Outcast

by Susan Oloier

  My heels clicked against the floor, and my skirt billowed out behind me, as I pushed open the church doors and made my way down the steps into the brisk night. I leaned against the railing and cried. Huge sobs choking my throat. What had I done?

  The winter break slipped by without episode. Aunt P stayed out of sight for the remainder of the holiday. The winter break moved along too quickly. Like a breeze in the stifling heat of summer, it was gone in an instant. Suddenly, New Year’s Eve fell upon us, and another year had come and gone. Grace invited me over for a sleepover where we played Wii, ate popcorn and ice cream, and talked about boys. She brought up Chad.

  “He’s so hot,” Grace said.

  I felt my heart rate speed up and remembered how our eyes met in church.

  “But Trina…” Grace played the rest of her sentence out in her thoughts.

  I needed her to finish. Trina what? Kissed Chad? Is his girlfriend now? What?

  My mind filled in the gaps. I watched Grace as she daydreamed about Chad. I studied her as she spun a curl around her finger, knowing what I had given up for her. All the while, knowing he could have been mine.

  Eight

  January. School returned with a vengeance.

  As I made my way to my locker before first period, I saw Chad and flushed with nervousness. Then I saw he was with Trina. My stomach plummeted from suicidal heights and hit bottom with a sickening smack. Loathing settled in as I watched him hug the locker next to hers. They acted much more intimate than before the Christmas break. It made me bristle. Something happened over the holiday. Something occurred in the short time we were all away from school. I continued to torture myself by watching, fitful and jealous. He was interested in me first. If it weren’t for Grace, he would be talking to me, leaning against my locker, smiling deliriously at me.

  I sank back against a locker across the hallway. Trina closed hers, and the two of them turned to leave. Trina spied me. Her smirk was laden with retaliation. My jaw clenched, my stomach tightened, and my hands curled into angry fists. I needed to get back at her. Somehow.

  I spent the second semester of my sophomore year in the throes of my studies. In World History, I immersed myself in the Roman Empire; I analyzed and dissected the literary devices used in To Kill a Mockingbird; algebraic equations took on a sudden intrigue that I’d never noticed before. Of course, all of this was a mere diversion from the budding relationship between Chad and Trina.

  I had once opened a fortune cookie that delivered the message appreciate what you have now so as not to miss it once it is gone. I had thrown it away, thinking it was stupid, written by a hopeful novelist who missed his calling and was stuck writing fortune cookie messages for a living, spelling out his own regrets to innocent diners at Chinese restaurants. I should have kept it. I finally understood what it meant.

  Watching Chad and Trina together in the hallways was torture. I seethed with jealously and there was nothing I could do. I had lost my chance. As much as I wanted to project the blame onto Grace, it was my own doing. She didn’t twist my arm to turn him down. She didn’t even know he had asked me out. If I had been honest with her, maybe she would have been okay with it. Maybe she didn’t care as much about him as I believed she did. There were all of those maybes when the truth of the matter was she would have cared. She would have been devastated, and I saved her the trouble of heartache and betrayal. As a result, I suffered my own misery. I guess that was the price of friendship.

  To avoid Chad and Trina, I took Photography instead of Acting. I was the only girl in the class, surrounded by a group of boys who were frightened to even speak to a girl in any capacity, whether it was a classmate, a waitress, or really anyone of the female persuasion. There was one exception: Henry Olson. It was obvious from the first day of class that he had a crush on me.

  Henry, to say it gently, was scientifically inclined. He loved biology and physics, but chemistry was the bomb. He wore high water pants that revealed his drooping tube socks, and he was the only teenager who found a pocket protector stylish. He definitely knew the laws of physics because he gravitated toward me immediately.

  Mr. Carson let us choose our seat on the first day of class. Henry chose to sit next to me. He must have picked up a Star Trek transmission that I, too, was an outcast. After measuring the chemistry between us, I figured he found me to be the most compatible partner for him. He introduced himself immediately and explained concepts to me seconds before Mr. Carson said them. When Henry’s prophetic ability proved correct—and it always did—he turned to me and smiled.

  I didn’t need the association with someone like Henry in or out of the classroom. But he was nice. And, unfortunately, he didn’t give me a choice.

  “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

  It was lunchtime. Henry hovered over our table. Grace eyed him suspiciously.

  I hesitated, but Henry either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He sat down before I said a word. Grace looked at me to answer the questions that scrolled across her face. I knew what she was thinking: it wasn’t good for our image to have Henry eating lunch with us. What did I care? Trina and Chad feasted on each other at the other side of the cafeteria anyway. What more did I have to lose?

  “Mr. Carson doesn’t know what he’s doing when he uses plastic developing tanks. Stainless steel is far more preferable.” He jumped right into a conversation.

  “Henry, this is Grace.”

  “Hi.” He tore through the food on his tray and kept talking like the intro never took place.

  “They have hardier properties and are so much easier to clean. I don’t think any of the pictures we’ve taken this year are going to be of optimal quality if he continues to use those worthless plastic tanks.”

  Grace’s look screamed a painful Help! Get us out of this situation! My eyes darted to Chad’s table, partly out of jealous habit and partly because I didn’t want him to see me with Henry. Chad’s gaze caught hold of me and latched on for a moment. His mouth lifted into a barely-visible smile, then he looked away. The severed connection crushed me. I put a chokehold on my tears by turning my attention back to the table.

  “Listen, Henry. We have some studying to do. So if you don’t mind…”

  “No, go ahead.”

  We waited for him to take his tray and leave, but he didn’t. Instead he dug right into his fish sticks, consuming them like they were top quality filets of sole. Grace and I ogled one another; her eyes pleaded with mine, mine with hers. I shrugged. We didn’t know what to do. I started to say something else to dissuade Henry from remaining near to us, but he cut me off. “So, do either of you have boyfriends?” A chunk of fish stick stuck to the corner of his mouth.

  We looked at one another and completely lost it. Henry may have been an embarrassment, but he was comic relief at a time when I definitely needed it.

  The moment I hoped would never arrive finally did.

  “Trina and Chad are dating.” Grace greeted me as I arrived at her house for a study session. My stomach sank, and I didn’t know how to respond. I had to comfort Grace. But the news had sucker punched me in the face, and I needed support, too.

  “That’s terrible,” I said, choking down a sob.

  Grace tried to mask her own hurt. “It’s okay. I mean, what made me think that I could ever get someone like him anyway?”

  “Don’t say that.” I attempted to be sympathetic.

  “What do you mean? Look at us. We could never get good-looking boyfriends. No one’s interested in me, and the only guy interested in you is that Henry geek from your photography class.”

  Us? Since when did this turn into an us? I felt offended that she would include me in her category of losers. I desperately wanted to tell her about Chad, but I held my tongue.

  “Henry’s a nice guy.” I covered my anger and defended him all in one breath.

  “Nice maybe. But still a geek.”

  She made me angry. Who did she think she was? Emma Watson? She had no right to label
Henry. Yes, he irritated me. And yes he was not the best-looking guy in the school, but she was passing judgment on him like Trina & Company did to us. I refused to put up with it.

  “A lot of people probably say the same thing about you.”

  “Are you calling me a geek?” She cocked her head to one side and crossed her arms defensively in front of her.

  “I don’t know. No.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “You said it yourself. We’re outcasts. Who knows what people say about us?” I included myself in the comparison to cushion the blow.

  “We’re not geeks,” she insisted.

  “But you’re treating Henry like Trina & Company treat us.”

  “She doesn’t treat us like that anymore.”

  “No, because she’s too busy rubbing Chad in my face.” Oh God! Oh God! Did I just say what I thought I said?

  “What?” Her eyes screwed into a puzzle.

  I hoped that I had imagined the words in my mind, that they didn’t actually spill from my mouth.

  “She’s gloating about the fact that she’s with Chad and we’re all alone. That’s all.” I hoped I covered my blunder well.

  “That’s not what you said. You said she’s rubbing it in your face.”

  “I meant our faces. It just came out all wrong.” I tried to sound aloof, like the slip-up was a simple confusion with syntax. I fiddled with my backpack to avoid making eye contact with her.

  “You like him.”

  Two thoughts ran through my head. Either I continue the charade, risking the possibility that the whole truth would make itself known, or I simply admit I like him and be done with it.

  “No, I don’t. I just really hate Trina.”

  My answer sent Grace on a whole other subject. “She’s not that bad, you know.”

  “Actually, she is.”

  “Obviously Chad doesn’t think so.”

  “He just doesn’t know her yet,” I said mostly to myself.

  Henry continued to join us during lunch hour. He attempted to entertain us with useless trivia we would have been better off not knowing.

  “You two need to have more vitamin C in your diet. You know that the sailor’s disease, scurvy, occurred as a result of a lack of vitamin C. I’ll get you both some orange juice.”

  And off he’d run to the cafeteria line and return with two containers of orange juice. Grace, who was initially annoyed with him, suddenly seemed intrigued by his quirkiness and protective behavior.

  “You know what causes freckles, Noelle?” He stared at the dots that sprinkled my face while shoving goulash into his mouth.

  “No.” I self-consciously covered my face with my hands.

  “They appear when the sun activates your melanocytes.”

  “I think they’re just genetic.”

  Grace acted enthralled by the information. “How do you know all this stuff?” she asked him.

  “Books. And I watch Jeopardy.”

  Grace smiled a little too boldly at him. He smiled back. I supposed now that Henry paid attention to her instead of me, he was no longer as bad as she first thought. Maybe Henry was the diversion Aunt P. described.

  Nine

  March. The winter was dry, deeply alive with the promise of forest fires in the high country. Only the hardiest of wildflowers peeked from the stone and dirt on the roadside. Most remained fugitives within the recesses of the ground.

  The Easter holiday approached, but I felt no sense of renewal or rebirth.

  Chad and Trina were a couple. There was no denying it. They were constantly together. Instead of the Trina & Company of the past, it was now Trina & Company & Chad. The only upside to their relationship was that Trina and her friends stopped picking on us. Not much of an upside, considering what I had given up. Grace and Trina stayed away from each other—two magnetic poles pushing the other away. To Grace, Trina had stolen Chad from her when, in reality, she had stolen him from me.

  On Ash Wednesday, we went to church. Everyone filed in by homeroom. I went to the nurse’s office with a throbbing headache. She took inventory of my symptoms, diagnosed me with dehydration, gave me a sixteen ounce glass of water and two pills of ibuprofen, and forced me to lie down for ten minutes. By the time I left with a pass in hand, my homeroom had gone.

  I pushed through the school doors and skirted across the lawn to the foreboding, stain-glassed structure of the church. I tiptoed to Sister Maggie, my homeroom teacher. She glanced at the pass, silently waving me to a spot at the end of a pew. The only open seat was next to Chad. I hesitated. Sister Maggie gave me a shove with her look.

  I sat beside him, and his cheeks pinked.

  “Hey, Noelle.” He sounded sheepish, perhaps sorry. Likely, it was just my imagination.

  I noticed Trina two rows ahead of us. She turned to smile at Chad, but immediately frowned when she spotted me.

  As we waited for the procession of students in the rows ahead of us to get blessed with ashes, Chad finally turned to me. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” More than he knew.

  “I’d like to be friends,” he whispered under the organ music.

  I started to answer, but felt the harsh glare of Trina as she stood to make her way out of the pew. Her hatred for me far outweighed the peace and love the church was intended to represent. Chad’s eyes followed my gaze. It suddenly grew clear to him. He paid her a smile thick with guilt. I waited for her to turn before I answered him.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?” His tone was a plea.

  “I don’t want to be your friend.” I confessed. I wanted to be so much more.

  Hurt blanketed his face.

  Beyond the fact that an initial attraction existed between us that would never let us just be friends, Trina would never allow it. Never.

  We stood to exit our pew, as well. Trina maintained an almost constant watch over Chad as she received the blessing from Father Timothy. Hypocrite.

  “Why are you with her?” I blurted.

  “Noelle—”

  “Why?” I pushed.

  “I wanted to be with you, but—”

  I cut him off. “But her? She’s...so beneath you. So…you’re better than that.”

  “Shhhh,” came Sister Maggie’s warning.

  The row in front of us filed out. Yet Chad looked at me as if we were the only two people in the church.

  “I—” Chad started to say, but the guy behind gave him a shove.

  We resorted to silence as we humbly made our way to the altar. When we returned to our seats, stigmatized by the blackened charcoal on our heads, there seemed to be unfinished words between us, but what could we say? What could we do?

  Mass ended. The music blared. The final procession began. Everyone stood, anxious to return to class.

  But there was one more thing to say.

  “I wish…” I started as we neared the exit.

  “Me, too.”

  I thought I saw a trace of something in his eye, but I turned away as I saw Trina push her way out of the sea of churchgoers.

  A torrent of hope washed over me. Did he mean what I thought he meant? Or was he simply referring to friendship? Nonetheless, I felt elated as I returned to the school with the rush of fellow students, all blemished by the cross of ashes placed on their foreheads. Grace caught up with me.

  “What are you so happy about?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” I needed to stop lying. “I need to run to the bathroom before class. Want to come?”

  “Can’t,” she said. “Henry’s helping me with my science project.”

  I wandered into the girls’ bathroom on the second floor. I tucked myself into a stall at the far end. While there, a collection of voices walked into the restroom.

  “God, I need to get this shit off my forehead. Totally ruined my makeup.”

  “I know. What the hell? I hate Ash Wednesday. It’s so…gross.”

  I recognized the voices. Trina. Liana. I stayed in the st
all, studying the graffiti on the door, waiting for them to leave.

  “I am totally going to get that bitch.” Trina continued a conversation that obviously began before they reached the bathroom. She seemed to have it in for everyone. “If she thinks falling off a ladder was bad, just wait."

  My brain instantly sent a jolt to my heart, making it palpitate in ways that I feared would send me into cardiac arrest. She was talking about me.

  “Flirting with him in church? What a bitch!”

  The conversation was peppered with the sounds of toilets flushing, water running, and the winding of the paper towel machine. Out of fear, I stayed as silent as possible.

  “Since her makeover during the summer—”

  “Plastic surgery is more like it,” Liana interrupted.

  “Whatever! She thinks she’s God’s gift.”

  “It’s not like you have anything to worry about. I mean, come on.”

  I peered through the crack in the door to observe Trina smiling at her image in the mirror. Her expression quickly dulled to a frown as additional thoughts crept into her head.

  “True, but I still want to teach her a lesson.”

  “How?” Liana’s voice jumped an octave in her excitement.

  “I’ll think of something.”

  The bell rang, sending the two of them out of the bathroom. I flushed the toilet and exited the stall. I felt jittery, not sure of what they might do. I wondered if I should tell Chad. If he realized how mean and vindictive Trina was he might just dump her. Maybe he already knew, but didn’t care. Grace was the one person I really wanted to tell, but couldn’t. Telling her would mean confessing all the truths I kept hidden from her in the past. I didn’t need her dramatics on top of everything else right now. I decided to go it alone.

  The Spring Fling. I had no intention of going. Grace and I could hang out and possibly go to a movie that night. The last thing either of us needed to see was Trina groping Chad. The mere thought nauseated me.