay, thanks.” This receptionist cannot possibly know how much I need my best friend right now. Without her I am alone in this terrible awful place where I am forced to come and be tormented five days a week. On top of that, I’m not going to have time to eat lunch. Good thing I have absolutely no appetite.

  As I leave the office I nearly collide with Kyle Henessy. I haven’t seen him in a couple of months, unless you count when he drives by our house, but when that happens I never see his face, just his car and his hunched-over sinister silhouette. Kyle the stalker is wearing this stupid Hawaiian-looking shirt that makes me remember that cruise to the Bahamas, the last trip our families took together. I remember how Marion followed Kyle around making sure he had enough sunscreen, and how, even though he was only thirteen and Paige was twelve, he kept taking the sunscreen from his sister and trying to get Paige to let him rub it all over her. My parents kept whispering to each other about it, and I was listening to them, which is why I remember it so clearly.

  “What’re you doing here?” I blurt out.

  “Hey, Parker.” He isn’t as geeky as I remember. His body has kind of caught up to his height, and he doesn’t have any noticeable acne. Plus, his hair is clean and looks almost blond. When he was stalking Paige, and always lurking around our first-floor windows, his hair usually looked unwashed and kind of dismally brown. I’m shocked. He almost looks cute.

  “Um, hi,” I say, unsure how to proceed.

  “You look a little more like Paige than you used to.” High praise from Kyle Henessy, though a little creepy, I realize that. His voice isn’t all creaky and broken anymore, and besides the shirt with the great big flowers, he looks normal. Right now Kyle is violating the restraining order (he isn’t supposed to be within fifty feet of any members of my family), but I don’t say anything about it. Not because I want to be near him, exactly, but because it’s kind of unfair since he couldn’t know I would be in the office. He’s holding a red Allenville band sweatshirt I presume he is dropping off for Marion. Poor baby must be cold. You’d think their mom would do it, but no. She probably called Kyle at work and he rushed right over to help his precious little sister out. They
’re so protective of each other it’s sickening.

  There isn’t anywhere else to go, so I head back to the cafeteria. I am resigned. Raye is not here and there is no one to help me, and nowhere to hide. I can’t stay in the office, not with Marion on the way, so I trudge slowly down the hall.

  I imagine that it will go silent when I enter through the double doors and walk down the ramp, but everything goes on as it was. Conversations surge, girls laugh, forks chink against unidentified objects buried deep in the meat loaf.

  In fact, he doesn’t even see me as I walk up behind him. He’s sitting at the end of one of the long rectangular tables with Jeremy Tenant, this incredibly animated actor guy who is pretty nice-looking. They’re feeding one another lines from Monty Python, which they recite in phony British accents followed by roars of laughter. Their own laughter. Nobody else is listening or laughing.

  “Um, hi, Jeremy,” I say.

  “Hey, Parker.” Jeremy stands up so that I can have his seat. “Look, I’ve gotta stop by the auditorium for a fitting—the costumes for Macbeth are in. I’ll see you guys later.”

  “Did I run him off?” I would kind of like to be cool enough to hang out with Jeremy Tenant. On the other hand, I need some undivided attention. I need him to focus on me. Yeah, I’m glad Jeremy is gone.

  “Nah, he’s been talking about those costumes all day.”

  I sit down and stare at him. I can’t help it. My stomach feels weird. I’m getting sick of being jittery and nervous all the time, but my day has been bad. I need him.

  “Can you move a little closer?” He has his hand on the small of my back and is pulling me into the area between his legs so that I’ll be pressed against him. I put my hand against his chest. This is the stuff I didn’t like, before we broke up, the public stuff.

  “Look, I don’t think you have to prove anything about us to anybody today.”

  “You saw the pictures?” he asks. He rubs my leg with his thumb. He isn’t even looking at me. I can’t believe this. Did he know that there were pictures of us online, and he didn’t even send a crappy e-mail?

  “You saw them? Whatever everybody’s talking about?”

  “Last night.”

  He’s so calm. I pull myself away from him, just a little bit, so he knows I’m upset.

  “Who took them?”

  “I wish I knew. It’s bizarre, thinking somebody was watching us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t worry about it too much, Parker. I’m sure it was just some freak job with a digital camera.”

  “Too many of those around here.” I clench my teeth, think about Kyle and how he got caught in a tree outside Paige’s window and how my parents were so completely freaked out that they called the police.

  “Yeah. Aren’t you going to eat?” He hands me a Reese’s cup. I nibble the edges off, all the way around. He thinks the way I eat is funny.

  “Don’t say anything.” I give him the look. I feel almost comfortable beside him, and yet I am on edge. The good feeling is just masking all the turmoil underneath that I don’t want to acknowledge. I try to focus on being happy.

  “I won’t say a word. I wouldn’t dare.” He’s teasing me, but in that cute way he has. I smile and look into his eyes, trying to make things right between us with the force of my will.

  Right now things are weird when we’re together. Comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. I think he’s too sure of me. That’s why I broke up with him in the first place. The sureness. If I were equally sure of him it would be different. Like he knows that when he calls I’m going to grab the phone and be all breathless, and that if he asks me to do something I’m going to do it. Breaking up with him was the only way to surprise him, and it did, the look on his face was priceless. But it didn’t really stick, I guess.

  We have advanced British lit after lunch. When the bell rings we stand up and walk side by side. “Hey, what happened to your books?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “You think we’ll have to write that essay today?”

  “I’m sure of it.” Before the break we were supposed to write this major essay comparing Romantic poets with rap music, but then school got called off for two inches of snow. So, major essay, here we come. Too bad I know less about rap music than I do about Romantic poets. Middle-aged teachers who try to act hip are so incredibly lame.

  20

  It’s a strange situation, deciding where to sit in class now that we are kind of tentatively back together. I mean, do I move to the back of the room, or do I stay in the middle? Why doesn’t he move to be with me? If I move, do I sit where I have a good view of him? Or do I allow him the view of me? Are the other students watching me? Are they even slightly aware of the things passing through my head, or am I crazy?

  The questions just keep coming. Do I sit to his right or to his left? Should I try to pass notes to him? Of course I don’t pass him lame little notes. I sit two seats behind where I used to sit, before we started talking in the first place. He’s in the very back, I’m one row ahead and to the left diagonally. I rarely look at him, not even when I’m sitting in class, but all I can think about is him.

  This is the last class of the day, and I am so ready to get out of here, but it’s a long class. We’re on a block schedule, which means I may actually die of old age before I get out of here, and the hands on the clock above the whiteboard are barely moving. The Gruesome Twosome are totally smirking at me. I guess they saw the pictures too. I don’t want to think of them looking at me, and I think maybe he feels the same way. Out of the corner of my eye I see him frown. He kind of shifts in his desk, and I can tell he’s annoyed by their smirks. Since we’ve been dating, they haven’t even looked my way. The little freakazoid is staring down at his desk now. I’m aware, like I’ve got some kind of radar to tell who’s looking at me and who’s not. If I could just get that focused on the lesson. I glance at the little weird kid. Maybe he’s just keeping his head down because he has a black eye and a busted lip. Who knows how he got beat up, but he had it coming.

  The essay is a piece of cake, even though I don’t have my notes. Even though my neat outline of everything Ms. White had to say about the Romantic poets is now a dripping mound at the bottom of the Dumpster outside the office. She writes her prompt on the board and sets a timer, and I tune out all the tension around me, forget about the other students in the classroom, and start to write. I turn the paper in just before the dismissal bell rings. I can feel the evil twins checking me out from behind. I step out into the hallway, relieved to get away.

  My purse is making little buzzing noises. We’re supposed to keep our cell phones in our lockers, but that wasn’t an option today with the slush and all. I fumble for my phone. Finally, Raye calling me. My mom gave it back this morning so I can get in touch with her if I have an emergency—the whole reason they bought me the phone in the first place, in case the school blows up or something.

  “Hello?” As I speak I turn and search the hallway for him. Is he still in the classroom? I stop and wait, just in case.

  “Hey, Park, I didn’t make it to school today.” Like I hadn’t noticed. Raye’s voice is all scratchy, like her nose is stopped up. “But I can take you home. Want to meet me at Arby’s?” The Arby’s is right next to the school. Big sigh of relief. I had been toying with the idea of asking him to drive me home, but now I can’t even locate him.

  “Sure.” I have to move on. This tall girl is glaring at me. I guess I’m standing in front of her locker. I look over my shoulder and then start to move my feet. Defeated. You would think after the afternoon, the walking together and the glances, that he would take the time to say goodbye. I swing my purse over my shoulder and lug my new stack of old books with me, out the side door and toward the sidewalk that leads directly to Arby’s. I wish Raye were here to walk with me; I always feel self-conscious walking alone. I have to go all the way across the school parking lot to where the sidewalk begins and then across the Arby’s
lot.

  She’s hiding behind a big roast beef sandwich dripping with bright yellow cheese. “What happened to you?”

  “God, Parker you have to get ungrounded. Not having anyone to talk to is ruining my life.” This is good, I like being irreplaceable and important. Not good that she feels her life is going to hell, but really, this happens to Raye periodically, and with my help, she deals with it.

  “Maybe you can tell my parents that.” I sit down. Dad isn’t really aware of little details like when I’m supposed to get home from school, but if Mom asks him what time I arrived and they realize I didn’t come straight home, well, that could extend the grounding. I push the fear of further punishment out of my head and focus on Raye. “So you broke up with Josh?”

  “We’d only been on four dates. I wouldn’t call it an official breakup.” She looks down. I think she’s being too casual about this, and that means something.

  “Then why did you sit in your car and cry?”

  “Ian e-mailed me last night.” Okay, first there was the e-mail. Then she cried and left the lights on. I wonder suddenly how she got her car started after she called to tell me the battery was dead this morning. Raye puts the sandwich down on the shiny foil it was originally wrapped in and reaches for her drink. She isn’t looking at me, which I think is a bad sign.

  “Really?” I pick up one of her curly fries.

  “Yeah. He just wrote about all this personal stuff. It reminded me of the old days. I miss him.” She wrinkles her nose. Some other emotion is hiding under her carefully blank expression. Hope? Is she getting back together with the magnificent Ian?

  “He started your car today. With jumper cables or whatever.” It’s a guess, but her eyebrows fly up and almost hit the spiky fringe of her dark hair.