Skin (6 page)

Now I’m in dance class stretching like a big blob. I remember Devin talking about feeling like a whale. Maybe all teenage girls think they’re about to get harpooned.

Maybe we all want to get harpooned. If
harpooned
means something else. I flush.

We stand tall, both arms overhead, reaching high, palms facing each other. This is a yoga asana.
Asana
is the Sanskrit word for ‘pose.’ Ms. Martin loves yoga, and she knows maybe nothing about jazz dance. But she agreed to sponsor our club last year—and again this year, because she figures maybe she can recruit some of us to yoga.

She actually told that to Becca, who is the best dancer in the school.

Which is probably why Becca has so many parties: she likes people to watch her when she’s dancing—even just party-dancing. Becca knows how juicy she is.

And which is why Ms. Martin put Becca in charge of practice sessions last year.

Whatever. Yoga is okay with me. Stretches are fun. And they make my gut feel better.

“Trapezius down, girls.” Ms. Martin walks through the three rows of us. “Think of your wings. If you keep your trapezius down, your wings won’t bunch up. They can spread. And you can breathe.”

And I have them; I have those wings.

The girl beside me rolls her eyes. Maybe she’s a ninth grader. They always put on that ultra-sophisticated act.

When Ms. Martin stops to talk to Mona, one of the better dancers, the girl leans over and whispers to me, “What’s up with that? Wings!”

From nowhere comes a huge urge to rise to Ms. Martin’s defense and stomp this objection to dust. Ms. Martin talks about arms as wings all the time, and I love it. I whisper back, “It’s not stupid. What’s stupid is pictures of angels with wings growing out of their back and arms hanging down in front. Or that mutant Warren with wings
in the third X-Men movie. That’s the anatomy of insects. But birds and bats have wings in place of arms. I mean, their wings are their arms, right? And human anatomy is more like bird and bat than insect. So if angels are built in the image of humans, then their arms should be wings.”

The girl looks stunned. She moves over one place in our row so she’s not beside me anymore.

Instantly I want to bite off my tongue. I look around to see if anyone overheard.

Becca is behind me, glaring. “I thought you were trying out a new image.” She steps forward. “Really, Sep, you have to stop doing that. Lipstick and nothing else at my party will be fine. But science lectures? No. No more boring talk. That’s a rule. For your own good.”

I love science—things are true or false in science, it’s not just all opinions that lead nowhere. Everyone should love science. But I remember Joshua Winer in the lunchroom today—how his eyes started to focus on the wall behind me.

I pay attention to Ms. Martin again. Maybe concentration will redeem me.

After we’ve gone through a half dozen more asanas, a girl raises her hand. She’s a senior. Melanie someone. I know her from Jazz Dance Club last year. “Did you bring music?”

This question is rude, but also necessary. Ms. Martin is showing no sign of wanting to include jazz dance at all today. She looks flummoxed at the very idea of music.

“Because I did,” says Melanie. “Can I put it on?” She’s already walking to the tiny closet where the CD player is. There’s a small yellow-and-pink tattoo on the inside of her right ankle. I stare a second, while the import of what a tattoo can do—what it can hide—sinks in.

With respect to tattoos, there are three kinds of people: people who don’t have them and never will; people who might get one or already have one and might get a second or even a third, but that’s all forever; and the tattooed people. The tattooed people are addicted. They have many. Or if they don’t have many yet, they will and they know it.

I know this because my old friend Sola became a tattooed person in ninth grade. She moved away after eighth grade, but she e-mailed me all about it. The first time she got a tattoo, the artist said to her, “Is this your first? It won’t be your last.” She said she knew it was true. As of the last time she wrote, she had seven.

I’ve always figured I was in the first group—no tattoos ever.

Melanie takes a CD out of a backpack lying on the floor beside the closet door. Within a minute we are listening to
drums, rattles, plinkity things. “Here come the drums!” Melanie shimmies her way back to her spot.

“Becca? Becca?” Ms. Martin looks around like a tuna who’s been forced to halt, terrified of drifting downward into the abyss. “Oh, there you are.”

Becca leads us for the rest of the hour. I like this music. It makes you have to move. Even when you’re a big blumpy thing with a tampon jammed inside you.

At the end of class I go up to Melanie. “Great music. Who’s it by?”

“John Hanks. ‘Here Come the Drums.’” Melanie smiles.

This is what tunas need to listen to when they get discouraged and wonder what’s the use. But I remember what Becca said, and I keep my mouth shut.

I check the mirror in the girls’ locker room and touch up my lipstick.

By the time I get to the parking lot, the after-school activity busses have already left.

“Sadistic, huh?” It’s Owen. He comes up beside me and I’m instantly happy. Owen’s the best.

I raise an eyebrow at him.

“The school board members are evil. They supply busses, but the busses leave the parking lot five minutes after the hour. Activities are supposed to stop on the hour. But even if they do, with putting away athletic gear or
music instruments or even just taking a whizzy, most people wind up missing the bus.” He smiles. “Sadistic. Walk you home?”

Owen lives two blocks away from me. We’ve walked home together nine hundred times. We start out in the same instant, legs synchronized. He’s only a little taller than me, so it’s easy to stay in step. We’ve always fit this way.

I look at him. He must have had a haircut for the start of school, ’cause he looks a lot less shaggy than usual. He looks nice. I smile at him. “Were you at Chess Club?”

“Chess Club’s tomorrow. Want to join?”

I shake my head. Owen’s good at chess. He taught me how to play it after Nonno died and I couldn’t bear to be at home because of how sad everyone was. We spent whole days together then. Not talking, just focusing on chess moves. It was a good distraction, but I never really came to like the game much.

“Starting a jellyfish club?”

I blink. “What?”

He taps his bottom lip. “Pink. Purple. What next? Blue?”

“Lay off, Owen.” I shift my backpack to the other shoulder. “I wrote yes. Then again, everyone in eleventh grade did.”

“Not everyone. Twenty-three people didn’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Mr. Eberly made me stay after today. That’s where I’ve been, in his office, changing yes back to M or F on everyone’s emergency contact cards and health cards.”

I laugh. “How did he know you started it?”

“He’s not a total idiot.”

I laugh again. “Did you memorize the names of the twenty-three traitors?”

“No. But I screwed them. I changed their M’s to F’s and F’s to M’s. Now all the girls will get invitations to meetings on masturbation and all the guys will get invitations to meetings on managing PMS.”

“Nice.”

“Unfortunately, I also probably screwed a bunch of loyalists, since I don’t know everyone in eleventh grade and some of them had crossed out so heavily I couldn’t read what they had written before they put in yes, so I assigned M or F randomly to people with names like Pat Baldwin or Haguchi Yamatachi.”

“I love you, Owen.” I can’t believe how good it is just to walk and talk with him. “Do they really have meetings on masturbation and not invite the girls?”

“Ready to start a revolution, huh?”

“You’re the one who plots against the powers that be, not me.”

“Yeah, right—when are you going to fix that? Anyway, I was just joking. The guy meetings are mostly on not using steroids for sports. But the real crime is that they don’t invite guys to the PMS meetings. I mean, come on, that should be part of our self-defense instruction.”

“I take it back: I don’t love you. Talk like that and you can walk home alone.”

“Major threat. Okay, change of subject. How’s math going?”

“Why? So you can amaze me with how much more you know?”

“Of course.”

Owen took calculus last year, even though he’s in the same grade as I am. He’s our class’s math whiz. He’s really the whole high school’s math whiz, because last year he scored second in the school on some national test, and the girl who scored first graduated. This year he’s taking a math class at the college.

“Why don’t you tell me about your college course?”

“Abstract algebra. You would love it.” And off he goes, into vectors and matrices.

The funny thing is, it’s great to hear. I love complex systems. I could listen to Owen forever. And he knows that. He might be the only one in the world who knew I would love this very conversation.

RATTLE GREETS ME BEFORE I’m even halfway to the kitchen. That dog can smell blood a mile away. His big blind head comes banging into my crotch.

I get on my knees and scratch him behind both ears at once. He loves that. “You can’t do that, Rattle. Just be a good dog and I’ll let you sit by my feet as I do my homework.”

And that’s how the evening goes, with Rattle by my feet farting in his dreams, Dante moaning over having to write an essay already and it’s only the second day of school, Mamma blinking away her fear when she helps me cold-cream off the lipstick to find only white again, and
Dad belching as he reads a legal brief, which is better than farting, at least.

My cell has a message from Devin tonight, but no one else. I don’t read it.

Where’s Joshua?

Maybe he’s already realized I’m boring, so he’s stopped flirting. That is, if he was flirting with me—and for the life of me I can’t figure out anything else he could have been doing. Well, it’s okay if he’s stopped. There was something great about flirting with him, but at the same time something awful. The last thing I need is a guy who’s turned on because he likes my lipstick.

I finish my homework and am grateful to finally collapse into bed.

My eyes are closed. But I can’t sleep. Tomorrow is Thursday. Tomorrow I see Dr. Ratner. It’s been only two days—but these two days have dragged. Tomorrow I find out.

I pat my lips.

Slap them lightly, then harder.

A sob catches in my throat.

Rattle comes galumphing onto my bed and plops on my chest and licks me right up the face. His big tail thumps on my knees.

He sleeps in my room only when I have my period. He’s like a big sign on the wall: blood here. Blood and garlic, a
strange set of favorite odors. Maybe he’s a self-hating vampire at heart.

I wrap my arms around him and cry.

Rattle licks my tears and my snotty nose. His fur stinks. Right now, though, I love it. I love him.

The next day I somehow make it through Bio and English. I move on automatic, as if in a haze. Not even lunch perks me up.

Devin dropped Latin III. And no one’s talking to me in the lunchroom. And I have white lips.

I can’t stop myself from looking around.

Where’s Joshua Winer?

Why are my lips white?

I think I’m going crazy.

After school, I walk to the pike. Dr. Ratner’s office is a block past the mall. Mamma said she’d meet me there late, because she’s teaching an afternoon class. Fine. I don’t need anyone holding my hand.

It takes forty minutes to walk to the doctor’s. I’m a sweatball by the time I get there. I sign in and take a seat in the waiting room.

“Sep?”

I look up in surprise at the nurse. “It’s not my appointment time yet.” I have another fifteen minutes of
ignorance—isn’t ignorance supposed to be bliss?—don’t steal them, please.

“The appointment before yours cancelled. Come on in.” She smiles.

I follow her through the doorway into the inner sanctum. I have done this dozens of times. Dr. Ratner’s been our family doctor since before I was born. I take off my shoes and step on the scale. Then the nurse leads me to an examining room and tells me to sit on the examination table and takes my blood pressure. She gives me a gown.

“It’s just my lips.”

“All right, then. Keep your clothes on. The doctor will be with you in a minute.”

And he is.

“Dr. Ratner? You’re never on time.”

He smiles. “And I’m not today. If you were the patient who cancelled, we’d be starting fifteen minutes late. Why don’t you come sit down here on this chair?”

I perch on the very edge of the chair.

He sits by the little desk and scoots his chair out to face me. “So, Sep, what’s the problem?”

“My lips are white. Under this lipstick.”

He opens a drawer and hands me a little foil package.

I read:
Makeup Remover
. I go to work on my lips.

Dr. Ratner hands me a small mirror.

I finish up and hand it back to him.

Dr. Ratner studies my lips. “Well, you’re right. White lips.” He pulls out a notebook and picks up a pen. “I’m going to ask you a lot of questions. If you give an answer and then later you want to change it, just change it. I’m fishing. And I need to know as much as possible. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth.”