Love Me Never

  “Isis, how did you know there was going to be a lockdown? Are you…” she lowers her voice and leans in. “Involved with shady characters? It’s okay to talk to me, you know. I can convince the police you didn’t mean any harm. There are programs for students like you - ”

  “I saw the kid who likes knives too much run across the quad in his underwear with a plastic one.”

  She looks understandably shocked. Principal Evans gets on the PA and announces it’s safe. On my way to the parking lot I pass the open Principal’s door, where knife kid sits in a chair, surrounded by three cops arguing what to do with him. I flash him a thumbs up, and he makes scissors with two fingers and drags them across his throat in a jovial greeting, but it doesn’t faze me. I’m still in a daze.

  I got kissed.

  The one thing I never thought would happen to me, happened.

  -3-

  3 Years

  10 Weeks

  1 Day

  I quickly find out two things about East Summit High;

  1. Avery might be the most popular, but Kayla is widely regarded as the prettiest.

  2. Every boy in school has had at least five wet dreams about her.

  This means that Kayla didn’t have to earn her popularity by groveling to Avery like everybody else. She simply showed up, grew a pair of fabulous knockers and had a face to die for, and Avery recruited her into her friend group solely based on how pretty she is, and how spineless. And I say that with the utmost respect. Kayla is, comparatively, spineless. But she isn’t stupid. This means that Kayla might actually like being popular, or she might actually like Avery. I’m willing to bet it’s the first more than the second, because who honestly likes contract slavery other than two-hundred-year-old racists and the raunchy BDSM crowd? No one.

  Kayla invites me over to consume cookies and interpret the giant stack of World History homework she can’t quite seem to grasp, which is understandable – grasping the true glory of Genghis Khan is a little difficult to do when he’s not here himself, shooting fletched arrows into your ass.

  “Hello, spawn!” I coo at Kayla’s baby brother as he waddles into her room. He burps at me.

  “It looks like you guys speak the same language,” Kayla quips.

  “Where was that sass when Jack was making you cry at Avery’s party?”

  “Uh, hello? He’s my crush? I’m not going to sass him.”

  “Flash ‘em the sass before you flash ‘em the ass.”

  “What kind of saying is that?” She laughs.

  “Grandma-saying. She’s the head of the motorcycle gang at her nursing home.”

  I amuse myself for a few minutes by showing her brother how to blow spit bubbles. Kayla’s still a little beat up over the fact Jack kissed me, for real this time, and I’ve spent the past hour assuring her it was nothing, but she still won’t believe me.

  “Everybody’s saying you looked shocked. Like, a good shocked. And what the hell is that?” She points at my hand. I hold up the snakeskin-patterned wallet.

  “Oh this? I just, uh, picked it up.”

  “It looks like something from a corny cowboy movie.”

  Her brother squeals and pulls my hair. I blacklist him.

  “Hey, don’t call my wallet corny. Do you have a snakeskin wallet? No. Even if you did, yours would be uncool, whereas mine was both free and satisfying, by which I mean I stole it from my nemesis’ butt pocket while he was macking on me.”

  “You stole Jack Hunter’s wallet?” Kayla’s eyes bug out. I wave it in front of her with a smirk.

  “What, you think I’d go down without a fight? Wanna see what’s inside?”

  Her curiosity wars visibly with her crush, but curiosity kills all types of cats, including people. She scoots next to me. I peel it open and expect some sort of unholy glow to come from within like in cartoons, but all that comes out is a piece of lint and the smell of pine. Inside is Jack’s ID – him glaring at the camera intensely.

  “He’s so hot,” Kayla sighs. “He even takes good ID photos.”

  “That’s a sure sign of being an alien. Or plastic surgery. Possibly both.”

  “Look at the age!”

  I peer at the age stamped on the ID and frown. March 20th, 1989. There’s no way he’s that old.

  “That’s not his birthday,” Kayla insists. “It’s January 9th, 1994.”

  I give her a long, meaningful look and she flushes. Fake ID – fine. We all gotta buy booze and get into clubs somehow. It’s pretty standard. I rifle through the rest of the wallet – five bucks cash, some change, a library card because he’s a nerd, some receipts for chicken and milk and measuring tape. Pretty basic high school kid stuff, but surprisingly tame coming from the wallet of a guy who talks like an Einstein clone and looks like an underwear ad. I was expecting loads of condoms and maybe a line of molly.

  Kayla’s brother screams in my ear for candy. I tell him the plants in the yard need watering and he immediately trundles towards the kitchen spewing spit bubbles.

  “Look!” Kayla grabs something from the wallet. It’s a stack of business cards. Or, at least I think they’re business cards. But they don’t actually have any business addresses on them, so they can’t be business cards. They’re a deep black with a single red stripe on the bottom, with the same name and same phone number in dangerously svelte red text;

  Jaden 894-354-3310

  “Jaden must’ve really liked Jack to give him this many cards,” Kayla muses. She’s so dense sometimes.

  “They’re his, Kayla. He’s passing them out. That’s why he has so many.”

  Her mouth makes a little ‘o’. “But…but his name isn’t Jaden.”

  “It’s a pseudonym.”

  “Why would he need one?”

  “It’s probably for a job.”

  She nods. I bite my lip and torture my brain into thinking more clearly. I take a single business card and put the rest back, handing the wallet to her.

  “Here. You can do the honors of returning that. He’s probably stressing its gone – this is your chance to tip the scales in your favor. Even if the scales are made of misogynism and the bones of small infants.”

  She takes it, beaming. “Thanks!”

  “Is Avery still mad at you for leaving the party?” I ask.

  “Oh, no. I mean, Avery never really gets mad mad, you know? She sort of just, doesn’t talk to you. Or look at you. Or acknowledge you exist.”

  “Ah, yes. Perfectly reasonable.”

  “I was supposed to, um, talk to Wren. You know, student council president guy.”

  “Your student council prez goes to boozers? Consider me impressed.”

  “He’s cool like that, but at the same time he’s also intimidating. Like, really intimidating. He’s going to MIT and he doesn’t look anywhere at you except your eyes. No lips, no boobs, not even your eyelashes. Just. Your. Eyes.”

  She stares at me as if demonstrating, wide-eyed and unrelenting, and I shudder.

  “Alright, alright. I get the picture. Mega creep.”

  “Yeah, but like, a socially accepted mega creep. It’s weird. He’s friends with everybody. And I mean everybody. He watched an entire season of Naruto just so he could talk to the anime club kids.”

  I whistle. “He’s certainly impressive. Hellbent. Also possibly from actual hell.”

  “Anyway, Avery wanted me to, um, talk to him.”

  “Just talk?”

  Kayla nods a little too hard for my liking. “She wants more funds for the French club. She’s president of that. She’s trying to set up a trip to France for them or something.”

  “So you talking to him would get you funds? Are you that good at talking?”

  “Just, you know. I’m nice. I can get things from people.”

  “You’re pretty.”

  “But I’m also nice! And I’m smart! Okay, maybe not in World History, but who even cares about stupid plagues anyway? We have vaccines now! I’m really good at home ec and Mrs. Gregory sai
d I have a natural talent for geometry, okay? I’m a lot of things besides pretty so don’t just say that like everyone else!”

  Her chest is heaving, and her face is a little red. I put my hands up in surrender.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re a lot of things besides pretty. I just meant…I just meant –”

  “You just meant what? I know I’m pretty, okay? I know that! That’s all anyone talks about! But I’m not pretty enough, I guess, because you’re the one Jack Hunter kissed and not me!”

  She shouts the last sentence. It hangs in the air like icicles, cold and jagged.

  “I didn’t - I’m sorry –”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it anymore,” she murmurs. “I have to watch Gerald, so if you could just leave, that’d be great.”

  I feel all the air punch out of me at once.

  “Oh. R-Right. Sure.”

  I grab my backpack and books, shuffling them away. Kayla gets up and goes into the kitchen, wiping dirt off her brother’s face and scolding him for trying to eat daisies. I want to say bye, or apologize again, but there’s a thick curtain of awkward closing on the stage that is our tenuous friendship. I want to say a lot of things to her. I want to thank her for being the first person to really invite me over to their house, to talk to me, to eat lunch with me. But those words get stuck in my throat, the gratitude I have for her dammed up by shame.

  As I leave and start my car, I mentally kick myself. Of course she gets told she’s pretty. She gets it all the time. Pretty girls like her are sick of hearing it. I was insensitive to even say it – but how could someone like me understand what pretty girls experience?

  Ugly girl.

  Jack kissing me – was it really such a huge deal for her? Maybe I underestimated her feelings for him. She must really like him if she’s that upset. Hell, if I still believed in love and had someone I liked and they kissed my sort-of-friend, I’d be mad at that friend too.

  She has every right to hate me.

  Mom texts me, asking me to buy sponges and some blueberries on the way home. I’m feeling terrible about what I said – so terrible I grab a bar of chocolate. Or three. When I get home I sneak into Mom’s bathroom and count her pills – she’s down two. That’s good. That means she took them. I can breathe easier, and maybe get a solid night’s sleep.

  “There’s a package for you from your father,” Mom says. She’s up and baking muffins – hence the blueberries. It’s a good sign. No, scratch that; it’s the best sign I’ve seen in a while.

  “Thanks.” I smile. Forced smile. Always a little forced. It won’t be a real smile until she’s really better.

  But I don’t remember what better looks like, anymore.

  The package is wrapped in brown paper and on my bed. The box inside reads Chanel. Dad married a rich programmer from New York – they’ve got two-year-old twin girls, and a boy on the way. I’ve never met them, but just knowing I have stepsiblings wigs me out. I see them on Facebook through the pictures Dad posts, but it’s like they aren’t real. It’s like they’re photoshopped Loch Ness monsters and the University of Whatever is going to prove the hoax by showing me the beam of light in the background is wavy or something.

  They’re real.

  Sometimes I wish they weren’t.

  And that’s horrible, so I stop wishing that. Or at least I try to.

  Inside the box is a beautiful chiffon blouse. It’s light and fluffy and with dozens of frills, expertly tailored to my measurements. Dad’s new wife wheedled them out of me two summers ago when I visited. She’s nice enough, but it’s things like this that remind me she just wants me to like her. She thinks gifts of expensive name brands are all it takes to woo a high school girl.

  She’s half right. A blouse like this would woo any girl. Any girl who isn’t ugly. But before I can fold it carefully and put it in my closet to never touch again, I stop and consider this one. If I wore this, would I be prettier? Will it make me prettier? Maybe if I put this on, I can be pretty, and understand a smidgen of what Kayla’s problems are, what she feels. Maybe I can understand her better.

  I pull my shirt off and slip the blouse over my head. It’s so cool and airy, and the ruffles bounce with my every step. I can see my angry red stretch marks on my stomach through the gauzy fabric, but they don’t bug me as much for some reason. I smile at myself in the mirror – I look different. Prettier.

  Maybe Nameless was wrong. Maybe I am pretty.

  The door to my room opens just then, and I’m frozen in the headlights that are Mom’s eyes. She looks me up and down, and immediately shakes her head.

  “Oh, honey, that doesn’t suit you at all.”

  The air punches out of me again, but this time in a deeper way. A more final way. Mom opens the door wider, totally oblivious to how deep the wound is.

  “The muffins are ready. Come down and have some.”

  “Awesome. One sec. Just, uh, let me change out of this stupid thing.”

  When she’s gone I can’t look at myself in the mirror without flinching. The ruffles seem to droop idiotically. The color is an eyesore, especially on me. It’s not my thing. Being pretty is not my thing and I was stupid for testing the logical facts and practical boundaries. There are rules. And the number one rule is don’t try to be someone you’re not. I’m myself, no matter how ugly that is, and trying to be someone prettier is stupid, a waste of energy. I won’t do that ever again, no matter how much I want to. It’s not worth it. I will never be anything but ugly. And I’ve come to terms with that. I’ve made my peace with that.

  I stuff the blouse in the box and chuck it in the closet.

  -4-

  3 Years

  12 Weeks

  4 Days

  For approximately two weeks I debate the validity of ruining Jack Hunter’s life slash reputation slash all future prospects with women. Or men. Just love in general, really. Guys like him shouldn’t get to be happy. He ruins a girl’s happiness at least once per hour. On Wednesday, someone left him a love letter tucked between the wipers of his black sedan. He tore it off without a second glance and ripped it in two. A distant wail could be heard as a well-dressed, beautiful blonde girl from drama club had her heart shattered and smeared all over the pavement. She’d been watching for his reaction, and now she had to watch the pieces of her carefully-crafted letterfeelings whisk across the parking lot. I chased the pieces around, grabbing as many as I could, and comforted her for three hours in a stairwell while she cried on me. I pieced the letter back together. It was full of Shakespearian references and a particularly well thought out passage in which she drew comparisons between Jack and Romeo. I informed her she was right – Romeo’s manic mental illness and pigheaded refusal to acknowledge another person’s feelings are mirrored exactly in Jack. She thanked me for that keen assessment by calling me a bitch and storming off.

  Dramaclub Wailer was just the first. In two weeks of stealthily following Jack around campus, I count four love confessions, each more creative than the last. The girl who runs the morning announcements says Jack’s won a prize from the announcement committee, and to come to the PA room after school to get it. She does this every. Single. Day. And yet every day Jack never goes near the PA room – he doesn’t even walk in the same hall as it. He takes a route that leads him around it and makes him almost late for fourth period. I sneak a peek at the PA room after school for a few days; sure enough, announcement girl waits in that room for thirty minutes every day before finally locking up and going home with a defeated look on her face. A girl in art club is working on a marble statue of him (it’s definitely him, everyone knows that) complete with resplendent Greek posture and a perfectly replicated face. She’s left the crotch area blank and goes red if anyone asks her about it, but she’s diligently chipped away at it since Freshmen year, and she’s now a Senior. Another girl writes poetry and leaves it in his locker, and another girl in culinary class is drawing up plans to make him a three-tier cake for his birthday in Ja
nuary.

  Through all this, Jack is impervious. He reportedly dropped out of art class so he wouldn’t have to see the statue in the studio. With an expression of utter boredom, he cleans out the dozens of new poem scraps that appear in his locker every day. It’s like he’s numb to whatever a girl does to get his attention. No one dares to call his name out loud in the hall. He doesn’t have any guy friends – he keeps to himself at lunch and during recess he’s in the library.

  At first I stayed far away from Jack to quell the rumors, and to maybe-hopefully get Kayla to forget the fact he kissed me. But there are so many rumors now; it’s just one irritating slurry. ‘They’re going out’ is the usual one, the most out-there one is that he’s my pimp and I’m addicted to lean, and my favorite is the one where I’m his long-lost half-sister and we’re doing the incest and doing it hard. None of them are helping my relationship with Kayla, of course, but today she sat at my table and we ate together. In total silence. Which isn’t exactly a step in the right direction, but it’s a step nonetheless. She only started sitting with me after she returned Jack’s wallet to him, which I watched in on. It went much smoother than their first encounter – she handed it over and he actually nodded at her! A positive signal! I don’t see his lips form the words ‘I’m sorry’, though, so technically he still hasn’t swallowed his pride and technically I am not regrettably still at war with him.

  Kayla’s smile lasted for hours after that exchange. It’s incredible how much control he has over her emotions, and how little he cares. Any guy in school would kill to make her smile like that. And his indifference towards her only makes me hate him more. No one should pour their entire heart onto another person without even an acknowledgement.

  I open the door to the library. Frigid air mixed with the pulpy smell of old books greets me. The librarian eyes my purple streaks but doesn’t say anything. She’s seen worse. I meander down the aisles, looking up and down for him. Finally, I find him in the romance section, leafing through a book with a beefy guy on the cover. I feel my eyebrows shoot up.