I simmer. Lawyers on TV always tell their clients not to say anything. The cops say that thing: “Anything you say will be used against you.” Self-incrimination. I looked it up. Three-point vocab word. So why does everyone make such a big hairy deal about me not talking? Maybe I don’t want to incriminate myself. Maybe I don’t like the sound of my voice. Maybe I don’t have anything to say.
The boy with the lime-colored hair wakes up when he falls out of his chair. The Gothgirls whinny. Mr. Neck picks his nose when he thinks we aren’t looking. I need a lawyer.
ADVICE FROM A SMART MOUTH
David Petrakis sends me a note in social studies. Typed. He thinks it’s horrible that my parents didn’t videotape Mr. Neck’s class or stick up for me the way his folks did. It feels so good to have someone feel sorry for me, I don’t mention that my parents don’t know what happened. They’ll figure out what happened soon enough at the next meeting with the guidance counselor.
I think David should be a judge. His latest career goal is to be a quantum-physics genius. I don’t know what that means, but he says his father is furious. His dad is right—David was made for the law: deadly calm, turbo-charged brain, and a good eye for weakness.
He stops by my locker. I tell him Mr. Neck gave me a D for the suffragette report.
David: “He has a point.”
Me: “It was a great report! You read it. I wrote a bibliography and I didn’t copy from the encyclopedia. It was the best report ever. It’s not my fault Mr. Neck doesn’t get performance art.”
David pauses to offer me a stick of gum. It’s a delaying tactic, the kind that juries love.
David: “But you got it wrong. The suffragettes were all about speaking up, screaming for their rights. You can’t speak up for your right to be silent. That’s letting the bad guys win. If the suffragettes did that, women wouldn’t be able to vote yet.”
I blow a bubble in his face. He folds the gum wrappers into tiny triangles.
David: “Don’t get me wrong. I think what you did was kind of cool and getting stuck in MISS wasn’t fair. But don’t expect to make a difference unless you speak up for yourself.”
Me: “Do you lecture all your friends like this?”
David: “Only the ones I like.”
We both chew on this for a minute. The bell rings. I keep looking in my locker for a book that I already know isn’t there. David checks his watch a hundred times. We hear Principal Principal bellow, “Let’s move it, people!”
David: “Maybe I’ll call you.”
Me: “Maybe I won’t answer.” Chew, chew. Blowbubblepop.
“Maybe I will.”
Is he asking me out? I don’t think so. But he kind of is. I guess I’ll answer if he calls. But if he touches me I’ll explode, so a date is out of the question. No touching.
THE BEAST PROWLS
I stay after school to work on tree sketches. Mr. Freeman helps me for a while. He gives me a roll of brown paper and a piece of white chalk and shows me how to draw a tree in three sweeping lines. He doesn’t care how many mistakes I make, just one-two-three, “like a waltz,” he says. Over and over. I use up a mile of the paper, but he doesn’t care. This may be the root of his budget problem with the school board.
God crackles over the intercom and tells Mr. Freeman he’s late for a faculty meeting. Mr. Freeman says the kind of words you don’t usually hear from teachers. He gives me a new piece of chalk and tells me to draw roots. You can’t grow a decent tree without roots.
The art room is one of the places I feel safe. I hum and don’t worry about looking stupid. Roots. Ugh. But I try. One-two-three, one-two-three. I don’t worry about the next day or minute. One-two-three.
Somebody flicks the lights off. My head snaps up. IT is there. Andy Beast. Little rabbit heart leaps out of my chest and scampers across the paper, leaving bloody footprints on my roots. He turns the lights back on.
I smell him. Have to find out where he gets that cologne. I think it’s called Fear. This is turning into one of those repeating nightmares where you keep falling but never hit the floor. Only I feel like I just smacked into the ground at a hundred miles an hour.
IT: “You seen Rachelle? Rachelle Bruin?”
I sit completely still. Maybe I can blend in with the metal tables and crumbling clay pots. He walks toward me, long, slow strides. The smell chokes me. I shiver.
IT: “She’s supposed to meet me, but I can’t find her anywhere. You know who she is?”
Me:
IT sits on my table, ITs leg smears my chalk drawing, blurring the roots into a mossy fog.
IT: “Hello? Anyone home? Are you deaf?”
IT stares at my face. I crush my jaws together so hard my teeth crumble to dust.
I am a deer frozen in the headlights of a tractor trailer. Is he going to hurt me again? He couldn’t, not in school. Could he? Why can’t I scream, say something, do anything? Why am I so afraid?
“Andy? I’ve been waiting outside.” Rachel sweeps into the room wearing an artsy-fartsy gypsy scarf skirt and a necklace of eye-sized mirrors. She pouts and Andy leaps off the table, ripping my paper, scattering bits of chalk. Ivy walks through the door, bumping Rachel accidentally. She hesitates—she has to feel that something is going on—then she takes her sculpture off the shelf and sits at the table next to me. Rachel looks at me, but she doesn’t say anything. She must have gotten my note—I mailed it over a week ago. I stand up. Rachel gives us a half wave and says “Ciao.” Andy puts his arm around her waist and pulls her close to his body as they float out the door.
Ivy is talking to me, but it takes a while before I can hear her. “What a jerk,” she says. She pinches the clay. “I can’t believe she’s going out with him. Can you? It’s like I don’t know her anymore. And he’s trouble.” She slaps a hunk of clay on the table. “Believe me, that creep is trouble with a capital T.”
I’d love to stay and chat, but my feet won’t let me. I walk home instead of taking the bus. I unlock the front door and walk straight up to my room, across the rug, and into my closet without even taking off my backpack. When I close the closet door behind me, I bury my face into the clothes on the left side of the rack, clothes that haven’t fit for years. I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin.
HOME SICK
It is time for a mental-health day. I need a day in pajamas, eating ice cream from the carton, painting my toenails, and enjoying TrashTV. You have to plan ahead for a mental-health day. I learned this from a conversation my mom had with her friend Kim. Mom always starts acting sick forty-eight hours ahead of time. She and Kim take mental-health days together. They buy shoes and go to the movies. Cutting-edge adult delinquency. What is the world coming to?
I don’t eat any dinner or dessert, and I cough so much during the news my dad tells me to take some cough medicine. In the morning, I smear some mascara under my eyes so it looks like I haven’t slept at all. Mom takes my temperature—turns out I have a fever. Surprises even me. Her hand is cool, an island on my forehead.
The words tumble out before I can stop them.
Me: “I don’t feel well.”
Mom pats my back.
Mom: “You must be sick. You’re talking.”
Even she can hear how bitchy that sounds. She clears her throat and tries again.
Mom: “I’m sorry. It’s nice to hear your voice. Go back to bed. I’ll bring up a tray before I leave. Do you want some ginger ale?”
I nod.
OPRAH, SALLY JESSY, JERRY, AND ME
My fever is 102.2. Sounds like a radio station. Mom calls to remind me to drink a lot of fluids. I say “Thank you,” even though it hurts my throat. It’s nice of her to call me. She promises to bring home Popsicles. I hang up and snuggle into my couch nest with the remote. Click. Click. Click.
If my life were a TV show, what would it be? If it were an After-School Special, I would speak in front of an auditorium of my peers on How Not to Lose Yo
ur Virginity. Or, Why Seniors Should Be Locked Up. Or, My Summer Vacation: A Drunken Party, Lies, and Rape.
Was I raped?
Oprah: “Let’s explore that. You said no. He covered your mouth with his hand. You were thirteen years old. It doesn’t matter that you were drunk. Honey, you were raped. What a horrible, horrible thing for you to live though. Didn’t you ever think of telling anyone? You can’t keep this inside forever. Can someone get her a tissue?”
Sally Jessy: “I want this boy held responsible. He is to blame for this attack. You do know it was an attack, don’t you? It was not your fault. I want you to listen to me, listen to me, listen to me. It was not your fault. This boy was an animal.”
Jerry: “Was it love? No. Was it lust? No. Was it tenderness, sweetness, the First Time they talk about in magazines? No, no, no, no, no! Speak up, Meatilda, ah, Melinda, I can’t hear you!”
My head is killing me, my throat is killing me, my stomach bubbles with toxic waste. I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?
I take two Tylenol and eat a bowl of pudding. Then I watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and fall asleep. A trip to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe would be nice. Maybe I could stay with Daniel Striped Tiger in his tree house.
REAL SPRING
May is finally here and it has stopped raining. Good thing, too—the mayor of Syracuse was about to put out a call for a guy named Noah. The sun appears butter-yellow and so warm it coaxes tulips out of the crusty mud. A miracle.
Our yard is a mess. All our neighbors have these great magazine-cover yards with flowers that match their shutters and expensive white rocks that border fresh mounds of mulch. Ours has green bushes that just about cover the front windows, and lots of dead leaves.
Mom is already gone. Saturday is the biggest selling day of the week at Effert’s. Dad snores upstairs. I put on old jeans and unearth a rake from the back of the garage. I start on the leaves suffocating the bushes. I bet Dad hasn’t cleaned them out for years. They look harmless and dry on top, but under that top layer they’re wet and slimy. White mold snakes from one leaf to the next. The leaves stick together like floppy pages in a decomposing book. I rake a mountain into the front yard and there are still more, like the earth pukes up leaf gunk when I’m not looking. I have to fight the bushes. They snag the tines of the rake and hold them—they don’t like me cleaning out all that rot.
It takes an hour. Finally, the rake scrapes its metal fingernails along damp brown dirt. I get down on my knees to reach behind and drag out the last leaves. Ms. Keen would be proud of me. I observe. Worms caught in the sun squirm for cover. Pale green shoots of something alive have been struggling under the leaves. As I watch, they straighten to face the sun. I swear I can see them grow.
The garage door opens and Dad backs out the Jeep. He stops in the driveway when he sees me. He turns off the engine and gets out. I stand up and brush the dirt off my jeans. My palms are blistered and my arms are already sore from the raking. I can’t tell if he’s angry or not. Maybe he likes the front of his house looking like crap.
Dad: “That’s a lot of work.”
Me:
Dad: “I’ll get some leaf bags at the store.”
Me:
We both stand there with our arms crossed, staring at the little baby plants trying to grow in the shade of the house-eating bushes. The sun goes behind a cloud and I shiver. I should have worn a sweatshirt. The wind rustles dead leaves still clinging to the oak branches by the street. All I can think of is that the rest of the leaves are going to drop and I’ll have to keep raking.
Dad: “Looks a lot better. Cleaned out like that, I mean.”
The wind blows again. The leaves tremble.
Dad: “I suppose I should trim back the bushes. Of course, then you’d see the shutters and they need paint. And if I paint these shutters, I’ll have to paint all the shutters, and the trim needs work, too. And the front door.”
Me:
Tree: “Hush rustle chitachita shhhh …”
Dad turns to listen to the tree. I’m not sure what to do.
Dad: “And that tree is sick. See how the branches on the left don’t have any buds? I should call someone to take a look at it. Don’t want it crashing into your room during a storm.”
Thanks, Dad. Like I’m not already having a hard time sleeping. Worry #64: flying tree limbs. I shouldn’t have raked anything . Look what I started. I shouldn’t have tried something new. I should have stayed in the house. Watched cartoons with a double-sized bowl of Cheerios. Should have stayed in my room. Stayed in my head.
Dad: “I guess I’m going to the hardware store. Want to come?”
The hardware store. Seven acres of unshaven men and bright-eyed women in search of the perfect screwdriver, weed killer, volcanic gas grills. Noise. Lights. Kids running down the aisle with hatchets and axes and saw blades. People fighting about the right color to paint the bathroom. No thank you.
I shake my head. I pick up the rake and start making the dead-leaf pile neater. A blister pops and stains the rake handle like a tear. Dad nods and walks to the Jeep, keys jangling in his fingers. A mockingbird lands on a low oak branch and scolds me. I rake the leaves out of my throat.
Me: “Can you buy some seeds? Flower seeds?”
FAULT!
Our gym teacher, Ms. Connors, is teaching us to play tennis. Tennis is the only sport that comes close to not being a total waste of time. Basketball would be great if all you had to do was shoot foul shots, but most of the time you’re on the court with nine other people bumping and shoving and running way too much. Tennis is more civilized. Only two people have to play, unless you play doubles, which I would never do. The rules are simple, you get to catch your breath every few minutes, and you can work on your tan.
I actually learned to play a couple of summers ago when my parents had a trial membership at a fitness club. Mom signed me up for lessons and I played with Dad a few times before they figured the monthly dues were too expensive. Since I’m not a total spaz with the racket, Ms. Connors pairs me off with Jock Goddess Nicole to demonstrate the game to the rest of the class.
I serve first, a nice shot with a little speed on it. Nicole hits it right back to me with a great backhand. We volley a bit back and forth. Then Ms. Connors blows her whistle to stop and explain the retarded scoring system in tennis where the numbers don’t make sense and love doesn’t count for anything.
Nicole serves next. She aces it, a perfect serve at about ninety miles an hour that kisses the court just inside the line before I can move. Ms. Connors tells Nicole she’s awesome and Nicole smiles.
I do not smile.
I’m ready for her second serve and I hit it right back down her throat. Ms. Connors says something nice to me and Nicole adjusts the strings on her racket. My serve.
I bounce the ball a few times. Nicole bounces on the balls of her feet. She isn’t fooling around anymore. Her pride is at stake, her womynhood. She is not about to be beat by some weirdo hushquiet delinquent who used to be her friend. Ms. Connors tells me to hit the ball.
I slam into the ball, sending it right to Nicole’s mouth, grinning behind her custom purple mouth guard. She twists out of the way.
Ms. Connors: “Fault!” Giggles from the class.
A foot fault. Wrong foot forward, toe over the line. I get a second chance. Another civilized aspect of tennis.