by T Cooper
When we got home, I fled to the sanctuary of my room and opened up my laptop. No e-mails. So I logged onto my secret account, where one message popped up, subject line reading, So . . .
I was afraid to click on it and read, but knew I could never resist:
Drew,
Thanks for writing. I’m sorry for what happened with your family. That sounds bonkers. And awful. Which I get. Lord knows my family can be both of those things too. I mean, my brother? Yuck. But OMFG your problems seem beyond. Leaving town like fugitives? Are you going to get arrested? Or end up in jail? Makes all that crap we stressed over last year seem fairly stupid, right? I’d heard that you ended up at some hippie boarding school and were abandoning everyone from your old life in favor of a spiritual rebirth or something. That’s what they’re saying around Central anyhow.
I want to tell you about my summer but it hardly seems worth going into given the circumstances. Let’s just say, camp was creepy. I survived. Not everyone was terrible. There were marshmallow roasts every night. So that was cool. But some of the counselors were so into the mission they seemed possessed. Like those girls in the old Beatles footage where they scream and shake and shred their clothes. Epic hysteria. That, I didn’t love. But I’m home now and it all seems funny in retrospect. I guess.
What else? It was nice to “read” your voice. I don’t hate you. I never could. You are my best friend. I DO hate that you’ve left me on my own this year to do battle with Chloe and her moronic minions. Now I have to deal with her at church and school by myself. Stellar.
I . . . This is hard. I feel like I sound fake. I don’t know how to talk with you without talking with you. In my head the words are pouring out, all messy and jumbled like a swarm of bees. But when I type, all that comes out is this dopey stuff. Like I’m talking to an aunt I haven’t seen in five years. There’s too much to say. So why say anything, you know?
I just reread your letter.
Do you really love me? I wonder. Not about you. But about why.
Write me again, okay? I feel so alone. I’m not trying to make you worry, especially since you are now on the lam (lamb? Whatever. I’m picturing you in a bonnet, riding a wooly little lamb. Joking is still okay, right?). But I do feel like that polar bear floating on the iceberg. Remember that poster? The one in the Bio lab that almost made me cry every time I caught a glimpse of it.
I’m sorry. This is turning into a bummer letter. I just miss you. I miss us. I miss the me I was with you around. Does that make sense?
Okay. I’m going to stop now. Before I become so pathetic you wonder why you ever liked me in the first place.
Write me again. Okay? I want you to. Even if it sounds like I don’t.
Love,
Aud
P.S. Oh yeah. I cut off my hair. I wonder if you’d think it looks pretty.
CHANGE 2–DAY 10
Second week of school in effect. I’m in homeroom watching Audrey, because that’s what I do in homeroom. Mr. Crowell is giving yet another pitch for the Peregrine literary magazine, trying to cajole us into signing up by making writing and talking about writing sound like more fun than skating, band, chorus, football, or, I don’t know, picking your nose.
“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth,” he proclaims, his eyes lit up the way teachers’ eyes do when they taste inspiration. “It is how we share ourselves. How we get to know each other. Stories are, by nature, intimate.”
When he drops the word intimate, a few heads do perk up, but not for the right reasons.
“So, any takers?” Mr. Crowell asks, surveying the class, eyes eager.
I’m mumbling, “Hells no,” under my breath when I spot Audrey’s hand among the few in the air. “I’ll do it!” I shout, thrusting my arm above my head like I’m some tween pop star during the fireworks finale of her concert.
“Enthusiasm! Marvelous to see,” Mr. Crowell says, clearly thrilled as he jots down my name, Audrey’s, and—after he mentions yet again that those who join the lit mag will earn extra credit in English—the names of a few other students, including phony Chloe, who obviously just wants another extracurricular for her college application portfolio. (Speaking of the lie that tells the truth.)
“Will poetry be a part of the Pelligrino, Mr. Crowell?” Chloe coos, her tone reflexively solicitous, even at eight forty-five a.m. “I’m an amaaaa-zing poet. I find poetry allows me to reveal my inner parts.”
From the back Jerry says, “I thought that was vodka.”
“Yes, Chloe, the Peregrine will feature poetry, and we look forward to your many revelations.”
I watch Audrey’s head shake slightly. If anyone in this class is poetic, it’s Aud. She must have asked me to read The Bell Jar a dozen times last year. I never got around to it—it seemed a little too close to home then. Maybe now I will. I can already hear DJ’s comments when I whip that book out at lunch.
Aud lowers her hand slowly once she’s sure Mr. Crowell has put her name on the list. I can’t help but notice what seems like an air of sadness emanating from her. Well, from the back of her neck, anyway. Of course, I could be projecting. At the very least she seems anxious, like she’s waiting for the first first-period bell to sound so we can all get out of here and on to the next thing. I can relate.
I can’t stop thinking about the letter she wrote responding to mine with the lamest excuse in history about why I was gonzo from her life. I wrote her back again, which I know is verboten, yadda yadda yadda, because we’re not really supposed to maintain the relationships our former selves created as our former selves. But this is different . . . Okay, it actually isn’t. But I don’t want to stop corresponding with Audrey. I don’t want to let her down. She needs me. Well, Drew. She said as much. Really, I’m doing it more for her than myself.
Finally the bell rings and homeroom ends, so I hop up, jamming my planner into my backpack sideways and making a pronounced (some might say clumsy) effort to catch up to Audrey. Mr. Crowell hollers at me on the way out: “See you at the first meeting!” I grunt back affirmatively, and it takes me a few seconds while fast-walking down the hall to remember what the heck he was talking about. Right, the Peregrine. I agreed to do that.
“Hey, Sylvia P.,” I say to Aud, finally catching up to her and hoping she doesn't wonder how I “guessed” at one of her favorite authors.
“Is that supposed to make you Ted Hughes?” she asks, not missing a beat. “’Cause that would not be a good look.”
“More like Langston Hughes,” I say, proud of myself.
“Do you have any idea what Ted Hughes did to Sylvia Plath?” she asks, like anybody knows who Ted Hughes is anyway.
I get the distinct feeling I’ve royally effed up. Why didn’t I read that stupid book when she asked me to? I reach back into my memory palace and can only come up with a fuzzy image of the cover, a wilted red rose stem or something. I got nothing. I shrug and try to smile so my dimples show, which Mom has repeatedly pronounced “adorable” and says will allow me to “get away with murder” if I ever need them to.
“Well, look it up,” Aud says, impervious to the smile. “It doesn’t end well for her.”
“Noted,” I respond, trying to maintain our walk-and-talk.
She suddenly slows, seeming to decide not to be so hard on me. “Anyway, I’m going the Joan Didion nonfiction route,” she announces, “so we can leave the adolescent suicidal poetry to Chloe.”
“If only,” I try. Audrey shoots me a that’s-too-far look, but then eases into her quiet wicked laugh. I join in. It feels good. To laugh, to have made her laugh.
I chat her up on the way to her next class, which is in the opposite direction and floor from mine, but I don’t care if I’m tardy. Just before we get to her room, I push my luck and try to cement our fledgling bond, and like every instance in all of history when one person tries to bond with another instead of allowing it to happen naturally, it is a tsunami of awkwardness the minute it starts coming out, but there’s no use tryin
g to stop the spinning gyre of doh.
“You know, Aud—REY! Audrey. I’m here, if you ever need a homie to roll with.” To which she gives me the same look she gave me on the first day when I called her by the same nickname.
She stops short, frozen like a Pompeii ash relic, ironically, just outside History class. I was only trying to drop a throwback term, a subtle inside joke from her favorite movie, Clueless, which Audrey’s memorized like the Pledge of Allegiance. Something I now see from the startled look on her face was a bad play. I try dimple-smiling again. She doesn’t smile back. Instead, she sort of cocks her head at me, and I realize my inner Drew is perhaps showing a little too explicitly.
I remember when I was Ethan and how most teenage dudes don’t talk this much, at least none that I knew. And never about feelings. And even more never about another person’s feelings. And sure as shazam never about freaking Clueless.
A couple bodies pass between us into class, and Audrey clearly wants to go in too, but knowing her, she’s trying not to be rude while also trying to figure out what the eff I’m talking about. I’m emo-ing up the entire hallway like cigarette smoke, and I can tell by her knit brow that I need to stop this emotional upchuck like yesterday, or I will never have a chance at getting this girl back in my life.
“So I saw you checking me out on the field yesterday,” I throw out suddenly, switching gears and channeling my idea of smooth, which is a cross between Justin Timberlake and every starter in the NBA.
“It was hard to miss your epic face-plant,” she answers, “if that’s what you’re referring to.” The hint of a smirk.
“Well, I made the team,” I counter. “I can’t be all bad.”
“Nobody said you were,” she replies, the second bell shrieking above our heads.
“Nobody said I wasn’t, either,” I call over it, as she slips into History, and I think I see her shoulders twitch with some sort of satisfaction as she turns the corner and disappears out of sight.
Progress!
Even if it did make me tardy for Chemistry.
* * *
Oh, one more thing: when I was changing in the locker room, I saw this freshman acting all bizarre while he was getting dressed. He was covering himself with a towel and seemed unnaturally nervous given no one was paying him any attention, except me, I suppose. Which of course you DO NOT do in boys’ locker rooms. So we locked eyes for a beat, both of us apologetically, but then he kind of bared his teeth for a flash, like a cornered rodent.
It’s probably nothing, but I had the distinct sense that he could be “in the club.” I’m going to ask Tracy if she knows if there’s another Changer at Central (like she’d tell me). That is, if I can pry her away from her DL love interest, Mr. Crowell. Ew. Brain, please stop going there.
The images, they burn, they burn.
CHANGE 2–DAY 15
The end zone is in sight. I’m running top-speed (well, as fast as I can wearing a full uniform with pads and helmet). I glance left, glance right: path clear. I keep pumping; it’s going to be the first touchdown I’ve ever scored, who cares if it’s just in a practice drill?
But then, jaysus jiminy cricket, I’m plowed down. From my right side, totally unexpectedly, something clobbers me high up in my shoulders/neck area, my whole person flattened by what feels like a speeding bus. Then the crisp crack of plastic and the rattling of every bone in my skeleton from traveling in one direction to BLAM, snapping in another direction entirely, some awful, unnatural body physics I’m sure Michelle Hu would know just the right terminology for. And like that, I’m roadkill on the grass, five yards short of the goal line.
My ears ring, and wait, what? I can see sky. Where’d my helmet go?
“Sorry, holmes,” I hear from somewhere above and behind me. Jason’s voice. Of course. He sniggers. Someone else joins in. Like a pair of evil gridiron twins. “Gotta get you toughened up for the big-time Friday,” he says, walking around to survey his work. “No weak links,” he adds, stretching his jersey out enough to tuck his floppy shoulder pad back inside. He glares at me on the ground, the sun behind his head, while his hype-man Baron clutches my helmet in a gloved hand and dangles it above me.
“Get up, bitch!” Baron hollers like he’s a Marine drill sergeant.
Now I’m seeing stars. (FYI: those little white flashes don’t actually go in cute birdie circles around your head like they do in Tom and Jerry cartoons, but actually shoot in every direction inside your eyes like barbecue skewers trying to find soft tissue to pierce.)
“I’m thinking a football scholarship’s not in the cards,” Jason snarls. “Maybe soccer? Lotta homos play that.” He nudges up his face mask enough to spit on the turf beside me. Baron drops my helmet, and it bounces twice, rolls to a stop against my head.
Which I can’t move.
“What the hell are you doing?” I hear distant screeching from the other side of the track.
“Uh-oh,” Baron says under his breath, “it’s Mother Teresa,” and starts jogging away.
Jason stands up even taller. “What?” he asks, petulant.
It’s Audrey. Her face bright red and glimmering, practically in tears, like she just witnessed an animal being abused.
“I saw what you did,” she snaps. “Even if Coach didn’t. You think he’d want you injuring someone from your own team, genius?”
Jason eyes me, then Audrey, thinks for a few seconds, something suddenly occurring to him. “Oh, hell no, this is not happening.”
“Are you okay?” she asks me, but I’m afraid to nod my head. In case I can’t.
“No, uh-uh, this is not gonna happen,” Jason continues, even though the coach has blown the whistle calling everybody back into the huddle. “Being a lezzy last year wasn’t enough? Now you have to find another way to feel special?”
The whistle blows again, this time longer, seemingly more insistently. Jason snaps to and Audrey bends down toward me as I slowly sit up.
“Hey, she’s only using you to piss off our parents,” Jason says to me. “You know that, right?” He jogs off, his springy athletic trot underscoring why he’s the captain of the team however many years running. Probably since he started toddling.
“I am so, so sorry about my idiot brother,” Audrey coos sincerely, her sympathy almost splitting my heart into all of its individual chambers.
“We can’t help who we’re related to,” I manage, the torturous stars subsiding some now that I’m fully upright.
She looks so sad. The way Jason always makes her look. Now I start trying to stand up because I’ve had just about enough of being down here below everybody.
“Here, let me—” She grabs my elbow, but I shake her off. She lets go. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” she tries.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but right now I want Audrey to leave me alone. I’m barely managing not to puke, feeling like the entire school’s eyes are on me again, thoroughly embarrassed, ashamed, my face burning hot, even though I know I shouldn’t be feeling any of those things. There’s no logical reason. It was an unfair, dangerous hit, and Jason wasn’t even running the same drill as me. He was just asserting his dominance. Again.
And yet I can’t help feeling all those things. And Aud being there only makes it worse. Before I can stop it, last year comes flooding back—when Jason got wasted and forced himself on me, how instantly I felt like everything was my fault, that I’d asked for it somehow or, worse, deserved it, because I was weak, or naive, or simply too stupid to see it coming.
“Are you okay?” Audrey says again, jolting me back to the now.
“Whatever, it’s all good,” I say lamely, and sort of harshly. “I have to get back.”
She just waits, now on the verge of tears. I try to jog back to join the team, but every step sends shooting pain into my head and neck, so I have to slow-walk in order to bounce less. I don’t bother turning back to see if she is watching me go.
* * *
“Mom has a late group s
ession,” Dad says, soon as I push through the door into the kitchen. “Looks like it’s just going to be you and—what’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I announce, dropping my backpack and gym bag by the door and blowing past him, causing the newspaper he’s reading to flutter to the tile floor. Snoopy jumps off the couch and runs to greet me, but I knee him out of the way too.
“Okaaay,” I hear Dad exhale, but nothing after that because I slam my bedroom door behind me and dramatically hurl myself onto the bed like a frigging teenage cliché, not that I care.
I lie there for a few minutes, too filled with, what—I don’t know, a whole all-the-emotions-you-can-stuff-in-your-face buffet—to fall asleep. All I want is for the day to be over. I’m feeling a little bad for both the newspaper and kneeing Snoopy (though not bad enough to do anything about it), when my laptop dings. It’s DJ:
Yo Erkel, wanna come to Nash this weekend? I got a spoken word thing on Saturday, then we’re gonna get some pizza or something. Kenya’s coming. My mom’s driving.
I pull the laptop onto the bed, type: Do you know Jason Stewart?
DJ: QB? Yeah.
Me: I want to kick his ass.
DJ: What for?
Me: Breathing. He’s a menace to society.
DJ: Like the movie?
Me: ?
DJ: So you comin?
DJ: Yo?
Me: Sorry. I don’t know. Yeah, I think. Let me make sure it’s cool with my parents.
DJ: My mom said she could call your mom or whatever.
Me: No, that’s okay. I’ll tell you tomorrow.
DJ: Cool.
Knock-knock. Dad at the door. Unlike Mom, at least he waits to open it until I yell, “What?”
“Howdy partner,” Dad says, calm as can be. “What’s going on?” I close my laptop and pull it out of the way before he plops parentally on the bed next to me. Snoopy noses through the door right after, so damn happy-looking all the time with that big goofy pit bull smile and wagging tongue. He’s so in the moment, incapable of resentment or self-loathing or even being pissed at me for acting like a jerk. He hops on the bed, sensing I need him more than I let on.
