The Girl in the Park

by Mariah Fredericks

  I had free study and I was headed to the library. As I walked down the hall, I noticed a girl standing smack-dab in the middle. I recognized her as the new girl, the one from Long Island with bad hair that nobody liked. She was pushy, was what people said. And I saw why. Every single person who passed, she yelled, “Hey there!” The more popular kids got a sad little body check and questions—“What’s up for the weekend?” “Could you believe that assignment?”

  I slowed down, wincing at every Hey and How you doing? She was so wrong it was scary, and most kids brushed her off without a second glance. But she didn’t quit. I noticed that, too. It was horribly fascinating. Like watching someone pound nails into their skull, again and again, with a big crazy smile on their face.

  Eventually the crowd thinned out and it was only us left. I stood there watching as Wendy paced back and forth. This girl was so out there. Even when she was alone, you could read every emotion. She moved her head from side to side, threw her hands in the air, folded her arms, unfolded them.

  Then burst out with, “How am I such an idiot?”

  I laughed. Because here I was thinking she was so different from me, so insanely confident. But she felt like an idiot the same way I did.

  Impulsively, I said, “Can I make a suggestion?”

  Now, this probably came out like “Shuh-gesh-on.” T’s and s’s still kicked my ass. And there was a moment before Wendy spoke when we both realized she had a choice. If she was a wannabe, she’d make fun of me. Clamp up her nose and say, “Yush?”

  But instead she laughed. At herself, not me.

  “God, yes, please. Anything.”

  She was friendly. She was eager. She acted like I knew what I was talking about, so I acted that way too. “You’re trying too hard,” I told her. “And you’re going after the wrong people. Girls like Honor and Rima—forget them. They’re sophomores and they’re popular. You need to aim for their third-level friend. The girls that hang with top girls, but secretly? Resent them. You can be the outside friend they complain to. Then once you’re deemed okay? You work your way up.”

  She came to stand next to me. “So, who should I be talking to?”

  I thought. “Try Karina Burroughs. Maybe Colby Breslin. Jenny Zalgat.”

  She took those names in, then asked, “How’d you figure this stuff out?”

  “I’ve watched these people my whole life.”

  “But …” She hesitated. “What? You don’t care if they like you?”

  This had never occurred to me, that I could be the one to choose. That, rather than being rejected, I could just not care. “Kind of,” I said, trying to look bored by it all.

  “That’s cool. I could never do it.” She grinned. “But it’s cool. Wendy, by the way.”

  “Rain.”

  * * *

  “… ’ow are your friends?” my grandmother asks. “ ’aylor?”

  Taylor. “Still writing for the paper,” I say. “Still crazed.”

  I realize: Taylor stayed at the party after I left. I should have told Ms. Geller to call her. Except that Taylor would tell her the whole story, and I still wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

  My grandmother asks about my singing, which I hate talking about around my mom because she always pretends I’m better than I am. I’m not terrible. But I’m not her and I know it.

  “B-oyfriends?” my grandmother wants to know.

  “I’m off men,” I tell her.

  She leans in. “… Lucas?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah—what did happen to Lucas, Grandma?”

  “He was an actor,” says my mom dismissively. “That’s what happened to Lucas.”

  “Do you think he’d go out with me?”

  I had to look twice to make sure I was seeing the right person. Cam Davies? Was Wendy serious? We’d been friends for a month, and already I knew, you couldn’t always be sure.

  Just in case, I shook my head. “Girlfriend.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “Wendy.” I looked at her.

  She giggled. “I’m just asking.”

  Just then, two girls walked by. They were second-level girls, not to be spoken to. But Wendy smiled, gave them a big “Hi!”

  She’d broken the rules and I braced myself, knowing what was coming. The girls stopped. And stared. Then one of them, Gillian Lasker, made a flushing sound—the new joke was toilet cleaner, not pools. Laughing wildly, they hurried down the hall.

  I muttered, “Jerks.”

  Wendy didn’t answer. She just kept staring down the hall at Cam Davies.

  Later, the rain clears and we take a walk around the garden. It’s beautiful with the fallen leaves and the smell of freshness in the air. My mom says to Grandma, “Give me a quarter and I’ll move in.”

  From her wheelchair, Grandma waves her hand. Forget it. She hates having a nurse, hates being taken care of. A lot of her old friends she doesn’t see anymore.

  My mom says she’s crazy. But I understand. My mom doesn’t know what it’s like to be less than perfect, how people zoom in on that until it’s all they see. Maybe because it weirds them out … or maybe because it makes them feel better about themselves.

  People do pretty ugly things to make themselves feel better, this I do know.

  “I jerked him off.”

  The first party we went to together, Wendy slept over at my house afterward. When she said that, I leaned out of my bed to look at her. But I couldn’t see her face in the dark.

  “Who and what are you talking about?” I asked, really, really hoping she’d say, Just kidding. God.

  But she said, “Daniel. At the party.”

  Then she laughed. “It shot straight across the bathroom. I left it on the towels.”

  “That’ll thrill Evie’s parents.” Because I still thought about parents with these things.

  “Oh, Evie’s a bitch, who cares?” She yawned.

  Then I thought of something else: Gillian Lasker in the hallway. “Doesn’t Daniel have a girlfriend?”

  There was a silence. Then Wendy said, “She should know to say hi when someone says hi to her.”

  “ ’at goes,” my grandmother says, pointing to a dead bush.

  “Tell the gardener,” agrees my mom. Walking up to the bush, she touches the dry, leafless branches. They snap right off, get tangled in the rest. It looks like a nest of bones.

  “This was so pretty,” says my mom. “I wonder what happened.”

  What happened? I think. That’s always what you ask. What happened with Lucas? What happened with Wendy?

  She’s with Nico, I tell myself. And it’s a big drama and she’s the star. If she goes home, she turns back into plain old Wendy Geller, pool cleaner princess.

  “I hate my mother.”

  Wendy glared around her living room. “Look at this place. She gets everything wrong. But hey, she lives at the office, what does she care?”

  For the first few months we were friends, I didn’t see Wendy’s apartment. We always went to my place. Finally, one Saturday after a movie, she said, “Come see the hellhole.”

  Wendy lived in the East Seventies. “Fancy address, crap place,” she told me. It wasn’t a hellhole, but it was very different from my rambling, color-mad apartment, where you couldn’t walk without tripping over books, CDs, or carpet fringe. The walls in Wendy’s place were white plaster. No curtains, just blinds. The couches and chairs were beige and oatmeal, the tables glass. There was one shelf of books, mostly self-help and dieting. The kitchen was bare, except for one plastic bowl with some dried-up lemons. The place was quiet, but empty quiet rather than peaceful quiet. A motel you stayed in for one night before getting where you needed to be.

  We went to Wendy’s room. The furniture here was mostly IKEA, but she’d gotten a few bright funky things—a pillow shaped like a strawberry, a polka-dot lampshade. She’d covered the plaster walls with magazine cutouts. Glistening male bodies and girls with lots of hair and angry eyes. Flopping on her bed, Wendy sai
d, “I should just go live with my dad. Of course, he now has Heidi, who I totally can’t stand. Uck—you’re so lucky having a cool family.”

  I thought about my mom and grandmother. Also, about the dad whose name I knew but I’d never met. About the half brother who didn’t know I existed. About his mother, my dad’s wife. Was that cool? It was complicated. But I didn’t think Wendy was interested in that.

  Rolling onto her stomach, Wendy said, “So—guess who I talked to today?”

  “Who?”

  “Seth. Cu-ute Seth with the shoulders.”

  I nodded, even as I thought of Seth’s girlfriend Rima Nolan, one of those top girls who still thought Wendy was trash.

  Wendy stared at me; she wanted more. Was I supposed to say, Yeah, cool? Bring up Rima? What?

  Sometimes, when I didn’t know what to say to Wendy, I talked to her in my head. Now I thought, Well, gee, first you went after Cam Davies. Then it was Daniel Ettinger. Last weekend, Malcolm Liddell. You’re not with any of them now. Their girlfriends—or ex-girlfriends—hate you. Every girl in school worries you’ll go after her guy.

  “I didn’t know you were into Seth,” I said lamely.

  She grinned. “Ab-so-loot-ly.”

  Really? I thought. Because, maybe I’m crazy, but I never heard you talk about Seth until Rima gave you the stink eye when you complimented her skirt in the cafeteria.

  “Seth’s going to Jenny’s party this weekend.” Wendy rolled over on her side. “I can tell my mom I’m with you, right?”

  “Right.” I had stopped going to parties with Wendy after the thing with Daniel and the towels. But Wendy still told her mom she was with me whenever she wanted to go out.

  “Maybe you could come this time,” Wendy said casually.

  Immediately, I shook my head.

  “It’s just a party,” she said, joking, but annoyed also. “It won’t kill you to go.”

  It might, I thought. A lot of times, when I had to speak to someone, my heart pounded so bad I was convinced it was going to explode. And I didn’t know how to tell Wendy she was different at parties. Someone not my friend, almost like the girls who made fun of me.

  She shrugged. “I mean, unless you’re going to be some kind of virgin nun your whole life …”

  I stared, but Wendy’s face was blank, as if she hadn’t said the ugly thing she’d just said. I knew very well that speaking and the other thing went together. If you never talked to people, the chances of getting someone interested in you were pretty much zilch. And it was more than that. Guys took courage. Out-thereness. Sharing your thoughts, souls, bodies. Whatever—I was too scared for all of it.

  I had thought that was my secret. Now Wendy, my supposed best friend, was calling me on it.

  Maybe to prove I did have the guts to speak, I snapped, “Well, better a virgin nun than the opposite.”

  I don’t know who was more shocked, me or Wendy. She immediately sat up and pulled her legs up to her chin. Wrapping her arms around them, she put her head down, face turned away from me.

  I felt awful. Also thrilled. Yeah, I can be nasty too. Because that was another secret. The hope that one day, someone would push me too hard and I’d say something so scorchingly cruel that no one would ever mess with me again.

  Take it back, Rain, I thought. Unsay what you said. The whole world hurts Wendy. Yay, you; you can do it, too.

  “Wen?”

  She wouldn’t look at me.

  “I’m sorry. I totally suck, that was … wrong.”

  There was a long silence. Then, her head still turned, she mumbled, “I suck too.”

  “Me, more.”

  She looked up, grinning. “No way. I so outrank you in suckage.”

  Laughing, I said, “Okay, you win.”

  “Which means you have to come to the party,” she said triumphantly. “I will totally stick by you the whole time, I promise.”

  Then she added, “Seriously, dude. Those people are harsh. I need one person there that I know is on my side.”

  An island of safety.

  How could I say no?

  “How’s Katherine Palmer?” my mom asks. She’s going through my grandmother’s friends one by one. At each name, my grandmother just shakes her head. I sit in the middle, wishing this would end.

  “Call her,” says my mom after every shake of the head. “Invite her over.”

  My grandmother glares, but it doesn’t stop my mom. “You need your friends,” she insists. “They need you.”

  “Things … change,” says my grandmother.

  Five minutes after we arrived at the party, Wendy dumped me cold, and I was living my worst nightmare: silent and lost in a roomful of people. I smiled, nodded, pretended to be one of the group. I watched Wendy work her way over to Seth, listened as she giggled and shrieked, Oh my God, that’s hilarious.

  I prayed for her to stop, prayed for her to come back, to be my friend again. If I was her home base, shouldn’t she be mine? Wendy had said these people were harsh, and they were. Harsh and shallow and only into themselves. And Wendy seemed to get along with them just fine.

  Who are you? I wondered. And why did I ever think we were friends?

  When Wendy and Seth disappeared into the bedroom, I left and wandered in the hallway of Jenny’s building. Wendy and I were supposed to go home together; I couldn’t split. But I couldn’t stay in there. Sitting on the cold, white marble steps, I decided I had been exiled to some barren Arctic wilderness. All around me there was snow, ice, frigid winds. No sign of human life anywhere.

  Then Rima Nolan ran out into the hallway.

  I heard her before I saw her: the ragged crying, the sharp echo of heels on the tiled floor. I felt a flutter of heat and movement as she rushed past me and up the stairs. I don’t think she saw me at all.

  The crying continued, growing faint as she climbed. I glanced down the hall, thinking Rima’s friends would follow. But no one came.

  Not right, I found myself thinking. Come on, people, girl’s in pain. You can’t just leave her.

  But they could, it seemed.

  The silence and emptiness of the hallway began to frighten me. Gazing up the stairs, I listened for Rima. Heard nothing.

  Raising my voice slightly, I said, “Um, are you all right?”

  No answer. I noticed that the hallway windows were open. This was a twelve-story building. We were on the ninth floor; the street lay far below us. And Rima was headed up. Last year at a party, Nellie Callender got massively drunk and tried to jump out a window.

  Standing, I called up the stairs, “Hey!” Cringing as it echoed through the stairwell.

  All I got back was silence.

  Nervous, I climbed to the next floor. Then the next, until I heard the crying again, that ugly whining noise of real pain. I reached the top floor to find Rima wiping her nose with her sleeve. Bone thin with straight dark hair and enormous gray eyes, Rima was something out of Brontë, which I’d always frantically envied.

  I kept my distance. Rima had never been mean to me, but I’d stayed out of her way, so she’d never had the chance. Now I was breaking the Thou Shalt Not Speak rule. And I was Wendy’s friend. She would have every right to blast me.

  Then Rima whispered, “They’re laughing.”

  “What?” I came closer.

  “Laughing.” Her voice was stronger now. “Everyone. They’re hanging out by the bedroom door, listening. They think it’s hysterical.”

  I felt sick. Rima, I realized, had always thought those kids were nice because they were nice to her. Now she was seeing how ugly some of them could be. Welcome to the other side, I thought.

  “I think … I think they’re pretty drunk,” I said softly, not sure if I meant her friends or Seth and Wendy.

  “No excuse,” she choked out.

  “Nope,” I agreed.

  Rima looked up, as if she suddenly realized who she was talking to. I stepped back. “I’m probably the last person you want to talk to, I’m sorry. I’ll go
get …” I gestured downstairs, even as I wondered who I was going to get.

  “No,” said Rima more calmly. “It’s cool. Hey, you came up here.”

  You. When Rima said that without contempt, the red burning hurt I’d felt, oh, it seemed like forever, cooled. In an instant, I wasn’t the freak girl who talked funny or Wendy’s coverfriend. I was just a person helping someone out.

  Glancing toward the window, I said, “I have this very melodramatic mind. I was worried you were going to jump.”

  She grinned. “I’m scared of heights.”

  “Oh.” And for no real reason, I laughed.

  Rima laughed too. Then she stopped. “This kind of feels like falling,” she said quietly. “All these people … you think they care about you. They’ll be there for you. And then they …”

  I thought of Wendy, how she promised she’d be with me at the party. “Then they let you fall.”

  “Yeah.” But she laughed again.

  “At least,” I said, “after you fall, you land on solid ground. You know where you stand.”

  She smiled. “And what if you’re smashed into a million pieces?”

  “Yeah, that could be a problem.”

  She sat. After a moment, I sat too. The two of us on one little ledge of white marble step. She talked about Seth, about her friends. Her parents, what they expected of her. How she was just a little sick and tired of the whole thing.

  I listened. And it seemed to help both of us.

  The conversation about friends seems to tire my grandmother out. She grows quiet. Her gaze drifts back to the garden. I give my mom a look, and she nods. Standing, she says, “I so want to stay, but we have to go.”

  Gwen brings my grandmother to the door. As we walk down the long hallway, I check to make sure Grandma hasn’t actually fallen asleep. But no, her eyes are open, focused on the long stretch of hallway that leads to the door.

  As we put on our coats, Grandma hands me an envelope. Taking it, I can feel photographs inside. She says, “M-m-y m-o … ther. And sis …”

  She struggles and I say, “Your sister?”

  She nods. Recently, she’s started doing this, giving me family photos. Images of people I don’t know but I’m connected to in some strange way. I’m not sure why she doesn’t give them to my mom, but my mom says, “Just take them. It gives her pleasure.”