Cornered

by Rhoda Belleza

  • • •

  It all started just a couple of months ago, around Halloween of this, our junior year at Cornwall High School. That’s when I got my first-ever boyfriend—Brian Doyle. I liked him okay. He was one of the hottest guys in our grade, but he always seemed a little too perfect. And everyone has faults, don’t they? Anyone who appears to be so put together must have something terribly wrong with them, right?

  At first I couldn’t believe that Brian was into me. Him with his sandy, tousled hair and perfect body, and me with my wide swimmer’s shoulders and ski-jump nose. I had transferred in from South Hills High my sophomore year, and I’d sort-of been adopted by the girls who ran with Brian’s crew. On Saturdays, Brian and I took a CPR class at the local community college—me to renew my lifeguard certification and him so he could coach Little League this summer. As the only two high school students in the course, naturally we’d talk. We were friendly enough, if not friends. The only other time we really saw each other was fourth-period environmental science, and a few weeks into the semester, we all went on a school trip to the Boston Aquarium.

  “Hey, Cera,” he’d said while I stood by the shark tank, watching them glide past. “Cool field trip, huh?”

  I nodded, hoping my freckled cheeks would camouflage the hot blush I felt forming on my face and neck. Part of me wished I could step through the glass, enter the cool water, and swim away. I couldn’t understand why I was so embarrassed. I talked to dudes all the time. But not like this. I could feel the undercurrent of something happening. And lest I be sent back to remedial school for girls, I had to go with the flow.

  “Would you want to go see a movie sometime?” he asked.

  It turned out that on the bus ride to the aquarium, Anya and Lily, my two most beautiful friends, had told Brian’s friends that I liked him. I didn’t really, but I knew I was supposed to, because as Anya and Lily pointed out—what wasn’t there to like?

  “I dunno, guys,” I’d said to them. “I’m not sure I want a boyfriend. I really want to focus on school and swimming right now. I need to qualify for a scholarship if I want to—”

  “You’d rather swim than hang out with Brian Doyle?” Anya asked, cutting me off.

  “It’s not just that,” I said. “He’s cute and everything, but he’s not really my type.” Maybe that excuse would go over better?

  Not so much. “He’s everyone’s type!” Katie shrieked. “You are so adorable. Are you just, like, supershy?”

  I was the girls’ pet project—always encouraged to wear their clothes, try their makeup, and, most of all, kiss a boy for chrissakes—and I started to feel kind of obligated to play along. They would absolutely kill me if I turned down Brian Doyle. And that’s how it started, how the boy who wore well-fitting J. Crew T-shirts and loved to snowboard ended up being my boyfriend. We spent the first few months talking on the phone a lot, going to parties together, and sometimes going on “dates” to the Olive Garden and a movie. I was crossing a lot of “firsts” off of my list, like first boyfriend-kiss and first meeting of boyfriend-parents. Sometimes it seemed worth it because he was popular and others expected me to be part of a couple, but other times I wondered why I did it. My fears about losing practice time were totally realized—I was barely doing Saturday morning swims anymore—and I didn’t get to see Erin half as much as I usually did.

  Then one afternoon after school about three months ago, when we were hanging out at his house “doing homework,” Brian tried to stick his hand down my pants. (It was actually the second time he’d tried it; the first time was in Sean Talcott’s laundry room around Thanksgiving.) I pushed his hand away but he moved it back, pressing his weight on to me.

  “Come on, Cera,” he’d whispered. It makes my skin prickle just to think about the way his breath had left a cold wetness on my earlobe. I remember picturing myself as a bullet, shooting upstairs, out of the house, and far away from him. In that moment, I realized I just wasn’t attracted to him. Where were the fireworks when his bare skin brushed against mine? The goose bumps and the heart flutters? I was pretty sure you’re not supposed to feel something like disgust when your boyfriend touches you.

  Anyway, long story short, I broke up with him. Not, like, then and there, but a couple of days later, right around Christmastime.

  “It’s not you,” I told him—and honestly, that was mostly true. “It’s just that I’m not . . . ready for this.”

  “But we’re barely doing anything,” Brian said.

  “I just want to spend more time with my friends,” I said. “And I don’t think I want a boyfriend right now.”

  I divulged the half-truth to my girlfriends, a group that at that point still included Anya and Katie and Lily. “He wanted to do too much.” I let them infer my meaning. He wanted to go too far, too soon. Classic after-school-special type stuff. It was the only reason I thought they’d understand.

  And yeah, maybe they’d think I was a prude, even if they didn’t say it out loud. So I made sure to point out that I had let him feel my boobs, that I had rubbed my hand over the outside of his pants. It wasn’t like I was frigid, or anything. These girls had all gone farther than me. Lily wasn’t even a virgin. But they nodded like they were sympathetic, and I thought that was that.

  Until.

  “Brian told Matt Kimball that he thinks you’re a dyke,” Anya told me matter-of-factly over cafeteria pizza about a week after the breakup. “He said it’s a swimmer’s thing,” she added, invoking Cornwall legend Eva Nolan, who had graduated five years ago and went on to become a championship swimmer and a lesbian activist.

  “Of course,” I said, keeping my tone sardonic. “If I don’t want Brian’s fingers in my underwear, I must not like boys. It makes perfect sense.” I congratulated myself on having such a well-honed sense of sarcasm and took another bite of pizza.

  It was weird how Anya just offered a half smile in return, as though she was mulling something over. Later that afternoon, I caught her whispering something to Katie. They were both looking at me like I had something on my face.

  Turned out that it wasn’t an isolated rumor. Within the course of a day, more started to circulate and eventually made their way back to me.

  Cera Asher doesn’t even like to French kiss. Cera Asher slapped Brian Doyle when he touched her bra strap. Cera Asher likes girls. Like-likes them.

  “Sorry, we’re saving this seat,” Katie said when I tried to join my friends the next day at lunch. Brian saw it happen from his end of the table and gave me a self-satisfied smirk. My face burned and I turned away, realizing I had been officially shunned. As I scanned the cafeteria for another place to sit, I heard someone call out to me.

  “Hey, Cera,” Anya said loudly as she put her tray down next to Katie. Everyone turned to look. “So, I have a question. Are you, like, scared of kissing boys?”

  That was the worst part—that it wasn’t just bitter Brian Doyle who was doing the name-calling and whisper-campaigning. It was my so-called friends too. I was still too new to have any real allies, and over the next couple of weeks my reputation plummeted.

  During gym class, Katie would shoot basketballs straight toward my nose. Someone stole my biology lab from my cubby in the science wing, and I got ten points deducted because I handed in the do-over late. It was reported to Principal Noyes that I had plagiarized an AP English essay. I started eating lunch on the benches outside the auditorium, just to avoid any cafeteria incidents.

  At the Valentine’s Day dance—which I decided to go to because I couldn’t bear to tell my parents why I was skipping it—Lily and Anya purposefully bumped into me, spilling bright red punch down the front of my dress. I called Erin while crying.

  “I shouldn’t have gone,” I sniffled. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You need to say something to them, Cera,” Erin said firmly. “This isn’t okay.”

  And so, the following week, I cornered Anya alone by her locker.

  “Why are you doing this t
o me?” I asked, willing myself not to cry. “Why did you take Brian’s side over mine? We used to be friends.”

  She stared at me. “Because you embarrassed us,” she said, fiddling with her necklace. I embarrassed her? It didn’t make any sense, but before I could probe further, Katie and Lily came sashaying up behind us.

  “God, Cera, could you be more obvious?” Lily sneered. “Anya, is she bothering you again?”

  They came closer and Katie’s shoulder checked mine, hard. I teetered off balance and felt the left side of my body smash into a metal locker. When I glared at Katie she shrugged.

  “Sorry, Cera. I thought you were the butch kind.”

  Well, that didn’t go as planned, I texted Erin. Not quite the reaction I was looking for.

  Maybe you should go straight to the source, Erin suggested. Confront Brian.

  So I tried to approach him—my asshole, rumor-spreading ex-boyfriend. Stupid, stupid idea. I caught up with him after school the next day. “Brian,” I called out. He was walking in a pack with some other guys, and when he turned to face me his eyes narrowed.

  “You think she’s gonna beg him to take her back?” I heard one of the boys say under his breath.

  “Nah—she’s not into guys,” another responded. My face burned.

  “Can I talk to you for a second? Alone?” I jerked my head toward a doorway.

  “Why don’t you look for a chick to harass,” Brian said. “You said you wanted to spend more time with girls, right?”

  Bewildered and humiliated, I stood rooted to the spot as he high-fived his friends and moved down the hallway.

  And so now I’ve reached a point where the only time I feel really safe is when I’m curled up with my cat, Zero, listening to scratchy vinyl on a secondhand record player. Or when I’m with Erin, watching TV marathons and eating Combos. When my mom and dad get home I pray they’ll ignore me, because at least that means I don’t have to answer any embarrassing questions about what happened to all my other friends.

  • • •

  That’s how I got here, with one school day left before Spring Break. I couldn’t wait; it would be a welcome reprieve from my hellish new life. After that, I could begin the countdown to summer, senior year, and getting the hell out of here.

  I was sitting in front of my computer, listless and unable to concentrate, with a bruise on my arm because some asshole shot a goddamn BB gun at me on my way home from school. What a bunch of hicks. My attentions flickered between the flash cards on my desk and Zero, who had decided the corner of my biology textbook was his second dinner. Mostly I was just rubbing my arm and thinking about whether I could convince my parents to let me move to Canada for my last year of high school.

  I was about to force myself to go back to vocab drills—I had a Spanish exam in the morning—when a pop-up ad zoomed onto the open laptop screen on my desk. I clicked the X at the top of the window, but it refused to close.

  “DEFEND YOURSELF,” the advertisement blared in bright red letters. Then, in slightly smaller ones: “Do you want to feel in control? Women’s self-defense classes. Five sessions. Taught by professional law enforcement officials at the Hillsdale Community Center.” The price was listed in tiny font at the bottom of the ad. Eighty bucks. Was the ability to defend myself—I pictured myself in a Rosie the Riveter stance—worth two shifts at the video store, where I earn my pocket money? It might not have been. But the second line: Do you want to feel in control? I replayed the last couple of months, the hostility and humiliation. Lesbo. Dyke. Loser. The words rattled in my brain, and I knew the answer was yes. I did want to feel in control, thankyouverymuch.

  Notwithstanding the pellet that had been shot at my back just hours ago, it wasn’t like I really feared for my physical safety, per se. But there was no denying that I felt increasingly powerless, like I couldn’t tread water much longer. And the idea of spending the rest of the semester, this summer, and my senior year avoiding run-ins with my tormenters . . . it made me feel closer to drowning. If it had taken just a few months to get this bad, what would happen next fall? Would I spend my senior year hiding from the people who I thought were my friends?

  I rummaged through my bag for my “emergencies only” credit card and signed up then and there. It was clear that this was getting to be an emergency.

  • • •

  The room in the community center was large, windowed, and carpeted with a flat, hard, blue-and-gray-flecked rug. When I arrived at 6:55, a group of women was already milling around a registration table and filling out paperwork. I tried not to make eye contact. I was second-guessing myself.

  “Welcome,” a tall, pony-tailed woman said to me, sticking out her hand assertively. “I’m Diane. Former detective. I run this thing.”

  I did my best to smile normally and shook her hand. “I’m Cera. Cera Asher. I signed up online? I paid already. Is there something I need to fill out? Do I need to be wearing sweatpants?” I could hear myself rambling and tried to shut up. It didn’t work. “Because I didn’t know . . . I wasn’t sure. . . .”

  She probably got this a lot. This nervousness. Women and girls like me who felt somehow embarrassed for being there. “You’re fine. We’re just doing intro stuff today. You’ll need athletic clothes for tomorrow’s session.”

  Over the course of the next hour, with all of us sitting in plastic chairs that were arranged in a circle, I met the other twelve participants, including Gerrie, a pixie-haired college student who volunteered for the campus rape hotline; Ashley, a bleached-blond woman wearing too much foundation—“My ex is stalking me,” she told us, picking anxiously at her nails; Rose, a middle-aged social-worker who signed up to refresh her skills; and Madeline, a fit young cop who pulled out pictures of her two kids to show everyone.

  I appeared to be something of an outlier, at least in the sense that these ladies all seemed to be really super gung-ho about the class and I was, well, skeptical. I mean, in the day and a half since I told her that I signed up, Erin had taken to calling me She-Ra, and I wasn’t crazy about that moniker. Not to mention the fact that when Ashley started talking about her psycho ex and all the other women in the room started nodding sympathetically, it felt uncomfortably like group therapy or something.

  “Hi,” I said quietly when it was my turn. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell the truth. I crossed and uncrossed my legs. “I’m just doing this for school credit,” I lied. “My friends were all going away for Spring Break, but I’m . . . not. So I thought this would be a cool thing to do.” I pasted on my fakest smile, hoping they’d get the hint and move on to the next victim.

  But that was just the beginning.

  The next night, with all of us dressed in sweats and T-shirts, Diana got to the good stuff. We left behind the touchy-feely kumbaya circle and started kicking and punching. Which felt great, actually. The only downside? Every time we exerted ourselves, whether we were hitting the air with our fists or chopping into it with our feet, we had to shout “NO!” at the top of our lungs. Seriously. And not, like, No thank you or even No way. It was “NO!” Like, No chance you’re getting any closer without me kicking you in the balls!

  We were a roomful of chicks, shouting “NO!” over, and over, and over. I wanted to die a little at first. It was so embarrassing.

  Still, the kicking and punching felt damn good. I left that session sweating, and I smiled the whole way home.

  But then, when I turned on my computer later that evening, my smile faded. Someone who went by Cornwall-Sweetheart had written me an e-mail: “Hey Cera, Just wanted to let you know I have a video of you changing in the Cornwall locker rm. See you on Monday! xo.”

  I actually gagged. I didn’t know if it was true or not, nor did I know what this so-called Sweetheart intended to do with the supposed video. But my stomach fell to the floor all the same. The last thing I needed was half-naked images of me plastered around the school. I pressed my head into my hands and forced myself to breathe.

&nbs
p; • • •

  On the third night of class, Diana taught us more advanced holds and escapes. I took out my fear and frustration on the cushioned mannequins, shoving them furiously and slamming my sneakered feet into the rubber padding. With each blow, I tried to release some of my bitterness.

  “Nice energy, Cera,” Diana said.

  At the end of the session, I was breathless and pumping with adrenaline. I took longer than usual gathering up my belongings and I ended up being one of the last to leave. I heard the women’s good-byes bouncing around the parking lot as I jogged down the concrete steps and bent over my bike to disengage the rusty padlock.

  I was struggling with the lock, sweaty and annoyed because I was trying to make it home in time to meet Erin for our weekly nachos-and-reality-TV date, when I saw something shimmering in the corner of my eye. I straightened up fast and squinted into the street, which was awash with yellow-orange light. At first I couldn’t pinpoint what caused the disco-ball effect in my side-vision. I was about to turn back to the lock, to the infuriating task of prying it open, when I saw them.

  Wings. Moon-white, reflecting the light like ripples on a lake. Long, paper-thin, and translucent, with strong veins running through them. There were wings, like that of a dragonfly, extending out of Ashley. Their grayish silver pattern danced before me, glinting and undulating as they reached their full span. From where I stood, each wing looked to be four feet long from shoulder-blade to tip.

  I blinked and blinked again. Turned around to see if anyone was behind me. If this was a reality show gotcha grab, it was brilliant. But I was alone. I turned back to see if a blond, winged woman was still standing by the bus stop on Sullivan Street. There was.