The Art of Feeling

by Laura Tims

  I let go of the book, and it thunks to the floor. I kick it under Lena’s bed.

  My pain doesn’t make me more understanding or empathetic—it makes me miserable, and I’m better off taking pills to get rid of it. Eliot just doesn’t need pills, that’s all. He’s not inhuman because he can’t feel pain. If not for the downsides, any normal person would leap at the opportunity to have his condition. Even with the downsides, I still can’t stave off the jealousy whenever my leg aches. Just picturing him and his imperviousness makes me feel better.

  Eliot would be so hurt if he read this.

  Or would he? He’s Eliot. He probably wouldn’t care.

  I have to sit down on the bed as I realize that kind of proves her point.

  But he panicked at my single tear. Even if he acts like an alien, even if he told me about his parents leaving him and his brother hitting him and his classmates bullying him without a trace of sadness in his voice, I know he cares. It’s just easier to go numb.

  I understand that.

  I take out my phone and find the book on Goodreads. It only has four reviews, all under three stars.

  Interesting ideas, but mostly conjecture.

  Would benefit greatly from real-world case studies.

  The internet has spoken. Dr. Brown doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

  Chapter Nine

  THE NEXT MORNING, LENA WAKES ME UP. “I’m making acai bowls for breakfast! Come on down!” she sings through my door.

  Since I know from past experience that my choice is to go of my own volition or be dragged downstairs by my pajama pants, I get dressed and find her in the kitchen. The sight of her is like an electric shock.

  “What’s wrong with your hair?” I blurt.

  “Do you like it?” she asks brightly, even though I didn’t ask what was right with her hair. “I did highlights in the bathroom last night with a kit from CVS. Salons are so expensive, and Mom was a strong supporter of DIY.”

  It looks like random chunks of her hair were dipped in bleach, but I guess that’s technically what highlights are.

  With her hair changed on top of her new eye color, she’s becoming less like Mom on the outside while simultaneously aiming to become more like her on the inside.

  Even Eliot wouldn’t be able to explain my sister.

  “They’re . . . nice,” I attempt.

  “I love them, too! They’re so fun!”

  She’s clearly trying to drown out yesterday by reaching a new pitch of cheeriness. She hands me her version of an apology, a bowl of what appears to be granola mixed with deer poop.

  “Eat. The mind can only be as healthy as the body.”

  Seconds later, Rex finally slouches into the kitchen. He jerks back. “Holy fuck, who pissed on your hair while you were sleeping?”

  Her smile weathers this. “Samantha likes it,” she informs him.

  “Just because you’re making our house hideous doesn’t mean you have to match.” Rex dumps his acai bowl into the trash and loudly pours himself some Lucky Charms.

  Tito says good morning by head butting each of our ankles in turn. Lena’s the only one who dodges, fake sneezing like she’s suddenly allergic to the dog who’s lived with us for ten years.

  “Let’s you and me have a girls’ day this weekend, Samantha,” she announces, pointedly ignoring Rex. “They’re having a sale at Kohl’s on Saturday, and you would be the cutest in a T-shirt dress with a statement necklace. It’d still fit with your casual style!”

  “Actually I thought Sam and I could walk Tito across Hensley Field that day.” Rex mashes his cereal with a spoon. “Since we both love Tito. Since he’s fucking awesome and too good for you and all.”

  “She can’t walk all the way across that field anymore! You need to put thought into accessibility.”

  She says accessibility in a perfectly audible whisper. I pour sugar onto my breakfast while she’s distracted, hoping it’ll revive my appetite.

  Rex sloshes his half-full bowl into the sink. “Come on, Sam, I’ll drive you to school today.”

  I can tell by his eyes that he’s not high. I gamble on a nod, and we run for it as Lena flutters after us, protesting.

  Every time I ride in Rex’s truck, it’s gotten filthier. I raise my good leg to avoid the crumpled McDonald’s bags beneath my seat as he drives, blasting Drake.

  “So this fucking sucks,” he says over the music.

  “We can survive until she leaves. It won’t be long—she hates it here.”

  She can’t stand people who are sad and stuck when she’s so desperate to move, move, move.

  “Dad’s being a pussy—” he begins.

  “Don’t say pussy.”

  “Dad’s being a vagina and letting her boss him around. He didn’t say anything about the couch—he just stared at the empty space and went all quiet. . . . He needs something to snap him out of it, and she needs something to focus her energy on, other than ruining our house.”

  He waited to bring this up until we were alone, and people don’t wait to say good things.

  “So, since it’s been a while . . .” His knuckles redden and whiten as he tightens, relaxes his grip on the wheel. “I thought maybe you just needed time. You know.”

  “I obviously don’t know.”

  “Well, I was just wondering . . .” Tighten, relax. “I was wondering if you’d remembered anything else about the guy who hit you.”

  My leg aches hard and fast, and I flinch away from the windshield like it’s about to shatter. The pain fills me with sudden and irrational rage, a need to attack what’s hurting me in order to survive. “Maybe I was too busy having my leg crushed to be memorizing license plates and fingerprinting people.”

  The car fills with tension and Drake.

  “Sorry,” he whispers.

  When he’s sober, the lines under his eyes are deeper, his voice sadder. This is what the pills hold back.

  The one time I suggested he start antidepressants like me, he pointed out that we probably couldn’t afford another co-pay.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I grit out. I’m sorry I haven’t tried harder to remember.

  I think I could, if I tried.

  And that scares me.

  I will try again. I memorize the bags under Rex’s eyes. I will.

  “I don’t deserve to ask, but . . .” His voice breaks.

  “I’ll give you more after school,” I say quietly.

  He falls silent, his head drooping.

  I force myself to think about anything else, and my mind lands on school, where I’ll be the only one standing between Eliot and everyone else—until Gabriel finds out and transfers him somewhere far away from me.

  Apparently the only way to distract myself from stress is with other stress.

  “Rex?” I ask, and he seems relieved that my tone isn’t accusatory. “This is random, but could I ask you something about Anthony?”

  His head shoots back up. “I swear to God, if he’s hitting on you—”

  “He’s not! Jesus! He’s just pissed at my friend, and I need advice on getting him to lay off.”

  “What friend? Are you talking about the random kid you told me he jumped last month?”

  “Well, now he’s a friend.”

  “What kind of friend?”

  “Not the kind that’s hitting on me.”

  “He better not be, because—”

  “Can you shut up and tell me what to do?”

  “There’s nothing to do.” He slurps from a week-old soda, gags, and spits the flat syrup back into the cup. “Let Anthony flush it out of his system, and he’ll back off once he feels like he’s won.”

  Which will be when Eliot is dead, because he refuses to let people feel like they’ve won. “I need something faster.”

  “You need to stay away from him is what you need to do. How do I say this so you listen? You, Anthony, stay away from.”

  He sighs. Even though Anthony and I shared a grade, it was Rex he latched
on to, trailing after him in our house and carrying Tito from room to room. “If there’s anyone who shouldn’t be scared of him, it’s you.”

  “I don’t know, man. It doesn’t matter.”

  “If it doesn’t matter, tell me what happened, because something obviously did.”

  Suddenly he’s the most attentive driver ever. He fixates on the road until I poke him.

  “Don’t repeat this, okay, because it’s probably not even true,” he mutters finally. “I smoked too much weed senior year and had a paranoid phase. By the way, don’t you fucking ever do drugs. Or drink, for that matter. Or have se—ergh—relations. Or watch Game of Thrones. That shit is not appropriate for—”

  “Fact one, I’m already on drugs; they’re just legal. Fact two, I’ll become a nun right now if you get to the point.”

  “You know what I mean. . . .”

  We’re almost at school. “The point!”

  “Ahh.” He rubs his head hard. “Remember when I got expelled? I don’t remember putting weed in my laptop case, okay? I don’t remember a lot of things from that year, but there it is.”

  It dawns on me. “You think it was Anthony.”

  He groans. “It sounds dumb as shit.”

  “But you had weed on you all the time back then. . . .” I scratch my ear, confused. “What makes you think that? Did you piss him off?”

  “Nah, man, it’s more of a feeling.” He reaches unconsciously for the flat soda again, but I swat his hand away. He lets it fall. “We were cool, or I thought we were, but there were times he’d get weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “I’d tease him about the old days, and he’d laugh like normal, but his eyes would go cold. Gave me the chills when we’d hang, like he secretly hated me. It was probably just paranoia. I also thought Mr. Tennyson was batting his eyes at me in English.”

  I’ve gotten that same feeling around Anthony, the sensation divers probably get when they brush up against a shark.

  But it’s ridiculous—he’s No-Moore; he’s not capable of subterfuge or psychopathy. At worst, he’s a bully. Not to mention what he owes our family. He was part of it, for a while. Rex was probably too high to remember he’d put his weed in his laptop case. It’s his style: hide it in the charger compartment, unzip it in class, drop it on the floor. Anyway, it’d be too ironic, Anthony and his ex-girlfriend pulling the same trick.

  And didn’t Eliot say that people with Anthony’s personality type were deliberate? He wouldn’t gain anything by getting his old friend kicked out of school.

  “I don’t know,” I murmur as he rolls up to the building.

  “It’s cool. I wouldn’t believe me either. I’m not the definition of a reliable dude.”

  And he laughs this sad, awkward laugh that stays with me long after he drives off.

  After first period, I text Anthony, telling him to meet me in the stairwell before gym. The surprising part is that he shows up. He’s already in his gym clothes, his backpack slung over one cleanly muscled arm, his eyes the lightest blue in the world.

  “What can I do for you, Samantha?” he asks.

  I don’t waste time. “When are you going to be done with Eliot?”

  “If it was anyone else, I would have been done ages ago.”

  That wasn’t what I was expecting. “Why is Eliot different?”

  “Oh, it’s not him I care about. It’s you.” The light, light blue eyes are icy. “Yelling at me in the hallway, talking shit about me behind my back, all for this random asshole? Did he grow up with you? Did he name every stuffed animal he ever had after your dog?”

  He always manages to edge in sideways with a guilt trip. But I rally.

  “If you care about me, you’ll leave him alone.” I square my shoulders. “He’s the reason I’m not lonely now.”

  “Why the fuck did you ever have to be lonely? All those months after the accident, I was right here, but you never even spoke to me.” His voice wavers, and he clenches his fists. “I always wished your mom was mine, too, that I could trade and be one of your sibs. After the accident, I could have used a shoulder, but you were obviously only interested in solitude—until this guy shows up, screws me over, and suddenly he’s the one and only person you’ll talk to.”

  Mom was always extra nice to Anthony, the poor rich kid with the empty house—buying him McDonald’s when we weren’t allowed to have it, passing him endless treats for Tito so our dog would love him as fiercely as any of us. Now that I think of it, I remember hearing he stayed home from school for a week after the accident. My sadness was so big at the time, there wasn’t room in my field of vision for anyone else’s.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I never realized you were grieving for her, too.”

  He lowers his eyes.

  Even jerks are capable of struggling. And ironically, now that he’s tormenting Eliot, I’ve tasted what it must have felt like to be Anthony Moore in middle school.

  Maybe he’s just trying, in the most obnoxious way possible, to keep himself safe. “I’m sorry we grew apart, too,” I say. “Maybe we can catch up sometime. But only if you leave Eliot alone.”

  “Oh, no.” He points at me. “That’s not the ultimatum—this is. You leave Eliot alone. As in, stop speaking to him. Then I’ll end it. He’s not good for you, okay? It’s for your sake that I’m doing this.”

  The most douchebaggy, asshole-teenage-boy way possible.

  “That’s not happening.”

  He looks at me coldly. “Then we’ll have to see how long it takes him to break.”

  That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, I want to yell.

  Instead I say, “He honestly doesn’t give a shit about anything you’ve been doing.”

  “I guess I’ll have to try something new.”

  He strides around me and goes downstairs before I can shrug off my bag and hurl it at his head.

  Gym class, a modern-day hell. The worst part is that I used to like gym.

  It’s ridiculous that I have to go, but my doctor has stopped writing notes and started saying things like “There are some activities you can still do, Samantha” and “I want you to stay involved with your peers, Samantha” in a poorly veiled attempt to bully me into going back to physical therapy.

  “Today we will be playing basketball.” Mr. Englewood announces it like a military drill, marching back and forth in front of the bleachers. “Anthony, Trez, you’re team captains. Let’s take this game seriously.”

  Everyone watches in wordless fascination as Anthony and Trez face each other.

  “Therese,” Anthony says with a warm smile, pronouncing the two syllables distinctly. She ignores his outstretched hand, her expression black ice, though I spot her jam her fingers into her pockets so nobody sees them shaking. Anthony throws a what-can-you-do glance at the audience. The message is clear: she’s a bitch, and he’s trying his best.

  They pick teams until there’s only Eliot left, sitting next to me. I can’t tell which one is more irritated when Trez calls his name.

  “What?” he snaps.

  I nudge him. “You’re on her team.”

  “Teams for what?”

  Trez grabs him and drags him toward her half of the gym floor. “Just stand somewhere and be tall.”

  She must not be too guilt ridden about the bullets he’s been taking for her, but then, she doesn’t seem like the type of person who lets herself feel guilty.

  “Help me keep score, and pay attention. You could still be a sports analyst,” Mr. Englewood tells me.

  I give him the finger when he turns to blow his whistle.

  Both teams are afraid of their captains, and the breakup is common knowledge. The game gets brutal fast, but even after the third kid is elbowed, Mr. Englewood doesn’t call foul. “Love the enthusiasm!” he shouts, a bloodthirsty gleam in his eye.

  Eliot loiters in a corner. I know who he’s texting before my phone buzzes—there’s only one person he messages.

  What is
the point of requiring that we constantly bounce the ball instead of carrying it like sane bipeds? This sport was likely invented during a contest to find the stupidest way of transporting an object.

  I’m giggling when Anthony rams him.

  The phone flies out of his hand. I lurch upright, and Mr. Englewood reaches for his whistle, but Anthony is already whipping around. “It was an accident! He was just standing there on his phone. I’m so sorry.”

  He yanks Eliot upright with a fake smile.

  “He deliberately assaulted my teammate!” shouts Trez.

  “I don’t hurt easy.” Eliot scoops up his phone. I notice I’m rubbing my leg and make myself stop.

  Just show some weakness, Eliot. Let him think he’s won.

  The game restarts. At Englewood’s frantic gesturing, Eliot wanders vaguely toward the ball, feigning elaborate distress when someone steals it from in front of him. The next time someone passes to him, he stands there making a face.

  “Dribble or pass!” moans Mr. Englewood.

  Across the gym, Anthony takes advantage of the moment to whisper something in Trez’s ear. She turns pale, jerking away.

  Anthony is grinning when the ball hurtles at him. It literally knocks the smile off his face.

  “It was an accident, et cetera et cetera,” says Eliot, yawning.

  “I want the rest of the game accident free,” Mr. Englewood thunders. “Now go, go, go!”

  I’m imagining all the different ways Anthony could separate Eliot’s head from his body, but Anthony spends the rest of the game loping around the gym and scoring points with his easy smile, getting nowhere near Eliot.

  It ends in a tie just as the bell rings. Englewood retreats to his office, dabbing sweat off his forehead. Trez storms out into the hall, and everyone else follows, except for Anthony.

  He walks right up the bleachers past Eliot, bends down, and pushes his mouth against mine.

  I don’t think the word kiss. I think get off. Get off, GET OFF. But I can’t say it, can’t push him away. I’m frozen. Anthony doesn’t move his mouth, just holds it against mine, hot and revolting. Only when one of my crutches clatters to the bench below does he break away to hand it to me.

  “She might give you attention,” he remarks to Eliot, who is paralyzed near the doors, “but you’ll never be able to do that with her. I can tell just by looking at you. You’re not brave enough, and even if you were, you’d never get it right.”