by Jo Knowles
“But, Mom. I haven’t talked to Leah in months.”
“Well, maybe if you two had stayed close, Leah wouldn’t be so —”
My mouth drops open. I can’t believe she’s actually going to blame me for Leah’s problems.
“Nice, Mom,” Christi says for me. “You should be grateful Lainey doesn’t hang out with Leah anymore.”
“I’m just saying,” my mom says, faltering. “Mrs. Greene is afraid to leave Leah alone, and I think we owe it to them after all the things they’ve done for Lainey over the years.”
“Whatever,” I say. I will never get why my mother thinks she needs to impress Mrs. Greene. Obviously, they will never be friends.
Leah finds me at my locker that afternoon. I have a flyer about soccer tryouts in my hand when she comes up behind me and peers over my shoulder. She breathes quietly in my ear.
“Hey, Lainey, haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Hey, Leah.” I quickly crumple up the paper, but she’s already seen it.
“Girls’ soccer?” She smiles and narrows her eyes, then licks her lips.
I try to step away from her. “Yeah, but — I probably won’t bother,” I say, trying to sound casual.
“Why not? You’re athletic.”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t want to.”
She moves in closer to me so our faces are only a few inches apart. I quickly scan the hallway for who might see us.
“You know there are perks for being on a team, don’t you?” she asks.
I try to move away from her again, but I’m already practically inside my locker. Her breath smells like cigarettes and mint gum. She seems different again. Meaner. I wonder when she started smoking.
“What perks?” I ask, forcing my voice to stay calm.
“The locker room, Laine? Come on — you can’t fool me.”
“No. Really. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Laine, you’re so good at pretending you’re innocent.” She reaches for my hand, touching it gently before I pull it away. I drop the paper in my locker and close the door.
“I have to get to class,” I say. Our eyes meet. For a second I think I see the old Leah there. The one who taught me how to ride horses and passed notes in class with me. But she quickly looks down.
“Don’t give up on that tryout, Lainey. Just think of the locker room.”
I start to walk away, but Leah grabs my arm.
“The locker room, Lainey. All those girls undressing in front of you? How will you control yourself?”
I feel sick to my stomach.
“Look at you,” Leah says, close to my face again. “You can’t hide it, Laine. I know what team you play on.” She moves even closer and whispers in my ear. “See ya tonight.”
She turns and walks down the hall. As she swings her hips, her short skirt swishes back and forth, going higher up her thighs.
I lean against my locker. She’s wrong. Other girls don’t make me feel different. Only Leah.
But she’s the one who did those things to me.
So what does that make her?
By the time Mrs. Greene drops Leah off that night, my parents have already left for a party. Christi has escaped to her room and shut the door, leaving me to welcome Leah in. Great.
She opens the door without knocking and throws her leather backpack on the floor by the door. She checks out the room. And me.
“Well, this is going to be a blast,” she says sarcastically. “How the hell are you, Lainey?”
“OK,” I say. “You?”
She shrugs. “I’m hungry.”
“There’s some leftover pizza in the fridge,” I say. “Feel free to help yourself.”
She wrinkles her nose as if I offered her leftover meat loaf, but she goes into the kitchen anyway. I don’t follow her.
I watch TV in the living room, waiting for her to come back out. But she doesn’t. After a while, I hear her voice through the kitchen door. I turn down the volume on the TV.
“Come on,” she says. “Why don’t you come over and party? Her parents aren’t even here.”
I walk to the kitchen and poke my head through the doorway. Leah’s sitting at the kitchen table with her feet propped up on it, one of my father’s antique bar glasses in her hand.
“Just a minute,” she says when she sees me. She lets the mouthpiece slide down below her chin. “May I help you?” She takes a sip of her drink.
“What are you drinking?”
“Gin and tonic. Want one?”
Who is this person? To a stranger, Leah probably looks about eighteen or nineteen, not sixteen.
When I don’t answer, she takes a long drink and turns her back to me.
“So will you please come?” she asks the person on the phone. She laces the cord of the old phone my dad restored through her fingers as she talks in a fake whine.
“I bet I could cheer you up.” She pauses as the other person says something, then giggles.
I leave her there and find Christi in her room, studying French.
“Oui?” she says, looking up.
“Leah’s drinking Dad’s gin.”
Christi stops smiling. “Perfect. When will Mom and Dad be home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lainey?” It’s Leah calling from the kitchen. “I’m still hungry!”
Christi looks worried.
“She was asking some guy to come over and party,” I tell her.
“Crap.” Christi gets up, annoyed. “Can we just lock ourselves in here?” She’s kidding, but I would have been up for it.
“Lai-ney! Where are you?” We hear Leah climb the stairs and make her way to my room. “Lainey?”
“I’m in Christi’s room!” I call back reluctantly.
“Hey, guys,” she says from the hallway. “I didn’t even know you were here, Christi. What were you doing? Hiding?” She has one hand behind her back. In the other is a full glass of gin and tonic. She’s even cut a lime for it, like my parents do at their parties.
“I’m trying to study,” Christi says. “What are you doing?” I can tell she’s trying to sound authoritative, but she isn’t really pulling it off.
“If you’re the babysitter, maybe you could make me something to eat?” Leah takes a long drink from the glass.
“There’s leftover pizza in the fridge,” Christi says. “Didn’t Laine tell you?”
“Why don’t you like me, Christi? You’ve never liked me, have you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I make you nervous, don’t I? Just like I make Lainey nervous. Why do I make everyone so fucking nervous?” Leah walks closer to us as she speaks, keeping her hand behind her back. Her lips are wet and shiny. Her cheeks are pink. She smiles as she walks toward us, swaying a little, then takes another drink.
“How much have you had, Leah?” I ask.
“Get over it, Laine. God, you’re such a prude.” She smiles, though. “Or at least you’d like to be, wouldn’t you?” She looks at Christi, then winks at me.
I move closer to Christi.
Leah stops in front of us.
“What do you want?” Christi asks.
“I want you to make me something to eat.” Slowly, Leah starts to bring her hand from around her back, still hiding whatever she’s holding. She smiles mischievously. The ice cubes in her glass clink.
“Fine.” Christi moves past us and starts down the hall. Leah follows her. That’s when I see what she’s holding behind her back. It’s a tiny paring knife that she must have used to cut the lime for her drink.
“Leah!” I yell before I can even think what she’s doing.
Christi stops at the top of the stairs and turns around. “What is it?” she asks.
Leah stands between us, still facing Christi. “Oh, this?” she asks, showing Christi the knife.
“What the hell is that for?” Christi asks.
“What do you think it’s for?” Leah says. She touc
hes the tip of the knife to the inside of her arm, slowly running it down to her wrist. The now half-empty glass spills a bit as she does it.
“Jesus!” Christi yells.
“Relax,” Leah says, taking the blade away so we can see a speck of blood form a tiny bubble at her wrist. She smiles at us.
“God, Leah. Put it down or give it to me,” Christi says. “It’s not funny.”
“You want it, Christi? Or do you want some of this?” Leah holds out her glass to Christi. Christi reaches for the glass, but Leah quickly pulls it away and chugs the rest of it. “Sorry, you’ll have to make your own. I’m sure you wouldn’t want something I put my mouth on, anyway.”
“Give me the knife, Leah,” Christi says. “You’re drunk. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“C’mon, Leah,” I try, finally finding my voice again. “This is dumb.”
“Like you care,” she says. She touches the blade to her wrist again, spilling a remaining ice cube on the floor.
“I — I do care, Leah. What the hell?”
“Put the knife down. Now,” Christi says, stepping toward her.
Leah keeps the knife pressed to her wrist.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“Would you really care, Laine? Would you care if I did it? Or would you be relieved?” She runs the knife across her wrist again, leaving a tiny red line.
Without thinking, I step forward and snatch it out of her hand.
“I’m calling Mom and Dad,” Christi says.
“Oh, please.” Leah rolls her eyes. “It was only a joke. You don’t think I’d really do it, do you?” She starts to head down the stairs as if nothing has happened.
“You passed the test, Laine!” she calls back over her shoulder. “I guess you still fucking care after all.”
“What a psycho,” Christi says. She walks back to her room and slams the door, leaving me standing in the hallway alone. I look down at the small knife in my hand. It has blood on it. Mine.
I don’t know why, but I don’t want Christi to see, so I go to the downstairs bathroom. Leah is there, fixing her hair. I ignore her and open the cabinet to find a bandage.
“Oh, fuck!” she says when she sees my hand. “Are you OK?”
“Do you care?” I ask.
A car horn in the driveway interrupts my cold stare.
“Oh, shit,” Leah says. “I’ve gotta go. I’m really sorry, all right? It was only a joke. Seriously, are you OK?”
Behind the makeup she actually looks concerned. Even scared. Maybe.
The car horn blows again.
“I’ve gotta go,” she says.
She runs through the dining room, grabs her bag, and shuts the door hard behind her.
I creep to the open window and listen through the screen.
“When I honk, you get your ass out here!” a guy’s voice yells. It sounds way older than someone in high school.
I listen for Leah’s response, but I don’t hear anything. The sting in my palm starts to throb as I try to peek out at them.
“Just get in!” the voice shouts. A door shuts. Tires squeal as the car tears out of our driveway.
I go back to the bathroom and finish fixing my hand. Back in my room, I try to stay awake until she gets home, but the next thing I know it’s morning and Leah isn’t here.
When my parents ask where she is, I tell them she left with someone last night, but I don’t know who. I keep my hand in a fist and don’t say anything about the knife. Christi shakes her head at me when my parents aren’t watching, but she doesn’t tell, either.
Mrs. Greene pretends not to be mad at all of us when she shows up at the house a few minutes later and finds out that Leah’s gone. My parents keep apologizing, saying they were out late and didn’t know Leah was missing until just now.
I don’t know why Christi and I don’t tell them about the knife. I don’t think it occurs to either of us that Leah would really hurt herself. Not seriously, anyway.
We were so stupid. Of course it wasn’t a joke. It was a warning.
Leah and I spend the next few weeks avoiding each other. The long Columbus Day weekend can’t come soon enough. I spend the whole time in my room reading with Jack curled safely at my feet. Christi feels sorry enough for me to actually invite me to go shopping with her and her friends, but I pass.
I dread going back to school the following Tuesday, but it’s a waste of time because Leah isn’t there. She’s gone.
As the weeks go by and she doesn’t return, more and more rumors spread about where she went. The ones I’ve heard so far are: she dropped out to go to modeling school; she transferred to a fancy all-girls’ finishing school; her parents sent her to a girls’ military school to straighten her out; she transferred schools because she’s already slept with all the guys in this school; and she got pregnant.
I haven’t spoken to Leah since the knife incident, so I have no idea what’s true. And even though I’m selfishly relieved that she’s gone, I worry. To feel better, I try to convince myself that if anything really bad happened, Mrs. Greene would tell my mom.
Some days, I still feel her watching me. Taunting me. Sometimes when a pretty girl walks by me, I can almost hear Leah’s wet whisper in my ear, “Checking her out, Lainey? She’s cute, isn’t she?”
But Leah’s not here anymore. It’s just me, beating myself up.
After Leah’s comments about soccer, I decided to prove her wrong by joining the team after all. I’m not afraid of the locker room. I’m not checking anyone out. Actually, I like getting ready in the locker room, listening to the gossip as we dress for practice, like I’m part of a group again, even if I’m outside the circle. It’s not all that different from the group of fake friends I had with Leah.
“I heard our new uniforms will be in Friday,” Jen Thomas says as she laces up her cleats before practice. She’s talking to Carrie Winters. They’re both juniors.
“I hope mine’s the right size,” Carrie says. “Remember how tight my top was last year? God, I didn’t even need a sports bra. I swear Ms. Sawyer does it on purpose so she can check us out.”
Ms. Sawyer is our coach. She’s openly gay and has a partner, so I doubt she’s interested in them.
Jen pushes out her flattish chest. “She’s not checking me out, that’s for sure. Unless she likes little boys.”
“Maybe little girls,” Carrie jokes.
I wish they’d shut up.
“This school is so whacked,” says Jen. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
“No shit. Speaking of getting out, have you heard about Leah Greene?”
My ears get hot.
“She moved, right? That’s old news. And good news, if you ask me.”
I try to pay attention to my cleats, but I’m sure my head is leaning way too close to them as I hang on every word.
“No, she didn’t move. She’s just not coming back here,” Carrie says.
“Why not? Is she too good for us? God, she and her sister are so stuck-up.”
I act busy stuffing things in my backpack so they don’t think I’m listening.
“Actually, I heard that Leah tried to kill herself,” Carrie says.
I drop my bag and look up. Jen stops brushing her hair. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Carrie almost smiles, like she’s proud to know this top-secret news.
I pick up my backpack again and put it on the bench. My hands are shaking.
“Maybe sleeping with every guy in the senior class last year got to her conscience,” Jen says, brushing her hair again.
“Who knows. Why is it all the rich, beautiful girls who do crap like that? I mean, she has everything going for her, so what does she do? She sleeps with every guy on the planet and then tries to off herself. She probably just did it for attention.” Carrie stands up and looks at herself in the mirror. She tucks a few loose strands of hair back into her ponytail.
Jen rolls her eyes.
“I heard Leah transferred
to private school over at Sheldon,” says Carrie. “All the rich fuck-ups end up there.”
“She’s just like her slutty sister, Brooke,” Jen says. “They think they’re so much better than everyone else.”
I see Leah pressing the knife against her wrist and look down at the scar on my palm. I squeeze my hand shut again. I feel dizzy. I pull off my cleats and put my school clothes back on. No one seems to notice or care. I shove my practice clothes in my backpack and stand up. The cement floor feels like it’s swaying underneath me. I wobble as I step forward. Carrie gives me a funny look.
I walk out of the locker room, out of the school parking lot, and away. Nobody tries to stop me.
It’s cold and windy outside. The sidewalks seem empty, even though they aren’t. I walk looking down at the pavement in front of me.
The cold stings inside my ears and makes my head pound. I walk faster, finally ending up downtown, in front of the glass door of my parents’ antique store.
I stand outside looking in. My father is talking to a customer. They can’t see me out here in the dark.
I hold my hands in fists inside my jacket pockets. The air is cold and damp-feeling. But I can’t go inside. I’m supposed to be at practice. I’m supposed to be happy Leah is gone and out of my life. But I can’t stop thinking about the last time I saw her, pressing that knife to her wrist. Asking me if I would care. Telling me I passed a test I didn’t even know I was taking.
The woman shopper inside the store turns toward the door. I step aside quickly. The tiny customer-warning bell jingles as the door closes behind her. Her heels click steadily down the sidewalk as she walks away.
The store is quiet. I watch my father smooth his hand over a polished table. Then he walks to the back of the store, and I can’t see him anymore. When he turns out the store light, I see my reflection in the glass. It startles and sickens me at the same time.
I turn around and lean against the cold store window.
Leah tried to kill herself.
Leah tried to die.
I try to remind myself of all the mean things she’s done to me, but in the end it doesn’t matter. With Leah, it never did. Even from the very beginning. No matter how much she hurt me, I always came back. All she had to do was reach for my hand and pull.
