Beneath the Skin

by Kyla Stone

  The hours pass and I cannot sleep. The weight of the darkness, the ceiling, the house, the sky splattered with spiky stars—I feel them like a heaviness, like iron in my bones.

  A heaviness that will not go away.

  5

  The metal bars of the chair press into my back. Fat droplets of rain slap against the windows of the unused classroom Dr. Yang utilizes for his so-called group therapy sessions. A dozen chairs and desks are stacked against the far wall below the bulletin board still tacked with yellowed prom queen nominations and a cafeteria schedule from two years ago. My stomach rumbles.

  I sit closest to the wall of gray windows and the rusted radiator beneath them. It’s raining so hard, I can barely see the tree line 50 feet past the school. I can’t see the river at all.

  Dr. Yang keeps glancing at his watch. “She’ll be here shortly.”

  And I tried so hard to be late. Damn. My eyelids are heavy and I just want to sleep this whole day away. I spent my three days of suspension scouring the house, catching up on homework, and taking extra shifts at Bill’s Bar and Grill. I made enough to pay the electric bill, at least until it’s due again next month. Ma was so checked out, she didn’t even realize I was supposed to be in school. I took her cell phone while she slept and deleted the message from the office informing her of my suspension. I intercepted the letter in the mail too. It’s just too easy, sometimes.

  The classroom door opens and Arianna Torrès floats in.

  My hands curl into fists in my lap. “It’s about time.”

  Arianna’s cheeks flush. She is extremely thin. She’s wearing khaki-colored skinny pants and a tight pink cashmere sweater that brings out the tawny bronze of her skin and the hazel flecks in her dark eyes. Her thick black waves spill down her back. She has a pixie-doll face, with a button nose and full lips. A constellation of acne dots her forehead.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says breathlessly. “AP French went over and—”

  I sigh loudly enough to break off her words.

  “Arianna, this is Sidney Shaw. Sidney, this is Arianna Torrès. I think a small group session will really help to . . . open things up.”

  “Where’s the rest of the group?” I ask.

  Dr. Yang furrows his brow. “We may have a few other students join us in the future. For now, however, we’ll start with you two. It’ll be good for everyone to get out of their comfort zones a little. Why don’t you introduce yourselves? Sidney?”

  “Well, like the good Doc just said, my name is Sidney. I’ve been forced here because I killed three cats and drank their blood.”

  Arianna raises her eyebrows.

  “All right, it was five cats. And two dogs. But I didn’t drink the dogs’ blood. Tasted funny.”

  Arianna folds her right leg over her left and smooths the wrinkles in her pants. She looks at Dr. Yang.

  Dr. Yang clears his throat and does his steepling fingers thing under his chin. “Let’s start with Arianna, then. Maybe if Sidney sees how it is done, she will be more inclined to cooperate.”

  Arianna sits up straighter, her tiny, birdlike hands folded in her lap. “I’m senior class secretary. I’m on the honor roll. I’m in band—”

  I snort. “Go on, continue, please. I’m a big fan of band.”

  “I play the flute. First chair. Uh, I live over on Broadview, that’s across the bridge. Oh, and since everyone always asks, my parents are Colombian but they both lived here in the states almost their whole lives. They never taught me Spanish, so don’t ask me to help with your homework. And my eyes are naturally this color, not contacts.”

  I stare at Dr. Yang, trying to beam my disgust and sense of indignity into his brain. Can’t he see how awful this is? This is a terrible, horrible idea.

  “Do you think you could talk about why you’re here?” Dr. Yang asks her.

  “Oh, please do,” I say. “I want so badly to hear what terrible atrocities you must have endured to earn your spot in this exclusive therapy group.”

  Arianna smooths her hair with both hands. She’s so skinny, her bones seem to poke out of her paper-thin skin. “I wake up most mornings and feel sad, like there’s this heavy weight dragging me down.”

  “And why is that?” Dr. Yang asks in his shrink-voice.

  “I don’t know.” She bites at her nails. I can see from here that her nails on both hands are bitten down to the quick. The skin around her nail beds is red and raw.

  “Well, that’s why we’re here. To figure it out together.” Dr. Yang flashes me one of his looks. “Are you ready to talk yet, Sidney?”

  “I’ve been talking ever since I got here.”

  Dr. Yang frowns at me. I stare back at him. He’s the one who dragged me here. I never signed up for this or agreed to do anything other than show up. Besides, every time I look at Arianna, I see Jasmine. I see everything I’ve lost. My heart contracts. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to think about any of this. “When I was three, my parents gave me away to a circus. I was made to sit on my head for six hours every day and pretend I was a mutant.”

  Arianna looks like she just swallowed something distasteful. Dr. Yang only sighs. “Group sessions will not work if we don’t cooperate and speak honestly with each other.”

  The familiar churn starts in my gut, a roaring, out-of-control feeling that washes everything else away. “Does that ‘we’ include you? Have you told us all about you? Are you in a band? Do you eat cats?”

  Dr. Yang frowns. “No and no. Sidney, are you ready to be a contributing member of this group?”

  “Of course not. There’s no way I’m telling anything to Miss Beauty Queen over here. I thought the whole point was to put me with a damaged individual like myself.”

  “She is like you.”

  “No, she’s a spoiled rich girl with too much time on her hands.”

  “I resent that statement.” Arianna’s voice is soft. “You are mistaken on so many levels. But I realize you have a lot of anger issues and cutting other people down probably makes you feel better.”

  I don’t even feel the pain any more. I’m just pissed. “Anger issues?” I lean forward, my upper lip curling. “What are you, an aspiring Freudian? You pretending to be mentally deranged so you can study a psycho like a zoo animal?”

  “No, of course not. I am only trying to say I think I understand—”

  “You don’t understand anything.” I cut her off. “Don’t even try.”

  Dr. Yang clears his throat. “I think the first rule we need here is respect. Everybody has the right to say what they need to say, and the other person needs to respect that, even if they don’t agree with what’s being said. Sidney, you are walking a very fine line here. I don’t think you want to be dismissed from this group, do you?”

  My mouth tightens. He has me and he knows it. I cannot get expelled. I have to be here, no matter how much I despise this whole debacle. I have no choice. It hurts to say it. “No.”

  “Okay, then. Why don’t you tell us the real reason why you’re here?”

  “I have an ‘anger issue’. I tend to hurt people who piss me off.”

  “Then why are we in this group together?” Arianna frowns at Dr. Yang. “Isn’t her problem pretty unrelated to mine?”

  “Not quite. Sidney?”

  He’s going to make me say it. I hate him even more than usual. It doesn’t matter that everyone already knows, thanks to Jasmine Cole. It doesn’t matter that it’s scrawled on the gym bathroom wall, along with a few other choice epitaphs. I don’t want to give her anything. But they’re both staring at me. He’s not going to let me out of this claustrophobic room until I say it. “I cut. I’m a vampire. I have to get blood somehow. Biting people is frowned upon these days.”

  “I do that, too. Cut.”

  My stomach twists in iron knots. Where do these perfect girls get off acting like they have any problems deeper than finding a boyfriend or surviving bad hair days? It makes me sick. It makes me want to punch her in her perfectl
y-shaped nose. That would give her some problems. “Congratulations. Would you like a trophy? We’re handing out awards for ‘most tragically disturbed.’”

  Arianna looks stricken, like she’s even more desperate to escape than I am.

  “I realize it will take a while to open up, but I believe it will happen, if given time,” Dr. Yang says. “This is why we will continue to meet and talk though our issues. Each of you holds the power to heal both yourselves and each other. I’ll be your facilitator, but the real work is up to you. As for you, Sidney, my patience is finite. Remember that.”

  “Whatever.”

  He drones on, but I’m just watching the minute hands tick by on the clock on the wall. “Isn’t it time to go yet?”

  Dr. Yang looks at his watch. He stands up and shakes out his pant legs. “Yes. I think we’ll break for today. Remember to come back next Tuesday, same time, same empty classroom.” He gives me a sharp look. “I expect you both here.”

  I’m out of the classroom and nearly to my locker by the time the bell rings. My stomach grumbles, reminding me I missed breakfast. Getting the boys ready for the bus every morning doesn’t leave much time for anything but a granola bar on the way out. I swing by the cafeteria to get a bag of Reese’s Pieces from the vending machine. I almost always get Reese’s Pieces or a package of peanut butter cups for a snack or lunch. I go to the river, the school library, or sit in the car to eat. It’s cheaper than buying lunch in the cafeteria, and it keeps me from having to spend one more minute than I have to with these asshats.

  I have Miss Pierre’s AP Classic Literature next, the only half-interesting class at Brokewater High. You can barely see the river from her classroom, so I don’t bother sitting by the windows.

  Miss Pierre likes class discussions. She wants us to talk about race, class, sexism, imperialism, greed, and whatever other themes she can squeeze out of the all-white, all male canon of books we have to wade through in high school. Actually though, I do like Shakespeare. You have to concentrate; the sentences are like puzzles. You have to work at it to figure out the real meaning.

  “Good morning, class,” Miss Pierre greets us from the front of the room. She’s only in her 40s, her light brown skin still unlined, but her hair is completely silver. She leaves it natural and curly to her chin, giving her an air of easy sophistication. “We have a new student today.”

  Everyone looks around for the new kid, but they all seem to be looking at me. No, they’re looking a bit askance. The new kid is sitting directly to my left. He’s Asian, with tufts of black hair sticking up all over his head as if he rolled out of bed without bothering to glance in a mirror. He’s wearing an orange and black plaid shirt buttoned up to the collar, like he’s prepping for Halloween. His olive-toned skin is cratered with painful looking cystic acne. He smiles and gives a little wave. Someone snickers.

  Miss Pierre is wise enough not to put him on the spot by making him say anything. “Please make sure to help him feel welcome today, as I’m sure you will. Now let’s move on. In Act 3, scenes 4 through 5, which you should have read last night, Shakespeare challenges us with the idea of madness. Lear descends into madness as he wanders the heath in the storm. I’d like to spend some time discussing the purpose of Lear’s madness. Is there ever a purpose in madness? How does Shakespeare use it to spur change in his characters?”

  While Miss Pierre talks, the new boy turns to me and actually sticks out his hand. “I’m Lucas Kusuma.”

  I ignore his hand. “Lucas Kusuma as in Eli Kusuma?”

  “He’s my cousin. I’m staying with him for a while. I know, little family resemblance, right?”

  I just stare at him.

  “Our dads are Indonesian. My mom’s Chinese American, and Eli’s mom is from Argentina. He takes after her.” He shrugs. “People keep asking why we don’t look alike.”

  He’s related to Eli Kusuma, boyfriend of Margot Hunter, friend of Jasmine Cole. That’s all I need to know.

  Lucas’s hand is still suspended in midair between us. “And you are?”

  “That was not an invitation for a conversation.” I open my book and face the front.

  “But what’s your name?” he whispers like I didn’t just shut him down.

  Other people are still twisting around in their seats, staring at his face, at the whiteheads filled with pus and the red, infected bumps, their mouths contorted in disgust and revulsion. A thread of red anger knots itself in my stomach. So what? Why do they judge everything, hate everyone who’s even a little bit different? They’re all so small-minded and vile and awful; I despise every single one of them. Right now, I despise Lucas just as much, but it’s got nothing to do with the state of his skin.

  I have no interest in talking to anybody. Everyone here knows already, and they pretty much leave me alone, except for the Bitch Squad. I especially have no interest in speaking to a Kusuma. Like, ever.

  “Pssst,” he hisses.

  “Piss off.”

  “Just tell me your name.”

  “You’re poisoning my air with your presence. Go away.”

  He shrugs, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Somebody’s a moody monkey.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Sidney Shaw, is there something you’d like to share with the class?” Miss Pierre stares at me from the front of the classroom.

  My neck flushes with heat. I clear my throat. “No, ma’am.”

  For the rest of class, I sit in my sit, staring straight ahead. I barely hear a word. Finally, the bell rings.

  “See you later, Sidney Shaw.” Lucas gives me a lopsided grin. I don’t know what he’s so pleased about, or why he’s so interested in talking to me. It’s unnerving as hell.

  6

  The next day is pretty much a repeat of the day before. In Classic Lit, Lucas Kusuma tries to talk to me again. This time, I don’t even respond. I stare straight ahead, pretending to be enthralled in the class discussion.

  Halfway through class, he passes me a note. A literal paper note, like we’re in middle school. When he leans close, I catch the smell of spearmint gum and a little too much cologne, which has a woodsy, dense scent that reminds me of the trees along the riverbank—oak and maple, pine and willow. I crumple the note and drop it on the floor without looking at him. He tries again, and I push the little folded paper off my desk with my forearm. What is it with this guy not getting the hint?

  When the bell rings, I grab my stuff and get out of there.

  “Hey, Sidney!” I recognize his voice behind me, but I keep walking.

  I head to the cafeteria to grab a bag of Reese’s Pieces. I’ve just torn open the bag and tossed a handful in my mouth when I see Jasmine, Margot, and their squad sauntering down the hall, straight toward me. Arianna’s with them, not at the front of the pack, but trailing a bit to the side. They all have their bejeweled iPhones in their hands, texting while simultaneously chatting and walking. They don’t have to worry about running into anyone, the crowd parts before them.

  Arianna sees me first. She gives a small shake of her head. But it’s too late. Jasmine’s heavily made up face contorts into a sneer. “How are you even still here? I thought they’d have locked you in a cage by now.”

  My heart drops into my stomach. I lift my chin. “No such luck.”

  She eyes me up and down. “Nice outfit. It looks like someone poured you into it and forgot to say when. Don’t you ever get tired of eating?”

  I pop a handful of candy into my mouth and chew loudly. “Nope. Don’t you ever get tired of being a greasy piece of human garbage? Maybe if you ate some of that makeup, you’d be pretty on the inside.”

  “You’re such a bitch.”

  “See? You just confirmed my hypothesis.”

  Margot rests her manicured fingers on Jasmine’s arm. “Just keep walking.”

  As I pass by them, Margot kicks my ankle with one of her spiked three-inch heels. I go down hard, landing on my hands and knees. The rest of my Reese�
��s Pieces scatter across the floor.

  A few people laugh.

  “Oopsies.” Margot’s voice drips with saccharine sweetness. “It’s a wonder how some people make it through the day.”

  My mind goes red. They want to fight? I’ll give them a fight. Let’s see how arrogant they are with broken noses and black eyes marring their perfect faces.

  Before I can get to my feet, someone grabs my arm and hoists me up. Lucas. He’s so close, I see the sheen of oil on his forehead. I flinch and try to shake him off, but he holds on.

  “Don’t,” he says in a low voice. “It’s not worth it.”

  “She’s not worth it.” Margot tosses her hair over her shoulder.

  Jasmine slits her eyes. “Don’t waste your breath. She’s just a fat freak. A nobody.”

  Lucas’s grip on my arm tightens, like he knows exactly what I’m about to do. His fingers are strong and warm. I feel the heat of him through his palm. He’s right. I can’t. I can’t let myself go. I can’t get expelled. I make myself breathe deeply, one, two, three times. And it’s enough. The pounding red in front of my eyes slowly fades.

  Margot and Jasmine flounce down the hall. Students part and move around us, either ignoring us completely or throwing us contemptuous glances. Lockers slam and a stampede of footsteps head for class, the lunchroom, or the front door.

  I yank my arm free. I can still feel his handprint. I expect to see a mark, but there’s none.

  My cheeks redden. I hate that he saw them get the best of me. I hate that he—or anyone—saw me on my knees, beaten. Shame and humiliation burn through me. “Don’t touch me. Ever. What part of leave me alone do you not understand?”

  He smiles that awful lopsided grin again. “Come to lunch with me.”

  My stomach clenches. There’s no way. No. Effing. Way. I haven’t got a clue what he wants from me, but I’m not stupid enough to fall for whatever game he’s playing. He’s part of the Bitch Squad by association. That’s all I need to know. “That’s about as likely as a blizzard in July.”