In fourth grade, they were fixing their lip gloss in the mirror of the girls’ room and deciding who was cool, and by fifth grade, they dictated who was so not. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, the Nasties solidified their clique and labeled the rest, the jocks, the nerds, the goths, the losers. Rachel and I have always sort of floated outside of clique boundaries. We were never subjected to the worst of the terrible Nasties torment—although they weren’t kind to us—but we never really fit in anywhere, either. Now Rachel wants to be “in” with them?
Great. School is going to be just great.
I stop pacing in front of my dresser mirror and take a look. Long frizzy waves of brown hair, vampire pale skin, freckles on my nose, and big muddy brown eyes that are so dull, I would fall asleep if I had to look into them. Nate had the same hair, the same brown eyes, but his eyes glinted with a ferocity that never looked boring.
The bleating of the alarm clock pulls me abruptly from sleep. It isn’t difficult; these days I don’t sleep so well, restless with anxiety. My eyes are open, but it takes a few minutes before I can bring myself to sit up. Then, as I plant unsteady feet, the floor crackles and slides away. Startled, I look down and smile. A pile of pencil sketches is scattered across the floor. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to draw—a map of Edinburgh. Dark lines molding the shape of a city, finer strokes of gray for the castle and moody fall sky.
Quickly, I wash and dress and make my way down to the kitchen. My father is already gone, without a farewell, of course. I can feel the tension practically smothering all of the air from the room with my mom’s nervous pacing. She flits around here and there as she waits for me. The kitchen is filled with early morning sunlight, the yellow gingham curtains and seat covers adding to the cheery effect. A false front, I think. The smell of cooking oil lingers, and there are pans and plates strewn across the counter.
“Oh, good, you’re ready,” my mother says breathlessly.
“Hey, Mom,” I reply, dropping my backpack on a chair.
“Sweetie, did you sleep well? You look a bit tired. Here, I made you breakfast; look, scrambled eggs, toast. Have some orange juice.” She is talking a mile a minute, practically doing a jig as she dances from one side of the kitchen to the other. “High school! I can’t believe my baby is starting high school. Take a vitamin!”
“Wow. Okay, you can stop hovering, Mom. It’s just the first day of school. I’ve already been through eight of them before this.”
“But it’s the first day of high school! You’re all grown up. I can’t believe it,” my mother repeats. She pauses and her forehead tightens. “You’ll come home immediately after school, right, Cora?” she asks.
“Yes, Mom,” I answer. I can feel the irritation inching into my voice. I try to push it down, but I need to get out of the house. Now.
“I don’t want you hanging around anywhere,” my mother warns. “And you’ll watch out for traffic?”
“I understand, Mom. I’ll come straight home and I’ll be careful. Promise.”
“All right. I love you. Be careful, and have a good day. I can’t believe it’s your first day…”
“I love you, too, Mom.” I wave good-bye as my mother gathers her belongings and moves into the garage. I scoop a couple of forkfuls of runny eggs into my mouth and take a hurried bite of toast, then throw the rest in the trash, toss my dishes in the sink, and get ready to dash out of the house without drinking any orange juice or taking my vitamin pill. Very rebellious.
Suddenly, my mother pops her head back in through the door to the garage. “You’ll come home straight after—”
“Yes, Mom!” A flash of ire rises into my throat, onto my tongue. It tastes bitter. “I promise!” I pull my backpack onto my shoulder and move past her, stalking through the garage, then, guilt getting the better of me, turn and tell her again, “I love you.”
When will she get off my back? And when will I stop worrying that an angry word to her will…make her fall apart?
My mother just raises her hand and gets into her car.
My ten-speed bicycle is a smoky, silvery blue, and it’s beautiful. I caress the frame, lovingly squeeze the tires. They are both soft. Quickly, I grab the pump. I am so stupid for not checking the air pressure last night. Ugh. My hands are covered in grease, but I at least manage to avoid getting it on my clothes. And then I am on my way, and as I cruise down the street, my legs pumping hard to regain familiarity with the pedals, I can just about forget to feel anxious. The scenery is a blur and I hardly remember to notice it, to resent it. My mind is as blissfully blank as the wind.
Not for long.
As I pull up to the high school, with its tan brick facade, and dull, darkened windows that peer back at me like listless aliens, the churning in my stomach returns.
Quickly, I wheel my bike over to the crowded bike rack and chain it up. The parking lot is filled mostly with dusty older cars that look like hand-me-downs, probably from parents to kids or from older siblings to younger ones. The last part of that thought is accompanied by a twitch in my gut.
My gut. I never felt like I had a gut before The Accident. I’d gotten stomachaches—or tummy aches as my mom calls them—but my gut hadn’t ever been a part of my anatomy I was aware of. Now I know just what that metaphor, to feel like you’ve been punched or kicked or any other manner of battering in the gut, means.
Anyway, I had better snap out of it. I can’t just hang around here staring at the cars all day. People will really think I’m weird.
I steel myself, take a deep breath, and walk toward the front doors. The doors swing shut after each body that passes through them, beating the air as if to say, There’s no coming back out. Dozens of kids are pouring past me, like salmon swimming upstream. Everyone is pushing to get in here, and I’ll bet no one even actually wants to be here. As I look all around, the urge to turn and run is strong. Very strong. Oh my gosh, I so don’t want to be here.
Well, tough.
The corridors of the school are narrow and dimly lit. The walls are painted mustard yellow, and the linoleum floor tiles are a grayish white like dirty dishwater. So different from the cheery hallways of my middle school. Even the classrooms in Lincoln Grove Middle School had been painted in bright, happy colors: sky blue and buttercup yellow, with encouraging posters and artwork welcoming the students. By the time I’d started the eighth grade at LGMS, coming to school felt like being enveloped in a warm, fleecy blanket. If not the most fun place to be, it was familiar and safe. But this, Lincoln Grove High School, is just foreboding. It’s cold and scary.
I stop in the middle of the hallway, trying to get my bearings. I came in here once during the summer for freshman orientation and a pair of bored-looking seniors showed me, and a group of other kids whose last names started with the letters A-F, around. I can’t remember where any of the classrooms are, where these hallways go. Kids stream by me, swiftly dodging and moving past in circling eddies, like a river will wash around a tall rock or log. The tide of faces shows worry and excitement, eagerness and despondency. Upperclassmen find their friends and younger kids wander alone, searching.
Most of the kids look old. The girls have chests, actual chests, and bouncy, movie-star hair. I look down. It’s a flat slope all the way, and I can feel my blue jeans hanging loose at my waist, gathering at my ankles, pooling over the tops of my sneakers. I still look like a little kid. I don’t feel any different, no more grown up. But I’m in high school now. Shouldn’t I feel older? Shouldn’t I have good hair and curves and a boyfriend? Instead, I’m still flat and straight and hopelessly single. No one wants to date the dead guy’s sister. And probably, no one ever will. I glance around again and feel my stomach clench. This is it. I’m really here.
Yet, I can’t shake this awful sense that the next four years will be another kind of prison. I just have to get through this. Four years and then I’ll be free.
I feel myself floating adrift in the whirlpool of bodies, but in a strange wa
y, I find the sea of the hallway almost reassuring. Maybe if I see the others as this muddled, huddled mass, maybe no one will notice me at all.
I shuffle along, letting the current pull me, and I have the sense that I am like a rat caught in a maze of tunnels, moving endlessly toward some promise of…of what? Light? Life? Cheese?
The thought tiptoes idly through my mind, when suddenly I see something that makes me stop abruptly. That blonde hair. I know it. It’s Julie. Julie Castor, Nate’s ex-girlfriend. More specifically, the girlfriend who dumped him the night he died. The girlfriend whose ex-ness triggered Nate’s nighttime automotive antics. She is talking to some scruffy-looking guy with saggy jeans.
Julie glances up; her heavily lined green eyes meet my own and widen slightly. Then she looks away. I bow my head, afraid to look up and meet her hard green glare again. I was not prepared to see Julie. Well, I guess this is how it is…high school. I’d better get used to seeing people from Nate’s life, here, every day.
I finally find my locker in the next hallway and put a combination lock on it. Then I move along to my homeroom. As I enter into the classroom, a gradual hush descends, and twenty-nine heads swivel toward the door. I feel dizzy, and for a second, just a second, I think I might be sick. But Rachel is there, waving to me, and as I gratefully make my way to sit down beside her, the buzz of chatter and gossip resumes.
“You’d think no one ever saw a girl with a dead brother before,” I say softly.
Rachel puts her hand on my arm and squeezes. “Ignore them,” she whispers. “Hey, guess what’s happening this weekend?”
“What?”
“The LGH Bonfire! We have to go. Have to. Everyone who’s anyone will be there. Everyone.” Rachel still has the funny valley girl twang, and she has actually said the words “everyone who’s anyone.” What?
I shake my head as vigorously as I can without totally messing up my already messy ponytail. “Uh-uh, no way, lady. Not in a million years. Besides, my mom will never let me go.” For once, I am thankful for my mother’s crazy, overbearing rules.
MY MOM’S RULES:
No drugs (fine, makes sense)
No alcohol (also reasonable)
No riding in cars unless a parent is driving (a little bit overprotective)
No going out without a parent at night—ever (kind of crazy, right?)
Permission to go out without said parent on daytime outings will be given on rare occasions only (seemingly very, very crazy)
“What do you mean?” Rachel whines. “You have to come with me! I can’t go alone. Puh-leeeese!”
“I’m telling you, my mom won’t let me. I’m not allowed out after dark, remember? I might turn into a pumpkin or something.”
“No, seriously, you cannot miss this. And I can’t go without you. Please, just ask her. If you don’t, I will,” Rachel threatens.
“Yeah, good luck with that.” I smirk. “Anyway, I don’t even want to go.”
“What do you mean? How could you possibly mean that?” Rachel squeals.
“I don’t know. I’m just not…” My voice trails off as the teacher begins to call roll.
“Just ask your mom, okay?” Rachel wheedles.
“Fine, I’ll ask! Jeez.”
Rachel shoots me a wide smile, and I can’t help but return it.
After homeroom, Rachel and I split up and head to our first classes. I edge into the surge of students, bodies pressing tightly together, pushing and fighting through the halls. I have geometry. When I arrive in the classroom, the teacher, Mr. Lane, announces that everyone will be sitting in alphabetical order.
His voice drones on as he calls the names, “Allan, Andrews, Ballans, Belson, Bradley—” He looks up, looks around. “Bradley? Any relation to…” He doesn’t finish. I had begun to raise my hand, and I drop it too quickly, so that it slaps the wooden desk with a resounding clap. I can tell that he had been about to say something smart-alecky about my brother, but stopped himself when he remembered. My face is hot, and the nausea has returned. I stare at the ground. Really? Did this really just happen?
The class shifts uncomfortably, and the silence stretches on.
“Uh, sorry, Miss Bradley, for your loss. Your brother was quite a character—a, uh, fine young fellow.”
I can’t even begin to find my voice. I just nod my head and feel my ears catch fire. Seriously? A fine young fellow? I cannot believe this is happening.
The rest of the morning passes relatively smoothly—relative to the humiliating debacle of geometry class. My classes will be challenging, and there is sure to be a serious load of homework for each one. But I can’t shake the feeling that my teachers are examining me, looking for signs of—I don’t know—grief, similarity to Nate, craziness. Who knows? But I can sense that they’re treating me carefully. So are the other kids. A few girls I used to be friendly with B.T.A. (Before The Accident), like Callie Rountree and Carolyn Wright, have said hello to me, but I can tell they want to run away from me as fast and far as possible. Like I have leprosy or something. I pat my nose. Still there. No crumbling body parts.
At lunch, Rachel and I sit together as we have done since the first day of first grade. I bought the hot lunch and I cast around the tray for something edible. The chicken is simultaneously stringy and rubbery and strangely gray. The green beans are cold and rubbery, and the rice pudding is stringy and also gray. To be expected from a school-issue lunch. While we sit at our end of the lunch table, next to a wide window, Rachel keeps darting looks across the cafeteria at Josh Mills, one of the boys in our grade. We’ve known Josh for as long as I can remember—that’s how it is with most of the kids in our class, we’ve been together since we were babies—but we’ve never counted him as a friend. I mean, he is probably decent enough, but he’s definitely more interested in soccer than in girls. His hair is shaved close to the scalp, and his ears stick out like half moons on either side of his head.
He is laterally friendly with the Nasties, meaning his friends are friends with the Nasties, and he is allowed to sit at their lunch table. Important fact: He has never participated in the Nasties’ merciless shredding of other classmates. He’s never stuck up for any of their victims, either. (Well, neither have I, for that matter.) Still, I figure the fact that he’s never joined in the Nasty choral renditions of calling Rachel “McFattie”—her last name is McFadden—is a plus.
“So, I just have art left this afternoon. Thank goodness,” I remark.
“Mmm,” Rachel mumbles distractedly.
“They put me in Advanced Art, you know, with mostly upperclassmen. They hardly ever let freshmen into the advanced classes,” I tell her.
“Cool,” she mutters, clearly not interested even a little bit in what I’m saying.
“So, what do you have after lunch? History?” I ask, trying. Really trying.
“Don’t you think Josh got cute over the summer?” Rachel finally asks in a hushed voice. “Like, supercute?”
“Supercute? Really?” I repeat stupidly.
“Oh my gosh, yes! Are you not seeing?” Rachel continues. “I think I have the biggest crush on him!”
“Josh?” I ask. I am dumbfounded. I can’t see past the big ears and the Nasties.
“Yeah! Don’t you think?” Rachel carries on, not waiting to hear my opinion. “I mean, he must have grown like three inches.”
“Hmm,” I murmur.
“Do you think he’ll be at the bonfire?” Rachel asks.
“Well, you said everyone who’s anyone will be there,” I snicker.
“You’re right. He’ll definitely be there,” Rachel agrees, not noticing my tone. “You have to call me as soon as you ask your mom, okay?”
“Uh-huh,” I answer without really paying attention to the question. I stare out the window at the cars in the parking lot and the broken glass glittering on the sidewalk like diamonds. It’s funny how a blown-out windshield can look beautiful.
Nervously, I make my way to the back of the high school,
where the art studio is tucked away in a light-filled corner hallway. I enter the classroom and peer around. The walls are covered with a messy flood of color, cutouts from magazines and books, all kinds of images, paintings and drawings and photographs of sculptures, some of which I recognize, many more that I do not. Easels people the room, draped with canvases and drawing tablets. Students are perched on rickety stools stained with paint and dotted with spots of glue.
I settle down in the far corner of the room, near the windows, which are filthy and tall, reminding me of some neglected cathedral. Then I hang my smock, one of my dad’s old work shirts, on a hook at the back of the room.
There are fifteen other students in the class, mostly a mix of sophomores and juniors. Including me, there are eleven girls and only four guys. The teacher, Ms. Calico, looks young. She is wearing khaki bell-bottoms and a flowery blouse with a long silver chain and a thick wooden pendant hanging down by her belly. Her brown hair is messy—like mine, I think—short and tucked behind her ears. She is standing by her desk at the front of the room, flipping through a magazine.
Suddenly, a shadow fills the doorway. Ms. Calico looks up, then smiles. “Just in time,” she says.
I look up to see who’s come in with the bell. And I feel my stomach plummet into my feet. I stand up quickly, knocking my stool over. I’m frozen and I look away from the dark gray eyes that are now staring at me curiously. Work, feet, I plead silently. I bend down and pick up my stool, then sit and huddle behind my easel.
It’s a strange sensation, feeling all the color drain away from my face. The blood runs away slowly, leaving a sickening shiver in its wake.
Damian Archer. I glance up, and see him still standing in place, staring at the floor, a queasy grimace on his face. Good, I think, I hope he feels worse than I do. Maybe he’ll feel so bad, he’ll leave.
How can I be in a class with Damian? I can’t sit here in the same room as him. I just can’t.
Damian was in the car with Nate that night. The night of February 8. Nate died. Damian walked away. Walked away. My mom said it was Damian’s fault, his influence that made Nate do such a terrible and foolish thing. And looking at Damian in his black combat boots, black jeans, black trench coat, I’m inclined to believe it, too.