My Life in Black and White

  Ifonlyifonlyifonly

  ON MONDAY MORNING, I woke with a pit in my stomach. Why did I agree to this? What was I thinking? Then came a rap on my door and my mother’s voice. “Rise and shine!” Her chipper tone—plus the Lord & Taylor gift box in her hands—made me want to dive out the window.

  “Happy first day of school,” she said, beaming. “I bought you a little outfit…. I hope you like it…. If you don’t … well … we’ll just go back and exchange it later.”

  I nodded, afraid that if I opened my mouth I’d barf.

  “Here!” She handed me the box. “Take a look!”

  I nodded again, trying to smile. But when I lifted the lid and peeled back the layers of tissue, I felt sick. Inside was a floaty, cream-colored blouse and a lavender skirt embroidered with tiny, cream-colored flowers.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I murmured.

  “Don’t you love it? I thought the blouse was darling. And the detailing on the skirt makes it special without being too busy…. I wasn’t sure about sizes….” She hesitated. “But we’ll just take it back if it doesn’t work.”

  I nodded, feeling ten times worse.

  My mother hadn’t said a word about my weight since the accident. Food comments, yes. Hair comments, definitely: she freaked when she saw what Luna had done to me. But she hadn’t yet crossed the line to weight. Even now she was backpedaling. “I’m sure you’re still a size two, honey.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, knowing that I wasn’t. Knowing that she knew it, too.

  “Do you want to try them on?” she asked.

  “Not right now.” As I placed the clothes back in the box I mumbled something about gym being first period and not wanting to get my new outfit sweaty, which was, of course, total BS. I hadn’t even seen my schedule. “I’ll try them on later,” I added.

  Satisfied, my mother changed the subject to something even worse. “Have you done your oil yet?”

  Just like that, we were back to the face. I said I hated the oil; she said I had to do it, anyway. I asked what difference did it make? She asked did I hear what the doctor said about scar prevention? Then she whipped out a beige-colored bottle—some kind of miracle foundation she’d discovered at the Lord & Taylor cosmetics department, especially for scars. She told me that after I did my oil, she would be happy to do my makeup. “How does that sound?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “I think this will really make a big difference, honey. Why don’t we try it?”

  “Go nuts,” I said, suddenly too tired to argue.

  It’s not like I could look any worse.

  Here is a picture: sophomore girl, walking through the double doors of Millbridge Senior High School on her first day—a moment she has imagined a thousand times before. In her mind, it has always been her and her best friend, and they have always looked amazing—strutting down the hall like they own the place, hair flowing out behind them, legs tan and strong from running the two-mile, senior guys staring, senior girls frowning.

  But that is only a picture.

  That isn’t real.

  Real is walking into high school two weeks late, with your sister and her trombone. Real is a haircut from hell, ten extra pounds, and eyes so red from crying that even the Visine your mother gave you before you left the house didn’t make an ounce of difference. Real is incomprehensible.

  Not that my mother didn’t try. She tried the special foundation. Then her regular foundation. Then powder and blush. She even tried bright pink lipstick and dramatic, kohl-lined eyes, to distract from the graft. Nothing worked. The minute I got in Ruthie’s car I scrubbed it all off with a paper towel. I stuck on four Band-Aids, even though they looked ridiculous, and combed every possible strand of hair in front of my face.

  Now here I was, a hideous freak, slumped against the wall outside the guidance office, wearing my sister’s pants because nothing else fit.

  “You okay?” Ruthie asked as I stared down at my schedule.

  “No.”

  “Everyone’s nervous their first day…. Trust me … you’ll be fine.”

  I shook my head, feeling fresh tears spring into my eyes.

  Ruthie unzipped her backpack and pulled out some mini tissues. “Here,” she said gruffly. “Take these.”

  My sister wasn’t a fan of emotional displays. Of any kind. Whenever she saw people making out, or screaming, or bawling—even on TV—she would get all weird and twitchy.

  Like now. While I dabbed at my eyes, Ruthie shifted from foot to foot, buckling the chest strap of her backpack. The chest strap. Who buckles the freaking chest strap of their backpack?

  “First bell’s about to ring,” she said, glancing at her watch. “You know where sophomore hall is, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, wiping my nose. Last spring, the ninth grade had been bused over from the junior high for Step Up Day. All morning, we toured the building. Then, while everyone else was eating lunch, Ryan and I snuck into the janitor’s closet and made out in the dark, surrounded by mops.

  “Good.” Ruthie’s tone was brisk, businesslike. “So you know where you’re going. Locker, homeroom, library—all in sophomore hall. You’ve got your schedule. You’re good to go.”

  Good to go. Did she not see that I was having a breakdown here? That I was not qualified to “go” anywhere?

  “Hey.” Ruthie punched my arm lightly. “You’ll be fine.”

  I gave her a look to indicate that no, I would not be fine, and that she was the worst sister ever. But before she could respond, Sasha and Beatrice appeared out of nowhere, which is what they do. Whether they are suddenly holding a séance in your backyard or watching the SyFy Channel in your basement. I have seen their fashion sense evolve through the years—from combat boots to dreadlocks to capes. When I was in the hospital, they showed up with Guatemalan worry dolls (Sasha) and oolong tea (Beatrice). They have never been anything but nice to me, but still. Words cannot describe how weird they are.

  “Hi, Ruth,” they said. “Hi, Lexi.”

  I managed a watery smile.

  “Do you want us to walk you to your locker?” Sasha asked. Her voice was kind, her eyes soft. Her suspenders an arresting shade of orange.

  I shook my head. “That’s okay.”

  “You sure?” Beatrice squinted at me through her cat’s-eye glasses.

  “Yeah.”

  Ruthie glanced at her watch just as the bell rang. “Gotta go,” she told me. Then, “I’ll look for you at lunch.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  But as the three of them took off down the wall, I had the crazy urge to sprint after my sister and grab her by the leg, like I was a little kid. I don’t remember this, but my mother says I used to follow Ruthie everywhere. I called her “Woofie,” and I would get insanely jealous whenever anyone tried to play with her. We were at the playground once and some girl asked Ruthie to go on the slide. Apparently, I went ballistic, screaming, “My Woofie! My Woofie!” so loud that half the park came running over, just to make sure I was okay.

  Where was my rescue team now, when I actually needed it? MIA. There were people everywhere—laughing, shouting, scurrying to their lockers—but they weren’t my people. I had no people. No best friend. No boyfriend. I was, for the first time in my life, totally alone. I could walk right back outside, and no one would notice. I could call my mom, and she would come and get me, and in twenty minutes I would be home in my pajamas, eating ice cream.

  But something stopped me.

  It wasn’t the pitiful vision of myself festering away in front of the TV, getting fatter and uglier by the second. It wasn’t dignity. It wasn’t pride. It was a voice.

  “Omigod! Lexi?”

  A voice so grating I would know it anywhere.

  “I barely recognized you! What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t coming back! Taylor said—what happened to your hair?”

  I shrugged, reassuring myself that Heidi—whose jeans were so tight you could see the fat bulging out over her waistb
and—was in no position to talk.

  “I cut it,” I said.

  “Wow!” Heidi said, a big, fake smile plastered on her face. “It looks really good!” Her eyes darted from my hair to my face to the rest of me. I watched as everything came into focus: not just my Band-Aids, but the popped-off button on my shirt and Ruthie’s khakis—which, while new, were the high-rise, butt-widening variety.

  “Love the pants,” Heidi gushed in the manner of a preschool teacher telling a three-year-old how awesome her scribbles are.

  It was the last straw. Worse than the pain of a hundred pulverized bones, a thousand skin grafts. Heidi was happy to see me like this.

  Well, fuck her.

  As the second bell rang, I didn’t even think about it; I just took off running down the hall, blowing past Heidi and all the other stragglers—so I wouldn’t be late for homeroom.

  LeFevre, Mayer. L, M.

  We’d been in the same homeroom since seventh grade so it shouldn’t have come as a big shock, but when I peered through the window and saw Taylor—sitting in the second row, between J. P. Melillo and Elodie Love—I froze. There were new highlights in her hair, a bright coppery color that matched her shirt. My first instinct was to run over, tell her how good she looked.

  Then I remembered. When you hate someone, you take a seat in the back row—as far away as possible—and hope that she doesn’t notice.

  But of course she noticed.

  Everyone noticed.

  As soon as I opened the door, eighteen heads turned.

  I’d imagined it a hundred times, the looks on people’s faces when they saw me. The options were limitless: Shock. Horror. Disgust. Pity. Glee. (This was the one I’d envisioned for Heidi, and for Jenna Morelli, who once told me I was so stuck-up she hoped I got run over. Even though that was sixth grade, I hadn’t forgotten.)

  “Lizbeth Lunn?”

  Mr. Ziff was taking attendance.

  “Here.”

  “John Lynch?”

  What was I going to do, stand there like a moron?

  “Here.”

  “Cecilly Macomb?”

  I climbed over Jenna Morelli’s backpack, taking the nearest seat I could find.

  “Here.”

  “Alexa Mayer?…” Mr. Ziff—who was tall and skinny, with a bobbing Adam’s apple and Harry Potter glasses—glanced up from his clipboard. “Alexa?”

  At first, I couldn’t catch my breath. The air felt too heavy, too warm. But finally, like a chicken that’s been trying for a year to lay a single egg, out it popped. “Here.”

  Here. Gawk away.

  As the eyeballs bore into me, the room grew hotter. Or maybe it was my face. If I blushed, the graft would be even more obvious. I pictured myself sweating so hard the Band-Aids fell off. All people would see was a red square on an even redder background. The thought made me nauseous. It killed me not to dive under my desk, but I made myself look straight ahead at Mr. Ziff. Not at his face, but at the impressive collection of ballpoint pens clipped to his shirt pocket.

  “Welcome, Alexa,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  How much did he know? I thought about my father’s phone call to the principal, explaining my absences. A whole scene played out in my mind: the principal calling a staff meeting, informing my teachers about the accident, describing what had happened to my face, encouraging everyone to treat me as “normally” as possible.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Taylor staring. Everyone staring. I bent down, pretending to need something out of my backpack. While Mr. Ziff finished attendance and moved on to announcements, I riffled around, thinking, If only I could zip myself inside my backpack and never come out. Then I started to spiral.

  If only I never met Taylor.

  If only Ryan never moved here.

  If only the party never happened.

  If only I didn’t get into Jarrod’s car.

  If only I didn’t take off my seat belt.

  Ifonlyifonlyifonly.

  The instant the bell rang, I jumped up. I couldn’t wait to get out of there—out of my own head. I had just made it to my locker, just opened my combination lock, when Kendall and Rae descended out of nowhere.

  “Lexiiiiii! We heard you were back! It’s so good to see you! Your hair looks awesome!”

  The tears were just behind my eyeballs, pricking away. But then I felt the warmth of bare, tanned arms around me. I smelled Kendall’s Juicy Fruit, Rae’s coconut shampoo, and somehow I could talk. “Hey, you guys.”

  “You look great,” Kendall said, taking a step backward. “Doesn’t she look great?”

  Rae’s head bobbed. “She does. You look great, Lex.”

  “So great.”

  I knew they were trying to make me feel good, but their smiles were a little too wide, their words a little too sweet. Where were Kendall’s usual snarky comments? She had plenty to snark about. My lack of return texts. My not telling them I was coming today. Something.

  But no. “What do you have first period?” Kendall asked, scanning my schedule. “Sophomore Lit with Bardo. Me too!”

  “Me three!” Rae said.

  “We’ll walk you!”

  “Great!” I said. “Thanks!”

  I stretched my face into a smile as fake as theirs, and I let them walk me down the hall, surreptitiously fingering my Band-Aids to make sure they hadn’t slipped off.

  The day only got worse.

  In trigonometry, the unthinkable happened. Mrs. Silver had assigned seats and I was next to Ryan. Ryan, who last saw me throwing plates. In the heat of the moment, let me tell you, throwing plates feels incredible, but in retrospect it is mortifying. Pathetic.

  Even more pathetic, the minute I saw him sitting there, doodling in his notebook, my stomach flipped over just as it had back in December, when he skated past me for the first time.

  He looked so good. He was tan from coaching tee ball, and his hair was even blonder than usual. He’d just gotten it cut—I could tell from the white line at the nape of his neck and above his ears—but the top was still long, flopping onto his forehead just the way I liked it. Shaggy, but not sloppy.

  I instantly regretted cutting my hair. Ryan always told me how much he loved my hair, how sexy it was—how, when I blew it out and put in hot rollers, I looked like a Victoria’s Secret model.

  Now, I was a freak. A freak with a patchwork face and clown clothes. When Ryan looked up from his desk, he did a double take, his expression morphing from Who are you and why are you sitting there? to Holy shit.

  “Lexi…” he mumbled, flustered. “Hey … you’re back.”

  I shrugged. Actually, it was more of a muscle twitch, which made me look like an even bigger freak.

  Was it my imagination or had everyone stopped talking? Except for the squeak of Mrs. Silver’s marker on the whiteboard, all sound had ceased. I could see Annalise Jankoff—the biggest gossip in our grade—a few desks over, a half smile playing on her lips. By lunch, whatever happened next would be all over school.

  “Are you … feeling better?” Ryan asked.

  I snorted, not just for him, but for the peanut gallery. “Yeah, Ry. I’m feeling better. I’m feeling awesome.” I unzipped my backpack to take out my trig binder, and my pencil case clattered to the floor. Pencils flew everywhere.

  Crap.

  Mrs. Silver spun around. “Everything all right?”

  Oh, yes. Everything’s peachy.

  As I squatted to retrieve my pencils, a vision of Ryan and Taylor flashed across my mind—her coppery highlights, his tan legs. If only Ryan were wearing flip-flops right now: I would stab him in the foot. Which wouldn’t be nearly as bad as getting stabbed in the back, but still. You had to start somewhere.

  After trigonometry, I tried to shake it off. I tried to pay attention to my teachers, but I couldn’t. Seeing Ryan again triggered all sorts of memories I didn’t want to think about.

  Like this one time when he and I were hanging out at his
grandparents’ house and he dragged their old tandem bicycle out of the garage because I told him I’d never ridden tandem before. He told me not to worry, he’d steer; all I had to do was pedal. He took me to the top of this really steep hill. I told him to go slow, and he promised he would. But when we started going down, he did the opposite. He went kamikaze: all pedals, no brakes. “Slow down!” I kept screaming. “Slow down!” I was so scared. But Ryan just yelled back, “Hold on!” When we got to the bottom of the hill, he was laughing. Then he saw that I was crying, and he said, “Shit.” He pulled me into this big hug and told me he was sorry. Probably, I should have slapped him. A lot of girlfriends would have done that, to get their point across. But I didn’t. I stayed right where I was, my face pressed against his shoulder, breathing in the grassy-sweet smell of his shirt, feeling safe in his arms.

  My throat hurt, thinking about that moment. See, dumb-ass? part of me was saying. He was always a jerk. While the other part of me was saying, No, he wasn’t. He loved you.

  “These burritos smell like armpits,” Rae announced as we settled into our seats in the cafeteria.

  “Why do you buy?” Kendall asked. “Why don’t you bring your lunch like a normal person?”

  Heidi set her tray next to Rae’s and squeezed in beside her. “I like cafeteria food.”

  “Shocker,” Kendall muttered. This was a clear reference to Heidi’s weight, a running joke that made me uncomfortable and the other girls at the table—a mixture of field hockey and soccer players—snigger.

  “Seriously.” Piper Benson smirked into her Diet Coke. “Carbs much?”

  Heidi, oblivious as always, started chowing on burritos. At the same time, Rae asked me how it felt to be back—was it weird?

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  And what about this random table we’d been relegated to, now that we were lowly sophomores?

  “It’s different,” I admitted, more to my sandwich than to Rae.

  “We’ve been demoted!” Kendall cried in faux outrage, like losing our center-table status was the worst thing that had ever happened.

  I could feel my old teammates, Kelly Bartells, Ariana Ramos, and Laurel Popovich sneaking glances at me.