by Rachel Hruza
“Seems to me you’re the one who wants Brendan’s attention.”
I immediately shut my mouth and tried to keep from blushing. “No, I—I just know she’s smarter than that, that’s all.”
“Uh huh.” Oliver pushed himself away from the table and leaned back in his wheelchair while gripping the wheels, doing what he called “stationary wheelies.”
“You girls seem to keep all kinds of secrets, and talk bad about each other behind backs. Why don’t you just tell Megan how you were feeling? Stop being so immature.”
“You’re immature,” I retorted.
I scowled at Oliver’s confident grin, and this made him smile even more.
He lowered his chair so it was on the ground again and then rolled closer to me, leaning so his face was inches from mine. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
His brown-eyed gaze stayed steady on mine, but I could feel my own gaze jumping back and forth between each of his dark pupils. I felt my face flush and my heart race, and I stood up, certain my heart was going to leap out of my chest from his close proximity.
Oliver snorted. “Point proven.”
The worst part of it all was that I knew he was right, but I still didn’t want to admit I had been wrong.
The rest of the day went by slowly and horribly. My brace seemed to be digging into the meatiest parts of my skin with utmost abandon. I left English just to go to the bathroom and undo the bottom strap. I tried to stretch in the stall to relieve stress, but it didn’t help. Then Jenny and her horde of girly goons followed me down the hall between classes, giggling about Brendan and Jenny soon being a couple.
Worst of all, when I went to my locker at the end of the day, Megan was there, tossing her hair and laughing loudly—with Brendan. He gave me a quick glance and then turned to walk down the hall with Megan. If this was a scene in an average high school television drama, sad music would be filtering in as tears rolled down my cheeks and I ran wildly to the bathroom. Instead, I stormed down the hall and practically knocked Brendan over when I grabbed his arm.
“Can I borrow him for just a moment, Megs?” I asked with a huge smile, while really thinking, Stay away from my Kool-Aid, traitor!
“Of course, Truthy,” Megan said, in her most chipper manner, but I could tell she was disappointed I was pulling him away.
I dragged Brendan back to my locker so I could put my books away. He was dragging his feet as if they were glued to the floor. I shoved the books I needed into my backpack and then I looked Brendan squarely in the face.
“I didn’t tell anyone your secret.”
“I know.”
“So why are you mad at me?”
“I was just—” He paused and looked away. “I was scared. If people find out about this, I’ll be laughed at. I’ll be put in the remedial classes. You think a kid who can’t read at thirteen is going to get into college?”
“Yes,” I said, picking up my bag and swinging it over my shoulder with a thump. “You are.” We started walking.
“It’s harder than you think.”
“No, you’re making it hard.”
He sighed.
I stopped walking. “Look at me.”
He did. I looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then I rapped my knuckles against my plastic ab.
“I trusted you with my secret. You can trust me with yours.”
Brendan grinned. Good grief, I liked that grin.
“Okay, Trendon. You’re right.” He put his arm around my shoulders as he walked me out the door to the bus.
“So, I heard you’re going to be dating Jennifer Henderson soon,” I said.
“Jenny?” He looked as if he’d thought about it before, and then he laughed. “No. Why?”
“Her brigade was taunting me with information about how you two were going to fall in love and run away together to, I don’t know, the moon? Or Jenny’s dreams, apparently.”
Brendan laughed. I loved making him laugh.
“You’re ridiculous sometimes, Tru,” he said.
“It’s true,” I said.
“That’s what I said. Tru.”
“No, I meant—” Even when he was confused, I didn’t want to look away. “Never mind,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”
He jerked his chin in a forward motion, one of the lamest forms of acknowledgement guys have invented. I rolled my eyes as I turned and walked onto the bus.
Megan had saved me a seat, as usual. “Everything okay, then?” she asked.
Good ol’ Megan. “Yep,” I said.
“Good,” she said. Even though I knew Megan wanted me to be happy, I could tell she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about this particular outcome.
Apparently Newton wasn’t happy about it either. In late October, I went in for my three-month check-up after having my brace, and it wasn’t exactly the best news.
“Well, the curvature is holding. That’s good.” It was the least clinical thing I’d ever heard Dr. Clarkson say.
“What does that mean, exactly?” my mom asked him.
“It means that while braced, her spinal curve is pushed to a lower degree. When it’s not braced, it goes back to its original starting point.”
He was entirely focused on my mother, ignoring the fact I was sitting right there.
“Okay,” my mom said. “So by wearing the brace until she’s done growing, Truth’s spine will stay at thirty-five degrees?”
“We can only hope so,” Dr. Clarkson answered, without an ounce of sympathy or consideration.
“You mean my back can still get worse?!” I burst out, loudly and angrily.
“Well, yes,” Dr. Clarkson said. “Your spine may continue to curve. We brace it to slow its progress during the growing period, hopefully keeping it from progressing past the bracing point.”
“Are you kidding me? Why am I even wearing this thing?” I asked.
“I just said—to keep your back from getting worse.”
“I thought this was guaranteed to make me better.”
“Even with surgery, there’s no guarantee your back will hold. The body is an amazing thing.”
I almost leapt out of my skin. “Surgery?”
“I don’t think you’ll ever have to worry about surgery, but it is an option,” Dr. Clarkson said.
“Really?” my mom said. She had tears in her eyes for the first time in any of the doctor visits I’d had. “You don’t think she’ll need surgery?”
“If her spine continues to hold like this, I don’t think she will.”
I didn’t point out that Dr. Clarkson continuing to say “I think” meant he could easily be wrong.
My mother and I left the longest and second-worst appointment I’d ever had. Right behind the one where I’d found out I actually needed a brace.
“Maybe you should get a rolling backpack,” my mom said, as we drove away. The way she abruptly broached the topic, I knew she’d been considering this for a while.
“Hold up that thought-plane,” I said. “Alter your course, Mama Dearest. I am not using luggage as a backpack.”
“I think it would be best for your back.”
“No.”
“Well, I’m going to get you one.”
“No!” I didn’t usually get mad at my parents. I didn’t buy the whole “teenagers need to be obstinate” thing; my parents were good, nice people. I could be that to them, too. However, with this abominable idea lingering between my mother and me, I felt anger growing inside my belted body.
I crossed my arms and waited in the car when Mom stopped at a department store. I leaned my chair back and watched the people who filed in and out of the sliding glass doors, carrying their nice new purchases. None of which were rolling backpacks.
It was bad enough I had to miss school to go to these appointments (okay, so missing school was pretty awesome), but now when I went back to school, I would have a new, piece-of-junk suitcase to put my books into.
“I swear she picked out the biggest, ugliest one she cou
ld find,” I said to Megan and Brendan, whom my mom had let me invite over for pizza and a movie after I arrived home from my appointment. It was a Friday, and I couldn’t wait to bash my new school accessory.
“It’s not that bad,” Megan said.
“Are you kidding? It’s big enough to fit you inside it, Megs, and the only pattern it came in was old lady floral.”
“The flowers are pretty lame, but it’s really not that big of a deal, Truth,” Brendan said.
I sighed. Even though Megan and Brendan were being nice about it, I knew people would make comments about me behind my back—and behind my backpack.
I pressed play on the movie, and Newsies, one of my favorites, blasted on the screen. I was hoping the soothing voices of singing and dancing newspaper boys would calm me down for the weekend, so I could get my mind off the dreadful sound of wheels rolling across cement and tile, which reverberated in my brain like a bad song.
It was all I could do to keep myself from breaking the backpack when my mom wasn’t looking. Instead, my spirit was broken.
With his invisible clutches, Newton had dragged me down to a new level of uncoolness.
CHAPTER 11
A Biting Accident
Chunk. Doonk. Rowl. The rubberized plastic wheels of my new backpack clamored against the cement steps of the hallway. As each wheel clonked or bashed against a stair, I vented my irritation with choice words my mother wouldn’t have appreciated.
I rolled my backpack quickly through the high school side of the building, comprising overconfident sophomores and even more zealously confident freshmen, to the junior high hallway. To my relief, no one said anything about the girl with the backpack on wheels roaring behind her.
Paired with my brace, my jeans were too tight. I hadn’t done my laundry that weekend, so when it came time to dive into my wardrobe that morning, I’d been up a creek. Meanwhile, my pants were up my crack. Even though the summer months had come and gone, my personal temperature was always hot. But as sweaty as my plastic pal made me, I suffered through each day wearing long, loose shirts that hung past the indentation from my brace and would hopefully offer some sort of air movement for my extra-warm torso.
I approached my locker where Megan already stood, talking to Brendan. Shockingly (I almost dropped my rolling inanimate buddy), Jenny Henderson was there as well. She smiled, nicely for once, and said something that made them all laugh. Remembering my conversation with Oliver about backstabbing, and knowing Jenny had just looked at me, I felt certain she was talking about me. Maybe she’d pulled Megan and Brendan over to the dark side and I’d have to wheel away, dejected and alone. Or worse, maybe they’d told her about my brace.
I picked up my pace. My right foot caught my “study-luggage,” as Harold had called it, and I tripped mid-step but kept going. I rolled right up to the trio I didn’t fully trust, ending up almost in the middle of their small circle.
“What’s up, trendy Trendon?” Megan said.
“Hey, Tru. Nice backpack,” Brendan said. He winked. I should have smiled, but I didn’t.
“Hi,” I said, in a voice that was too loud and full of suspicion.
“Hello, Truth,” Jenny said. “How are you?”
I wanted to mimic her chipper voice back with: I don’t know, Jen. How are you when your best friend and maybe-boyfriend are talking happily with your nemesis?
Instead, I murmured, “Fine,” and unloaded books from my school suitcase. Meanwhile, Megan, Brendan, and Jenny fell quiet. An awkward, they’re-probably-staring-at-my-backpack-and-back-to-my-brace kind of quiet. I felt like I’d interrupted the Three Musketeers in the middle of becoming BFFs.
“So Megan tells me your mom forced you to get a backpack with wheels.”
Immediately my limbs, mid–book shelving, stiffened. Jenny was not supposed to know about the backpack. Obviously she could see it, but I didn’t want her to know I’d gotten it because of my curved spine.
I slowly turned around, making eye contact with my so-called best friend for a split second. She looked away quickly. Too quickly.
“Yep. Here it is.” I kicked it. It hurt my big toe. “Ouch,” I said.
“That sucks,” Jenny said, shaking her head. “My mom tried to make me get one too. I refused though. She bought one, but for the first week I had it, I carried my books in my arms in protest. She eventually took it back, because it cost seventy bucks and she didn’t want to spend the money if I wasn’t going to use it.”
My ears perked up. A fellow repressed daughter? “That was smart,” I said. “I should have done that. I think I’ve committed myself to it now though. I don’t even know where I’ll put the thing during the day. It won’t fit in a locker.”
“You could put it in the locker room. I’ll go with you,” Jenny said.
“That’s a good idea,” Brendan said.
I couldn’t tell if he was referring to storing my backpack or having Jenny accompany me.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
Jenny grabbed the backpack’s handle and began rolling it down the hallway. I gave Megan a quick glance again. She just shrugged her shoulders. Jogging to catch up to Jenny, I watched as she walked. She was so confident. Her stride was long and her hips swung back and forth like a perfect pendulum. Her long, blonde hair swayed in straight, shiny strands just below her shoulder blades.
Part of me wanted hair like hers instead of the frizzy curls I always pulled up into a messy bun-combination-ponytail on top of my head. The other part of me wanted to yank on Jenny’s golden mane, hard.
We passed the freshmen and sophomores again. We passed by Charity, who was so engaged in conversation with her group of girlfriends, she didn’t notice her sister rolling by. To her possible doom. Jenny could kill me in the locker room. While my body would be found eventually, she would probably corroborate her story with Megan and Brendan, and the tracks of my new suitcase rolled into my skin would show I’d been killed in a horrible accident of death by backpack. Not by a pretty, popular girl.
I sighed as I opened the door for Jenny and she rolled my backpack into the lair of fruit body mists and vanilla lotions.
“There you go.” Jenny stood the suitcase up so I could take the handle.
“What?” I asked.
“Megan told me how embarrassed you were about dragging this thing through school,” she said. “I wanted to help.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thank you?” I still wasn’t sure how to feel about this.
“You know, it’s not a big deal you have that. No one’s going to care as much as you think. If you drop it off here first and carry your books the rest of the way, you won’t have to backtrack in the morning.”
“That makes sense. Thanks,” I said, sincerely this time.
“Okay, see you in Band!”
Jenny turned and walked out the door.
The first bell rang.
I stood there, confused. Jenny Henderson was supposed to be my nemesis, the evil I went throughout my day to avoid. She had put sand in my gym locker. Now she was trying to be my friend? I couldn’t fight the urge to believe there was something underhanded or sneaky behind Jenny’s actions, but I had to admit, it was kind of nice. Rather sisterly. My own flesh and blood, Charity, hadn’t even wanted to walk in the door with me that morning, because of the eyesore she thought I’d be. She sympathized, but she also had a reputation of her own to protect. I understood that. Now, the girl I had considered the most selfish, cold-hearted person in the world had risked her reputation for me.
“What a confusing world we live in,” I said aloud, to no one in particular. No one answered.
I rolled my boxy backpack into a corner. To my friends, it probably seemed like I was making too much of a commotion over just a bag, but there was more to it than just my dislike of its physical appearance. Having to use a rolling backpack was like admitting defeat and committing myself to the fact there was indeed something wrong with me; something different about me. But I wouldn’t give in to Isa
ac Newton. Not yet.
In Band, I watched Jenny as she sat next to Brendan. Her flirting was natural: she ran her hand through her long blonde hair and pulled it away from her face; when Brendan said something, she laughed, slapping his shoulder playfully. I watched as he smiled at her, her pretty face crinkling into a toothy grin. Her laughter was high and flute-like, while I knew I guffawed like a trombone.
Band always put me in the mood to compare things to instruments. Jenny was a smooth saxophone, while I was a buzzy plastic kazoo. She had the slim body of a violin, while I was curved like a tuba. The only thing we had in common physically was that we were both female. And she was better at being female than I was.
I blew hot air into my mouthpiece and pushed on the spit valve. Four quick droplets leaked onto the cement floor. Wasted DNA, I thought. Ending up on the bottom of someone’s shoes.
At the end of fourth period, I visited Oliver in the resource room. I collapsed in the chair across from him.
“Hey,” he said. He began to motion toward the back of the room. “I was thinking you could help me today.”
“I can’t. I’m an abomination,” I moaned.
“Finally she admits it!” he said, smiling. “All these weeks just waiting for you to say it so I didn’t have to!”
“Shut up,” I said.
“What’s up, Drama Queen?”
I spoke without thinking. “My mom made me get a backpack with wheels on it. It’s the worst.”
“Are you kidding me?”
I immediately looked up from where I’d buried my head on the table.
“I basically am a rolling backpack,” Oliver said. “Am I an abomination?”
“No. That’s not what I meant—”
“You know, I let you complain a lot without saying anything back, but I think you need to put some things in perspective, Truth.”
I felt myself grow incredibly hot. For several seconds, I thought my skin would melt right off my body. I didn’t know if I should look away or look at Oliver to see what he would do, so I ended up swiveling my head in various directions until my gaze came to rest on his face.
Oliver was watching me, waiting to see what I would do next.
