by Paige Rawl
“Sure!” I said, scrambling down.
We practiced several times, the seventh-grade girls lifting me high into the air until I was standing near their shoulders, my arms extended toward the ceiling.
I was happy then. I remember that.
A little while later, Yasmine and I were back outside the gym, sitting at the tables with a big group of kids. I was sweaty from all that activity. Nothing looked any different than it had an hour ago. One of the kids passed around a water bottle. I took a swig, then handed it back.
“Careful,” a seventh-grade boy said. “Don’t drink after her. She has AIDS.”
It took me a moment to register what I had just heard. Then it took me another moment to make sense of it.
Forget the fact that I had HIV, not AIDS—I knew exactly who he was talking about. He was talking about me.
I didn’t look at Yasmine directly, although she was right there. She surely heard it, too.
She has AIDS.
But.
But wait.
There was only one way anyone could possibly know I had HIV.
Don’t drink after her.
I told only one person. Just one.
I told my best friend.
My body went slightly cold, and I felt a wave of nausea.
If I told only Yasmine, and now other people knew, this meant only one thing: Yasmine had told someone else. She must have done it immediately, probably while I was practicing the Wildcats cheer.
But she couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have.
Lila, I thought. She might have told Lila.
Don’t drink after her.
Then Lila must have told other people. And those people were going to tell other people.
It was only an hour later and already everyone around me knew.
She has AIDS.
And I knew something else, just by the way he said it. I knew that my HIV wasn’t the same as my asthma or somebody else’s knee troubles. It was clear from how he said it that there was something really wrong with having HIV.
There was something wrong with me.
Everyone was looking at me. My cheeks felt hot, though I didn’t know if it was from shame or anger.
The water bottle was still in my hand. I didn’t dare pass it to anyone.
Just then, a song we all liked came on in the gym. The group jumped up and rushed toward the music to dance. I was just sitting there, still holding the water bottle from which no one else wanted to drink.
I didn’t say anything to anyone about what just happened. I didn’t say anything when I followed them into the gym to dance, and I didn’t say anything to anybody when we headed back to the concession stand for popcorn. I didn’t say anything when we listened to song after song, or even in the wee hours of the morning when everybody got sleepy and silly.
I didn’t feel sleepy and silly.
I didn’t say anything to Yasmine for the rest of the night, but I didn’t act angry, either. Instead, I pretended it hadn’t happened, that I hadn’t heard what I heard, that people didn’t know what they shouldn’t know. I laughed a little too loudly and I danced with a little too much enthusiasm, occasionally sneaking glimpses of Ethan and wondering what he would think if he found out.
Mostly, I just tried to fit in.
But for the rest of the night, I was deeply conscious of Yasmine, of where she was at every moment. I was waiting, perhaps, for some kind of explanation.
She has AIDS.
Morning came with no explanation. The lock-in ended. My mom’s car was waiting outside in the parking lot. I climbed into the front seat and looked back at the school.
“Did you love it?” Mom asked as she turned onto 73rd Street. She was so certain that the lock-in would have been fun—in her mind, there was simply no other possibility. I placed my head against the passenger window and looked outside. I didn’t want to disappoint her.
“Yeah, it was good,” I said. I heard my own voice, heard the sadness in it. “I’m tired,” I added quickly. I turned on the radio.
At home, I took my medicine, my mother watching closely, then I lay down on my bed. I looked at my bright purple walls, the pink-and-purple spattered ceiling fan. On the other side of the wall, I heard my mother taking her pills—the opening of the cabinet door, the pills rattling around inside the plastic jar, the water running, then everything being put away all over again.
I placed a pillow over my head. I didn’t want to think about the fact that she took medicine, too. I didn’t want to think about her at all.
I felt sick to my stomach.
I didn’t tell my mom about what had happened at the lock-in. Not then, not for the rest of the weekend, not for a long time.
Ordinarily, Yasmine would have called me. Mere hours would have passed before my phone would ring; Yasmine would be at the other end, ready to talk about all the gossip from the lock-in. We would have talked and talked, processing the event as we discussed it. Then we would have begged our parents to let us get together, so we could gossip about the lock-in face-to-face, even though we had just done exactly that on the phone.
But my phone didn’t ring. Yasmine didn’t call. She didn’t call that day or that evening or even the next day. Which, frankly, was okay. I had no idea what I’d say to her, anyway.
Deny It
GRADE SIX
That spring, about a month after the lock-in, something happened. It was something about a note, something I don’t understand exactly, even today, years after it happened. I have reconstructed the day in my mind many times, trying to figure out who was behind it, and why.
All I know, even today, is that this day marked the end of one part of my Clarkstown experience and the start of something else.
It was just after lunch. Yasmine and I had sat at opposite ends of the lunch table. We had not met each other’s eye. We laughed and chatted with those who sat between us, each of us acting like there was nobody whatsoever—nobody at all, let alone a former best friend—in the space where the other sat a few feet away.
I had not spoken to Yasmine since the lock-in. Or perhaps it was she who hadn’t spoken to me. Either way, she had retreated quickly into the distance, just as suddenly as she emerged as my friend at the start of the year.
I wondered if perhaps she felt bad about telling people about my HIV. I tried smiling at her in the hallway a couple of times, thinking maybe we could just start over. She didn’t look at me to notice.
Anyway, on this day, I was walking toward social studies class when Yasmine rushed past me. She pressed her hand against her face, and her shoulders were rounded. I knew right away that she was crying. I stopped and glanced back at her as she raced down the hallway, her form moving swiftly around other kids, all those kids with textbooks under their arms, backpacks slung casually over one shoulder.
A few months ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to go after her, to weave through all those kids and stop her, help her, make her laugh again.
But now—I just knew she wouldn’t even let me near her now.
She disappeared around a corner. I turned back toward class, but a group of girls blocked my way.
“God, Paige,” one of them said, standing closer to me than was comfortable. “Why would you do that?”
“Yeah,” followed another. “You’re just mean.”
I glanced from girl to girl. One set of eyes narrowed into angry slits, another bore into my own with a long, hard power stare.
But what was this about? Why would I do what?
The bell rang. I brushed past them, into class. My teacher stopped me at the door.
“Paige,” he said quietly. “Miss Ward wants to see you in her office.”
Miss Ward was one of the school counselors. My mom had been right on that first day—school counselors did seem to deal mostly with kids who were in trouble. Until now, Miss Ward was just the lady with all the makeup and the big flashy smile, the one who once had been my mother’s gym teacher and now wore high heels and dea
lt with kids who had problems bigger than mine.
But I was in trouble now. I was sure of it. For the life of me, though, I had no idea why.
I glanced at my teacher, hoping he could give me some hint about what I’d done. He shrugged, then gestured toward the door. “Go ahead, Paige. We’ll be right here when you get back.”
Moments later, I knocked tentatively on Miss Ward’s door.
She looked up.
“Paige,” she said sharply. “Please”—she gestured toward a chair on the other side of her desk—“sit.”
I sat.
She folded her hands on her desk and said nothing for a long time. She just sat there looking at me. I shifted in my seat and stared down at my hands. Was I supposed to speak first? If so, what was I supposed to say?
There were framed diplomas on the wall above her. I glanced past her, toward the open window. I waited.
Finally, she spoke. “Paige, I’d like to know what you were thinking when you wrote that note.”
“What?” I asked.
“The note that you put in Yasmine’s locker,” she said. “I want to know why you would write such a thing.”
I tried to piece together what she was saying. I hadn’t left a note in Yasmine’s locker—not since before the lock-in, anyway. Could Yasmine have found a note that I left before the lock-in? But why would I be in trouble for that?
I looked at Miss Ward, confused. “What note?”
She frowned at me, looked me up and down for a moment.
Then she picked up a piece of paper. She held it out me.
Her nails were painted immaculately in bright red. I wondered, briefly, if they were press-ons.
When I didn’t reach for the paper right away, she shook it a little.
I took it, unfolded it. I didn’t recognize the handwriting.
Still. Some of the words jumped off the page immediately. Terrorist was one. Go home were others. I felt a cold rush go through my body. Oh, God, I didn’t even want to look at this thing.
And then I saw. At the bottom of the page was my own name.
My name, as if I had written and signed this thing.
Wait, I thought. My brain seemed to be working slowly, more slowly than it should have. Why would my name be on this?
Then I realized that someone must have signed my name, pretending that I wrote this.
Someone signed my name to this? To a note that calls Yasmine a terrorist? But why . . . ?
I thrust it back toward Miss Ward, as if simply holding this thing was enough to get me in trouble. “That’s not mine,” I said quickly.
Her eyes were cool. The woman clearly didn’t believe me.
“I didn’t write that,” I said again, as if merely repeating myself might change her mind.
I tried to fit together the pieces of this creepy puzzle. Honestly, though, none of this made any sense. It was my name, but it was not my handwriting. It was in Yasmine’s locker, but I hadn’t put it there.
Why would anyone . . . ?
That’s when it hit me: someone out there hated me. Someone hated me so much that they wanted me to get in serious trouble. To this person, whoever it was, it was worth making Yasmine cry, worth disrupting the school day, worth throwing around words like terrorist—as hate-filled a word as could be imagined in Indiana in 2007.
I swallowed and touched my index and middle fingers to my temples. The world around me began closing in. It was like a camera lens focusing in on a smaller and smaller point. The fluorescent lights and the cinder-block walls, Miss Ward’s frown and all my troubles with Yasmine, the fact that I was missing class right now for something I hadn’t done: all of these things just disappeared as the world became centered on just a single thought. That thought, the only thing I could see then, was this: People hate me.
“You’re saying you did NOT write this note?” Miss Ward’s words, the sharpness with which she said them, jolted me.
I shook my head, although convincing her of my innocence suddenly seemed less important than it had been a few moments ago. It was the hate I was worried about now, the hate that seemed to be coming right out of that note, right at me.
I spoke quietly. “I didn’t write it.”
Miss Ward pressed her lips together and surveyed me for a moment. Then she stood up, walked to the door with a click click click, and called out to a staff member outside her office. “Could you please gather some samples of Paige’s handwriting?” Her voice was curt.
She returned to her seat—click click click—then folded her arms across her chest. She took a deep breath. Then she frowned. “What on earth is going on here, Paige?”
And that’s when I told her. I said that ever since the lock-in, Yasmine had been telling people that I had AIDS. I explained that it had to be Yasmine. No one else at school had known, and now everyone knew. I told her that kids were telling others not to drink after me, that they whispered about me in the hallway, that people had been treating me like I was contaminated.
I took some deep breaths, and I stared at her computer keyboard, not blinking. I was trying so hard to maintain my composure, but it did not work. My face crumpled, and I began crying. Hard.
“Half of them don’t even know what HIV is, I’ll bet.” My face was twisted up. “They’re just using it as an excuse to be mean.” I was such a jumble of mad and sad, it was almost impossible to get my words out.
Then I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I looked at her, helpless.
“But,” Miss Ward started, then she paused. She examined me curiously. “Well, but you don’t have HIV . . . do you?”
“Well . . .” I paused. “Well, yeah. I do.”
Miss Ward’s face changed then. It froze for an instant, then drained of color. I swear, her skin grew so white that her makeup looked like a pastel mask.
She pressed her lips together and swallowed. “I see.”
She began to stand up, then she sat down again. Her phone rang, but she did not pick it up—she just sat there with that blank look on her face. When the phone stopped ringing, she took a deep breath. Then her lipstick-red mouth widened into an enormous smile. Her blushed cheeks pulled toward her ears, and her giant earrings flashed.
“Well,” she said brightly. “You know what you could do?”
She leaned in toward me like the two of us were about to share a delightful secret. “You could just deny having HIV!”
She beamed at me. The way she said it made it seem like that was the answer to everything.
I sat in silence for a long time, trying to make sense of her words, trying to figure out how her suggestion was helpful in any way.
Because, of course, I did have HIV. Saying I didn’t would be a lie.
I had been raised my whole life to know that lying was wrong.
And there was something else, too. Something that was very wrong with her words, with her suggestion. Something I couldn’t quite put a finger on.
There was a knock at the door. The staff member that Miss Ward had assigned to gathering my work handed her several pieces of paper. I recognized them as some of my assignments—a composition, a vocabulary test, a piece of homework. Together, Miss Ward and the woman looked back and forth between the note to Yasmine and my own work. Miss Ward said quietly, “It wasn’t her.”
Okay, I thought. This is it. Now I would be able to leave her office, go back to class. After all, I hadn’t done it, and now, in front of us, was proof.
Instead, Miss Ward pressed her lips into a frown. She stepped out of the room. When she returned a few minutes later, she was with three other people: another counselor, the assistant principal, and Yasmine.
The three of them filed in, sat down. Yasmine was sniffling, and she did not look at me.
I wanted to tell Yasmine, right then. I wanted to say that I didn’t write the note, that they had compared handwriting and it was clear. I hadn’t done it. I wanted to say to her: Don’t you know my handwriting? Don’t you know me? For some reason, I even
wanted to say that I was sorry. I was sorry that she had gotten the note, sorry that there was this terrible gulf between us.
I was sorry, so completely sorry, that everything in the world was so confusing.
But I said nothing. I just sat there in silence waiting for one of the adults to take the lead.
But Miss Ward did not tell Yasmine that the note wasn’t mine. Instead, she reached for the phone. “I am calling both your parents,” she said.
“No!” cried Yasmine, genuine panic in her voice. “Please don’t call my dad. Please, Miss Ward, please don’t.”
I was so confused then. I couldn’t imagine why Miss Ward wanted to call my mom. What exactly had I done? But Miss Ward surely thought I had done something. And she was the grown-up, the one with the diplomas on her wall. She was the one in charge. So I said nothing. Instead I sat there, feeling ashamed.
“Mrs. Rawl?” Miss Ward spoke into the phone, her voice an odd combination of cheery and tight. “I am going to need you to come to school. Yes. Yes, we have a bit of a problem. Mmm-hmm. Yes, a problem with Paige and another girl. Yes. Mmm-hmm. Right away, please.”
And then a short while later, we were crammed into the office, all of us: Miss Ward, Yasmine’s own counselor, the assistant principal, Yasmine, Lila—they’d called her out of class, too—my mother, and Yasmine’s father. Aside from Yasmine’s sniffles, the occasional huffy sigh from Lila, and the tick-tick of the clock on the wall, it was absolutely silent in the room.
Then Miss Ward cleared her throat.
“It would seem,” she said, “that these girls are having some, um, drama.” She explained the situation, beginning with the note I hadn’t written. And through my tears, I explained—again—about Yasmine’s telling kids about my HIV status.
And that was how my mom learned that my HIV wasn’t a secret anymore.
Her face crumpled, and I looked away.
