My Life in Black and White

by Natasha Friend

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Her heart is in the right place…. Look, I’m not asking for a miracle. I’m just asking for a concerted effort.”

  I heaved a sigh.

  “Beans.”

  “What.”

  He looked at me. “Throw me a bone here.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Fine?”

  “I will make a concerted effort.”

  Even though it made me mad to say it. I’d vowed not to let my mother rule my life, and now here she was, using my father to lay a guilt trip on me. Which I couldn’t be mad at him for. It wasn’t his fault.

  Watching my dad now, removing his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his beaky nose, I felt horrible. There were bags under his eyes. A day’s worth of stubble on his cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.” I hesitated. “I’m sorry you missed court. I won’t skip any more classes.”

  There was a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball when my father got up from his chair and hugged me.

  “I know you won’t, Beans,” he said, scruffing his chin against the top of my head. “I know you won’t.”

  Fucked-up face.

  Bag over her head.

  The one LeFevre hooked up with.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I lay in bed, watching the words crawl across the screen in my brain, over and over—like the ticker tape at the bottom of the TV when you’re watching CNN.

  I mean, what are you supposed to do when people are saying, essentially, that you are an ugly slut? I’d been called things before—snob, stuck-up—but I’d always had someone to defend me. Taylor, Ryan, my mom. Someone to assure me those accusations weren’t true.

  Now I had no one. No one but myself.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  It was 10:30, and he was still in his study.

  “Can I borrow your credit card?”

  “Hmm?” He looked up from the stack of papers on his desk.

  “Can I please borrow your credit card?”

  He lowered the glasses on his nose and looked at me. “What do you need?”

  I shrugged, focusing on the diploma framed in gold on the wall. JEFFREY CHARLES MAYER, JURIS DOCTOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. “Just some stuff online. For school.”

  “Define stuff.”

  “Just … you know, clothes…”

  “Didn’t Mom already buy you everything you need?”

  “No, she did. It’s just…” I hesitated, then heard the words come tumbling out. “None of my jeans fit and I only have one hooded sweatshirt, which isn’t even mine, it’s Ruthie’s, and the thing is … I don’t want to go into any stores and I need to wear hoods now, so … I won’t spend a lot. I promise. I’ll shop around. Just tell me what the limit it is and I’ll stick to it.”

  The room went silent.

  I shifted my gaze from the wall to my dad and saw the shine in his eyes. What, I wondered, did he see when he looked at me? Whatever it was, I knew that in a second he would reach into his briefcase and pull out that credit card. Whatever he could do to fix the problem, he’d do it.

  “Beans?” His throat sounded full of marbles.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know I love you, right?”

  “I know, Dad.”

  Over the next few weeks, THE RULES were in full effect.

  To prove that I no longer cared about my looks (Rule number two), I wore only jeans and hooded sweatshirts, pulled as tight around my face as possible, leaving just enough room to see. Hoods were against dress code, but not a single teacher called me on it. Shocker.

  To prove that popularity was the least of my concerns (Rule number five), any time I saw Taylor, Ryan, Jarrod, Kendall and Rae, or any of the field hockey girls or football guys, I would pretend they were nothing. Specks of dust. Atoms.

  I became a walking Homeland Security Alert System, constantly on the lookout, scanning the halls through my hood hole for Taylor’s coppery highlights, Ryan’s baseball cap, so I could be prepared to ignore them.

  Vigilant though I was, I couldn’t avoid everything. Like the time Taylor stepped out of the bathroom stall as I was washing my hands. Our eyes met in the mirror and her mouth opened as if to say something, but I quickly walked away, wiping my hands on my jeans and repeating the mantra: You are nothing. A speck of dust. An atom. Meanwhile, my heart was pounding and every nerve in my body screamed, Code Red!

  Or the time Jarrod suddenly appeared in the doorway of my English class just as I was coming out, and we both froze like deer. Then, without a word, we brushed past each other, silent as branches.

  Or the time I turned a corner in the hall and bumped smack into Kendall and Rae. “Lexiiii!” they squealed, pretending they were happy to see me. “How are you?” Kendall asked, all low and concerned. And Rae said, “We never see you anymore!” Their insincerity—their two-facedness—was mind-boggling. I didn’t know what to say, so I mumbled something about needing to find a teacher, and I hightailed it out of there.

  I tried making new friends (Rule Number Three). For a week, I sat at a lunch table where, in my old life, people would have laughed hysterically to see me sitting. With Marielle Sisk and Robyn Pinover and those girls. They weren’t exactly unfriendly. Marielle, with her Little-House-on-the-Prairie dresses and her pocket Bible, was too well mannered to be mean. And Robyn barely spoke a word. She just stared at me through her Coke-bottle glasses. I felt like a bug under a microscope, especially when this other girl, Lynn—“Lithpy Lynn” we used to call her in elementary school because she couldn’t say her s’s—started firing questions. Why was I sitting with them? I never sat with them before. What happened to my friends?

  I stopped going to the cafeteria.

  Lunch wasn’t technically a class, so I didn’t feel guilty about skipping it. I’d dodge any teachers in the hall, find an empty room, and wait there until the bell rang. The language lab. The auditorium. Anywhere but the darkroom. The last thing I needed was another encounter with Photo Boy. I spotted him twice, once with two other guys—bow-tie-wearing, pencil-behind-the-ear types—and once in the gym while I was playing badminton. Both times he had a camera around his neck and an intense expression on his face, like he was trying to solve the climate crisis.

  I pretended not to notice.

  At the end of each day, I would drag myself to the library to study (Rule Number Six) until Ruthie finished band. Then she would drive me home, or we’d stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for a Coolatta, followed by a painful dinner where my mother asked too many questions and all of my answers were one word. By the time my dad got home, I’d already be in bed, dog-tired but unable to sleep—the movie reel in my brain spinning overtime.

  No one seemed to care that I was blowing them off. I wanted Taylor to be miserable, but every time I saw her she looked fine. Perfectly content to be walking down the hall with Heidi instead of me. Heidi, who seemed to have taken up residence on Taylor’s hip like a giant, frizzy-haired burr.

  I tried not to let this bother me. The two of them deserved each other. Still, whenever I spotted them together, I felt a pang. Heidi would never be Taylor’s best friend, I told myself. If it weren’t for their mothers, Taylor wouldn’t give Heidi the time of day. If Heidi’s dad weren’t richer than Oprah, no one else would put up with her, either. She wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t funny. She was just annoying. Kendall and Rae, Kelly, Ariana, and Laurel, Piper and the other soccer girls—none of them could stand Heidi. They only tolerated her because Taylor did, and because Heidi had an eight-person hot tub right in the middle of her kitchen.

  Then there was Ryan, who seemed to have moved on spectacularly. For about a week, he tried talking to me in trig. The conversations went like this:

  Ryan: Hey, Lexi.

  Me:

  Ryan: How are you?

  Me:

  Ryan: How’s it feel to be back?

  Me:

  Ryan: Are you going to keep ignoring me?

/>   Me:

  Ryan: (annoyed sigh) Whatever.

  After those first feeble attempts, he started ignoring me right back. Then Mrs. Silver changed the seating chart, and we were on opposite sides of the room, which should have made things easier.

  It didn’t.

  I knew I should forget Ryan, not just because of Rule Number Four but because I had my pride. Only I couldn’t help myself. I watched him all the time when he wasn’t looking. Wrestling with Kyle Humboldt and Jason Saccovitch in the hall. Buying Cokes from the vending machine. Laughing with some ponytailed girl at his locker.

  I wondered what was so funny.

  I wondered if he was comparing her to me.

  I wondered whether, if I had just gone farther with Ryan, all of this could have been prevented.

  He tried once. It was the day after graduation. We were down in his grandparents’ basement and he started to unbutton my jeans, but I stopped him. Then he tried putting my hand on his zipper, but I pulled away. At the time, he was cool about it. He said he would wait until I was ready. “You’re not mad?” I said. And he said, “It’s no big deal.” But if it was really no big deal, why would he hook up with Taylor? Was it all about sex? Did he get something from her just because he couldn’t get it from me?

  I lay in bed for hours asking myself these questions, waiting for answers that never came.

  “So, what are you girls wearing tonight?”

  It was Saturday morning, ten o’clock, and already my mother had popped her head through Ruthie’s door three times—each time with a new excuse for interrupting. First, it was to deliver our folded laundry, then it was to open the windows and let in fresh air. Now, here she was again, placing a tray of iced tea and orange wedges on Ruthie’s bedside table.

  Ruthie, blasting away on her trombone, didn’t hear the question.

  “What are you girls wearing tonight?” my mother repeated, louder.

  From my spread-eagle position on Ruthie’s bed, I gave her a blank look. “What’s tonight?”

  As if I didn’t know. As if there hadn’t been a million posters plastered around school for the past month. HALLOWEEN HOMECOMING, OCTOBER 24! MASQUERADE BALL! BE THERE OR BE … A LOSER!

  “Band uniform,” Ruthie announced, propping her trombone against the wall and helping herself to iced tea.

  At first, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered. The marching band played at halftime.

  “After the game,” our mother clarified. “The dance … I heard from Mrs. Gillespie at church that the theme is masquerade, and I have a few dresses that would be perfect. I even picked up a couple of masks at the costume shop, with feathers and glitter and—”

  Ruthie shook her head, muttering that she had other plans.

  “What kind of plans?” I asked. My sister’s idea of a fun weekend was watching the SyFy Channel with Sasha and Beatrice or hanging out at the coffee shop with all the other band geeks.

  She ignored me, proceeding to gulp down the first glass of iced tea and then to pour herself another.

  “Since when do you have plans on a Saturday night?”

  “It’s a band thing.”

  “What kind of band thing?”

  Ruthie shrugged and started drinking again.

  “Alexa?” My mother smiled tentatively. “Would you like to take a look at what I have?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, in the polite-but-distant tone I’d mastered since promising my father I would make an effort. “I will not be attending any homecoming festivities.” (Rule Number Five.)

  “Oh.” My mother nodded. “Well, that’s fine.” She busied herself with the orange wedges, then with a stack of books on Ruthie’s desk. Then, because she couldn’t stand it a second longer, she blurted, “Not even the game? … I thought your father and I would take you out for an early dinner and then the three of us would go to the game and watch your sister march….”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I murmured, like I was actually considering this. Then, “Thank you for the offer. Maybe next time.”

  “Next time,” she repeated.

  “You and Dad should go, though,” I said, thinking how nice it would be to have the house to myself. “Be Ruthie’s cheering section.”

  Ruthie rolled her eyes just as our mother took the bait, murmuring, “Of course. We wouldn’t miss it.”

  Jackpot.

  As it turns out, having the house to yourself is not as great as you would think. The second Ruthie and my parents left, I blasted the stereo and started bumping and grinding around the living room, but without anyone to laugh at my dance moves, I got bored. So I raided the kitchen for ice cream, chips, cherry Coke. I settled into my mother’s best chair—the white one with the pink roses—that we were never allowed to sit on. For maybe five minutes I was in heaven, stuffing my face, sprinkling barbecue-potato-chip dust all over. Then I started feeling sick. No one was here to reprimand me or to suggest that I have celery instead. I didn’t know why I was doing it. So I put everything back.

  The house, I realized as I walked from the kitchen back to the living room, was too quiet. I might as well turn on the TV and visit my old friends—Hannah Montana, Ellen, SpongeBob, and Dr. Phil—just to have some company. So I flopped down on the couch with no regard for my dirty sneakers resting on my mother’s hand-embroidered Peruvian throw pillows.

  I forgot it was Saturday. None of my favorite shows was on. I was a little annoyed, but then I remembered the movie channels. I found one of the Batmans, which I wouldn’t normally be into, but this one had Christian Bale, and who doesn’t love Christian Bale? So I settled in.

  I think it’s no coincidence that my lightbulb moment occurred during this particular movie. You can’t watch a kid’s parents get murdered before his eyes and feel nothing. You can’t watch him put on his armored suit and start fighting bad guys and not cheer. If you have any shred of human decency, you want Batman to win, not just to avenge his parents’ death, but also to show the miserable jerks of this world what it feels like to lose.

  I didn’t even watch the whole thing. When inspiration hit, I just went with it. With no friends and no parents around to drive me, I pulled my bike out of the garage for the first time since July Fourth, when Taylor and I rode to the fireworks.

  The wind on my face felt good and crisp. I pedaled like a crazy person, until my legs burned and the air in my lungs felt like needles. On the highway, cars whizzed past me. A few of them beeped. Mothers, probably. I wasn’t wearing my helmet, and my own mother would be having a conniption if she saw me, but I didn’t care. For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

  The guy behind the counter at Costume City was greasy haired, pock faced, and mean looking—the last kind of person who should be working in customer service. To the woman in front of me in line, who was searching for a Strawberry Shortcake wig for her daughter, he snorted, “Strawberry Shortcake? Are you kidding me? She sucks.”

  The woman demanded to speak to the manager.

  Greaseball said, “I am the manager.”

  After she stormed out, he rolled his eyes toward me and said, in the most bored manner possible, “Can I help you?”

  I almost chickened out because I knew what was coming. Batman? Are you kidding me? He sucks.

  Instead, the guy nodded approvingly. “Batman is the shit.”

  I felt a surge of relief.

  “We’re all sold out, kid. Halloween’s a week away.”

  Crap.

  Then he grinned, showing a surprisingly nice set of teeth. “How do you feel about Catwoman?”

  Meow

  THE GYM DIDN’T look like a gym, that was for sure. Whoever was in charge of decorations took their job seriously, what with the endless strands of Christmas lights and the gold and silver balls hanging everywhere. Tables were set up along the perimeter, with champagne glasses for punch and vases full of what looked like tree branches sprayed with metallic paint, and millions of glass pebbles. Even the bleachers had been covered in shiny pap
er. Because the overhead lights were turned off, the whole room had a shimmering, otherworldly feel—as long as you ignored the basketball hoops and the lingering smell of sweat socks.

  After half an hour of standing in a corner, observing the scene, it occurred to me how stupid I was to be nervous. I was Catwoman. Every square inch of my body—and most of my face—was shielded in black Spandex. If ever there were a time to be fearless, it was tonight.

  Walking around the gym, I noticed that other girls’ “costumes” weren’t much different from the dresses they’d wear to a regular dance. Short or long, shiny or lacy, strapless or not. But the masks changed everything. You had to look at bodies and hair for clues.

  Right away I spotted Taylor. I knew her so well—her knobby knees, the way she tipped her head to the right when she was talking, her low, gravelly laugh—it didn’t matter what she was wearing. (Which tonight happened to be a gunmetal gray sheath dress with sky-high strappy sandals, an updo, and a glittery silver mask.) I could pick Taylor out of a crowd in Grand Central Station. In the middle of rush hour. During a power outage.

  Which made it all the more ironic that she walked by me three times without so much as a clue—each time carrying a champagne glass and hanging all over Heidi, making me wonder what she was drinking besides punch.

  Ryan was nowhere to be seen. But then, most of the guys were impossible to identify. While a handful had skipped dressing up altogether or had thrown on the token skeleton T-shirt, others were wearing full costumes. There was a gorilla, Darth Vader, Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, four President Obamas, one Bush, vampires, mummies, Beavis and Butthead, and probably thirty grim reapers—complete with skeleton masks, black robes, and bony hands holding knives. Fake, plastic knives, but still. They were freaky.

  At one point, a few of them sidled up to me and—because there was no way I could possibly know who they were—said things they otherwise wouldn’t have had the guts to say. Like, “Hey, Catwoman, looking for something to lick?” On any other night, in any other context, this would have been mortifying; which is to say, if I had been me, I would have been mortified.