Waiting

by Carol Lynch Williams

  Daddy’s at my door before I can make my eyes open.

  I’m crying.

  Shaking.

  Afraid.

  Poisoned from the nightmare.

  “You okay?” he says.

  I nod.

  Find my voice. “Yes.”

  Let my eyes open just a bit.

  Daddy stands there, one step away from being in my room. His hand rests on the wall, and he leans toward me. Doesn’t walk inside. “Well, all right then.”

  I’m cold like snow.

  I need him to hug me, but he doesn’t walk into the room.

  Just stands there. Leaning. And lets me thaw on my own.

  I lie back down. Tuck myself in. Wrap my own arms around me in a hug from me.

  When I look back toward my bedroom doorway, I see my daddy’s gone.

  Without a word.

  And I know then, I know, he blames me too.

  At school the whole world pretends I’m not there.

  They look away when I’m near.

  Walk around me like I’m a stone in a stream and they’re the water.

  I’ve gotten pretty good at pretending too.

  I only cry sometimes. Always in the bathroom.

  I sit in the back of the classroom.

  I look away.

  But Jesse and Lili have changed this complete aloneness for me.

  They smile, though Jesse doesn’t approach when he’s with Lauren. Just clasps her hand, lifts his chin to me.

  Lili runs up, chattering like she hasn’t seen me in weeks instead of two classes.

  And Taylor, he walks like he stands at the edge of a cloud, waiting for the fog to clear so he can get up close.

  Today,

  though, something in me changes. Was it my dream?

  My mother in my brother’s football hoodie? Daddy not quite coming into my room?

  I feel the change as I dress.

  Like I’m cracking apart.

  As I eat breakfast alone.

  Stretching in an uncomfortable way.

  As I walk past my mom, who doesn’t even look up from her novel and coffee, the overhead light flicked on instead of the shades lifted and the curtains opened.

  When I call Lili to say I have a ride, I feel sick to my stomach. What’s wrong with me? How can I even feel what I’m feeling? I wait outside in the morning sun, dew sparkling on the grass, and I feel the change and worry over it, like I’m working at a loose tooth.

  (“I can pull that out,” Zach said, more than once. “We can share the money Mom gives you.”

  He pulled out three of my baby teeth, both of us working at them, before Mom found out what was going on.

  She laughed.

  Can you believe it? Laughed! And said, “Zacheus, your sister needs her teeth to eat.”)

  I haven’t been outside long before Taylor drives up. I grab my stuff. Hurry to the car, to him, throw the Toyota door open. Do I look as different as I feel?

  “Ready?” he says, and I’m across the emergency brake, hand on his thigh, mouth on his mouth. He kisses me back, touching my arm, the car rolling forward until he puts the gear in park. My hands are on his face, pulling him close and closer.

  He looks at me when I pull away.

  “Good morning,” I say, and he gives me a raised eyebrow look.

  “Hey.”

  That feeling? That change? It’s there still. Heavy.

  I put my hand on Taylor’s face. “School?” I say.

  “Not so sure anymore,” he says, but he shifts the car and drives us to class.

  “I’m trying to get into choir,” Lili says when I see her in the hall. “What do you think, London?”

  She’s in my space and it’s strange—comforting.

  Like medicine for my illness. I want to hug her. Hear her tell me she loves me. Does she really?

  Jesse glances at us over his shoulder as he stops at his locker. Sends me a smile.

  Is he thinking of that kiss? Our kiss?

  I am, and my face burns at the remembrance. Especially with Taylor at my side. Does he know? Can he read the look Jesse gives me? Am I making it up?

  How does my new skin fit? Is it too tight or too loose?

  “I think you should try out.” I say this having no idea if she can sing or not.

  Does it even matter with our choir?

  Can I even remember listening to our choir?

  I think I was just the sister of the best tight end the

  ’Cudas had seen in several years.

  I was a football sister. Not a choir listener.

  Now who am I? An only child changing in the hallway at school.

  More changes.

  They are so different so different, the two of them.

  How can I be interested in two people like this?

  Because they are the same, too, in a simple way. In a tender, simple way.

  I feel the change as I walk into the building.

  Feel the change at my locker.

  As I grab the right books for my morning class.

  As I watch Taylor walk away to his class.

  As I see Jesse and Lauren together.

  See Heather in the hall with another guy (who is that?).

  Jesse’s in my head. All in my mind. Taking over.

  I can’t push him out, or away, from my thoughts.

  My insides shift too.

  I feel . . .

  Not so alien.

  Still alone, yes, but not really, because I have three friends and they may not know everything but they know enough.

  And they don’t care. Or maybe it’s that they do care.

  My stomach is full of electricity. And sometimes I can’t quite see because of the jittery feeling. I sit through study hall and do nothing but shade a whole piece of paper gray with my mechanical pencil.

  In calc I pretend to listen. But I can’t keep my mind on Ms. Stephan’s explanations.

  I only think of kissing.

  Of hands and tongues and things that would make my mother melt if she knew what was in my brain.

  And I’m thinking it about two guys.

  Two.

  I can’t even look at Ms. Stephan.

  I am far worse than my dead brother.

  Zacheus doesn’t hold a candle to me.

  What would it be like to kiss them together both at once?

  To have them touch me at the same time?

  I am so sick.

  Sick!

  But I want to see Jesse

  Now

  and I don’t know why the thoughts are here

  Now

  don’t know what I have done

  Now.

  In the movies, I’d snap the pencil I hold in my hands not tremble the way I do.

  My thoughts are in control.

  As a man thinketh . . . I can hear Daddy’s voice.

  Oh yeah?

  What about this, I’m a girl.

  As a girl thinketh?

  The metamorphosis rages by the time I am out of my seat and into the hall between classes.

  It takes over my feet. Makes me move toward Jesse when I see him alone after second period. He’s in the hall. I’ve sought him out, gone looking for him, something I would never do Before. I’m going to be late to class.

  I see him through the crowd, see his look of surprise when he sees me, that slow smile of his.

  Whoever I’m becoming makes me grab his hand when I get close to him and pull him away from his locker.

  “What?” he says, letting out a bit of a laugh, trying to close his locker door before we get too far away, me dragging him along. “What is it, London?”

  But I am too surprised to answer.

  His eyes are dark, dark. And his face is so pretty. It looks like he didn’t shave today.

  Someone laughs as they hurry past us, and I pull him into a doorway, the classroom behind us unlit.

  “What are you doing, London Castle?” Jesse says. He smiles, but his smile seems worried. Or his
face. His face seems worried. Or nervous. Yes, nervous. And that’s sexy too.

  I want to say, “I’m not sure, Jesse Fulton,” but instead I put my arms around his neck. I have to stand on tiptoe.

  He’s thinner than Taylor, and he smells like clean laundry.

  Does he wash his own clothes? Or does his mom? I rest my head on his chest, breathing deep, pressing close to him, hoping this acting on the metamorphosis means I will feel better inside.

  For a second he stands there. Hesitant. Then he puts his arms around me. Just holds me. Just holds me. And when I kiss him, a long kiss, comparing his taste to Taylor’s, my hands gripping his shirt, he kisses me back.

  The bell rings.

  “Get a room,” someone says, and someone else says,

  “Get some for me,” but they’re background noise that doesn’t matter.

  My face is hot, my heart pounds.

  “We’re going to be late,” Jesse says. He sounds breathless. Or off balance. The way I feel.

  “Right,” I say, then turn and leave him standing there, and head to class.

  I’ve become a kissing addict. I think that’s it. The buzzy feeling. Burning lips. The foggy eyes. Maybe I could kiss every good-looking guy here at school. Maybe even the good-looking male teachers. The thought warms me and troubles me at the same time.

  “That was weird,” Jesse says when I get into the van.

  We have only a moment together, and I want to run my hand over his face, but I sit down as though nothing has happened between us. I settle my short skirt around me like a fan. It’s the best purple color ever. Dark pinkish purple.

  I give Jesse a bit of a look. Lili climbs up next to me and plops down with a sigh.

  Then Lauren is in the car. I give her a sweet smile. An I-know-what-your-boyfriend-tastes-like smile.

  “You didn’t wait,” she says to Jesse, and he looks at her, eyebrows raised, then glances at me. Her voice is a pout. Her whole face bugs me, but I look down at my skirt, think how pretty it is. Think how it’s the color of a butterfly and how I’m like a butterfly too, with all this evolving I’m doing.

  “Why’d you look at her that way?” Lauren says.

  “At who?” Jesse says.

  No one says anything, then Lili speaks. “You have an active imagination, Suck Face.”

  Am I a Suck Face?

  Maybe. Maybe I am.

  Gosh, I hope so.

  Do I want to be? Yes, maybe I do.

  “I imagined my boyfriend not meeting me at my locker?”

  She’s mad. I don’t look to see. Now I stare at the window, keep my face straight, pet my skirt.

  Jesse starts the van, and I stare out at the parking lot full of cars and students, look for Taylor’s old Toyota, think about my brother driving me to school, wish I had the nerve to kiss Jesse again and claim that name for myself. “Queen Suck Face.” Or something bigger. More powerful—like “Oprah Suck Face.”

  That works for me.

  I don’t want to go home. I don’t. The closer we get to my place, the more my muscles tense up. Going home means maybe a stop to my mutation. I can’t even hear anyone’s words, just the sounds of their voices. I want to be here. Stay here. Stay where my friend tells me she loves me. Where I’m maybe “Oprah Suck Face.” Where two good-looking guys see me and want to be with me.

  The sun rests in the sky at a slant.

  “We’re here,” Lauren says. “London, get out.”

  “Shut up, Queenie,” Lili says. She turns to me, her face bright. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say, and when I get out of the van, I notice my skirt’s not as bright as it was.

  I watch the van drive off. See Lili waving out the back window. I stand there.

  Where to go?

  I start walking. Leave my backpack hanging from the mailbox and move. The afternoon is cooling off. I’m glad for my short jacket but sorry for the short skirt. My legs are cold.

  “Zach? Have you been watching over me? Have you seen me?”

  What would he think?

  Would he slap hands with me for this or tell me to treat his best friend better?

  I stop in the middle of the dirt road. Close my eyes. I know what he’d say.

  But, this is all his fault. Zach’s. If he wasn’t dead, I’d be making wedding plans with Taylor maybe. Or college plans.

  I keep trudging along until I find myself in our orange grove—maybe right in the middle—where all the air smells tangy and the trees are tall enough to block the setting sun.

  “Zach,” I say. I don’t feel him close, like I want to. “Don’t be mad at me, ’kay?”

  There’s nothing but the sound of a mockingbird. The wind cools. The sky is blue. Clear.

  I sit down, away from sandspurs, feel the sand beneath me, look at the raggedy trees.

  I’ve grown raggedy like that. But at this moment, in this place, because of the change, I feel okay. The kisses behind me. The kisses that may wait for me. I like this.

  “Maybe it was that kiss,” I say to Zach. And, “Maybe I could live out here until summer’s good and strong and then winter sets in again. Maybe. Mom would never notice if I left.”

  And then this weird thing happens, and all at once I’m thinking about Rachel Bybee. It’s like I hear her voice, or see her picture, she’s that clear in my mind. For a moment I am stuck sitting there in the orange grove.

  “Go.”

  I hear that word. I do.

  And the next thing I know, I’m up, on my feet, walking—then running—then out of there and down our sandy lane to home.

  I call her three times.

  Her old cell phone number.

  Over and over and over again.

  But she doesn’t answer. Just says, “This is Rachel’s number. Leave a message if you want me to call you back.”

  I don’t. Leave a message, I mean. Maybe I will soon.

  The next time I call.

  Rachel broke up with Zach.

  It was a teary separation.

  No.

  It was worse than teary.

  It was horrible. Her parents waited for her in the car, engine running, tapping at the horn every minute or so for her to hurry on up.

  Daddy and Mom stood behind Zach, arms crossed. I watched out through the screen door, hands clenched, teeth clenched. Crying with my brother and with Rachel Bybee when her father came and dragged her away.

  That’s true.

  Zach held on to her and then her daddy was there and my mom, and Daddy did nothing but look away as my brother ran after his girlfriend. (She didn’t want to go.)

  I ran out on the porch, hoping I could change things, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t change anything. And Mom, she told me to shut up.