Luz, Rebound

by Jeania Kimbrough

  I didn’t know it was her, or that she must have followed me in after chapel, but when she started talking I realized Christie was in there with me and waiting.

  “Anyway, she’s such a bitch, always trying to flirt with my boyfriend.” Her voice and the added slur made me stop midstream. Bitch? Moi?

  “You should kick her ass,” Deana, an overly dramatic day student to whom I’d never much to say, suggested.

  My eyes widened in disbelief this was really happening.

  Giggles. “Yeah, kick it all the way back to Australia,” another voice chimed in who I figured was Josie, a long-legged Junior on the Drill Team with both of them.

  “Ha! Yeah!”

  It was for my benefit, this conversation. I couldn’t let myself pee anymore. I wasn’t exactly physically afraid of Christie, although I guess her and her friends could have taken me out, three against one. It was just the idea: Fighting would get us thrown out of school, and besides, it was just so vulgar. But what else did I expect from her?

  I angrily rolled out the toilet paper toward me to break the silence that was waiting for me to react. The thought of them standing there listening now made me both clench my teeth and start to sweat as I tried to slow down my own breathing to hear more. I noticed how my feet shifted slightly as I stood. The sound of my zipper coming up punctuated my movement. I needed to get out of here, but I didn’t want to face her. And yet I had to face her and show her I wasn’t afraid.

  “Geez, it stinks in here,” Christie said.

  Quietly I tried to relax and take a longer breath without gasping, composing my face into a neutral expression.

  “Who’s taking so long?” Deana asked, and then giggled. “Got a problem in there?”

  I opened the stall door quickly, my jaw tight, heading for the row of sinks where they all stood.

  Christie was putting on lipstick, watching me. I caught a glint of her diamond ring reflected in the mirror. Josie had a hairbrush in her hand.

  “Oh, it’s her,” Deana said, snapping a compact shut.

  I averted my eyes. “Excuse me,” I said, moving toward the sink between Christie and Josie to wash my hands. They didn’t move. I took another step forward, more resolute, unwilling to back down, and Josie shifted her weight, allowing me a few extra inches.

  “Don’t splash water on me,” Christie seethed as I quickly pulled my hands from the sink.

  “I didn’t.”

  “And you better leave Ryan alone, too.”

  I said nothing.

  “I said to leave Ryan alone,” she repeated, applying another coat. Her voice was venomous and inside I raged at the suggestion she could even stand there and say it. I’d been leaving Ryan alone. My eyes shot back up at hers in the mirror. I knew they were defiant. Hers were hateful and I had the strongest urge to lash back, to tell her that was way too much lipstick for Ryan anyway, and she hadn’t even seen bitchy yet, but held back and tried to remain cool.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t. Even. Look. At. Him.” She watched me as she twisted the lipstick down and flipped it into the makeup bag on the counter.

  “Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?” I bit out as I wiped my hands.

  Deana moved back in front of the exit door. “Come on, Christie.”

  I turned halfway around so I could address Deana and still face Christie.

  “I need out.”

  Deana looked at Christie, who was putting her makeup bag into her backpack, zipping things up with finality.

  “Let me out.”

  “You’d better watch it,” Josie piped up. “Don’t mess with other people’s boyfriends.”

  I stepped sideways away from her and Christie, back to the stalls and closer to the door. “Do you think he’s going to be proud of you that you tried to fight with me in the bathroom? I haven’t been around Ryan in a year, but I can tell you that when I knew him before, he had a lot more class than this.”

  “Well, you don’t know him anymore!” Christie declared.

  “It might actually make him look at you in a whole new light,” I continued over her interruption. “And if you want to mess with me, I’ll make sure I escalate this all the way to the friggin’ headmaster’s office. Your stupidity might get you suspended, or worse! Is that what you want?” Anger had turned to biting sarcasm at the end of my outburst. But I was beginning to shake.

  Either my words or my emotions seemed to make them think though, and Deana moved away from the door as I propelled myself toward it. I swept past, flinging the door wide open with all my adrenalin surging through me.

  A hairbrush whizzed past my ear and fell at my feet, first startling, and then enraging me. I kicked it across the hall in front of me. I made up my mind, then and there. Christie was going to be sorry for this.

  ***

  Ping! The brush I’d just kicked across the hallway flew into the metal radiator against a wall, making an echoing sound. I looked up and around to take in who might have noticed. My eyes fell on Ryan about ten feet away from me, leaning back against the wall. It was the second occasion I’d been able to meet his eyes today, and they blinked rapidly. She’d probably told him to wait for her. I adjusted my direction to walk toward him now, with a forthrightness that startled even me. His stance changed. His back came off against the wall and his eyes widened. He didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t either.

  “You’re an idiot!”

  “What?” He looked surprised at my outburst.

  “She’s a psycho. You’ve hooked up with somebody crazy, you know that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. What happened?” He glanced over my head at the restroom and back at me.

  “Christie’s crazy, and you’re just…I don’t even know who you are anymore!”

  “Hey, don’t call my girlfriend crazy!” His eyes grew flinty. That he would try to defend her actions and call her his girlfriend to my face made me want to slap him.

  “She just tried to attack me!”I jerked my arm straight back off to my side, pointing my finger toward the bathroom.

  “What did you do to her?” Anger rolled through his voice.

  “Ugh,” I gasped. I couldn’t bear a second more. “You…” My hand flashed on level with my face in my peripheral vision.“…deserve each other!” I bit out, balling the hand I’d extended into a fist as I consciously plunged it back down to my side, unable to even look at him any longer. “Tell yourself what you have to, Ryan.”

  “Hey, answer me!”

  I bolted away from him toward the stairs, which led to my next class, and stubbed my toe on the second one. I figured that because my back was to him and he couldn’t have seen me wince, he might have thought the expletive I let out at the sharp pain was probably also directed at him. I hoped so.

  Chapter 10

  Pensando

  “¿Estás pensando de Christie ahora mismo?”

  The class laughed. Señor Tovar was asking Ryan if he was thinking of Christie right now in Spanish class, obviously because he didn’t answer his first question about the color of the fisherman’s coat in the short story he’d just read us.

  “Si, Señor. Lo siento mucho. Discúlpeme, por favor.”

  His apology and request for forgiveness rang true enough that Señor Tovar repeated his question, allowing Ryan to answer correctly this time. “Amarillo”—yellow.

  Ryan sat in the back of the class, away from me, and I would have had to turn around to witness the interaction firsthand as many of my classmates had done, but I refused. I didn’t think it was funny.

  Since lashing out at him yesterday after Christie and her friends threatened me in the bathroom, I hadn’t said anything more about it to anyone. I was still thinking too, mostly about how I cou
ld seek revenge. He knew what she did, he must have gotten her to tell him, and still he said nothing. Instead, he continued to be her zombie. I’d seen them together before chapel this morning. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one to notice. Even the teachers made light of it. I shivered in disgust.

  “¿Tienes frío, Kara?” Señor Tovar asked me.

  “Oh, I guess—” I started in English and then realized my error. I wasn’t cold but it was easier to explain than my true feelings, and Señor Tovar had a way of asking those kinds of questions. “Si, un poquito,” I said, doing a quarter turn in my chair to find the sleeve of my jacket I had draped over it. As I did, I glanced at Ryan and jerked in my seat when I saw him staring back at me. I shrugged my shoulders into my black wool coat and turned quickly away.

  “Muy bien. Ponte tu abrigo.” Señor Tovar loved to repeat what we were doing in Spanish. His goal was conversation. He commanded, “Repitan después de mí, clase, Kara tiene su abrigo, pero Ryan no tiene la chaqueta.”

  We repeated the difference between overcoat and jacket in unison. Señor Tovar asked Ryan where his coat was. Ryan replied his friend—amiga—had it. Of course she was wearing his jacket. She was always trying to lay claim to something of Ryan’s, I thought bitterly.

  We continued answering questions about the reading, but Señor Tovar wasn’t satisfied. “You are thinking about something other than the story,” he said in Spanish, and split us into two groups.

  “Bien, ahora clase, pregúntenle a sus compañeros sobre qué están pensando.” Señor Tovar asked each side to ask members of their group what they were thinking about and write it down to turn in for an in-class assignment. Ryan was on my side of the room. By the time I got to him, I already knew what I was going to say.

  “Estás pensando de Christie, ¿no?” I said matter-of-factly, my concentration on the tip of my pencil poised on a page of my notebook, ready to scribble down his confirmation.

  “No,” he said, surprising me. I looked up at his face. “En este momento, no.”

  “Then what? Entonces ¿en qué?” I asked, flipping the eraser side over to remove the start of a character, but actually trying to hide my curiosity.

  “Que siento lo de ayer.”

  My pencil skewed off the line as I stopped writing. My ears seemed to flex at the apology, and I glanced up again and then down, hearing my breath flow through my nose. I said nothing. It was sort of an apology, though not from her, and in another language. I was conscious that we didn’t have much time until Señor Tovar would signal we change partners again.

  “Y tú, ¿en qué estás pensando, Kara?” He broke my pause with one of the first questions he’d asked since I’d been back, I realized. I wondered if he did, too. And he was asking me what I was thinking, and struggling through the language made it sound as if it was a question heavy on his mind.

  “Sobre una amistad perdida. ¿La recuerdas?” Even though I had planned to say it, I still heard a shake in my voice as I got it out. I didn’t expect him to answer that he remembered our lost friendship. I just wanted to remind him of it with my question.

  “Si,” he said, so softly that only I could hear as Señor Tovar instructed us to pair with the next person. But I still wrote Christie down on my paper in front of him. Ryan wrote Australia.

  Chapter 11

  Not What I Said

  “You remember how you told me that Ryan Hutchins and Christie Navarro were in a really intense relationship right now?”

  I was returning catalogs to Dr. Matthews and sat down at her invitation for a chat. I couldn’t resist bringing Ryan up again. I had told no one about the short, but meaningful exchange we had in Spanish class. I wanted something like it to happen again and since then it seemed like he almost felt the same way. Although they were still always together, I thought I saw Christie frowning at him a couple of times, and neither seemed to smile and laugh together quite as much as before. Maybe their slight change in behavior was only when I was near or a product of my imagination—but maybe it wasn’t.

  “Yes.” She placed the stack of catalogs on a shelf behind her.

  “He gave her a promise ring.”

  “I know,” she said, straightening them a little more.

  Her answer surprised me, and was too nonchalant. “It’s weird because she won’t look at me anymore, although her friends continue to stare me down in the hallways.”

  She turned to face me, bringing her palms together on the desk, and I wondered if what I said had surprised her. “Do you feel threatened by her or any of her friends, Kara?”

  “No, they’d be stupid to do anything.” But I did wonder if Ryan had said something to Christie to reprimand her. Perhaps that’s why she was avoiding my eyes. I doubted though that he told Christie he’d apologized to me. “So, what’s the official position regarding classmates getting engaged at Trinity, anyway?” I casually put my hands behind my head and leaned back, though I could hear the annoyance in my tone. “Is that cute or something for you teachers and administrators?”

  Her back seemed to bristle at my goading.

  “I don’t think there’s an official policy, but if you’re asking me if I think it’s a good idea for people to get engaged so early in life, I would say generally speaking, no.”

  “Yeah?” Her noncommittal stance was annoying me as well. I knew she had more thoughts than that. It was just a matter of if she would tell me what they were. “And how would you analyze this particular situation?”

  She laughed a little, straightening some files and gathering a couple of pens together on her desk. “I won’t discuss my opinion on other students with you.”

  I sat up in the seat now, more annoyed. “But you expect for me and others to share our perspectives on people around us? Why isn’t it a two-way street?”

  “Kara, you’re not being reasonable. That’s not what I’m saying. As a counselor you don’t talk about one of your clients to another one.”

  The room grew still as the revelation about what she’d just said hit me. I stared at the pen in her hand. “Christie or Ryan is a client of yours?”

  She looked uncomfortable. “That’s not what I said.” She dropped the pen and folded her arms in front of her.

  I shifted in my chair, thinking and watching. “But you’re not denying it, are you?”

  “It would be like me discussing seeing you with one of them.”

  I shook my head. “You and I basically talk about college catalogs.”

  “Basically. Maybe that is what I basically talk about with most students.”

  “He and I are speaking again.” My eyes locked with hers, but I tried to make my voice deadpan as I quickly spoke these last words.

  She peered at me. “Really? When did that happen?”

  “A little after I found out about the ring, I suppose. It wasn’t a long conversation,” I continued under her questioning stare, “but someone needs to start talking some sense into him.”

  “What’d you say?” she asked.

  “Basically nothing much. I mean, nothing worth repeating.” Mrs. Matthews had pissed me off and she wasn’t the only one who could practice selective information sharing. “The important thing, I guess, is we talked. And I just think that ring is a bunch of BS, ya know?”

  ***

  Outside Dr. Matthews’s office, I inhaled the crisp afternoon air and started walking, beginning to relax. It wasn’t really helping to talk to her. She was just another adult trying to manipulate or judge me, but I supposed it was worth going to her in the end to find out Christie or Ryan or both were seeing her over something, too. Maybe that is why she managed to both annoy and tempt me during the two visits I’d had with her. She knew something about me or Ryan or all of us that she wasn’t sharing. But I could be manipulative too, and this new knowledge about Ryan or Christie discussing their relationship
with her made it somehow seem more vulnerable.

  Things were shifting, even the seasons. Valentine’s Day was upon us in a little more than a week and spring break in March, followed by the Spring Fling dance two weeks later. The seniors could either go on a trip to Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, or a ski-camp in the Sangre de Christos up north. For me, Nic and Kelli the decision was a no-brainer: the beach. I took another deep breath of cold air, trying to reset, wondering where Christie and Ryan would choose.

  In English class a couple of days later, when Christie missed school, I found out. As we sat in our circle before the bell rang, Cooper brought up spring break plans. He loved skiing and was trying to build it up to others as the choice to make.

  “What about you, Kara? You’ve had enough of beaches, haven’t you? Think of the nice cozy fires, marshmallow roasts, hot tubs after a cold day in the fresh powder.”

  I laughed. “Sounds nice the way you put it, but I need a tan,” I joked.

  “Totally,” Kelli agreed. “As well as nightclubs, fresh piña coladas, and catching waves.”

  “Those better be virgin piña coladas you’re talking about, Kelli,” Cooper shot back in mock warning. “There’s a dance club at the ski resort. Aw, come on, ladies—we’ll have fun.”

  Matt said he’d probably join him skiing.

  “You see?” Cooper said. “What about you and Christie?” he asked Ryan. “Deana said you two were undecided.”

  Ryan shrugged, and I opened my notebook like I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I glanced up at the clock. We had about a minute left before the bell. “She’s thinking about skiing, but I’d like some warm weather,” Ryan said. “I went skiing at Christmas.”

  “Want a tan, too, huh, bro?” Cooper asked.

  I put my head in my hand now, looking down as I turned some pages, trying to control a blush. It wasn’t that Cooper sounded like he knew anything. It was just that I’d become so used to looking for hidden communication in anything concerning Ryan