Y in the Shadows

by Karen Rivers

  She just doesn’t care.

  I want to not care. It would be better to not care. Then I wouldn’t care about what Is is telling me right now — that Stasia finally hooked up with some jerk named Hooter at a party over the weekend. Hooter is an asshole. Rich, preppy, revolting creep. I want to find him and punch him. But instead, I laugh and say, “Lucky guy.” Is looks at me strange, but so what?

  “What?” I say. “She’s hot. He’s lucky.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “If you have a crush on my sister, she is. You have a crush on my sister, Tony?”

  “Nah,” I say. “My heart belongs to Michael.”

  “Yeah, right,” he says. “I believe that.”

  “Pipe down,” says Mr. Morgenthal. “This is quiet study time, not shoot-the-breeze time.”

  “Sorry,” Israel says. “We’re studying.”

  “Sorry,” I parrot. I make myself stare down at my stupid test. Forty-four percent. How can anyone get forty-four percent on anything? For a sickening second, my stomach drops and I can totally see clearly the future where I am my dad. Dumpy and dandruff-flaked and scurrying home to live with my mum when the going gets rough with whoever I disappoint in marriage.

  I shake it off. Tap my foot. Think about the game after school. Should be an easy one. We’ve never lost to MSS. Can’t happen. They’re all little short guys. Rich kids. Can’t buy the genes to make them six foot two though.

  I’m kind of excited. I know I’m supposed to like a challenge, blah, blah, blah, but I like to win, too. And I know we will.

  There’s something nice about that. Comfortable. Makes the game fun.

  My phone beeps, earning me another glare from Mr. M. It’s Is. It says, BURGERS DOWNTOWN AFTER GAME? I shrug. I don’t know if I feel like it. I’ll probably go. Better than being at home. Better than TV. I should go for a run, go to the gym. But so what? I can skip a day. What could happen? I’ll suddenly become out of shape overnight?

  Not possible.

  I have to remember how to relax. Since Joe died, I just can’t. It’s one thing that I’ve tried to talk about with Israel, something that I think he gets, which is why he tries to bully it out of me. It’s just that I feel like I’m not supposed to. Or I’m not allowed. It doesn’t make any sense, but what does?

  Israel says that probably Joe would have been pissed with me for using him as an excuse, and he may be right. I wish he were right.

  On one level, I think that Joe probably didn’t care that much about me, but I don’t say that. I don’t say that to Is. I don’t say that to anyone. I like the idea that he would have wanted me to keep going. I like the idea that he was that kind of person, after all.

  I can remember feeling good. It used to come easily. Now it’s like something inside me freezes sharp and hard, and I can’t do it anymore. Israel is my lifeline. He notices. He cares, even though Joe probably wouldn’t. He forces me to try.

  Which is good, but also sometimes it makes me mad. Sometimes it makes me tired.

  The weekend before school started, back in September, he totally dragged me out camping with a bunch of guys. It was mostly fun, I guess. Started off okay. We tubed on the river. It was freezing. But, yeah, I relaxed. I had a good time. For a while. Then a lot of guys drank until they puked, got stupid and loud and then passed out hard on the ground. That was too familiar. That was too much like Joe when the balance flipped for him between partying to have fun and partying as an excuse to drink and drink and drink some more.

  I guess that ended the fun for me. I drank too much and cried. Since then, I’ve felt awkward around all of them. Outside of myself. I can’t explain. I feel like I’m faking everything. Like I’m an old man who is just pretending to be a high school senior.

  Luckily, I can just tell them I’m in training. No one ever tries to make me drink or anything. I do it voluntarily if I’m going to do it at all. It’s not like on those PSAs where some kid’s friends are always trying to make him drink or smoke or do drugs. Where do they find those kids? Seems to me that people do what they want. They have respect for people who don’t. It’s not all about, “Ooh, you have to try this or we won’t like you.” That’s just bullshit. Never happens.

  This morning, when I left for school, Mum was still asleep. She’s been asleep for three days, I think. Her room is starting to smell like dirty sheets and greasy hair. She’s missing so much work. How long will they let her get away with it?

  I saw the number from The Bank on the call display about ten times. I hope she’s called them back. I hope she’s remembering to do that.

  I mean, she wakes up to eat, but then just stumbles back to bed again. I guess she’s “depressed.” I’ve seen Dr. Phil. I know what’s going on.

  I just don’t know how to fix it. Slip Prozac in her drinking water?

  She’s started smoking again. Hanging out of the bathroom window like a kid who’s about to get caught. It gets all mixed up. Who is the kid? Which one of us can get into trouble? Isn’t it supposed to be me? I don’t care if she smokes. Maybe smoking will get her back together. Give her something to do with her hands so she stops freaking out.

  Yeah, going downtown after the game would be okay. I can grab a burger, not worry about dinner. Hang with my friends. Blend in. Be normal. There. The choice is made. Now I don’t have to think about it. I can just think about the game. The win.

  The points I’ll score.

  In the end, I get ten points, which I like. A nice even number, not a great score, but whatever. The roundness of it makes me happy. And we win, obviously. It’s an easy win: fifty-three to thirty-eight.

  Of course, because I have a car, a bunch of people pile in. Matti, Israel, Aurelia. Samantha in the front. Michael sitting on someone’s lap in the back seat. She’s looking at me in the mirror. She’s smiling and stuff but I can tell it’s an effort. She tries so hard. Sometimes I just want to tell her, “Look, it’s okay. Stop trying.” It makes me nervous. I kind of smile at her. I almost feel sorry for her. What does she want with me, anyway?

  She’s so focused on me, it makes her seem fierce, hungry.

  I try to channel with my eyes, relax, relax, relax. It starts to rain a bit, windows are fogging up. People are horsing around. I can’t see.

  “Hey, T,” says Matti. “Who’ve you been driving around in here?” He’s holding something in his hand. What is it? Some kind of necklace? It’s glass. It looks familiar, but I can’t quite place it. I shrug.

  “All you losers are always getting into my car because you can’t drive,” I point out. Getting my licence before everyone else has sort of turned me into the driver for everything. I don’t care, I’m just saying. The necklace could be anyone’s.

  “Probably Stasia’s,” says Michael. She reaches for it. She’s laughing, but not laughing. She sounds bitchy, to tell you the truth. The way she says “Stasia.” Like she’s spitting, like a cat. How does she know about Stasia? I can tell that I’m blushing like an idiot.

  “Stasia’s never been in my car,” I say. Israel snorts with laughter. Of course, it’s a total lie, and I’m not even sure why I said it. To make her feel better, I guess. Not that I have to do that. Of course, I’ve given Stasia a million rides. It’s like she was saying, “You like Stasia better,” and I was saying, “No, it’s you. okay? It doesn’t matter, I guess it’s you.”

  “Wait,” Aurelia says, grabbing it. “I’ve seen this before.” She is swinging the necklace around. “I know whose this is.” She gives me a look in the mirror. A hard look. “Huh,” she says. “Surprise, surprise.”

  I still don’t get it. “Whose is it?” I say impatiently. “What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s Yale’s,” she says.

  “Oh, The Bleeder,” says Matti. “You been driving around with The Bleeder?”

  “Don’t call her that,” I say, although I don’t know why I feel like I have to defend her. “I’ve never driven her anywhere.” This is true. I haven’t. I feel confused.

  Yale?


  I feel something in my throat, like a spidery sensation. Like knowing something’s wrong.

  But that’s just stupid. I mean, I don’t even know the girl. I reach around and grab the necklace at the next stop light. Stuff it in my pocket. Sam and Aurelia are making some graphic and gross jokes. “What’s white and red and spins around bars?” says one.

  “Yale,” says the other, laughing hard.

  Michael doesn’t laugh. She looks me in the eye. I like that she doesn’t laugh. I don’t know why I care, but I do. “I can give it to her,” she says. “I’ll return it.”

  She’s got nice lips. Pearly. Smooth. Do girls condition their lips? Something about her lips seems extra smooth. They’re probably soft. For a second, I’m lost in that thought. Like, really lost. I want to kiss her. I want to ...

  “Kotex,” screams Samantha.

  “Just shut the fuck up,” I say. And because I never talk like that, they all do. It starts to rain harder, which seems all the more strange because the sky is mostly blue. Somewhere there must be a rainbow, a bright one. But the rain is pouring off the glass so hard that I can hardly see at all any more. Like I’m driving blind.

  ****

  Michael

  Chapter 6

  The fact that, after all this time, Tony made a move on her has Michael feeling both on top of the world and incredibly confused. Tony was her unattainable thing. Unattainable, as in safe. Unattainable, as in “not someone whose tongue will be lodged in my mouth at any time soon.” Kissing scares her in a way that she’d love to admit to someone, anyone, if only anyone she knew was the kind of person she could actually confide in. She can’t confide in any of The Girls. If they knew (if they ever thought about it, that is) how inexperienced she was compared to them (Aurelia has already had sex with four different people and the others regularly get drunk on the weekend and hook up with whoever at parties), they’d laugh at her. She’d lose all her power, if it is actually power that she has over them. Scarier still, she might lose their friendship, and then she’d be alone in the great sea of students, just another pretty face, and she wouldn’t know how to be that person.

  If Granny Aggie were still alive, she’d talk to her about it. About how her stomach clenched at the moment of lip contact (not in a good way, more in a please-go-away way) and everything inside her pulled back. Repulsed. Like he was somehow violating her in a way that was uninvited. But it was just a kiss. What is wrong with her?

  The really painful part is that she had fantasized about that moment for so long, in so many different ways. She’d imagined that kissing him would be great. Magical. Transformative.

  But it wasn’t. Not even close.

  For some reason, it also makes her not like him. It makes her mad at him, like it was his fault that one kiss didn’t turn her instantly into a writhing, sensual heap, instead making her feel frozen inside. Locked up. Not how she wanted to feel.

  How she deserved to feel.

  He tasted like burger. Onions. But still... it was Tony. Her Tony. This beautiful boy who she’d plotted to be with for so long and now she can’t remember why. She has to rewind and remember, figure it out. Remind herself that this is what she wanted. What everyone expected because that is what she had set up to have happen, what she had planned and schemed and hoped for and imagined. It was her dream.

  Maybe she had just been distracted by the taste — the horrible taste. Maybe that was all it was. She would never in a million, billion years allow herself to eat food like that. Greasy. Fattening. Skin destroying. Revolting.

  Not that making out with someone who ate that stuff was the same as eating it. Obviously.

  The kiss also made her hyper-aware of the fact that her eye teeth were quite sharp, almost vampire-like, and when he thrust his tongue around in there she was almost afraid he’d get hurt. She also wondered about her own breath, probably terrible. She was instantly self-conscious, her insides curling like a salted slug from the horror of it. Bad breath from not eating being as bad (if not worse) than bad breath from eating gross things.

  It didn’t make sense, but even though she didn’t enjoy it at all, not any of it, she wanted him to be enjoying it. She wanted him to want more, to love it. To love her.

  And also to never touch her again.

  She’d had plans, that was the hard part. He was going to be The One. Her first. She’d planned it for so long she didn’t know how to re-imagine the plan. But if the kiss was so... bad. The real thing wouldn’t be good either.

  Maybe there was something wrong with her?

  She could follow through, anyway. It wasn’t just about kissing. It was about being with him. Being Tony’s girl. Being safe in that. Because he’s Tony, he’s so nice. And gorgeous. And everything, obviously, that she’s ever wanted.

  But, still, there was that feeling. That bad feeling. That feeling of being humiliated. But why? Tony would never humiliate her. That was part of why she’d picked him to begin with: his inherent kindness. The way his eyes smiled when his lips did. The way he never looked away from her face when she spoke. The way she knew he’d never brag or talk about her or any of that.

  Afterward, Israel sneaking him a high five like she wouldn’t notice. Israel, the opposite of Tony, full of locker-room gossip. Like a girl, but trashier. Meaner. All hard edges and brash cruelty, much like Aurelia, come to think of it. A male version.

  Tony awkwardly getting out of the car to hug her when he dropped her off. She could tell he wanted to kiss her again, but she’d turned her head to the side, buried her nose in his shoulder instead. Smelling the reassuring smell of him. Avoiding the wet lips, the slippery tongue, the too-much saliva.

  Aurelia frantically making the “Call me!” sign. Sam glowering, but Sam had a crush on him, too. She should have known that. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? She made a half-smile at Sam, raised her hand to Aurelia, let go of Tony.

  She wanted to redo it. Start from the top. Chew some mint gum, maybe that was all the problem was. Give him gum before he swooped in with his lips like a bird of prey lunging at a mouse.

  It was all mixed up somehow with Yale’s necklace. She said she’d give it back to her and he’d handed it over, relief in his eyes (was he scared of Yale himself?) as though obviously Michael would see Yale before he’d see her. Yet he must have known they weren’t friends, that Yale wasn’t a girl who had friends, or maybe he’s just a boy and unobservant and oblivious like they all are.

  She’ll give it back, of course. Michael looks up as Tony’s car finally pulls away, disappears down the street. She holds the necklace up in front of the porch light, which is always on because no one can figure out how to switch off the sensor. The pendant is big, glass, pretty, strange. Full of greens and blues, sort of like the whole world encased in glass. Like a marble. Sully would love it. If she showed it to him, he’d hold it tight and never let it go, so she can’t do that. Can’t even let him sneak a peek. Maybe she should just give it to him, pretend she doesn’t know about it, but no. It’s Yale’s. She’ll give it back. She holds it against her cheek; it’s cool. It’s not something she would ever wear herself. Too hippie. Too alternative. Too out-of-the-ordinary. Too too.

  But somehow mesmerizing.

  Hard to look away from. The glass has more and more colours the more you look at it. Little patterns that you don’t see at first. It almost looks alive, like inside it is moving.

  Frankly, she’s a little surprised that Yale would wear it. But what does she know about Yale? She never really pays much attention to what Yale is wearing. She really only worries about her own clothes, her own look. Always perfect. Always chosen so carefully, everything matched to look both unmatched and yet right, like it’s her job or something. She barely sees other peoples’ outfits unless they are wearing something incredibly great or something incredibly awful. When she thinks about it, she can’t picture Yale in anything except jeans and T-shirts (and gym clothes, of course). And the necklace that she never would have re
membered in describing Yale, but now that it’s in her hands, she realizes she has never really seen Yale without it.

  They’ve been on the same teams and at the same schools forever, but no one even knows Yale, she thinks. Come to think of it, Yale has always been alone. Never with a friend or attached to a group or anything. Almost like she did it on purpose, acted all mysterious and secretive to keep people away. Better than everyone else. Not willing to do the things everyone else did to fit in, like make herself look her best. Make her smile whiter, her hair straighter, her skin look clearer. Like she was above all that.

  Or maybe Yale is more like every monster in every movie ever made. Weird-looking and off-putting in some mysterious and yet not totally heinous way. But maybe, under it all, a heart of gold.

  Much like Michael herself is misunderstood. Assumed to be one way, because of the way she looks. Not feeling the way she should feel.

  Not feeling anything really at all.

  Maybe Yale would get that. Probably she would. Strangely enough, Michael feels an overwhelming pull to go inside and call her up. Act like they are friends. Confide in her in a way that she’d never confide in, say, Madison, with her fake accent and her constant name-dropping and celebrity obsessions. Confide in her like a real friend. Like a real person, not just a person who seems like they’re always acting, like Sam. Aurelia. Like Michael herself, really, if she thinks about it.

  She stands outside. Unmoving. Under the sign that’s swinging in the warm spring breeze. Now that the rain has stopped, the air smells delicious: almost like summer, like wet grass and rising warmth and earth. She breathes so deeply she almost falls over, knocks her head on the sign. The sign that says ANIMAL TAXIDERMY. A picture of a fox, staring, beside the printed phone number. The fox is ugly. As far as she can remember, her parents have never actually done a fox. Lots of family dogs. She shudders. She will never, ever own a dog. Nothing furry. Nothing not furry either, come to think of it. Reptiles are as bad, if not worse.