Skin (25 page)

Then the girls go one way and the guys go another.

Except for Joshua.

And me.

I force a foot to take a step.

“Stay a second, Sep. Please.”

I stand there. I am dead again. Why don’t I fall?

“You look good.”

In costume, I think. Covered.

“I miss you.”

My tongue sits like a rotting, dead seal on the bottom of my mouth. I will cry if he says anything else.

This is bad. Very bad. I have to leave. I take another step.

He puts a hand lightly on my forearm. “I don’t know what’s going on. I think about you all the time. If you’ll only talk to me, we can work this out. I know we can work this out.”

“No,” I say with that big, blobby, dead tongue. “Some things can’t be worked out, Joshua. Forget me.”

“You have to tell me. Not speaking is… God, Sep, it’s wrong. You’re wrong. This hurts.”

I know. It’s killing me, too. I’m wrong, so very wrong. But I can’t find a way out that doesn’t seem a lot worse.

I stand as tall as I can. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Good-bye, Joshua.” And I walk. One foot in front of the other. I walk away from the boy I love. I don’t look back. I won’t look back. I won’t.

Becca and Rachel close forces around me, almost as though by some sort of instinct—the save-the-sister instinct.

Neither of them asks what happened. Neither of them has ever asked what happened with Joshua. But I know people think he dropped me. Who can blame them? He’s Joshua Winer.

Still, I’m so grateful to them that they’ve never asked.

“Let’s go on over to Baltimore Drive,” says Becca. “The biggest houses are there. They give out the best treats.”

I almost say it’s late. But 10 p.m. isn’t late. I want to go home. But I don’t want to be alone.

Why is absolutely nothing easy?

“THE WORLD IS VISHNU’S dream.” Those were the last words Ms. Martin said today before Becca took over Jazz Dance Club. I could swear she was looking at me as she said them. But maybe I just want to believe that. I’m still hoping for messages, answers, a way out. I’m still frightened out of my mind.

I walk home silent with Owen talking nonstop beside me. I don’t even pretend to be listening. And he doesn’t pretend to think that I am. He doesn’t pause. He doesn’t ask questions, not even rhetorical ones. He is simply voicing his thoughts in front of me. It dawns on me that he is
utterly unself-conscious around me. Maybe around everyone? How? How did Owen get to be so smart?

We part at his corner and I walk the rest of the way repeating Vishnu’s name so I won’t forget it. But I don’t say it out loud. I am not Owen. I am not that smart. I don’t want others looking askance at me. I simply won’t let that happen while I can still avoid it.

I hit the Internet, which has become my new home. I spend more time there than anywhere else.

Vishnu is a sleeping god. He lies on a giant serpent, an endless serpent, who floats in the universal ocean, the milky ocean. And he dreams. Everything that happens, everything we see and hear and smell and touch and taste and know, all of that is Vishnu’s dream.

That time I met Ms. Martin walking Monster, she talked about another god, Lord Ganesh. Ganesh removes all obstacles. I read the whole story then, but I read it again now. Ganesh removes obstacles for a reason, an unforgivable reason. Shiva, his father, cut off Ganesh’s head in a moment of anger, and then, when his wife had a fit, replaced it with an elephant head. What could be worse? But Ganesh somehow went on—he went through life with that ginormous head, that trunk, those ears, helping others, removing obstacles from their paths.

And all because of Vishnu. Vishnu dreamed the world,
so Vishnu dreamed that whole horror story. Vishnu created Ganesh’s misery. And he can’t make up for it simply by dreaming that Ganesh then does good for others. One act doesn’t justify the other. I’d like to punch Vishnu awake and yell that in his big flabby ear.

Vishnu made a mess of his dream. Dad would call him a piece of work.

I am nine hundred times better off than Ganesh. Nine hundred zillion times. I still have my own head, the right size, with the right parts. Only the colors are different.

And I still have the same body.

“Your body is your animal.” Ms. Martin said that today, too.

I try to know the experience of the animal that is my body. The most animal I’ve ever been is with Joshua. I remember that moment in lovemaking, when you cross the line from one kind of consciousness to another. A different sense of self.

I don’t have that anymore.

But if I can believe Ms. Martin, people can get to that point of understanding themselves, of inhabiting the animals they are, if they can find a way to allow themselves passion and compassion.

Maybe that’s what happened to Ganesh. That’s why he could remove obstacles from others’ paths. Maybe it had
nothing to do with Vishnu. Ganesh could have taken control. He could have embraced passion and compassion and found a new way of being himself inside them, despite or because of that elephant head, it doesn’t matter.

That’s what I need to do. I can’t just look to others to be kind to me. I can’t control that. I have to learn how to be kind to myself. To the animal that is me. To this body. This skin. This me.

The rational part of me knows that this is the job ahead.

It sounds so simple.

The world is a giant deception. Hardly anything is simple.

I hit the off button.

IT’S THE SECOND SATURDAY of December.

I have been a zombie for ten weeks. The splotch on my face that starts at the top of my lips and used to look like a worm has been joined by a splotch over my left eyebrow and a series of spots on my right temple. The shape of it compares to nothing. It’s a mess. My face is a mess. It’s official: I’m ugly.

Fine. I wear my skin-cream mask. No one sees me. I’m safe for now. Who cares?

With the exception of that one visit to Chinatown with Rachel and the fiasco of Halloween, I haven’t gone
anywhere with anyone. Devin and I visit each other, but only after school at my house or hers. She’s with Charlie on the weekends.

I’m over being envious of her. She has what she wanted: true love. I had it, too, though.

And I’m getting rich. I babysit a lot. Often twice a weekend. At those sweetly inflated prices. Last night Sarah told me her mother ate a child. Here’s how the conversation went:

“Mommy ate a baby.”

“Sarah, don’t say such a crazy thing.”

“She told me.”

“She wouldn’t say that.”

“She pointed to her stomach and said, ‘There’s a baby in here.’”

“No, she pointed to her uterus.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a bag inside you that’s meant to hold babies.”

“Inside me?”

“Inside all girls.”

“I can hold a baby in me?”

“Yes. But not now. Not while you’re tiny. Ask your mother about it, Sarah. Ask her to explain.”

So Mr. and Mrs. Harrison have benefitted from my babysitting. They’re getting it on again. If I keep hiding
like this, maybe they’ll have a full house of little monsters. Then I could charge nine hundred dollars an evening. And all those kids wouldn’t drive me crazy, because I’m already crazy.

I went officially crazy on the second Saturday of November. That was when our high school had the Homecoming dance. It was late this year, because our football team’s match with our archrival wasn’t until the last weekend of the season. And we always have the dance the night after that game.

Joshua and I had talked about going to the dance together. We had talked about me selling cookie dough with the cheerleaders and the Go-Camels, which is the support group for the football team. Lunatic mothers run it. They’re all in love with their sons. They’re the ones who sit on the bleachers and scream encouragement during the games even though the players can’t possibly hear them. And fringy, moon-eyed girls are in it. I would have been part of it. Just to help raise funds for that dance.

Instead, of course, I didn’t sell cookie dough. And I sure didn’t go to the dance.

But Joshua did. With Sharon Parker.

He had to go. He’s captain of the team, after all. And he needed a date.

But then he showed up at a party the next weekend
with Sharon. Devin told me. And he didn’t have to have a date for that.

And Becca had another dance party, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and Joshua went with Sharon to that, too.

Then this week Bill Brant tried to chum up to me at lunch. It was obvious: now that Joshua’s not into me anymore, his friends are free to hit on me. I almost puked on Bill’s sneaker.

Joshua’s over me. He’s with Sharon.

He’s safe. That’s what I wanted. Right?

Life goes on.

Joshua’s safe, safe, safe. He has someone else to turn to. Someone waiting in the sidelines. He can forget. He has Sharon.

All I have is me. This is what I wanted, and I have it, and I hate it, and I’m burning up inside.

Life goes on. How dare it?

Which is why I am now standing on one foot with my other leg cocked, the bottom of the foot pressed against my standing leg’s thigh. This is tree pose—
vrksasana
. It’s a balance challenge. Ms. Martin says the point of this pose is not balance; the point is to find other relationships within the body—other relationships that will support you. I need other relationships to support me. I can do this.

Life goes on.

I hold the pose a full three minutes on each side, which amazes me. Then I walk into the bathroom and scrub my face clean and look in the mirror and repeat that thought: life goes on.

And I’m sick of being mad. I can’t control vitiligo. I’m not normal. So what? This is my life. It’s taking a shape I never would have planned—but it’s mine. It’s all I have. I can be a tree; I can find a way to support myself on one foot.

It is Saturday night. Life goes on. It is December. Life goes on. Christmas is coming. Salvation Army bells and decorated trees and Christmas carols and lasagna and red and green and silver spangled days. Christmas. When everyone is happy with the greedy thoughts of presents ahead.

Presents.

Anyone deserves a Christmas present. I’m going to give myself one. Now. Tonight. It’s been over a week since the last spot appeared. Maybe this is who I’m going to be. But even if I keep getting worse, tonight feels right. The me I am in this very moment is ready. I declare that—silently, but firmly.

Dante and two friends are watching the third X-Men movie. This is, of course, the nine hundredth time Dante has watched it.

I walk down the stairs slowly. No cosmetic cream. No stamps on my hand. No lipstick. And I’m wearing a shirt with a regular neckline and no scarf. I am a mutant, like the characters in the movie. So it’s fitting I should arrive like this.

I stop a moment midway on the stairs and stand absolutely still. In mountain pose now, tall as I can be. I breathe deep. I feel my body’s weight. Anger dissipates. All I feel is the strength inside me. I can do this. Tim and Zach and Dante—I can face them.

I descend to the bottom step and look at my hand. It’s white, but not just the spot. It’s white all over because I’m gripping the banister so hard. Fuck this shit. That may become my new mantra.

I walk in. The lights are off, of course. What a brave girl I am, to expose myself to the dark. I almost laugh. I sit down on the couch beside Zach.

“Hey, Sep,” says Zach.

“Hey,” says Tim. He’s on the floor with his back leaning against the coffee table.

“What do you want?” asks Dante. He’s in the chair.

“I just came to see the movie.”

“You hate this movie,” says Dante.

“No, I don’t. Not anymore.”

“You can’t stay,” says Dante.

“Why? Are you guys going to make out or something?”

Zach laughs. “Who cares, Dante? Let her watch.”

“Come on, Sep. These are my friends.”

“You’re just watching a movie. I won’t say anything.”

“You’re already saying things.”

“I’m just answering you.”

Dante stands up. Then he sits down. “Okay, you can stay. But only if you go make us popcorn.”

“All right.”

“All right?” Dante sounds so surprised he just might faint.