Even though Nightingale is only fifteen blocks from Manhattan Prep, it might as well be at the other end of the universe, as Sara is in all honors classes and basically lives in the publications lab as coeditor of the yearbook. That’s the weird thing about Sara: even though she looks like the bastard offspring of Madonna and the Cure’s Robert Smith—all black rubber bracelets, dark eye makeup that she basically sleeps in until it smears artfully and her mane of wild blond hair—people like her, seek her out and want to be her friend. She manages to exist in a space where she cannot be clearly labeled or defined, moving seamlessly from clique to clique, belonging to none of them. If I had even one ounce of Sara’s self-confidence and charisma, her solidified sense of self, I could probably rule the world. Instead, I’m the weird girl who goes to a school for “special” kids, that even the other special kids avoid.
“Oh please,” I said, smiling at her antics. “Like I won’t see you all the time anyway.”
“True.” She sat up, her eyes sparkling with mischief before her face grew pensive. When Sara shifts gears, it’s like watching a wall come down—or go up, depending on what she’s feeling at the moment. “Is it because of . . . you know . . . parental stuff?”
The smile faded from my face, and I stared out the window at a garbage truck clanging down the street, not wanting to look her in the eye. “You could say that,” I mumble, my voice tight in my throat as if I’m being strangled by my own words.
“I thought things had gotten worse when you showed up with that black eye,” Sara said quietly, her eyes on the rug, “but I didn’t know what to say. I never know what to say.”
“No one really does.” My voice broke on the last word to leave my lips.
When I think about my mother, I have to stop what I’m doing and just breathe, my brain flooded with images: shades pulled down like eyes slowly closing, the windows shut tight. Wiping the blood and snot from my nose and cleaning the cut that splits my upper lip with hands that won’t stop shaking. That feeling of invisibility, the noise of the city closing in around me like a noose.
“What about your dad?” Sara put her arm around my shoulders, leaning in. I could smell her strawberry shampoo and the patchouli oil she always dabs on her neck and behind her ears. It made me think of the industrial-strength cleaning products our maid, Jaronda, used in the kitchen once a week to clean the floors and countertops, that faint medicinal smell she left in her wake.
“What about him,” I sighed, untangling myself from Sara’s embrace. “He’s the one who signed the lease on my new place.”
“That’s fucked up,” Sara said, sitting down beside me and twisting her unruly mass of hair into a knot on top of her head. “When they got divorced, I always thought you’d go live with him eventually.”
I snorted, rolling my eyes to the ceiling. “I don’t think Jasmine would appreciate that.”
Jasmine. Long dark hair, tanned skin and liquid black eyes. It was no wonder he fell for her the moment she came to work at his firm. Now they live on seventy acres in Connecticut. My father started his career in the mailroom of Solomon Brothers, working his way up to account executive, cold-calling big fish like Donald Trump for hours at a time, then senior account executive, before finally making partner just before my tenth birthday. Now he practically runs the whole place. After the movie Wall Street came out, Forbes magazine featured him on the cover, a wry grin plastered across his overly tanned face, his blue eyes staring out from beneath the caption that read THE REAL-LIFE GORDON GEKKO. Sure, there were checks on each birthday, and when the social workers called him last spring, stating in no uncertain terms that I could no longer live in my mother’s penthouse apartment on Eighty-Third and Park, he’d signed the lease on the East Village apartment without comment, except to mention that at six hundred dollars a month, the rent was more than reasonable. A steal. But never once did he suggest that I live with him, that maybe it wasn’t a good idea for a seventeen-year-old to be fending for herself in the heart of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, just steps from Alphabet City, where gunshots popped in the night air like a string of firecrackers and junkies routinely nodded out in doorways.
As I waited for him to speak, to tell me that I was finally and unequivocally coming to live with him once and for all, I could hear Jasmine cooing nonsensically in the background like a demented bird, her tinkling, melodic voice amplified over the wire, and I knew I was lost. Say it say it, I thought, concentrating with all of my being, squeezing my eyes so tightly that I saw stars exploding, flowers of red and white unfurling their violent petals. My thoughts echoed in the silence that followed, and the words never came.
I take the train seven stops each way, and I usually like the ride, the narrow series of dark tunnels, the flashing lights that remind me of the strobes that shine down on me in the club, my body illuminated like an X-ray. But today, I’m too nauseated, the whiskey sours I drank last night tumbling around in my stomach like a team of trapped, acidic acrobats. Of course it would help if I could sit down, but there are never any seats during morning rush hour. A man sits across from me reading the Post, his face set in grim concentration. The headline for today rises above a large picture of Mikhail Gorbachev and shrieks IS THE COLD WAR OVER? Gorbachev’s expression looks worried, his bushy eyebrows knitted together in what might be concern or fear, and I wonder if he knows something I don’t. I hang on to the metal pole and close my eyes, wondering how long I can go on this way, how long I can maintain, my blank eyes reflected in the mirror each morning, red-rimmed and wasted. As the train lurches out of the station, I sway back and forth, my fingers burning like icicles, my body frozen to the core.
TWO
“SO, HAVE YOU GIVEN any more thought to your future?”
Ms. Sherman, the guidance counselor, is staring at me over her silver-rimmed glasses, the round lenses magnifying her blue eyes. I’ve successfully avoided the mandatory weekly meetings, the glossy college brochures and probing questions since the start of the semester, but today, as I was attempting to tiptoe past her office during my free period, she spotted me and called me inside. Her office is plastered with posters of sad-faced kittens featuring cheerful messages scrolled across the bottom—sayings that are probably supposed to be inspirational: HANG IN THERE, BABY! YOU CAN DO IT! But all those furry faces and glib platitudes just make me feel more tired than I already am. I know I didn’t always feel this way, so used up and exhausted. When I first started clubbing, even though I rarely got more than a few hours of sleep a night, I moved toward school weightless, feet gliding over the pavement, heels clicking in time with the music coursing through my headphones. This was before I started working the ropes of the VIP room a few months ago, throwing pills down my throat and powder up my nose just to get through the night.
I stare past Ms. Sherman and out the window, concentrating on the cars whooshing past in the street, the fine layer of dust coating the beige venetian blinds. Her office is painted a sunny yellow, the walls way too bright for my bloodshot eyes, a rainbow of pillows covering the dingy white couch.
Ms. Sherman leans forward on her elbows, her red hair frizzing wildly around her pale face devoid of makeup, and rests her weight on the pile of paperwork cluttering her desk. How she’s ever able to find anything at all, much less help kids get into the college of their choice, is a complete and total mystery.
“Have you even thought about college? The SATs are coming up soon.”
There is a plaintive note in her voice and she holds her hands out in front of her for emphasis. After a moment of silence she sighs loudly, dropping her hands into her lap and sitting back in her chair, watching me carefully.
“Not really,” I mumble, clearing my throat and meeting her eyes. The only thing I hate more than waking up in the morning and going to school is being forced to have conversations about my future—or lack of one—before I’m even fully awake. “I still have time, right? I mean, to take the test.”
“Well, yes. But you really need t
o start making some decisions.” Ms. Sherman leans forward, shuffling through the papers on her desk until she finds a manila folder, presumably my file. “I’m afraid your grades are going to be a problem.” She opens the folder and peruses it intently. “Currently, the only course you’re doing well in is English, and yet, back in ninth grade you were an A student.”
She takes off her glasses and looks at me, blinking slowly. Even though she’s got to be at least fifty, she looks younger without the metal frames, the wan moon of her face as exposed and vulnerable as a baby’s. I almost want to give her a hug and tell her it’s going to be OK, make her a cup of cocoa. The lines around her eyes are like paper cuts marring the thin, delicate skin.
“I’ve spoken to your mother, and she said there have been some . . . issues at home. That you’ve been quite rebellious.”
Her voice drifts off into nothingness, and even though I can tell she’s trying to be as tactful as possible, my breath halts in my chest. At the mention of my mother, my body goes as rigid as a plank of wood, my fingers curling into fists. I can almost hear her silky voice as she twirls the telephone cord around one thin wrist, grinding her cigarette butt into a crystal ashtray.
You see, Ms. Sherman, I’ve tried everything. But Caitlin is just completely uncontrollable . . .
As chatty as my mother is, particularly with anyone she wants to either impress or push around, she obviously hasn’t clued Ms. Sherman in on the fact that I’m now living alone on the Lower East Side without any parental supervision whatsoever. For one, it’s probably all kinds of illegal since I haven’t been emancipated. My mother happens to be crazy, but she isn’t stupid.
“She wasn’t very specific, but . . . do you want to talk about it?” Ms. Sherman asks gently.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. I look down at my hands and start to pick at the skin around my nails, which is what I always do when I’m uncomfortable or nervous. I want to speak, to find the words to describe the last seventeen years of my life, but I don’t know where to begin, how to describe what it feels like to open the front door after school, afraid of what might be waiting there. How do I explain how hard it is to cover up cuts and bruises with makeup so that the scabs don’t show through? How it feels to cry myself to sleep at night, sobs caught in my chest like wads of flypaper. I can hear laughter in the hallway outside Ms. Sherman’s office, and a blast of music brings Madonna’s “Express Yourself” shimmering into the room for a moment before the music fades away as the volume is turned down.
Come on, girls, do you believe in love . . .
I picture Madonna’s haughty face, the blond hair piled atop her head, her defiant stance. Sitting here, afraid to open my mouth and speak, I know I’m nothing like her.
“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, Caitlin.”
“I can’t,” I manage to get out. “I’m sorry.”
Not to be deterred, Ms. Sherman plods briskly on.
“If you do go on to college, do you know what you might want to study? Mr. Kent tells me you are quite a talented writer.”
Mr. Kent is my English teacher, and he gets all kinds of happy if anyone turns in their homework more than once a week. I’d never admit it to Ms. Sherman, but I kind of like writing. Somehow, it’s easier to put down on paper what I can’t say out loud. Not that I write much anymore, except for school. Two years ago my mother found my diary, read the whole thing from cover to cover, then placed it back in my room, the pages creased with her fingerprints. For weeks afterward, she’d allude to the things I’d written about over the dinner table and as she passed me in the hallways, her silk-clad legs whispering my secrets as she walked by: how I wanted to kiss Brian Fortenoy, how afraid I was that my parents would get divorced, how I hated the silence that hung between them heavy as a wet winter coat. The hopeful look on my mother’s face when the phone rang late at night, her eyes hardening as she listened to my father’s sheepish excuses. The quiet, palpable rage that simmered just below the surface of her skin, radiating out and infecting us all.
“You better hope we stay together,” my mother spat under her breath as she marched into my bathroom one morning, snatching a jar of cold cream from the sink and opening the lid, releasing the powdery scent of roses and chalk in the steamy air. The words hung between us like a threat, and I pulled the towel I was wearing tighter around my naked body, my skin covered in gooseflesh.
“I like English OK, I guess.” I shrug like it’s no big deal.
“Maybe you might want to think about studying journalism,” Ms. Sherman says brightly, happy to have a plan to put into action.
I imagine myself in a busy newsroom wearing a crisp white blouse buttoned up to the neck, my hair cut in a breezy, no-nonsense shag, a pair of tortoiseshell glasses perched on the bridge of my nose. The image makes me inexplicably sad for some reason, and I close my eyes, sighing loudly. What can I really tell Ms. Sherman about the future when I can barely even get through the present? When I first moved into my own place, I thrilled to that first heady rush of freedom, the ability to make myself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in my kitchen at two a.m. if I wanted to, eating it standing up at the counter, unafraid of what might happen if I left the dirty knife in the sink or forgot to replace the lid on the jelly jar. For the first time in years, I slept dreamless most nights with nothing to fear. There was no one to scream if I walked into the apartment three hours after school let out for the day, to sneak into my room at night, pulling the covers from my bed in a rush of fabric that whistled through the air as it sailed down to the floor. I ate when and what I wanted, and I did my homework most days because I felt like it—not because anyone told me to. I could have Sara and Giovanni over every night of the week, and sometimes I did. But as the months dragged on, it was never enough to erase the ache in my chest when I saw a family on the street, a child balanced carefully on the broad expanse of her father’s shoulders, a mother bending over a dark-haired little girl in a stroller, tenderly brushing the hair from her small round face.
The whole idea of college seems hazy and far away as a dream when I’m dragging my clothes up Avenue A to the Laundromat and boiling water for spaghetti for the third night in a row, using an old metal bowl I’ve punched a hole into for a colander. When you’re focused on survival, there’s no way to plan for or even think about the future. It hangs there in the distance, as abstract as a Mondrian painting, shimmering just out of reach.
“Well, you’re going to have to figure it out sooner or later.” Ms. Sherman closes my file, pushing it decisively to one side. “Not to mention the fact that your attendance this year has been nothing short of atrocious. You’ve missed a total of nine days since the start of the year, and it’s only November. I think some detention is probably in order, don’t you?”
She raises one eyebrow, looking at me as if she already knows the answer. I hate detention, and so far, no matter how much school I’ve missed, I’ve managed to squirm my way out of it. Just as I’m opening my mouth to protest, the phone begins to ring, shattering the moment and making me jump about a mile in my chair. I hate loud, sudden noises. Even the simple, everyday sound of a car door slamming shut can make me flinch sharply and break out in a cold sweat. The only place I am impervious to noise is in the club, the music crashing over me like a wave, sweeping me along and burying me beneath its pounding, relentless beat.
Ms. Sherman picks up the receiver, clearly exasperated by the intrusion. After she says hello, her voice fake and saccharine sweet, she begins listening intently to whoever is on the other end of the line.
“I have to take this,” she whispers urgently after putting one hand over the receiver.
I gather up my backpack and stand up, throwing the comforting weight of books over my shoulder, grateful for the chance to escape unscathed.
“Come and see me next week,” she says, waving a hand, shooing me out the door. “We’ll figure it out then.”
I watch as she picks up her glasses, slid
ing them over her nose, and then swivels around in her leather chair so that her back is to me, her body blocking what’s left of the morning light.
THREE
I’M SITTING ON THE STONE STEPS at school, pretending to enjoy an apple that I bought from an Asian grocery a few blocks over, when all I’m really thinking about is how long I have left until I can go home and start getting ready for the club, every stroke of makeup on my skin sliding me further from daylight. I tongue the white flesh and sink my teeth in, wishing the ripe fruit was the tanned blond head of one of the salad girls.
Since Manhattan Prep is housed in a brownstone and has a population of only one hundred students or fewer in the entire school, we don’t have a cafeteria. Or a prom. Or dances. Or phys ed. Instead, the Park Avenue girls buy salads at a cafeteria next door and sit in the glass atrium picking at their wilted greens, retouching their lip gloss with sticky pink wands. Even though we are all essentially weird in some way—after all, this is a school for kids who have gotten into some kind of trouble—it’s not enough to banish cliques completely. We still have the same bullshit categories as any other school: the jocks, the popular girls, the nerds. And the untouchables. Like me. So I sit on the steps and try to pretend that it doesn’t matter, when really, I’d do just about anything to have a friend here. This silent admission makes my cheeks flush with shame. How can I be so weak? Even at Nightingale, I only ever really had Sara, her blond curls hanging over my shoulder, elaborately folded notes tossed at my feet during study hall. Somehow, it was almost enough. But here, with no one to talk to day after day, the loneliness creeps in like an old friend I no longer want to know. Worse yet, it wants to make small talk. Oh, it’s you again? How’ve you been?
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