by Mindy Raf
Okay, yes, I worry about Mom, and about me, and I guess about things in general, but worrying isn’t being negative, it’s … being prepared. And it’s not like Mom’s just relying on me to be prepared, and doesn’t need Allissa. If anything, she relies on Allissa much more than me; like every time she needs advice about a client, or what to wear, or a billion other little things where I’m sure I’d completely drop the ball.
I grab my phone off my dresser and check the time. It’s four in the morning. Then I drop it down again like it grew spikes, remembering that awful voicemail still inside it. Now I have a Jacob Ullman choking-seagull laugh track playing on a loop inside my head. Thinking about tomorrow gives me this terrible, queasy feeling.
Maybe I can switch schools. Or maybe by some miracle I’ll finish my portfolio in time, and I’ll get picked to go to Italy this summer, and then I’ll leave the country and never come back.
CHAPTER 19
I’ve gone digital.
In Spanish the next day, I try to own the noise.
I read this book once about meditating, and it said that the only way to silence unwanted noise in your head is to accept it and own it. I have no idea what that means, but it’s what I’ve been trying to do all day.
So when I stand up to get a tissue in Spanish and I hear Jacob whisper, “Whew, it’s cold in here, just a bit nippley,” I try to own the noise, especially since I know there’s no way I look “nippley” in a bulky sweater with a T-shirt underneath it and a Lola’s bra underneath the T-shirt.
During a pop quiz in algebra, I try to own the noise, even though Aaron Napert is constantly tapping my shoulder, and when I finally give in and turn around, he and rest of the guys in his row start coughing and sneezing the words tits and boobs.
Okay, so I don’t think I’ve owned even a decibel of noise today. In fact, I feel like I’m living through one of those dreams people have—the one where you arrive at school and realize that you forgot to put your clothes on. Except I’m definitely wearing clothes today. I’m even wearing my wool ski socks because it’s raining and water always soaks through the soles of my shoes. I refuse to wear the rain boots my mom picked out because they have neon-green polka dots and smiley faces on them. Allissa says I could make them look hip if I wanted to, but I don’t want to make them look hip. I just want to keep them in my closet. My point is, I’m fully clothed today, thick ski socks, Lola’s grandma bra, sweater, the whole shebang. And yet I feel like I’m walking around totally naked with LOOK AT ME AND SNICKER spray-painted across my boobs.
Thank God Mom’s picking me up. Today is the perfect day to leave school early. I’m going with her to see Dr. Madson, and I might have to drive her home if they need to do a lot of blood work, which is scary because I’ve only had my permit for like three months.
At my locker, I check my face in the tiny mirror to be sure I don’t have any giant boogers and see a paper bag on the top shelf that wasn’t there this morning. It says Thinking of You on the outside, and there’s a chocolate chip scone inside. When I went to the drama room this morning to tell Jenna that I wouldn’t be at rehearsal today, the door was locked, so I just assumed Jenna was still mad. Maybe she still is. Though I’m pretty sure it’s her writing.
I’m grabbing a notebook out of my locker when I feel something pointy hit my head. A paper airplane lands at my feet. How mature. I’m about to wad it up and throw it right back at Nate and Jacob, who are standing across from me at their lockers, and making a big deal of acting like they’re not paying attention to me at all, when I see that the plane says “read me” on one of the wings. I reluctantly open it up, and there in large, scrawling capital letters is “NICE TITS!!!”
I feel my nose tighten. My chin is starting to tremble. I keep my eyes focused on the contents of my locker, and slowly crumple the paper in my fist. I will not let those guys see me crying over a stupid paper airplane.
Mom’s not picking me up for another ten minutes, but I think I should just head outside to wait for her now.
“Hey, Izzy.” I see Meredith’s strawberry hair out of the corner of my eye.
“Hey.”
“Have you seen it?” she says in this weird hushed, detective-like tone.
“What?”
“Well, I haven’t seen it yet,” Meredith whispers, “but I hear it’s pretty bad. Let me know when you see it, I have some theories.”
“Meredith, what are you—”
“Crap, chem test! We’ll talk later, okay?”
“No, wait—” I say, grabbing my coat and backpack, trying to catch up with her as she jets down the hall and out of sight.
“Delete it! I swear to God!” I hear Blake’s voice loud and clear, which stops me in my tracks. “I’m gonna kill you guys! Give it to me!” He’s shouting now, jumping up after Nate, who’s holding his phone high above his head.
“No way, dude,” Nate says, laughing.
“I erased it, what the hell?” Blake says, getting more and more worked up.
“Jacob sent it to my phone when you were taking a piss.” Nate is triumphant. “And I’ve sent it on to the taskmaster. I did you a favor, dude. You’re welcome.”
Blake lunges at him and people start to crowd around, waiting for a fight.
“Calm the hell down, Blake! I’m keeping it,” Nate says, backing away from Blake.
“Yeah me too. It’s sooo pretty,” Jacob adds.
“Yeah!” Nate laughs. “It’s reeeeally pretty.”
Blake actually pushes Nate to the ground then. And when he does, the phone goes flying across the hall and skids into my right foot.
I pick it up. I don’t know why I do, it all happens so fast. At first I don’t understand what I’m seeing and then, oh my God, gross! I know boys download pictures from the Internet, but I didn’t think they kept them as screen savers on cell phones! Then I drop the phone on the ground because my hands are shaking too much to hold it. I recognized something in the picture. The sweater. The fuzzy green sweater above the boob.
I lunge down for the phone, needing to take another look, but Tim Clawson swoops in and snatches it away. “I believe this belongs to us,” he says, which makes him and all the senior guys around him laugh.
“Izzy!” I hear Blake calling after me, but I’m already halfway down the hallway, and I don’t stop. I’m holding my hands over my mouth and running straight to the girls’ bathroom because—
I make it there just in time.
• • •
I’ve never run at this speed, for so long, in my entire life. Still, I can’t seem to get home fast enough. I’m getting completely soaked too. Well, except for my socks; my trusty old ski socks.
I want to die. I want to sink into the wet pavement and just die. And then I want to kill Blake Hangry. I want to come back to life and stab him in the head. I want to shoot him. I want to strangle him. I want to poison him. I want him drawn and quartered. I want him to be tortured medieval style, or like that Edgar Allan Poe movie we had to watch for English; something about a pendulum. I want all those things to be done to him, and then I want to die again. Because no matter what happens to him, my boob—my naked, large, disgusting, nasty, ugly boob—will still be saved inside every cell phone of every guy on the varsity basketball team and God knows who else forever.
When I see Mom’s car in the driveway, I feel like I might be sick again. But at least she hasn’t left yet to pick me up from school. I enter the house through the back door that connects to our laundry room and strip off all my wet clothes. I catch a glance of my reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall and turn my head away. I can’t even look at myself.
“Izzy? Is that you?” I hear Mom heading down the stairs and quickly throw on a pair of clean jeans and a sweater from the laundry basket on top of the dryer.
“It’s me!” I yell back. “I … I decided to walk home!”
“I was just on my way to pick you up [cough]. You should have called. What if we missed each other and—”
She stops in mid-sentence when she walks in and gets a look at me. “Oh my God, Izzy, you’re soaked! Why [cough] did you walk home in the rain? What were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t raining that hard when I left and … I got out of class early, so I just thought I’d walk.”
“Okay, well then … [cough]. Well, okay. I guess we’ll leave as soon as you blow-dry your hair.”
“Okay,” I say, avoiding her eyes. Then, “You all right?” I ask, because she’s leaning against the wall, and even though she’s got on her makeup and winter bronzer, she still looks pale. Also, some of the polish on her left hand is chipped. It’s miniscule but this is a first and I can’t take my eyes off of it. “Mom?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Oh, Izzy, I can’t believe you [cough] went and did something like this [cough] and your hair looked so perfect this morning.” She sighs.
I tell her I’m sorry again and then head upstairs to quickly blow-dry my hair back to perfection so we won’t be late for the appointment with Dr. Madson.
• • •
“You’re beeping again,” I tell Mom as her cell phone goes off for what seems like the hundredth time in her purse.
“I know, I know,” she says, keeping her eyes on the road. “Will you silence it, sweetie? I can never figure out how to do it.”
I reach into her purse and pull out her phone. I see that she has three missed calls from Cathy Mason. Cathy knows! Does Cathy know? Maybe she does, and she’s already told Mom via voicemail. Or maybe she’s told her already, and Mom’s just playing it cool, waiting for me to fess up. I search her face, but she just coughs a couple of times and checks her spotless teeth in the rearview mirror.
“Who called?” she asks me.
“Cathy Mason, a bunch of times,” I mumble.
“Oh, no. You know what? Hand me my phone, I have to listen to my messages.”
“Why? Is everything okay?”
“Actually, no, Izzy. No,” she says, shaking her head, “everything is not okay. I’ve spoken to Cathy Mason already today. Twice,” she adds.
I feel like my chest is filling up again, like my neck is the middle of an hourglass, and the sand’s just sliding down.
“What’s going on?” I manage to get out. But Mom holds up her finger, listening to her voicemails.
It’s probably only been about three minutes, but it feels like three years go by before she hands her phone back to me to put away. And now she’s shaking her head again, and coughing, and saying, “These kids, these stupid kids.”
“Mom, is everything—”
“Izzy, are you aware that pornographic content is being distributed among your entire school?”
Okay. So you know that special power Superman has, where he blows cold air on the bad guys and then they freeze solid? Well, hearing Mom’s words turns me into one of those frozen-solid bad guys.
“Pornographic content,” Mom repeats, and lets out a long sigh, which freezes me further. “Cathy just confirmed, it’s your class!”
“What’s my class?”
“I’m sorry, sweetie, I’m just so … unnerved. Early this afternoon, I got a call from Jackie Ullman, who got a call from Bari Robertson [cough], who got a call from Jillian Dodgers, whose daughter Wendy called her from school in tears and told her that David Seltzer [cough] forced her to look at a lewd picture! Of a naked breast! That he had on his cellular phone [cough]! And during gym class!”
“Oh … my God.” Oh God, oh God, oh God. Just crash the car into a tree right now, Mom. It’ll be better for everyone.
“I know,” Mom says, the perfect line of black under her eyes stretching out as she widens them. “And apparently David was tormenting poor Wendy, asking her if she was jealous, and telling her she had a chessboard chest. Or no … a checkerboard chest? I don’t know, but—”
“What?”
“Yes! So cruel and immature and—and well, her mother was so outraged, she called David’s parents. That’s what Cathy was just calling about, that David Seltzer was called into Mrs. Preston’s office, and he said it wasn’t his picture, but that it was sent to him, and that, apparently, it’s a photo of a girl in your class. Somebody in your class, Izzy!”
Don’t black out, don’t black out, don’t black out, just keep talking, keep your voice normal, don’t throw up, don’t throw up, just breathe. Breathe. Breathe! “So do they um … know who it is?” I ask.
“No, not yet. Maybe Meredith Brightwell [cough], one of those types of girls, probably. It’s so sad. I feel bad for Stacy.”
“What do you mean one of those types of girls?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Mom, Meredith isn’t one of ‘those types of girls.’ She didn’t even do that in the bathroom with Nate Yube. It was just an awful rumor.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“It’s true!”
“I’m not saying she’s a bad person, Izzy. But those skirts she wears … If she lifts her arms too high, her whole factory is exposed. And those heels, I don’t know how she walks in them … and that red lipstick … how her mom lets her out of the house in that nafka attire is—”
“Why does that matter?” I ask, my voice rising in volume. “You think she did that in the bathroom just because she wears short skirts?”
“Izzy, lower your voice.”
But I don’t. “And you think I’d never do something like that because I wear baggy sweaters?”
“No! What? You know I hate those baggy sweaters.”
“So you’d rather I wear tighter clothes? Like Meredith?”
“What? No!”
“Because you can’t have it both ways, Mom, and it doesn’t matter anyway because everything’s out there, and—”
“What? What are you saying? What are you yelling about?”
“I just—I don’t know. Forget it.”
“Well, I can’t drive with you [cough] yelling like this. Especially … [cough] when I’m not … feeling well,” she coughs out, digging her chipped fuchsia nail into the fabric of the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry. I … well … maybe then that’s what we should focus on—getting you feeling better, and not some picture of some poor girl who we don’t … even know.”
Mom responds to that by pressing PLAY on the CD player.
My life is sunshine lollipops and rainbows that’s how this refrain goes so come on, join in, everybody! Sunshine lollipops …
• • •
“We just missed the shuttle to Dr. Madson’s wing,” Mom says an hour later as we pull into the parking lot of the Pittsfield Medical Village and watch a bus pass by our car. “We’ll have to wait for the next one.”
“Okay,” I say.
As we sit in the parked car, waiting, Mom concentrates her gaze on me like I’m a line on an eye doctor’s chart. And for a moment I think she knows, I think she knows everything. Then she leans in toward me, pushes a chunk of my hair behind my ears, and says, “They did such a good job with your layers. It’s going to grow out really well.”
I nod and give her a small smile, concentrating on taking as many mental snapshots as I can right now, while she still thinks I’m not one of those girls.
CHAPTER 20
I didn’t know it could morph.
You’d think they’d build a huge medical center, where lots of sad and serious stuff happens, somewhere that’s a little sunnier than Pittsfield, Michigan. It’s only a couple of hours from home, but the Pittsfield Medical Village feels like another country, where the language is hushed tones and the currency is crisp dollars bills that the vending machines won’t spit out.
Dr. Madson has his own floor. It’s one big main, circular area with all these hallways going off in different directions. If you looked at it from above, I imagine you’d see kind of like a spider’s body, or if you’re feeling optimistic, a sunburst. The main area is pretty spacious with a big nurses’ station in the center, and clusters of chairs all around it.
I�
�m sitting in one of those chairs, and I know it’s only been a couple of hours, but I feel like I’ve been at this hospital and on Dr. Madson’s rare-stomach-cancer floor for centuries. Mom’s still having tests done, or maybe she’s already talking with Dr. Madson about the results. I’m really not sure because I haven’t heard anything from anybody since the nurse came and took her away when it was still light outside.
So yes, I’ve had plenty of time to sit here writing horrific captions on all my mental snapshots, going through every single Rap Room moment, and realizing that my ugly, unsupported boob is now immortalized in binary form.
The worst part of it all being, I let it happen.
It’s true. I did. When Blake pulled my sweater up, I knew I didn’t want to do that and I didn’t want to be there. I knew something wasn’t right, but I just stayed on my back while Blake took pictures! Pictures that, by now, a lot of people have seen, again and again and again, and again and again and again. And like me, they probably all said “Ew!” Because even though the reception here is terrible, my phone indicates that I have seven new messages. Seven new picture messages. That’s right, I’ve already been sent seven copies of Blake’s clear, centered, high-resolution photo of the very worst part of me.
My head, it’s seriously going to pop off my neck. It’s going to just explode off my body like one of those champagne corks. But obviously, not as celebratory. Are there more photos than the one I saw? Is my face in them? I think my face was underneath my sweater the whole time. Was it? Not that it matters, because all those guys know it’s me, and what’s to keep them from telling whoever they want? Cathy Mason will find out. She finds everything out. And Pam! Pam saw me leave the Rap Room, wearing that sweater. If she sees it, or if Mom does, they’ll recognize it for sure.
