A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

  “Or maybe they’re just dicks.”

  I watch the steady clip-swipe of the windshield wipers. They can’t move fast enough to keep up with the rain.

  “Charlie…are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Happy?”

  He looks stunned for a minute, like I’ve voiced the most personal question he’s ever been asked. It’s raining so hard I can barely hear him when he answers, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We slowly wind through wet gray streets. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. What do you care?”

  “I do care. I want you to be happy.”

  His expression flickers between anger and something that looks like shame.

  By the time he pulls up to my house, it’s pouring even harder. I have my fingers on the handle when he speaks.

  “If you ever need a ride…” He’s looking down at the steering wheel, his fingers slowly tightening and loosening around it.

  “Thank you, Charlie.” Then I open the door and run through the rain.

  AFTER SCHOOL I jog to catch Adam just as everyone is piling into his car. Charlie is in the back, so I guess he isn’t angry with Adam anymore.

  “Hi, Julian,” Jesse says, and at the same time Adam asks, “You don’t have rehearsal today?”

  “Um…no.”

  “Really? The play’s in like two days.” He keeps looking at me as if he suspects I’m lying and is considering kicking me out of his car.

  “I kept messing up,” I finally admit, too embarrassed to look at anyone. “Miss Cross had to give the part to someone else.”

  “You should’ve told me.” He puts the car into drive. “I would have practiced with you.”

  I glance up to find Emerald watching me, her eyes full of sympathy, and I have to look down again.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Charlie says. “Did you even really want to be in the play?”

  “No.” But I did, mostly because Adam seemed to think it was so amazing that I was cast in the first place. “I guess not.”

  After Adam drops everyone else off, he drives to his house instead of mine. Once we’re inside, he heads straight to the giant computer on the desk in the living room. “I’m pulling up the script,” he says as he sits down. “Let’s go over your lines.”

  Even if it weren’t too late, I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself by trying to read in front of him. I’m not a second grader any-more. “No.”

  For a moment he looks surprised by my refusal, then he pushes out the chair next to him. “Julian…” For Adam, it’s an incredibly firm tone. “Come on.”

  My feet begin moving all on their own until I’m sitting at the desk. Frustrated, I drop my head onto my outstretched arms.

  “These lines are kind of hard,” he says after a minute. “Sit up. All I want you to do is read them, all right?”

  “I can’t.”

  He tugs the back of my collar just hard enough to make me look at the screen. “Try.”

  So I try, and I actually do okay until I get to line three. “Sp-spruns evnee—see? I told you I can’t!” I drop my head back down.

  “You can. You were doing fine. Sit up.”

  I do what he says.

  “Read this word again.” He brackets it between two index fingers so it’s all I can see.

  “Sp-spruns.”

  “Spurns,” he corrects.

  “Spurns.”

  “And the next word?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He brackets it just like he did before.

  “En-enviously?”

  “Right. Now start that line from the beginning.”

  “Spurns enviously at s-straws; sp-speaks things in doubt.” I glance at Adam. He nods, so I keep reading.

  “See?” He smiles. “You know it. It was one word tripping you up. Now do it again.”

  Instead of going to lunch, I head to the English Hall. Ms. Cross is eating a sandwich with one hand and typing with the other. I knock on the doorframe.

  “Adam!” She smiles, and it totally transforms her face. “How’s my all-time favorite student?”

  “You say that to everyone, don’t you?”

  “No, I do not,” she says seriously.

  I pull a chair up in front of her desk and take a seat. “Since I’m your all-time favorite student, I was wondering…” Her eyes narrow in exaggerated suspicion. “…if I could talk to you about Julian Harlow.”

  “I can’t believe this.” She sets her sandwich down firmly on a napkin.

  “What?”

  “Is this about him being reinstated as the Gentleman?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You are the third person to speak to me about this today.”

  “Seriously? Who else?”

  “Emerald, and another boy who has asked to remain anonymous.”

  “Oh, come on. Tell me.”

  “Charlie Taylor.”

  “Charlie?” I laugh.

  “I’ll tell you what I told them. Julian is a very sweet boy. I gave him the part to begin with because I…My point is, it’s just too difficult for him.”

  “It’s not.”

  “We’ve been at this for nearly a month and he still—”

  “He just gets stressed, but he memorized it completely last night.” I can tell she’s considering this, so I press on. “Please? He was really disappointed. Can you just give him a chance to show you he can do it?”

  “Oh, all right! All right! But honestly, Adam, if he can’t do it, he can’t do it. I don’t want him getting up on that stage and embarrassing himself if he can’t.”

  “He can.”

  I take a seat on an overturned crate in the hallway that runs alongside the auditorium. The corridor has been blocked off with a few partitions and is serving as a dressing room since we can’t all fit backstage. At least fifty yelling kids are getting dressed and putting on makeup around me.

  Yesterday Miss Cross told me she’d thought it over, and she was willing to give me another chance. And I could actually say my lines! I was so…relieved, but now that the play is about to begin, I’m just nervous. I can hear families crowding into the lobby outside the theater, and every minute or so, a boy or girl appears to deliver carnations to a different actor. Parents can buy them for two dollars and have them sent backstage before the show.

  Suddenly, a panicked voice shouts loudly enough to be heard over all the chaos, “Why are the seniors here?”

  “What?” someone else yells.

  “Seniors! A big group of them.” A crowd of ninth graders run to the partition and peek around it.

  “Oh shit,” one boy moans. “They’re gonna do something to us. I know it!”

  “Oh god, it’s them.” Kristin sounds horrified. “Why are they here?”

  Curious, I get up and peer though their necks, but it’s too congested for me to see anything. Then I hear my name. The kids part just enough for me to see Adam grinning and waving me toward him. Everyone in the entire hallway stares at me. I pretend not to notice as I ease through the crowd of ninth graders into the even bigger crowd of families.

  Adam and Emerald are smiling and holding hands. Beside them are Charlie, Allison, Camila, Matt, Jesse, and a lot of Adam’s other friends.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  Adam gives me a look, a cross between amused and exasperated. Charlie is wearing a harsher version of the same face. “Why do you think?” Adam says.

  “I don’t know. You said the plays are horrible. You said students never come.”

  “We’re here to see you, stupid,” Charlie says, but he’s actually smiling.

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you need to put your costume on?” Adam asks.

  “Yes.”

  Charlie points back toward the dressing area. “Go!”

  “Okay. Bye!” I wave, then weave back through the swell of people. The sick nervous feeling I had just a mi
nute ago has disappeared. Instead I feel something warm spread through my body. People I love will be watching me. Their eyes like safety nets, I can’t fall.

  The play is as awful as they ever were, so about five minutes in, I’m fidgeting.

  Charlie stomps on my foot.

  “Asshole.” I wince, but this just seems to make him happy. Five seconds later, I’m squirming again, not intentionally trying to piss him off, but it’s a nice side effect.

  As each terribly executed scene drags on, I get a little more agitated. I can’t stop thinking about what Ms. Cross said, how she didn’t want Julian to publicly humiliate himself. Maybe I made a mistake in pushing him. If it doesn’t go well, who the hell knows what’ll happen?

  Then finally, in act IV, Julian steps out onto the stage. He’s wearing a puffy velvet jacket, little pants that end at his knees, and god-awful purple tights. Charlie laughs, and it’s my turn to stomp on his foot.

  I hold Emerald’s hand as Julian says his first line. Easy part down.

  Hamlet’s mother responds, then I squeeze Emerald’s hand harder, reciting his lines in my head as if I can send them to him telepathically. Julian answers, maybe not with the best projection, but all his words are correct and clear.

  As he’s exiting stage left, I break into noisy applause, totally inappropriate for the somber scene. Emerald looks at me with a startled laugh, then she claps too, and soon Charlie, Camila, and every other senior we dragged along stands and cheers.

  JULIAN AND I are on our convoluted walk to Dr. Whitlock’s when he says, “Do you want to know where I eat lunch?”

  I glance over at him, surprised. “Sure.”

  “I can show you, but…”

  “What?”

  “It would have to be a secret.”

  “Okay, now I’m really curious.”

  “You couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t.” He still looks uncertain, so I repeat, “I won’t.”

  “Okay.” He smiles suddenly. “Follow me.”

  We head into the auditorium, and I follow as he flies up a ladder backstage into the prop attic over the theater. He heads behind an old bureau, and slides back two loose boards like a magician.

  I bend, peering into the dark. “There’s another room!” I say, amazed. But I don’t see how you could get there without risking a deadly fall. There are too many missing floorboards above thirty feet of darkness.

  Julian squeezes into the narrow space and steps onto a plank. When he gets to the end and bends his knees like he’s going to jump off a diving board, I say, “Julian, wait!” But he’s already leaping through the air.

  He lands in the other room, then turns around, looking a little worried now. “Maybe you shouldn’t,” he says. “You’d have to jump and…”

  “And what?”

  “You fall down a lot. Even…even during normal walking.”

  If anyone else said that, I’d think they were being a smart-ass. Coming from Julian, it’s totally sincere concern. I gauge the distance, and really it’s only a couple feet.

  “I think I’ve got this.”

  He doesn’t look convinced, but he steps back enough to let me jump through the narrow passageway. When I make it, Julian’s wearing this hopeful smile, so I say, “This is cool.” But it’s not cool. It’s practically a closet, one that was burned and rebuilt but still smells like it’s rotting. “You eat lunch here every day?”

  He nods.

  That’s even more depressing than this room. We’ve been up here for less than two minutes, but already I’m feeling bored and caged. I pace the floors, look out the little window, then pace some more and end up stubbing my foot on something—a stack of composition notebooks stuffed into the corner.

  “What’s this?” I say, crouching down to pick one up.

  “Oh…nothing…well, just…”

  I open it and find Julian’s hieroglyphic-style handwriting, but it’s neater than it used to be and not that hard to read if you try.

  Walking toward the little round window, I start to read. Then, even though this room’s too dim and way too cramped, I find myself sitting on the floor and turning page after page.

  When I glance up, Julian’s watching me, chewing on his thumb.

  “How do you do it?” I ask.

  He gives me a worried look. “Do what?”

  “Write stuff like this. How do you think of it?” Reading his story—it’s like how I used to feel when I read Elian Mariner books. How much I loved them, and how it felt to suddenly find myself in another world. Julian’s looking even more worried, so I realize I need to clarify. “It’s good, Julian. Really, really good.”

  For a minute his face freezes completely, and then he smiles a wide smile.

  I stand and hand the notebook to him.

  The bell rings, a much more distant sound than usual. “Are you hungry?” I ask, struck again with the image of Julian having lunch up here in the shadows.

  “Yes.”

  “You should eat in the cafeteria. I mean, why eat alone when you have friends?”

  I feel the curious eyes of my classmates as I enter the cafeteria for the first time.

  The giant room is full of people and Adam is walking so quickly, I’m afraid I might lose him in the crowd. I jog to keep up.

  When we get to his table, it’s awkward trying to find a seat where there isn’t really room, and right away he starts talking with Emerald, so I’m not talking to anyone.

  Then Jesse asks me if I want to listen to his iPod. Without waiting for an answer, he pushes his headphones against my ear.

  “It’s nice,” I say.

  While we’re talking about our favorite music, Adam tells me to drink half his green juice. Camila tells him to leave me alone, but I drink it anyway, then Adam says something funny and I laugh along with everyone else, and it feels just like dancing at Emerald’s party—the same electric connection.

  That feeling follows me all day, and I imagine I can see it the way you can see the golden glow that surrounds angels in paintings. It’s still there when I enter the house after school, a safety net, a trail of gold, happiness.

  It takes a moment to register him. Russell. Standing in the corner of the kitchen, dark as a shadow and statue-still except for the insect pulse in his throat.

  “IT LOOKS LIKE the bus got you here early today,” Russell says.

  “Yes.”

  He stares at me like if he looks hard enough he can see the truth written there. “What are you wearing?”

  “What?”

  “What part of that question was confusing to you?”

  “Nothing, I just…it’s just a shirt.”

  “I know it’s a shirt.” He smiles. “Where did it come from?”

  “A friend from school.”

  “A friend?” A small, disbelieving laugh. “And by friend, you mean Adam?”

  “…Yes.”

  “So first he’s coming into my house, and now he’s dressing you in his clothes?”

  “He hasn’t been coming to the house.”

  “He’s never been in this house?”

  “I just meant he only came inside that one time. He hasn’t come back.”

  “Why would this boy give you clothes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are you giving him?”

  “I haven’t given him anything.”

  There’s a frightening blip in the vein in Russell’s neck, like on the night he broke the shell. “That’s a lie.”

  I take a step back.

  “What are you doing for him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what you’ve been doing?”

  “I mean I haven’t been doing anything.”

  “You must be doing something. People don’t just give you things for no reason.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I don’t know the answer.”

  “Were you complaining
, lying about me?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “I think he just thought my clothes were too small.”

  “So you were complaining.”

  I shake my head.

  “You must have been. Do you think I believe for one second that just out of nowhere this boy took special notice of you and your clothes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Julian…” My name is a sneer. “Why would he notice your clothes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are you not telling me?”

  “He was just being nice. He’s my friend.”

  “I’ve known you for your entire life.” His mouth twists to the side in an almost smile. “You don’t have friends.”

  Tears spring to my eyes, but I don’t feel sad. I feel—

  “Why is he giving you clothes?”

  —angry. “He thought I needed them.”

  “Why?”

  Fury curls in my stomach. “Because mine don’t fit.”

  “And how would he know that?”

  My hands curl into fists. “Because he can see!”

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Russell look shocked before. But he is, mouth slack and eyes wide—shocked. For a minute neither one of us speaks.

  Then his face unfreezes and turns red. “Go get it.”

  “W-what?”

  “Don’t ask me what again. Go get it.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!”

  “That boy Adam, he’s been planting things in your head! You never used to talk to me this way.” Russell strides to the cabinet, yanks open the bottom drawer, and grabs the switch. “Take off your shirt.”

  Behind my eyes, I see the fury on Adam’s face the night Russell hit me with the shell. My heart’s a fist, opening and closing and growing with every beat. “I did nothing wrong!”

  The switch blurs. Red slashes of pain. Pain that isn’t right or mine to take. I fall, kneeling inside Adam’s anger.

  When I wake, I’m stiff and sore. I glance at the dresser, but there’s no money and no shell. Whatever courage I felt last night is gone. All that remains is regret. I have a long walk to school, so I need to get ready.

  Every movement is slow. Every movement hurts.