Swell (11 page)

In the gym, I silently mapped the path I’d taken with Christian at the Toga Dance. Across the gym was where I’d watched Jenna dance before Christian took me by the arm. To the left was the drinking fountain where he’d doused himself. And as I left the pit of memories with my assignments in hand, I pretended Christian was exiting with me into the night. Now I was thrown away, because studying, athletics, and selfishness were more important than me.

I marched to my locker and then my French II class. Madame Gris was a tall, white-haired woman with an a-line skirt that had big pockets at the sides. She kept her hands in those pockets the whole time, only taking them out to write on the whiteboard or tuck her hair back behind her ear. She went on about relationships between verbs, conjugating, and other stuff that went in my ears and got lost somewhere at the back of my neck. My brain was too preoccupied with how the day would go.

And it went pretty well. I ate lunch in the cafeteria with Jenna, figuring we’d resume our daily schedules, hang out together at school, and see each other now and again on the weekend. I also kept my eyes peeled for Allison, so that I could strengthen that bond and put into motion my plan to stay near Christian and the booze.

Our outdoor cafeteria was a great expanse of eating bliss. If you dropped your food, a squirrel or crow would be ready to clean it up. There was no shade from the sun, so sunglasses were vital if you were going to eat there. Being that I was wearing black, I became a solar panel as the minutes passed. Jenna chatted about a cute boy in Spanish and how bummed she was about getting Mrs. Luddington for English instead of Mr. Holt.

“She’s fat and smells like clay,” she said, gnawing on a hunk of string cheese. As I picked at my PB&J, I saw no sign of Allison or any of the popular group. Most of them went off campus for lunch. Those were the days.

I thought about nothing but Christian for the rest of the afternoon. I hoped he would catch a glimpse of me, but my monumental efforts to avoid seeing him made that unlikely. But if he did see me, I wanted him to feel so bad that he would stop and talk to me, give me a hug and maybe find some time to fit me into his busy schedule.

I was looking forward to my final and favorite class, art. It was in a portable classroom at the back of the campus, tucked below a retaining wall that dripped with green, slimy moss. The teacher, Mr. Stanley, waved his arms as he talked rings around what we’d accomplish in his class.

“When you leave this class on the last day of school, you’ll know whether you like art or love being an artist,” he said, leaping into a backwards skip.

“Looks like we’re getting the art
and
the dance,” said the boy sitting to my left. He had scruffy brown hair and wore a khaki jacket that had been washed too many times. His pale skin was sprinkled with light freckles, and his eyes shone with a warm, dark color.

“I’ve heard creative people are usually good at more than one thing. Like artists who play music, or writers who sing,” I said.

“And art teachers who dance whenever someone says
oil paint
.” He reached over to shake my hand. “I’m Jesse.”

“Rebecca,” I said, taking hold of his warm, smooth and strong hand, a bit of blonde fuzz on the knuckles.

“Ionesco. I’ve seen you in the paper for some art contest. What’re you doing here?”

Nobody had ever looked twice at the paper when I was in it. My mom, being typical, would clip my stories and announcements and tack them to a bulletin board, but that was about it. Warmth ran over my face knowing that Jesse knew about me.

“I want to go to Otis, so I have to be here.” Even though I was beyond the basics of high school art class, I had to put in an appearance to get where I was going.

“Hmm, that’s a good school. You think you’ll get in?” He leaned his head against his hand and waited for my answer.

“I… uh… have been planning on it since I was little. I’ve never thought of not going.”

This Jesse and his seeds of doubt were messing up my perfectly rotten first day of school. Going to an art college was my dream, and not going wasn’t part of the plan. Jesse was talented at finding the little areas in which to irritate me, even though we’d only known each other for all of five minutes.

“Mr. Leary, please pay attention, at least on the first day. You can bother Ms. Ionesco after class… with her permission, of course,” said Mr. Stanley, standing over Jesse, giving me a wink. He knew Jesse was giving me a hard time.

“I’ll do that. Thank you, sir,” said Jesse, leaning back into his seat and crossing his arms.
I noticed he wore a beaded bracelet with a silver circle and triangle in the middle.

The rest of the period, Jesse paid attention to Mr. Stanley, and I paid attention to him without him noticing. It was hard to ignore how sure he was of himself, smiling when the teacher made a good point, and grumbling about ones he thought were wrong. When the bell rang, I felt a little disappointed to say bye to him.

“Guess we have to show up tomorrow. See you then, Ms. Ionesco!” He stood up and left the room before I could reply.

Lost in a fuzzy place from a long day of school and an experience with someone who made me doubt myself, I wandered down to the parking lot to meet Jenna and her mom. When I didn’t see them, I started to stroll along the sidewalk, feeling better than I had all day.

I was jolted when I saw Christian leaning against his car, talking to Hillman. They both laughed and then Hillman spotted me. He kept his mouth shut and watched me from behind dark sunglasses as I walked. A slight smirk was on his mouth. I shuddered and headed back to where I was supposed to meet Jenna.
Hot coals could not have made me walk any faster. I must have looked like one of those speed-walkers with the funny
swishy butts as I hurried away.

Seeing Christian made me feel like a little girl who wants a doll more than anything in the world, but can’t have it because she doesn’t have enough sticker
s on her Good Behavior
chart. No matter how much I
cried and pleaded, it would
never be mine.

“Hello, Beck.
” A voice like water over jagged
pebbles breathed on my neck. I turned to face Hillman. He had shadowed my walk in perfect silence. His red hair was slicked back, and he wore a tight shirt and skinny jeans that contoured his muscular legs.

“Hi.” I held my books close to my chest, praying that Mrs. Beltran would show up and rescue me.

Hillman circled, surveying what he saw like it was an auction. “Never seen you wear black like that. It looks good on you.”

I didn’t feel so strong and powerful anymore.

“Thanks.”

“I was just talking to Christian.” He brought his arms up around his neck and stretched, his shirt lifting to reveal ripped abs. “He said you guys broke up.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I turned away, but he came around to face me again, arms crossed in front of his broad chest.

“He’s like that. Doesn’t make time for his girls. I’d never do that… to you, I mean.” He might as well have handed me a dozen red roses, his conversation laced with innuendo. I could think of nothing to say. Any other girl would have jumped up and down with joy, but I wanted to run.

“Oh, okay.” I felt
my legs start to shake
, and I looked around for any sign of Jenna. Christian had already left the parking lot, not that he’d care if he saw Hillman talking to me.

“He does have good taste, though.”

Right then, Jenna came around the corner and stopped in her tracks. Her jaw dropped when she saw me cornered. Like a drill sergeant, she marched over and stood between us.

“Don’t you have something better to do, like fuck one of your cheerleaders?” Her hands were on her non-existent hips, tousled curls cascading around her face. Hillman stood back, intimidated by this girl who was almost as tall as he was.

“You’re a bitch, you know that?” He walked away, his footsteps hard and fast against the pavement.

“I got him good and pissed!” she squealed, proud of her prowess. Whatever she did, it worked and I felt the adrenaline run from my body. Even better, her mom pulled up and we got into the SUV.

“What the hell was he doing?”

“I saw him talking to Christian and he must have followed me.”

“It looked like he was giving you the once-over.”

“Or something…”

Mrs. Beltran drove by Hillman’s Beemer just as he was pulling off his shirt.

“If I was only younger,” she said, slowing down on purpose. Jenna looked at me and we both pretended to gag.

Chapter 13

“I’ve been watching you. A lot.” Hillman pressed against me with such force that I bit my tongue, the blood seeping through my teeth as I cried.

“And I think that you should’ve been with me, instead of him.” He leaned heavy on my chest. My lungs gasped for air, but not before I started seeing black stars in front of my eyes.

If I could just pass-out I’d be fine. I wouldn’t know what happens next. For now, it felt like my soul was somewhere else, on a different planet.

I was able to catch a su
dden, deep breath of air, and then another. When the black stars cleared I saw Christian pounding his fist into Hillman’s face.

≈

There’s nothing like a good drink to end a bad day. Seeing Christian from afar, and being cornered by Hillman like a caged ani
mal, brought the whole day down.

My dad had bought some cheap bottles of cabernet and stashed them in the pantry in case of emergency. They already had several better bottles, and I thought if I mixed one of those with the cheap stuff, I could pluck one for myself, undetected.

In my room with the door locked, I poured the wine into a mug and chugged it. With another mug-full, I sat down at my computer and checked Facebook.

There was a friend request. Jesse Leary.

I was amazed to see a photo of the boy in the khaki jacket looking back at me. He was quick to seek me out, and I granted his request, exploring his page.

Jesse had over 450 friends. Quite a few were much older than him. His profile was goofy. He listed Quasi-Buddhist Methodist Atheist as his religion, and that his political views were left and right, up and down. He was a month older than me, single, and looking for new relationships. I thought it was cool to not only make a new friend at school, but have that friend find me on the Internet.

My warm buzz wasn’t half bad, either. The bottle of wine was almost gone, and I held ground without feeling like I’d gone too far. This wasn’t bourbon, after all. That was for alcoholics.

However you put it together, a bottle of wine on a school night was no picnic the next day. It was like crawling through slime to get showered and dressed. To top it off, I got my period. My hands shook as I tried to press a pad into my underpants, and it fell into the toilet and floated around the bowl like a lifeboat.

I didn’t give two shits about what I’d wear for the second day of school. A purple sweatshirt? Great. Jeans? Fine, as long as they didn’t give me camel toe. Tennis shoes would give me the tread I needed to keep from tripping in my post-wine haze. And Tylenol, God bless it, for the pain in my head and in my pelvis.

Jenna was happy to see me looking like my regular self.

“You looked goth yesterday. So not you, Beck.” She dabbed at her face in the back seat of the car. It was my dad’s turn to drive, and so we traveled in his 1985 Cadillac. A real hooptie, with a trunk that looked like a semi had smacked into it.

“Today I don’t care what I look like.” I did care a little, though. My mom always said that if you feel ugly you should put on some makeup and fresh clothes, do your hair, and then you’d feel better about yourself. I don’t think anything could’ve helped the way I felt.

I avoided Christian and Hillman by steering clear of Jock Wall, but one person I couldn’t avoid, not that I wanted to, was Jesse Leary. He’d get to see the real me, and tough shit if he didn’t like it.

He chewed on a smelly, yucky piece of beef jerky when I sat down next to him. Why anyone would want to eat that crap was beyond me. Not only did it look like a cadaver finger left in the sun, it gave whoever ate it the most nasty breath on Earth.

“You’re not supposed to eat in class.” I tried holding my breath, and contemplated pulling my shirt up over my nose. He chuckled and wrapped the remaining jerky in a baggy and placed it in his jacket pocket.

“You’d be surprised what you
can
eat and drink in class.” He winked at me.

Mr. Stanley made the rounds with a stack of papers, each with a different assignment. I got shadowing, which was a soothing no-brainer.

“You look better today — more relaxed,” he said.

“Thanks, I think.”

“Gee, I think too! We have something in common.”

As I smoothed shadows and darkness into my paper, I recalled what Jesse said about eating and drinking in class. I hadn’t thought about bringing something to school, just in case I needed it. I could put booze in a water bottle, make it look like fruit punch, and nobody would know. Not a bad idea.