by Kyla Stone
Miss Pierre moves to the front of the room and claps her hands. “I hope everyone read chapter two last night. What did you guys think of Hester Prynne’s public condemnation and humiliation on the scaffold? Pretty intense, right?”
Lucas slips me a folded piece of paper. I don’t throw it away this time. Meet me in the parking lot by the fence at 2:00. Bring your running shoes.
I fold the note carefully and slip it between the pages of the book. I’m not going to meet him. Of course not. Why would I? Because I want to. I do. I want to be near this awkward, puppy-dog boy who’s goofy but also smart and sensitive. I haven’t felt this way since, what, eighth grade? Before my life went completely toxic, where every breath I breathed was poison. It still is.
I want to breathe. I have to breathe. I have to do something, or I’m not going to make it. I need that cool, cleansing feeling to wash over me. I need it in ways I can’t explain.
20
I’m already wearing tennis shoes, but I don’t want to run in jeans again. I wait until ten minutes into the P.E. period and go in just to grab my sweatpants out of my locker. Everybody’s running the track outside, but Coach Taylor’s still in the gym, fiddling with one of the badminton nets.
“Shaw!” he yells when he sees me. “Get your lazy butt out there right now or I’ll fail you!”
I shrug and keep walking. “You’re already going to fail me. So what’s the point?”
He growls something after me but I don’t stick around to hear it. I’m already gone.
I’m not at the fence to meet Lucas at 2:00 p.m. because I’m in the bathroom, gripping the porcelain sink with both hands and staring into the mirror. My eyes—Frank’s eyes—stare back at me. Intense, piercing blue, deep ocean blue, lost-at-sea blue. I swallow hard. My heart rattles around in my chest. I’ve never given myself a pep talk before, and I’m not going to start now. I slap the mirror with my open palm. To hell with blue eyes. I’m going to run.
Outside, the sky is leached of color by the sun. The wind whips dead leaves into swirling eddies across the parking lot. The chill in the air nips at my exposed skin. I zip up my jacket.
Lucas jogs in place by the fence. “I was starting to think I must’ve written the time wrong. You ready?”
I try to smile at him, but it must come out as a grimace because he immediately asks me if something’s wrong. I shake my head. “Let’s do this.”
“I like to run this overgrown path by the river. That cool with you?”
I nod, not trusting my voice. I’m glad I’m not the only one drawn to the river. I follow him when he turns left at the hole in the fence. He finds it quickly, a beaten down dirt path wide enough for us to jog side by side. Even though the forest has mostly lost its leaves, the brush is still untamed. Thorns snarl out and snag my clothes. Gnarled branches slap at my arms. The river rushes beside us, glittering in the sun.
Lucas pulls ahead of me. His stride is quick and smooth. He’s so light on his feet, his sneakers look like they’re barely touching the ground. He’s like an antelope, leaping across the savannah, born to run. In sharp contrast, I’m sloppy and uncoordinated, the proverbial bull in a china shop. After only a few labored minutes, I’m gasping for breath. I suck the freezing air right down into my lungs.
Lucas slows down, jogs beside me even though I’m in a flat out run. “Sorry,” he says.
“I feel like an idiot.”
“Well, you are kind of flailing around like a drunk orangutan.”
I choke out a laugh. “That bad, huh? Got any pointers?”
Lucas tells me how I should focus my energy toward forward propulsion while staying balanced. “Let your lower leg unfold beneath you. Don’t reach too far in front. It should land nearly beneath your center of gravity.” He shows me how to drive my legs through my hips, explains things like flexion and extension and knee kick-backs, his face flushed and his eyes shining.
We run the 1.5-mile trail and then walk back. My legs are shaking. My side is in painful stitches and a cold, clean whiteness invades my whole body.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asks, not even out of breath.
“I have a strange feeling you’re gonna ask anyway.”
“What happened with you and Arianna?”
I tense, instantly defensive. Why did he have to bring that up, of all things? “What do you mean? Nothing happened. We’re not friends.”
“It didn’t seem that way. I mean—what she did for you? At the beach. That was a big thing for someone like her.”
“Someone popular, you mean.”
“Yeah. The first thing I learned when I got here was not to cross Margot Hunter. You know, that whole insulting the alligator thing? Well she did, and now none of those girls will talk to Arianna now. She’s more toxic than a nuclear warhead. Everyone’s just waiting to see how Margot’s going to get her revenge.”
“I guess it sucks to be her.”
“She did it for you.”
“Yeah, you said that already.” The white, clean feeling is fading fast.
“But now you’re not talking to her either.”
A growing headache pulses at the front of my skull. The poison seeps back in through the pores of my skin. “And? I told you, we’re not friends. What does she want? Me to fling myself at her, declare my undying loyalty and pledge myself to her for life? Or maybe carve out my pound of flesh that I owe her and present it to her on a bloody platter?”
“You’re making about as much sense as a screen door on a submarine. She doesn’t want anything. She’s just sad.”
“Did she tell you that? You two been chatting?” the words come out sharper than I intend. Why am I acting this way? My words sound terrible in my own ears, but I can’t stop them.
“Yes, we have,” Lucas says simply. “She did a brave thing. I respect that. And she cares about you.”
I kick at a tree root in the path. “Nobody cares. Everybody’s only out for themselves and what they can take from people, through manipulation or through force.”
“That’s a pessimistic view of things.”
“Well, it’s the correct view of things.”
Lucas runs his hand through his unruly dark hair. “If you view every interaction through that filter, then yeah, it’ll come true.”
“Whatever. If I wanted a shrink, I’d pay for one. I already have Dr. Yang doing a bang up job. ”
“Okay, fine. Be all sarcastic if you want to, but that’s what you’re doing. You’re pushing away everybody who cares about you.”
Guilt washes over me in waves. “That’s what you think?”
He stops in the middle of the trail and turns to face me. “Holy hell, Sidney! Just stop it, will you?”
I stare at him, stunned. He’s upset. His jaw is clenched, that vein throbbing in his neck. “Of course I think that. It’s exactly what you’re doing right now. You’re pushing me away.”
I lick my lips, trying to think of some defense. I don’t have one. “I am not.”
“Yes, you are. Not everyone is out to get you, okay?” His face goes still and serious. “Arianna is a good person. Even if you don’t want to have anything to do with me. Just don’t push her away.”
He’s right. I know he is. She saved me at the beach and was perfectly decent to me, and I treated her like an asshat. And Lucas, too. I pushed them both away. Because why? Because I always assume every interaction is a manipulation, a way to gain the upper hand. Because if I let myself trust again, care again, it’ll open me up wide. And I can’t bear the thought of another betrayal, another blade slipped between my ribs.
Because I’m scared. I’m a coward, just like Jasmine, who sacrificed anything and everything to be popular. And just like Arianna when she walked by me all those times. But she stopped walking away. She stopped being a bystander. She did something. Guilt and shame skewer me. She doesn’t deserve this. I’ve been terrible to her and she doesn’t deserve it. I’m the one who’s the coward now.
“Damn it
all to hell.” I stare at Lucas and he furrows his brow, like he knows what I’m thinking, like he can see straight into my heart. I take a deep breath. “Okay. I hear what you’re saying. I do.”
Lucas nods. “That’s all I’m asking. You know, I would never have let that happen—what those girls did at the beach. I hope you know that. Eli either. Xavier was in on it. He sent me up to the house to get me out of the way. I’m generally a passive person, but holy hell, I wanted to punch his beautiful teeth out.”
A laugh escapes my lips before I can clamp my mouth shut. “I thought his teeth were beautiful, too. The most beautiful part of him.”
“The only beautiful part of him.”
We stand looking at each other for a minute. We’re already back to the trail leading to the hole in the fence, and the parking lot, and school, and Margot and Jasmine and work and Ma and Frank and my crazy, miserable life. Suddenly I don’t want this to end. “There’s a rock. Just a hundred or so yards further along the bank. There’s no path, but no one goes there, either.”
“Lead the way.”
I push through the snarled underbrush. The slab of rock juts out into the river, the same as always. I sit down, hanging my legs over the edge. My feet dangle a few feet above the water. Out of the protection of the trees, the wind whips at my clothes. Lucas sits next to me. I sense the heat of his body, smell the faint odor of sweat-dried skin.
“This is amazing. So quiet,” he says.
“I skip class to come here sometimes.”
Lucas clears his throat. “Can I give you something?”
“No one’s stopping you.”
He presses something small and lumpy into my hand. It’s some sort of carved wooden shape with two rounded sides curving into a V in the center. “What is this?”
The tops of his ears go red. “It’s supposed to be a butterfly. I’ve seen all those wings and insects and stuff you draw on the edges of all your assignments. They’re really good. Unlike this. I made it for you in woodworking class. The idea was much better than the execution, obviously.”
“It looks sort of like a mangled heart.”
One side of his mouth hitches into a goofy grin. “Well, I guess it works then. ‘Cause my heart is mangled for you.”
My fingers close over the wooden heart. “What did you just say?”
He clears his throat. “Sidney, I like you. I mean, when not you’re acting like . . .”
“A royal pain in the ass?”
“Something like that. But yeah. There it is. I like you.”
“Why?” The shiver starts in my skin and ripples clear through to my core. If he says something about my boobs, I’m going to push him straight into the water.
“That’s easy. You’re beautiful, but you’re beautiful like the woods, the river. You’ve got to be still and really look, really let it sink into your whole self. You are your own person. You don’t care what anybody else thinks. You’re strong, and brave. You can be mean but you don’t have meanness in you—not like them.”
I stare down at my legs, shaking my head.
“The first time I met you, you looked at me. I mean, you looked at me and saw me, not my skin. Everyone always just notices my face is a big, puss-filled zit. And that’s all they can see. It felt like you didn’t even care about that. Then the next time I saw you, you were verbally sparring with Margot and Jasmine and you were so much smarter and quicker than they were. You said Jasmine was a ‘loathsome toad.’ I said to myself, ‘here’s a girl. She’s creative with her words, just like me.’ And I just knew.” He shrugs, grinning sheepishly.
My face heats up. For once, I can’t think of a thing to say.
“I told you I wouldn’t touch you until you gave me permission. So, I’m asking. Can I kiss you?”
I try to stop it, but I can’t help it. My body’s betraying me again, but this time my veins tingle with a feeling so foreign, I don’t even recognize it. I don’t think my tongue can form words.
His fingers touch my chin and tilt my head up. I look at him and his eyes are a rich, dark brown, a brown I can swim in, sink into. Not blue. Not like Frank’s. Not like mine.
He kisses me. His lips are full and soft and send fizzing sparks shooting through my body. I’m dizzy, my stomach flipping in delicious somersaults.
His tongue gently pries open my lips and then we are kissing harder, faster. I’m sinking, falling, free and loose and I don’t know how I’ll land, or if I will. It feels like flying and it feels like drowning, all at the same time.
Then his fingers slide along my scalp, into my hair, cradling my head. Like Frank. Frank’s words slither through me. Are you whoring around on me?
I go cold. Shame floods me, and all the good feelings shrivel up like the dead and rotting leaves swirling in the river. I shove him, hard.
“Ouch!” He looks at me in surprise.
“I can’t,” I gasp, wiping my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket.
“Wait. What are you—?”
I jump to my feet. “I have to go.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No!” I say with such force that he flinches. “Just—leave me alone. I’m not that girl. I’m not who you think I am.”
I turn and flee, running as fast as I can through the bare trees, twigs slapping my arms, my face, and then I’m under the fence and across the parking lot to my car.
School’s already out. I should be heading to my shift at Bill’s. But I’m not. I can’t. I want to go back to the solitude and safety of the rock—my rock—but I can’t do that either. There’s an intruder there. I led him there and once again it’s my fault, my fault.
I peel out of the parking lot, but I don’t know where to go. My head is wrecked. My skin is blistered from his touch. Wild thoughts flutter-flap through my head, panic on a Blue Morpho’s iridescent wings. I need to cut. I have to cut. Right now.
There’s a foreclosed farm off of Briar Lane, only a mile from my house. I drive down the dirt road and pull off onto the weed-infested embankment. An old red barn stands amidst the barren, abandoned fields. The barn’s paint is faded and peeling off in long swaths. Several of its wooden slats are gone, like missing teeth.
We used to go here, Jasmine and I, to stalk her butterflies. We captured them in nets and carefully maneuvered them into wide-mouthed glass jars. Jasmine used her tiny forceps to murder them without damaging their fragile wings. We pulled back two of the wooden slats of the barn and smoked cigarettes in the dusty shadows. And all of that is gone now. Dead memories.
I yank the plastic baggie out of the zippered pouch of my backpack and shake out the razor. It falls into my lap, sharp glinting metal.
A sigh escapes my lips. I lift my leg and balance it on the center console, my shoe pushing against the shifter. I roll my sweatpants to my kneecap and shove down my sock. I cut deep, inhaling sharply as the blade bites into the flesh below my ankle. Two sides of my skin open up like a mouth, smooth pebbles of blood popping and trailing in slow trickles into my sock. I don’t bother to wipe it up.
I make another cut, waiting for relief. But it doesn’t come. I try again and it still doesn’t come. Black fangs of despair sink into my brain. I can’t do this. I can’t. I thought I could make it, power through until graduation, then flee and never look back. But I’m not strong enough. I’m not that girl Lucas sees. I’m not who Arianna thinks I am. I’m not strong. I’m weak and I’m dirty and my soul is a black shriek of fury.
I want to take the blade and gouge it deep into my own chest, scrape away the filth and the darkness, digging deep for something, anything, for any pearl or bone or scrap of the girl I used to be, the girl that sketched in a room surrounded by butterflies or the girl that crawled into bed with her frightened brothers or the smart-ass who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, or the girl who Arianna trusted her secrets with or the one that Lucas saw and liked enough to want to kiss. Where is that girl? Where is she?
There’s only me. The freak who wants to c
ut her own skin off and beats up little kids and resents her own brothers, who pushes away any whiff of kindness because she doesn’t deserve any of it, who hides her true self in a shield of rage. The slut who thinks and does ugly, dirty, despicable things. The dirty little whore who lies still and silent for her own father.
Tears streak my face and now I’m slashing at my legs. The red of my own blood splatters my legs, my shoes, the seat, the console, the gear shift. I’m growling, gasping, hiccupping cries of outrage because it won’t come. The cold calm, the sweet release, the honey soothing my raw, flayed insides—it’s abandoned me as surely as everything and everyone else.
“No!” I sob. “No no no no no!” It’s not enough. This isn’t enough. I want more. I want more than this. I want to be more than this. I want to claw out of my own skin and be someone—something, anything—else.
I pummel the steering wheel with my fists. I feel everything more than I’ve ever felt anything before, and it’s like something clawing me from the inside, slashing my gut, my lungs, my heart, my soul.
Everything hurts. Everything bleeds.
21
I miss another day of work. I’ve got a bunch of texts on my phone from Bill and Brianna, a few more from Lucas. I haven’t even read them. There’s a pile of unopened college brochures on my desk, an SAT study guide whose spine I have yet to crack. I skip group counseling, Lit, Government, and Phys Ed. I wouldn’t have made it to school at all if what waited at home wasn’t worse.
I feel hollowed out, like someone sucked up my insides with a straw. I am a corpse, skin covering white bone, nothing more. The darkness invading my head is so black, it obliterates everything.
I sit in the car in the driveway. It’s the last week of October. Everything is brown; the roads are pitted and muddy. The sky is a sheet of gray metal. I stare at my bleak, dingy trailer. I want to drive away but I’m ravenous, the pit in my belly aching to be filled. Payday’s not until Friday, so I’m broke. I’ll grab some peanut butter and a spoon and a heavier sweater, then I’ll go to the river or the old barn again and just be gone, until midnight or one a.m., or however long it takes Frank to slump into a drunken stupor.
