by Tish Cohen
I can’t strip fast enough. Skirt and tights drop to the floor. I pull on the yoga pants and realize, too late, that there are no mirrors inside the tiny stall. My love affair can continue only if I slip out from behind the safety of my curtain.
Tripping over my cast-off uniform as I leave the dressing room, I bundle my shirt and vest at the waist and emerge.
The pants are gorgeous and make me look as if I actually do yoga. Which I don’t. They’re probably well over seventy bucks, and I know Dad would never agree to such a purchase, plus he’d hate the Anton logo on the right butt cheek, but I let myself dream for just a few more minutes.
A girl with a snub nose and short mahogany hair looks at me. “Those look so good on you. You should totally get them.”
“Thanks.” I yawn, wondering if I dare catch a nap on the bus ride home. “Maybe I will.”
What a lie.
Anxious to escape her roving eyes, I yank back a curtain and walk straight into the muscled chest of a guy. But not just any guy. A nearly naked guy. Well, naked other than the underwear or bathing suit or whatever. It’s hard to get past the beefy pecs fairy-dusted with blond hair, which trickles down his tire-tread abs and into his … into his low-slung boxers.
I peel my hands off his chest, my face burning with flustered giggles, and look up at his brown eyes. It’s the guy who burst into lit class this morning. The twelfth grader who forgot his textbook. “Sorry,” I mumble.
Instead of breaking into a smile and making some lame sexual innuendo, like any of the guys at Finmory would have, this guy’s face darkens and he snatches up a T-shirt. As he tugs it over his head, I notice his chest and shoulders are stippled with dozens of tiny scars, as if something exploded and he’d been caught in the fiery spray. I can practically smell the sizzling flesh.
“Seriously,” I say, backing up. “This no-sleep-by-night is getting to me.”
The scars are safe under the T-shirt now. He looks at me, his mouth a grim line that slopes down on one side. No sign of the sweet guy who bumped his head on my desk. “Try opening your eyes by day,” is all he says.
I fumble with the twisted curtains and bolt. Back in my dressing room, I fall to the floor, fighting not to drop dead of mortification. I can just see him in the halls later, pointing me out to his friends, mocking the idiot who copped a feel and kept right on gawking.
Those scars … I can’t imagine what caused them. In such a concentrated area too. His face was unmarked; so were his abs. Whatever it was, it had to have hurt like hell.
On the other side of the curtain, life goes on as if nothing happened. The beat of some song I’m too uncool to recognize. A cashier telling kids they have ten more minutes until closing. A girl with a deep voice wondering why she suddenly has two skirts with her name sewn in them. Her friends laughing.
I compose myself and reach for my tights. But where’s my skirt?
I peer through the curtain. It’s not out there. My heart starts to pound again. This makes no sense. How can a piece of clothing just disappear? It isn’t possible. A wool skirt doesn’t just walk away.
“You’re such a brat,” says a bored voice. “That’s what you get for owning, like, six school skirts. They’re dropping from the sky.”
Another voice, this one jingling like thin gold bangles. “It doesn’t make sense. Seriously, did you wear two skirts to school?”
“As if! I didn’t even know this skirt was missing.”
That third voice. Deep. Raspy. I’ve heard it before.
I remember. In Honors Math. One row up. Wearing Sunday underpants on Tuesday. Carling Burnack owns that voice. Not only that, now she owns my skirt. Which was, of course, her skirt all along.
I peer through the curtain to see Carling examining my pleats. I want to call out to her. Explain what happened. Promise to return it to her in the morning. Point out that while she has too many skirts for one girl to manage, this one is all I have to wear home. But I can’t do any of that. It would mean admitting that I went shopping in the Lost and Found.
Sloane sits cross-legged on the carpet. “Maybe Izzy stole it, so she could feel closer to Carling at night.”
“Shut up,” Isabella hisses. She flashes Carling a smile. “I know what happened. The poor skirt got lost and traveled hundreds of miles to find its way back to her crotch. Kind of like Lassie. I think it’s sweet.”
Carling pets the skirt like a bedraggled collie. “Poor baby. We should re-create its journey across the country and shoot it for film class.” She presses a kiss to the rumpled fabric. “Skirtie Come Home.”
A guy’s voice utters something I can’t hear and my blond dressing-room victim strolls up to Carling. He’s all smiles now as he slings one arm around her shoulder and plants a kiss on her mouth.
Anton’s boy genius—redheaded Griff Hogan from math class—interrupts the kiss. He grabs the skirt and pushes his snout into it.
“Griff, you’re such a pig.” Carling snatches up the skirt and pushes it into her bag. They all turn and head down one of the aisles.
I close my curtain. So that’s it. I’m officially screwed. I can’t approach the cashier and explain. Too risky. She’s definitely a student here—she was still in her uniform. There’s no way I can trust her. I have no choice but to go home wearing nothing but a pair of black tights and a white shirt that doesn’t even come close to covering my behind.
Unless.
I think of Rascal, stashed away on his fraying sheets. I know what he would say. If you prevent some calamity or unpleasantness from befalling society, if you are truly a great dude, any crime is justifiable.
Surely it cannot be fair to the good people of Boston to have some girl from Lundon climbing onto a city bus in her tights. It would be some kind of unpleasantness, there’s no mistaking it. And this is a definite calamity. Besides, it wouldn’t be murder.
I stare down at the pants, then bend over and run my hands along every inch of fabric, feeling for an antitheft device. All I find is a bar-coded tag hanging from the waistband. The thing is, I’ve never done anything like this before. I wasn’t one of those toddlers who reached for lollipops in the grocery store and by-accident-on-purpose dropped them into her stroller. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. I generally walk around this planet feeling I don’t belong, so why add to the misery with guilt?
Sucking in a deep breath, I picture Rascal one more time, then rip off the tag and head for the cashier to pay for my socks. As I make my way toward the exit, I pass Carling and her posse by the varsity jackets. I feel her eyes on me as I leave.
At the door, the guard smiles, tells me to have a nice day. It’s all I can do not to peel off the pants and hand them over. My face burns as I hurry past him, unable to choke out a reply. My hands start to tingle as I realize there is no turning back. I’m a thief now. A thief! Even if I grow up to end wars, cure diseases, or find lost puppies, I can never erase today.
Saint Sarah, I guess.
This was a huge mistake. I would have handled bolting in my ratty underwear better than I’m handling this.
I head out into the hall in search of a water fountain. Cold water on my face, that’s what I need right now. As I march down the corridor, I hear footsteps keeping pace with me. I spin around to find myself staring at Carling Burnack. It’s the same thing every time I see her. I get a thrill. A jolt. Like I’ve spotted a celebrity.
She walks toward me, her hips swinging with the kind of confidence I’ve never had. “You’re some kind of new girl, aren’t you, London?” When I don’t answer, she laughs. “That’s okay. If I were you, I wouldn’t bother defending myself either.” She reaches out and pulls the stretchy fabric from my thigh, then lets it go with a snap. “Not if I was wearing the evidence.”
“It’s not what it looks like. I was in the changing room and …”
“Lose the sob story, London. I don’t want to hear it. Besides, I’d rather be friends with a thief than a liar.”
chapter 9
burn baby burn
At one point on the bus ride home, I actually press my fist into my lips so I don’t throw up. Could it have gone worse? Carling Burnack knows what I did. She could do anything with this knowledge. Anything. Turn me in, blackmail me, tell the other kids.
Then again, she did say something about being friends.
I stopped by the Lost and Found before leaving the school. My plan was to find Mrs. Pelletier and tell her what happened. Explain that I had no choice but to leave the changing room in my tights. But Mrs. Pelletier is so kind and so trusting it hurts. As soon as I told her I lost my skirt, she made some joke that misplacing my skirt is proof I’ve assimilated. She looked almost proud of me as she led me into the closet. How could I tell her I stole from the school when she was being so good to me? While she thinks I’m a decent person?
I took the coward’s way out. Made sure to stand a few steps back so she couldn’t smell the newness of the yoga pants. Believe me when I say, no pants on earth have ever smelled this pristine. It was making me dizzy. I choked back my guilt, popped another skirt in my bag, thanked her, and hopped on a bus.
Our apartment building has a climate all its own—not unlike the inside of a casket that’s been underground for a few years. The air, what little of it exists, is so dark and dense you have to gnaw on it, soften it, before every breath. It’s foggy with dust and dander, so much so that I’ve taken to waving my hands in front of my face as I walk, to clear myself a path.
The foyer is lined in bare brick with nothing more to dress the walls than a handwritten poster reading NO PeT. Absolute NO EXePtion. And whatever effort the owners didn’t put into ventilation and signage, they made up for with a peculiar choice on the floor. Below my feet, the buckling wooden floorboards are coated in chipped pink paint so thick it could be dried-up frosting.
Still reeking of guilt and factory-fresh Lycra, I trudge to the bottom of the narrow wooden staircase and start the long, airless climb to the fourth floor.
Halfway up the second set of stairs, I detect the peppery sweetness of weed wafting out from under someone’s third-floor door. All three entryways on this floor are unpainted wood, and there’s a sickly tree in a plastic pot beside 3B that may or may not be dying of secondhand smoke. I slow down in front of each door on Cannabis Row, trying to determine who’s doing the dirty deed, but cannot detect any difference. Maybe the smell’s coming from all three.
I slow as I pass 3C because the door is cracked open just enough that I can peek inside. From what I can see the place is nearly empty but for a wooden futon with rumpled pillows and bedding, two overturned milk crates functioning as a coffee table, and a sheet nailed to the window frame.
Suddenly a guy in surfer shorts and a South Park T-shirt appears. His skin is pasty, and he’s thin enough that his bones threaten to pierce his skin. In his hand is a smoldering joint, which makes me feel marginally better. There’s another person breaking the law today, and he’s not even worried about keeping it secret. As he tosses his head, a snarl of dusty dreads swings forward like decaying snake skins, and I realize I’m staring at the driver of Carling Burnack’s Bentley. “Hey,” he says, shutting the door before I manage to squeak out a “Hey” of my own.
As soon as I’m through the threshold of our apartment, I pull the pants down to my ankles and stumble to my room, where I kick them off and cram them behind the unpacked boxes in my closet. I dump a handful of old books and clothing on top. Then I slam the closet door shut and lean back against it as if the pants might try to dig their way out of their makeshift grave.
I miss my old life so much it hurts. Mandy’s been calling me every night to rave about her new horse. She’s planning to spend tomorrow hacking him in the woods, oiling his hooves, and trimming his tail. After, she and Eddie will go to a big party at Vince Martin’s house, where Leeza Owens is supposed to show up with a tattoo that goes from her shoulder to her elbow.
Normal teenage existence seems so far away. A life where I’m not monitoring my father’s condition and pulling all-nighters and contemplating being expelled for theft seems so out of reach I wonder if I ever knew it at all.
I roll over onto my side to see a small envelope waiting on my nightstand. It’s dirty and tattered to the point of being fuzzy at the edges and is addressed to me. There’s no sender information, but the thin, weblike handwriting gives it away even before the French postmark. It’s a new tactic from my mother—a letter in disguise. Slipping a fingernail under the sealed flap, I pause. Do I really want to hear what she has to say, especially since her departure is the reason Dad’s obsessiveness has shown up again?
Then again, maybe something has changed. Maybe she hates the taste of French tobacco more than she hates life with me and Dad. Maybe she’s coming home. Maybe she can save me from my new life.
I tear open the envelope and pull out a thick letter. A photo falls to the floor, landing faceup. As soon as I see it, I realize I’m a stupid girl who gets what she deserves. I knew not to open the letter and I opened it. There, lying on the rug, is the black-net rocket of the Eiffel Tower piercing a bleached white sky. Worse, standing at its base is my smiling mother. Whomever she is arm in arm with has been cut out in a lame attempt to crush me slightly less, but I recognize the fur on those burly forearms. It’s the man I despise more than anyone on earth. The reason she went to a French cooking school in the first place. Her bilingual boyfriend got a job so good she just couldn’t help herself.
I snatch up the photo, the letter, the filthy envelope, and push it into my metal wastepaper basket. Then I heave my window open, set the can on the sill. I light one of the Benson & Hedges from the package I swiped out of my mother’s purse, drop it into the garbage can, and watch the Eiffel Tower curl up and burn.
Once the smoke in my bedroom has cleared and my mother has vanished—yet again—I wander into the kitchen and pick up the ancient wall phone to check for messages. The beeping dial tone raises my hopes that Mandy has called with more delicious news from Lundon. But after punching in our password, I hear a man’s voice.
“I’m looking for Charlie Black….” He pauses, shuffling a few papers. “I hope I have the right number. This is Ryan Talbot from Eastern Property Management. We’d like to offer you the position you interviewed for. Give me a call at the office when you get a chance.”
I knew it. Dad should have called them after his interview instead of jumping at the first janitor job that came his way. Wait a minute. This means we can move back home!
So many happy thoughts swarm my head they get all tangled up. The vision of a full night’s sleep bumps into the thought of hanging out with Mandy again. The joy of being absent from Poppy’s future movies collides with the hope that Dad’s locked doors will settle down if we go home. Best of all, I can escape Carling and whatever it is—or isn’t—that she might do to me. Before I know it, I’m wrapping myself in the phone cord and wondering, with all the extra money Dad will be making, if we’ll be able to afford to live in the two-story house next to Mandy’s.
Just then, Dad’s key turns in the lock and I race to throw my arms around him. He kisses the top of my head and tosses his keys into a bowl on the hall table. “Do I smell smoke?”
“You got the job, Big Charlie!” I’m on my toes with excitement. “The guy from the property-management company left a message. He wants you to call him right away!”
He pulls off his Anton High jacket, looking confused. “The job in Lundon?”
“Yes. Which means we can go home! I can burn my uniform and my books, you can ditch your janitor suit, and we can go back to Lundon! Isn’t that sweet?”
Dad wanders into the kitchen and pulls a beer out of the fridge like he hasn’t a care in the world. He leans against the counter and sniffs the air. “Did you start burning your clothes already?”
“Did you hear me?” I hop up onto a barstool and spin around and around. There will be no greater feeling on earth than walking into school Monday morning and dump
ing my uniform on the counter in the office. And I’ll pack up my room, leaving nothing but the yoga pants behind. “Maybe we can buy a house on Mandy’s street. You know that place next door to hers, the one with the porch that wraps around the whole place? It’s been for sale forever.”
“Sara …,” Dad says quietly.
“Listen to the message. The guy actually says the job is yours.”
“Honey, I don’t want that position. Today was a great day. I formulated a new tracking procedure for the supply room next to the gym. Repaired the cooling system in the south building—it hasn’t functioned in three years. The principal himself came down to the custodian’s room and welcomed me. Said from what he hears, in another month I’ll have this place running so smoothly—”
“But the other job pays, like, twice what Ant pays you. You said it yourself. And it’s a huge step up. You’d get to hire other people to fix cooling systems. You’d get to be the Big Cheese!”
Dad reaches into the fridge and pulls out two pork chops, unwraps them, and puts them on a plate. He pulls out the frying pan and peers closely at it. “Doesn’t look quite clean.” Holding it under steaming hot water, he scrubs at it until I think the sponge might scratch right through the metal. Then he dries the pan, inspects it, shakes his head, and begins scrubbing all over again.
“Dad,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. “It would be so good for you to get away from cleaning….”
He shuts off the water and drops the pan to the counter with a clatter. After a deep breath, he says quietly, “Not everyone is cut out to be the boss,” and walks off toward his room, leaving me alone with the uncooked pork.
I stand perfectly still for a moment, blinking back hot tears. My father makes no sense. It’s like he’s avoiding any positive action in his life, and I have no choice but to pick my way through the rubble of his decisions. I know life isn’t fair. I’ve heard the propaganda. But come on, is hoping for a little normal paternal behavior really asking so much? He doesn’t even shout and swear when he gets mad! Instead, he gets quiet. He disappears. It doesn’t happen often, but his near silence can crack your eardrums.
