Read Between the Lines

by Jo Knowles

  “I don’t know,” the nurse says in a syrupy-sweet voice.

  My father grimaces at the sound. I know what he’s thinking: Queer.

  He’s called me that enough times.

  “We’ll try to be as quick as we can,” the nurse adds. He turns to me. “Let’s go take a look and see what we’re dealing with.”

  Before I follow him out, I watch my dad rush toward the exit. There’s something about the way he hurries out that is different from the way he normally moves. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was terrified.

  Maybe it really wasn’t the need for a nic fix causing his hands to shake.

  Maybe he just can’t bear to be in this place again.

  I walk behind the nurse through a maze of halls until we get to a tiny curtained space with a bed next to a bunch of machinery.

  “I’m just going to take your blood pressure and all that boring stuff. Then we’ll get you X-rayed.”

  I nod. He punches some keys on a tiny laptop.

  “So, how’d this happen?” he asks.

  “In gym. I’m crap at basketball.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, me too.”

  When he finishes with the basics, he makes me get in a wheelchair and pushes me down a whole new set of mazes until we get to the X-ray area.

  “You might have to wait awhile, but I’ll be back when you’re done. Want a magazine or something?”

  “No worries,” I say.

  He leaves me alone in the hall. There’s an empty stretcher and a line of wheelchairs against one wall. I imagine all the different patients who’ve sat in those chairs. The kids with the broken legs, arms, and fingers. I imagine most of them would have a parent by their side, not left all alone like me. I picture my father back in his truck, cursing me. Checking his watch every two minutes, getting all amped up about how much work he’s missing. Chain-smoking like a fiend. I’m sure it’ll be a pleasant drive home.

  Finally, the lab-tech person comes out and looks at the chart attached to my wheelchair.

  “Nathan?” she asks, then checks my wristband. She is almost as hot as the nurse from my fantasy.

  “That’s me,” I say.

  “C’mon. We’ll see if that’s broken. Wanna make any bets?”

  “How about wishes?”

  “Depends on your wish,” she says. “You don’t really want it to be broken, do you?” She has a dimple in her right cheek. Not on her left. I think I’m in love with it.

  “Well,” she continues, “even if it is, there’s not much they can do for you. Give you a splint and strict orders not to bang it again, at least till it heals.”

  I nod and follow her into the room. She puts a heavy apron around me. “No chance you’re pregnant, right?” she jokes.

  “No chance in hell,” I say.

  “TMI, my young friend,” she says, tightening the apron around me.

  We laugh. I wonder how old she is. She looks in her early twenties. She smells good. Like lilacs, actually. This seems very implausible, I know. Maybe my brain is just telling me that’s what she smells like. Either way, I take it as a good sign.

  I think about my mom again. Not because of the hot lab tech (that would be gross), but because of the smell of lilacs. Obviously. I think about the very few memories I have of her. How she used to make me hold her hand whenever we went for a walk. And how she ruffled my hair and said I belonged to the Clean Plate Club any time I ate everything on my plate. The memories are still so vivid. But I wonder how long they’ll stay that way. I was only eight when she left.

  When she died.

  The lab tech adjusts my arm under the camera and says, “Don’t move.” I nod and realize that counts. “Not so fast, are you?” she says, smiling. She wags her finger at me in a joking sort of way. In a mom-ish sort of way. I breathe in her perfume one more time before she leaves me and goes inside the booth to click the scan machine. I hope she doesn’t notice and think I’m a perv.

  From the booth, she speaks through a mic and reminds me to be still while she takes the X-rays. Then she comes out and adjusts my arm again.

  When we’re finally done, she brings me the wheelchair, and the nurse comes back and wheels me to the curtained room again to wait for a doctor. After what seems like hours, a doctor finally comes in, followed by my father and a strong draft of cigarette smell. I automatically sit up straighter on the uncomfortable folding bed the nurse left me on.

  “It’s definitely broken,” the doctor says. “But the good news is, the break’s nice and clean. I’ll have Christian fix you up, and you’ll be good to go. You’ll have to wear a splint for a few weeks and then come back for another X-ray to make sure everything’s healing properly. But no more basketball for you for a while, I’m afraid.”

  “No problem,” I say. “I suck anyway.”

  My dad grunts, and I regret saying it. Christian laughs. “There’s more to life than being a good ball player,” he says.

  Tell that to my dad, I think.

  But then I realize he just did.

  We don’t talk on the drive home. I stare out the window and hold my newly wrapped hand against my chest. Every so often, my father sighs his sigh, and I’m sure he’s having thoughts of disappointment. I’m sure he always dreamed he’d have the kind of son who was the school football star. The guy who gave swirlies to guys like me. The guy with the hot girl under his arm. The guy with muscles and nice teeth. The guy everyone loved and wanted to be.

  Instead he got me.

  I’ve never liked sports, even before he made me believe I sucked at them. I’ve always been afraid of balls, especially when someone is throwing one at my face. It was obvious by the time I lost a few baby teeth that I needed some serious orthodontic attention, but my father wasn’t about to pay for that. And now, at fourteen, I weigh one hundred sixteen pounds. My portrait is basically the anti-boy of the one my father imagined being enshrined on our wall, which, instead, is bare and trophy-less.

  There are so many reasons to resent me. Sometimes I wonder if he would have preferred that the accident happened on the way home, when I was in the car, too. Sometimes I wonder if he secretly wishes it had been me who died.

  As we drive, it dawns on me that we are not actually driving in the direction that will bring us home. He’s taking me back to school. With a broken finger. Typical. I don’t say anything because I know the response. “Suck it up. Be a man.”

  My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten anything yet today. I never eat breakfast on gym days for fear of puking from overexertion. We “wasted” several hours at the hospital, and now I missed lunch period. What’s the point of going back when school’s practically over? Even so, in five minutes, we’re driving into the school parking lot and up to the drop-off lane in front of the school.

  My father doesn’t ask how I’m feeling. He doesn’t even say, Have a nice day. Or, See you at home. I’ll get your favorite takeout! I don’t think he would even know what that is.

  Instead, he waits quietly for me to get out, his cigarette dangling a long gray tip of ash that is about to fall onto the floor of the truck. I watch it, waiting. But he doesn’t notice. He just stares out the window.

  “What is it, Dad?” I ask.

  He keeps staring.

  “Dad,” I say again.

  He slowly turns his head to me, as if waking from a sad dream. The ash starts to bend. It’s hanging on by some miracle now.

  “Your cigarette,” I say, nodding my head toward it.

  He presses it into the ashtray.

  I wait, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  He glances at my hand. My finger. Pointing at him. Flipping him off in the most pathetic way possible.

  He nods.

  I study his face in this rare moment where we acknowledge each other’s presence. The crease between his eyes is deep and seems to get deeper before my eyes.

  I wonder, with a horrible pang of regret, if it isn’t an anger line after
all. What if it’s a sad line, made by grief?

  “Go on,” he says to me, not as harsh as usual. Or, maybe, for the first time, I’m just reinterpreting the tone.

  Maybe I’ve been misinterpreting it all along.

  I lower my finger so it’s not pointing at him.

  I want to say something. Ask him something. But what?

  “Get going,” he finally tells me. His old gruff self is back.

  I get out of the truck and listen to the sound of the tires on the pavement as he drives away from me. I don’t turn around. I don’t think, as I so often do when he leaves me anywhere: I hate you.

  I just think: Good-bye.

  I walk slowly to the school entrance and pause. Contemplate turning around and walking someplace else. Maybe the park. Maybe the mall. Maybe anywhere. Else.

  But of course I go in. My dad’s no dummy. I am a wimp. But for some reason, I don’t care what he thinks anymore. For some reason, I get now that all my life, he’s needed me to be the weak one. The one he can blame. I can accept that, from him. But not from anyone else. Not anymore.

  In the office, the school secretary takes one look at me and my hand and cringes. “What happened, dear?”

  I didn’t know people still used the word dear. It makes me want to cry. Sometimes, when someone is nice to you for no reason but when you need it most, that happens. It’s rare for me, but today seems to be one of those days. I blink my eyes. You really are a wimp, I think. But then I stop myself. Who cares? So I’m a wimp. There are worse things.

  “Broken,” I tell her.

  “Shouldn’t you be home resting?”

  I shrug.

  “Well, let me write you a pass, and you can go on to class. Unless you want to spend the rest of the day in the nurse’s office? That’s what I would do,” she adds quietly.

  “It’s OK,” I say. Her smile gives me an uncomfortable lump in my throat. I’m not used to this much niceness in one day.

  She hands me the pass.

  “Thanks,” I mutter through the lump.

  I purposefully tilt my finger so its pointing sideways and clearly not giving any unintended messages to her. I contemplate stopping by the nurse’s office to let her know she was right about the break, but I’m not sure I can handle anyone else being nice. I swallow down the lump, get ahold of myself, and head to class.

  Sixth period means Creative Writing with Ms. Lindsay. She is by far the hottest teacher in the school. But she is also, for reasons I don’t understand, one of the biggest targets for torture. Usually that level of treatment is reserved for the subs, but Ms. Lindsay gets the sub treatment every day. Maybe it’s because she’s sort of a sub, having replaced a teacher who died last year. Not only that, but he committed suicide. People always feel guilty about suicides, even though they have nothing to do with them. I guess they think being mean to Ms. Lindsay is a sign of loyalty? I don’t know. I don’t understand most of the assholes in this school.

  I open the door to the room and flash my pass at Ms. Lindsay, then raise my injured hand to explain my absence. I’m careful, again, not to point my finger upward. She nods and I take my usual seat in the back. All heads swivel to check me out. There’s snickering, until I aim my injury toward the sound.

  Keith gives me a You OK? look, and I nod just enough to give him my Yeah look.

  Yeah, I’m OK.

  Then there’s real laughter.

  I brace myself for insults, but they don’t come.

  The funny thing is, for the first time, the laughter is for me, not at me. It has the tone of admiration more than anything else.

  Cal Hogan in the next seat leans toward me.

  “How’s it feel to be able to give the finger to anyone you want and get away with it?” he whispers.

  I grin as the question sinks in.

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  I’m surprised by how coy and confident I sound. I sit up straighter.

  I imagine myself as someone other than the school punching bag. The wimp no one cares about. The Kcoj. Instead, I picture myself as the football jock of my father’s dreams. The one everyone admires. This must be what it would feel like to be that guy. With everyone wishing they could be you for a day.

  Ms. Lindsay catches my eye. She’s standing nervously in front of the room, trying to get everyone’s attention. She appears to be on the verge of saying something important. She seems a little scared. She looks like how I feel most days. Until now. Maybe it’s time for both of us to change our ways.

  Her eyes dart around the room, as if she’s trying desperately to connect to someone, anyone, who will listen.

  I decide to be that person.

  Like her, I look around the room. I pause at each student and search the file in my brain for the mean comment, push, or kick each one has given me over the years. The ones who laughed at me, looked at me like I was a speck, called me a loser. Made me feel like one. I look at them now, as they look back at me in this new way. Like they are measuring this me against the one they vaguely remember. I was always so forgettable — just something to give a shove as they passed by.

  I smile confidently and I flip them all off.

  For me, and for Ms. Lindsay too.

  Up in front of the room, her eyes finally settle on mine. I watch as they move to my hand and settle on my finger.

  “Finger Boy!” someone whispers loudly.

  I watch the realization come over Ms. Lindsay’s face.

  I smile at her.

  She smiles at me.

  And then I burst out laughing.

  LIAR.

  That’s what I see in the reflection of the huge glass doors at the front of the school. We stand there, not moving. Me and my reflection. Hating each other.

  I clutch the likely germ-infested handle but can’t seem to push it. Reflection me is trapping real me. Pushing in while I push out. We are at a standstill. Not coming or going. I would probably still be trapped here if not for the man who appears on the other side of the door and pulls it open, ripping mirror me out of my grasp. I step aside. He doesn’t acknowledge me. He looks angry and impatient. A trail of cigarette smoke swirls around me in his wake, forcing me out into the fresh air. The door slowly swings closed behind me.

  Now what?

  Home. I’m supposed to go home because I have cramps.

  Only I don’t. That was a lie.

  I’m fine. At least, in that department.

  So . . . what now? What should this liar do?

  I’ve never been good at being bad.

  I usually blush when I lie. I fidget. I fumble. And then I usually come clean.

  But that’s because the only people I’ve ever really lied to are my parents. Tiny lies. Like about whether or not I have homework. Or who will be in the car when I ask if I can go to a movie with Grace and the girls. But I always end up feeling guilty and confessing, and then my parents tell me they appreciate my honesty and forgive me.

  But today I lied to one of the nicest ladies I know.

  I blame the girls.

  This morning, at our usual meet-up spot before classes, they were all there before me: Grace, Sammy, and Lacy. They were in the huddle. Usually when they see me, they open up and let me in. They give me a hug and tell me they love whatever I’m wearing, even if they don’t. That’s a white lie, so it doesn’t count.

  Only when I got close, they didn’t open up. They said, “Hey, Claire,” and instead of making space for me, broke up the circle and walked away.

  I went to class alone. I don’t have first period with any of them anyway, so it’s not that unusual, but it still felt unusual. All through class, I sat there, fake-listening to Ms. Yung talk about Web design and the importance of HTML something-something-something, wondering — and then remembering — why my friends all hate me now.

  “Claire,” Ms. Yung had said, walking over to me, “are you listening?”

  I looked up at her and noticed that she had a poppy seed between her front te
eth.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying not to stare.

  She turned and went back to talking about the magic of coding, and I sank deeper in my chair, trying to figure out how I could just go home. I couldn’t face the girls again. They had every right to hate me.

  So I went to the nurse’s office and made my escape.

  But now what?

  I walk to the bus stop and study the map and various routes the buses go. The red line leads to my neighborhood. The yellow breaks off to another part of town. The green goes to the city center. I reach out and trace it with my finger.

  Behind me, a bus rolls up. Without thinking or even looking for which number it is, I get on. I will go where it takes me. I told the girls I wanted more to life. Now I guess I’m going to find out what that means.

  The driver smiles at me when I slide my pass card through the reader. He has a giant silver front tooth. I like it. I don’t know why. Maybe because I can hear Grace or one of the other girls thinking, Gross. And today I am feeling the opposite of one of the girls.

  We pull onto the street, and I wait to see where we end up. The usual packed bus of high-schoolers is mostly empty. I glance around and take stock of who’s here. A mom or nanny with a little kid. A few businesspeople. A few more old people. I play the game I always play, making up who each one is. Who’s happy. Who’s sad. Who’s bored. I imagine their stories based on how they’re dressed and what they do to occupy themselves. The guy obsessively checking his phone for messages clearly wants a girlfriend to text him. The old lady with the paper who keeps huffing and puffing angrily is obviously a liberal who used to go on protests in the sixties and now is diminished to public grunting. She takes a pen from her enormous purse and madly scribbles out a face in a photo. I strain to see whose. The headline says something about the Republican senator from Arizona. I smirk and the lady winks at me.

  “Makes me feel better,” she says. “I’m not really violent.”

  I nod agreeably, suddenly feeling a partnership with her.

  Let’s change the world, I want to say to her. I know you don’t know me, but let’s hijack this bus and go protest something. I don’t even care what. I just feel like yelling. I just feel like caring about something.