Invisible Lines

by Mary Amato

  I get to P.E., and I’m wondering how I’m possibly going to make it through the class when a voice comes over the intercom. “Coach Stevins. Would you please ask Trevor Musgrove to report to the guidance office?”

  Guidance? What now?

  Stevins dismisses me and I walk down the long silent hallway back to the office, all the lockers standing at attention on either side like a firing squad.

  The guidance counselor—Ms. Beitz—looks like she has never smiled in her whole life. “I heard through the grapevine, Trevor, that you’re having trouble with your schedule … trouble keeping up with your science work, I mean. I checked—”

  “I’m keeping up,” I say.

  She looks at me like if I interrupt again, she’ll bite my head off and wash it down with her Diet Coke. She goes on, “What I was about to say was I checked the records and found a computer error in your schedule. You should be in Ms. Becker’s science class.”

  It’s guidance counselor code. What she’s really saying is that I’m not smart enough to be in a Summit class.

  My jaw clenches, and the anger in me rises up. “Who told you I’m having trouble?”

  “Is that attitude I detect in your voice?” Ms. Beitz drums her long blue fingernails on her desk. “Because I do not respond well to attitude.”

  “If Xander Pierce told you, then he is a parasitic fungus.”

  She sets her pencil down. “What?”

  “Oh. Sorry. Only Summit students are supposed to know what big words mean.”

  Ms. Beitz smolders. “I suggest you ponder what you think you’ll gain from disrespecting me.”

  I crossed her line so fast I’m dizzy.

  On the bus ride home, I ponder the hits I’ve taken. First: I was born. Second: Xander was born. Third: I beat Xander at juggling. Fourth: Diamond was born and rubbed my victory in Xander’s face. Fifth: I get blamed for doing graffiti that I didn’t even do. Sixth: I get kicked out of the only class I like.

  From the back, Markus’s voice interrupts my ponder. “What was you thinking would happen, Diamond?”

  “Shut up, Markass,” Diamond hisses.

  “Hey, Trev,” Markus shouts out, “guess what your girlfriend did for you.”

  “Shut up!” Diamond shouts.

  “Sit down, back there!” the bus driver yells. “Next person gets a detention.”

  I turn around to face them. Diamond looks scared. She tries to cover Markus’s mouth, but he pulls her hand away and says, “Diamond defended your honor, man.”

  I stand up, and the bus driver’s voice slams against the back of my head. “I said sit down!”

  I’m so mad, I don’t care. I walk straight for Diamond. “You did it, didn’t you? You did Xander’s locker?”

  Celine ooohs. “See, I told you he wouldn’t like it.”

  I glare at Diamond. “What part of LEAVE ME ALONE do you not understand?”

  The bus has stopped. The bus driver grabs me by the back of my shirt, drags me up to the front of the bus, and forces me into a seat. “You just earned two detentions.”

  21.

  THROWING PUNCHES

  I can hear the crying from down the hall. It’s Tish. She’s lying on the floor, bawling about something. Michael’s got his thumb in his mouth and an angry look on his face, and Mom is yelling at him about the backpack he wants. As soon as she sees me she shoots me this hard look with a hundred thousand times more force than mushrooms use to blast their spores. I don’t want to go in, but I have nowhere else to go.

  “Trev, tell Mom I need a superhero backpack right now,” Michael says.

  Mom shouts, “Michael, it’s over. Case closed. No backpack. Trev, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.” She slams the door and makes me sit in a chair. “I called the school today to ask about supplies for you, which is not an easy thing for me to do, you know, and the vice principal, Mr. Gonzalez or something like that, said he called you in because some kid said you wrote on his locker. How many times have I told you—”

  “Why is everybody assuming I did it?”

  “He said you’re already falling behind in Computer Applications and you got a detention for being late. We have a rule that you’re supposed to tell me if you get—”

  “It’s a stupid elective and I’m behind because we don’t have a computer for the homework. And you know why I got a detention? Because this guy named Xander has it in for me. He slammed into me and knocked everything down.”

  “Don’t go blaming everybody else.”

  “Don’t go blaming me without knowing what you’re talking about.”

  “I am at the end of my rope, Trev. So don’t raise your voice at me.”

  “I’m defending myself!”

  “Nobody is listening to me!” Michael screams, and throws himself into the corner.

  “Not now, Michael.” Mom glares at me. “How many times have I told you that you have to do good in school? It’s a brand-new school for you, Trevor; first impressions stick like glue.”

  “I know!” I throw my backpack against the wall. “I’m trying. You know how hard it is? I have no cell phone. No decent clothes. No shoes. Hey, you want to see this?” I kick off my shoe and pull off my sock and show her my blisters. “See these? I tried out for that team and made it. Did you know that? No. I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d just say no. You say no to everything that I want.”

  “I’m doing the best I can. I spent the day hauling Tish and Rex on the bus over to welfare for a face-to-face. And then I hauled them over to Bestway to get food. And then I hauled everything back here. Four bags and two kids.” The more she talks, the madder she gets. “I am trying. I work my butt off for you guys—”

  “If you work so hard, how come we never have any money?”

  “ ’Cause you guys are expensive. That’s why! It takes money to take care of you. And who’s doing it? You don’t see your daddy doing it. You don’t see their daddy doing it.” She points to Michael and Tish. “Who’s taking care of you? Me!”

  Whoever lives in the apartment next door turns up their music. They’re probably the same guys who ripped the picture off our door. “I hate it here. I hate my school. I hate this apartment.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Mom yells. “They raised the rent at our old place. We couldn’t afford it. Period.”

  I kick off my other shoe. “Langley’s tree house is better than this dump.”

  “Langley, whoever Langley is, was probably born to a family with money.”

  “How come I wasn’t?”

  “ ’Cause you were born to me.”

  “Well, I wish I wasn’t.”

  That stings. Her eyes are filling up and her face looks hot, like I slapped her. I don’t care. I’m too far gone to stop. I’m hungry and tired. All day long I’ve been kicked by everybody for stuff I didn’t even do. I turn my back on her and go into the bedroom. She follows, and I try to shut the door, but she grabs hold of it.

  “Who said life is fair, Trev? It ain’t. That doesn’t mean you can yell at me. That doesn’t mean you can mess up at school.”

  “I hate school. And I hate coming home and babysitting.”

  “Listen, Trev. You think I want to work at the Fry Factory? I’m young. You don’t see it, but it’s true. I’m young. I’d like to be going out tonight and partying with my friends. Maybe go to a movie. But I can’t. I got three kids. I got responsibilities. We gotta do things even when we don’t want to. You gotta help out around here, like it or not. And you gotta do good in school. I know you’re smart, Trev. I know you can do real good when you have a positive attitude.”

  “A positive attitude won’t make a difference.”

  “Stop talking like that. You are not giving up.” Her voice starts shaking like she’s going to cry, but she pulls herself together like a statue and doesn’t blink. “You think I don’t understand, but I do. Right around your age, I started thinking I was just a piece of trash, and I stopped trying. Who cares about stupid school p
rojects and tests and report cards? There was so much pressure on me I couldn’t take it anymore. I know what it’s like. But you can’t give up like I did! I’m counting on you to do better than me. Once you stop trying, everything else falls apart, Trev. That’s what happened to me. All my priorities got messed up. I started partying and messing around with my boyfriend and then I got pregnant and dropped out. Now look at me.”

  She’s standing in the doorway in her Fry Factory uniform. A ray of light from the kitchen is shining on one side of her face. I don’t want to look at her right now. Tish is standing behind her, staring at me with wide, scared eyes.

  “Momma?” Tish starts to cry again.

  “Don’t cry. Please,” Mom says, and picks up Tish. “It’s okay. We’re just having a little fight.”

  Tish calms down right away, and there’s something about it that reaches in and punches me in the gut. I’m not a little kid anymore. We’re not just having a little fight. It’s a big fight and it’s not okay.

  The edges of the room start to get blurry and my stomach hurts, like maybe I’m going to throw up or faint. “I’m the reason your life is so messed up,” I say.

  She’s just standing there like a statue.

  I throw my next sentence at her. “I bet you wished you would’ve thrown me in the Dumpster when I was born.”

  BAM!

  The apartment is vibrating. I am standing perfectly still, not breathing, just staring at her.

  Michael’s voice floats up. “Trev is bad,” he says.

  She’s not crumbling, like I thought she would. “Trev, you know that’s not true.” Her voice comes out thin and cold like she’s hollow on the inside. “We have to talk about this, but I can’t now. I have to go, and you have to watch Michael and Tish. This is between you and me so don’t take it out on them.”

  I turn my face into stone and stare at her. I’m not crumbling, either.

  “If you got homework, you better do it,” she says. She gets her stuff together and goes.

  I lock the door behind her.

  There is exactly two seconds of silence, and then Tish cries, “Momma.”

  I get milk in a sippy cup and hand it to her to shut her up.

  Michael glares at me.

  I get leftover hamburgers out. Michael won’t eat, so I ignore him and eat mine cold with ketchup.

  Tish finally decides to stop crying.

  “I’m hungry,” Michael says to the wall.

  “Nobody’s stopping you. Come and eat.”

  “I’m mad at you. You won’t help me and you’re mean.”

  “Then don’t eat.”

  There’s a knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” I ask without opening it.

  “It’s Diamond.”

  I don’t move.

  “I’m sorry I did that to Xander’s locker,” she says through the door. “I just come to say that. I thought I was doing you a favor, but I’m sorry.”

  “Go away.”

  “Are you gonna tell on me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please don’t.” She’s quiet for a few seconds, then she asks if she can come in.

  “No,” I say.

  “Please, Trev.”

  “Not my problem.”

  There is a long pause.

  “That baby is still at Saint Francis. He’s real sick,” Diamond says. “He might not make it. I heard it on the news.”

  Michael takes his thumb out of his mouth. “Charlie?”

  I don’t say anything.

  He runs to the windowsill. “Make his name fresh, Trev.”

  I want everybody to leave me alone.

  “I thought you might want to know,” she says.

  I don’t answer. After a few seconds the sound of her flip-flops echo as she walks down the hall.

  22.

  IN NEED OF MAJOR SURGERY

  Little Cavewoman wakes me up by sitting on my head.

  “Wev,” she says, and pinches my nose. “Me stinky diaper.”

  She ain’t kidding.

  “Come and sit on the potty, Tish!” Mom says.

  “Shouldn’t she sit on the potty before it all comes out?” Michael asks. He’s standing at the window, scratching on the screen with a Popsicle stick.

  “Well, I’m just trying to teach her to sit on the potty period. I’m tired of buying diapers. Don’t make that hole in the screen bigger, Michael. I just taped it up.”

  I guess some people wake up to the smell of cinnamon rolls and the sounds of birds chirping. I wake up to this.

  “I don’t want to go to school,” I say.

  “I’m not going, either,” Michael says.

  “You’re both going and that’s that.”

  Mom tells me she’s calling to make sure I’m in class. She tells me that I have to “inform” The Plague’s coach that I can’t be on the team. We’re both still mad at each other.

  Diamond attacks me the minute I show up at the bus stop. “If you told Gonzalez you didn’t do it and he believes you, then you’re not gonna tell on me, right?”

  “He’s not the type to turn you in,” Celine says.

  Markus adds his two cents. “Trevor likes hanging with the Summit boys. He ain’t gonna care about saving your butt, Diamond.”

  The bus pulls up.

  I’m going to explode.

  “Nobody around here minds their own business,” Juan says. “Leave the man alone.”

  Like I said before, Juan is all right.

  I sit next to him on the bus, and he reaches in his pocket and pulls out a piece of candy and gives it to me. Just a little thing, but it kind of saves me for the moment.

  Before my first class even starts, I’m called into the office. At this rate they should set aside a special bench in there for me with a little plaque on it: DEDICATED TO TREVOR MUSGROVE, WHO GETS HAULED IN AT LEAST ONCE A DAY.

  Mr. Gonzalez hands me the bus driver’s report. He explains the two detentions for standing up on the bus, which I’ll be serving during lunch, and says that he’ll be calling home to let my mom know. By the way, Mr. Gonzalez says, Ms. Beitz informed him about the computer error in my schedule of classes, and now my schedule has been corrected. I’ll be in Ms. Becker’s class for science.

  “But I like Mr. Ferguson’s class.”

  “The only way you can be in a Summit class is to have applied and been accepted into the Summit program,” he says.

  I can tell by the look on his face that it won’t do me any good to argue.

  No more perambulating outside. No more Irish caps and walking sticks. No more fungi facts and mycelium demonstrations.

  I sleepwalk through the morning and serve detention during lunch.

  Diamond tries to talk to me on my way to English. “I got an idea of how I can make up for what I did,” she says. “I’m gonna get you something you’re really gonna like.”

  “Try dying instead,” I say. “That might do the trick.”

  I’m not a mean person, but sometimes I just can’t take it anymore.

  In English, I get yelled at again for doodling.

  In my new science class, we spend the entire period reading out of the textbook and I swear the place smells like an old lunch sack. Since there is absolutely nothing in the classroom except Ms. Becker, my excellent supposition is that the stink is her perfume. Eau de Tuna Fish and Rotten Bananas. Markus is in that class, and every time the teacher isn’t looking, he fires a spitwad at the ceiling. He’s like a giant Ganoderma applanatum shooting out spores. He’s got a billion spitwads up there.

  I spend the entire period either trying not to: a) smell Ms. Becker; b) think about what Mr. Ferguson is doing; or c) obsess about Xander.

  Just before the bell rings, the office calls on the intercom.

  “Ms. Becker, do you have Trevor Musgrove?”

  “Yes.”

  Everybody goes “ooh” like I’m in trouble.

  “Please have him go to Mr. Ferguson’s room when the bell
rings.”

  Mr. Ferguson? My stomach drops. What is he going to say?

  After class, I walk slowly because I don’t want to run into Xander and everybody else.

  Mr. Ferguson is out in the hallway, taping another mushroom cartoon to his door. The class is gone, except for Mosquito Boy, who is chattering away.

  “Um, Trevor.” Mosquito Boy stops and looks at me. “Why weren’t you in class?”

  Mr. Ferguson tells him that he’d like to talk with me in private and takes me inside. The earthy smell of the place makes me sad because I miss it already.

  He gestures for me to sit down at the nearest lab table and he walks over to his desk, picks up a pink slip of paper, and sets it down in front of me.

  DROP/ADD FORM

  Student: Trevor Musgrove

  Drop: Summit Science

  Investigations, FERGUSON, period 7.

  Add: Science Investigations,

  BECKER, period 7.

  “I received this in my box, and I haven’t had a chance to talk to Ms. Beitz. What’s this about?” he asks me.

  He’s going to make me say it out loud: The reason I’m not in your class anymore is because I’m not smart enough.

  “Was this something you requested?” he asks.

  “No. I’d like to stay.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I’m not in the Summit program.”

  “Ah. That is a problem.” He pulls up a stool. “Did you apply?”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t know anything about it. Ms. Beitz said I was put in here because of a computer error.”

  The bell rings for the next class.

  He reads my mind and tells me that he’ll write me a pass so I won’t be in trouble for being late.

  We’re both quiet for a second. The teacher across the hall yells at everybody to listen up and then her door slams shut.

  He pulls down his glasses and looks at me over them. “There are rules, Mr. Musgrove. Admittance into Summit classes is by application only, and the application process is competitive.”

  “I know. Mr. Gonzalez told me.”

  He frowns. “I suggest you talk to Mr. Raye about this.”

  “Who is Mr. Raye?”

  “Don’t you have Mr. Raye for art? He teaches the regular art electives as well as Summit Art, and he’s the Summit Program Coordinator.”