Almost Crimson (17 page)

“But I didn't do anything,” CeCe said, surprised at Sophia's suggestion.

“Sometimes, you gotta take one for the team,” Laurita said. Her tone was flat and she didn't look up from her pudding cup. CeCe had noticed how Laurita had started to wear her hair down now.

We're a team?

“I didn't do anything,” CeCe said, more quietly. Laurita shrugged one shoulder, peering into the bottom of her snack cup. Sophia launched into a story about her little sister tanning a Barbie doll in the microwave.

For the next several weeks, Jesse would swerve out of his way to insert himself into CeCe's conversations, blurting that CeCe was a narc and couldn't be trusted with any secrets. CeCe saw him making an erratic beeline toward her one afternoon and closed her eyes in pre-exasperation. She tried to turn away but one of the varsity wrestlers walked by, blocking her path long enough for Jesse's voice to reach her.

“You gotta go narc on somebody?” he said.

“This is getting really old,” CeCe said.

Jesse walked away laughing. “Maybe for you.”

In late October, on picture day, someone handed a note to the girl waiting in front of CeCe in line. The girl giggled, looking around. She shook her head, sighed, and turned around to look pitiably at CeCe. CeCe looked at the girl blankly until she held up the square of notebook paper for CeCe to read: “There's a narc bat behind you. Watch your back!”

CeCe looked around, too, but saw no sign of Jesse. Her insides collapsed. He'd enlisted the entire school.

CeCe ate her lunch in the home ec room by the middle of November. The teacher, Mrs. Watson, didn't ask any questions or demand an explanation, and CeCe was grateful. Laurita and Sophia hadn't questioned her, either, and CeCe assumed they appreciated the relief. They would speak when passing in the hallway or chatter quickly at the beginning of the school day, but neither asked CeCe to slow down on the way to class or to wait for them on her way to the bus stop anymore.

CeCe would eat her lunch and read while Mrs. Watson graded papers or set up for her sixth-period class. She also taught the health class all of the freshmen had to take. They covered first aid, nutrition, hygiene, mental wellness, careers in health, and an odd review of epidemics throughout history.

“Mrs. Watson,” CeCe asked one day, a random curiosity filling her mind. “I have a weird question.”

“Weird questions are my specialty,” Mrs. Watson chirped. She was a thin woman, with a long graying ponytail and bright hazel eyes. She wore lots of embroidered vests, long denim skirts, and clog shoes. She bounced through the room like a robin, placing gauze and bandages on each desk.

“I started my period this year and I want to make sure it's normal.”

Mrs. Watson looked up from her fistfuls of gauze. “What makes you think it might not be?”

“My best friend started her period in the sixth grade and, well, I remember her talking about—,” CeCe shifted in her seat, crossing her legs at the ankles and looking down at her feet. “The smell.”

“There's an odor?” Mrs. Watson asked, moving from desk to desk.

“No,” CeCe said. “That's just it. I don't smell anything. With all the Summer's Eve commercials and stuff, I thought it was supposed to smell, but it doesn't. I didn't know if that meant I was low on . . . estrogen or something.”

Mrs. Watson laughed, birdlike. “The way these companies push that stuff, you'd think so,” she said.

Mrs. Watson told CeCe a woman's body produces its own cleansing fluids and that douches were a marketing ploy. She also explained how the iron content in menstrual blood sometimes created a stronger scent than regular blood. She emphasized the importance of good hygiene and more thorough washing.

“Does that make more sense?” Mrs. Watson asked.

“Yes,” CeCe said. “I wasn't looking forward to smelling like baloney.”

“Baloney?” Mrs. Watson repeated, and howled with laughter. “Sweetheart, I think smelling like lunch meat would be adding insult to injury for us women!”

CeCe agreed and laughed, wondering why she found it so much easier to talk and laugh with adults.

 

Laurita appeared at CeCe's locker before their last class period.

“Where were you at lunch today?” Laurita asked. CeCe noted an unfamiliar edge to her voice. Maybe her friend missed her after all.

“Mrs. Watson's room,” CeCe said. “She lets me eat in there since—”

“It was you!” Laurita screamed. Laurita looked around and clenched her teeth to constrain the volume of her voice. She stepped close to CeCe's face. “Lunch meat? You told her I smelled like lunch meat?”

CeCe's mouth gaped open and her mind raced to connect the explosive dots, but her mind couldn't focus as she stared up into Laurita's flaring nostrils.

“I didn't—,” CeCe said. “I mean, I wasn't talking about you—I was asking—”

“Save it, CeCe,” Laurita said. “I do
not
believe you. Why would Crystal come up to me out of nowhere and ask how my lunch meat was doing this month?”

“Crystal?” CeCe said, confused. “Jesse's girlfriend?”

“You can't blame this on Jesse,” Laurita said. “It was
you
talking about your
friend
to Mrs. Watson, who thought it was so funny she told Ms. DiPaulo and guess who was retaking a test in Ms. DiPaulo's room?”

“But I wasn't talking about you,” CeCe said, tears making their way to her eyes.

“Right, like you have another ‘best friend,'” Laurita said as she turned to leave.

“Laurita—”

“Look, I'm already sick of having this crazy-ass kid calling me a ‘bat' every day because of . . . whatever you did to him, and now his crazy-ass girlfriend is telling our gym class my coochie smells like lunch meat!” Laurita said, backing away. “Find a new best friend,
Crimson
.”

CeCe wanted to protest again, but the venom Laurita had coiled around the syllables of her name made CeCe stop. As her friend stomped away, CeCe knew Jesse had won.

By the time the weather chilled and snow threatened its return, Jesse had expanded his menacing enterprise to a small network of enforcers. Systematically, they made CeCe's name a damning expletive for any brand of unfavorable news:

“We had a pop quiz in Geometry. Crimson narced.”

“We're getting apple slices instead of tater tots. Crimson.”

“The Aerosmith concert got Crimsoned.”

The slightest grace was that most of her classmates knew her as CeCe, if they registered her name at all. She sat in the back of their classes as they flung around her birth name like a booger. Laurita ignored her completely, but Sophia greeted her between classes, band practice, and forensics. CeCe tried sinking into the walls and floors inside Maclin High School. She didn't waste time rolling curlers into her hair and stopped laying out her clothes at night and agonizing over the makeup bag. She stopped it all and no one seemed to notice.

“CeCe, Mr. Meadows would like to see you in his office,” said her homeroom teacher one morning. It was the last week before holiday break and everyone was anxious for vacation to start. As she gathered her books and stood, a few of Jesse's minions chanted quietly from the back of the room, “Narc! Narc! Narc!” A hushed rumble of laughter followed CeCe from the classroom.

She walked the wide hallways, listening to the slip of her flat shoes across the tiles. CeCe looked down at the gleam on the floors as she made her way to the office. She passed banks of lockers, intersecting hallways, and classroom doors with clips of the teachers' lessons lobbing overhead as she walked by. It was calming to move through the corridors alone.

“CeCe, come on in,” Mr. Meadows said, standing in the doorway of his interior office. Mr. Meadows was a large man with a broad back and shoulders, as if he wore hooded sweatshirt beneath his plaid dress shirts. He also had a booming voice and an effortless smile. Like all the other freshmen, CeCe had liked Mr. Meadows since he had guided them through their first day as Maclin Vikings.

She felt uncomfortable now. She'd already had a midterm one-on-one with him, like all the other freshmen, and didn't know what this meeting could be about. CeCe hoped the trend of social workers hadn't followed her to high school. She sat at the small round table in the corner and waited.

“I like to be straight with you kids,” Mr. Meadows said as he sat, lifting his ankle to cross his knee. “I don't like beating around the bush because we're too smart for that, right?”

CeCe nodded and swallowed, perching the tips of her fingers nervously on the table's edge.

“There's something going on with you, CeCe,” Mr. Meadows said, “and I wanted to talk to you before things got out of hand.”

CeCe's eyes widened and her brain searched for things she'd done or said that might “get out of hand.”

Mr. Meadows released one of his rolling-thunder laughs. “Relax, CeCe. I forgot to say, ‘You're not in trouble.'”

CeCe relaxed her shoulders and lowered her hands into her lap.

“Your grades are OK but, based on your marks at Valmore, we were expecting a bit more from you,” he said. He considered his words before adding, “It doesn't seem you're making many friends, either. Is it true Mr. Kingsman found you eating lunch in the girls' shower?”

CeCe dropped her head. It sounded more pathetic when Mr. Meadows said it out loud. She'd started eating in the bleachers then moved to the locker rooms for complete seclusion. Once she realized girls still streamed in and out to retrieve forgotten folders, books, and hair bands, CeCe had moved to the shower stalls. Mr. Kingsman, the janitor, found her sitting on a pallet she made of clean towels with a book in her lap and sandwich in hand.

“Y'know, CeCe,” he said. “I won't pretend like I know how you feel. A new school. New kids. New rules. A whole new obstacle course to master, right?”

CeCe pursed her lips, the closest she could offer to a grin.

“The bad news, kiddo, is that you have to figure it out. You have a great future at this school and I'd hate to see it squished in your very first semester.” Mr. Meadows forced his torso against the small table to face CeCe. His mustache had streaks of gray, like his short, cropped hair.

“Tell me what I can do to help you turn things around next term,” he said.

CeCe looked at his big face and kind eyes. She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what she
could
say. She couldn't narc about Jesse calling her a narc. She couldn't repeat the lunch meat misunderstanding without embarrassing Laurita again. She couldn't tell him about how coming to school was as agonizing as going home. CeCe wanted to tell him all of this, but she couldn't. Instead, she started to cry.

“Oh, CeCe, don't start crying on me,” Mr. Meadows said, unwedging himself to stand and get a box of tissues from his credenza. “Then I'll start crying, and you don't want to see a big clumsy guy like me crying, not with this huge honker. Trust me, it's an ugly, snotty sight.”

CeCe took the tissue and felt a small laugh escape.

“That's better,” Mr. Meadows said, smiling back at CeCe. He sat and waited.

Finally, she said, “I don't know.”

“OK, that's fair,” he said. “If you had a solution, you would've done it already, right?”

CeCe smiled weakly and shrugged one shoulder.

“Tell you what,” Mr. Meadows said. “How about you think about it over holiday break and we'll come up with a plan together.”

“OK,” CeCe said, scooting her chair back, sensing their discussion was over.

“I have one suggestion to start,” Mr. Meadows said. CeCe turned from the door, her hand on the lever. “There's a little cubicle in the back of our office. You can eat your lunch there for a while. No one will see you, no one will bug you, and no one will swipe your pudding cup. Sound good?”

CeCe beamed, nodded.

“All right then,” Mr. Meadows said, standing and following her through the door. “I've got to get upstairs and talk to the seniors about their winter sledding trip. You'd think they were taking a spaceship to the moon, as complicated as they're making things.”

Booming laugh.

“Thank you, Mr. Meadows,” CeCe said.

“You're more than welcome, CeCe,” he replied. “No one expects you to figure out this high school stuff all by yourself. Then there'd be no reason for
me
to show up! You're not as alone as I know you think you are. We Vikings gotta stick together, right?”

“Right.”

CeCe thanked Mr. Meadows again and went to her locker to get ready for her first period class. She could feel the goofy outline of a smile on her face, and it felt good. At lunchtime, she carried her brown bag to Mr. Meadows' office and the guidance secretary tucked her into a back cubicle, as promised. When CeCe left the office, the secretary gave her a blank sheet of school letterhead. CeCe held the sheet gingerly, looking quizzically at the empty page.