The Tattered Gloves

by J. L. Berg

Walking over to the counter, I took a quick look around and found myself instantly overwhelmed. I didn’t think, in my relatively short life, I’d ever seen that much food in person. There were doughnuts that looked like they’d been boxed fresh from a bakery, sizzling bacon, eggs, pancakes, and several boxes of cereal.

  The starving child inside me wanted to grab everything and find someplace to hoard it all.

  The untrusting teen in me wanted to run.

  I aimed for middle ground and silently grabbed an apple fritter and a handful of bacon as I made my way to the bathroom.

  School.

  I looked in the mirror and let out a long sigh. Taking another bite of the sugary sweet doughnut, I tried to talk myself into getting ready.

  Ten minutes later, I hadn’t moved an inch, but the doughnut and every trace of bacon was gone. So, I had to decide if I was either going to stay in here all day or face the world.

  Looking down at the place where my toothbrush rested near my aunt’s, I made my choice.

  At least I could grab another doughnut on the way out.

  “IS THAT WHAT you’re wearing?” Addy asked as I stepped into the living room.

  Staring back at her in the outfit that had nearly given me a headache a half hour earlier, my eyes furrowed in confusion. After looking down at my faded jeans and plain black long-sleeved shirt, I found myself instantly glancing back up at her, asking, “Why?”

  “It’s not that it’s bad. It’s good. We just might want to pick you up a few things the next time we’re in town.” Her eyes narrowed in on the hem of my shirt.

  I turned away, toward the door, with the backpack Addy had pulled out of her craft room for me slung over my shoulder. It was secondhand, like everything I owned, but nicer than most of my stuff. There were a few stains on the dark fabric but no rips or holes.

  Tugging it close to my body, I felt her hand grip my shoulder. I instantly stiffened. She backed off.

  Standing at the doorway, I stood frozen.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” She hesitated. “I don’t know how to do this, Willow.”

  Turning around, I saw concern written all over her face. “Do what?” I asked.

  “Take care of you, be there for you. I’ve never been a mother… much less an aunt before.”

  My eyes briefly wandered over her as I remembered the way her hand had reached out toward me.

  “Stop trying,” I said, severing our conversation with just two abrupt words.

  I didn’t bother waiting for her response.

  As she had reminded me when I first got here, it was time for me to go get an education.

  THE SHORT RIDE to school was tense, to say the least.

  I did everything I could not to look toward the driver’s side of the car, and I was pretty sure Addy was doing the same. When the car came to a stop in front of the double doors of the high school, I didn’t bother saying good-bye.

  It was probably better this way anyway.

  For both of us.

  She’d just end up disappointed and filled with regret if she tried feeling anything for me.

  The school looked different at this time of day. Students were loitering in small groups on the lawn, talking or texting on their phones. Even texting couldn’t be done alone in high school.

  I managed to go unnoticed as I walked through the entrance and down the familiar hall, passing the fishbowl office I’d sat in yesterday. The chatty secretary my aunt had spoken about looked up from the counter, instantly recognizing me, and waved.

  Figuring I’d handed out enough rudeness for the morning, I gave a small wave back as my pace quickened down the hallway, toward the direction of my new locker. Although, I’d declined the normal student tour guide on my first day, the chatty secretary had been kind enough to show me around briefly while class was in session, even stopping by my locker briefly.

  Today though, I’d be on my own.

  It was what I was used to after all.

  Roaming down the corridor, I found the locker without issue. The building might be somewhat outdated, but the lockers seemed relatively new.

  However, getting into them proved otherwise.

  After three attempts, I was ready to give up and just use my hand-me-down backpack as a makeshift locker.

  Who needed an aligned spine anyway?

  Certainly not me.

  “It helps if you go past the last number just slightly,” a voice called out.

  I looked to my right and found the same blonde girl I’d seen sneaking in the day before.

  Although we shared the same hair color, the similarities stopped there. She was everything I was not. Tall, lean, and curvy in all the right places and dressed in a way that clearly showed she’d never worn a single piece of secondhand clothing.

  “Thanks,” I replied dryly.

  “You’re new here,” she said, not bothering to form her words into a question.

  If everyone knew everything about each other, like my aunt had said, then it would be obvious to a popular-looking girl like her that I didn’t fit in. That I obviously didn’t belong.

  “Yes,” I said, giving my locker combination another try.

  To my surprise, her bit of advice actually worked, and the door sprung free, giving way to an unimpressive little space for my things.

  Realizing I actually had nothing to put in there, I quickly shut it.

  “Where are you from?” the nosy girl asked.

  I guess this conversation is continuing.

  “DC,” I answered as I made an attempt to leave.

  She just followed right along. “DC? Wow, I bet this is crazy different.”

  Crazy different. That’s one way to describe it.

  “You could say that,” I replied, wondering just how long she’d be tagging along. Would she follow me into my first period class? Would she try to braid my hair and make friendship bracelets with me at lunch?

  As I dodged down the correct hallway for my first period class, the friendly blonde stuck to me like glue, chatting away about small-town life.

  “We don’t have a movie theater, but sometimes, on weekends and special occasions, the park will set up a giant screen and play old movies. It’s a great place to hang out.”

  I gave a strained smile, stopping in front of the open door that led to my first class.

  She looked at the door that led into the classroom, spotting the teacher at the desk, and frowned. “Try not to fall asleep. He’s a bore. What other classes do you have?”

  Before I could even answer, she snatched up the schedule I’d had clutched in my hand and was skimming through each period. Her face changed from happy to sad, like one of those clowns who moved his hand up and down his face as he changes emotions.

  “We have third and seventh together! Yay!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together, before adding, “I’m Allison Greer, by the way. It’s nice to meet you, Willow Fairchild! See you later.”

  She skipped off before I could say anything more. Looking down the hall, I watched her greet and hug several people before disappearing.

  What’d just happened? And how did she known my name?

  Looking down at my schedule that she’d handed back to me, it dawned on me.

  She’d read it.

  Sneaky little—

  Wait, had she looked at my gloves? Even once?

  The warning bell rang, telling students they had two minutes to get to class. Suddenly, the hallways were a flurry of energy. Boyfriends and girlfriends hugged, and friends said good-bye as I made my way to my first class at Sugar Tree High School.

  THIS WAS THE part I had been dreading. Well, the part I was dreading the most.

  The walking-into-class part.

  Will everyone stare? Will the teacher make me talk about myself, like they do in movies? Or will I simply be able to sit down and disappear?

  Hoping for the latter, I quickly walked to the slightly overweight man behind the desk in the front of the room. He had
a large coffee stain on his white shirt, and it looked like he’d used several of the term papers around him to mop it up.

  Awesome.

  Hoping I could get by with as little talking as possible, I made myself as visible as possible, standing right in his line of vision. It didn’t take long for him to notice the awkward-looking girl in front of him.

  “Ah, yes… you must be Willow,” he said with a gentle smile.

  Letting out a sigh of relief, I nodded.

  “Good, good. Well, let’s get you a seat then. I do assigned seating in my class. Helps me learn names quicker in the beginning of the year. Although, by junior year, I tend to know half of these kids anyway. Why don’t we sit you here?” he suggested as I followed him down a row, toward the back.

  “Okay,” I said quietly as other kids looked on with mild curiosity.

  “Great. I’ll get you a textbook and a syllabus, and you’ll be on your way,” he said cheerfully, making his way back toward the front. He stopped a few times to give warnings on cell-phone use in the classroom.

  By the time the bell rang, I had one used standard English textbook and a copy of the semester’s syllabus on my desk.

  I tried not to notice the eight people around me, staring.

  As soon as the bell rang, it happened.

  The barrage of questions.

  “Where are you from?”

  “What’s with the gloves?”

  “Are you deformed?” one guy asked.

  The girl next to him playfully slapped him. They laughed quietly between each other.

  I didn’t bother answering any of their questions. I was used to kids like this — the bullies and the ignorant ones.

  The labelers.

  High school was all about labels, and kids like this were the enforcers of said labels.

  Jocks, nerd, goth, whore — everyone needed to be something here. Otherwise, you didn’t exist. Otherwise, you were invisible.

  I preferred to be invisible.

  Head down.

  Don’t look up.

  And so, I did what I had been trained to do. I turned and walked away, letting their labels and their questions trail behind me like dust.

  One class down. Six more to go.

  THE REST OF the day went on much the same.

  Many stares, lots of questions.

  No answers.

  I was sure I was the talk of Sugar Tree High, but I didn’t care. The drama of school was something I found oddly comforting.

  Don’t get me wrong; I still hated it. The whispering, the laughter, and the never-ending stares. But it never changed. Whether I was here or in DC, it didn’t matter; teenagers were the same in every state.

  Well, most of them anyway.

  As I sat on the couch in my aunt’s living room while she sang to herself in the kitchen, my thoughts drifted back to my encounter with Allison.

  She seemed to break every rule I knew.

  She was obviously popular and well liked. If the looks and the designer clothes hadn’t given that away, seeing her float from person to person down the hall was a dead giveaway. But the way she’d treated me? It seemed genuine. In the past, I’d had other encounters with kids who’d acted like they were trying to befriend me, only to find out it was a bet — some cheap trick to win over the quiet, weird girl… whose feelings didn’t matter.

  But Allison seemed different.

  And that made it all the more terrifying because I found myself wanting to like her back.

  What good could come from that?

  “Did you get all your homework done?” Addy called from the kitchen.

  I nodded, quickly realizing she couldn’t see me from my curled up position on the couch. “Yes,” I replied.

  “Good. You haven’t really said how everything went. Did you find your classes okay? Make any friends? Learn anything?”

  “Um,” I managed to mutter.

  “Why don’t you come over here and help me fix dinner? That way, we can chat. I can barely hear you over this meat sizzling in the pan.”

  She could barely hear me because I hadn’t actually said anything, but I didn’t bother correcting her. She’d evidently ignored my advice from this morning to give up and was making a solid effort to get to know me.

  Walking into the small, boxy kitchen, I took the wooden spoon resting on the stove and began to idly stir the ground beef. Addy was chopping fresh tomatoes and lettuce on a plastic cutting board next to me, humming and happily swinging her hips. She’d changed out of her wacky attire for the day, opting for a pair of plain black sweats and an old T-shirt. It was still strange to look at her with those familiar blue eyes. But, the more I got to know her, the less I saw of my mother staring back at me.

  The resemblance would always be there; there was no doubt about that. The twin gene ran strong with those two, but everything else was starkly different. Addy carried herself with pride and a kind of joy I’d never seen my mom have. I didn’t understand how two women, both raised in the same household, could turn out to be such polar opposites. One so happy, and one so—

  “Are you going to tell me about school?” she asked again, her eyebrow raised in my direction, as she scooped the tomatoes into a serving dish.

  “There’s not much to tell.”

  “Did you meet anyone?” she asked.

  “Not really. Well, one person,” I amended.

  “Oh, yeah?” She perked up, stopping everything she was doing to divert her full attention in my direction.

  I felt my insides quiver at the sudden spotlight thrown in my direction.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It was just some girl who has a locker next to mine,” I said, shrugging.

  “What is her name?”

  “Allison.”

  “Allison?” she asked, searching for a last name.

  “I don’t know. She gave me a last name, but I don’t remember it. She has blonde hair.”

  She seemed to deflate a little at the lack of information I was giving, clearly hoping for more. Her shoulders sagged as she turned to finish up the fixings for our tacos, and I knew I should have said something.

  Anything to cheer her up.

  But what could I say?

  That the kids had wanted to know why I wore thick winter gloves all day long?

  Rumors were probably already floating around that I had some horrible disease or disfigurement.

  And, rather than answering them or sticking up for myself, I’d just scurried off because, if I told anyone the real reason I wore them, I’d finally have that label everyone was dying to put on me.

  Coward.

  “YOUR MOTHER DOES know what size you wear, doesn’t she?” Addy asked the next morning as I walked out of the bathroom, showered and dressed for school.

  Looking down at another version of the black long-sleeved shirt I’d worn the day before, I shook my head. “No,” I answered. “This is hers. Most of my clothes are. She always just gave me what she didn’t want anymore.”

  Her eyes widened and then softened.

  “Well, I meant what I said. I’m taking you into town this weekend. You’re too tiny to be wearing your mom’s hand-me-downs. She’s got to be at least two sizes bigger than you.”

  Four sizes, but who is counting?

  “Maybe, if I keep feeding you like this, you’ll actually grow some meat on those bones of yours,” she suggested, her keen eyes still fixated on my body.

  It made me suddenly aware of the way my jeans felt so loose around my hips… how easily they fell from my body.

  “You and me… we’re the same.”

  The memory of his voice cut through my mind like a razor blade, and I instantly stiffened.

  “Willow? You okay?” Addy noticed my change in mood almost instantly. She moved to my aid but stopped herself before her hand reached my shoulder. “Whatever is going through your mind right now, it will fade.”

  “It won’t,” I said through clenched teeth. “It will never
fade.”

  “It will. Maybe not today or tomorrow, not even next year… but with time, it will fade. And it will heal.”

  “You don’t know. You can’t—”

  “Trust me,” was all she said before turning toward the door.

  I watched her walk out, leaving the door open for me, and I wondered, Who is this mysterious aunt I am living with?

  “IT’S THE PERFECT solution,” Addy said over dinner that night.

  I’d just sat down in front of a large plate of homemade spaghetti and salad, my mouth nearly dripping with saliva over the aroma, when she’d hit me up with this ridiculous idea.

  “A job?” I said, looking up at her with a mixture of distrust and confusion.

  With a glance at the table full of food, my gut was churning — but for another reason entirely.

  Guilt.

  “If it’s a matter of money, I can eat less, and I don’t really need any new clothes. What I have here is fine.”

  Her hand stretched out across the table, an obvious attempt to console my fears. But, like always, she’d only gone so far, her fingertips barely grazing the tattered pieces of yarn on my glove as she tested my limits. I pulled my hand back, resting it under the table.

  “It’s not about money,” she said warmly, clearly ignoring my blatant rejection of her never-ending efforts at showing affection. “I don’t want you to think you’re a burden, but I do want you to feel at ease living here.”

  “So, you got me a job at a bookstore?”

  I didn’t understand her logic. I didn’t understand why she thought this was such a brilliant plan. The idea of stepping further out of my comfort zone was truly terrifying.

  “There are many jobs in town for kids your age,” she went on, explaining herself. “Most are usually snatched up before the Help Wanted signs make it to the windows. When Mr. Shepherd mentioned it to me, saying that he was looking for someone to stock shelves and keep the place tidy, I knew it would be a great fit for you.”

  “Can’t I just come back here after school like I have been doing?”

  In other words, couldn’t I just come here and hide?

  She sighed. “I mentioned to you earlier that I’ve been trying to get a storefront in town for my business, but I haven’t succeeded.”