Love (And Other Uses for Duct Tape)

  “She’s at her locker,” I tell him and he takes off. Tom’s hand squeezes mine. “I just don’t want you to think I’m a freak.”

  “Belle, I know you’ve had seizures.”

  “But not all the time. They were pretty controlled,” I say, letting go of his hand so I can shut my locker. The warning bell rings. “I’ve got to go.”

  I rush away from him without looking at his face, without letting him say anything. I rush away because I’m afraid I might see what he thinks. I grab Em at her locker and we book it to Law. Neither of us says anything, but I know both our brains are racing.

  When we get to law class, I squeeze Em’s hand, which makes Mimi lift up her eyebrows, smirk, and whisper something to Brittney who sits in front of her. Brittney did not grow up here. She moved in, so I forgive her for being stupid enough to hang out with Mimi.

  Mr. Richter mock applauds Em and me for making it before the bell, something we have a hard time doing. Then, he announces that we’re going to discuss abortion today.

  Somebody groans. I pull out my notebook. Brittney opens up her laptop. Mimi cracks some gum and announces, “It smells like puke in here.”

  Mr. Richter sighs and says, “Well, open a window then, Mimi.”

  “It didn’t smell until Belle came in,” she says, moving over to the window and yanking it open.

  I gulp.

  Shawn chucks a pen at her and goes, “Shut up, Mimi.”

  “Mr. Young!” Mr. Richter stands up tall, his face reddens.

  “She was insulting Belle,” Shawn says, all relaxed, leaning back in his chair as casual as if he were sunning after a ball game.

  “It doesn’t matter, Shawn. I will deal with Mimi. I am the teacher,” he points at us all, “and you are the students.”

  Mimi saunters back into her chair and hikes her skirt up to show a little more thigh.

  “Mimi. See me after class.”

  She pouts, leans forward and says, “Why? I didn’t throw anything.”

  “You know why.” Mr. Richter shuffles back to his desk.

  I think that both he and I want to start the day over. I start sniffing while he opens up a book. Kara shoots a note at me. I open it. It says: You do not smell like puke. Mimi is puke.

  I smile back at Kara. She gives me a thumbs-up. I love Kara. I write that to her: I love you. Then I shoot her the note. It’s sad that we have to waste so much paper writing notes. They should just let us text, which is much more environmentally friendly, although I guess we aren’t supposed to write notes either. But it’s not like teachers confiscate your paper if you get caught the way they confiscate cells.

  Mr. Richter stops fiddling around with his book and says out of nowhere, “This class is not going to be about what you believe or what I believe about abortion. It’s about the law. Got it? No big political debates? No religion. Just the law. That’s it. Anything else and you’re out of here. I’m serious.”

  He gives us a glare down. I start doodling in my notebook, trying to draw Tom’s face. I sneak a sideways glance at Em. She’s fiddling with her fingers in her lap, which is something she only does when she’s super nervous. I’d give anything to go over there and just grab her hands and hold them still, to lie to her and tell her everything is going to be fine.

  “Okay.” Mr. Richter clears his throat and leans back against his big metal desk. This means things are getting serious. “Who can tell me the first state that began the march towards legalized abortion?”

  Kara shoots her hand up. “Colorado. 1967.”

  “Good,” he says. He looks at me. “Belle? What did Colorado base its legislation on?”

  My hand keeps doodling Tom, but I make eye contact with Mr. Law Teacher, try to ignore Mimi’s snort and say, “The Model Penal Code. It allowed abortions in instances where the mother’s life was at stake. It was adopted by more than one third of all the states by 1973.”

  Mimi coughs. “Suck up.”

  Shawn mutters, “Shut up, Mimi.”

  “Belle’s an abortion gone bad,” she says and smirks, because for Mimi this is brilliant. She looks over at Andrew for approval. He’s staring out the window. His shirt is buttoned all the way up. I force myself to not imagine the hickey line hiding under there.

  Shawn glares at Mimi and says it again, only way more menacing. “Shut. Up.”

  Mr. Law Teacher’s head snaps on his neck in a nice version of teacher-possessed and he says, “Mr. Young, are you at it again?”

  Shawn shrugs.

  Mimi whispers really loudly to Brittney, “It’s funny that Belle would know all about abortion. It’s not like she and Tommy are ever going to have sex. She’s so frigid.”

  Everyone’s heard that. Even Mr. Richter. He turns bright red and starts sputtering. He has no idea what to do. Neither do I. I start writing I hate Mimi in the margins of my notebook. I flash a glance up at Em, but she’s schlumped in her chair looking like she’s going to cry, which is not normal Em behavior. She’s normally the one who screams at Mimi for me; that’s my Em, defender of all underdogs.

  She’s not paying any attention.

  She’s thinking about babies.

  It’s all I can do not to get up and hug her.

  Mr. Law Teacher is now pulling Mimi out of the classroom by her elbow. She has to quick-walk in her juicy outfit to keep up. The heels are a killer. People titter. I don’t care. Em looks up like she’s finally back in this universe.

  “You okay?” I say to her while Kara simultaneously announces to the world that Mimi’s a bitch.

  “No, you are,” Brittney says to Kara.

  Kara lifts her eyebrows. “You do not want to go there.”

  “Abortion is stupid,” Shawn announces to the world like an idiot. I’m not sure why he does this. Maybe to change the subject off of whether or not Tom and I are ever going to have sex, I don’t know.

  He keeps going on. “I mean, it’s stupid to get pregnant in the first place, but unless you’re raped or going to die, I don’t think you should ever get an abortion. You have to be responsible for your actions. Without responsibility you don’t have nothing. You have no self-respect. You have nothing. You can’t just run away from the costs of your choices.”

  Em sinks lower in her chair.

  “Never?” Kara’s eyebrows raise and she’s into super feminist woman mode. “What if Em got pregnant? You’d want her to throw away the rest of her life? Would you?”

  The world freezes. One century passes. Another.

  “Of course,” Shawn says. “If we were stupid enough to make a baby.”

  Kara shakes her head. “Your entire life would change. You’d have no freedom. All your dreams would be gone. And it wouldn’t be your decision, Shawn. It would be Emily’s. Right Em?”

  Kara expects Em to rally beside her like normal, but Em just nods and looks down again. She takes out her camera, snaps pictures of all of us in the room. Kara quiets.

  Even Shawn notices and his voice comes out sweet and kind. “Emmie? You okay?”

  She nods and takes a picture of him but doesn’t say anything.

  Shawn stares at me for help, for a clue. I raise my shoulders in a big lie, pretending I don’t know anything, pretending that Em doesn’t have a secret.

  “Mimi’s an idiot,” Em announces. Everyone stares at her because she didn’t answer Kara.

  When we were little every time there was a concert for chorus or an assembly where we had to go up and have our names called for honor roll, Emily would get really nervous. She’d start wiggling her long fingers together, moving one then the others. My mom called it “fidgeting.” Mimi used to call Em “freaky fingers.” I thought Emily had grown out of it, but the moment Mr. Richter comes back into class she has to put her camera away and her freaking fingers start.

/>   “Between 1968 and 1973 how did people challenge abortion laws? On what grounds?” Mr. Richter says, striding back to the front of the class, pretending like nothing happened. Mimi returns to her seat a second later, pretending to be a good girl but flashes me a look of pure evil.

  Andrew raises his hand. “Vagueness.”

  “Good. Good.” Mr. Richter keeps lecturing and asking questions. We keep answering and life goes on in our first period law class. Em barely looks up. It’s going to be a long day.

  It’s later in the morning when I’m walking to Advanced Math that Shawn finds me in the hall. His eyes plead. “Belle. Can I talk to you for a sec?”

  We duck into a corner of the stairway. Freshmen skitter by on their way to the foreign languages section of the building. They look at Shawn with awe. He’s tall with big shoulders to match his voice and he walks like the jock he is. He’s a good guy though.

  That jock stereotype is wrong when it comes to Tom, and Shawn. Most stereotypes are wrong, if you think about it. For example, since I’m a liberal high school feminist folk singer some people might assume that I do not shave my armpits. Those people would be misinformed and nasty. Those same people would assume Shawn was a sexist idiot because he’s good at baseball and soccer. They would also be wrong. Shawn is sweet and funny and he’s really good with kids and his mom. He cooks a great spaghetti casserole, which is corny, but true. My stomach grumbles. Thinking about all this labeling stuff is hard work.

  Still, though I love Shawn and his spaghetti casserole, I do not want to talk to him, especially not about Em.

  “I’m going to be late for Math,” I say.

  He pulls a pout. “It’ll only take a second.”

  I lean against the wall with one shoulder. The light flickers over us. From the smell of it, it seems lasagna is being made in the teachers’ lounge. Shawn smiles at a sophomore junior varsity baseball player, Josh something or other. Then, Shawn focuses.

  “Is Em mad at me?”

  Everything in my body relaxes. He has no idea. He doesn’t suspect.

  “No,” I answer, honestly.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  He exhales big and long. “Good. ’Cause she’s been acting funny all day.”

  Andrew trots by and hits Shawn on the shoulder. They start talking baseball and I push off the wall, my feet ready to take me to Math. Shawn grabs my elbow, lightly, not in some he-man aggressive way and he says to Andrew, “I’ll catch up.”

  Andrew hustles down the stairs.

  Shawn blue-eyes me and says, “Do you know what’s wrong with Em?”

  I shake my head.

  “You should ask her,” I say. The light flickers again and starts buzzing.

  “But she’s not mad at me?”

  “I swear.”

  He nods, lets me go, flashes me a smile and says, “I just really love her, you know?”

  He takes the stairs three at a time, ascending towards the top of the school, moving fast and sure, like he knows just who he is and where he’s going, a confident guy, a popular guy with a beautiful girlfriend, a college acceptance letter, and possibly some Eastern Maine baseball playoff action in his future. I watch him go and mourn him, the Shawn I am about to lose to fear the same way I just lost my best friend, Emily.

  Our math teacher is missing in action.

  “He’s meeting with the vice principal,” Anna explains when I sit down. She gestures at the board.

  It says in big white crooked letters: You have 20 minutes to amuse yourselves. Do not break any laws. Do not commit murder. Do not fornicate. Think about math.

  “Wow,” I say.

  Anna nods and her still-green hair swishes around. “Yeah. I know it. You up for the bike ride Wednesday?”

  “I’ll be there,” I tell her.

  She smiles. “Good.”

  “I’m not bringing any tampons though.”

  “Condoms?”

  “Nope.”

  She laughs and then she starts asking everybody else. She just goes up and down the rows, reminding people. Sweet Dylan says hi and we talk about music for a minute. He tells me he thinks Bob gets too jealous about everything.

  Dylan’s leg bounces up and down, jingling change or keys in his pocket. “He’s all nervous about colleges.”

  “Because you’re going to Carnegie Mellon and he’s going to UMaine?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dylan,” I gulp in air and rush the words out. “Are most guys awkward about sex?”

  “You and Tom still haven’t done it.”

  “Shut up.”

  I hit him in the shoulder. He laughs and doesn’t even rub at it. “Powerful fist there, Belle.”

  I lower my voice, “I mean it because … ”

  I should not be going there.

  “Because I wasn’t?” he starts mega-watt smiling. “Thanks, I’m honored.”

  My hands cover my face. Dylan plucks them off. “I think we weren’t awkward because it was a natural progression of our love, you know? Like we were exploring who we were and we felt so safe with each other. God. Did I just say natural progression?”

  “Yep.”

  He cracks up. Then he gets it under control. “I just mean. It wasn’t like we built it up into a big thing so it wasn’t like I had the chance to be awkward.”

  “Okay. Right.”

  “It will be fine,” Dylan says. “Tom will be fine.”

  Crash be-bops in and pounds Dylan’s big shoulder with his small hand hard enough for Dylan to jerk forward. Crash is only carrying a notebook. I bet he’ll ask to borrow a pencil. He always does. “Dylan, how’s my favorite gay-man friend?”

  Dylan laughs, but does not rub at his shoulder. “Good, how’s my favorite Pakistani-descended American friend with an appropriate name?”

  Crash bashes his hip into the desk and smiles at us. He says to me, “Sometimes that boy just wants me to flip him off, you know? It’s like he’s calling for it. Belle, you got a pencil?”

  “I know,” I say, handing him a pencil and Crash has already turned his attention to Anna, his newest ideal girlfriend. Anna, oblivious, starts talking to him about the bike ride Wednesday. Crash almost drools.

  “Will you be wearing spandex?” he asks. “Little biking shorts? Sports bra?”

  Dylan shakes his head, sits down and starts texting Bob a note, which will earn him three nights’ detention if he gets caught. I know he’s doing this because I, being nosy, ask. I start working on a song and then get distracted because Andrew and Mimi are having a shout-down. I’d forgotten they hooked up Saturday night. I shudder. I’m not sure how I’ll look at either of them again.

  “We are going out,” Mimi says.

  Andrew opens up his math book. “You wish.”

  Mimi’s head flips back. Her eyes narrow and for a second, she looks, gasp, vulnerable. “What?”

  Andrew totally ignores her and turns a page in his math book. Nobody ever looks at our math books. Mimi is not stupid. She knows this. “Andrew!”

  Still nothing.

  She comes back at him, standing up now, shoving her breasts near his face. “What?”

  Andrew leans away. “I said, ‘You wish.’”

  Mimi’s voice lowers to a whisper but everyone else in class is quiet now, listening, just like me, watching the five-car-motorcycle pileup that is known as Mimi Cote. “You said I was awesome.”

  “Having sex was awesome but that doesn’t mean you are awesome,” Andrew says in a quiet voice for Andrew, which really isn’t saying anything. “But you and I are definitely not going out.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “You’re in love with Tom anyway.”

  Everyone looks at me. I wave but my bloo
d stops moving, I think, just freezes there in my arteries and veins.

  Mimi puffs herself up. “I don’t have one-night stands.”

  “Right.” Andrew stands, eyes hard and mouth stuck in a fake smile. He spreads his arms wide. “Everybody hear that? Mimi and I are not going out. We are not a couple.”

  Mimi stares stunned, shocked.

  “Sit down, Andrew,” Dylan says.

  Anna gulps. I can actually see her swallow.

  Mimi’s lips twitch like they used to do when we were little and she didn’t get to be the flyer anymore on the eighth-grade cheering team, or when she didn’t make it to the geography bee in sixth grade. Her lips twitch like that because she is trying not to cry. And one horrible little part of me kind of likes it, because she’s such a jerk-head to me all the time, but this other part can’t stand it, and remembers us practicing cheers together and giggling while we ate popcorn with mustard on it and our fingers turned yellow like a Muppet’s.

  So I say, “Leave her alone, Andrew. Don’t be such a user.”

  Andrew’s mouth loses his happy look and it becomes a hole in a guitar, nothing comes out, nothing goes in.

  I say more softly, “Mimi, everything’s okay.”

  She power pivots and stares at me. “Shut up, Belle.”

  All the hate in the universe is in those three words.

  “I don’t need a pity party from Frigid Girl and her do-gooder friends,” Mimi announces and slams out of the room.

  “Frigid Girl?” I cough out my new superhero name. “I’m Frigid Girl?” I start giggling. If I’m Frigid Girl, what would my super powers be? I will not answer that.

  Dylan pats my shoulder. My stomach does a back tuck and settles somewhere near my kidneys.

  Andrew sits down and announces, “Belle’s not a frigid girl. Maybe a Do-Gooder Girl, and Mimi’s just a bitch. Right, Dylan? I mean before you came out you were banging Belle all the time.”

  This, as my mother would say, is not a helpful comment. My hand shakes and I use it to cover my eyes, like I can hide or something, incredibly mature of me, I know.