Outcast (28 page)

The brief summer monsoon storms kicked up dust and blew it around in wind tunnels. Occasionally, I heard showers tapping on the windows, smelled the water seeping into the dry ground, but I never felt it. And the fleeting brush with it left me yearning for more.

By the start of my senior year, I was grounded again. There seemed to be no ending to my punishment. It had no effect on me. I did what I wanted to do. My mother forbade me to see
Chad
, afraid I would meet the same fate as Becca did. She ordered me to go to church, thinking it would rescue me from temptation. There was nothing she could do to keep me in the house. Curfew became a joke. I refused to allow her to control me. I ignored her and did whatever I wanted. With my dad gone, it was even more miserable than usual. I refused to let my mother cling to me like a life preserver and drag me under. 

Chad
picked me up in front of the neighbor’s house every morning, so my mother wouldn’t harass me about dating him. Grace and I grew apart. We hadn’t spoken to one another since the end of our junior year. When we finally saw each other in the hallways, we talked about the summer, and everything seemed fine between us. Then Trina & Company arrived. They waltzed past us, and Grace’s demeanor instantly shifted. Her smile disappeared, and she fell under their spell.

“Nice look, Doctor Freckle.” Trina leered at me, her buttery-swirled hair tied in a French twist, her makeup applied with effort and precision. “Maybe you should go back to juvie where you belong.”

Her cronies laughed. Grace cowered, not wanting them to see her with me. I refused to let them know I felt intimidated. They glanced at her but said nothing. No bad words for Grace. It was all suspicious.

Chad
inched beside me, and the group scattered like cockroaches. Despite their breakup, I suspected Trina still wanted to look good in front of
Chad
.

“What was that all about?”
Chad
draped his arm around my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek.

“She hates me. What’s new?” I watched her slink away, wondering why she detested me so much. 

“I have to go,” Grace abruptly declared. She acted strange. More so than usual. Something changed in her over the summer. The girl who saved me from Jerry Searfus was gone, replaced with a meek someone I no longer recognized or knew.

Father Dodd convinced me to stay in the drama club. In lieu of performing on stage, I chose to work behind the scenes. No auditioning for me. It was
Macbeth
. More Shakespeare. Administration seemed addicted to the flowery language, deluded into thinking there was no ugliness behind the pretty words.

Once again, Father Dodd seemed bored. After years of battling with administration to get
Barefoot in the Park
as the play of choice, he gave up. He decided to make this play a student-directed one. That way, he removed himself entirely from the equation. He attempted to coerce me to direct it, but Drama held little appeal for me. I had enough of it in my life, so I declined. So Trina became the director. That was enough to make me feel confident in my decision to work on lighting and props.

The director also held the casting position. So she naturally cast herself in the role of Lady Macbeth.
Chad
obviously became Macbeth. Trina had her eyes on him, her claws ready to dig into him. They’d be spending oodles of time rehearsing together. I planned to watch her carefully. I had his heart now, so I didn’t plan to let it go.

Trina & Company harassed me more than usual. Whether it was because of the locker room incident or my new look, they picked on me relentlessly. Whenever
Chad
wasn’t around, they took advantage of my vulnerability, drawing attention to me in the hallways by labeling me as
slut
,
she-man
because of my short haircut, and the everlasting
Doctor Freckle
.

Trina was a constant blemish. English and art were the only classes I truly enjoyed, and English was tainted because of her. Somehow I managed to maintain all
A
s. The stories woven within the paintings kept me forever mesmerized with Art. And the lure of escapism kept me reading the assigned novels in English.

Mr. Gabrean, the English teacher, told us to start thinking about a project that would be due sometime in February: a twenty-page paper on a book of our choice. It would be worth a third of our grade, so he wanted to give us the opportunity to read and research months ahead of time. I chose
Crime and Punishment
. It seemed like a relatable book. In many ways, it was thematically perfect. In it, Raskolnikov murders a woman for money, but justifies his action by knowing he had rid the world of a worthless person. How apropos. Not that I had murder in mind, but I would have loved to live in a Trina-free world.

Cassie and I no longer had the same lunch period, so I resorted to my old trick of going home sick in the middle of the day. Once again, it was Aunt P to the rescue.

“I was worried. You haven’t called me since July.” It was September. I never bothered to tell Aunt P the news about the car or my parents. All of my energy was spent elsewhere.

Aunt P was always reliable. No matter how many disagreements we shared or how many times we battled it out, she was always there for me. She was far from perfect. Like my mother, she tried to change me. She just happened to go about it differently. Her way was more palatable.

“Thanks for the car.” I teetered on the edge of the seesaw, nibbling on a turkey sandwich from AJ’s. P dusted off a bench seat. I turned down another fancy restaurant meal. I preferred the park. It gave me the opportunity to smoke freely, a habit that had grown progressively worse since my father left.

“You like it. Does it drive well?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

P shifted uneasily on the bench. She was out of her element in the outdoors.

“My mother sold it.”

Red rage stained P’s face. She spewed obscenities about my mother, peppering her remarks with
bitch
and
fucking bitch
. I offered an insignificant apology, which seemed to calm her down. It was as though she realized my mother, the object of her hate, wasn’t there. I was.

“My dad left.” I talked into the sandwich.

I expected her to chortle, happy that my mother suffered a significant loss. She didn’t. Instead, she grew silent, glancing around at the trees and the playground equipment as if seeing them for the first time.

“I’m sorry, Noelle. When?”

“After
Florida
.” It took a Herculean effort to hold back the tears. 

“Is that why you called?”

“No.” I lost my appetite, tossing half of the sandwich back into the bag. “It’s those shitty girls again.” I tapped a cigarette from its package and lit it. P’s glance was disapproving, but she refrained from comments. “They’re worse than ever.”

“Forget about them, Noelle. They’re just green with envy. Look how you’ve blossomed. I mean, I love what you’ve done to your hair.” She made a move to touch it affectionately, but drew her hand back.

“I doubt that’s it.”

I took a long drag off the Camel, watching children play on the jungle gym. They looked so happy and free. They had no idea what problems lay ahead for them. Someday they, too, would grow up and have troubles just like everybody else. Some would be fortunate, others would be outcasts like me. I assessed the kids, all happy and getting along with one another, and wondered which would be which. I watched them, considering the moment they would realize that they were different from each other. It was inevitable. They just didn’t know it yet. They were green, too. Not with envy, but with an innocence, a blissful ignorance to the world outside their own.

Suddenly, everywhere I looked I saw shades of green. In some way or another, everyone I knew wore a variation of it. Maybe I was green, too.
Naïve
, Becca called me. Perhaps she was right. I never thought problems out on my own. I always had to run to Aunt P to rescue me. A sophisticated person would never have to do that. Yes, I was green, too. In my own way.

“Do you wish you had never done it?”

“Done what?” she asked, perplexed.

“Had the abortion.” The words poured out casually as I studied the cherry on the end of my cigarette.

“Who told you about that?” She pretended the wooden bench was uncomfortable, not the conversation, as she twisted in her seat.

I ignored her. It made no difference how I discovered the information. The point was that I knew, and she couldn’t change that.

“One thing you can’t do is change the past or have regrets.” Her face was flushed. I know she worked hard to quell her emotion.

“Do you think about it? The baby?”

“I often wonder what she would have looked like.” Tears formed in her eyes. I never thought she was capable of an emotion other than anger. I tapped into her hidden hurt.

“Sometimes I picture her looking just like you.” I glimpsed her with her eyes peeled on me and saw all the layers stripped away. She sat exposed in front of me. I saw a different P, one whose opaque vulnerability and innocence surfaced from beneath her translucent exterior. She shellacked her essence in arrogance, anger, and indifference. For a brief instant, it was all pared away.

She wanted to share more, but there was too much reality entrapped in that moment, so we both resorted to our previous airs.

“Living well really is the best revenge.” P drew me back to the previous conversation, suppressing her drudged-up feelings.

“Not if they’re living better than you are.”

Even though I dwelled in the wings, I noticed it. She made no effort to hide it at all. Every moment, every opportunity she received, she interacted with him, touched him, lured him toward her. The smiles he gave to her seemed like an offering of forgiveness. Of himself.

I wanted to rip him away from her with the call of my voice. But I didn’t. I just stood behind the curtain and watched.   

I told myself I wasn’t jealous. He and I were a couple. I had his pendant, so why should I be worried about Trina stealing him away from me? He dumped her to be with me. Right?

But a nauseating feeling crested in my stomach as I studied them onstage. As much as I pushed it down, covered it up, and squeezed the life from it, it was still there. They had a history, and it was sexual. If he liked her enough to do it once, why wouldn’t he do it again?  Maybe he missed being with her. Maybe she was better than me. Maybe he realized that I really was a loser and an outcast and wondered why he ever claimed to love me in the first place.

Christian called to me, shattering the torment I put myself through. He was the senior in charge of the backstage production, a quiet leader who only talked when he needed to give direction to someone. Apparently, I needed it.

“Why don’t you help Dara get the makeup ready for dress rehearsal?”

I dragged myself to the dressing rooms where Dara, a timid sophomore with straight, dusty blonde hair and no smile, prepared the makeup tables.

“Need help?”

I watched her meticulously lay out tubes and canisters of makeup, styling gel, and hairspray for the female actors. She reminded me a lot of myself when I was a sophomore. I imagined she was picked on a great deal and participated in backstage theater as a means of trying to belong. I felt sorry for her.

“Just getting everything ready for tomorrow’s dress rehearsal. You can put a tube of makeup at each station.”

I grabbed a few and mimicked her actions. I didn’t want to interfere with her way of doing things. “It seems expensive for each actor to get her own makeup and hair products.”

“Most of them share. But Trina ordered a separate set for herself, including hair gel.” I detected bitterness in Dara’s voice.

“Why?” I asked.

“The cheap stuff causes her to break out. Or so she says. Who knows about the hair gel? Her station is right there.”

“She has her own station?” I leered at the spot with loathing. Everything was perfectly arranged for her when she arrived at her throne. I detested her even more after the details of her pretentiousness.

I thought of
Chad
again, of him spending so much time with Trina instead of with me. I knew I was behaving jealousy, overreacting.
Chad
told me—showed me—he loved me. I had no reason to doubt anything. Yet I did. The outcast in me wouldn’t let me believe I was worthy of someone like him.

I heard from my dad a month after he left. I felt bitter and jilted. He had waited too long to call. He said that he had to think through some things. The events with Becca were too much to handle. He behaved as though what happened to our family only involved him. He spoke in circles, never getting to the core of it all. I wished he would confess he was a coward for running away while my mother and I stayed behind. At least then I would have had some respect for him. But he never once admitted the truth: my mother drove him away.