The Inside of Out

by Jenn Marie Thorne

  “Yeah, totally!” I backed away, hands where she could see them.

  “Okay.” She slumped, exhausted—but also visibly relieved.

  As she walked off, I dropped the smile, the act, all of it. There was no point in pretending. She wasn’t going to look back.

  She left me the stoop. I’d noticed it sitting empty on Monday and Tuesday, but I’d snuck lunch up to the math wing to eat alone, knees tucked to make myself as small as possible. On Wednesday, the stoop looked so sunny and inviting that I took a chance, poked my head out, and reclaimed my old seat.

  I’d sort of hoped it would be empowering. That I’d feel independent, self-sufficient, like this was still my own little corner of the universe. But the stoop just felt like a stoop—not mine, not Hannah’s—a random architectural feature of an ugly municipal building.

  I ate. I left. And on Thursday, I got over myself.

  “Hey,” I said, approaching the granola table. “Mind if I—?”

  “Of course!” Sophie beamed, clearing the spot next to her.

  I’d bought a salad for lunch, worried about offending their sensibilities, but now I looked around to find them chowing down on cafeteria burgers and chicken soup. Not what I’d expected.

  Sophie tried to include me in the conversation, but it was all about some music festival they were going to and some guy named Gus who was lending them his van and was apparently hilarious, so there was really no entry point. I focused on my non-meal, grateful at least for the pretense of friends.

  “Nope,” said a dreadlocked girl at the end of the table. “Nope, nope, nope.”

  Everyone’s heads turned right, a herd of gazelles sensing danger.

  “Ignore them,” said the boy to Sophie’s left as she folded into herself. I glanced up from picking at my lettuce to see the Sexual Harassment Squad veering in our direction.

  But they weren’t here for Sophie.

  “Daisy,” cooed Seth Ross, his pompadour shellacked with gel, Roman nose begging to be re-pummeled. “I’ve missed you. We were hot together, don’t you think? Did you see my interview?”

  I bit into a cherry tomato. “Yup.”

  As far as harassment went, this was not impressive.

  His friends were more skillful. “I heard you like dick now, is that right?”

  “Or just football dick?” said the shortest guy in the crew, pulling on his ear as he tittered.

  Leering, Seth picked up the thread. “Something about those sweaty jockstraps . . . do they remind you of—?”

  “Oh my God,” was all I could say.

  Then, to my left came a sudden blur of movement as Sophie picked up the piping hot bowl of soup from a tray opposite her, stood, and tossed it at Seth Ross’s crotch.

  Her hands flew sweetly to her cheeks. “Oh, goodness. I’m so sorry, clumsy me!”

  We all stood in amazement.

  “What the fuck?” He was doubled over, spurting short-form expletives as his friends kneeled in a cluster, dabbing him with napkins. Realizing how it must look, he started hitting them to get them to stop. It was incredible.

  Sophie fled. I followed. After a few rounded corners, I found her in the girls’ room, perched on the windowsill, wiping her face with balled fists. I thought for a second she was laughing, but then she looked up, cheeks splotchy red and eyes streaming.

  “That was so mean,” she said, shuddering. “I can’t believe how mean I just was!”

  “You were defending me.” I eased open one of her hands and held it. “Thank you. Now you need to start doing that for yourself.”

  She squeezed, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” I leaned in, catching and holding her eye. “Think about your anger issues. Wouldn’t your mom be proud if she could see—?”

  “She would be horrified. We’re Quakers! We’re supposed to be pacifists.” She buried her face in her tucked-up knees, her symbol necklace swinging loose.

  “Wait, you’re a Quaker?” I squinted at her. “I thought you were, like, Wiccan. Or Hindu.”

  She peeked out, perplexed. “Why?”

  “Your necklace,” I admitted. “I couldn’t figure out what the symbol meant.”

  Sophie blinked down at it. “S? For Sophie?”

  “Oh.” Now that she mentioned it, the curve did form a recognizable . . . yeah, I was an idiot.

  When we left the bathroom, Principal Zimmer was shuffling uncomfortably on the other side of the hallway, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Just heard there was an altercation in the cafeteria?”

  Sophie’s head sank.

  Oh no, I realized. They’re gonna call her mom.

  I stepped in front of her. “I did it. Lost my temper. He deserved it, but . . . sorry?”

  Principal Zimmer sighed. “Come with me.”

  Behind me, Sophie’s eyes widened in shock, then relief. She mouthed “Thank you,” and added out loud, “See you later, Daisy, I’m gonna get back to my friends.” She spun back. “I mean—”

  I forced a wan smile. “It’s cool.” I know what you mean. “See you later.”

  After shame-marching through the halls to the administrative wing, passing students grinning maliciously to see me getting into trouble—their fremdschämen morphing into schadenfreude—Principal Zimmer passed me to the starchy vice principal, who at least looked sympathetic as she handed down a one-week suspension, part of the school’s “zero tolerance” policy against on-campus violence. I didn’t bother to argue.

  “Whom should I call?” the vice principal asked, lifting her phone from its cradle. “I need to notify one of your—”

  “Dad!” I blurted. “My dad.”

  I forced my mind into a happy place while she spoke to him, then she motioned to a set of chairs in the hallway where I could wait.

  The bell rang for seventh period. Raina walked past, typing on her phone. Then Jack, with Sean, who was demonstrating something with a series of elaborate hand gestures. Then Kyle. He dropped his bag, spilling books onto the carpet, and Sophie ran up to help. I lifted a hand. They didn’t see me.

  “Daisy.” My dad was standing over me, more ashen than I’d ever seen him. He looked like he needed to be quarantined, which he sort of already was. “Let’s go. Explain in the car.”

  “It was Seth Ross,” I said as soon as our seat belts were clicked.

  Dad’s mouth fell open. “The same—?”

  “Yep.”

  He glanced around wildly, his face blotching with anger under his two-day stubble. “Do I need to have words with him myself? Or with his parents?”

  I swallowed my grin. “No, Dad, I don’t think we need another assault charge tacked on, but I appreciate the gesture.”

  He settled down and started the car.

  “Could we . . . possibly . . . not tell Mom, though?”

  His grimace deepened. “This seems like her area more than mine, Daisy. I don’t see—”

  “I don’t want her to get involved,” I said. “She would, like, start a petition on school harassment and . . . can we just tell her I’m home sick? Let her off the hook this once?”

  “I see what you’re saying.” Dad glanced sidelong at me. “But she and I are partners, Daisy. I don’t like cutting her out.”

  Really? I thought. Because I can’t remember the last time the three of us were even in the same room together.

  Was that what marriage was? Meet-cute in high school, share your dreams, launch a business, start a family, drift apart until you aren’t much more than roommates? If that was the case, maybe it wasn’t so sad that I hadn’t seen Adam in five days. It wasn’t heartbreaking at all. It was fantastic.

  Watching my expression darken, Dad patted my shoulder and sighed. “All right, Daisy. Just make sure you’re convincing.”

  After I heard Mom
’s car pull out of the driveway the next morning, I uncurled myself from “stomach virus pose,” got out of bed, and stood for a few minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, debating whether to put on clothes, run a brush through my nest of hair, make some effort to feel human. But after a few bleary stares at my reflection, I opted for Plan B: wallow.

  Here it was again, that old familiar feeling. Maybe it had always been with me, lurking in the background while I pretended to be happy. Empty house. Silent. Indifferent. I had the nostalgic urge to curl up with my old Giselle Chronicles books, but that would involve climbing into the attic. So instead, safely back in bed, I stared at Zelda as she flounced onto the end of my mattress and silently delivered a smug lecture: Hope: Avoiding It at All Costs.

  “You knew this was going to happen,” the cat said, blinking slowly. “It was only a matter of time before Hannah realized you weren’t worth caring about. You’re a psycho and everyone knows it now. Everyone in the entire country—including Adam. You’re not gay. You’re not asexual. You’re not worth a designation. You’re just nothing.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek, as close to a shower as I was going to get today.

  “Stop crying,” Zelda said, burrowing into the covers with a low purr. “Nobody feels sorry for you. You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself. It’s boring.”

  My cat, cruel tormentor though she may have been, had a point. Wallowing was really freaking boring.

  So I got out of bed, pulled out my bio textbook, and started to read it, right from Lesson One: Darwin.

  Once I’d worked my way through to one chapter past where we were in class, I took a break to check my email. Nobody had written. Then, stupidly, I clicked on the tab next to email—the one that took me to my brand-new Facebook account. Lots of people had written me there! All my new “friends.” Saying what a liar I was, that they hoped I would crawl back in the troll hole I’d come from, that they wanted their donations back, that I’d set the gay rights movement back ten years, which seemed like a bit of an overstatement. But I wasn’t gay, so I didn’t get to decide that. Maybe they were right. Maybe I had just screwed up the lives of millions of people.

  I deleted the account and shut down my computer for at least the day, maybe ever, and went back to having a staring contest with the cat. The cat won.

  My mom’s voice chirped, the stairwell echoing with a name that jolted me awake like a fire alarm.

  “Hannah!”

  Hannah. Here.

  “So nice to see you again—it’s been too long. How’s the school year going?”

  I tried to scramble from bed, but Mom must have come in and tucked me in extra tight while I was unconscious, so I got tangled in the covers and nearly sent the bowl of miso soup she’d put on my nightstand sloshing to the ground. By the time I made it to the stairs, I heard Mom saying, “I’ll tell her you stopped by. I know she’d want to see you, but she’s resting.”

  “Oh.” Hannah sounded confused.

  “Besides, she’s probably contagious.”

  “Nope!” I yelled, taking the stairs two at a time. “I feel one hundred percent better! Thanks Mom, I’ll take it from here.”

  Hannah and Mom both looked fairly stunned to see me careening to the front door in banana-print pajama pants and an oversized Minnie Mouse T-shirt, but at my chipper expression, Mom retreated and Hannah’s face did something encouraging. It lifted, not quite a smile, but close.

  “I came to give you these,” she said, handing me a dauntingly thick packet of printouts from my teachers.

  “Thanks?”

  “And to see if you might be up for a sleepover this weekend?” Hannah stared at her shoes, as if frightened to see my reaction. Then her eyes darted slyly to mine. “Unless you’re too sick?”

  “No.” I backed up a step and raised my voice. “I think all that food poisoning is finally out of my system!”

  In the kitchen, I heard Mom mutter, “I knew it! That goddamn school cafeteria . . .”

  “She doesn’t know?” Hannah mouthed.

  I raised my eyebrows. Like she even needed to ask.

  Hannah laughed, but the effort seemed to drain her, her happy expression slumping into nothing.

  “It hasn’t been a week.”

  “I know.” Her eyes were back on her shoes. She shrugged. “Close enough.”

  This doesn’t feel right, I thought—then: What is the matter with you? She’s invited you over! Say yes, say yes!

  “Okay,” I said.

  “My place tomorrow night, then.” She turned away. “It’ll be fun.”

  Her voice was hushed. She was saying it to herself.

  Mama Tan greeted me with a Euro-style double-cheek kiss when she answered the door. Then she leaned in to whisper.

  “So glad things are getting back to normal.”

  “Me too,” I said, dodging her dangling headscarf and wondering why she felt the need to keep her voice low.

  Hannah stuck her head around the corner of the stairwell to wave me upstairs. As I shouldered my overnight bag, Tan winked and pointed, like we were Navy SEALs and this was our go signal.

  Then I stepped into Hannah’s room, and everything got even weirder. It was all laid out. Popcorn in a large bowl. TV paused on the first seconds of what looked like the season premiere of Triplecross. UNO cards stacked beside a Scrabble box. Hannah already dressed in neatly pressed polka dot pajamas.

  She jumped cross-legged onto the end of her bed. “I’ve got the whole season—I don’t know if you’ve kept up, but I am way behind—or we could rent a movie. Or both, like interspersed. Three episodes, movie, something like that? And I thought we’d order pizza, but I can probably coerce Mom into hitting up a kitchen for us, if you’d rather have something gourmet.”

  “Pizza’s awesome.” I pulled a container of peanut M&M’S from my overnight bag. “I brought some candy to mix—”

  “With the popcorn?” Hannah grabbed the popcorn bowl and shoved it under my face. “Already did it! Totally prepared.”

  “Um. Great!” I turned to put away the candy, trying to pinpoint the source of my uneasiness. These things—the movies, the candy, the meal, even the pajamas, were supposed to unfold naturally. You talk about food when you get hungry. Talk about a TV marathon when you get bored of talking about other things. You don’t line it up in advance.

  But that wasn’t the only thing bothering me. So far tonight, I could detect only the faintest impression of Hannah-weirdness amidst all the weird-weird vibes she was throwing my way. She wasn’t even making eye contact.

  Maybe because we’d fought. We hadn’t actually made up yet, either. We’d just stopped communicating and abruptly started again, skirting the far edges of things. I wasn’t lolling on her rug like I should have been, burying my face in a pillow, saying, Oh lordy Han, there’s this boy who wants nothing to do with me now and I really miss him and I feel like a total idiot about it. And she hadn’t mentioned her ex at all. Not one word.

  “Hey,” I said, kicking my shoes off and crawling onto the bed. “I think we should probably talk about things.”

  Hannah’s face went pale, but I pressed on, starting with the easiest apology.

  “Look, I’m sorry about QB kissing me. I know that probably came as a shock, but I swear, we weren’t dating and we still aren’t. Never will be. I mean, he’s a surprisingly nice guy, and ridiculously hot in a textbook-standard kind of way, but—pretty much a different species. It would be ludicrous for us to mate.”

  Hannah pivoted on one knee, her forehead scrunched. “It wasn’t about QB. I mean, that was a capper, but it’s not what I’m upset about.”

  I tucked my knees up and held them. “The speech.”

  She stared past me. “I never thought you would take it that far.”

  “It did get out of hand,” I admitted, and hoped she could read the furthe
r apology in my eyes. That I’d lied. That I’d implied she was my girlfriend. That her real girlfriend broke up with her right afterward. But she was still looking away, so I added, tentatively, “Natalie seemed pretty upset too. Was it because of—”

  Hannah’s eyes flash-flooded. “Let’s not talk about Natalie.”

  “Oh.”

  “Let’s not talk about any of this, okay?” She forced a smile. “Let’s just watch TV.”

  “Okay.” I smiled. “Distraction it is.”

  A half hour into the season premiere of Triplecross, I started to twitch, ready to crawl out of my skin, or at least this room. Bad enough that I was watching this asinine show, stewing at the missed opportunity to meet the cast at homecoming, but Hannah was way too into this episode, narrating the whole thing like a ten-year-old on a sugar rush.

  “What do you think of the new guy?” Hannah asked, leaning over my knee to pick an M&M out of the popcorn bowl. “I think he’s a solid runner-up for hottest.”

  I stared at her. She ignored me.

  “He’s got kind of a dirty Prince Eric thing going on,” she said. “Like, yeah, definitely a prince, but maybe the kind of prince who’s legit and lived on a boat and knows all the sailor jargon and smells kind of briny but not too briny. I’d go for that.”

  “You’d go for that?”

  Her smile drew in. She shrugged.

  “Are you bi, Hannah?” I shook my head. “I didn’t—”

  “No.” She turned to fluff a pillow. “I’m not . . .” She sighed. “I’m not bi. I’m just playing Hottest Guy on Triplecross.”

  “We can change it to hottest girl. Hottest person.”

  “Not as fun.” Her face kept falling, a melting mask, until she grabbed the remote to pause the show. “I’m gonna check on the pizza order. Shouldn’t it be here?”

  She tried to scoot past me on her way to the door. I grabbed her hand.

  “Hey. Stop.”

  She stared at me, eyes pleading.

  “Take a breath,” I ordered. “Pizza can wait. Hannah. We have to talk about what’s going on with you.”