The ride to school is tense, the air so tight it’s almost painful. My mom doesn’t turn on the radio. The only noise is the occasional whir of a passing car. I know she was only trying to help with her suggestions of drying my hair and paper bags for my books. She was just being a mom. But my life is constantly teetering on the sharpened point of a blade. Each interruption, each outsider with her warm cafeteria cookies and paper bags could be the one who pushes me over, out of equilibrium, into death.
I don’t feel bad for yelling at her. I hope she learned her lesson.
CHAPTER 12
It shouldn’t really come as a surprise. If I had allowed my mind to look forward, if I had room in my brain to plan ahead, I would have known it would come to this eventually. In a week, my monster has eaten my closet. What started as a few militant sweaters has become a full-blown rebellion. The pink cable knit sowed the seeds of revolution with its point about having been inhumanely stored for the spring and summer months. In droves, with mean looks and enthusiastic middle fingers in the air, the rest of my closet joined its ranks. They had standards. They deserved better. As each of them marched to the dark side, they whispered their consequences: Wear me and your mother will die. A vivid image of a rainy day, a mound of freshly packed dirt at the foot of her tombstone. Wear me and your father will be in a car accident. A searing picture of my dad’s head smashed against the steering wheel, blood leaking down his face and pooling onto his khakis. The airbag didn’t deploy.
I stare at the closet doors. There is a low mumble coming from within, but I can’t hear any specific messages. I sit quietly in my room for a few minutes, listening to their grumbles, sinking deeper into my own shell. All my clothes are dangerous. I’m awoken by the sound of my dad’s garage door banging open. It is the signal in my morning routine that I should already be done getting dressed and close to leaving the house. I’m going to be late. Again. But how do I get dressed? I have no safe clothes. My entire closet is banned.
A complete silence settles into the house now that my dad is well on his way up the driveway. With a long sigh, I slump over, unable to sit upright under the weight of my thoughts. How did I get here? The past weeks have congealed into a thick block, a blur of confusion. Now with pale skin and thinning hair, I barely remember the person who used to live in this room. The collage of posters, photos, and letters plastered across my bedroom walls seem so foreign. The eight-by-ten photo for the yearbook of the cross-country team posing in our bright white jerseys in the blazing sun. The note Sara wrote me with a drawing of Ms. Griffin dancing around in front of the class. The smiling girl who carefully and lovingly covered these walls no longer exists. I am a stranger in my own bedroom.
Wandering to the edge of my thoughts, I find my eyes settled on the large bureau at the foot of my bed. It is topped with picture frames, my banned piggy bank and jewelry box, stacks of books. As imposing as it is heavy, the massive dresser holds eight horizontal drawers. Eureka.
On my knees in front of the dresser, I eagerly dig through the bottom drawer, which spills outward as soon as I open it. Old sports jerseys, matching pajama sets, T-shirts from long-forgotten soccer tournaments. With mounting excitement, I shove my hands deep into the packed drawer. It’s a treasure trove! Each of the eight drawers is bursting with a rainbow of opportunity. Pants, shirts, sweatshirts. A small light glimmers within me. Maybe this will be okay. Maybe I can make this work.
I smile smugly to myself as I remember all the times my mother has begged me to clean out this dresser. “There’s just so much crap in there,” she would say. “Send it to Goodwill. Give yourself some breathing room.”
Twenty minutes later, I am standing in the middle of a knee-high mound of clothes. It turns out my mom might have been right. Quantity does not mean quality. I am enveloped by piles of paint-stained tank tops and torn running shirts. Ragged flannel pants and gym shorts from elementary school. I am surrounded by clothes, but I have nothing to wear. At least not in public. Sorting through the mound, I cringe as I think about Sara’s reaction to any of them. I see her whispering with her friends at her locker, “What is that shirt?” I blush as I imagine their giggling stares against the back of my head while I wobble down the hallway under my pile of books.
I look at the clock. It’s 8:50. I’m already late for art. If I don’t get to school soon, my parents will get an automated phone call at work that I’ve missed a class, and that is not something I want to deal with. Just pick something. Staring down at the pile, it’s like choosing between two evils. Death by guillotine or electric chair? Neither, thank you.
Pick something! I yell at myself. With a small start, I blindly shove my arm down into the pile and grab on to a sleeve. And with a light tug I pull an oversized gray sweatshirt out from the masses. Holding it up, I see it has a large red cartoon horse racing across the front. I crinkle my nose. This sweatshirt isn’t even mine. It’s my friend McKenzie’s. I vaguely remember wearing it home from a sleepover at her house once. Apparently I never returned it. Looking down at the pile, I spot a pair of red sweatpants and grab them as well. At least I could match.
I look in the mirror next to my bureau. There is a jagged rip across the right knee of the red pants. My entire kneecap is exposed, the fabric flapping lightly against itself. The sweatshirt is fine . . . if wearing cartoon animals to school when you’re fifteen is fine. Dark circles echo under my eyes, contrasting with my pale, almost translucent skin. I don’t know how long it’s been since I brushed my mangled, dripping hair. It’s already soaked cold, dark puddles into the shoulders of my sweatshirt.
I slide into the last five minutes of art and hope that Ms. Michaels never noticed I was missing. As the class bell rings, she walks by and silently slips a detention notice in front of me but doesn’t mark me absent. I exhale with relief. The way today is going, I have to consider it a victory.
Tiptoeing my way to second period and creeping into Ms. Griffin’s room, I try my best to go unnoticed. I am cowering: shoulders forcefully curled forward, head tilted down so my nest of hair covers my face. I bring my gaze up a few inches, looking ahead at the crack-filled tile floor, and find myself suddenly locking eyes with Sara. She jumps in her desk in surprise, gaping at me in horror, or maybe disgust. Her eyes drill into my scalp while I’m looking down, stepping gently between cracks on the floor. My neck burns. She only turns around as Ms. Griffin clears her throat to begin class.
“Okay, everyone, okay. It’s the day you’ve been waiting for.” She holds up a thick stack of stapled papers. “I’ve graded your Les Mis essays.” The room bursts into whispers and groans. She begins walking around the classroom, handing out the papers in the order they appear in the pile. “Overall, I was pleased with your efforts. But I was surprised by the lack of thesis statements, given how much we have focused on them this year.” She squeezes between desks. “I can see that some of you did not take my advice and left your reading for the last minute.” The class fills with guilty murmurings. “Trust me, it showed.” She weaves through the rows of desks, leaving behind stunned smiles, blank faces, silent curse words.
A slight nausea rises as I remember the torn paper, the dull pencil, the messy eraser. The long night that followed on the blue mat in the hallway. I’m picking nervously at my nail when I feel her body at my side. Ms. Griffin looks down at me, taking in my sweatshirt, my tower of books, my damp hair. She lays the paper facedown on my desk and taps it gently with two fingers before walking away, continuing her lecture to the class.
I stare at it for a few moments before slowly turning it over, rolling up the edges slightly so my neighbors can’t see my grade. In thick red marker across the top is an enormous circled C-minus. Scrawled beside it she has written, Illegible. Please type.
A C-minus? A dusty corner of my brain leaps to life. I’ve never gotten a grade like this! Much less in English class. My mind is whizzing about, suddenly remembering that I care intensely about school. About my GPA. About college! I flip through the pag
es, scanning her comments, her grammar corrections. On the last page, in the same aggressive red pen, she has written, Come see me after class. Underlined three times.
The bell rings and I remain seated. Other students shuffle by me while I wait to be fed my safe number. When I look up, Ms. Griffin is gesturing me toward her desk.
“Miss Allison. How are you today?”
I force a smile. “I’m doing well, thanks! You know, just the usual.” I shrug at her.
She nods at me gently and pushes her chair back from her desk. “Allison, we’ve known each other for how long now? Three months, four?” I shrug again. “Your Les Mis paper . . .” She opens her mouth, closes it, seems to rethink her words. “Your Les Mis paper . . . it didn’t seem like your normal work.” She looks at me and I look straight back at her. I have an explanation, but not one that she would understand. With my silence she continues: “I can tell you didn’t finish the reading. You didn’t really even attempt to answer the question. It’s not typed. It’s ripped? The last three pages . . .” She stops as I begin to squirm on my tiptoes. I can no longer make eye contact. My heart is pounding as I pretend to be very interested in a poster over her head. “Allison. Sweetie.” Staring at the poster. “Allison?”
It’s her gentle tone that breaks down the wall, and I suck in hard on my cheeks, trying to mentally stop the tears. I stare at the poster intently until my chin stops quivering and the wetness welling in my eyes soaks back in. When I look down at her, she is still sitting patiently, her left eyebrow slightly raised. “I know, I know.” I look up at the ceiling again, willing away the emotions. “I’m sorry. I just, I didn’t plan ahead. I got stressed at the last minute and I don’t know, I panicked. My computer was broken. I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.” My arms are aching against the weight of my books. I’ve got goose bumps.
She lets out a long sigh and leans back in her chair, nodding. “I understand that things happen. You have competing priorities. This just isn’t what I expected from you, Allison.” We look at each other across her desk. “You should have talked to me. We could have worked something out.” I choke on my breath at this comment. Highly doubtful, Ms. Griffin. This is a little bit outside your wheelhouse. Mine, too, for that matter. I can see in her eyes that she is genuinely trying to connect with me, to extend a life raft. But we live in different worlds. Her soft voice and questioning expression are comforting, but I know there is nothing she could have done to help me. I’m in this fight alone.
“Promise me you will come to me if something like this happens again.” I nod at her, tight-lipped, and almost laugh to myself. No chance in hell.
Although I got control of my tears in front of Ms. Griffin, a thick lump sits heavily in my throat as I tiptoe alone to Civics and Ethics. I set my pile of books down at my desk in the classroom and immediately return to the hallway to use the restroom. I just need to take a few deep breaths.
I’m back from the bathroom only a few seconds after the bell rings. The class is milling about, the sound of chairs scraping across the floor, zipping book bags. I navigate my way toward my desk and see what looks like a giant mound of trash beside my chair. Moving closer, I crane my neck and extend my tiptoes, trying to see what exactly it is. With held breath, as I get within a few steps of my seat, I realize it is just the stack of binders and books that I can’t put back in my locker. But I don’t recognize the pile that became my full-time companion just three days ago. What started as a stack of binders and textbooks has somehow mutated into a leaning tower of trash. Atop the inside core of school materials there are now dozens of used, crumpled paper towels, tissues, folded sheets of notebook paper.
I look back over the past few weeks and vaguely remember adding some of these treasures to the pile. I’ve known the truth about trash cans from almost the beginning, and since I started carrying around my stack of school supplies, I’ve added another damp, crumpled paper towel ball to the pile every time I’ve used the school bathroom. Including the one I have dutifully brought back with me in my fist from my most recent visit.
In addition to the paper products, there are also multiple bags of food. My ham sandwich from earlier this week, a mysterious bag of dried carrots, an uneaten Fruit Roll-Up. Sitting down in my seat, I see a flattened bag of chips inside my chemistry textbook. A mashed brownie squelching out between two binders.
I’ve been saving my lunches ever since my emotional revelation behind the cafeteria the other day. Instead of simply leaving my brown bag somewhere on campus, I squirrel away each individual banned item from my lunch into my backpack as a gesture to my mother. I stash a fruit cup in the front zip-up pocket, Tootsie Rolls between the notebook paper in my English binder.
Although I have been intentionally collecting food and paper towels, it is only now, long into my new hobby, that I see what my tower of books has grown into. Somehow it has expanded in height and girth. It looks like the deluded collection of a homeless person who mumbles the day away on a dirty city street. Looking down at the pile, I get a faint hint of terrible stench. The smell of a rotting ham sandwich.
• • •
Every student in the county is entered into the pool to be enrolled in driver’s education on their fifteenth birthday. In late November, my name is drawn and the official letter sent. A major life milestone for my classmates, the on-the-road portion of driver’s education is an important step toward adulthood and independence, an event to be celebrated. To me, however, it is a minefield of potential new discoveries and epiphanies. The best way to keep my mind at bay is silence, routine, staring at large blank spaces for hours at a time, hiding behind brick walls beside Dumpsters. The open road, strangers, a car. It’s going to be a disaster.
Driving lessons take place either in the dark early morning before first period or in the setting sun after school. Since my parents think I am attending indoor track practice every afternoon (cross-country ended in late October), I show up to my first driving class on a frosty November morning. I am wearing red, white, and blue flannel pants and a tattered T-shirt from a long-past soccer tournament.
Although I don’t quite need to wear a bra yet, the feel of the straps against my skin gives me a boost of confidence. Their outlines through my shirt prove that I am, in fact, a girl. This morning, to my complete embarrassment, all the contents of my “intimates” drawer—underwear, bras, tank tops—were banned. I sit in the front seat of my mom’s car, self-consciously crossing my arms tight against my chest.
My mom pulls up in front of the school administration building behind a black Ford Crown Victoria, a generic version of the patrol cars used by local police. Compared to my mom’s sleek sedan, it looks like a boat. A very slow boat.
I push open the passenger door and tiptoe over to a tall man who I assume is the instructor talking to another female student around my age. An icy blast of wind whips itself across the open parking lot, and I jerk convulsively inward, grabbing my thin, torn T-shirt against my skin. The gust pushes against my clothes, forcing them to wrap around me, exposing my bony silhouette. For the first time, I realize how skinny I’ve become. I can see my ribs protruding through the thin cotton. My thighs are only skin wrapped against rattling bones.
“Well, doggone, girl! It’s winter! Where is your jacket?” The tall man, noticing the other student’s distraction, says as he looks over toward me too. His entire face is lit up as he waves me over, his mouth spread into a gap-toothed smile.
“I’ve been trying to tell her that all morning!” My mom’s voice pipes up anxiously from behind me. “All month, actually.” She is walking quickly toward us, the door to her car still ajar, and extends two jackets in her hands. I turn and look longingly at the fleece in her left and the wool pea coat in her right, but they’re not safe. They’re from the closet. A furious static is billowing like smoke from their fabric. I can see it searing into her skin. A lump pops to life in her left breast, and as she moves closer to me, their poison begins to sting against my skin as wel
l. An immediate, fierce anger rises from my stomach with the peppy edge of my mom’s voice and her inability to just leave me alone. Mind her own business.
I swing quickly on my toes to face her. “Mom, I told you.” My teeth are gritted, my hands clenching in fists against my legs. I can smell my own sour, rancid breath as it puffs into clouds in the air in front of my face. It’s been more than a week since I’ve brushed my teeth. Bees buzz furiously in my ears and I close my eyes against their noise, trying to concentrate. My legs are shaking under my pajama pants. From either frost or fury.
“Come on, honey. It’s literally freezing outside. Please. Take a jacket.”
“I said, no jacket.” The words shoot out of my mouth, fueled by the pent-up emotions of the morning: losing my intimates drawer, shivering under dripping, frozen hair. “Why don’t you listen to me?” I’m screaming, my arms pushed rigidly down to my sides with clenched fists. I pause to catch my breath. Well? I ask her with my eyes, daring her to try to respond. My mom’s face is stunned, her eyes opened wider than I have ever seen them. “Go to work.” I whip back in the other direction, leaving my mom to gape at me from behind and find my teacher and the other student trying to hide the surprise on their faces. They both smile at me hesitantly, the way you look at someone who has just screamed at her mother in front of strangers. The way you stare at a girl wearing a holey T-shirt when there is frost on the ground.
As I hear my mom’s car pulling out of the school parking lot, the tall man straightens his back, claps his hands together, and takes a deep breath. “Well, I’m Mr. Stowe. Your driver’s education teacher.” He smiles at us both like it’s a sunny spring day. I wrap my arms tightly around my chest and look down at the ground. As he shows us the outside of the car, as we test the tires and adjust the mirrors, he tells us about his fifteen years of experience, his passion for teaching. “There ain’t nothing better than preparing young people for a life on the road. It’s my calling, I’ll tell ya. It’s the Lord’s will.”
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