Circle the Soul Softly

by Davida Wills Hurwin

  “Kate?”

  I open my eyes and the room swerves like a car around a curve, so I giggle and close them again.“Mm-hmm?” I say.

  “Oh man, she’s wasted,” Layla says.

  “She only had one beer,” Frazier says.

  “Why do I think it’s her first one ever?” Jake asks.

  “Leave her alone, you guys,” David’s voice answers. “She’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, but her mom said be home by one,” Layla says. “It’s quarter to.”

  “I don’t wanna go home,” I whine, enjoying the fact that words are tumbling out of me, even if they do sound a tiny bit slurred. I love this attention. I love the ease with which I’m getting it. “I wanna pee.”

  “I’ll take her,” Frazier says, and the next thing I know I’m upright and walking. Then I’m alone in a bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror.

  “Whoa.” I say it out loud but it’s like someone else is talking. There we are, me and Stupid Kate—and one of us is stuck in the mirror. I giggle as I wonder which one, then I start to disappear. Suddenly dizzy, I slide down to sit on the toilet and hang my head down between my knees. I’ve slipped over some edge and it isn’t fun now. Somehow I manage to finish peeing and get my hands washed and open the door. David’s waiting to walk me back.

  We settle back on the couch, I lean my head on his chest and drift. Someone calls my mom and tells her the pizza took too long to get there and we’re just now starting to eat. I glance up and see everything is normal. The TV is playing some kind of old science fiction. Layla and Stacey and Jake are piled on each other, laughing at it. Frazier and Gabe have gone. The panic drains out and I drift some more.

  I dream that David is kissing me.

  I wonder what time it is.

  I realize David is kissing me. And I like it.

  “Coffee,” Layla’s voice says. David sits me up a little and puts a cup in my hand.“Just sip a little,” she tells me.“It’s not too hot.”

  I swallow a gulp and make a face.

  “You are so cute,” Layla says. “You remind me of me in seventh grade, I swear to God. Doesn’t she?” I smile and take another sip of the coffee. I like being cute. I don’t know yet about private school double-talk and I think she means it. I almost like being drunk.

  “Careful, babe,” David warns, and puts his hand on the side of my head to draw me back to his chest.

  “What a good little girl you are, Kate,” Stacey says, that echo of sarcasm in her voice.

  “Fuck off, okay?” David says, and strokes my hair back from my face. He leans in to kiss me again. Unfortunately, the coffee isn’t compatible with the beer and I’m going to hurl. I scramble up, dash to the bathroom, and vomit my entire gut into the toilet. Do I remember to shut the door? Of course not. Vaguely I’m aware of people piling in behind me, but too bad, I hurl again. Somebody grabs my hair back and flushes the toilet every once in a while, cooing in a low voice,“It’s okay, it’s okay, Katie, just get it out. Get it out.”

  Which I do. Which clears my brain. Which lets me realize how extraordinarily stupid I look. But wait—can I smile now, because this would be a good time to smile? No. I cry. In front of all the people in the world that I want to impress, I sit on the goddamn floor of a bathroom and cry.

  “Hey, Katie-Katie, it’s no big deal,” Layla says, running a wet washcloth over my face. “Stace does it all the time.” Even Stacey laughs at that one.

  The hallway stretches forever and this time the walls are closing in and the Monster’s already used up all the air. Minnie Mouse swoops down to save me and suddenly we’re floating and I can breathe. I see Michael below waving but the Monster gobbles him up and Minnie disappears. I start to fall. The Monster snatches me before I hit the ground and bites me into two people. One is inside him; the other is outside, screaming. Minnie swoops in again, but this time she wraps duct tape around my face, leaving only my eyes connected to the outside.

  THIRTEEN

  So, the show’s over and it’s like it never happened; I’m Invisible New Girl again. Amazing True Actor has melted into the cast picture posted on the theater “memory wall,” and I have nothing to say to people I’ve worked with every day for the past two months. I pretend I don’t see Stacey and her bitch-stare. I smile when I run into random objects that everyone else in the entire world is able to miss. I skulk past David, the guy who was kissing me, instead of asking when he’s going to call me—like he said he would backstage on closing night. Oh, by the way, which is when he kissed me again.

  Ah, Stupid Kate. How I’ve missed her.

  Jake has another party, for Stacey’s eighteenth. I am not invited; no doubt Stacey reminded him that all I do at parties is sit around or throw up. Or—substantially worse—he simply didn’t remember to think of me. I don’t even know about it until after it happens, when everyone who went needs to say to everyone who didn’t: “Omigod, you weren’t invited??”

  I smile and shrug. Omigod, can’t you go die somewhere??

  To make the world perfect, Thanksgiving break arrives and Michael flies up to Steve’s for the entire five-day weekend. I’m stuck at home with an overage glamour queen I used to call “Mom” and a middle-aged man who prances through the house like a horny twelve-year-old. Add the geometry homework from hell, a six-page research paper on a line from a poem by some dead gay guy I’ve never heard of, and—this is the biggest bummer of all—no show to look forward to.

  “Completely sucks” is the descriptive phrase I’ve chosen.

  Somehow I survive Thanksgiving dinner, managing to find random acts of kindness to be thankful for, which I express in the briefest of terms so Mom and Robert can get back to being thankful for each other. After dessert I plead homework and hide in my room to go online. I find a site on schizophrenia and it’s actually making a lot of sense on a very personal level, especially the part about “onset with adolescence,” when Layla IMs me to go to a movie with her and then sleep over at her house.

  Whoa.

  There is no logical reason for her to want to spend time with me. I say I have to check with my mom. She says, “k, cool, let me know.” I sign off and freak out more. What’s going on? Does she feel bad Jake didn’t invite me to his party? Not likely. Is it some kind of setup? I’ve seen it done now at school a couple of times, but Layla doesn’t seem the type. Maybe everyone else is out of town. I’ve heard her say how she hates to be in her house alone.

  The Universe chuckles at my dilemma: if I go, Stupid Kate will show up and Layla will wish she’d called someone else. I’ll become fodder for half-whispered conversations, a guaranteed social disaster. If I don’t, I’ll be stuck here alone with middle-aged hormones and my own very split personality.

  No contest.

  I lie and say I’m going out of town. Then I sign off. I’m not in the mood for any more of the outside world, and the big screen downstairs has nine billion channels. Plus there’s all that homework to do. And earphones were made for blocking what you don’t want to hear.

  Here’s the list: the two weeks after Thanksgiving are ridiculously busy and I’m probably the only person in the school’s history who manages to go from a low B to “watch out, Brainless,” in both geometry and World Civ.

  Which makes Robert hire a tutor.

  Which effectively eliminates free time after school or in the upcoming winter break.

  However! Nightmares are down, I now dress in a relatively cool-yet-individual manner, my hair is looking great—and, oh, about the no free time? It doesn’t matter! I have no show, no friends, and no life—I have nothing to do but study.

  “Wanna ride home?” David says, and I look over my shoulder to see who he’s talking to. This is the same David who has not remembered I’m alive the past week or so. He smiles, and suddenly I don’t care.“You, Katie. Do you want a ride home?”

  “Oh, sorry, I thought . . .” I blush, giggle…. “Sure. Yeah. Thanks.”

  He tosses my backpack into his car and we
slide in. “Hey, where have you been lately?”

  “Um …oh, just around.” Good, Kate—

  “School sure sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, um . . .” Speak!

  “So what are you doing over break?”

  “Me? Um, not much.” Why am I so lame?

  “Well, I was kinda wondering if maybe you wanna go to Aspen with me?”

  “Um …what?” I almost look over my shoulder again, as my heart does this strange little turning over in the chest affair. I wonder if he’s making fun of me.

  “My whole family goes. We have a house and basically just ski and hang out.You have to share a room with my sister but she’s cool. What do you think?”

  “Uh . . .” Maybe he means it?

  “Hey, if you don’t want to, it’s okay. I understand.”

  “No, no, I mean yeah, yeah. That sounds like fun. Going to Aspen, it sounds good.”

  “Excellent. I’ll get my mom to call yours.”

  This fantasy ends when Mom gets off the phone that evening and huddles with Robert. The Royal we appears.We acknowledge I’m doing better, emotionally, and that I’m trying to bring up my grades. We admit that going from a public to a private school can be hard. We hint that if David had been a more frequent visitor to the house and if Robert knew his parents (like he knows Jake’s, go figure), that we might begin to consider it. But we’re absolutely certain that we have priorities for winter break that don’t include travel with a boy we barely know.

  “So does that all make sense?” Mom asks.

  “Yeah, it’s fine.” I can’t tell if I’m mad or relieved. I do, however, smile.

  “We just want to do what’s best for you,” Robert adds.

  “I know.” Disappearing would be a good thing at this point.

  “Hey, I got a question,” Michael says, coming around the corner with a bagel in his hand. He plops down on the couch next to me.“What would you say if a girl asked me?”

  “That’s a little different,” Robert explains.

  “Oh.” He takes a bite and finishes his comment with his mouth full. “Okay. Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, Katie’s younger than you are, and secondly—she’s a girl.”

  “But his family’s going to be there.”

  I continue to be amazed by this new brother I’ve gotten.

  “Michael . . .” Mom’s wearing her enough-now expression.

  “No, really, why can’t she go? It’s just a week, adults are present, he’s a good guy, and she’ll have plenty of time for homework.”

  Robert sighs and throws the Look at my mom.

  “Katie is in danger of flunking geometry, Michael,” Mom says.“And that’s the bottom line.”

  Michael heads for the stairs. “The bottom line is you don’t want her to grow up.” He shrugs at me as he leaves the room. “Sorry, Skates …I tried.”

  No worries. Two hours of vectors and trapezoids effectively blunt all disappointment by numbing my brain to outside stimuli. Until there’s an instant message from “Hamlet99.”

  I know immediately that it’s David.

  hamlet99: i’m bummed you can’t go

  kt13: me, too. sry

  hamlet99: yeah.

  kt13: maybe u cn take somebody else?

  hamlet99: hm.

  hamlet99: maybe.

  hamlet99: NOT!

  hamlet99: u there

  kt13: yeah

  hamlet99: feeling stupid now

  kt13: why

  hamlet99: um, no words

  kt13: me 2

  hamlet99: easier when ur acting

  kt13: lines are gd

  hamlet99: i’m going to tell him maggie

  kt13: tell me first

  hamlet99: i really like you

  hamlet99: not just friend-like

  hamlet99: uh …u there?

  kt13: yeah

  hamlet99: i actually said that

  kt13: same

  hamlet99: really

  kt13: yeah

  hamlet99: whoa

  kt13: yeah

  hamlet99: wanna go see a movie or something when i get back?

  FOURTEEN

  In real life there’s no such thing as geometry. Not when I have the boyfriend I always wanted: an OMG-he’s-cute, older-guy boyfriend who loves theater, does not act stupidly jocklike or fixate on his sex drive—at least that I’ve seen yet (smile, giggle, blush)—a boyfriend who hangs out with me, calls on the phone and, best of all …really likes me.

  Me, Katie!

  We go back to school in January, after the most incredible four days of my entire life (excluding of course,New Year’s Eve, when my mother said “No way” to the party David’s sister was having). In those four days David has taken me to dinner and to a movie and to a play at the Geffen, and we walked around the Santa Monica Promenade holding hands.

  I have magically morphed to my True Self, the one I sensed but couldn’t find, the one that fits. I’m funny; I have words (well, most all the time); I can (almost) throw Stacey’s bad moods right back at her; I like my family and Robert; I meet David’s sister, Casey—we like each other; he meets Michael—and they like each other. Corny love songs make sense. My brother can call me “Skates” whenever he wants. And last, but certainly not least, I’m barely—but truly—passing geometry.

  Which means—in real life—I can work on the musical that Tess will start directing next week. The one David happens to be in. The one Stacey did not get a lead in, much to everyone’s surprise. And when we’re not in rehearsal, David and I can go out. Which turns out to be nothing like I ever imagined. Going out with David means we talk. About everything—politics, school, stupid people, even religion. David believes in reincarnation. He thinks souls decide things in between lives, and know before they come back each time how long they’re going to live.

  “It’s like you make yourself a promise,” he explains one afternoon. We’re sitting across from each other on the greenroom couch, waiting for rehearsal to start. His left leg is pressing against mine, and I have a hard time concentrating on what he’s saying. “You know, like maybe I decide I need to be responsible for my actions, so I choose a life situation that’ll give me chances to do that. Make sense?”

  “Um, that would be …not a bit.”

  He laughs. (I make him laugh!) “Okay. Imagine that in a past life I was your basic Jake-type, irresponsible and stupid, and say I was high one day and hit some old lady crossing the street. And nothing happened to me because my parents got me out of it. This time around,my soul decides I need to learn about consequences, so I choose to come back disabled or get hurt in a war or something. Voilà. I understand consequences.”

  “What about the old lady?”

  “She chose too. She’s working something out.”

  “Ah. Very convenient.” I’ve gotten over the leg; now I can’t stop staring at his eyes.

  “Or complicated,” he adds.

  “What if you screw up again?”

  “I keep coming back until I figure it out.”

  “But how do you know what you’re supposed to do when you’re here?”

  “You don’t. That’s the challenge.”

  “Uh-huh.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “Why do you think Stacey chose to come back an asshole?”

  I catch his smile and miss his answer as Tess pokes her head in the door and motions us to join her. He takes my hand and we head out to the stage. I’m not sure how much I believe David’s philosophy, but right about now, does it matter? I’m in a theater. Actors are working through a play. I’m scribbling notes for an amazing director and sucking in that peculiar but intoxicating theater smell—years of sawdust and paint and artists and rented costumes, makeup and excitement and lights. I can feel the warmth being chilled as the ancient AC unit grumbles away under the lines the actors are reading. Behind me the tech director is hanging lights.

  It all fits. Even me.

  I smile and Tess glances over and smiles bac
k. She thinks I’m pleased because David’s just done a very funny bit. She has no clue that Wise Magic Girl is sitting next to her, bathed in an aura of love for every single person in this theater—yeah, even Stacey.

  FIFTEEN

  “Tell me about Daddy.” In our newfound sibling tolerance, I’m lounging with Michael on the balcony of his bedroom. It’s a chilly and beautiful February evening; the wind has sent most of the smog scurrying out over the ocean. No doubt the dolphins are gearing up for a protest.

  I’m pretending to do homework.

  Michael’s feeding his face.

  “That’s random,” he says, stuffing in a meatball. My brother does not subscribe to holistic living practices.

  “Well, I can’t exactly ask Mom, can I?”

  “Why do you have to ask at all? You knew him.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Skates, you were his favorite.”

  “Yeah, right, Mister I-do-everything-with-my-dad.”

  “Uh-huh. Which dad was that?”

  “Come on. You were always together.”

  “Oh yeah, right. You must mean my fantasy father. The one I didn’t have.”

  “How can you say I was his favorite?”

  “‘It wasn’t me.’” He sings it.

  “I barely remember him.”

  He sighs. “Trust me, Skates, you were it. He loved the hell outa you.”

  I have to sit with that for a second. He offers me a hunk of sourdough and asks, “Why is this coming up now?”

  “Well, David was talking about reincarnation and—”

  “Shit. You believe that crap?”

  “It could be true.”

  “Mm-hmm, and I’m Jack Black.”

  “All right, so what do you believe?”

  “You’re born, you fuck up, you die, and the worms have a party. End of story.”

  “I like David’s theory better.”

  “You just like David.”

  “Yeah, I do.” I start grinning and can’t stop.

  Michael gets up and closes his bedroom door, then rejoins me on the balcony.