by J. S. Puller
I knew I should have stopped to listen to Paige the second I walked into the cafeteria. Something was up. For one thing, it was way too quiet. There were a few whispered conversations here and there, but not the whirlwind of chatter that everyone was used to. And as I walked in, it got even quieter. Except for one shrill, uncontrolled giggle that rose up out of a corner. I turned to follow the sound, but a splash of color drew my attention away.
Plastered up against the wall were posters. Dozens and dozens of posters covered with pictures of my face. Someone had taken a picture of me. It wasn’t flattering. One eye was squinty and my mouth was open, like I was just about to take a bite out of something. The horrible thing was blown up, copied dozens of times and shining with glitter and sequins and cutouts of tiaras, surrounded by pink and red hearts.
CITIZENS!
Vote for Jane Silverman
for Seventh-Grade
Valentine’s Day Queen.
The slogan repeated over and over and over again in gloriously ugly Comic Sans MS. And to make matters even worse, half of the posters had phrases like “Kohn Junior High for Jane” and “Kohn Supports Jane Silverman.” The other half had pictures of Tyler on them, wearing the fake plastic crown.
They were awful. Garish and gaudy and ridiculous and nothing at all like me. They looked like desperation splashed on a wall. And as I stared up at them, mortified, the laughter began to swell. Giggles from the cheerleaders and hoots and hollers from the jocks and every other shade of laughter in between.
“We get it,” I heard Dagmar say from somewhere in the middle of it all. “Hashtag-cryforattention.” She was snapping pictures of the whole scene with her phone. “Why don’t you just put on a cape or something?”
I turned to look at her, but found Tyler, who had just walked in with his friends. They all burst into roaring laughs, slapping him on the shoulders. Tyler rubbed the back of his neck, averting his gaze and looking embarrassed.
Nothing ever embarrassed Tyler Jeffries.
Ever.
Not until today.
“I didn’t…” I tried to explain, but the words stuck in my throat.
“Not a bad idea,” Kevin said. He turned to face the back of the room. “Janey for queen!”
From somewhere behind me, a chant started. “Janey! Janey! Janey!”
“No!” I spun in a circle, their faces blurring together.
“Janey! Janey! Janey!”
“I didn’t…I never!”
“Janey! Janey! Janey!”
It got louder. They wouldn’t let up. Mocking me was apparently too much to resist. I felt like I was going to be sick. I was drowning in my own name, my eyes filling up with tears. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, raced past Tyler and out of the cafeteria, ripped into the bathroom, and locked the door behind me.
No lock could stop the shameful, taunting chant from echoing in my brain.
Janey! Janey! Janey!
The rest of the school day was impossible. I drifted through it in a dreamlike state, not allowing myself to meet anyone’s eyes. I just wanted to go home. To escape. And when the final bell rang, I was out of my seat like a rocket, racing to the library. I would return my books and sneak out of one of the side exits.
And hopefully disappear.
But, of course, the day couldn’t make anything easy for me. Because there was Dagmar, lingering near the library door, grinning in that horrible, predatory way of hers. “You learned your lesson yet, freak?” she asked, brushing her ponytail back off her shoulder.
At least she’d dispensed with all the fake sweetness.
I tried to slip past her into the library, but she blocked the way like she had for Paige, planting a hand on the wall with a loud thunk. Too high for me to step over, too low for me to duck under. I took a step to go around her other side, but the hallway was bustling and kids went by, blocking the path. No choice but to wait.
I stared down at my Blue Shoes.
“Have you figured out that it isn’t Halloween?”
“Dagmar…”
Her face came dangerously close to mine. “If you mess with me again, you’re going to wish I’d only sent flowers and made a few lousy posters.”
“Fine,” I said hotly. “I get it. I won’t bother you.”
“And what about your freak friend?”
“She’s not my friend.”
“Oh. Well. I guess freaks can’t really have friends, can they?”
I saw Kevin passing by, unsteady on his crutches. He caught my eyes for a second, but then he saw Dagmar. Looking panicked and afraid, he quickly turned away, hobbling off as fast as he could. Coming from the other direction was Meredith Li. I raised a hand to try to flag her down, but she spotted Dagmar and immediately pulled a compact out of her purse, breezing by and pretending to check her lipstick.
It kept going like that. Everyone scurried away in fear of Queen Dagmar Hagen.
She was back.
It occurred to me in that minute that I knew the name of every single person who passed: Sixth graders, seventh graders, eighth graders. Kids on the quiz bowl team. Kids in the school play. Black kids. White kids. Asian kids. Smart kids. Jocks, cheerleaders, and mathletes. Popular kids. Outsiders. Only children and new kids. Classmates since kindergarten.
Each of them paused for a second, lips parting slightly. But then each of them saw Dagmar and changed their mind. They wanted to help me. I could see it in their eyes. They wanted to reach out for me, to protect me.
But not one would dare throw themselves between Dagmar and her prey. That had been something only one person was willing to do.
The frightened gazes didn’t escape Dagmar’s attention. Her lips curled up. She was loving every second of it. “You don’t have friends, Jane.”
“Stop.” I barely said it. I doubt she heard it.
It wouldn’t have made a difference.
“You know what you are, Jane? Nothing.”
“I…”
“I feel sorry for you. I really do. Not pretty. Not special. Not popular. You’re”—she made an absent, futile gesture—“nothing.” And she laughed. It was the worst sound I’d ever heard. “I don’t know how you can stand being alive and being nothing. I’d just want to curl up and die.” She took a step closer to me. I could feel waves of heat radiating off of her skin. “Don’t you? Just want to curl up? And die?”
What could I do but tell her the truth? “Yes,” I said.
“Could you be more tragic?”
“Dagmar.”
“More pathetic?”
“Please.”
I felt her move more than I actually saw it. Heat whistled through the air and I looked up to see her draw her hand back, palm open. I clenched my jaw in anticipation of the blow.
“Dagmar!”
We both turned to look at the same time, to see who would dare challenge her.
It was Tyler. He marched over to where we were standing, grabbing Dagmar by the wrist. “What are you doing?”
I expected her to adopt her customary sweetness. To bat her pretty eyes at Tyler and flirt. But apparently, that ship had sailed. She twisted her wrist out of his grasp and glared straight at me again. “Oh, nothing.”
With that, she was gone. She blazed away from the library with a flip of her hair, as if what had happened had truly been nothing.
But it hadn’t been. In the silence between each pulse of my heart, I could hear myself breaking. I stared down at the ground, my cheeks flushed and hot. And I wondered how I was supposed to go on with life after all of that.
Tyler looked at me. “You all right, Janey?”
“What’s wrong, Janey?” It was a pair of sixth graders I’d helped with language arts last week looking over at me.
“Janey?” It was an eighth grader I’d given a mint to, once upon a time. “You look like you’re about to cry.”
“Are you okay, Janey?” April. Dagmar Hagen’s right-hand woman.
More voices joined the chorus. More kids began to stop and
slow and look at me, faces filled with concern.
“Janey?”
“Janey?”
“Janey?”
It reminded me of the chanting from the cafeteria. The mock praise. The laughter at my expense. I couldn’t hear their words, their concern. All I heard was my name, over and over and over again. And it was all too much.
I took off down the hall, careening past every door until I found the girls’ bathroom. I threw myself in just as the dam inside me broke. My legs gave out from under me and I hit the grungy tiles, crumpling up with a few breathy sobs.
And I cried.
I cried harder than I knew I was capable of crying.
Everything felt like it was coming out of me, every last drop of anguish and sadness and pain. I cried my guts out. I cried past the point when I knew that my tears had dried up.
I don’t know how long I sat there on the floor. But at some point, a pair of old, muddy sneakers suddenly appeared and filled my vision. “Janey?” Paige. I knew it before I even looked up to see her concerned expression.
I shook my head. “Just go.”
Paige sat down on the ground next to me, setting her books—in my old bag—off to one side. Like my dad, she didn’t say anything at first. She just sat there, allowing me to feel her beside me.
“There’s a bunch of kids standing around out there,” she said, jutting her chin in the direction of the door. “They said you were upset.”
I nodded miserably.
“Dagmar?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Paige exhaled through her nose. “Let me guess.” Her voice got a little deeper and cartoony. “You’re nothing.” Not a bad impersonation of Dagmar, all things considered. I might have laughed, if I hadn’t felt so miserable and so utterly empty.
“Yeah,” I said again.
“That’s an old Hagen classic,” she said in her own voice. “She’s been doing it for years.”
“I know.”
I’d seen it, hadn’t I? That day by the lockers, when I’d felt Dagmar cross those lines with Paige. I’d had to brace myself, I was so startled. And then Caitlyn had shown up to save Paige.
While I stood there watching, pretending not to notice.
Like Kevin.
Like Meredith.
Like everyone who had just left me at the mercy of Dagmar.
“I know,” I said again, quietly.
“Makes you kind of wish the earth would open up and swallow you whole, doesn’t it?”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
“There was a pretty good streak going for a while, though,” Paige said. “With Captain Superlative—”
“Caitlyn Li.”
She went on as if I hadn’t interrupted. “There to shut her up.”
“Just a freak accident,” I said, glaring at my shoes.
“Accident? No. Freak?” She frowned, nodded, and shrugged. “Maybe a little. I mean, compared to…” She trailed off.
I looked up at her. “Compared to what?”
Paige wetted her lips and scooted back a little to lean against the wall next to me. “For as long as I can remember,” she said, “Dagmar’s been awful to me.”
I sat up. “I know.”
“Of course you do. Everyone knows. It’s not a secret. Because there’s always someone there to see it.” She held out her palms. “Someone watching it. Someone letting it happen to me.”
We held a look for a moment, before I turned away.
“The hardest part is when people watch and do nothing.” Paige looked deeper into my eyes. “Which is most of the time.”
“When people just watch?”
“Or look away.” She smiled sadly. I could hear it in her voice, even without seeing it. “That’s when you really feel like you’re nothing.” She paused. “Someone was watching you today, huh?”
Everyone. Everyone had been watching me. And no one said a word.
“Didn’t do anything to stop it?” Paige asked.
“No,” I said.
Not at first, anyway.
Tyler tried to stand up for me. Then kids asked if I was okay. But it was all too late. The damage had been done. Dagmar had won.
Paige slapped her palm down on my knee, rocking it from side to side. “Welcome to my world.”
We sat in silence for a moment, before it occurred to me that there was something I needed to say. Something that I’d owed Paige. For a long, long time. “I’m sorry, Paige.”
She smiled. “Hey, I’m not looking for apologies.”
“Still.”
“Thanks.” She gave my leg a little squeeze. “You look like you could use a friend right now.”
“Yeah,” I said.
She was quiet a moment, thoughtful. Then she looked down along the line of her shoulder at me. “Come with me. Come to my house.”
“What?”
“Let’s go. Right now.”
“You sure you want to be seen with me?” After all, I was probably going to be the butt of every joke for the rest of time.
“It’s cute that you think I would care about something like that.” She paused a second. “You got plans for dinner tonight?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you’re coming with me.”
There was something about the way Paige said it…there was a spark of knowing in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before. Something she was holding back. Something important that was couched in the invitation. I didn’t understand it. But somewhere along the line, I’d discovered that if there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was an unsolved mystery, an unanswered question. I had to know things. Everything. And Paige had something on her mind. I wanted—no, I needed—to find out what it was.
Answers, unfortunately, are elusive and temperamental creatures. You have to fight for them. In my case, in order to figure out why Paige wanted me to come over, I would have to run through a gauntlet first.
Paige hadn’t been kidding about what was waiting for me outside the bathroom. As the door opened, a group of students—ten, fifteen, twenty maybe—looked up expectantly, like a herd of meerkats. I kept my head ducked low, huddling close to Paige. I knew if I made eye contact I’d feel it all over again. That sense of helplessness, that feeling of being at Dagmar’s mercy.
I heard kids calling out to me, though. Tyler and the others. I knew each and every one of them. They’d become a part of the fabric of my existence, through opening the door and handing out mints and offering help in the library. The new fort kid, Nicole. Raquel, the seventh-grade class president. Zach from the yearbook club. Darnell, who was captain of the mathletes. And April, who I’d pushed away, mistaking a third grader’s fear for something more sinister.
“Janey?”
“Are you all right, Janey?”
“Forget about her, Janey.”
“It’ll be okay, Janey.”
“Janey.”
“Janey.”
“Janey.”
It was the cafeteria all over again, with the Janey! Janey! Janey!
I shuddered, thinking about it.
Paige put her arm around me and led me down the hall. Most of the kids stayed rooted to the spot and watched, falling silent, but Tyler trotted along behind us. “Is she going to be okay?” he asked.
I cringed at the sound of his voice, ducking my head against Paige’s shoulder. Go away, I thought. Just go away.
“Yeah,” Paige said, sensing my discomfort.
“Just ignore Dagmar, Janey,” he said. “And they say I’m a drama queen.”
Just go away.
“It’ll be fine,” Paige said.
“Okay,” he said. And reluctantly, he added: “I have to get to rehearsal.”
“Go. I’ll take care of her.”
“Bye, Paige. Bye, Janey.” He started to walk down the hall. I could hear his footsteps retreating, but then they stopped. “You know,” he said, “I get it. I know what it’s like to be made fun of. Theatre kids get made fun of all the time.
I get made fun of all the time. You can’t take it too seriously.” A pause. “So don’t. It doesn’t matter, Janey. None of it matters.”
The German shepherd, as it turned out, was every bit the hassle that my dad anticipated. He was relieved—and pleasantly surprised—when I called to tell him that I had an invitation to dinner. I think he was sure that if I was left to my own devices, I’d eat nachos and Pixy Stix, with ice cream for dessert, and call it a well-balanced meal. Instead, it was roasted chicken, fruit salad, creamed spinach, and the best macaroni and cheese I’d ever tasted.
Paige’s family lived in an apartment building not too far from where my dad and I lived. Her mother reminded me of the Betty Grossman I’d always imagined. Plump. Friendly. With gentle hands and a laugh that rippled through her body. Paige’s four older sisters were all incredibly beautiful, just like her. And her little brother, Tyrone, was a ball of kinetic energy, bouncing from one thing to the next. I didn’t get to meet her dad. He was in the city at an event. But from the pictures on the wall, I could see that he had the same soulful eyes as Paige.
Not a clown. Not a hobo. Not a loser.
Not even a little bit.
After dinner, Paige and I shut ourselves up in the room she shared with one of her sisters, who seemed to be involved in a seriously goopy text conversation with her boyfriend. She ignored us while we sat together on Paige’s bed, which was up against the wall, under a poster for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
We talked for a while, then Paige produced a box of markers. The next thing I knew, I was drawing a tattoo on her arm. It was a flower—a hibiscus—with delicate, fluttering petals along the back of her hand, and a long, leafy stem that snaked up the length of her arm, wrapping itself around her elbow.
“You ought to join the art club,” Paige said, smiling as I started to shade in the petals with a pink marker.
I stared at her hand, the tip of my tongue peeking out of the corner of my mouth as I concentrated. “I’m not that good.”
“You don’t have to be. It’s not like anyone’s paying you to do it. It’s just for fun.” She snorted. “You think my songs for choir are any good?”
“That one you were working on in the cafeteria sounded pretty good,” I said. Not that I knew good music from bad. I couldn’t explain my feelings well, but my instincts just told me that music was written into Paige’s soul.
