Standing Sideways

by J. Lynn Bailey

  There he is. Stuck in the passenger seat of my car. I reach for the door handle, but it’s locked. I never lock my car. Nobody ever locks the doors to their houses, cars, or anything else in Belle’s Hollow. We don’t need to. It’s the type of town that closes up shop for town functions. The type of town that hangs signs in their window—Be back in five. Ran uptown for some change. Leave your money on the counter.

  Simon looks at me from the driver’s window.

  “Open the door.” I’m mad. Pissed off. Fuming. But, really, who should I be mad at? Clearly, this wouldn’t be an issue if Simon and I weren’t sleeping together.

  He laughs a drunk laugh, and it pisses me off more.

  “This isn’t funny, Simon. Unlock the door.”

  He hits the unlock button, but when I go to pull open the door, he locks it again.

  “Simon James, you asshat. Unlock the damn door.”

  He hits unlock and pushes the car door open.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” I lean in, so my face is practically in his lap, and I’m jiggling the seat belt. It’s a jiggle-jiggle-pull method.

  But I feel Simon’s hands in my hair.

  “Stop it,” I say as I feel the beads of sweat begin to form on my forehead.

  He laughs.

  “Livia? Is everything all right?”

  Immediately, I stand and whack the back of my head on the roof of the car.

  Simon is laughing uncontrollably now.

  It’s Daniel.

  What do I say?

  You lie, Liv. Because that’s what you’ve grown accustomed to.

  No, you tell the truth. You haven’t done anything wrong.

  But everything about this situation is all wrong.

  “Hey, Daniel.” I’m extra peppy with my hey and my Daniel.

  My Daniel. Again, sounds weird.

  “Uh, Simon, this is Daniel. Daniel, this is Simon. And he seems to be stuck in the front seat of my car.”

  “Yes, so I see.”

  Simon reaches his hand out. “Nice-to-meeee-you,” he slurs to Daniel, coming out all in one word. He laughs and hiccups again.

  “Oh, a bit wankered, are we?” Daniel examines the seat belt.

  Simon laughs so hard, he falls forward. “Wankered!” He tries to give Daniel a pound but completely misses his knuckles.

  Daniel steps in without getting too close to Simon and jiggles the seat belt, and it comes loose. Just like that.

  Simon falls out of the car.

  “I need to get him home,” I say, placing my hand on my forehead in frustration.

  Daniel’s eyes don’t meet mine this time.

  Daniel helps me get Simon to his feet and into the backseat. Simon groans as he falls into the seat.

  He slurs again, “I love you, Livia.”

  I shut the car door in a panic.

  The right decision right now would be to tell Daniel what’s going on. The right decision right now would be to stop lying.

  Daniel casually leans on the side of my car, but his eyes say something different. Concern maybe. And then he asks the question I saw coming minutes ago, “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No. No. No. He’s Jasper’s best friend. Was. He’s got a girlfriend.” I wave it off like it’s crazy Daniel even asked. “But, wait”—I always feel the need to clarify with Daniel—“the only reason I said he had a girlfriend wasn’t to say that, if he didn’t, I would date him because I wouldn’t. I said he had a girlfriend because—oh, God, never mind.”

  A tiny smile spreads across Daniel’s face, as if knowing I’m flustered gives him pleasure.

  His face grows more relaxed, and then he does the methodical-thinking thing—where he pauses, mulls the words around his mouth—Liv, don’t think about his tongue again—and then pauses again, only to say, “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  He’s concerned I have a boyfriend.

  “No, no boyfriend. Boyfriend clear.” I’m so awkward, I hiss at myself. “Girlfriend? For you?”

  He shakes his head. “Do you want me to help you get him home?”

  No, I don’t want to invite you into my complicated, totally messed up life, Daniel.

  “I’ll manage.” I open the driver’s door.

  Daniel taps the roof of my car with the side of his fist. “See you.”

  Simon is snoring as I take a left on Twelfth Street from the high school and another left on Randolph Street.

  “What did you do, Simon?” I whisper under my breath.

  He murmurs something. And then he starts to whimper.

  I park in front of his house and open the backseat door. “Simon. Wake up.”

  He doesn’t budge.

  I pull on his arm. “Come on. Wake up.” I lightly tap him on the face a few times. “Simon James, your Vans are on fire!”

  He opens his eyes. “Wha?” He looks around. “Ouch! Head…” He holds his head in his hands.

  “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

  I help him to his feet but not without a lot of effort on my part. A piece of me thinks he’s enjoying this. With his arm around my neck and my arm wrapped around his waist, we make it up the steps of the porch and get inside his house and to his room, the only neat place in the house.

  His house is a pigsty from the overflow of dirty dishes on the counters and in the sink to the coffee can full of cigarette butts—half of them in and half of them missed shots on behalf of the smoker.

  Still groggy, he says, “Come-on, Liv. Lay-wi-me.” He eases back toward his pillow on his bed, his eyes closed.

  I stare at him as he peacefully sleeps. I wish he could sleep like this all the time. I wish the hurt didn’t eat him up. The regret I know he has for not going with Jasper to LA.

  “Liv,” he says through squinty eyes, “I love you.”

  My insides turn out. “No, you don’t, Simon. We’re just two people healing our hearts.”

  “What’s going on in here?”

  I turn to see Whitney standing at the door.

  How long has she been standing there?

  What did she hear?

  “Nothing,” I lie. “Whitney, we’ve been friends since we were kids. Of course he loves me; we’re like family,” I manipulate. Because she heard that part, right?

  Whitney tilts her head to the left, trying to get a better read on me, knowing there might be more to what’s being said than meets the eye. “What happened to Simon? He smells like alcohol. He doesn’t drink.” Whitney looks to me again, more questioning than anything. “Why are you with my drunk boyfriend in his room? Let me smell your breath,” she says.

  “What?” I gawk.

  She turns to me. “Let me smell your breath.”

  “This is asinine. Smell my breath? You can’t be serious?”

  Whitney gets in my face. “Blow.”

  I roll my eyes. Whitney this close to me makes me feel uncomfortable.

  I pause.

  I sigh.

  “Blow,” she says louder.

  I blow.

  She smells.

  “How did Simon get like this?”

  I shrug. “No idea. I found him like this.” I don’t, however, tell her he texted me.

  “Where?”

  “In the gym.”

  Liar.

  Whitney looks back to Simon and then to me again. “I’ll take it from here.”

  I turn to leave.

  “Livia, did you forget?”

  What? My cheating ways?

  “The pictures.”

  “Right. I’ll get those to you.”

  “We work together tonight, so you’ll bring them,” Whitney states in a diplomatic tone, almost forceful, as she eases onto the bed next to a passed-out Simon.

  I nod and do everything but run outside to my car, and I head back to school as fast as I can.

  At school, I reach in the backseat for my backpack. Shit. It’s in Mr. Joe’s classroom. I realize I have to put my tail between my legs, march back in there, and grab it. />
  Second period, his prep period. No students. No distraction.

  I make my way to the classroom.

  He’ll want to talk about the paper and my lack of attention, that my commitment to our agreement might not be one hundred percent. That maybe Harvey College doesn’t deserve such a distracted student. A flake. A cheater. A liar.

  Outside his open classroom door, which is unusual, which is weird, which is totally unlike Mr. Joe, I take a big gulp of air as I prepare my defense.

  It’s dark.

  “Mr. Joe?” My eyes slowly adjust to the dark, windowless classroom. “Hello?”

  “He left. Won’t be back until tomorrow, Livia,” Mrs. Brimm calls from behind me. “Missed you the other day,” she says casually, like a high school counselor would.

  The ones that don’t probe just sit and stare. No accusatory tone. No blame.

  I know what she’s doing. I’m not stupid. I know what you’re doing, Mrs. Brimm. But I hold my tongue.

  “Help me, would you? Before you go to math?”

  I give her a what-do-you-want-from-me stare.

  “I’ll write you a note.” She walks to the wall behind Mr. Joe’s classroom door.

  Am I wrong about Mrs. Brimm? Is she really not here just to collect a paycheck?

  I grab my backpack and follow her.

  Behind Mr. Joe’s classroom door starts the I AM wall, something Mr. Joe started when he first got to Belle’s Hollow High. In his class, my sophomore year, Mr. Joe asked us to write down on strips of paper ways that we were judged, stereotypes, the things we were not. Then, after that, he neatly piled all the strips of paper together and asked us to move our desks into a large circle. He threw them up into the air, and pieces of paper danced around the classroom like confetti. We didn’t know who wrote what.

  I am NOT:

  Athletic

  Racist

  Sure of myself

  Often included

  Loving

  Helpless

  Muslim

  Who you think I am

  Christian

  Just a band nerd

  Skinny

  An American

  Confident

  Then, Mr. Joe asked us to pick up five of these white strips of papers that we identified with most. He asked us to write down why we were connected to them. Asked us to write how we could shatter these stereotypes.

  I feel Mrs. Brimm’s eyes on me as I stare at the colorful wall that is the outcome of our project that we started two years ago.

  After the first activity, Mr. Joe asked us to focus on what we were and to write those down, each on a colorful notecard—the I AM statements. Our class took to Twitter and Snapchat, using the hashtag #iam. Soon, it exploded everywhere. National news organizations came in to film us. Coffee shops, bookstores, other high schools, and colleges started their own I AM wall.

  Without noticing, I trace my hand against the coolness of each card, a space to see who we are and what we represent.

  I look for Jasper’s first. I look for his writing because the I AM wall is constantly evolving with notecards and black permanent markers, growing every day, students adding to our massive wall that wraps around the building. His statement once caused me confusion, my eyes unable to grasp the fact scribbled across the card in his chicken scratch.

  I find it. His.

  I AM not straight.

  My heart begins to ache, knowing how long he kept the secret. Not feeling like he could tell his own twin sister. His parents though, rightfully so, since that was when Dad left. At a time when Jasper needed him most, which makes me angrier with our dad. He wasn’t there for Jasper. But I wasn’t either.

  I AM self-involved.

  Jasper came out on a wall, for the world to see, though hidden behind a black Sharpie and a neon-pink notecard. The thing is, I never brought it up. I pretended not to notice.

  I find mine.

  I AM an awful sister.

  I need to look away because the stupid tears come to my eyes. I was his twin. I should have noticed, right? Felt something the day he put the black ink to paper.

  Immediately, I turn and walk to math and leave Mrs. Brimm to the I AM wall.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  “Math.”

  Stupid fucking wall.

  “Livia? Your note.” Mrs. Brimm extends her hand. “For being late.”

  I reach back and take it.

  “And, Livia?”

  I roll my eyes, my back to her. “Yeah?”

  “Stop by later?”

  “Yeah.” Not a chance.

  My cell phone chimes. It’s Cao.

  Cao: Where are you???

  I hastily shove my phone in my back pocket, angry with myself. And my dad.

  I try to sneak into Ms. Sund’s statistics class—not because I’m late, but because I don’t want the attention. The pitiful looks.

  “Livia, glad you’re here,” Ms. Sund says as she clasps her long, slender fingers together.

  Everyone tiptoes and is sympathetic to my loss; nobody cares if I’m running a half-hour late to class. There’s no, Where’s your excuse for being late? You get a tardy for the class. Nothing. Just a, Glad you’re here. As if people are making excuses for behavior because of what happened to my brother.

  I take my spot next to Cao, and she gives me the death stare, the you-have-some-explaining-to-do look.

  Ms. Sund is tall, thin, and wears her gray hair in a bob. And she smells like baby lotion. She speaks softly, and her explanations are always far more in-depth than most students require; I’m sure of it. Her eye glasses, thick. Things are passed, unnoticed, in her classroom without her so much as batting an eye. Her class is known as The Exchange because you can exchange pretty much anything without being detected. Except for drugs. We have drug-sniffing dogs on campus that periodically pop into classrooms, especially Ms. Sund’s.

  According to BeLHo, she’s been known to cut loose at Breck’s Tavern—on a tabletop with red heels. It happened only once. But, still, I have the mental image to hold for collateral, just in case.

  Cao: Where’d you go? Joe seemed pissed after you left.

  Me: I had to get some air.

  Part of this is true.

  “Cao, is that a phone I see on your desk?” Ms. Sund looks through her glass lenses, then through her bifocals, and then back to her regular lenses again.

  “This? Ms. Sund, it’s my calculator,” Cao lies.

  “Oh, my mistake. Apologies.”

  Cao and I sit at Jasper’s table.

  Linda brings out cheese fries and a large Coke.

  The cheese fries make me smile because Daniel comes to mind. I could text a picture to him.

  Thinking of you. Love, Liv.

  Death by Cheese Fries. Liv.

  Cheesy chips anyone? ;)

  But I realize I don’t have his number. Maybe I should ask him for it. The look he gave me as I pulled out of the parking lot, a drunk Simon in the back, was uneasy. Unsure. I need a second opinion on all this.

  “You going to tell me what happened during first period when you went all MIA on me?” Cao drops another cheese fry in her mouth, and a piece of cheese falls on her Psychedelic Research Department T-shirt. She pulls off one of her red suspenders, so she can clean the spot. “For Jimmy’s sake.” She rolls her eyes, takes a napkin, and wipes it.

  It’s Christ’s sake. But I don’t remind her.

  I fill my cheeks with air and tell her what happened with Simon and Whitney and with Daniel in the closet. Two days in a row.

  “Simon is her boyfriend, Liv, after all.”

  “I know. But all I was doing was helping him. Besides, he’d texted me.”

  Cao’s eyes narrow. She drops her cheese fry back in the gooey mess of cheese fries. You never drop a cheese fry back into the pile. It’s against the law. Cao knows this. She’s proving a point.

  “Do you think he would have texted you if you guys weren’t doing the flamenco on the si
de?” She picks up another cheese fry.

  It’s deed. But, again, I don’t correct her.

  “Liv, he was drunk in your car. He told you he loved you.”

  “Ugh.” I lay my head in the crook of my arm and bury my eyes into darkness.

  I hear Cao say, “No-girlfriend British boys are way hotter and far more available than American boys with girlfriends.” Cao reaches across the table and picks my head up by my forehead. “Besides, have you seen Daniel’s body that he keeps hidden under that jacket? Shoot me dead.” She catches herself. Slowly, she covers her mouth. “Oh my God, Liv. I didn’t mean that. I just—it’s a—”

  I nod. Everything is different now.

  There’s a long silence between us.

  “Do you want my egg rolls?” She tries to recover as she reaches into her backpack and pulls out her lunch. Cao rolls her eyes. “It’s pathetic, Liv. I’d rather stick my eye with needles than eat another bowl of rice. Or watch another Chinese film. Or read another book by Tan. Now that she’s all Tan, I’m, like, not all Tan. Why do we do this—rebel? It makes no sense.”

  “Tell her. Tell her you don’t want any of it and that you’re happy being Chi-American and raised by white parents.”

  Cao bursts out with her cackle. Chi-American is a term we made up in eighth grade. She did actually.

  “Don’t look now, but Hotty McBritish is walking this way.”

  Daniel doesn’t walk. He doesn’t swagger. He steps. He steps as if the world isn’t watching him and in the humblest way possible. His strides are long and flowing and even. As if his family owns the walk, like he’s been doing it for years.

  With his hands in his front pocket, he approaches the table.

  Our table.

  But, this time, it’s as if he hasn’t thought about what he is going to say. As if this whole approach-the-table thing is out of his comfort zone, something he’s not used to.

  His eyes are on me.

  I try not to twitch or move or breathe. I try not to make him feel like his coming over here is a bad decision because it isn’t. It is certainly the most right decision. I bet Daniel always makes unerring decisions.

  Well, except for when he lied to the police. But he did it with the best of intentions.

  And, right now, all I can think about is sex with him. Maybe it’s the way his hands in his pockets make his pants bulge. Maybe it’s his broad chest in his maroon sweatshirt. Or maybe it’s his black-rimmed glasses that I don’t see him wear often. Except the night he came into Bob’s.