by Amanda Davis
“DOES ANYONE IN THIS ROOM WANT TO DO PUSH-UPS? HUH? IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE G.D. CLASS?!”
Silence.
“WELL THEN YOU BETTER GET TO IT, UNDERSTAND?”
We did. We spent the rest of the period scribbling, doodling, and shading, in consecrated silence.
When the bell rang, the fat girl was waiting by my locker with a corn dog that she swirled in a small cup of ketchup.
“Hi,” I said. I was sleepy and my hand, which was covered in graphite from the number-two pencil, ached from all the drawing. “You missed a hell of a sub,” I told her, but she was deep into the corn dog. We walked to the bathroom. I saw Jenny Sims down the hall and wondered if she’d visited Andrea Dutton yet.
“Doubt it,” the fat girl said. She had ketchup on her chin and down the front of her blue shirt. I pointed at it. “Shit,” she said.
Ahead of us Jenny pushed through the bathroom doors and we followed. There was a cluster of five or six girls in there, so I had to wait for a sink. The fat girl stood in the corner dabbing at her chest with paper towels. Finally a sink opened up. In the mirror I could see that the bathroom had emptied out and I squirted my palms with stinky pink soap from the dispenser.
“Great,” said the fat girl. “Now you’re going to smell like a dentist’s office all day.”
“Shut up. Like you smell so great yourself,” I said, just as Jenny Sims walked out of a stall.
I froze. She raised her eyebrows and gave a little laugh. “Excuse me?” She looked around. “Who were you talking to?”
“No one.”
She opened her eyes wide. “Riiiiiiight,” she said slowly, then washed her hands and left.
“Hey,” the fat girl said.
I looked down; the water was still running and my hands were red. I turned it off and wiped them on my jeans. I had the dizzying feeling that the world had just tumbled away from me again.
“Oh shit,” I said, and we headed to English.
By fourth period I was convinced that everyone was laughing at me.
“You need to relax,” the fat girl said, but I kept my mouth shut, afraid to answer. We passed Tony Giobambera in the hall and he didn’t look at me. I stopped and turned to follow him, but the fat girl hooked my arm and dragged me to math.
Missy Groski smiled creepily when I walked in.
When I sat down she turned around. “Talk to yourself much, freak?” She shook her head and wrinkled her nose in disgust.
My face burned. Jenny was friends with Missy. I felt sick.
“Page two seventy-six,” Mrs. Lemont said.
By gym, I was a sweaty wreck. All of a sudden I’d been noticed, but in the wrong way, in an awful way. I told Coach Ford that I didn’t feel well and he let me sit on the bleachers even though I didn’t have a note—more proof that I was an acknowledged crazy person.
“You’re really paranoid,” the fat girl said.
The class was playing volleyball, split into four teams, rotating serves. The room was incredibly loud and echoed as balls slammed off the ceiling and walls and gym floor, and people yelled things back and forth to each other. I felt it might be safe to talk.
“Okay,” I said, trying to move my lips as little as possible. “How are we going to leave?”
“You want to get them back, Faith. To send a message, you have to make a move.”
“I don’t even know who they are,” I said, and my voice was small.
“I think you do.”
But I didn’t, did I? Everything seemed insurmountable. I stared at her until she met my gaze. “I really don’t know who they are,” I said. “Really.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Unbelievable.”
“But you know?”
She nodded.
I looked back at the game as a tall, muscled boy lunged at the net and missed a return. I bit my lip. “What exactly did you mean by make a move?” I said.
She watched me for a minute and then she smiled.
“All right,” she said. “Good.”
I was nervous to see Charlie again. I hadn’t worked since that late, confessional evening and I worried that he might behave as though nothing at all had happened. But I was wrong.
“Faith!” Charlie called from across the restaurant. “How’s my gal?” He was grinning. My whole body through to my bones relaxed and I smiled back at him. “Look at this,” he said when I got close enough. He unbuttoned and unrolled his sleeve to show me a huge white bandage with a dark stain, covering the middle of his forearm.
“What happened?”
“New tattoo,” he said.
I made a face. “I didn’t know they bled.”
“Totally normal.” But he winced as he carefully peeled the bandage back. On his arm was a carousel, very colorful and scabby.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. It was so detailed and intricate I could almost see it moving.
“Look carefully…what’s missing?”
I concentrated but I wasn’t sure. I blinked up at him and he smiled.
“It’s the brass ring,” I said half an hour later when we had both donned our aprons and were drying the silverware with bar mops.
“Huh?”
“That’s what’s missing, right?”
“You’re good,” he said, and smiled.
“Did your boyfriend get the brass ring on his arm?”
Charlie dropped a fork and clamped a hand over my mouth, his eyes wide with alarm. He hissed, “SHHHHHHHHHH,” and looked over his shoulder, but the chef was downstairs; the wait staff had only just begun to arrive and were chattering away in the dining room.
“Sorry,” I mumbled through his palm. And when he released me: “What’s wrong?”
“Look…no one knows about me here and I like it that way, okay?”
I nodded. All secrets were safe with me.
At school I was a robot, a Martian, a ghost. I floated through the halls with my mouth closed and my eyes open. I was stealthy, like a busgirl, but I was watching.
“Can you cover for me?” Charlie whispered. I had a tray of waters and the dining room was full.
“Whatever you need.”
“I’m just running to the bathroom.”
“No problem, Charlie. Go.”
He was gone twenty or thirty minutes. I cleared dishes so fast that Jerry, the dishwasher, gave me a dirty look. Finally Charlie returned, drowsy-eyed and amiable. He thanked me.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Anytime.”
He gave me the thumbs-up.
After chemistry, which I was barely passing, I walked home. Instead of Yander’s small houses and the neighborhoods beyond them, instead of the housing projects and then the lovely gates of our street, I saw city streets and skyscrapers. I saw the Eiffel Tower and the Mississippi River. I saw California hills and the Hollywood sign. I saw anything else I could conjure besides Gleryton.
By the Dumpster Charlie smoked with his thumb and forefinger. He exhaled upwards. I watched carefully and tried my hardest to copy him exactly. When he dropped a cigarette on the pavement, he ground it to nothing with one delicate twist of his right toe. I did the same. If we were very busy and very tired, sometimes we’d squat while we smoked, the relief in our tired legs making up for the discomfort. When he stood, he stretched his arms and twisted his back until it popped. I did the same, and followed him inside with the closest imitation of his cocky step that I could muster.
The fat girl had a banana muffin and was humming to herself as we walked along Darby Road. The morning air was chilly. I took mittens out of my pockets and watched my breath drift up and away from us like cigarette smoke. “What do you think of tattoos?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like his influence on you.”
“You’re just jealous because I have a friend.”
“Ha!” Then: “Faith, are you sure you can trust him?”
I turned sharply and examined her big soft face for some trace of guile, but she just stared back at me, a
ll unblinking innocence. I looked away and we kept walking. “I trust him,” I said.
“Really,” she said. “Because I don’t.”
Boys moved through the halls like packs of wild dogs. The fat girl watched me watch them. They were all different sizes, all different heights, but their limbs were somehow uniform, equalized by the similarity in their strides. They were loose and dangerous.
“They need to pay,” she whispered.
My stomach clenched and I scowled at her.
But I knew she was right.
My mother was waiting for me at home after my shift. “We don’t talk,” she said when I sat opposite her at the kitchen table. “I don’t see you anymore.”
It sounded rehearsed. I was tired, but I’d been expecting this. I’d been expecting something from her.
“What do you want to talk about?”
Silence. She had an empty glass in front of her and she put it to her mouth as though to take a drink, then put it down again. She rubbed both eyes with one hand. “I don’t know,” she said finally, her voice low.
I waited for something else, but it didn’t come and the minutes just kept ticking by. I was going to leave her alone in this house. I’d been convinced that it would be easier for her, that secretly she wanted me gone as much as I wanted to go, but now I wondered at that. She looked ragged, my mother. Stretched thin and taut. It had never occurred to me that she could be as lonely as me in this house. I licked my lips and groped around for a way to talk to her. “Are you okay?” I said.
“Of course.”
She sounded cold, which was enough of a warning signal that I had misjudged her mood. “I think I’ll go to bed,” I said. “I’m exhausted. It was busy tonight.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and picked up the glass again, studying it as though it hid some secret small world in its recesses. Then she cleared her throat.
“I know that you’ve been smoking, Faith. That is unacceptable.”
A snort escaped and I spoke without thinking. “Since when have I ever been acceptable to you?”
She looked like she’d been slapped. “You will not speak to me like that, young lady.” Her gray eyes were hard and angry and her voice was low. “You are my goddamn daughter and as long as you live under this roof there are rules. You do not smoke. When you’re grown up you can act like a low-class heathen, but until then you will do as I say. Am I understood?” She was standing now, leaning forward.
“Yes,” I said, staring at her hands balled into fists, her knuckles white against the table. I waited until she rose to refill her glass before slipping upstairs to the sanctuary of my room.
Jenny Sims giggled at me in the hall. They all did. Everyone laughed at me or averted their eyes. That’s that girl who talks to herself, their gesturing eyebrows seemed to say. The one from Homecoming—you’ve heard about her.
I walked without seeing anything, my vision blurry, but I felt the sea of gawkers part, felt heads turn as I passed. And I left a whispering wake.
Another evening. Charlie leaned against the Dumpster when I came outside. He appeared to be falling asleep. His head floated down to his chest and then bobbed up again.
“Charlie?”
His expression was dopey. He gave me a lazy smile.
“You get any sleep last night?”
He didn’t answer. Then shook his head and closed his eyes again. I went back inside and set up by myself. When Emily asked where Chuck was I said he’d gone downstairs for ice. About an hour after the dinner rush started, Charlie was on the floor, refilling waters and clearing dishes. I was moving too fast to watch him. I’d been doing the work of two as furiously as I could by then, hoping to keep such order that Charlie’s absence would go unregistered.
“Thanks, doll,” he whispered when he passed me on my way out of the kitchen. His words made my whole evening shimmer.
“I bet he has one,” the fat girl said, and gestured towards Tony Giobambera with a corn muffin. It was smoking time. Tony Giobambera took another drag and we watched, leaning against the low wall and shivering in the nippy air.
“I bet he has a tattoo,” she said again.
“Where do you think it is?”
“I’d say right below his belly button.”
I giggled, but she didn’t. “Okay, what do you think it is?” I asked, and nudged her in the arm. She was staring at him intently.
“Maybe…” she began, and then was quiet.
“Maybe what?”
“Nothing,” she said, and took a big bite of the muffin.
“What?” I said again, but she ignored me and all of a sudden I was uneasy. “You really do think he has a tattoo?”
“Faith.” She was warning me. Why was she warning me?
“Come on,” I said. “A tattoo below his belly button, what do you think it is?”
“I think it’s a fat girl,” she said, and I filled with icy water. “A fat girl on her knees.”
“Him?” I asked with my eyes closed. The world shifted slightly on its axis. I was cold and hot all at once.
She took a gulp of coffee. She gave a slight but definitive nod.
“I’m not ready,” I said. “I’m not ready,” but I felt something hard and cold growing in my belly, like a rigid little stone, solid and uncompromising.
“Tony Giobambera.” I was floating above us, held to the world by my angry little rock.
The fat girl shrugged. “One,” she said.
“Faith, you seem distracted,” Fern said. “Is there something on your mind?”
“No.” I shook my head for emphasis. “Not at all. I’m just fine.”
“Do you feel healthy?” she asked. “Are you still running?”
“Sure,” I said. “But maybe not as fast.”
She looked up but I didn’t care. I was calm. I was strong.
I met her gaze.
She scribbled away.
“Two and Three,” the fat girl said softly, and I followed her eyes. They were laughing at their lockers.
“Four,” she said later. “Five. Six.” They walked easily along the same halls as me. My pebble became a stone became a boulder. I was solid from the inside out.
“Seven,” she whispered. The bell rang.
We were behind the restaurant a few days later and it was late.
“I want to meet your boyfriend sometime,” I said.
Charlie lit a joint.
“Well,” he said, and took a deep drag. I had to wait a minute for the rest of the sentence. “…that can be arranged. You’d like him. Marco can be inspirational.”
He grinned at me. I reached for the joint. I had never smoked pot before and told Charlie this. “It’s up to you,” he said. I took the paper between my fingers and held it to my lips and inhaled.
“Hold it,” he said.
I blew the smoke out. I felt entirely normal. What on earth was the big deal?
“It takes a while,” he said. “You’ll see.”
I shivered. It was cold to be out here like this, but beautiful also. The night was clear; the stars were spilled salt on a black table. I took another drag and my lungs felt open and enormous. We sat quietly for a moment. Then Charlie produced a chocolate bar from the pocket of his coat and unwrapped it slowly. I watched the way his fingers worked and marveled at how lovely they were, how fine and thin and delicate.
“Now you gotta try this,” Charlie said.
“Your hands,” I said. “Beautiful.” It was all I could manage. The air was sharp in my lungs. Words seemed difficult, heavy and thick. “Wow,” I said. The inadequacy of language floated before me in all its complex magnitude.
Charlie laughed and held out a piece of chocolate. I took it and its sweetness filled my mouth like a rich, gorgeous song. It was the most amazing thing I had ever tasted.
“You, my sweet friend, are stoned.”
I smiled and felt my entire face spring alive.
We let the chocolate melt in our mouths. I was full to over
flowing, things were fighting their way out. I took a deep breath and it all swam in me, everything pushing itself up, howling to be heard.
“You wanted to know why we’re leaving,” I said.
Charlie nodded. “Who’s we?”
So I told him about the fat girl.
“Is she here right now?” he asked.
She wasn’t. Once she’d seen the joint and heard me start speaking she’d shaken her head. The look she gave me. She knew. And she left quickly, arms crossed over her chest, eyes lowered to watch her feet. She’d set out into the night. But she’d be back.
I shook my head. “She doesn’t like you,” I said. “She doesn’t trust you.” My mouth was dry.
“Well, why should she? I’m not sure I would if I were her.”
I looked into his pale blue eyes and they confused me. “Would you if you were me?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You do. That’s what matters. You do or you wouldn’t tell me about her or leaving.”
He was right. My skin felt like marshmallows.
“Or why,” he said.
His face was a little uneven, a little off center. His spiky red hair was tucked up in a gray ski cap that covered his ears. His eyes were big and lashy. They looked like marbles, like azure coins.
“I haven’t told anyone,” I said, and took a deep breath. I tried to choke it down a little but I couldn’t help it, I began to cry, silently, tears that fell in warm lines down my cheeks.
“Aw, Faith,” he said and put his arm around me. The canvas of his jacket was rough and smelled like stale smoke and restaurant. I leaned against him and felt small and very tired.
Homecoming.
Homecoming.
Homecoming.
I told him. It was strange how calm I was saying it, how the words arrived one after the other in long perfect sentences, and as they did I could see it vividly, the night cold like this, the red punch that had warmed me, the plastic cups. The hands, the dirt beneath the bleachers.
There were nine in total. Nine guys who’d done it. Eight who made me gag and one who’d held me down for the others. One who’d pinned my arms and pinched my nose so my mouth fell open. One who’d squeezed my body with his knees to hold me while they came at me one after the other, unzipped and laughing. He’d worn a ring. It’s what I saw while they approached, that and their belts, their jeans.
