Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  All my classmates from Little Red are going into seventh grade today. Most of the kids went to the high school five blocks away, and I imagine them now, in their regular clothes, not even noticing my absence. I miss Imogen, but when I saw her over the summer, she was wearing colored lip gloss, tight high-waisted jeans, and a tube top, and she had feathered her hair. She bragged about hanging out with Pilar and some new girl named Constance. Constance wears a C cup. Constance used three bottles of Sun In on her hair. Constance was already smoking. Constance sounds constipated, is what I wanted to say. Blood rushes to my face when I think about Imogen and Constance together all the time. Maybe this is my chance to start over again and get things right.

  But these girls do not look like the right people to start over with. They are my opposite: blond and pale, with symmetrical features and a haughtiness that looks steamed into their tight skin and crisp clothing. A dull ache begins to thud inside my temples, and I press them back with my fingers. Please don’t be a brain tumor on my first day of sixth grade for the second time. I catch my sudden urge to suck my fingers and swap it out for a calming chomp on my nails.

  My homeroom is in a hidden nook on the second floor. Stenciled on the door is “VI,” which I find out later is the roman numeral for six. Mrs. Smyth, the homeroom teacher, has a scoop of blond-white hair, a tan, and wears a colorful flowing island caftan. She comes right over to greet me. Her necklace is made of oversized turquoise beads that clack when she moves. I am homesick for my mom.

  The girls are all nice to me, and their kindness offers me hope. They gather around my desk to interrogate me. Where do you live? What school did you go to before? What did you do for your summer vacation? Do you have a boyfriend? I can’t let them sniff out how vulnerable I am. A blond girl with an upturned nose, a popped collar, and a flush of whiteheads on her chin pushes through the small crowd.

  “Anyone ever call you Mandy?” she asks. Her mouth doesn’t open wide when she talks, which makes her look like a ventriloquist.

  “Yes,” I say. “But none of them survived.” I sound like my dad.

  All the girls laugh, and even I take myself by surprise. Scent thrown.

  “You’re funny,” she states, staring at me without a smile. She walks away.

  “That’s Bree,” a girl named Magda whispers. “Stay away. Madison too.”

  I memorize three names. Bree and Madison are popular. Magda is not.

  The first class is called Western Civ, which I’ve never even heard of, and Mrs. Smyth spends the lesson telling us about what we’ll learn. No one even opens their notebook. What was Kara talking about? This school is a breeze. Later, when Mrs. Smyth mentions the books we’ll read for English, I nod because I’ve read them already, in last year’s sixth-grade English. No one knows that this is my second time, and I feel like a genius. This is why they can’t ever discover that I’m an idiot who has to do everything twice because I don’t get anything right the first time.

  When the bell rings, Mrs. Smyth tells us to single-file at the door, smallest person in front. Much to my despair, that’s me. My tunic keeps falling off my body. Why am I so small when I’m the oldest? Maybe I should take those hormones or get that leg extension surgery. Downstairs, girls and teachers file into an auditorium. I’m between two blond girls who lean over me to talk to each other like I’m not there. They giggle about a teacher named Mrs. Plump.

  This is “Prayers,” which I guess is also church, and strange since I’m Jewish. I feel like a crasher for being there. After we all say, “Amen,” Mrs. Maynard welcomes everyone, and then there’s a school song everybody knows and announcements about committees and groups. Everyone nods, murmurs, laughs, claps, and raises their hands for things I don’t understand. When we file out, I feel arms cross over me and note the smell of Breck shampoo. Kara! She snuggles her face in my neck and whispers to me.

  “I just got here,” she says. “How’s it going?”

  “Good,” I say. “I made some girls laugh this morning.”

  “Of course you did. You’re hysterical,” she tells me.

  I am?

  “I’ll find you later!” she says and darts ahead, entwining herself with her friends. My breaths come easier and deeper now. All I wanted was to be at the same school with her again. And a uniform. No matter what floor I’m on, I know Kara is somewhere near. If I get scared, I can find her and she will save me from dying.

  The second half of the day is different. Mrs. Smyth says it’s time to “get down to business” and “take careful lecture notes.” I’ve never taken any notes before, lecture or not. She has suddenly begun speaking very quickly, too fast for me to copy down every word she says. I get half of them before they trail off.

  I notice that when Winifred writes, she first leans back to listen before hunching over to jot stuff down. How is she going to learn everything if she’s writing only ten of the words? I realize that out of everyone in my grade, I’m the only one (almost) keeping up. They’re failing and I’m succeeding! When Winifred, or anyone, asks whether they can borrow my notes, I’ll say, yes—of course! I’ll be happy to let everyone copy them. I look up at the classroom door where Kara is grinning and waving wildly at me. I can’t wait to tell her that I’m smarter than I thought. I hope she checks on me every day.

  When the bell rings, we pack up our books and I glance over at Winifred’s notes, just to get a sense of what she’s doing wrong so that I can offer my help. But her paper’s been divided into sections resembling a type of chart, full of roman numerals. There are indentations and underlines and it looks very well organized and clean. How did she do that? I have pages and pages of sprawling text, but Winifred has a clean, well-laid-out chart. As she leafs through her notebook, I see dozens more just like it. What the hell?

  Other kids’ notebooks look the same. Some have even pulled out rulers to ensure their rows are perfect. Where are they getting these charts from? Mrs. Smyth didn’t even draw on the board. Is there another part of the world that exists that I can’t see? Everyone always seems in on something I’m not. As the day progresses, I become increasingly alarmed at how little I understand. This was a huge mistake. I followed the wrong path, led by a false belief that uniforms had power. This wasn’t what I meant to ask for.

  The girls in my class, while friendly, are too young for me. I watch the girls in the seventh grade, the grade I should be in, but they seem, weirdly, too advanced. They’re developed and sophisticated in a way I can’t ever see myself being. They’re not my people either. I am stuck somewhere in the middle, in a place that doesn’t exist. I’m embarrassed that I wasn’t allowed to advance with everyone else. All my fears are coming true.

  Outside, girls yell their good-byes. Some take off in pairs; others run toward Jackson Hole for after-school Cokes and fries. I stand alone, hoping someone might say good-bye to me, or ask if I had a good first day, and do I want to join them for fries, but no talks to me and I stand alone and still at the curb. Kara has Curriculum Committee, so I have to go home by myself. I’m taking the Fifth Avenue bus for the first time, alone. I know I’m old enough to do this. Eddie is fourteen and he’s been going to the East Village by himself, where bums set garbage cans on fire to get warm and cars are bombed out like there’s a war on, but still, I’m afraid. I remind myself that I’m twelve, twice as old now as Etan was the morning he disappeared. But what if the person who took him waits at all the bus stops? The news a few weeks ago said a man was arrested for luring some boys into a drainpipe. They found pictures in the drainpipe of little boys who looked like Etan Patz. What if the Drainpipe Man is the person who took him? After they arrested him, they discovered he used to date Etan’s babysitter. What is wrong with babysitters?

  My mom drew me a map. A big box squares HOME, and the gridlike streets that make up the distance between Eighth Street and HOME look very short. When I get off at Eighth Street, I just have to follow the drawing. Even though it pulls up mere feet in front of me, I scramble onto the
M15 before it can leave without me. Gratefully, I flash my bus pass.

  “You’re going to Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue, right?” I ask, just to make absolutely sure.

  He nods, and I walk to the back where it’s empty, worried because he didn’t say yes. A nod could mean he wasn’t listening. I watch Central Park fall away, The Plaza, and FAO Schwarz. The wind is strong and brown lunch bags roll down sidewalks, past the fancy Fifth Avenue department stores, disappearing behind us. The backward tumbling reminds me of my own body when I’m trying to fall asleep. With a defeated exhale, the bus stops and lowers, like my grandma’s electric bed, for a woman in a wheelchair. Leaves and napkins fly up from the sidewalk in circles. A plastic bag catches in the weave of a metal garbage can and thrashes against it, trying to escape, but it’s caught, held hostage.

  My mother said the bus will drop me off on Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, and all I have to do is walk straight, right through Washington Square Park. Easy-peasy. Once we’re at Fourteenth Street, I realize I’m the only one on the bus. Marci Klein was on a bus when she was kidnapped. I stand and check that we’re going in the right direction. My breath is starting to thicken. But then the arch for the park’s entrance comes into view, and I calm down, ring the bell, and stand near the door.

  But, instead of stopping where he’s supposed to on Eighth Street, he turns left and keeps going, away from the park. My colon spasms and a noose lassos around my neck. I feel the slipknot tightening into the hollow of my throat; I can’t get air. I am being kidnapped. No one can save me. I start swallowing at the air to get some into my lungs, pulling whatever I can through my mouth and nostrils to keep me alive. Please let me off the bus. I will do anything you want. I will be nice to Holly, I will not think bad thoughts about other people, I will…Is he slowing down? He’s slowing down, oh thank God thank God.

  He stops, but the moment between stopping and opening the door feels like a lifetime and I worry that he’s changing his mind, and he’s going to look in the rearview mirror, spit out an evil laugh, press the gas, and steal me away, but then I hear the deep wheeze and the door accordions open. I fly out, entangled in relief and terror, and having no idea where I am or how to get home. I don’t know where the park is. I was paying attention only to being kidnapped, not to where the bus was going. The bus did something different from what my mom said it would do, and I can’t adjust for that difference. I can stay true only to the directions as they are, and only from the place I’m supposed to be, not wherever I am.

  Maybe if I walk straight, I’ll still hit the park. My mom is always right, so even though there was an error, she’ll still be right. I walk straight, but the park does not appear, and the neighborhood starts feeling shady, and I become more lost. Now the fear that hit me blocks ago turns crippling.

  I turn and look behind me. What were buildings and sidewalks on my way here now look like shapes and textures. Windows are rectangles, two-dimensional drawings. I’m hit by an ominous, tumbling sense that I’ve fallen into some replica of reality, a world flattened into two dimensions. Colors are beige and muted and stretch into one another. As everything starts to double, I feel myself rise up, above it all, vibrating.

  I’m lifting above the city like mist, and all of a sudden I know what’s really going on. People are just game pieces being played on a city-sized board. Everything looks fake, like it’s been illustrated. Even the bricks look drawn on; roof shingles are rectangles darkened by charcoal. The cars look like paper cutouts, and cracks in the sidewalk are drawn on by chalk. Everything is a farce; nothing is true. Abruptly, I have seen life for what it is. We are all objects without meaning. The meaning comes only from the giant invisible hands that are playing their game with us. An early fall chill. Someone is lowering the sun, and immediately I know my entire family has gone on without me, not noticing I’m even missing. I imagine my family doing things they don’t even do—sitting around a campfire, reading aloud from a book, playing guitar, laughing at jokes—now that I’m gone. Kara’s bracey grin; the boyish glint of Eddie’s squinty laugh. The things I’ll never see again.

  I walk fast toward the nearest store, determined to make them save me. The cool sweeping mist of each big breath puffs in dragon blasts through the inside of me. They didn’t have enough information to keep him in jail, so they let the Drainpipe Man go. Now I know that anyone who passes me could be the Drainpipe Man. Little kids dash zigzag in a burst down the street toward me. Little darting faces. Their carefree laughs, squinting eyes, uneven mouths, baby teeth, and crooked little chins look suddenly both ominous and in danger. I duck into Bolton’s, where the women on staff wear white stockings and pleated blue skirts. I don’t realize I’m crying until someone calls for tissues. They coddle me and give me a lollipop. When they talk baby talk I realize they think I’m younger than I am. This is a common problem. Sometimes I wish I were still nine. Not the bad nine where Melissa and Baba died, when Etan disappeared, but the nine where people tried to protect me from the real world. Usually when people do find out I’m older than they thought, they gasp in disbelief, and I feel like apologizing. I am not being who they expected me to be.

  When my mom rushes in, she thanks the women who work there and I’m relieved she looks as worried as I feel. Out on the sidewalk, I expect her to ask someone where we are, or hail a taxi, but instead, she walks down the block and there, in front of us, is the park. I don’t understand. It was right there the entire time? I try to explain what the bus did, and how hard I tried to follow her map.

  “I wonder if your ambidexterity caused the problem,” she says.

  “It didn’t,” I say.

  “I’ll find you a tutor,” she says, walking fast as we approach the park.

  I don’t want a tutor. I just want someone to help me inside my body. If I can explain what happened, maybe she’ll finally hear me, but I don’t know the words.

  “I…I got overwhelmed,” I say.

  “A tutor can help you with your problems following directions,” she says. “They can work with you after school.” She clutches her purse to her chest, pulling me behind her.

  I have problems following directions? “Maybe if someone walked the route with me? From start to finish? Then I’d know how to do it the right way,” I say.

  “I’ll draw the map so it’s clearer for you. I should have labeled the stores and restaurants and not just the streets,” she says. “I’ll make the letters bigger. Maybe they were too small.”

  “I don’t think that was the problem,” I say.

  “Can you walk faster?” she says, her face pinched and drained of color. I hurry behind her through the park, passing a guy on a unicycle juggling pins, a man blowing giant soap bubbles toward the little kids who chase them, a musician singing James Taylor songs, and my-age kids dancing for change next to a blasting boom box. Those people don’t seem scary, but I must be wrong. My mom pulls on my hand. There are so many things to fear in this world; I am even starting to fear myself.

  I am a growing constellation of errors. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, only that something is, and it must be too shameful to divulge, or so rare that even the doctors are stumped. Whatever the case, not knowing is making everything worse. Is there some truth about myself no one will tell me? Whenever I ask, the answer is always the same. I have problems learning. When I push for more information, my mom gets flustered and says, “I can’t explain it.” She’s keeping something from me, I can tell. I try so hard to shake away the images, but I feel them coming—trouble learning how to tell time, bad grades, failing tests, the ERB, Dr. Rivka, staying back a grade, the notes the other kids took, getting lost—my heart sinks at the realization of the absolute horrid truth: I’m dumb. The adults lied to me; my mom lied to me. I didn’t stay back because I was little. I stayed back because I’m stupid.

  That’s how I know that no matter how many tutors she hires or maps she makes, I won’t get it right. I don’t understand how to do things. Other people know fact
s that I don’t, and not knowing, even things I never learned, is dumbness. Everyone else’s brains have information my brain doesn’t have. I don’t want anyone to know this truth about me. It has to stay hidden.

  On top of being stupid, though, I know there’s something else, the source of my worries that no one seems able to find. If the world discovers that I have a weird extra flaw on top of being stupid, who knows what grade they’ll put me in. Who knows what will happen to me. Who I am is a secret I have to keep forever.

  As we rush home through Washington Square Park, I smell the hot-dog carts, the pretzel stands, the fall pollen, new clothes, the faded perfume—and our fear. The sense that we’re just a board game has stayed with me, and I feel like I know things about the world no one else does. The map is crumpled up and grimy in my hand; I am crushing the very streets I am racing through, even HOME. Every smell cements this one terrifying experience inside me, and the truth about myself I now understand. From now on, all perfect New York City fall evenings will forever call up in me this specific terror, and an exquisite sadness, every September for the rest of my life.

  A Word Never Means Only One Thing

  The new tutor came, but Mom didn’t like how he dressed, so we got another, but I still can’t read a map. I sit all the way in the back of the class because I don’t want to be called on, ever. I never figured out how to take notes like the other girls, and now I’m too afraid to ask. Whenever Mrs. Smyth so much as looks my way, I get dizzy; I bend over my notebook like I’m too busy documenting her very important words to be called upon, though most of the time I can barely follow what she’s saying because I’m so worried about being too dumb to understand. The rare times I’m able to listen and do know an answer, I don’t raise my hand, in case I turn out to be wrong. If I’m called on, all the blood rushes to my skin and I grow light-headed and have no idea what I’ve said. It takes anywhere from five to ten minutes for the trembling to subside. After class, I sit in the front for a few minutes, pretending I’m scribbling some deep follow-up thoughts, when really I’m copying down from the board what I can’t read from the back of the room. Not that it helps.