Ikenna smiled at me. There’s a tiny gap between his top two front teeth that I’d fallen for the first day I’d seen it. Between his eyes and grin I was in danger of burning up. “I wrote it down, but I don’t have it on me now.”
Except for the fact that he was smiling at me, asking Ikenna about history class already seemed like a dumb idea. If I’d really forgotten to write down my homework, wouldn’t I have just checked with my friends from history class?
“Right,” I said. “Okay, thanks anyway.”
I sped away from him, silently cursing myself for being obvious. But the next morning when I was walking down the hall I heard him say my name from behind me. “Ashlyn?”
“Yeah?” I swung to look at him.
“Did you get that history homework all right yesterday?”
The history homework was a series of questions on Trudeaumania and naturally I’d known that all along but I said, “Yeah, I did—thanks.”
From then on we spoke to each other with gradually increasing frequency until one day in mid-April Ikenna stopped by my locker while I was looking for a hair band that’d fallen out of my knapsack and said he was thinking of calling me over the weekend but realized he didn’t have my number.
By then I could look into his eyes without turning stupid and I recited my number and added, “Give me yours too.”
We talked for an hour and a half the following Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t difficult speaking to him but I could feel an anticipation-energy between our words that made my heart beat fast the whole time. Before hanging up Ikenna said, “We should hang out sometime—go to a movie or something.”
“For sure,” I said breezily. My head was whirling like when you’re on one of those fairground rides that make you want to throw up and laugh at the same time. I tried to picture myself holding Ikenna’s hand at the movie theater, the two of us stealing kisses in the dark. “For sure,” I repeated. For sure, for sure, for sure. Maybe we could take the bus. Maybe Ikenna had an older brother or sister who could drive us so my father wouldn’t have to. Celeste would’ve done it as a favor but she was away at university in Guelph.
But the details would take care of themselves, I thought. Things with Ikenna were moving in a certain direction—the right direction—and the only thing I needed to do was swim right along with them.
I thought, I thought … and then everything changed on me in a heartbeat. It happened without warning, and by the time I saw my very best friend again on Monday morning the damage was already done. People stared at me in the hallway, whispering amongst themselves, sniggering and then looking away. Not everyone but lots of people from tenth grade. I glanced down at my jacket and jeans, wondering what they were noticing.
Carrie was waiting for me at my locker, and her eyes were murky. Now that I remember the details from my own life, her apology reminds me of Breckon’s to Jules. Saying you’re sorry doesn’t repair damage. It doesn’t take things back.
“Ashlyn, I’m so sorry,” she told me. “Please don’t hate me.”
I didn’t even know why she was apologizing. I stared dazedly at Carrie and said, “Why would I hate you?”
Carrie sniffled. She wrapped her hands under the end of her sweater and pulled it taut down across her body. “Because,” she rasped. “Because Teena Simmons knows what happened to you and she’s twisted it into lies that she’s telling everyone.”
What happened? My eyes searched Carrie’s. I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“Dylan,” she whispered, focusing on my shoulder. “You have no idea how sorry I am—how muchx20m" I wish I could take it back.”
Dylan. Dylan from when I was eight. The Dylan who’d grabbed me, kissed me and shoved his hand up my hoodie.
My stomach dropped. “What’s Teena saying?” I hardly thought about Dylan anymore, hadn’t dreamt about him in nearly a year. “I can’t believe you told her about that.”
“Me neither,” Carrie said sadly. “I never thought she’d tell anyone.” Carrie explained that she and her older sister had run into Anna Eisler, one of the most popular girls at Hillfield Park, at the movies on Saturday night. Anna invited them to a spontaneous party her boyfriend was throwing and because the only people Carrie knew there aside from her sister were some of the really popular kids from tenth grade, she’d drunk with them for hours.
This was why, when I’d called her on Sunday, Carrie had let her cell go to message all day. When I’d tried the landline, her mom told me she was sick. Although not sick, it turned out, but hungover.
“Teena was really upset,” Carrie continued, her hands twisting under her sweater. “Marshall dumped her on Friday night and on top of that her father started going out with a woman twenty years younger than him a couple of weeks ago. The two of us were talking on our own and she kept saying how gross it was, that if he was younger it would be illegal for him to do that, and … I was only trying to make her feel better, saying, you know, that it wasn’t like what happened to you.
“I was so drunk,” she sputtered. “And Teena was talking like she was being real with me. I’ve never seen her like that—she was almost crying. Not that that’s any excuse but …” Carrie paused with her mouth open. A fly could’ve zipped straight down her esophagus if it’d wanted to. “But today I found out she’s turned everything I said into lies. She and her friends are saying that, like, you secretly lost it to Dylan when you were twelve and that you …” Carrie grimaced, her hands popping out from under her sweater as she began to attack her cuticles.
“That I what?”
Carrie shook her head like she didn’t want to repeat Teena’s words.
“I’ll find out anyway,” I said, already feeling nauseous. I wasn’t ashamed of what happened when I was eight. Dylan did what he did and it wasn’t my fault, but it wasn’t anyone else’s business either. No one should’ve known unless I’d decided to tell them. And now the entire tenth grade would hear about it, but what they would hear would be lies.
“That I what?” I repeated.
Carrie looked down at the floor. “Begged him for it.” Her eyes snuck up to meet mine as she continued. “And that he should’ve never gotten into trouble for it because he thought you were older and it was all your idea anyway. She’s saying all the guys at school should stay away from you because if anyone gets with you you’ll probably say it was rape.”
I hung my head and leaned back against my locker. Why would Teena say that about me? I’d never done anything to her.
“Ashlyn, say something,” Carrie pleaded. “I swear I didn’t know this was spreading until I got here this morning and everyone was acting so weird. I’ve already started telling people that it’s lies.”
Some people—my friends—would know Teena was lying right away, but others would inhale the drama like it was oxygen, and I didn’t know what to do about it, just that I didn’t want to explain the truth about Dylan.
Later that same morning I bumped into a junior guy in the hallway as he was walking with his friends and he pretended to cower and shrink away from me. “Don’t call the cops on me—I never touched you,” he said with a nasty smirk as his friends laughed. I called him an asshole and shook my head like dealing with them wasn’t worth my time, never once looking any of them in the eye.
That entire first day people looked at me differently and talked in hushed voices behind my back. Some of them tried not to look my way and pretended they didn’t know my private business, but by the time the end-of-day bell rang I was sure the gossip had filtered down from the most popular kids to the general population, pyramid style. Mostly I tried to act like I didn’t care what anyone thought, but inside I felt like an X-ray held up to the light, my secrets exposed for the world to see.
That night the anonymous emails and text messages to my cell phone began. Close to a dozen of them. Cruel stuff that said things like I must have been hotter when I was twelve and asking whether I ever did it for money.
I didn’t want t
o tell my parents and upset them all over again; that bad time was supposed to be behind us. I told myself it would blow over soon and kept the emails and texts to myself—I didn’t even tell my friends. At school they stood by me and were fiercely protective, glaring at anyone who gave me a second look and saying that Teena and her friends were lying bitches. But late at night it was just me, reading those awful messages alone, turning them over in my mind. I should’ve deleted them without looking. I knew that but couldn’t help myself.
One of the messages said: “I bet you like it rough. You pretend to be a good girl at school but I always knew looking at you that you were a slut.”
That made me feel sick like when it happened, like when Dylan told me I was one of those girls who knew things early, and I wasn’t in any frame of mind to talk to Ikenna when I saw him at school but he didn’t try anyway. In the middle of the week he started to smile at me from down the hall and then stopped and turned away to say something to his friend Barrett.
I wonder now if he guessed the Dylan rumor was less than truthful and just didn’t know what to say to me about it, but I wish one of us had tried before we’d run out of chances.
I don’t know how I died but I don’t believe I died happy. People say it all the time: life isn’t fair. But I wanted a better ending for myself. There’s not much left to my life that’s yet to be revealed o bve I died to me, and as I brace for the tail end I feel as though I’m staring, naked and unsheltered, into the face of an approaching hurricane.
twenty-one
ashlyn
Nails on a chalkboard, the squeal of animals as they’re slaughtered, a dentist’s drill boring deep into a tooth, children screaming in fear—these are the kind of sounds people recoil from, and if you could hear the human heart break like I can, in the measure of someone’s shredded but silent breath, you’d know that sound is just as terrible. I can’t listen. I’ve switched the audio off on Breckon’s breathing for my own sanity.
It feels like cheating but I can’t help him if I can’t think. Maybe I can’t help him anyway. Maybe no one can.
A few minutes ago Breckon snuck out of his house after pretending to go to bed early. He’s driving west as I watch. Heading who knows where and I … I can’t focus. The past has caught up with me. It burns without heat. Strips away the Ashlyn I’ve become since my death and reminds me who I was at the very end.
From a distance I’ve witnessed Jules’s calm after Breckon broke up with her and envied it. The calm was of a sort I didn’t have. I wanted not to care about what other people thought they knew about me. Even Ikenna.
If he didn’t want to talk to me anymore that should’ve been his problem, not mine. But it still hurt. For all I know the crazy emails and texts (and one printed-off letter that I found slid into my locker) could’ve all been sent by one person. Would it have helped me if I’d known that for certain? A lone enemy rather than a collection of haters?
I should’ve changed my email addresses and cell phone number, told my parents and reported what was happening to school. It’s easy to see that now, but I didn’t feel that way before I died. I felt trapped between wanting to appear strong and feeling vulnerable and afraid, like the child I was when I was eight.
On the first Thursday after the news had spread I walked into the girls’ bathroom nearest the front office just before second-last period and found Shenice and Teena both fixing their eyeliner in front of the grimy bathroom mirror. Neither of them had spoken to me since before the Dylan story broke, and Shenice nudged Teena when she saw me.
Teena straightened her skirt like I was invisible. “I should’ve bought this in black while it was on sale too,” she said to Shenice.
“You can borrow mine whenever you want,” Shenice offered, her fingers capping her eyeliner and dropping it into her pencil case. “It looks better on you than it does on me anyway.”
I stopped directly behind them, staring at the two of them with a fierceness that caught Shenice off guard. She glanced anxiously at Teena beo bvejustiffore switching her attention to the contents of her pencil case.
“Can we help you?” Teena said in a mean voice, her eyes locking on mine in the mirror.
Shenice reached for her lip gloss, dipping her little finger into the pot to dab cherry red color onto her lips.
“I don’t understand why you lied about me,” I said, my voice as spiky as Teena’s. “I don’t get how you can hear a bad thing like Carrie told you—a private thing that wasn’t yours to tell—and think it’s okay to turn it around and use it against me.”
I clamped my mouth shut and waited for Teena to answer.
Then Shenice faced me, giving me enough respect to acknowledge what Teena hadn’t. “Look, it’s not our fault that Carrie can’t keep her mouth shut,” she said. “Once these things get loose there’s no stopping them. You know how it is, you tell a couple people and then they tell a couple people and before you know it, it’s everywhere. If you didn’t want anyone to know you should’ve picked your friends more carefully.”
“But it’s a lie,” I said, focusing on Teena’s back. “She knows it is. I never …” Tears stung my eyes. “I never did anything with Dylan. I was only eight.” I thought of the day in sixth grade when I’d pushed Vanessa into a puddle. Some of that old anger rose in me, mixing with fresh ache and brand-new outrage. “Something’s really wrong with you if you’d lie about someone who got molested,” I rasped.
Shenice’s face had fallen, but Teena kept her cool. “I don’t know anything about that,” she countered. “I only repeated what I heard from your friend. If there’s a lie in there, you better talk to her about it.”
I couldn’t believe Teena was still denying it. Pushing anyone wouldn’t help me now. Talking to them wouldn’t help either. I spun on my heels and charged out of the bathroom.
Shenice followed me into the hallway, calling after me. I hurried away from her but she caught up to me in the stairwell and asked, “Ashlyn, is that true? Were you really”—she dropped her voice—“molested when you were a kid?”
“Why would I lie?” I felt tears surge to the surface and struggled to hold them back. “Do you think I want to give you more ammunition to use against me?”
Shenice looked as though someone had slapped her. “I didn’t know,” she said. “I would never have …” She shook her head. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t have to listen to Teena,” I blurted out. “You should’ve known it wasn’t true.”
“I honestly am sorry.” Shenice’s forehead wrinkled as she frowned. “Between Marshall and what’s been happening with Teena’s dad she’s been rx20 am sorry.eally messed up lately but I never thought she’d lie about something so—”
“That makes two of us,” I interrupted, turning to break away from her.
“Wait, Ashlyn!” Shenice’s fingers brushed against my arm as I spun. She sounded concerned and maybe Shenice hadn’t meant for the rumors to get out of hand and hurt me the way they had but that didn’t mean I trusted her. The only thing I wanted now was to escape.
I jogged away from Shenice until I was outside the school doors, my eyes stinging but dry and my lungs gulping in cold air. In the distance a woman in a Burberry coat and silk scarf pushed her rosy-cheeked toddler in a stroller, along the muddy sidewalk. I wished I were that woman, finished with school and immersed in building my own life. Not with a baby yet, not for a long time, but away from Hillfield Park, where people wouldn’t know me.
Away. Allowed to be just Ashlyn without the baggage. No one staring and whispering about Dylan, maybe believing bad things about me or maybe not, but aware of them just the same.
I couldn’t handle history and science, but unless I wanted to trudge into the office and fake the flu I couldn’t go home either. My father’s work hours varied. He could show up at home at any moment.
I went back to my locker for my coat, scanning the inside for a nasty note that wasn’t there. So far there’d just been one,
but finding it slid into my locker meant whoever had put it there went to my school. Maybe it was Teena herself but it could’ve been anyone and he or she could drop a second, third and fourth letter into my locker at anytime.
Even if the rumor about me had been true, it wouldn’t excuse the things said in those texts and emails. There was something wrong with whoever had sent them, like I’d told Teena. Something wrong with them, not me. That’s what my old therapist would’ve said to me.
And I knew that for myself but knowing wasn’t enough, I needed breathing room. I put on my coat and grabbed my purse from within my knapsack but left the homework and knapsack itself in my locker. They were too heavy to carry around where I was going. If I’d had a car, like Breckon, I would have had more options, but the number seventeen bus route that went by Hillfield Park ended at two points—the Strathedine Town Center mall and the Cherrywood bus depot.
I caught the bus to the mall. My phone beeped just as I was getting off, signaling that a text message had come in. Don’t look, I warned. You know you shouldn’t. For at least an hour and a half, I resisted. I turned off my cell and wandered the hallways, sipping a fruit smoothie. Then I hid out in a corner of the mega bookstore.
Once it was three-thirty it was safe for me to catch the bus home again, and I headed for the exit nearest the bus stop, wishing I could spend every day this way, surrounded by people who wouldn’t know anything about me that I hadn’t told them. I thought if I could do that it might not even matter so much about the texts and emails. Impulsively, I flipped open my cell and saw there were two messages now. I read the newest first. It was from an unknown number, like all the othee acours, but what it said was very different:
T tried to hook up with I on Saturday after she left the party but he said he was interested in someone else. Then the rumors about you started. Coincidence??
My Beating Teenage Heart Page 21
