by Cyn Balog
“Zell,” he mused aloud. “Are you like Eminem? Liberace? Sting?”
“Excuse me?”
“You go by only one name?”
“N-no,” I said, and wondered if your speech impediment was rubbing off on me. “I’m Victoria. Victoria Zell.”
“Cool. Vic,” he said. Just like that. I didn’t have to tell him. He just knew. It was the first of many things he perceived about me.
I felt a thrill of excitement, of possibility, which I quickly tamped down. Better not to deal with disappointment. I opened my notebook to the first blank page and wondered how long it would be before he ignored me like everyone else. It was inevitable. Right now, he didn’t know any better.
At least, that’s what I thought until he held something out to me. Juicy Fruit. “Gum?” he asked.
“Um…” Juicy Fruit. Everyone else is into finer, fancier flavors, but he had plain old Juicy Fruit. And you know how I feel about Juicy Fruit.
I plucked the gum from his tanned fingers. “Thank you.” Was this a sign? I was about to unwrap the silver foil when I realized, “Mrs. Reese doesn’t let us chew gum in class.” My ordinary eyes meet his brilliant blue ones.
Oh, there is nothing as intense as the way he looks at you. When he does, it’s like you’ve been touched, maybe not by the hand of God, but by one of God’s fingers. That’s a whole thirteen months of Catholic school talking, Andrew. In class, our teachers spoke of saints being visited by God. You’re bathed in white light, enveloped in a strange and sudden peace. Supposedly, breath and words and sane thought escape you, leaving you totally giddy without having any idea why. I never quite believed all of that, but in that moment, I got it. His mere gaze felt like an extravagant gift.
“So she’s one of those teachers? Great.” Then he smiled, real easy, and leaned back in his chair as he fed the gum into his mouth. “I’m new. I’ll tell her I didn’t know.” His voice never wavered, even as he chewed. He looked up at the clock, and I got a better look of that field of cinnamon stubble on his chin. He was one of few boys in the class who could probably do with a shave. “Let’s see… Want to bet how long it is before she tells me to spit it out?”
I wanted to tell him no, that hell’s wrath would be a mosquito bite compared to what would ensue if he kept that gum in his mouth, but I didn’t have the time. The bell clanged, startling me enough that I wrote a black line across my clean page. Embarrassed, I caught him staring at me. He’d seen the whole thing.
“Jumpy, huh?”
He had no idea. You know how Mrs. Reese gave me nightmares, Andrew. She is the only late-grade English teacher at St. Ann’s, so I’d have the pleasure of having her every year until I blew the joint. I wasn’t the best at English, but she made even literary types want to pursue mathematical careers. She had a puckered, lemon-sucking face. She’d been at the school so long and was so comfortable in her position there that she wasn’t afraid to scream bloody murder at a student for, say, putting an apostrophe in the word its when it wasn’t needed. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who fantasized about her driving off a cliff in that smart Prius of hers.
I whispered, “I just don’t like—”
“Are you talking in my class, Miss Zell?”
Mrs. Reese had only gotten louder and meaner over the summer. I was glad I wasn’t chewing that gum because I’m sure I would have choked on it and died.
She had a new haircut, more severe, but everything else was the same. The way her sensible Easy Spirits scuffed up the aisle as she neared me. The way she tapped her fingers rat-a-tat-tat on every desk she passed. The singular way she managed to scowl and smile at the same time, as if she enjoyed making people cry. Every head in the class turned in my direction. The next words out of her mouth would be, “I see you’ve learned nothing from me over the break,” which she said just about any time we had a school holiday. I braced myself for it.
It was your voice that responded. Actually, not yours, but Z’s. He said, “Pardon me, ma’am. But I am new and was just asking Vic a question.” His voice was so smooth, so self-assured that I stared at him, marveling at the way he didn’t flinch at all. Nobody spoke to Reese without flinching. Nobody. “She was kind enough to help me out.”
I expected Mrs. Reese to launch lasers from her eyeballs and incinerate him. But her face softened. “You are Zachary Zimmerman?”
“Call me Z.” He proceeded to fill her in on the mundane details of his life, which for some reason, I found fascinating. Z moved here from Arizona, liked baseball. As he spoke, I realized he didn’t sound like you at all. His voice was too loud, too sure, like a radio announcer. Still, he had successfully diverted the wrath of Reese. And for that, I was grateful.
I thought that was the end of my story with Z. It was a short story, hardly worth reading. But I was wrong. Two seconds after Mrs. Reese turned toward the front of the room, as if she hadn’t just yelled at me for talking in class, he leaned across the aisle, still chewing noisily on the gum, and whispered, “You should come with me.”
I’d like to say that was when it began, but no. That was when it was cemented. I was a goner the second I looked into those eyes.
Chapter 4
You saw him often?
Yeah. He came in here weekday mornings, like once a week. Usually with a girl.
Did you say anything to him?
Other than, “What’ll you have?” No.
Did you notice anything that stood out about him?
His tips were for shit. But hey, he’s a kid. I didn’t expect much.
What was your impression of him?
He was cutting school, and we don’t get no cutters here. Young people ain’t our usual clientele. So the kind of kid that goes left when everyone else is going right.
—Police interview with Brian Kelly, owner of Kelly’s Deli, Bangor, Maine
I felt fire rushing to my cheeks. What could Z’s invitation possibly mean? Ever since I’d transferred to St. Ann’s for sophomore year, I’d been like pavement. Wallpaper. The thought of me hanging out with anyone was absurd.
I couldn’t turn to him, wouldn’t dare talk in Reese’s class, so I moved my notebook to the side of my desk and scribbled, Where?
He didn’t answer and couldn’t scribble anything on his own notebook, since he hadn’t brought one with him. The more time that went by, the more my cheeks ignited. He must have realized he’d made a mistake. Then I thought the mistake was mine. Maybe I’d misheard his words. As Reese went over our vocabulary list, I stuck on illusory. Surely I’d imagined the whole thing. Z and his Andrew-like voice were all in my head.
And then the bell rang. I got my stuff together to head off to my next class, hoping Reese wouldn’t rail at me on my way out. The second I stepped into the hallway, I heard that voice: “The place, of course.”
He was staring at me with those eyes. They made me think of Caribbean waters, so that’s probably why my voice drowned inside me. All I could manage to choke out was, “Ehm?”
Standing next to me, he was tall. He looked over my head, down the hall toward the K–8 classrooms, with their colorful, sunshiny drawings displayed on bulletin boards. “Every school has one, right? A cutting place?”
“A…” I began, but then I panicked. He couldn’t be thinking of cutting class already. That was ridiculous. It wasn’t like the student body at St. Ann’s was a bunch of saints—I’d heard plenty of Monday-morning chatter about wild parties that I hadn’t been invited to. I know they involved drinking and maybe even drugs. I’d heard the spiel about Central Maine lacking diversion, that “kids have nothing better to do.” A few kids had come to school hungover. But ditching class was impossible in our school because there were only twenty-ni—er, thirty—students in our class. Teachers noticed if anyone was missing. And why would Z ask me? Did I look like someone who went against authority? My parents had been spending so much time at
church that they may have been applying for sainthood. And they expected nothing less from my behavior. “What?” I asked.
He pointed down the hall, toward the doors that backed up to the woods. Yes, some kids would go out there and smoke behind the Dumpsters, but getting caught meant detention. I guessed if one wanted to leave school unnoticed, that would be the easiest way. But no way was I going. I planted my feet despite the tingling sensation that had overcome me, the whoosh of exhilaration that had my heart beating double time.
Andrew, you know I would never do anything like that. But something about him made me queasy and breathless and unable to think. It was almost like watching a slide show. First, we were in school, my feet pointed stalwartly toward my next class. Flash. Another image, his hand on mine. Flash. A shot of us bursting through the doors and into the woods, all lush and full of life, life that didn’t exist in the halls of St. Ann’s.
Outside, it was like I could truly breathe for the first time. Like this whole other world existed during the day, one I knew nothing about. We followed a small path, maybe a deer trail, into the woods, and before I realized what I had done, the school was out of sight and we were completely free. I followed him in silence, trembling, still clutching my notebook to my chest, wishing I could pop that extra Ativan.
Finally, he turned around, and even the birds stopped chirping as he spoke, as if nature bowed down before him. “Don’t cut much, do you?”
“What…what gave you…”
He touched my arm. “Goose bumps.”
There was a sea of them on my arms, making all the fine hairs stand out like they were surging with electricity. I was clutching my notebook against me so tightly that it was bending to the curve of my body. Relax, he’s just a guy, I told myself. Just like you, Andrew. Believe it or not, I tried to calm myself after his touch by convincing myself he was just like you.
But what a joke, Andrew. You two are nothing alike, are you?
I breathed in. Breathed out. Prayed to the Effexor gods. Tried to remember what that therapist had said last year before my parents’ insurance ran out and they couldn’t afford to send me. Control. You have the control. Visualize.
All I could visualize was my oncoming heart attack.
“We’re going to get into trouble,” I managed. “Mr. Cole doesn’t stand for any—”
“Who’s that?”
“The principal.”
“Oh. Short? The bushiest eyebrows on the planet, despite having no hair on his head?”
I nodded.
He waved me on. “Taken care of.”
“How?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice. Maybe he could pull whatever he’d worked on Reese and get away with it; maybe he was just one of those people. But I wasn’t like him. I always attracted the wrong kind of attention. Which is why I did everything I could to stay out of it.
He grinned. “I have my ways.” He took a few steps forward and then stopped. “If you pay attention, young Padawan, you may learn them.”
I couldn’t bring myself to laugh at his goofy Yoda impersonation. He couldn’t teach me that. It would be like teaching a blind person to drive. Impossible. I mean, who was this guy? I didn’t know anything about him. He could be a serial killer. And—
And I was walking through the woods with him, alone.
I stopped walking, or maybe I was still walking, but I couldn’t feel my legs. My ears began to burn. My heart raced. “I-I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t even know you.”
He walked ahead without responding and stopped to wait for me at a clearing. I heard a car horn beep. The side of a brick building appeared through the trees. Civilization! I almost lunged toward it in gratitude because I was already in far, far over my head, and this was my opportunity to escape.
Z stood in the center of the narrow path, blocking my way. He wasn’t overly large, but he was broad-shouldered, formidable. And laughing at me. “Well, you might not know me, but I know you.”
“You…do?”
He nodded. “You’re hungry.” He pointed to a sign on the brick. Kelly’s Deli. “All the kids who cut go here, right?”
I really knew nothing about where the student body spent their off-hours, but Kelly’s Deli looked tough, run-down. Like a hangout for prison escapees with frosted glass windows so you couldn’t peek in and see what illegal things were going on inside.
My stomach dropped. Z was wrong. What else was he wrong about? He was probably wrong about Cole. Cole would suspend us without a second thought. He was probably wrong about Reese. Eventually she would get him for chewing gum in class. And he was wrong about me. I’d been a little hungry before, but not now. Now, it was Retchville, population: me. “No,” I murmured. “Nobody cuts at St. Ann’s. They don’t. Because they’ll get—”
He laughed. “Not true. We just did. And we’re fine. Trust me.”
We walked to the deli’s crumbling asphalt parking lot, me lagging slightly behind, convinced we were about to run into a truancy officer. Inside, the deli was deserted. I wondered if the place was even open. There was nobody behind the counter and all the seats were empty. The stench of cigarettes and old bacon grease suffocated me. My breakfast of banana and juice started to fight its way back up my throat.
“Sit anywhere,” a gruff, disembodied voice said from a dark-paneled wall in the rear. I was sure whoever it was probably killed squirrels in the back to transform them into lunch meat.
I thought that once Z saw how disgusting this place was, he would turn and hightail it out of there. But that’s the thing about him, Andrew. That’s what made it impossible to leave him. He never does what’s expected. Part of me wanted to run, but the other part, the part that obviously won out, wanted to stay and see what he would do.
Z marched across the once-white speckled linoleum floor and slid into a booth like it had been reserved for him. The table was greasy and spattered with ketchup, but he didn’t notice. While I tried to pluck a napkin out of the dispenser, only to find it empty, he surveyed our surroundings, drummed his fingers on the table, and whistled something that sounded like a Sousa march. “So,” he said.
I spotted a hefty pile of napkins at the next table and ran a wad over the tabletop. The stains were crusted on; they were probably older than I was. I really could’ve used some Formula 409. “So what?”
His eyes, which were already big, widened. “Ask away.”
“Ask what?”
He smiled. “You said you don’t know me. Here’s your chance to. Ask me anything.”
I gaped. It was so forward. I would never ask anyone to ask me anything because would anyone really care for the answer? Part of me wanted to say, “I don’t care about you,” but already, a larger part of me did care. Cared and wanted to know everything about him, right down to the smallest detail.
And he knew that. The boy had me figured out from that very first day.
“Why did you ask me here?” I whispered.
He smiled. “You looked like you wanted me to buy you an omelet.” He turned away to study the menu on the wall.
I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously.”
He said, “I was being serious.”
Looking back, if I had realized I was in danger, I might have run. But I didn’t. I suppose I was already trapped. Only I didn’t know it. I thought I could make my own decisions, and my decision was to be there, with him. But I was so wrong.
Now I can see exactly why he asked me. Because when you’re preparing to conquer the world, you have to start with the smallest of countries.
Chapter 5
Did he cut school or act out in any way?
No, he was a good student. Oh, perhaps he cut a time or two. But what teenager doesn’t? Even our best and most conscientious students do from time to time. And his type of personality—creative, individual, the natural thespian—should not be boxed i
n or contained by rigid rules, but allowed the freedom to flourish.
—Police interview with Mrs. Wilma Reese, English teacher at St. Ann’s
At that diner, food was the last thing on my mind. I don’t even like eggs. You know that, Andrew. I ordered a bowl of Cheerios. It was the only thing I could guarantee to be one hundred percent squirrel-free. But I knew I wouldn’t eat it. All I could do was move the cereal around in my bowl, dunking the O’s and watching them resurface. He did most, if not all, of the talking, and I was grateful for that, because if I had to speak, I know I would have choked on my own tongue.
He talked about his life in Arizona, how he was on the baseball team, how he was going to try out for baseball at St. Ann’s because he was promised a partial scholarship to play for his grandfather’s alma mater in Arizona if he kept his grades up. Was the baseball good here? I didn’t know.
The thing was, it sounded as if he’d come from paradise. The weather was great. There were lots of things to do. He called his friends from back home his brothers and referred to them by name, as if I was supposed to know them too. Why, then, if his life there was so perfect, wasn’t he upset about being here in boring, rural Maine?
Even though he was doing most of the talking, Z managed to polish off a ham-and-cheese omelet before I’d even scooped one spoonful of cereal into my mouth. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You don’t talk much,” he observed. “Are you one of those?”
I stared at him, confused.
“Those Catholic school girls. Prim and proper, with a naughty side?”
If I’d been eating, I would have spit everything out of my mouth in shock. “No,” I said.
“You don’t seem so sure.” He leaned back, put his arms over his head in a luxurious stretch, and studied me, sizing me up. “Everyone has a wild side… They just need the right circumstances to unleash it. What makes you tick, Vic?” His eyes twinkled.
My face burned. I’d pretty much accepted that there are certain things in the world that people always want to know more about: The pyramids. The Loch Ness monster. People like Z. But me? Not so much. I shrugged. “Nothing. I’m boring.”
