Siobhan: “Your can quota. You aren’t carrying your weight. You aren’t contributing.”
Heather: “We’ve only been doing this for a week. I know I’ll get more.”
Emily: “It’s not just the can quota. Your posters are ridiculous—my little brother could have done a better job. It’s no wonder no one wants to help us. You’ve turned this project into a joke.”
Emily slides her tray across to Heather. Heather gets up without a word and clears it away. Traitor. She isn’t going to stick up for my posters. The peanut butter in my mouth hardens.
Siobhan pokes Emily and looks at the door.
Siobhan: “It’s him. Andy Evans just walked in. I think he’s looking for you, Em.”
I turn around. They are talking about IT. Andy. Andy Evans. Short stabby name. Andy Evans, who strolls in carrying a take-out bag from Taco Bell. He offers the cafeteria monitor a burrito. Emily and Siobhan giggle. Heather returns, her smile back in place, and asks if Andy is as bad as everyone says. Emily blushes the color of canned beets.
Siobhan: “It’s just a rumor.”
Emily: “Fact—he’s gorgeous. Fact—he’s rich. Fact—he’s just the itsiest bit dangerous and he called me last night.”
Siobhan: “Rumor—he sleeps with anything.”
The peanut butter locks my jaws closed.
Emily: “I don’t believe it. Rumors are spread by jealous people. Hi, Andy. Did you bring enough lunch for everyone?”
It feels like the Prince of Darkness has swept his cloak over the table. The lights dim. I shiver. Andy stands behind me to flirt with Emily. I lean into the table to stay as far away from him as I can. The table saws me in half. Emily’s mouth moves, the fluorescent lights glittering on her teeth. The other girls scootch toward Emily to soak up her Attractiveness Rays. Andy must be talking too, I can feel deep vibrations in my backbone, like a thudding speaker. I can’t hear the words.
He twirls my ponytail in his fingers. Emily’s eyes narrow. I mumble something idiotic and run for the bathroom. I heave lunch into the toilet, then wash my face with the ice water that comes out of the Hot faucet. Heather does not come looking for me.
DARK ART
The cement-slab sky hangs inches above our heads. Which direction is east? It has been so long since I’ve seen the sun, I can’t remember. Turtlenecks creep out of bottom drawers. Turtle faces pull back into winter clothes. We won’t see some kids until spring.
Mr. Freeman is in trouble. Big-time. He gave up paperwork when the school board Xed out his supply budget. They have caught up with him. Teachers just handed in the second-marking-period grades and Mr. Freeman gave out 210 As. Someone smelled a rat. Probably the office secretary.
I wonder if they called him down to Principal Principal’s office and put this on his Permanent Record. He has stopped working on his canvas, the painting we all thought was going to be this awesome, earth-shattering piece of art that would be auctioned for a million dollars. The art room is cold, Mr. Freeman’s face a shade of gray-purple. If he wasn’t so depressed, I’d ask him what the name of that color is. He just sits on his stool, a blue broken cricket husk.
No one talks to him. We blow on our fingers to warm them up and sculpt or draw or paint or sketch, or, in my case, carve. I start a new linoleum block. My last tree looked like it had died from some fungal infection—not the effect I wanted at all. The cold makes the linoleum stiffer than usual. I dig the chisel into the block and push, trying to follow the line of a tree trunk.
I follow the line of my thumb instead and gash myself. I swear and stick my thumb in my mouth. Everybody looks at me, so I take it out again. Mr. Freeman hurries over with a box of Kleenex. It isn’t a deep cut, and I shake my head when he asks if I want to go to the nurse’s office. He washes my chisel off in the sink and puts bleach on it. Some sort of AIDS regulation. When it is germ-free and dry, he carries it back toward my table, but stops in front of his canvas. He hasn’t finished painting. The bottom right corner is empty. The prisoners’ faces are menacing—you can’t take your eyes off them. I wouldn’t want a painting like that hanging over my couch. It looks like it might come alive at night.
Mr. Freeman steps back, as if he has just seen something new in his own picture. He slices the canvas with my chisel, ruining it with a long, ripping sound that makes the entire class gasp.
MY REPORT CARD
THIRD MARKING PERIOD
DEATH OF THE WOMBAT
The Wombat is dead. No assembly, no vote. Principal Principal made an announcement this morning. He said hornets better represent the Merryweather spirit than foreign marsupials, plus the Wombat mascot costume was going to suck money from the prom committee’s budget. We are the Hornets and that is final.
The seniors support this decision totally. They wouldn’t be able to hold up their heads if the prom had to be moved from the Holiday Inn Ballroom to the gym. That would be so elementary-school.
Our cheerleaders are working on annoying chants that end in lots of buzzing. I think this is a mistake. I have visions of opposing teams making enormous flyswatters and giant cans of insecticide out of papier-mâché to humiliate us during halftime programs.
I’m allergic to hornets. One sting and my skin bubbles with hives and my throat closes up.
COLD WEATHER AND BUSES
I miss the bus because I couldn’t believe how dark it was when my alarm clock went off. I need a clock that will turn on a 300-watt bulb when it’s time to get up. Either that or a rooster.
When I realize how late it is, I decide not to rush. Why bother? Mom comes downstairs and I’m reading the funnies and eating oatmeal.
Mom: “You missed the bus again.”
I nod.
Mom: “You expect me to drive you again.”
Another nod.
Mom: “You’ll need boots. It’s a long walk and it snowed again last night. I’m already late.”
That is unexpected, but not harsh. The walk isn’t that bad—it’s not like she made me hike ten miles through a snowstorm uphill in both directions or anything. The streets are quiet and pretty. The snow covers yesterday’s slush and settles on the rooftops like powdered sugar on a gingerbread town.
By the time I get to Fayette’s, the town bakery, I’m hungry again. Fayette’s makes wicked good jelly doughnuts and I have lunch money in my pocket. I decide to buy two doughnuts and call it brunch.
I cross the parking lot and IT comes out the door. Andy Evans with a raspberry-dripping jelly doughnut in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. I stop on a frozen puddle. Maybe he won’t notice me if I stand still. That’s how rabbits survive; they freeze in the presence of predators.
He sets the coffee on top of his car and fumbles in his pocket for the keys. Very, very adult, this coffee/car-keys/cut-school guy. He drops the keys and swears. He isn’t going to notice me. I’m not here—he can’t see me standing here in my purple marshmallow jacket.
But of course my luck with this guy sucks. So he turns his head and sees me. And wolfsmiles, showing oh granny what big teeth you have.
He steps toward me, holding out the doughnut. “Want a bite?” he asks.
BunnyRabbit bolts, leaving fast tracks in the snow. Getaway getaway getaway. Why didn’t I run like this before when I was a one-piece talking girl?
Running makes me feel like I am eleven years old and fast. I burn a strip up the sidewalk, melting snow and ice three feet on either side. When I stop, a brand-new thought explodes in my head:
Why go to school?
ESCAPE
The first hour of blowing off school is great. No one to tell me what to do, what to read, what to say. It’s like living in an MTV video—not with the stupid costumes, but wearing that butt-strutting, I-do-what-I-want additood.
I wander down Main Street. Beauty parlor, 7–Eleven, bank, card store. The rotating bank sign says it is 22 degrees. I wander up the other side. Appliance store, hardware store, parking lot, grocery store. My insides are cold from breathing in frozen air. I
can feel the hairs in my nose crackle. My strut slows to a foot-dragging schlump. I even think about trudging uphill to school. At least it’s heated.
I bet kids in Arizona enjoy playing hooky more than kids trapped in Central New York. No slush. No yellow snow.
I’m saved by a Centro bus. It coughs and rumbles and spits out two old women in front of the grocery store. I climb on. Destination: The Mall.
You never think about the mall being closed. It’s always supposed to be there, like milk in the refrigerator or God. But it is just opening when I get off the bus. Store managers juggle key rings and extra-large coffees, then the cage gates fly up in the air. Lights wink on, the fountains jump, music plays behind the giant ferns, and the mall is open.
White-haired grandmas and grandpops powerwalk squeak-squeak, going so fast they don’t even look at the window displays. I hunt spring fashions—nothing that fit last year fits now. How can I shop with Mom if I don’t want to talk to her? She might love it—no arguing that way. But then I’d have to wear the clothes she picked out. Conundrum—a three-point vocab word.
I sit by the central elevator, where they set up Santa’s Workshop after Halloween. The air smells like french fries and floor cleaner. The sun through the skylight is summer hot and I shed layers—jacket, hat, mittens, sweater. I lose seven pounds in half a minute, feel like I could float up alongside the elevator. Tiny brown birds sing above me. No one knows how they got in, but they live in the mall and sing pretty. I lie on the bench and watch the birds weave through the warm air until the sun burns so bright I’m afraid it will make holes in my eyeballs.
I should probably tell someone, just tell someone. Get it over with. Let it out, blurt it out.
I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy—old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length.
A rent-a-cop strolls by. He studies the wax women in the Sears window, then strolls back the other way. He doesn’t even bother with a fake smile, or an “Are you lost?” I’m not in fifth grade. He starts back for a third pass, his finger on his radio. Will he turn me in? Time to find that bus stop.
I spend the rest of the day waiting for it to be 2:48, so it’s not all that different from school. I figure I learned a good lesson, and set my alarm clock early for the next day. I wake up on time for four days in a row, get on the bus four days in a row, ride home after school. I want to scream. I think I’ll need to take a day off every once in a while.
CODE BREAKING
Hairwoman has been buying new earrings. One pair hangs all the way down to her shoulders. Another has bells in them like the pair Heather gave me at Christmas. I guess I can’t wear mine anymore. There should be a law.
It’s Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they’ve done to him? We are reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones.
It’s all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break—these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn’t he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward?
I can’t whine too much. Some of it is fun. It’s like a code, breaking into his head and finding the key to his secrets. Like the whole guilt thing. Of course you know the minister feels guilty and Hester feels guilty, but Nathaniel wants us to know this is a big deal. If he kept repeating, “She felt guilty, she felt guilty, she felt guilty,” it would be a boring book and no one would buy it. So he planted SYMBOLS, like the weather, and the whole light and dark thing, to show us how poor Hester feels.
I wonder if Hester tried to say no. She’s kind of quiet. We would get along. I can see us, living in the woods, her wearing that A, me with an S maybe, S for silent, for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame.
So the code-breaking part was fun for the first lesson, but a little of it goes a long way. Hairwoman is hammering it to death.
Hairwoman: “The description of the house with bits of glass embedded in the walls—what does it mean?”
Utter silence from the class. A fly left over from fall buzzes against the cold window. A locker slams in the hall. Hairwoman answers her own question.
“Think of what that would look like, a wall with glass embedded in it. It would … reflect? Sparkle? Shine on sunny days maybe. Come on, people, I shouldn’t have to do this by myself. Glass in the wall. We use that on top of prison walls nowadays. Hawthorne is showing us that the house is a prison, or a dangerous place maybe. It is hurtful. Now, I asked you to find some examples of the use of color. Who can list a few pages where color is described?”
The fly buzzes a farewell buzz and dies.
Rachel/Rachelle, my ex–best friend: “Who cares what the color means? How do you know what he meant to say? I mean, did he leave another book called ‘Symbolism in My Books’? If he didn’t, then you could just be making all of this up. Does anyone really think this guy sat down and stuck all kinds of hidden meanings into his story? It’s just a story.”
Hairwoman: “This is Hawthorne, one of the greatest American novelists! He didn’t do anything by accident—he was a genius.”
Rachel/Rachelle: “I thought we were supposed to have opinions here. My opinion is that it’s kind of hard to read, but the part about how Hester gets in trouble and the preacher guy almost gets away with it, well, that’s a good story. But I think you are making all this symbolism stuff up. I don’t believe any of it.”
Hairwoman: “Do you tell your math teacher you don’t believe that three times four equals twelve? Well, Hawthorne’s symbolism is just like multiplication—once you figure it out, it’s as clear as day.”
The bell rings. Hairwoman blocks the door to give out our assignment. A five-hundred-word essay on symbolism, how to find hidden meanings in Hawthorne. The whole class yells at Rachel/Rachelle in the hall.
That’s what you get for speaking up.
STUNTED
Mr. Freeman has found a way around the authorities again. He painted the names of all his students on one wall of the classroom, then made a column for each week left of school. Each week he evaluates our progress and makes a note on the wall. He calls it a necessary compromise.
Next to my name he’s painted a question mark. My tree is frozen. A kindergartner could carve a better tree. I’ve stopped counting the linoleum blocks I ruined. Mr. Freeman has reserved the rest of them for me. Good thing, too. I am dying to try a different subject, something easy like designing an entire city or copying the Mona Lisa, but he won’t budge. He suggested I try a different medium, so I used purple finger paints. The paint cooled my hands, but did nothing for my tree. Trees.
On a shelf I find a book of landscapes filled with illustrations of every stinking tree that grows: sycamore, linden, aspen, willow, fir, tulip poplar, chestnut, elm, spruce, pine. Their bark, flowers, limbs, needles, nuts. I feel like a regular forester, but I can’t do what I’m supposed to. The last time Mr. Freeman had anything good to say to me was when I made that stupid turkey-bone thing.
Mr. Freeman is having his own problems. He mostly sits on his stool and stares at a new canvas. It is painted one color, so blue it’s almost black. No light comes out of it or goes in, no shadows without light. Ivy asks him what it is. Mr. Freeman snaps out of his funk and looks at her like he just realized the room was full of students.
Mr. Freeman: “It is Venice at night, the color of an accountant’s soul, a love rejected. I grew mold on an orange this color when I lived in Boston. It’s the blood of imbeciles. Confusion. Tenure. The inside of a lock, the taste of iron. Despair. A city with the streetlights shot out. Smoker’s lung. The hair of a small girl who grows up hopeless. The heart of a school board director …”