Aspen

by Rebekah Crane

  “Jasmine?”

  “I think it suits me.” She brushes her black hair over her shoulder. “Anything is better than Kim. Kim Choi is just so Asian. I’m more unique than that.”

  Kim convinced me to pierce her nose this summer. I told her I didn’t think a nose ring was very “peace, love and happiness,” which is kind of our thing. She told me to shut the hell up and do it. I held ice on her nose until it went numb, and then pressed the needle through. She has a hot pink hoop now. Uma saw it and almost had a heart attack. “Korean girls not supposed to have nose rings,” Uma yelled. “You grounded forever!”

  Kim threatened to tank her grades so badly that she’d never get into Stanford, where her older sister, Grace, is studying, and Uma backed off. Kim’s been trying to change her name since junior high, when Uma sent her away to a Korean summer camp in California. Seven other girls were named Kim Choi, and each hoped to go to Stanford. “And that’s only the Korean girls!” she shouted. “What about the Chinese? I’ll never stand out in college.” She’s been using different names ever since in hopes that one will stick. They never do.

  “You are unique,” I say. Jasmine smiles.

  We walk to the locker that’s been mine since freshman year. Students pass on either side of us, people slowing for a second as their eyes move from my cast to my face. I stare at the ground and grit my teeth. Pulling the rubber band from around my wrist, I tie my hair back to control the frizz. If the staring continues, I might splurge on one of those treatments that’ll straighten my hair. The curls make me too noticeable.

  At my locker, I plug in the familiar combination without having to think about it. Then, digging in my backpack, I find the same picture I hung up last year of Kim, Cass and me riding the Boomerang at Six Flags. Kim insisted we ride it and then screamed the entire time. Cass stuffed his face into Kim’s chest and I sat on the end, a huge smile on my face, as my hair blew up behind me. I tape up the picture where it hung last year, smiling at the moment captured so perfectly.

  “I heard they’re holding a memorial for Katelyn at Friday night’s football game against Prairie View,” Kim says, leaning back against the wall.

  “It’s a good thing we don’t go to football games, because that might be awkward.”

  “You know it wasn’t your fault.”

  I was on my way to Kim’s house that night. When I didn’t show up and didn’t answer my phone, she called Ninny, who was at the grocery store buying ice cream and flowers, apparently to make me feel better. I’ve never told Ninny this, but punctuality is better than ice cream in my book. Kim actually made it to the hospital before Ninny. She burst into the ER wearing rainbow pajama pants, her hair pulled into two high ponytails.

  “I’m going to fucking kill you!” she screamed, launching herself onto the bed and grabbing me in a tight bear hug. “I can’t believe I just said that. I’m a terrible friend. The lowest.” Her breath on my ear felt so warm. At that moment, I couldn’t have imagined anything better, even though her embrace practically cracked my already bruised chest.

  And then I laughed. What else are you supposed to do when someone brings up your death right after you almost met your maker? She washed my hair in the sink until no blood was left in it.

  “I know,” I say. The nausea from earlier comes back just uttering the words.

  Kim squints as she looks at me, like she can tell my words are bullshit and she’s about to call me out. I keep steady. Her narrow eyes get even narrower, until they almost look closed. And then she says, “Wanna go to Cass’s after school and play Just Dance to piss him off? I promise I won’t make fun of you for looking like a drunk hobbit.” Kim flicks the bun on top of my head and taps my cast.

  “Tempting,” I exhale my held breath. “But I can’t. I have to work, and then it’s dinner with Uncle Toaster, remember.”

  “Right. That’ll be a banging good time.” Kim plays the air drums. “You know you can talk to me if you need to. Today can’t be easy.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine,” I say, unloading notebooks from my backpack and putting them into my locker.

  “Hey, Aspen.” Tom Ingersol sidles up next to me, opening his locker, his shiny blond hair shaped into a faux-hawk. It takes a second for a response to actually cross my lips. Tom’s locker has been next to mine for three years and he’s never spoken a word to me. Literally. Last year, my entire backpack spilled over the floor, tampons and all, and he just stared at me before stepping on my English book and walking away.

  “Hi.” My voice has an upswing.

  “You look tan. Did you go on vacation?” Tom smiles, his white teeth so straight they almost look fake.

  “No. Must be from mowing the lawn.”

  He nods, his grin never wavering.

  “You look tall,” I finally say to fill the uncomfortable silence.

  Tom puffs out his chest. “Runs in the family.” He glances at Kim, who’s staring at him like he has a third eye. Then, like everyone else, Tom looks down at my cast and then up at my scar. “Well, if you need anything, just let me know. We’re locker buddies after all,” he says, before walking down the hallway.

  “Oh, my God,” Kim says in her best valley girl voice when Tom’s out of earshot. “Did Tom Ingersol just talk to you? You are so fucking cool.”

  “Did he say ‘locker buddies’?”

  “Seriously, how much gel do you think it takes to get his hair to stand up like that?”

  “Half a bottle, at least,” I say as the first bell rings, starting our senior year.

  Before I slam my locker closed, I take one last look at the Six Flags picture. How is it possible to want to go back in time and at the same moment to want to forget everything?

  As Kim and I turn down the hall, a poster catches my eye. Someone has plastered Katelyn’s smiley-faced junior year picture, her soccer number written beneath it in purple and gold, to the wall like a paper gravestone. The caption reads: Boulder’s best and brightest, lost but not forgotten.

  “Let’s go to Moe’s for lunch. There’s a new guy there and he’s fucking hot. Uma would hate him. He’s perfect,” Kim says, but her voice sounds muffled in my head. I can’t peel my eyes off Katelyn’s picture. “Aspen, are you okay?” Kim follows my gaze to the poster.

  “I’m fine,” I stutter and force my eyes off Katelyn. “I need to hit the bathroom before class.”

  “Okay.” Kim’s voice sounds hesitant, as if she might wait for me outside. I flash a smile, making it as genuine as possible. Her suspicious look lightens slightly and she says, “Lunch: you, me and Cass,” before heading down the hall toward her first class, her straight black hair hanging down her back.

  When she rounds the corner, I pull the mirror out of my purse, a slight shake in my hands, and check the dull red line on my forehead. It’s all that’s left of the cut I got when my face hit the steering wheel. My old car is a little short in the airbag department. I thought it would take longer to heal, but the doctor said the body gets better faster than we think.

  “It’ll give you character,” he said.

  “Have you met my mother? I have enough character.”

  The doctor also said I’d been through something “traumatic.” I looked up the definition on my phone as I waited for Ninny to show up at the hospital. I know what traumatic means, but I wanted to see what the dictionary had to say.

  Traumatic (adj.): of, or produced by, a physical trauma or wound; psychologically painful

  The hallway empties as I stand in front of Katelyn’s paper gravestone. Boulder’s best and brightest. Except I distinctly remember her getting a C on a chemistry test.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a lone girl walking down the hallway, like a shadow creeping up on me. Her purple and gold soccer uniform almost shines in the fluorescent light. My heart rate picks up as I try not to look in Katelyn’s direction. If I ignore her, she’ll go away. She always does. I pull in breath after breath, my eyes fixed in front of me, until her bro
wn hair disappears from my peripheral vision.

  When she’s gone, I use one of my No. 2 pencils to scratch out the word brightest.

  “You’re welcome,” I say to her picture before leaving the pencil under the paper gravestone and walking away. I’m sure one of her friends will get mad that I defiled the poster, but there are enough lies floating around in the world. The least I can do is correct one of them.

  CHAPTER 2

  I’m late for math. The whole class stares at me as I walk in. I swear no one breathes. Mr. Foster looks at my cast and then at me and says, “Oh, it’s you. I’ll let this one go, considering.”

  I want to say to Mr. Foster, “Well, if I’d have known that . . .” and walk out of the room, but I don’t. Instead, I sit at an empty desk in the back row and slouch down in the seat.

  Considering . . .

  Hunter Hunter leans over halfway through class and tells me he thinks my blue cast is rad. He’s one of those kids who loves his snowboard more than anything and frequently uses adjectives as sentences. Awesome. Bad-ass. Wicked. I’m not sure what his parents were thinking when they named him Hunter Hunter. Aspen Yellow-Sunrise Taylor doesn’t seem so bad in comparison.

  “It itches,” I whisper back.

  “Sweet,” he nods, his shaggy strawberry blond hair bouncing in his eyes. “It’s hot.”

  I can’t tell if he means the cast makes me look more attractive or if he means it’s hot outside, which explains the itchiness. He just keeps smiling at me and nodding slowly, his neck moving in a wave-like motion.

  Later in the morning, Mrs. McNatt lets me leave English five minutes early. “I don’t want you penalized by your next teacher because you can’t walk as fast as everyone else,” she says, her lips pulling down into a frown. People love to give me the pity face: puppy dog eyes and a droopy frown. I get it every time I walk into the grocery store or doctor’s office or coffee shop.

  Turning down an opportunity to leave class early would probably make people stare even more. What reasonable teenager doesn’t want to leave class the moment it’s begun? So I shrug and walk out. I don’t dare look behind me, even when I can feel an entire classroom of eyes heating my back. Nerves start in my feet and move up to my head; by the time I’m actually out of the classroom, I’m seeing stars and I think I might throw up. The clock on the wall says 11:30. I’m barely halfway through the school day. I shake out my arms, take a deep breath and hobble down the hall. According to the clock next to the art room, it takes approximately a minute and a half for me to get there, so I doodle on my binder until Mrs. Allen opens the door.

  Kim, Cass and I walk to Moe’s Broadway Bagels for lunch, so Kim can gawk at the college kids from University of Colorado who work there. They’re typical college students: greasy, stoned and working for free carbohydrates. Kim loves any boy who will piss off Uma. I continually warn her about the woes of pissing off one’s parents with bad sexual decisions, Ninny-style. I’ve seen the repercussions firsthand and it isn’t pretty.

  Sometimes I walk around downtown Boulder looking for the other half of my gene pool: a man with Afro-like blond hair and big brown eyes. One time I actually saw someone who fit the description and asked him if he was my dad. He said he was from Texas and as far as he knew he only had three kids but not to tell his wife about the third one. “That was a mistake,” he said.

  I said, “I’m a mistake, but not one made in Texas,” and moved on.

  It’s not like I’ve been totally deprived of men in my life. Ninny should’ve replaced our front door with a revolving one by now for all of the men who’ve come through it. When I was little, she always had me call them “uncle.” Uncle Jake drove a two-seater El Camino. I had to ride around crouched in the back so the cops couldn’t see me, which seemed pretty cool when I was three but later I learned about car seat laws. Uncle Toby had a glass eye that never moved in sync with his real eye. Uncle Bill and Uncle Bobby were twin brothers just out of high school; I’m not sure which was creepier. And my favorite, Uncle Tiny Tim: He only lasted a day before Ninny experienced why his nickname was ‘tiny.’ And now I have to put up with Uncle Toaster.

  “Mama like,” Kim says as she licks cream cheese from her fingers and points to the guy behind the counter. He’s wearing a Vail T-shirt and has big spacers in his ears to stretch out his lobes.

  “He’s disgusting,” Cass says, and throws a napkin at Kim.

  “Says the kid with green hair. What is up with you today, Casanova Sawyer? Why the sudden change in apparel?” Kim takes the napkin and wipes her mouth.

  “I thought I’d start the year off right.” Cass runs his hands over his clean plaid shirt and tucks his long green-brown hair behind his ears. He dyed it last year when he lost a pizza-eating contest against Mitch Laughlin. If Cass won, Mitch owed him a hundred bucks. If Cass lost, he had to dye his hair green, including the stuff around his manly bits. “I’m gonna eat this pizza like it’s your mom” were Cass’s exact words. Mitch didn’t take that lightly.

  On the plus side, Marcy Humphrey paid more attention to Cass with green hair and gave him an over-the-pants hand-job after gym class. Still, Cass is growing the green out. Half his head is chestnut brown and the other half’s the color of slime. He’s dressed well, though, which is weird. I’ve never seen him in anything but ratty old T-shirts and his favorite jeans with holes in the knees.

  “Well, you look like a douche. A douche in a plaid shirt,” Kim says.

  “I’m sorry, Jasmine. Or should I call you Sabrina, Tonya, Fantasia or Tiffany? I can’t keep track. Are you picking these names from the book 101 Trailer-Trash Names, by Britney Spears?”

  “Jerk,” Kim huffs and walks over to dump her trash. “Tell him he looks like an asshole, Aspen.”

  Cass raises a spoon full of yogurt and aims it at my face. “Watch what you say, gimp, or I’ll shoot.”

  I throw up my hands in surrender. “Peace, man. I think you look nice.”

  “See,” Cass gloats at Kim.

  I’d be worried about their friendship if I didn’t see the way they look at each other sometimes, like their eyes don’t notice anyone else in the room. Cass will gaze at Kim when she’s not looking, like he’s drinking her in from head to toe. And Kim will glare at him sideways, her pointed stare softening for a moment. They might actually be in love. I figure all the fighting is one giant foreplay session. When they finally do have sex, the universe might explode with the second Big Bang.

  “Aspen doesn’t count,” Kim says. “She’s been through something ‘traumatic’ and isn’t thinking straight.” Kim makes quotation marks with her hands as she mimics the doctor. Now it’s my turn to throw my napkin at her. She catches it in midair and smiles at me. “Let’s talk about more important things. What are we doing this weekend?”

  Cass’s mouth falls open. “ExtermiNATION comes out this week. You said you’d go to GameStop with me to get it. You promised.” He makes a puppy dog face and looks between Kim and me.

  “Those video games promote violence. I’m exercising my right to social resistance in the name of peace.” Kim picks at the blue polish on her fingernails.

  “They’re art,” Cass protests.

  “You sound like a gaming nerd.”

  Cass leans forward. “Your new name sounds like a Disney princess who wears too much makeup and thinks misogynistic rap songs are romantic.”

  “Enough,” I yell, and touch Cass’s arm. “I’m in. We promised.” I glare at Kim across the table.

  “Fine. But you better make it quick. No playing every game in the store. Aspen can’t stand on her leg that long.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I focus on my plate, picking lettuce off my bagel sandwich and tossing it to the side. I’ve lost my appetite. Kim brings up the accident more and more these days, like making a joke about it makes everything lighter. Or like if she pokes long enough, maybe I’ll finally talk to her about it. But no one wants to be caught in her own nightmare. I’m not looking to remember.

/>   “If she gets tired, I’ll hold her,” Cass says.

  “Hold me?” I cock my head to the side.

  “Sure. You’re like 90 pounds, right?”

  “More like 120 with the spore on my leg.” I pull apart a piece of the bagel.

  Cass comes around to my side of the table and stands in front of me, his eyes scanning my body from head to toe. The look makes me nervous, but before I can protest, Cass lifts me out of my chair and throws my body over his shoulder. “See, I can do it!” he yells as he runs around Moe’s.

  “Spank her!” Kim hollers, a wide smile on her face, the snarky comments between her and Cass already in the past. Cass taps my butt like it’s a drum, as I bob on his shoulder, laughing.

  “I’ve been taking private lessons with Uncle Toaster,” he says as he beats out a rhythm.

  I dangle upside down, my blood rushing to my head, and giggle like a toddler being tickled. Stars fill the corners of my vision, but I don’t care. This moment is so reminiscent of last year. Of how it used to be. I close my eyes and let my brain go cloudy, drinking it in.

  “Excuse me, kid,” the college student behind the counter says. Cass stops mid-twirl. “You’re causing a scene. Can you take your girlfriend outside?”

  “We’re the only people in here and she’s not my girlfriend.” Cass glances at Kim.

  “Wait, you . . . ” The college stoner points at me. “You’re that girl.”

  I push my hair out of my face as Cass sets me down. My bagel sandwich sits in my throat, about to come back up; I swallow hard once, then again.

  “What girl?” I try to say it like I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “From that accident. No one has hair like that. Shit, man, that was bad. Are you okay?”

  I pull on my curls, trying to flatten them out, and cringe. Why does Boulder have to be so small?

  “Don’t we need to get back to school?” I say to Kim and Cass, my eyes wide and pleading. I grab my purse and walk out of Moe’s without another word.