thirty-four
I don’t know what possessed me to join cross-country. I’m the most unfit person I know. Actually, I volunteered to be a team assistant. It seemed like something I could do—hold the stopwatch, keep the water bottles filled, stuff like that. I was watching everybody warm up, waiting for someone to tell me my job, when a fat guy with mirrored shades—Coach Buffman—waved me down from the bleachers. Coach Buffman is anything but buff. He must have read my mind because he slapped his gut and said, “Can’t exercise a bad diet.
“You here to run?” he said. “Our team’s a little short. We need runners.”
I watched the girls in one pack, the boys in another, pounding around the track. The girls were all long and sleek, but muscled, too, toned, like the horses we pass on the way to school. Madeline’s built like that, not me. Even in their mud-caked sneakers and sweaty tees, they looked clean and pure and healthy, like girls in a skin-care commercial. They were normal girls, pretty girls, not girls with secret scars, girls with ghosts.
“You are a runner, right?” he said.
I tried to see his eyes—was he joking?—and said, “No.”
“Have you tried?”
When I didn’t answer, the coach started clapping at me. He stabbed his finger in the air and sent me out onto the track. “Go,” he shouted. “Give it a shot. You can do it.”
I felt stupid out there in jeans. I didn’t have the right kind of sneakers, the right kind of bra. My feet striking the ground sent shock waves through my shins, my knees, and up into my back. I could feel my thighs bouncing, my chest bouncing, and tensed when the boys came up behind me. I could hear them sucking air into their lungs and forcing it out, as they split like a hive around the beast dragging down the center lane. The girls were next, ponytails swishing, shorts swishing. They made it look so easy, so effortless, like they could go and go forever. Not me. My chest was ready to explode. My shins were on fire. I was sweating and gasping and my legs had started to wobble.
That was only the warm-up.
Madeline kept me going. Jogging backward so she could face me, she smiled and cheered me on. I made it around the track I don’t know how many times. More than twice. Maybe three times. I stumbled onto the grass and put my hands on my knees, doubling over. Digging my fist into the flesh above my hip bone, I tried to calm the pain in my side. The air scorched my lungs and my heart pounded so hard I thought it might stop.
“Good job, Moss,” the coach shouted. “We’ll make a runner out of you yet.”
I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t breathe.
After practice, he took me to his lab. It smelled like chemicals and propane. Coach Buffman’s the biology teacher. I’ll have him next year. He gave me a permission slip for my mother to sign and a pair of cross-country trainers (on loan until my mother can get me my own) and a pep talk straight out of some feel-good-movie locker room scene. Set high goals. Train hard. Don’t be afraid of success.
“I forgot to give you the talk on drugs,” Coach Buffman said, reaching back to pull a couple of glass jars from the metal cabinet behind his bench. The jars held two miniature pigs floating in cloudy liquid. One looked pretty normal, but the other was missing its face. No eyes. No nose. Just a wrinkly flap of skin where the snout should be.
“This little piggy’s mother was pumped full of junk,” he said, swirling the jar with the deformed fetus. “This little piggy’s mother was clean.” He swiveled on his stool and returned the pigs to their shelf. “Got it? Good. See you … what d’ya need, Lane?”
“Coach…” It was one of the boys from the team. He was drumming his fingers on the door frame, tapping his foot to some imaginary beat. He was long and restless looking, one of those boys who can’t stop moving. Standing still was an effort. He saw me and waved and said, “Hey,” and then pointed his thumb into the hall and added, “I’ll come back.”
I don’t know if it was the running or the pigs or the fumes, but I felt suddenly dizzy. “I have to go,” I said. My heart pounded rapidly again. Madeline heard it and rolled her eyes. I scooped up the sneakers and the permission slip, and the boy flattened himself against the door. His cheeks flamed as I held my breath and scooted by. He raised his hand one more time and said, “Later.”
Hugging the sneakers, I ran for my locker and felt strong and light. Behind me Madeline was calling Slow down! and Wait! I don’t know what got into me. I was flying so fast, she couldn’t keep up.
thirty-five
I made a huge mistake. My mother had warned me before we moved to Pottsville: Don’t draw attention to my scars. Don’t flaunt that I tried to kill myself. People might not understand.
She was right.
It went through the school like wildfire. All day long I’ve felt their eyes on my wrists. Dialing the combination on my locker, raising my hand for a bathroom pass, every time my chunky bracelets clinked, their eyes whispered, Pathetic. Desperate. Sick in the head.
I didn’t mean to tell her. We were changing after gym. She’d caught me off guard.
“Are those what I think they are?” Jess squinted, leaning in for a better look.
They were the first words she’d said to me since that first day on the bus. I could’ve said no. I could’ve said the scars were from the accident. Everybody knows about the crash—it’s a small town. They all know my dad died. They all know about my head injury. I thought telling her would make me seem special. Some sad, lonely creature who needs a friend. That’s what I thought, standing there in my socks, my bracelets on the changing bench. I lowered my head and waited for her to reach out and take me by the shoulders. The heartbroken girl with the bruised brain.
I looked up. Her eyes widened. She screwed up her mouth in a weird way.
Behind her, Madeline was shaking her head. Don’t cry, Ellie. Not in front of them.
All around us, girls were borrowing brushes or copying homework, but Jess just stood there, staring. She looked uneasy. Maybe it was Madeline breathing down her neck.
Pull your boots on. Fix your hair. Forget about Jess. Madeline passed me my bracelets. Put these on and go to class.
I’m almost through the day. Study hall, cross-country, then home. My old insecurities are rushing back. I should’ve known better. Pretty girls don’t understand. Pretty girls who like pretty pictures and pretty poems and pretty songs. I don’t connect with girls like that. Girls like Jess. Girls like Natalie. They’re all cut from the same bright and cheery cloth. They don’t understand darkness. They’ve never felt the claustrophobic panic of the world pressing in, sucking the life out of you.
I understand.
I know. I know. It’s just that you’ve never had to sit by and watch other people take for granted what you’ve only ever dreamed of having: love, friends, a life. It doesn’t matter what I do on the outside. I can’t change what’s inside. I can’t change what I love and hate and fear and admire. I’m still a weirdo. There’s something off about me and they know it. I’ll never fit in. It makes me sick to think how much time I’ve wasted trying to be liked, how much time I’ve wasted worrying about what other people think about me. I don’t want to care, but I can’t help it. It hurts that people don’t like me. It’s always there, the longing.
thirty-six
My mother called me a lurker. I heard her in the bathroom, running water, sobbing softly. She’s been doing that a lot lately—crying. It scares me. It’s not like her. My mother’s a rock. For her, there’s always a bright side, a silver lining. It’s hard to match her enthusiasm. But I wasn’t lurking. I knocked because I thought she might be sick. But she wasn’t. She was in the tub, taking a bath. Her eyes were red. I watched her fold a wet washcloth and drape it across her forehead.
“You want some aspirin?”
“No, I’m fine. Sit down.”
I sat on the toilet lid and breathed in steam through my nose. It smelled like lavender and old people—that minty gel I rub on my calves at night to keep them from cramping. My mother had fix
ed whatever was wrong with the lights, but it’s still too dark in there. She wants to redo the bathroom. Rip out the ugly pink tile, replace the rust-stained sink. Put up one of those vanity light fixtures, the kind that holds four bulbs. Everything is on hold, though, until she finishes school.
“Ellie, do you ever wish you had a sister?”
Shocks of guilt sizzled down my legs. Did she know about the ultrasounds? If she knew about those, then she knew about the fur, the ashes. What about the sleeping pills?
“Yeah. I guess. Not really. Are you okay?”
“I don’t feel well,” she said.
“Maybe you should see a doctor.”
“It’ll pass.” My mother sank deeper into the tub and splashed water over her shoulders.
“How are your classes going?” I asked, which cheered her up some. I think my interest surprised her. That’s pretty sad. Am I that self-centered? Probably. Yesterday, I walked right by the new car parked in the driveway—she’d bought it while I was at school. We talked a little more (mostly about how I came in last at our first cross-country meet), and then she asked me to do a couple of things around the house—unload the dish drainer, take the chicken out of the freezer, stuff like that. I know I haven’t been the best daughter. Madeline’s the one who deserves the gold star. She dusted and vacuumed while I took out the trash. It’s getting colder now, and the days are growing shorter. Someone was burning leaves. Someone else was running a chainsaw. Autumn was out on her bike—a crappy three-speed pocked with rust.
“Hey,” she called, coasting up the driveway.
I was tempted to give her the cold shoulder, but I folded my arms and said, “Hey” back.
“Is it true you tried to kill yourself?” she said.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Everybody knows.”
“That’s obvious.”
Autumn let my jab slide. She leaned her bike against the bushes like she was planning to stay.
“Jess Nolan’s a big mouth. Watch what you tell her.”
“Thanks for the advice.” I turned toward the house.
“No, wait. You want to come over? We’ve got a fire going in the backyard.”
“I can’t,” I said. “My mom’s sick. I don’t want to leave her.”
That wasn’t entirely true. That wasn’t why. Is it morbid to ignore the living so you can be alone with the dead? I can’t help it. It’s a sickness, this longing to be with her twenty-four hours a day. But she makes me feel so alive. Without her my nerves start to deaden and my feet become heavy bricks. Everything is dull and interminable.
Why can’t I be normal?
We never did have that chicken for dinner. Mom’s stomach was upset, so I ate one of those healthy TV dinners, the kind with brown rice and no dessert. It tasted like the box it came in. Madeline’s gone off to where ever it is she goes and now I’m doubting my decision, wondering if it’s too late to take Autumn up on her invitation. I know they’re still out there. I can smell the smoke …
Never mind. Madeline’s back. She’s sneaking up on me. I hear her giggling softly, nearer and nearer. Her fingers slide along my collarbone, circling me from behind. My brain explodes. My veins dilate, flooding my body with calm and warmth. All my doubts and fears recede, and I am perfect again. Whole. Complete. She completes me.
This is why I do it. This is why I wait for her.
thirty-seven
Maybe I was wrong about everybody here. Maybe they’re so starved for new faces they’ll take anything they can get. I was wrong about Jess. She doesn’t hate me. She doesn’t think I’m some suicidal maniac. She offered me a piece of gum during assembly and told me about a place I should get my mother to take me shopping for a homecoming dress. “Don’t go to the mall,” she said. “Everyone’s going there. You don’t want to look like everyone else.” She showed me a picture of her dress then—royal-blue taffeta with balloon sleeves—and told me not to tell anyone. She wants it to be a surprise. She pulled a magazine out of her bag and said, “Here. It’ll give you some ideas. You are going, right?”
I wanted to ask her if you-know-who has a date—the blushing boy from cross-country—but I couldn’t because then she’d know I like him. It’s next Friday—the dance. I asked Autumn if she’s going. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Not in a million years.” She said Jess was only being nice to me because she wants to win Homecoming Queen, that she’s being nice to everybody, hoping to win more votes. Autumn wants me to come to her house instead. She wants to have anti-Homecoming. She said we can sneak some of her mother’s wine coolers down to the basement and play air hockey all night.
I think I’ll go to the dance.
The place Jess told me about is ninety miles away, but my mother said she’d take me. That’s how badly she wants me to go. Plus she wants me to know she appreciates all I’ve been doing around the house. I feel guilty taking credit. Madeline’s the one who cleaned up the yard—front and back. I hate raking leaves. But I had to pretend it was me. And Madeline doesn’t mind. She wants to help because she cares about her Ellie.
I was all psyched about the dance until my mother had to ruin it by asking if I was going with Jess, or does Jess have a date? Of course Jess has a date. Derek Jordan. He’s a junior. She’s going with him. Now, I’m worried. What if I go and no one talks to me? I can’t expect Jess to hang around with me all night. What if I buy the wrong dress? What if no one asks me to dance?
My mother says I’m too much in my head. “Go,” she said. “Be yourself. Have a good time.” She makes it sound so easy. Maybe it is. Don’t overthink this.
thirty-eight
We’re doing a unit on space. Most of the stuff I already know from my dad. He loved stars. My mom got him a telescope one Christmas, and he used to take me out to this field, way out in the middle of nowhere, beyond the city’s orange glow. I remember once we stayed out until four in the morning, watching this star cluster called the Pleiades. We got to see Mars, too, rising red on the horizon, and Venus, a cold, lonely disk in a shimmering swath of low-ranking stars. We’d bring blankets and lawn chairs and a thermos of cocoa, and listen to these all-night talk shows on my dad’s short-wave radio. I miss those nights of ours, just the two of us, talking and joking and dreaming. I wonder what my mother did with the telescope?
Our assignment is to find out something about our astrological sign: How it got it’s name. When it’s visible. What are its noble features (whatever that means). I’m a Taurus—the bull. It’s the form one of the gods took to rape some princess. I didn’t want to write about that. Mr. Dunkley doesn’t know my birthday. If I’d been born nine minutes later, I’d be a Gemini, so I did Gemini instead because of the twin thing. It’s made up of the stars Castor and Pollux, twin brothers—one mortal, the other immortal.
It wasn’t part of the assignment, but I wrote about it anyway—how they were hatched from an egg, and how the immortal brother sometimes appeared as a swan. The twins shared a bond stronger than regular brothers. They did everything together. They were never apart. When the mortal brother was killed and sent to the underworld, the immortal brother begged the gods to keep them together. The gods granted his wish, but with a catch. They couldn’t just go to heaven and live happily ever after. That would be too easy. The brothers were sentenced to spend eternity dividing their time between the palace of gods and the suffering dead.
I’m sure the mortal brother thought this was a good deal. But what about the one who could have lived in paradise forever and ever? Was it worth it?
thirty-nine
Nobody knows about the vanishing twin thing. Nobody. Some jerk read my journal and drew a picture in the girls’ bathroom of a baby eating a baby. This smiling fat thing with pointed teeth and an arm in its mouth. The other baby was just a pile of parts, with its eyes x-ed out. I went in there before lunch, and there it was on the stall, mocking me. Who? Why? What did I ever do to anybody? I squirted a bunch of paper towels with soap and started scrubbing, but it
wouldn’t come off. My throat began closing, and I could feel my lungs collapsing inward. I dumped my bag on the floor. I couldn’t find a marker, but I found a math compass and started gouging at the drawing, scraping the paint down to bare metal. Sweat dripped down my forehead and my hand shook, stinging from where the compass was cutting into it. The spike snapped off. I threw the compass in the trash, tossed my crap in my bag, and rushed to my locker. Where was Madeline when I needed her?
That’s when I saw Autumn, heading for the cafeteria. I grabbed her wrist and spun her around. “Did you draw that picture?”
Her brown eyes went wide and deerlike. She was helpless against my grip. “Ow!” she wailed. “What picture?”
“Don’t play stupid! That picture on the bathroom wall?”
I could tell by her confused face that she was clueless. It could’ve been anyone, really. I’m always leaving my bag in class when I go to the bathroom. I leave it on the library table when I’m looking through the stacks. I leave it in the locker room, right on the bench, during gym.
“What’s going on, ladies?” the school nurse butted in. She’s short and wrinkly and looks kind of like a troll with her pants hiked up to her armpits.
“I don’t feel good,” I said. “I’m sick.” It wasn’t hard to fake. I was a sweaty mess. I wanted to throw up.
She touched my forehead. “You feel warm,” she said. “Come with me.”
My mother came and got me. She made me take a nap. “You don’t want to miss Homecoming tonight,” she said, tucking me into bed with that frowny face that makes me want to slap her. I’m sorry. It’s not my mother’s fault. I can’t go, but I can’t tell her—not after she drove all that way for my dress, spent all that money that we don’t really have. I can’t go because I’m afraid. What if it’s not just one person? What if everyone is in on it? What if I’m being set up, like that girl in that movie who goes to the dance and gets a bucket of blood dumped on her?
The In-Between Page 8
