7 Souls

by Barnabas Miller; Jordan Orlando

Mary had no idea what to do. She heard herself whimpering, which alarmed her, and tried to stop, to get a grip. Moving to the wall, she collapsed against the lockers and slid to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking back and forth. She only realized that she’d lost track of time when the bell clanged again, hammering her eardrums, and then the same deafening ballet started all over again, the classroom doors banging open and the students leaping out like racehorses obeying a starting gun. Mary didn’t move until someone—Jenny Mullen, a junior she barely knew—tripped over her knees and nearly went sprawling across the floor, her book bag spilling its contents.

  “Damn it!” Jenny yelled, glaring at Mary balefully. “Like, get out of the road, yo! You’re totally in the way.”

  “Sorry,” Mary said, rising dutifully to her feet.

  I’m totally in the way.

  Despair was flooding over her like quicksand. This was supposed to be the day she was the center of attention. Everybody has a day like that, once a year—it’s as basic as breathing—and this was supposed to be hers. Instead, she was “totally in the way.” It wasn’t fair at all.

  “Hey, snap out of it!”

  The voice was very familiar and very close. Mary was thinking about the black house in the field of snow—the place she was absolutely sure she didn’t remember, didn’t recognize. It took her a moment to focus and realize that somebody was standing right in front of her, speaking to her—somebody she knew.

  “Mary? What the hell—you look awful.”

  Amy Twersky, Mary’s best friend (her other best friend, she corrected herself), was looking at her intently. Mary felt a wave of relief at the sight of Amy’s familiar, beloved face. She’d somehow managed to miss all her friends so far that day—it was the first time she’d seen Amy since arriving at school.

  Amy was pretty—pale, like a figure in a Renaissance portrait, freckle-faced, with long, flowing orange-red locks—but Mary saw she was downplaying her looks, as usual. Amy was the most self-conscious person Mary had ever met. She looked adorable today: she was wearing a cute Gaultier bubble dress with studded Balenciaga gladiator sandals. But she’d hidden the entire top half of the dress with a smocklike J. Crew cardigan.

  Amy had no self-esteem. That had been true for as long as Mary could remember: back to the second grade, when they “officially” became best friends—there was an actual Best Friend Contract buried somewhere in Mary’s bedroom closet, scrawled out in marker and sprinkled with purple sparkles, notarized by Hello Kitty and signed with thick red Crayolas.

  “Hi, Amy,” she said weakly. She couldn’t muster anything else. The rush-hour crowd of yelling students and the slamming of lockers meant they had to raise their voices, but Mary didn’t want to make the effort. It didn’t seem worth it.

  “I’m sorry,” Amy said quickly. “You don’t look awful—I can’t believe I said that. You look beautiful, totally beautiful. You look hot.”

  There was no way to stop Amy from apologizing for everything, Mary knew; she had tried many times, over and over. Finally she’d given up.

  “That’s okay,” she said automatically. “I do look bad. I’m—I’m having a bad day.”

  Amy nodded sympathetically.

  That’s it? Mary found herself wondering. You’re just going to nod? No “Sorry to hear that”? No “Happy birthday”?

  But that was asking for the moon, she thought bitterly. For some reason, nobody was going to say it (except Ellen, at home this morning, she amended). She believed she would get through the entire day without a single birthday greeting. She’d stopped minding—honestly.

  Everyone’s against me today. The whole world’s against me.

  Rather than fishing for it, rather than playing word games and hoping Amy would come to her senses and say happy birthday (and apologize and turn red), Mary just reached for her friend and pulled her close, hugging her. She couldn’t help it; she just felt so helpless and alone.

  Amy stiffened. She always stiffened when Mary hugged her; Mary wasn’t sure why. Amy’s arms came up slowly and hugged back, her thumbs tracing the curves of Mary’s shoulder blades.

  “I’m having such a bad day,” Mary said into Amy’s cloud of Renaissance hair, a lump forming in her throat that she forced herself to ignore. “Patrick dumped me.”

  “What?” Amy pulled away, her eyes wide. “He did what?”

  “Broke up with me. This morning.”

  “What? What?” Amy stared at her. “Wait a second. You’re not messing with me?”

  Mary shook her head. “Not messing with you.”

  “Is he insane?” Amy wondered. “He broke up with you? That’s like …” Amy pushed her hair back from her face, groping for words. “That’s like, I don’t know, winning the lottery and then throwing the ticket away.”

  “Thanks,” Mary said hollowly. It was a nice thing to say, but somehow it didn’t help. “Look, Amy, can you just—can you just make sure you’ve got my back today? I don’t know what’s wrong with—”

  “Of course.” Amy squeezed her shoulder, her eyebrows climbing, yearningly. “I’ll do anything for you. You know that.”

  “Everything except miss your next class,” Mary said. She was starting to feel better—and she realized that the corridor’s population was thinning out. Amy had a couple of minutes to get to wherever she was going. “Thanks, Ame. Really.”

  “What about your next class?” Amy was checking her watch. “Didn’t you just have some big test or someth—”

  “I’m going to the nurse,” Mary told her. She’d made up her mind, just like that. “I’m not—There’s something wrong. I can’t explain; I just … I just don’t feel right.”

  “Well, you look great,” Amy said again, her eyes roving appreciatively up and down Mary’s figure. “You’ve got that going for you. Why do you always look so pretty, damn it? I’m such a cow.”

  Mary had stopped listening because she saw Scott Sanders at the other end of the corridor. Scott was walking briskly, hurrying to his next class, his overstuffed red book-bag bouncing behind him, his thick legs jiggling within his pleated khakis. “Hey!” she yelled, making Amy flinch and then turn to see whom she was yelling at. “Hey, Scott!”

  “Mary?” Scott squinted quizzically at her. “What in the Sam Hill is the matter with you, woman?”

  “What—” Mary couldn’t figure out what Scott meant. Scott always used corny phrases like What in the Sam Hill and How in blue blazes. “What do you mean, what’s the matter with me? I was about to ask you the same—”

  “I’m sorry,” Amy interrupted, squeezing Mary’s shoulder. “I’ve got to get to Art History—I’ll catch up with you.”

  Amy leaned to kiss Mary on the cheek and then sprinted away. Mary was barely listening—all her attention was on Scott.

  “You just skipped the test,” Scott marveled. “Brilliant; innovative. Did you actually think that would work? Shama even asked us where you were, since your name’s not on the absent list. Do you realize what kind of bloody hell is going to descend upon you?”

  “Never mind that,” Mary said impatiently. She was peering at Scott’s plump, pleasant face, looking for some sign of the blind panic she’d seen there mere hours before. “What happened this morning? What were you—what were you warning me about?”

  (Look out, you’re in danger!)

  “What?” Scott’s blue eyes looked baffled. “What are you talking about? ‘Warning’ you? The only thing I’d warn you about is Mr. Shama, because you’ll have to—”

  “Scott!” Mary had grabbed both his shoulders. They were the only people in the corridor now—everyone else had vanished into classrooms and all the doors had shut. “Scott, this morning, in front of the school you, like, ran toward me, screaming that I was in danger.”

  Scott was shaking his head. He looked completely baffled. “Mary, what are you talking about? Are you, like, zonked out on drugs or something?”

  “They beat the shit out of you!” Mary yelled.
Scott flinched—Mary actually saw a droplet of her own spit land on his gold-framed glasses. She realized she was shaking him. “Pete Schocken and Silly Billy and the rest of the damn team—they surrounded you and took you down!”

  “Mary, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with you?”

  She let go of his arms. I’m raving, she realized fearfully. I’m raving like one of those homeless people that everyone pretends they can’t see.

  What’s happening to me?

  “Scott,” she asked hopelessly, “don’t you remember this morning? Don’t you remember running down the street and screaming at me?”

  “This is the first time I’ve seen you all day.” Scott was looking past her, around her, trying to figure out if anyone else was lurking nearby—exhibiting the healthy paranoia of the geek who never knows when he’s going to get persecuted. “Listen, is this some kind of senior prank or something? Because I don’t think it’s very funny.”

  He doesn’t remember, Mary thought, amazed. She was sure of it—she could see it in his eyes. He really doesn’t remember.

  There was another possibility, one she didn’t want to consider.

  Or it didn’t happen.

  Patrick hadn’t noticed or reacted, she remembered. He’d guided her down the street like nothing unusual was happening at all.

  “Listen, I’ve got AP calculus,” Scott said nervously, checking his antique wristwatch. “I’m sorry, but the big joke’s going to have to wait.”

  I’m losing it, Mary thought. I’m going crazy; I’m remembering stuff that didn’t happen.

  She let go of Scott’s shoulders and let him pull away, not watching as he sprinted down the hallway.

  A black house with no lights, standing alone beneath a dark sky.

  “Something’s wrong with me,” Mary said out loud. She was alone now; her voice echoed strangely in her ears. Something’s wrong with my brain. I have to see the nurse. She started moving, walking toward the stairwell, trying to ignore the cold fear that was spreading through her like winter frost.

  BY THREE IN THE afternoon Mary was outside the school, leaning on the black wrought-iron bars of the Chadwick gates, hands in pockets, book bag on the ground between her feet. She was staring at the lines in the sidewalk, which were actually kind of peaceful and soothing to look at. The school day was ending soon and she could hear the clashing of the school’s doors behind her as kids came out, just a few this early, the beginning of the tide that would engulf the sidewalk with a deafening clamor of voices and ringing cell phones and pounding feet; the repeat of the scene that had started the day.

  Why am I still here?

  Mary wasn’t sure. There was no reason not to leave and go home. Nobody was talking to her. Nobody cared about her. She stared at the sidewalk and saw passing shoes and trouser cuffs and the occasional skateboard or Razor scooter, but she refused to look up. I won’t look up until somebody talks to me, she thought. But that means I’ll still be standing here when the sun goes down.

  The nurse had been useless. Mary had waited behind a couple of seventh graders who had cut themselves doing some kind of experiment in science class and needed disinfectant and gauze bandages and wouldn’t stop crying, as if their small wounds were the most extreme pain they’d ever experienced. Shut up! Mary wanted to shout at them as she sat and fidgeted in the chair on the other side of the nurses’ station’s white curtains. You think that’s pain? You don’t know what pain is.

  I know what pain is, she thought. It wasn’t something that happened to you on the surface; it was something that hit you far, far deeper inside. She could feel the hurt floating in her stomach, beneath the outfit she’d worked so hard at putting together but that nobody had cared about. This is the definition of pain—the worst day of my life, and there’s not a scratch on me.

  Except that wasn’t true, was it?

  The scratches on Mary’s lower back seemed to have closed up and started to heal, but the skin was still tender. She still had no idea where she’d gotten them, or what had happened the night before.

  I hope I had fun, she thought bitterly, because I’m sure not having any today.

  “There’s something wrong with my brain,” she’d told the nurse helplessly, when the two desperately wounded seventh graders had left and it was her turn. The nurse, a stocky Eastern European woman with a solid helmet of hair pulled back into a bun that looked like a steel soap pad, dutifully took her vitals and made her look at some flashing lights and asked her some simple questions, never really hiding her own skepticism. Mary couldn’t blame her—how many privileged young hypochondriacs did this woman have to deal with every day?—but she became more and more uneasy at the thought that nothing was wrong with her; that she was being a princess, a crybaby, a little girl starved for attention and not getting it and feeling sick because of it.

  Or maybe there’s something really wrong with me, she’d thought as the nurse rose briskly to her feet and impatiently waved Mary away. Maybe this is one of those brain tumors or ski accident things where nobody notices anything wrong until it’s too late. She even had tried to ask the nurse about that, but the woman just shook her head impatiently, ordered Mary to go back to class and turned to the sophomore football player (Kip something) with the sprained knee who was waiting his turn.

  The wind was picking up, out in front of the school, an hour later. The sky had not cleared. Mary drew her trench coat more tightly around her and continued staring at the grooves in the dirty sidewalk, realizing she’d memorized them. She knew she should go home. She’d long since given up on getting a “Happy birthday”—that was the impossible dream—but she’d settle for a simple “Hey, Mary” from somebody she knew, or even somebody she didn’t.

  Oh, who are you kidding? Go home. Nobody cares; not Patrick, not anyone else. How much clearer can they make it? All she was doing was making it worse for herself. She could just go home and take a bath and go to bed and sleep late tomorrow morning and watch Saturday cartoons and then maybe throw herself off the Brooklyn Bridge. The only reason she was staying at Chadwick—the only reason she hadn’t left, after cutting all her classes—was because home meant her own dismal little room and Mom calling out for her cigarettes and blended orange juice. Maybe watching some MTV or even soaps on the damn Daewoo television, which sucked … and that was just too pathetic a way to spend her seventeenth birthday. She drew the line at sitting at home watching television—she would rather stand here leaning against this metal gate and be ignored and wait for—

  “Hey.”

  A male voice—one she didn’t know—coming from right in front of her. She could see a pair of scuffed Puma running shoes and the cuffs of some worn-out jeans without moving her eyes. Somebody telling me to move, Mary thought dully. I’m in somebody’s way, again. Somebody has to unlock their bike or something.

  “Mary? Hey. You all right?”

  I won’t look up, Mary thought. It’s not worth it. I don’t even know who’s talking to me, and I don’t care. I refuse to find out.

  The Pumas didn’t move. Whoever this person was, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You sure?” Mary realized that she had been wrong: there was something familiar about the voice. “You don’t look fine.”

  Slowly Mary raised her head.

  It was Dylan. Ellen’s friend Dylan, from the roof.

  “Are you looking for Ellen?”

  Dylan shook his head, brushing his hair back from his forehead and giving her a clear look at his face—which wasn’t bad, surprisingly. She hadn’t seen what he looked like up close: it was the effect of his olive complexion, his thick stubble, and his messed-up hair. He looked like an Indie Rock version of one of those French poets on the covers of Ellen’s old books.

  “No, I’m not looking for Ellen. I’m actually looking for you.”

  What?

  Mary pushed herself away from the gate and stood upright, bringing herself closer to Scruffy Dylan, wh
o, apparently, was looking for her. At this point in the day, she figured she was ready for whatever dismal surprises were still to come. After a birthday like this, what else could go wrong? She didn’t know, but she had a hunch she was about to find out.

  “Why are you—why are you looking for me?”

  “Yeah … well …” Dylan rocked on his feet, staring down at the ground, his hands jammed in his jeans pockets. As she waited he took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “Okay, no more beating around the bush. It’s like this: how’d you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

  Mary had thought she’d had some idea what to expect—but she had not been prepared for this. She was so startled, so surprised, that she couldn’t speak; she just stared at him, waiting while he slowly raised his eyes to meet hers.

  “Okay, bad idea,” Dylan said quickly. “Bad—bad idea; I get it. Never mind; forget I asked. It was stupid of me to—”

  “No, wait,” Mary said, shaking her head. “Wait, I’m just surprised, that’s all. You want … you’re asking me out to dinner?”

  “Yeah.” Dylan nodded calmly. “I’m asking you out to dinner. I thought”—he paused, looking at her, tilting his head while he fumbled for words—“you’re obviously having a bad day and I’ve been wanting to ask you out, so here I am.” He smiled in a way that seemed to say, My fate is in your hands. “Don’t be too mean—before you cut me down to size, let me just, um, diffidently point out that it takes a little bit of courage to do this.”

  “But—” Mary was at sea. “You mean tonight? This evening? You want to go to dinner tonight.”

  “That’s right. Do you have other plans?”

  He’s got to be kidding, Mary thought. Right? This is a joke.

  But she could see that he wasn’t kidding. It was obvious, looking at his face.

  “No,” she said finally. “I guess I don’t. Have any other plans, I mean.”

  “Okay.” Dylan nodded. His eyes were uncommonly green, she noticed. “Look, please—go ahead and shoot me down quickly, because the longer that takes, the less pleasant it will be.”

  “But you don’t even know me.”