Tears welled up in my eyes.
More children took their seats, all of them staring at Cecille and Donny, who seemed to be suffering greatly in my presence. I’d had enough. “I don’t stink!”
“Yes, you do!” said Donny. “You smell just like … just like … a skunk!”
Cecille giggled. “Yeah, a skunk!”
Savanna in the pink dress shook a finger at her. “That is mean.”
A girl started to sit down, but Cecille waved her off. “No! You don’t want to sit by a skunk!”
Donny grabbed my braid. “See? She even has a skunky tail!”
Tears slipped down my cheeks, and I put my hands over my face, amid the whispers of “Skunk!”
Why didn’t Miss Molly come over there and stop them? Why didn’t she save me?
Donny pinched my stomach, hard.
And then, I couldn’t help it. The pee seeped out and drenched my underwear, turned my denim skirt dark in patches, and then spread to the edges of the chair.
Drip. Drip. Drip onto the primary-colored blocks of carpet that made up the Happy Time Circle. The green square darkened in spots.
“Look!” cried Donny. “The skunk peed her pants! Now she smells like … skunk piss!” He pinched his nostrils shut, and the other children followed suit.
I looked to Savanna for help.
Slowly, Savanna slid her chair over, away from me. Then she pinched her nose shut as well.
Miss Molly approached the Happy Time Circle, a dark look on her face. But she said nothing to the children all holding their noses. Instead, Miss Molly rolled her eyes slightly and sighed, mumbling under her breath, “I thought we’d at least make it to recess before someone did that.”
The classroom aide was Miss Nola, the gray-haired lady from earlier. No longer sweet, she scowled and pinched my elbow with old, wrinkled fingers. “Come on.”
When I stood up, warm pee dripped down my legs and into my perfect lacy black-and-white socks. By the time we reached the single-stall faculty bathroom at the end of the hall, each footstep squished. The aide opened up a new package of white underwear and handed me one, along with some rough brown paper towels. “Clean yourself up. I’ll be out here.”
Through sobs and sniffles, I held a paper towel under the water until it was a soaked, mushy ball, then pushed the button of the soap dispenser and let the glittery pink ooze out. I wiped my legs, shivering as the cool water and soap dripped down, and dried them with a scratchy paper towel. Some of the soap dried sticky.
As hard as I tried to clean off the smell, it lingered. Donny was right. I smelled like skunk piss.
I put on the big and baggy underwear, which felt like it might fall down at any moment. That afternoon, after enduring an entire day of children holding their noses whenever they came near me, I trudged out to my mom’s car.
She grinned. “Well! Did you pick out a best friend yet?”
Instead of answering her question, I claimed I had a stomachache. When I got home, I ran upstairs and stripped off my clothes, my new Mary Janes, the no-longer-perfect lacy black-and-white socks, and stuffed them all in the garbage.
I was five years old. Old enough to know I had not turned out to be the child my mom wanted me to be. Old enough to know I was already a failure at life.
{7}
STILL TOO TIRED to move, all my efforts were focused on breathing regularly. I sat there on the floor, staring at the concrete wall on the other side of the room. I hadn’t reminisced about my school years for a while. In my day-to-day life, there was no time to think. There was definitely no time to wallow in the past.
I was doing what I liked, getting paid a lot of money for it, and was about to head off to college. I hadn’t ever planned to tell Rory much about my torturous grade-school years. And why the hell would I? They were bad enough to live through once.
I had been afraid to tell him. Who would ever want to love someone who had been known as Skunk Piss for much of her childhood?
Maybe Miss Molly was blind, I don’t know, but she never stopped them from tormenting me. Maybe she didn’t want to deal with it. Maybe she was stupid. Maybe she’d been bullied in childhood and was relieved that no one bothered her.
I didn’t tell my mom that year. Or the next. Not that she was absent from my life, or even school. She brought cupcakes for every open house. I liked those nights. Both my parents, holding my hands, lingering over my desk to see my latest drawing or math or writing. On those nights, I was like everyone else, simply another kid with proud parents.
Telling them the truth would have ruined it.
Their pride kept me silent. Because I loved that they were proud of me. And seeing what I was really like in the classroom on a daily basis—weak, victimized, cowering alone at recess, sitting at the end of the lunch table by myself—would have deflated them. Maybe they would have felt like they failed. The biggest reason I never told them?
I was terrified they wouldn’t love me anymore.
No one wants to be the parent of the class loser.
Their love and pride were all I had to hold on to, and all it took to keep me silent.
Finally, in fifth grade, I’d had enough.
Why did it take so long? Really, it wasn’t like I was walking up to other little girls and asking them to jump rope or share my Nutella at snack time, then having to deal with their saying no. I interacted with none of them, so there was little chance for any actual rejection to occur.
Plus, there was the little matter of the pariah cloud over my head.
But children are optimistic at heart. So I waited for someone to ask me to play. And in the meantime, I kept busy.
I read. Constantly. From second grade on, the librarian would let me stay in at recess and help her shelve books. I loved being there in the quiet windowless room, alone with all the shelves stuffed with stories, many happier than mine, but some much more tragic. Those books were my friends.
Charlie Bucket and Lucy Pevensie and Harry Potter. They begged me to read them. So I was okay as long as I had books. Maybe, deep inside, I held out hope that I could escape like Charlie and Lucy and Harry had. Like one day I would be swept away to run a chocolate factory or discover I had secret magic skills. Or maybe I would find a wardrobe and say, “Screw this, I’m going to Narnia.”
In fifth grade, our teacher was mean. We’d had Miss Reed as a long-term sub in fourth grade when our teacher had a baby, and she had been kind and patient. Even to me. But when she returned in the fall as Mrs. Klein, she apparently took her new full-time job seriously. Maybe it was Mrs. Klein’s constantly demanding so much of the entire class. But for whatever reason, it seemed like nobody had energy left after dealing with her to mess with me. At least some of the time. Sure, there were days when I was treated like a leper, nothing new. But there were also days when the girls who had tormented me for years were, if not exactly my friends, at least my allies.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Something on that order.
Some days, it was as if they realized we needed each other to survive fifth grade.
And I began to trust. Cecille had blossomed into a lovelylooking ten-year-old. Still mean as hell on the inside, which just goes to show you can’t exactly judge a book by its cover. But even she had mellowed with the advent of Mrs. Klein’s fascist regime. At lunch there were even some days when I sat with her and her friends, who actually seemed like they were my friends, too.
And why wouldn’t they want to be my friends?
Despite my enduring nickname, which had been shortened to Skunky, I did not smell. My parents had money. I always had the best shampoos and soaps and perfumes and trendiest jeans and dresses and shoes. I got good grades. I wasn’t terrific in gym class, but I wasn’t ever picked last, either. And slowly, I began to let down the walls that had bricked their way up around me since that first day of kindergarten.
Then, in March, a new girl showed up. Christine had flaming red hair and freckles all over her face. She was prett
y and wore white jeans with a blue sweater. That first day, cheeseburger and fries day, I took my tray in the cafeteria and stopped as I decided where to sit.
The new girl sat by herself at the end of the lunch table. But instead of bowing her head low over her tray, trying to seem invisible like I usually did when I ate alone, she held her head high, looking around at everyone.
Christine seemed fearless.
I wanted to sit by her. Christine knew nothing about me, none of my history. Finally, I could have a friend. Perhaps even a best friend. I hadn’t been invited to sit with Cecille and her crew that day, so I took one step toward Christine.
Cecille stepped in front of me. “Skunky, you sitting with us?”
I glanced quickly over at Christine and swallowed. For a matter of seconds I considered my options because there usually were none. Maybe I will blow off Cecille, blow her off like she doesn’t matter, and go claim Christine as my one and only friend. Instead, believing that things had changed, hoping that at last I was truly part of the powerful faction of the fifth grade, I nodded.
We sat down. I dumped a packet of ketchup onto my plate and dipped a crinkled fry into it.
Cecille leaned forward toward the center of the table, beckoning us in with a hand. Her gaze darted about, conspiratorially. “So, Olivia.”
I froze and stopped chewing.
She never—none of them ever—called me anything but Skunky. If there was a teacher or other adult around, they refrained from calling me anything.
Cecille continued, “We’ve been talking.”
I swallowed, waiting. “Yeah?”
She raised and lowered a shoulder. “We’d like you to be a permanent member at our lunch table.” She looked around at the others. “Right?”
The rest nodded, some um-hmming, some giggling as they ate their cheeseburgers.
I was too stunned to say anything. It had finally happened. All those years of torment were over. Had they realized I wasn’t going to cave? I wasn’t going to go begging them to be my friends? Was that what they’d been waiting for all this time? And they finally decided it was time to reward me by letting me in?
Whatever the reason, I didn’t care. I smiled and nodded.
“There’s one thing you have to do,” she said.
I leaned in as Cecille whispered in my ear. My stomach clenched as she told me the price of being included and slipped something onto my tray.
Later, back in class, I told myself, You don’t have to do it. You can turn them down. Becoming one of them is not worth it.
But instead, I closed my fist around the item in my hand and took my seat, waiting for the right moment. We were in creative writing, my favorite part of the day. Because not only did I like reading to escape my world, I also liked writing my own worlds. I bent my head over my desk and began working.
“Pssst.”
I looked up. Mrs. Klein’s seating chart put the troublemaking boys in the front row, good students in the back, which left me in the second-to-last row. Cecille was across the aisle and one seat back from me. She jabbed a finger at Christine’s empty seat, which was right behind mine. Up at the front of the room, Christine was sharpening a pencil. Mrs. Klein entered grades in her computer, her back to us.
I glanced over at Cecille. She glared at me and mouthed, Do it.
I opened my left hand. A white packet of ketchup lay there, a little scrunched from where I’d been squeezing it. I quickly ripped the corner open and looked back up at the front.
Christine still hunched over the sharpener; Mrs. Klein still faced the other way. I grabbed a tissue out of my desk, crumpled it, then stood up and walked to the garbage can at the back of the room, tossing it in. On my way back, I dropped the open packet of ketchup on Christine’s chair, then quickly took my own seat.
She began to head back toward me. Please, let her see it, let her see it. Don’t let her sit on it.
And I realized there was no way Christine could miss it. She was coming from the front; she would totally look before she sat down. I breathed a sigh of relief. She would pick it up, throw it away, wonder who had done it.
But nothing bad would have happened. Nothing that I couldn’t take back.
“Pssst!”
I whipped my head toward Cecille.
A big smile on her face, she waved at Christine. Christine hesitated for a second, and then a smile spread across her face. She waved back. She wasn’t looking at her seat. The new girl was simply responding to a friendly classmate.
Christine sat down. Apparently without looking, because she quickly jumped to her feet behind me. “What is on my—” The butt of her white jeans was splotched bright red.
“Oh no,” said Cecille, so loud that everyone turned around. “Did you get your period, Christine?”
Christine’s hip brushed my arm as she ran for the door at the front of the room.
Mrs. Klein looked up. “You need a pass, young lady!”
But Christine was gone. And the entire class was laughing. Well, the entire class except for me. I sat there and tried to persuade myself not to cry.
And all these years later, sitting in the basement, I hated Cecille for making me feel like I had to do that. And I still wished I could take it back.
{8}
I TRIED TO stand, and actually managed to get up on my knees. But I had to bend forward and rest on my right elbow to keep from passing out. Slowly, I straightened up. My vision swam.
I took a couple of deep breaths until it cleared. “Maybe I’ll just stay here for a bit.” I leaned back against the wall and slid down on my butt, my knees bent.
I shut my eyes.
A door slammed overhead. An engine started. Tires crunching gravel.
I opened my eyes. Had Mrs. Dixon left again? Seriously?
I hoped she took her demon child with her.
The floor above my head creaked.
I froze.
Flute Girl was still in the house.
I exhaled. “I hope to hell your mother put the fear of God into you.” I didn’t know what I’d do if she tried anything. There had been only one EpiPen in my purse. So if Flute Girl decided to try the let’s-see-what-happens-when-the-allergic-girl-gets-stung game again, I’d be toast.
Steps on the stairs. Quiet, like she was trying to be sneaky, but she sucked at that part. Flute Girl was more skilled at confronting people with a stick in her hand.
“Get the hell out of here!” I yelled. “Just leave me alone.”
No response.
I wished I could get up and go bang on the door, but I was still working on breathing. Then a sound started. A low note on her flute. Then another. A song. She was playing a freaking song.
Nuh nah, nuh nah nuh nah na naa naa, nah nuh nah nuh naa naa …
Was that…?
“Holy crap.”
Lady Gaga.
Flute Girl nailed it. If I didn’t hate her guts, I might have been impressed.
Hopefully, Mrs. Dixon had hidden the key to the padlock, maybe even taken it with her. So Flute Girl had been forced to shift from killing me with bees to serenading me with a pop music medley.
She moved on to “All the Single Ladies,” then some old Maroon 5. I said nothing as she played and gave no indication that I even heard her. But as song segued into song segued into song, I began to wonder if she was still trying to kill me, only in a different way.
I got to my feet and slowly made my way over to the bed. I went the long way to avoid the shards of china and spaghetti mess on the floor and collapsed on the bed, wincing as the bounce jarred my bad shoulder and my throbbing hand. I awkwardly scooted up and laid my head on the pillow, then pulled the blanket over my head. It drowned out a bit of the music, but not entirely.
I groaned and patted the blanket closer in around my ears. But then it was too close to my face. After my brush with never breathing again, I couldn’t take it and pushed it away.
The ceiling was made up of white tiles. Clean, though, no mold. r />
The demonic flutist’s repertoire moved on to what could have been either Rihanna or an abysmal rendition of a Coldplay hit. Unsure, I tried to think of something to get my mind off the noise.
Unintentionally, my mind went back to fifth grade, to that day.
* * *
Christine ran out of the room. I sat there, not laughing with everyone else, feeling remorse for what I’d done. For what Cecille had made me do. Sure, I had a choice. But did I really?
What if I had said no? Cecille and her group would have barred me for good. But by completing the task, I had a shot at being embraced by her group. Because I had always been someone who looked at the big picture.
After about half an hour, Christine came back into the room wearing some baggy gray sweatpants, balled-up white jeans in one hand. I stared down at my math book as she neared me.
I was anxious for afternoon recess. I wanted to talk to Cecille and the others. I’d done what they said, which made me part of them now.
But Mrs. Klein was furious at the disruption and put us on lockdown until the end of the day. No recess. No talking. And after school, my mom was waiting outside, so I couldn’t do anything more than go straight to the car.
At school the next day, I took my seat. I tried to get Cecille’s attention, but her back was to me as she talked to a girl across the aisle. I turned and glanced sideways at Christine, whose gaze was trained out the window. She had on black leggings and a cream-colored sweater. No chance of repeating the humiliation of the day before with dark pants, I supposed.
Art was the first class of the day. But instead, Mrs. Klein said, “I’ve informed Mr. Millis that you’ll be a little late to art today.” Someone groaned. Mrs. Klein glared and crossed her arms. “I have a little story for you all.”
“Once upon a time, there were five buffaloes. They decided they wanted to go roller skating. Now four of the buffaloes took off, leaving the other buffalo behind. She wasn’t very good at roller skating, so they laughed at her and left her behind because she was so slow.”
Someone coughed.
Mrs. Klein continued. “The buffalo sat there, alone. And she began to cry because the other buffaloes were mean to her.”