When the World was Flat (and we were in love)

by Ingrid Jonach

  At least I had clear skin. Jo and Sylv both had spots, no matter how much they squeezed and scrubbed. They had more color in their complexions though. My skin was sallow and I had perpetual dark circles under my eyes, like smudged mascara.

  I guess I could have blamed them on waking up at odd hours, gasping for breath like a fish in a bucket – the nightmares were like having sleep apnea – but I had basically been born with my dark circles. A guy who dated my mother when I was in Elementary used to call me “Panda Eyes”. I tilted my head this way and that to see if they were highlighted by the fluorescent light that flickered above the mirror. My eyes glinted green, my one remarkable feature. But no one called me “Emerald Eyes”.

  “He probably has two heads anyway,” I said, mimicking Jo, and then laughed, half at what I had said and half at the fact that I had said it out loud.

  I was running about ten minutes late thanks to my primping and preening. Normally, I would have rolled out of bed and pulled on a few worn-out clothes. Today, I had spent at least fifteen minutes selecting a white cheesecloth top to pair with my customary light blue jeans and a pair of gold-colored ballet flats. A couple of large plastic bangles jangled on my wrist.

  My wardrobe came from Tree of Life, one of those stores that sold gemstones and incense. Deb worked there part-time and I pulled a few shifts here and there, which meant we got their clothes discounted or for free when they overstocked. I went for the non-hippie-ish items, meaning no tie-dyed dresses or crocheted vests. I did have a pair of hemp shorts though, and the cheesecloth top I was wearing that day. That being said, made by hand, as in knitted, stitched or dyed, was non-negotiable when you were shopping free trade.

  I checked the clock and realized Jo was running late too. We had walked to school together rain, hail or shine since kindergarten. When she did arrive, I saw she was wearing about a gallon of perfume and a skirt.

  “You have a tear in your tights,” I pointed out. The fact that she even owned a pair of tights or a skirt was kind of headline news, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Dammit,” she cursed, looking at the ladder, which ran from her knee to mid-thigh. “My only pair too.” She pulled at her hem, but she would have had to let it down about five inches to cover the hole. Jo was the opposite of a tart, but no one wore a skirt past their knee at Green Grove High, despite the efforts of Principal Turner – otherwise known as “Turnip” – and his tape measure.

  Our school had a strict dress code which no one followed. Heavy make-up was banned, as were skirts above the knee. For boys it was rude T-shirts, sleeveless tops, torn jeans, jewelry and bandanas. Not that there were any gangs in Green Grove, unless you counted Melissa and her lapdogs, who we liked to call the Mutts.

  I found Jo another pair of tights in my dresser.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  I nodded and knew well enough to face the wall while she pulled them on. She was modest, unlike Sylv.

  It took us fifteen minutes on a good day and twenty on a bad day to walk to school. I thought it was going to be a good day until a red bird flew across my path and my legs locked-up as I recalled my nightmares.

  “Look,” Jo said. “A red crossbill.”

  I had to laugh, even though my chest was constricted, as if by a large rubber band. “When did you become an ornithologist?” I teased.

  We got to school a few minutes before the bell. I could tell that every girl at Green Grove High had added an hour or so to their routine that morning. The corridors smelled like tanning lotion and teachers were busy sending students to the bathroom to wipe off eye make-up and lipstick. It was the routine whenever a new guy came to our school.

  “Is he here yet?” Sylv asked breathlessly when she met us at my locker.

  She was wearing a white micro miniskirt and black ankle boots. Her sparkly red top had a plunging neckline which showed a black lace bra. She was beyond breaking the dress code – she was annihilating it. Turnip was going to have a stroke.

  “No,” Jo sighed, and I wondered if she was sighing about Tom or about Sylv and her choice of wardrobe. I guessed it was the latter when I saw her wince as she looked Sylv up and down. I heard a few giggles behind me and knew without looking who was the laughing stock.

  “What I want to know is: what have you done to your hair?” I asked.

  Hairdressing was Plan B for Sylv if modeling was a dead end. She had managed to flunk Hairdressing 101 overnight though, because she had dyed her hair as orange as a tangerine. She had also teased the roots and unloaded a can of hairspray into it, like they used to in the Eighties. She kind of looked like Cyndi Lauper.

  “Why would you want to be a redhead?” Jo asked. Her own hair was strawberry blond, but she put a brown rinse through it once a month, turning it a mousey color with a hint of orange. It hung to her shoulders with a couple of kinks at the back, which gave it an unbrushed look. I wanted to smooth it constantly, like I was her mother, tucking in her shirt or dabbing at her face with a wet tissue. Jo would have slapped me silly though.

  “The packet called it ‘Tangerine,’” Sylv said.

  Well, whaddayaknow? I was right.

  “Anyway, I like red hair,” Sylv continued, looking down the corridor at Taylor Blackwood. Sylv had been crushing on Taylor since he got suspended for riding his skateboard in the gymnasium last March. To her, he was a daredevil. To me and Jo, he was an oil slick, with greasy red hair that made a cheese pizza look fat-free.

  “Ariel was a redhead,” I said, “and Jessica Rabbit.”

  “They were cartoon characters,” Jo pointed out.

  The bell rang, but no one moved. The boys continued to lean against their lockers, looking around for their competition. The girls were gathered in groups, wondering if Tom was going to be a no show. We were cutting into class time, but no one gave a hoot about English, except for Jo, and the teachers, who were shooing students out of the corridors, like we were a herd of cows blocking the road.

  “Gotta go,” Jo said, leaving us in her wake.

  “Give your lover a kiss for me,” Sylv called after her. It was an ongoing joke that Jo had it bad for her English teacher, Mr Bailey. She spoke about him like he had invented the English language. I guess he was kind of good-looking, if you were in the market for a father figure. He was about fifty-something with gray hair. Eew. That being said, me and Sylv were in the lower classes and had Mrs Baker, who had a moustache. Double Eew.

  At lunch we sat in the cafeteria at our regular table opposite the double doors. There was a window behind us, but our view would be obscured by a layer of dirt or snow, depending on the season. At the moment, it was the former.

  For nine months of the year, dirt swirled through the air, as if God had shaken a picnic blanket over Green Grove. It got into our clothes, our shoes, our houses, our cars. I often wondered what the town would look like naked, without its brown or white coats. Maybe the cars would look newer or the paint on the houses fresher, but I knew it was more likely to look like an actress on one of those stars without make-up specials.

  The janitor did stretch himself to clean our window now and then, but when he did all you could see on the other side was a brick wall.

  There was a commotion across the cafeteria.

  Sylv nodded and gave a low whistle.

  “Would you take a look at that?” Jo said. “One head.”

  The butterflies filled my stomach again and I hesitated before turning in my chair, as if I could see the fork in the road. When I did turn, I saw Tom walking through the double doors of the cafeteria, looking like he belonged in an advertisement for Salvatore Ferragamo. Oh yes, I knew my labels. Thanks to Sylv.

  He was wearing a gray T-shirt with roughed-up jeans. They looked brand new though, as did his white sneakers.

  He ran a hand carelessly through his hair, which was brown and short, but not too short for that tousled, bed-head look. He was about thirty feet from me, but I could see his face as if it were inches away, his broad cheekbones, straight no
se and strong jawline, as symmetrical as you like. There was a scar too, just under his chin. It was too small to see from where I sat, but I knew it was there, even though we were strangers.

  How? I wondered, but then he met my eyes and it was like my thoughts were sucked into a vacuum. I saw that his irises were a light blue, rimmed by a darker blue. It was like looking into glaciers, unlike the plain brown or gray varieties that were common in Green Grove. Of course, I had guessed his eyes would be as remarkable as my own, if not more so.

  It would have been nice to say it was like worlds colliding for him as well, but the look Tom gave me was not even that between a brother and sister. It was a dead-behind-the-eyes look and in that split second we locked gazes he was as connected with me as Jo was with her femininity. I may as well have been a piece of bubblegum stuck to the concrete or a dust mote floating on the breeze.

  Looking back now, I understand the look he gave me. I know what was going through his mind. But at the time it was like being spat on.

  I suddenly realized I was out of my seat and sat back down with a nervous giggle. Jo was giving me a what-the-hell look. I blushed like it was going out of fashion, staring at the ground and wondering if the entire cafeteria was laughing at me or if all eyes had been on Tom.

  Please. Please. Please, I thought, as I bit the bullet and looked up. It was the latter, of course. I could have juggled lunch trays while balancing on a stack of chairs and no one would have looked twice at me. Tom was magnetic, and girls were being pulled in left, right and center, me included.

  Melissa was on his arm in an instant. They looked like a couple as she paraded him around the cafeteria, the Homecoming King and Queen. Tom looked bored as she introduced him to the Mutts. I smiled, even though I knew I should care less, given Melissa was basically royalty and I was one of a million dust motes.

  “Was it as good for you as it was for him?” Sylv asked as we walked through the corridors to class.

  “What?”

  “The eye-sex.”

  “The what?” I asked in a high-pitched voice.

  “The eye-sex,” Sylv repeated. “You know, when your eyes meet across a crowded room.” She surveyed our blank looks and sighed, as if we were stupid. “Like this.” She held Jo by the shoulders and gazed into her eyes like they were in a soap opera.

  “Get a room,” I complained.

  “Should I be pressing charges?” Jo asked.

  “Come on, Lillie. I saw him looking at you. Spill.”

  “He looked at me for like a second,” I protested.

  “Premature ejaculation?” Sylv joked.

  “Stop it!” I looked over my shoulder, worried that Tom was within earshot.

  I spotted Melissa and her entourage a few yards back, sans Tom. They were having their own powwow about our new addition. I heard his name mentioned three times in the one breath, as Melissa fanned herself with a manicured hand.

  Jo joined in on the innuendo. “Was he that bad?”

  “No!”

  “Which means he was good?” Sylv asked.

  I gave up.

  I sat behind Melissa in Economics, staring at her shiny black hair. Of course, Tom would go with her in a heartbeat. They were like two thoroughbreds in a stable of donkeys. She was known for her string of boyfriends, but unlike Sylv she had standards. One of those standards was that they had to be out of high school – the oldest had been a senior at Green Grove State College – but I could see her making an exception for Tom.

  He was no Jack O’Lantern.

  My heart played Double Dutch when I saw Tom at my locker that afternoon. For a moment, I thought he was waiting for me, but then he spun the dial of the locker next to mine and my heart stopped jumping rope.

  Get a grip, I told myself, as I spun the dial on my own locker. This connection between me and Tom was one-sided. I took a deep breath and went about my business, but two seconds later my business became our business when a box of tampons fell out of my locker and bounced on the linoleum.

  Tom bent down to pick them up, as if on autopilot. My cheeks burned and I closed my eyes, praying that when I opened them I would see the dream-catcher Deb had made from an old coat hanger and a bunch of chicken feathers that hung above my bed, but then I heard Tom clear his throat and I knew that this was no nightmare. Oh well. At least I was safe from the man in the balaclava, if not from Tom.

  I opened my eyes and saw him holding out the box of tampons, offering them as casually as you would a packet of mints. He stood about half a head taller than me, tall enough to look down on me, but not tall enough for me to crick my neck.

  “Earplugs,” I joked. “For Algebra.” I laughed and took them from him, but when our fingers brushed, the hairs on my arms rose, as if charged with electricity. I laughed again. Magnetic? Electric? Tom was starting to sound like one of the X-Men.

  He looked at me and his irises slid through a spectrum of blues like a kaleidoscope as they caught the fluorescent lights. It was mesmerizing, but I lowered my eyes to his chin. There I saw the scar, a thin white line, a flaw on an otherwise flawless face. I knew that scar. I knew Tom. Again, I asked myself how.

  A memory knocked on the door of my mind, begging to be let in. It was like having the name of a song on the tip of my tongue. I flicked through my memories, like flicking through a photo album, but there were no snapshots of Tom.

  Tom turned back to his own locker with no hint of a smile at my joke. In fact, his eyebrows were furrowed, as if he was bothered by my comment, or maybe by me.

  It was Monday, which meant the girls and I walked to the Duck-In Diner for an after school snack.

  “How about I color your hair tonight?” Sylv suggested, as the waitress delivered our order. The Duck-In Diner had a menu to rival IHOP, with its waffles and buttermilk pancakes stacked to the ceiling. The uniform, however, rivaled Disneyland, with waiters and waitresses walking around wearing duck bill visors and white aprons with plastic feathers.

  “This diner quacks me up,” Jo said whenever we walked in.

  I looked up from checking my waffle for hairs – the chef had the arms of a gorilla ­– and realized Sylv was talking to me. “You know what? I think I’ll pass on getting suspended from school, but thanks.”

  Sylv had been suspended at least five times due to her hair color. She liked to change it a couple of times a quarter. You know, mix it up. Her current orange hair looked natural when compared to the purple and green streaks she had put in last winter.

  My hair was brown. Thankfully not a mousey brown, but more of a chestnut color. I had let Sylv put highlights in it once. I know, what was I thinking? It ended up looking like caramel. Jo had smacked her lips and joked about having a sweet tooth for at least three weeks until it faded.

  Of course, Deb would have done backflips if Sylv had dyed my hair all the colors of the rainbow. When I was twelve, she told me I was too conservative, saying it like it was a dirty word. She had made me sleep with a bundle of witch hazel under my pillow for six months to cultivate my creativity.

  I wondered whether there was a delayed reaction. Maybe the witch hazel was the reason for my dreams. It could also have been the reason for my newfound messy streak. Between me and my mother the house had not been vacuumed since spring.

  Sylv slumped in her seat. “You girls never support anything I do.”

  “What do you call the photo shoot yesterday?” I asked.

  “Have you developed the film?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I rest my case.” I knew her case was not rested though when she sat up straight, ready for a rant. “I was looking forward to inviting you to Paris with me for Fashion Week, but you would probably miss the flight, knowing how you are with deadlines.”

  “There was no deadline,” I protested.

  “Actually, the deadline was Thanksgiving,” Jo said, as she poured more blueberry syrup over her pancake stack. “Remember? You said you had to be discovered before the SATs.”

  “
Which gives me three months,” I said. “Please let me come to Paris with you.”

  We knew deep down that Sylv was as likely to go to Paris for Fashion Week as I was to be with Tom, but a girl had to dream when she lived in Green Grove.

  Dream, I thought as I stabbed my fork into my waffle, once, twice, three times. Dream. Dream. Dream. The word chilled me to the bone. These dreams, or nightmares, were taking their toll. Last week, I woke up with my own hands around my throat. Yeah, I know. A psychiatrist would have a field day. Even Jo had commented that my dark circles were looking black, instead of their standard shade of gray. I wanted to tell her about my dreams, but she was no dreamologist, or psychiatrist come to that. I knew her answer would be to pop an Ambien.

  “We should all go to Paris,” I said brightly, shaking off my dreams. “We could sit and gasbag in a French Duck-In Diner. Do they have Duck-In Diners in France?” I paused, wondering if the franchise had made it out of Green Grove, let alone Nebraska or the country, before my mind drifted to the photos I could take in Europe. I wondered if Africa was nearby and then grimaced at these holes in my knowledge. To think, geography had been my favorite subject last year.

  “Count me out,” Jo said. “My dad. You know.”

  I did know. Jo had been looking after her dad for two and a half years. He had prostate cancer and had been through chemotherapy, radiation and a bunch of operations. He lived with a colostomy bag attached to his bowel, which he liked to tell us meant he could go to the bathroom in his La-Z-Boy, like it was a joke. It was no laughing matter, of course, especially when you considered what had happened to Mrs Green.

  Deb sent bowls of tofu stir-fry to their house a few times a week.

  “Are you trying to kill me with this vegetarian crap?” Mr Green always asked, but the containers came back empty every time.

  “You know your dad wants you to have a life,” I told Jo.

  Jo gave a barking laugh. “In Green Grove?”

  I shrugged. “Or Lincoln or New York–”