I cried into my blankets. I cried to Allie, my best friend in the Building. I yelled at my father for no reason. He grounded me for a month, but I had nowhere to go.
* * *
I HAD FALLEN FOR RON IN LESS THAN A SECOND, but it took me months to pull myself out of the raw, bleeding place he’d driven me to. Allie was gone by then. She had abandoned me for some art school in Paris. Of all people, it was Cheryl I saw first when I raised my head out of the mud—a spring flower ready to bloom.
I wasn’t ready to get bitten again by that crazy love bug that hunted all animals in the spring. My plan was to learn to mingle. Cheryl was the perfect partner. She would talk for me.
Not many from our school hung with Cheryl, so she had fallen in with her cousin’s friends from a private school further downtown. A rich crowd—with cars, cool clothes, and cash. They never had dates—just gangs going out together.
Cheryl and I took the subway to her cousin Sylvia’s neighborhood. I wouldn’t want stuck-up Sylvia and her friends to pick me up at the Building. We drove to a new all-ages dance club. It took two cars to hold us all. Cheryl and I were squeezed into the back with Mike, the rich boy who had everything. In the front seat, Sylvia snuggled beside her boyfriend Bryce, who was driving his father’s BMW. The rest were in Serina’s Jetta—her parents had bought it for her three weeks ago.
Mike made me forget my promise to myself not to fall in love. He had a soft voice, loose, dark curls, and a lean, hard body.
Sylvia was whispering sweet nothings into Bryce’s ear. She giggled as he groped her with one hand, the other gripping the wheel. Cheryl was talking, of course.
“I’ve heard about this club. My cousin goes there all the time. It’s a strange name for a club, don’t you think? The Earwig. Kind of gross. Makes me think of bugs, not music. I’ll be checking my drink for any crunchy bits, that’s for sure. It will be so dark that we won’t be able to see any little creatures that may be crawling around on the floor. I think they should change the name. Don’t you?”
Cheryl managed to keep it up all the way to the club. She talked more when she was nervous. Mike and I spoke without words. Our legs touched and once his hand caressed mine.
At the club, the speakers blasted out dance tunes so loud my chest pounded the beat. I couldn’t help but move to the rhythm. The dance floor was a mass of people. Most couples didn’t dance together, except for the rare slow song when they paused long enough to hang onto each other and catch their breath.
I was drawn to this fast world. I had no time for Ron or his footsy games. I danced alone, song after song, burning off the pain, the sorrow, and the anger of Ron. I was caught in a spinning, dizzying zone. Until I could dance no longer. I rested as far from the booming music as I could get.
Mike found me. “I saw you dancing.” He nodded his approval and sat beside me on the small ledge that was once a windowsill—before they bricked in the window. His leg touched mine.
My face heated up. I forgot that others would be watching my dance, but I was flattered by Mike’s attention.
We could barely hear to talk. We leaned close together, cheek to cheek, lips brushing each other’s ears. I could smell his cologne, feel his warmth. Yet I didn’t look at his face. We would be close enough to kiss.
I learned that Mike was a rich boy who didn’t have everything. He was sad. He told me about his father. How he was a busy lawyer and a politician. How he never had time for Mike. Mike was lonely. No one understood him.
I pressed against Mike to comfort him. I wanted to sweep my lips over his, but his friends appeared. Cheryl, too.
“Ready to split?” asked Bryce as Sylvia nuzzled against him in the way that I wanted to nuzzle Mike.
It was not a question. Bryce was the driver. He said when it was time to go. He dropped Cheryl and me off at the subway. Cheryl was jabbering, but I must have passed the test because Mike asked me to come to a party with his friends. We would go to someone’s farmhouse-cottage northwest of the city. We would stay overnight.
Mike whispered in my ear, “See you next Saturday?”
I nodded. We had a date, sort of. Cheryl and the others would come, too.
What Mom and Dad didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Mom dropped me in front of Cheryl’s house for a sleepover—Cheryl’s parents let her get away with more. With our overnight bags, we walked to the bus stop in the rain. We took the subway downtown to Mike’s neighborhood. Bundled into a car with booze and Mike’s friends, we drove for two hours to the party.
“Come on,” said Mike to me. “Let’s find someplace quiet.”
The party was happening in the kitchen, but, after a few drinks, we went to a bedroom.
I kissed Mike, though he had more than a kiss on his mind. He pushed me down onto the bed and tried to reach inside my clothes.
“Come on, Cori. Let’s do it.” He nibbled my neck.
I didn’t want to do it with him. I didn’t want to do it with anyone yet.
“No. Stop.”
“You’re a wild girl. You sure dance like one.” He breathed into my ear.
He was a poor rich boy. Sensitive, yet sexy.
“No.” I pushed him hard—off me, off the bed. A tumble of clothes and skin bumped the floor.
“Hey!” he yelled.
But he stopped. It could have been worse. He pulled on his shirt and left me alone.
I didn’t see him for the rest of the night. Instead, I locked the door and cried. Later, I tried to sleep away my disappointment, but nightmares of Ron and Mike haunted me.
In the morning, Bryce drove us to Cheryl’s. Me on one side of the backseat and Mike on the other. Cheryl sat between us, with Mike’s arm around her shoulder. They whispered together the whole way home.
* * *
I SWORE OFF ROMANCE FOR MONTHS, but not for good. I was too weak to resist forever.
My father hadn’t moved out, but he walked around the apartment with heavy footsteps and eyes that smoldered. Until he missed supper one night. More than supper, actually. He didn’t come home until morning. I could hear the fight from my room.
“You smell like perfume!” my mother yelled. “Who do you think you’re fooling?”
My father said that he was sorry. That it wouldn’t happen again.
My mother wouldn’t talk to him, and she wouldn’t make him breakfast anymore. Dad avoided looking at her or me.
“What should I do?” my mother asked me when we were alone, like I was some kind of expert on love. “Maybe I should leave him.”
She didn’t say what would happen to me if she left. And she didn’t leave. She scrubbed the kitchen instead. And the bathroom, the living room, the bedrooms. Our apartment was spotless. Without a blemish.
“Men are evil, stupid, worthless pigs. Don’t be a victim, Cori.” My mother’s words rang in my ears.
I agreed.
* * *
SCHOOL DIDN’T KEEP ME BUSY ENOUGH to avoid Cheryl and Ron, and I refused to clean with my mother. So I started a strict exercise routine. Jogged for an hour before school each morning, never missed a high-impact aerobics class at the community center, and ate like a workhorse in between.
I promised myself I wouldn’t become one of those stupid women who believed in love. I refused to dream at night. Yet Paul battered my defenses with kindness. I met him at the gym. Paul the caveman. Blond, with a barrel chest, and muscle-man arms. He worked in a warehouse, lifting boxes. I was unprepared for his kindness.
For four months, he asked me out after each aerobics class—three times a week. At first, I didn’t even answer him, but he persisted. So I pushed him away with words, although I did notice his strong legs and cute butt as he jumped around trying to keep up with the instructor’s routine.
Finally, I agreed to one date, just to get rid of him. One date became two, then three, and then we fell into an easy dating pattern that stretched into eight months. I guess we were a couple, although I never meant for it to happen. I became used to having
Paul around. I expected him to be with me.
Until one night in the weight room, when I was watching Paul beat his own record with the free weights.
“Yes!” he yelled after he lowered the bar back into the rack. Walker, who was almost as big as Paul, patted him on the back as Paul wiped down the bench for him.
Paul was nice, but sometimes he got on my nerves. He kissed me slowly and he didn’t push for more. He never so much as glanced at another girl. He knew he couldn’t, or I’d leave him. Still, he grunted when he dropped the barbell, his sweat had a moldy smell, and he swallowed his food in big bites without chewing. I couldn’t keep quiet.
“What a man,” I said so he could hear. “He can lift heavy weights. Grunt for me, caveman.”
A few people laughed with me. Gemma the priss just raised one eyebrow at me. Paul said nothing. Just took it all in. He knew I was hurting. I’d told him about Ron and Mike. And Dad.
I knew I was wrong, but something in me couldn’t stop. Men deserved it, didn’t they? They were all pigs. “You know how Paul counts how much weight he’s lifted? By stomping on the floor!” I pounded the floor like a dumb mule. “One, two, three, … uh … seventeen?”
Walker and some of the other guys and girls were gathering around. They sniggered and howled. Gemma moved away, shaking her head.
“Ever see a monkey trying to write his name? You haven’t seen Paul signing a check.” Paul hadn’t finished grade 10.1 liked to tease him about that.
Paul grabbed his towel and flung it over one shoulder. “I’m hitting the showers.”
I opened my mouth to hurl one last gem but something about Paul’s sloping shoulders, his hand rubbing one eye, stopped me.
* * *
ON THE WAY HOME, PAUL PULLED THE CAR to a stop on the side of the road. He switched off the radio—a crooning song of a lover’s deceit.
“Hey, I’m listening to that.”
“I’ve got something to say,” he mumbled into his lap.
“Hold it, everyone,” I called to the imaginary crowd. “Paul has something to say.”
His face flushed. Then he said, “I can’t see you anymore, Cori.”
I was shocked. Dumbfounded. Paul was dumping me?
“This is a joke,” I began, reaching for his hand. “You can’t…”
“No joke.” He pulled back his hand and clenched the steering wheel. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I do. But …” He gripped the wheel tighter. “You’re a cruel bitch sometimes.”
What was he talking about? I wasn’t a bitch. The blood drained from my body until my head grew dizzy. My new firm muscles tightened around me.
“No!” The word roared from my mouth. This couldn’t be happening. Ron and Mike had only wanted me if I would sleep with them, but Paul was supposed to be different. He was supposed to want me and respect me no matter what.
“No use talking about it.” Paul put the car in drive and stared through the windshield. His chin was rigid but his eyes looked misty from the side. “I’ve made up my mind.” Then he added more softly, “I’ll take you home.”
I couldn’t see Paul for the tears.
I shut my eyes to force them back. The car swayed around corners. How could Paul do this to me? I wasn’t a bitch. He provoked me. Didn’t he?
Ten minutes later, the car pulled to a stop. I opened my eyes to the Building. Paul’s headlights shone on the white-brick wall to the underground. I watched the shadows of two people turning the corner of the Building. The lights in the lobby glowed a jaundiced yellow through the glass doors.
“Goodbye, Cori.”
I wiped my hands across my eyes to clear the tears. I wanted to fling myself over the parking brake at Paul. Prove to him somehow that he was wrong. That he did want me. Yet an invisible barrier had sprung up between us. Maybe it had always been there. Ron, Mike, and even Dad hovering between us like a ghostly wall.
I wanted to tell him how I wasn’t a bitch. How I was hurting from so many injustices.
He flinched as if I were about to throw something at him. “Don’t make this any harder, Cori.”
I hated how he said my name. Cori. With a too-hard C and an extra-long O. He had never said it that way before.
“I just wanted to say goodbye.” I sniffled, waiting for him to change his mind.
He didn’t.
I got out of the car and shut the door. Through the window, I caught a glimpse of his face from the side. One man’s face. Square chin. Shaved head. Nose twice broken in hockey. Freckled cheeks.
I stared at him, remembering how Paul smelled like earth after a spring rain. How his lips tasted like butter. How he dreamed of a business of his own one day—landscaping. He wanted to make flowers grow.
Paul pulled away from me then. His car circled the drive and turned onto the street, his red taillights winking goodbye.
Hot tears raced down my cheeks, and I heard the echo of my mother’s voice. Men are pigs. Never forget that. Maybe some were. But not Paul. The trouble was, Paul was gone.
Off the Couch
Roger
Apt. 615
MOM ALWAYS CALLED ME LAZY, but I would do anything for a pepperoni pizza with double cheese and anchovies, a late-night kung-fu show, or eggs. Sixteen white eggs. Chicken eggs, I guessed.
Mom, Kate and I were on the couch watching TV when Dad showed up without warning. He smelled like cigarettes. Snowflakes were melting into his hair. I couldn’t remember when I last saw him. Maybe it was spring.
“Daddy?” asked Kate as if she wasn’t sure who he was.
“Hey, baby!” Dad set an incubator down on the coffee table beside me. “There you go, Roger! The eggs are cold now. Just plug it in and you’re ready to go.”
The incubator was shaped like a flying saucer with a clear plastic dome. As large as the whole tabletop, it could have been a prop in a cheap outer-space show.
“For me?” I asked, leaning sideways to look at it. Dad had probably won it in a card game and didn’t know how else to get rid of it.
“Sure is!” He slapped the side of the incubator and I cringed, imagining the eggs cracking and the yolks spilling out.
“What does he need that for?” Mom stood to face him. Her eyes had that cold mean stare. Her neck muscles popped out in solid cords.
I sunk back into the couch. Kate cuddled closer to me, yanking nervously on one of the tight little braids Mom had worked into her hair.
Dad’s eye darted away from Mom. “The boy’s seventeenth birthday ought to be special. I’m just trying to make something of it.”
I was going to say that he’d missed my birthday. That it was last month. But Mom interrupted.
“Make something of your support payments, why don’t you? We need them more than a stupid incubator.” Her voice pierced like a sliver.
Dad wrung his gloves in his hands. He backed out of the apartment. I knew how he felt.
“Don’t forget those payments,” Mom yelled down the hall at him.
“Bye-bye, Daddy,” Kate whispered.
I watched Mom march back in. The TV droned out an infomercial for a new shampoo. With her hands on her hips, Mom stared at the incubator.
“I guess it’s scrambled eggs for supper,” she said with a sigh.
“No.”
I hauled myself up off the couch and stood in front of the incubator with my arms out beside me. My big stomach probably blocked it all.
“Oh, come on, Roger.”
Kate came to stand with me, her thumb in her mouth and her blanket trailing behind her.
“I want to see the eggs,” she said, without removing her thumb.
“Oh, save me, sweet angels.” My mother shook her head and walked away. I heard her opening the fridge and slamming food on the counter.
I carried the incubator to my room and set it on the floor. Kate followed me. I plugged in the incubator. The light glowed yellow and warmed my hands through the plastic. Someone had drawn a tiny X in pencil on each egg. Why?
&nb
sp; I watched until one moved. At least I thought it moved.
* * *
MOM DIDN’T MENTION THE EGGS AGAIN. Until she caught Kate and me watching a nature program two days later. A special on creatures that laid eggs. I didn’t know I was supposed to turn the eggs.
Mom came in from her Saturday lunch shift at the restaurant. She flung her brown tweed coat onto a kitchen chair. When she saw, on the TV, the fat mother hen settling on her eggs, Mom switched to the news.
“Don’t think you’re keeping those things if they hatch. You’d better find a place for them or it’s straight down the garbage chute they go.”
Beside me on the couch, Kate sobbed and pulled her blanket over her head. Mom settled into a chair with the converter.
I put my arm around Kate. She peeked through the holes in her blanket.
“I’ll take care of it,” I said.
We watched the news. I began to wonder what was inside the eggs. They were the size and shape of eggs from the store, but were they chicken eggs? Or maybe duck? Or even snake? If I knew where Dad was living, I could ask him.
* * *
“YOU NEED A LIBRARY CARD to take out books.”
The librarian looked over the desk at me with a forgiving smile. Three books were piled between us on the counter. From Egg to Chicken. Critters That Hatch. Inside an Egg.
“Oh,” I said. I should have known that.
The line-up of people behind me leaned in to listen. I wished I could have shrunk. What was the point of being big if it only made me a better target?
“I went to a library once with Mrs. C.” Kate beamed at the librarian over the edge of the counter. “She got a movie about a girl mouse. Do you have that movie here?”
The librarian shook her head and slid a paper over to me. “You need to fill out this form.”
“OK.”
She made the whole line-up wait while she helped me with the form. I could hear the impatient shuffling and sighing behind me, but I got a library card and the three books.
Take the Stairs Page 10
