The Most Dangerous Thing

by Leanne Lieberman

  I start the car and fasten my seat belt. “He only wants to go to the casino,” I grumble.

  Dad grimaces. “Fine. You can take him to the casino when you get your license.”

  “Just where I’ve always wanted to go.” I start driving down our street. Slowly. So far I’ve only driven to and from Zeyda’s house, making only right-hand turns. Dad keeps suggesting we drive over a bridge, at least, but I’m not that interested. Who needs to drive when you can bike?

  Dad makes me stop in front of a grocery store, partly so he can pick up some pretzels for Zeyda, but mostly so he can force me to practice parallel parking. I’m actually good at parking—it’s just geometry and spatial awareness—but I get stressed by impatient traffic waiting behind me.

  When we get to Zeyda’s, Dad finds a tool box in the garage and goes downstairs to look at the leaking window. Zeyda is in the small den at the front of his house, watching TV, but when he sees me, he mutes it. He seems more shrunken at this time of night. I can almost see his own fog settling into him. I imagine our two clouds joining over our heads.

  “How’s your mother?” Zeyda asks. “I haven’t talked to her in a couple of days.”

  “She’s good. These new Haggadahs she ordered for Passover came today, and she’s excited.”

  Zeyda scowls, the lines between his eyes deepening. “What’s wrong with the ones we always use?”

  “I don’t know. They’re dated or something.” Even though I’m supposed to be encouraging Zeyda to come to the Seder, I can’t help complaining a little too. “She’s also collecting costumes,” I say with a shudder.

  “For what?”

  “Bibliodrama.”

  “What’s that?”

  I roll my eyes. “It’s not enough to tell the Passover story. Mom wants the kids to act it out.”

  “She thinks it’s a party?”

  “Well, technically, a Seder is a party—a feast anyway. We’re celebrating freedom.” Zeyda’s scowl deepens. “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Some of her crazier ideas are already squashed. For a while she wanted everyone to sit on the floor on cushions around a low table, because that’s how the Greeks used to eat.”

  Zeyda rolls his eyes. “Greeks? Passover is Jewish.”

  “Apparently the whole idea of a Seder comes from the Greek tradition. But we’re not going to sit on the floor because Todd Davis has a bad back, and it wouldn’t work for you either.”

  Zeyda looks like he might spit with disgust. “And how’s Abby?”

  “Busy,” I say.

  “Doing what?”

  Busy reclaiming the word cunt.

  Zeyda is expecting me to say more, so I change the topic. “Have you thought about going to the JCC?”

  Zeyda scowls. “No. How’s your boyfriend?”

  “Um, not great.”

  Zeyda sighs. “Relationships are hard.”

  “Yes,” I manage to murmur.

  “Even Crystal and I fight like an old married couple sometimes,” he says. This makes me smile. “Did he stop sending you funny pictures?” Zeyda asks.

  “No. It’s just…complicated.”

  Zeyda pats my hand. “I’ll send you flowers. For you, roses.”

  For some reason this makes tears start to form in my eyes. I duck my head and look away from Zeyda. He squeezes my hand tightly.

  I feel a blanket of sadness settle over both of us, and we sit in the gloom a long time, our fogs hovering over us. The room gets dim, but neither of us mentions putting on the lamps. Then Zeyda turns the TV volume back up, and we sit in the dark and watch the business channel until Dad says it’s time to go.

  Dad drives home because it’s dark out, and my learner’s license only covers daytime driving. Luckily, with Dad you don’t always have to talk, and we’re mostly silent. Being with Zeyda has made the fog thicker. I want to go home and lie in my bed and stop pretending to be cheerful or communicative, but Sofia texts, asking for math help. By the time we get home, she’s waiting for me on the front steps of our house.

  “I’m going to fail my quiz tomorrow if I can’t figure out quadratic equations,” she announces cheerfully. “Will you help me?” I say sure and we head into the house. As we make our way downstairs we hear voices from the rec room—Abby and Sunita and the other girls rehearsing their monologues.

  “What’s going on?” Sofia asks.

  “Play rehearsal,” I say.

  “For what?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Sofia pokes me in the side. “Tell me.”

  I groan. “They’re writing monologues about…about their vaginas for the senior drama festival.”

  Sofia stops on the stairs. “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish.”

  “That’s so awesome.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s gross.” I continue down the stairs and open the door to my bedroom, but Sofia stops outside the rec room. “Wait, I want to hear.” She perches herself on the bottom stair, ear cocked.

  I reluctantly join her. “What about the math?” I whisper.

  “After. Shh.”

  “My monologue is about girls and their desires,” Sunita is saying, “about things we want to do, and how we don’t want to be seen as objects. It’s called ‘I Am A Sexual Being.’”

  Sofia grabs my hand and squeezes it tightly. I want to pull my sweater over my head.

  Sunita reads in a loud dramatic voice, “Sometimes I think boys only see girls as objects, as things to collect. You know, the boys who have pictures of topless girls on their phones or across their bedroom walls. Sometimes I think that’s all girls are to those guys, things to be traded, looked at, like baseball cards.”

  I sigh and resign myself to listening. I can handle a monologue about the objectification of women.

  Sunita continues. “Us girls, we are not just breasts, not just a picture in your magazine or on your phone. I am not only a body, but also a mind and a face. I breathe and love and talk and am in the world, same as you. I am not just a projection for your fantasies, not just skin for your taking. I feel the things you feel. The anger and excitement, the thrill of the game, the anticipation of the roller coaster, the release after a long run. I feel all those things.

  “And like you, I crave skin and body. I don’t only exist to be the object of your desire. I am a sexual being in my own right. I want to be a lover, not only the loved. I wear sexy clothes for me, not for you. I am a living, breathing creature. I am a sexual being. I am in charge of my own body and all it wants. I live and I breathe and I feel, and I crave too.”

  There’s a pause and Abby says something I can’t hear, and then everyone laughs. Sofia punches a fist in the air. “That was amazing!” she whisper-hisses. “I can’t believe your sister and her friends talk about that kind of stuff. We need to talk about this stuff.”

  I pull Sofia into my room and close the door. “No, we don’t.”

  “Please! Guys talk about these things all the time.” She gives me a knowing look.

  I know what she means. Last year Sofia and I were lying on the lawn outside her building when we accidentally overheard these guys talking while they waited for the bus on the other side of the hedge. At first we were annoyed by how loud they were, but then they started talking about which girls gave blow jobs, and we couldn’t stop listening. They talked about some video they’d seen and what the girl was wearing and what porny things she did. Then we heard them looking at pictures of girls on their phones and saying what they’d like to do to them. Finally the bus came, and they went away. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut after listening to that conversation.

  “Girls should talk about their bodies,” Sofia announces, plunking herself down on my bed. “I can’t wait to see your sister’s play.”

  I sit down next to her. “The school banned it from the festival, so now they’re planning some guerrilla pop-up performance. I don’t know when that will be.”

  Sofia’s eyes sparkle. “That’s even coole
r.”

  I tug on my hair. “Ugh. It’s not.”

  Sofia lies back on my bed and tucks her hands behind her head. “You have the coolest sister.”

  I mock punch Sofia in the arm. “Do you want help with the math now?”

  Sofia groans. “It’s so boring. I totally don’t get how you can be good at this stuff.” She shoves her binder off the bed and onto the floor. “If you wrote a monologue, what would it be about?”

  “I would never write a monologue,” I say flatly.

  “Oh, come on, what if you wrote a secret one?”

  I lie down next to her and prop my chin in my hand. A secret monologue? I think about what I wrote in my journal about our sex-ed classes. I could call it “The Most Dangerous Thing.” I imagine Paul’s fingers working through my hair, and a feeling of bliss comes over me, then confusion. “I guess I’d write about relationships,” I say. “How hard they are.”

  “Oh.” Sofia’s face softens. “Did you see Paul again today?”

  I nod.

  “How did it go?”

  “Um, not so good.” I swipe at tears that are starting to form.

  “What happened?” Sofia sits up next to me.

  I struggle to find the right words. “It’s the same thing as the other day. I’m not good with people.”

  “You have to stop saying that. You’re awesome with some people, the right people.”

  I rub my eyes again so I don’t have to look at her. “This boyfriend thing. I don’t really get how it works.”

  Sofia smiles. “Well, you hang out and do stuff together, like friends.”

  “Okay, I’m fine with that part.”

  “And then you get to do the in-love, or in-lust, stuff too. If you want to.”

  “That’s the part I’m not good at,” I whisper.

  I’m expecting Sofia to prod me on this, to want details, but instead she stands up. “See, that’s exactly what my monologue would be about. Girls don’t talk about this stuff, about what they want, and then when they’re with some guy, they don’t know how to get what they want or what they need. For example, did I ever tell Carlos what I wanted him to do to me? Of course not—that would have been awkward.” Sofia flips her hair out of her face. “But if you do stuff that, you know, feels good to you, then you’re a whore, and his friends get to say porny things about you. And if you say no, because maybe you don’t want to do those things, then you’re cold or a tease. You can’t win.” Sofia throws her arms up in the air.

  I mull this over. I don’t think I could ever tell a guy what I wanted—at least, not out loud.

  Sofia continues, “Boys get blow jobs, and what do girls get? Nothing, usually. Lately I’ve been thinking this is a social-justice issue.”

  “Please.” I groan. “You should go and hang out with Abby.”

  I pick up Sofia’s math binder from the floor. “Equations,” I say. “We should get you ready for tomorrow.”

  Sofia sighs. “Fine. But later, when I’ve understood this stuff, I’m going home to write my own monologue. It’s going to be about girls’ bodies and what they can do.”

  I resist sticking my fingers in my ears.

  Later, after Sofia has gone home and I’m finally alone in bed, I think about Sunita’s monologue. I’ve never seen myself as an object, as something that guys might look at. I’m not the kind of person who attracts attention, who other people look at and admire. But the second part, the feeling part, that’s me now, even if I don’t want it to be. That feeling part wants to be with Paul all the time, to touch his skin and inhale his scent, and it’s knocking me off my feet, like I’m falling off my bike every time I go downhill. When I think of Paul, I’m out of breath and want to slink close to him, yet I don’t know how. I can’t talk to anyone about this, not even Sofia. I am a living, breathing creature, but I also don’t know how to be that creature. A layer of fog comes over me, enveloping me like a second skin, pushing me hard against my bed. I want to peel it off, but it presses dark and heavy, like it’ll never go away.

  Nine

  I WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING when it’s still dark out, and before I even open my eyes I can feel the weight of the fog pressing down on me. The fog has grown overnight, and not only is it drifting around me like a shadow; it’s filling the whole room. It takes all my concentration to keep pushing it up so it doesn’t become part of me. I try to reach my phone, but my limbs are too heavy. Even opening my eyelids feels too hard. Fine. I’ll will myself out of bed without Sudoku, with only my mind. I try to envision my plan: do well at school, graduate, get into business school, get a great job, buy the dream condo—but now the condo feels like a prison I’ll return to every night, and I’ll still be lonely because I won’t be able to talk to people, and I still won’t be able to get out of bed.

  I watch the minutes advance on my alarm clock until it’s seven. Then I hear Abby in the bathroom, and voices and footsteps overhead. If I don’t get out of bed soon, I’m going to be late. I manage to roll over and pick up my phone. I text Sofia: Give me one reason why I should get out of bed this morning.

  She writes back, Because you have assignments due?

  Not good enough.

  Because I want to see what you’re wearing?

  Sweats.

  That is sad. How about because I love you and I’ll be lonely without you.

  I want to write Not good enough, but I don’t want to hurt Sofia’s feelings, so I write Thanks. Then I tuck the phone under my pillow. Fine. The fog wins. I stop trying to push it away and let it sink into me. It feels good to stop fighting. I won’t ever be able to have a boyfriend or let anyone touch me. I’ll just have to accept that. I am a heavy person, and my mind is a dark cloud. It’s kind of a meditation, letting the darkness ooze through me so that even my fingers and toes are filled with the cloud. It’s not even sadness anymore—it’s just dark. I pull the sheet over my head and hope I fall asleep and never wake up again.

  Abby knocks on my door about twenty minutes later and sticks her head in my room. She’s already showered and ready for breakfast. “Hey, did you sleep in?”

  “No, I’m sick,” I mumble from under the covers.

  “Oh, do you want tea or something?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t sound sick.”

  “Please leave me alone.”

  Abby goes upstairs. I’m sure she’s talking to Mom, who must be already finishing her coffee and getting ready to go. Please leave me alone. No such luck. Mom comes downstairs and sits on the end of my bed.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” she says.

  “I feel sick,” I mumble, the sheet still over my head.

  “Like vomiting sick or flu-ish? Have you got a cold?” Mom peels the covers back and lays her hand on my forehead like the professional nurse she is. “You’re not hot, and you don’t look congested or nauseous,” she says.

  “I have bad cramps,” I lie.

  “Are you sure that’s it?”

  I nod. Mom looks at me for a moment. “Are you sure something else isn’t bothering you? Do you need to go back to Dr. Spenser?”

  “My mental health is perfectly fine,” I whisper.

  “’Cause if it’s not—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Well, take something for the cramps and get yourself to school. I’ll text you in an hour.”

  “Okay.”

  The house gets quiet, and I drift in and out of sleep. I turn my phone off and shove it under my bed. The landline rings, and I ignore that too. At lunch Abby comes home and knocks on my door. She holds out her phone to me. “Mom’s worried about you, so she asked me to come home and check on you. She’s on the phone.”

  “Oh.” I take the phone and sink back into bed. “Hi.”

  “Syd, I wish you would answer your phone.”

  “I was sleeping,” I say.

  “Are you going to get up and get yourself to school for the afternoon?”

  “I don’t think so.”

&nb
sp; There’s a pause, and Mom asks, “What’s going on?”

  I don’t answer right away. “I need some time alone.”

  “For how long, Syd?”

  I hesitate. I want to say for a week, but then Mom will be really worried. “I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow,” I lie.

  Mom sighs. “I’m calling Dr. Spenser.”

  “Please don’t do that. I’ll call her if I need to.”

  “No, I think you need help.”

  “I don’t want help.”

  Mom sighs. “Okay, I’ll email her and ask her to call you to check in. Okay?”

  “It’s not okay. Please go away,” I whisper.

  “Turn your phone on so your sister can go back to school. I’ll text you in an hour.”

  I hand Abby the phone without looking at her.

  “Do you want soup or something?” she asks quietly.

  I shake my head and crawl back under the covers. It’s dark in bed and more comfortable than the closet. I hear Abby leave my room, go up the stairs and then out the front door.

  The house is quiet until my phone rings. I don’t pick up. Finally I retrieve my phone from under the bed and read Mom’s texts. Dr. Spenser says you’re not picking up the phone. She’s going to text you. Please respond.

  I groan and roll over. Dr. Spenser writes. Hi, Sydney, your mom is worried about you so I said I’d check in with you. How are you feeling today?

  Like a flat board. Like a piece of run-over cardboard. Like something that doesn’t exist anymore except for a snarling mind with a marble spiraling around and around: I’ll never be a lover, never be loved. Fine, thank you. Pass go and collect two hundred dollars.

  Why don’t you come in tomorrow afternoon and we’ll talk, Dr. Spenser writes back.

  Thank you for your concern, but it’s all butterflies and unicorns with me these days.

  Mom texts me a few minutes later. I made an appointment with Dr. Spenser for you tomorrow at 4 pm. Be home to hug you soon.

  My phone goes quiet, and time slides away from me like eggs off a plate. I try to read my poetry anthology, but I doze off. I’m aware of people coming home, of my door opening and then closing. At some point I fall into a deeper sleep, because when I wake up it’s dark and my clock says 11:30 PM. I take inventory of how I feel. Maybe I was only tired and I’ve slept off the fog, and I’ll wake as a new person. No such luck. My head feels like I’ve got bricks instead of brains. Even my mouth feels like someone stuffed paper in it while I was sleeping. I’m too heavy to move, so I lie listening to my stomach rumble for half an hour before I force myself to roll out of bed and crawl up the stairs.