The Detour

  I slipped down a little in my seat. Where was she going with that? Because it seemed to me like, more often than not, I was the buffalo left alone. Was she finally going to address the bullying in the room?

  “Finally, one of the buffaloes noticed the other one, crying all by herself, and went back to help her up. She joined the other buffaloes, and they all roller-skated together after that.”

  Um, what? I scratched my head.

  Mrs. Klein uncrossed her arms and shook a finger at us. “It has come to my attention that there has been some bad behavior in this room. We have a new girl, and I will not tolerate anyone treating her any way but the way we should treat others. Nicely.”

  My face began to burn. Seriously? I get treated like crap for years, and now the new girl gets picked on one day and gets a protective lecture from the teacher?

  Mrs. Klein scowled. “Mostly, I’m incredibly disappointed that the one person who knows what it’s like to be picked on, the one person who should know better—” Her gaze turned to me. As did several heads of others in the room.

  I slunk further down in my seat, and my face got even hotter.

  “—was involved in this. So this behavior will stop. You will all get along with one another from now on. Do I make myself clear?”

  I nodded, and everyone I could see also nodded. They wanted the lecture to be over. She dismissed us for art class, and we walked, single file, out in the hallway.

  We sat where we wanted in the art room, on long benches at cafeteria-style tables. Cecille sat down, and I headed for that table. But when I got there, she set a hand on the bench beside her. “You’re not sitting here, Skunky.”

  I froze. My heart began to pound. My hands trembled at my sides. Was she messing with me? I had done what she asked! Risked getting in trouble for it. She had to be joking.

  But the girls around her sported smug looks and shook their heads. One pinched her nose. Cecille looked behind me and called out, “Christine, come sit with us.”

  I turned and almost bumped into Christine. The new girl glared at me. “Cecille told me what you did. What did I ever do to you, Skunky?” She sat down next to Cecille, in the spot that was supposed to be mine.

  Cecille grinned at me. “Go sit somewhere else.”

  Blinking back sudden stinging tears, I quickly went to a table at the other side of the room. There, I slid in beside a couple of girls who wouldn’t care if I was there or not. They would ignore me, like everyone else did, but at least they wouldn’t say anything mean to me.

  I stared down at the table, trying to keep the tears from progressing. And I reached up to the back of my neck and rubbed. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

  My fingers got tangled in the hair at the back of my neck, and I yanked. The resulting sting made me jump. But the shock also, momentarily, took away the urge to cry. I reached up again and snapped out another hair. Slowly, after a few more, I was calm. I wasn’t going to cry. I had control.

  What’s the saying? You spend your entire adulthood trying to recover from your childhood?

  I didn’t know if that was true, but some days it seemed like it made sense.

  The hair pulling began that day in fifth grade and got worse over the summer. By fall I had a bald patch on the back right side of my head. I could disguise it because my hair was long, so I wore a side braid every day of sixth grade. Seventh grade I changed it to a braid going back into a ponytail, and eighth grade I gave up and wore a thick headband. At least I could change the colors to match my outfits.

  One summer day right after eighth grade ended, my mom and I were shopping. I was in the dressing room at American Eagle, trying to fit into a pair of size six shorts, which I knew was never going to happen. Along with the hair pulling, I’d also taken to snacking away my stress and loneliness.

  “Olivia, are they on yet?”

  “Just a sec.” I held my breath, squeezed in my gut, and buttoned the shorts. Then I pulled off my tank top to try on a shirt. But my headband got caught in the strap, and I yanked it off. Just then, my mom reached the end of her patience and pushed open the door.

  “Sweetie, I’d like to get home by…” She trailed off as her mouth fell open. Then her eyes narrowed and she touched the side of my head. “What happened? My God, you’ve got a bald patch!”

  “Get out!” I shoved her away, trying to close the door on her. “Get out! Please, get out!”

  But she pushed her way back in and shut the door behind her. We were inches away. Clutching the tank top to my chest with one hand, I tried to fix my hair with the other.

  “Have you been doing that to yourself?”

  My chin wobbled and my eyes filled with tears. I shut them, hoping to avert the flow. I nodded.

  “But why? Why would you do that? Is something wrong?”

  After years of hiding, years of keeping secret that I continued to be the most reviled kid in my class, I opened my eyes and the tears spilled out.

  Mom pulled me to her. She stroked my hair, long and slow. Her words were soft. “Tell me. You can tell me.”

  My mouth was mashed into the shoulder of her white T-shirt, so my words were rather mumbled. “Kids pick on me.”

  “What?” She stopped stroking for a moment, and then began again. “Why? Why would they do that?”

  Oh God. How many times had I asked myself that?

  I swallowed and took a shuddery breath. Then I lifted my head over her shoulder and stared at myself in the mirror on the door. My eyes were red, my face was blotchy, hair everywhere. And I told her the truth, starting with the first day of kindergarten.

  Her shoulders slumped. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “Why didn’t you ever notice?”

  Her face crumpled, and she set a hand over her eyes and began to cry.

  Instantly, I regretted my words.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know!” She dropped her hand. Her mascara was running as she put her hands on either side of my face. “It’s my work. I’m quitting tomorrow.”

  “No, Mom, come on.” I set a hand on her shoulder. “You love being a lawyer.”

  She shook her head. “I was too busy with my career to notice my child was being bullied to the point of…” She trailed off. Then she leaned forward and kissed my bald patch. “I’m done. I’m quitting.”

  “You don’t have to quit. But please don’t make me go back there.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Are you kidding me? You’re never stepping foot in that school again.”

  Later, when we needed to explain home school for my official book biography, we chalked it up to my busy writing schedule. And after I had stated it so many times in interviews, that pragmatic falsehood became in my mind the real reason for spending my high school years in the comfort of my own home.

  But that was a load of crap.

  My official bio also left out my therapy. Turns out my behavior had a name. Trichotillomania. It took a few months of pills and sessions, but I stopped. Journaling about the years of bullying was part of my therapy. And when I finally broke down and spilled everything to Rory, I felt like a load had been lifted. Because he knew everything and still wanted to be with me.

  Success had been the best revenge. I was out on book tour, staying in five-star hotels and having strangers stand for hours in line to see me, while Cecille and her posse were sitting in stupid school. And yeah, I did some stalking online. I had a book deal and would be going to a huge university. Cecille was going to community college to be a dental assistant.

  One day maybe she’d clean my teeth.

  So I was over those years, pretty much. But I didn’t quit writing about them in my journal, in the trunk of my car. The one I did not want Flute Girl’s mother to get her hands on. Because in those hands, as long as I was her prisoner in that basement, my journal had the potential to be just as destructive to me as a box full of bees.

  {9}

  FLUTE GIRL FINALLY ran out of breath and clomped up the stairs far louder
than she’d descended. Obviously, there wasn’t anyone there to sneak up on. I shut my eyes and managed to doze. When I woke, I felt a little better. I rolled over on my side and stared down at the spaghetti and broken shards of china. I’d have to be careful or I’d end up cutting myself and—

  I blinked.

  Stupid.

  I’d been worried about finding a weapon, and there was an entire pile of sharp objects. Some were too tiny; I wouldn’t have been able to pick them up without cutting myself. But some were larger. Those could definitely do some damage.

  I stood and walked around the bed. I chose a jagged piece the size of my palm. A pink flower lay nearly in the middle of it, as did a stain of spaghetti sauce. I picked out another piece of the flower part for good measure. And then, another. I walked back around the bed and slipped them under the pillow. Then I went to the bathroom and brought out the flimsy wastebasket.

  I didn’t really want to clean up the mess. But it might mean a better chance of Mrs. Dixon not noticing that any of the pieces were missing.

  The crunch of tires on gravel. A car door slammed.

  “Crap.” Quickly, I reached for the debris.

  Footsteps on the stairs signaled that I was nearly out of time.

  Click!

  The door flew open.

  Mrs. Dixon stood there, in the same flowered smock, scrub pants, and shiny red clogs as before. “You’re cleaning?”

  I nodded and tried my best to look like I wasn’t rushing to get done. But my heart pounded. A bead of sweat slipped down my temple.

  She came toward me.

  I froze, then straightened up and backed away from her. She held out her hands. “Here, you’re making more of a mess. I’ll do it.”

  When I didn’t move, she took the wastebasket from me. I glanced down at the mess and walked around her, sitting on the other side of the bed as she cleaned. She said, “You seem to have recovered.” But her tone was almost snide, like she thought I had been faking.

  “I took a nap.”

  She paused and locked her eyes with mine. “Must be nice, to take a nap when you feel like it.”

  My right hand clenched into a fist. “There’s not a lot else to do in here.”

  She tilted her head. “I imagine when you’re home, you have the luxury to do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want to do it.”

  She was pissing me off. Was it on purpose?

  Mrs. Dixon kept talking. “That must be nice. You didn’t even have to go to high school, did you?” Obviously, she knew the answer already or she wouldn’t have brought it up. Was she trying to make me sound like some kind of pampered, spoiled teenager who had always had everything handed to her?

  Because sure, maybe it seemed like that on the outside. Maybe the damn bio on the back of my books made it seem that way, but I had been through a ton of lousy years before anything got better. The past few years had been pretty sweet, though. I loved having a nice car and being able to buy pretty much anything I wanted and choosing what I wanted to do every day. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I relished going to conventions or conferences or book signings and having people fight to talk to me, get near me. Finally, I was the girl at the lunch table whom everyone wanted to sit by.

  No one was going to make me feel bad about my success. No one. The universe owed me, and no one would get me to think differently. Especially not Mrs. Daryl Dixon.

  I realized my face had grown hot, and my heart was pounding.

  She bent back over, pushing the mess into the wastebasket. The back of her neck was exposed. Soft. Pale.

  Vulnerable.

  I gulped.

  Those sharp pieces of broken plate hidden beneath the pillow could do some damage to that patch of flesh.

  My hand slid under the pillow.

  My fingers closed around a jagged piece of china. I quickly flipped it around so that I held the smooth side. Then I slowly got up on the bed, rising to my knees.

  “You have no idea how lucky you have it, do you?”

  Just keep talking.

  Gingerly, not to mention painfully, I made my way across the bed.

  Slide right hand. Right knee. Left knee.

  Breathe.

  “I try and teach my own daughter to be honest and work hard and good things will happen. She works so hard at her flute.”

  Slide right hand. Right knee. Left knee.

  Breathe.

  “That should be enough in this country. Work hard. Do all the right things. Everything should be okay.” She sighed. “But I don’t want her to turn out like me. Working at a nursing home. Giving sponge baths to old people who can’t even remember my name from day to day.”

  Slide right hand—

  I leaned forward too fast and lost my balance, falling forward onto my right elbow. The mattress jiggled. I stifled a gasp and scrunched my eyes shut.

  Please please please …

  “I had a dream. I had a dream, and it was taken away. I don’t want that to happen to her.”

  I slowly let out my breath and opened my eyes.

  She was still cleaning up, oblivious to me.

  Right knee. Left knee.

  Breathe.

  I paused, gazing down at that patch of pale skin. Then I lowered myself until I knelt on the edge of the bed, my weight distributed so that I was balanced solidly.

  I leaned over and raised my good arm, poised above her.

  One good jab, that’s all it would take.

  I didn’t have to kill her, only create enough pain to startle her, distract her enough to be able to get out the door and lock it. Then I’d deal with Flute Girl.

  “Because sometimes all the hard work and honesty in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing if someone else is dishonest and uses…”

  I shut out her babble and licked my lips. Just one good jab.

  I swallowed and tightened my grip.

  You can do this.

  My heart raced. I steeled myself, poised to pounce—

  “MAMA!” Flute Girl stood in the doorway, eyes wide, arm thrust out, pointing at me.

  I lost my balance and fell forward.

  Before I went even a foot, Mrs. Dixon grabbed my wrist and yanked me all the way off the bed. I slammed face-first onto the floor.

  The breath was knocked out of me, and a fresh bolt of pain shot through my shoulder. I hung on tight to that jagged piece of plate.

  To no avail. Mrs. Dixon was on my back, pinning me to the floor. She put a hand on my head and smashed one side of my face into the bits of plate and spaghetti sauce smeared on the floor. Her knee crushed my wrist, and I couldn’t hold on anymore. My fingers opened. I let the weapon go.

  Her knee lifted, and I tried to lash out with my good arm.

  Something immediately pinned it down. Something warm and squirming and alive. Flute Girl was sitting on my arm. I couldn’t use my slung-up arm to move myself. I could only lie there, panting, my heart pounding so hard it drummed in my ears.

  Mrs. Dixon left for a second. There was a rustle of bed-covers. Then her legs came into view.

  “You had quite a stash.”

  Clink.

  A piece of the broken plate landed in the wastebasket.

  Clink.

  Another.

  Then her weight was back on top of me. The two of them had me immobilized. My shoulder was on fire, and my cheek stung where broken bits of the plate dug into it.

  Mrs. Dixon’s breath on my ear was hot and moist. “Did you really think I’d let you hurt me or my daughter?”

  I said nothing.

  Flute Girl piped up, “She could have killed you.”

  Mrs. Dixon grabbed my hair and pulled up my head. She slammed it down again, my forehead hitting the green indoor/outdoor carpet—and the cement it barely cushioned—like a sledgehammer.

  I moaned at the thick surge of pain.

  Her mouth was back at my ear. “How would you feel? How would you feel if someone tried to hurt you?”

&nbs
p; “Just kill me already.” A mumble only. I wanted to yell the words, wanted to scream them. But my head was splitting apart, and it was all I could do to talk. “You’ve been trying to kill me since you found me on the road.”

  I braced myself for another head slam. Instead, her hold on me loosened for a moment. Actually, so long a moment that I considered trying to shove Flute Girl off my arm and make a break for it. But then her weight was back on top of me. “I’m sick of listening to you talk,” said Mrs. Dixon.

  Good. I shut my eyes. Maybe she’ll leave.

  Something brushed against my forehead, and I opened my eyes. A pink washcloth with orange polka dots dangled in front of me.

  What the hell?

  With strong, cruel fingers, she pinched my cheeks so my mouth opened. I tried to keep my lips glued together. But she pried them open and stuffed the washcloth in my mouth.

  “No!” But the word was a grunt as the cloth filled my mouth. I gagged. I wanted to scream.

  Breathe through your nose, breathe through your nose.

  “There. Now maybe you’ll listen.”

  Calm down, calm down. She just wants to talk.

  Something smooth, cool, and hard slid down my cheek. Back up, then down. Languorously. Almost … seductively.

  The breaths coming out of my nose whistled.

  “Isn’t it funny, that one side of this is so smooth? Harmless. I could do this all day and nothing would happen to you.” The object kept stroking up and down my cheek.

  “But the other side…”

  The coolness was no longer on my cheek.

  And then she held the third jagged piece of china in front of my eyes.

  I whimpered.

  And then the piece disappeared.

  “… is so sharp.” The edge poked at my cheek.

  I gasped, only there was no air to breathe in my mouth, so it was just a rapid inhale through my nostrils. Again I gagged, then struggled and tried to move, but they had me.

  Slowly, the edge trailed down my cheek and back up.

  “Imagine trying to do an author photo with a nice long scar.” She ran the edge back up and down.

  A chill ran down my neck, and goose bumps rose on my arms.