Tell Me Three Things (3 page)

I haven’t had a chance to really look without getting caught, but I’m pretty sure the Batman has a cleft in his chin, and there’s a distinct possibility that he wears eyeliner, which,
meh.
Or maybe it’s just the dark circles that make his eyes pop, because he looks chronically exhausted, like sleep is just not a luxury afforded to him.

“No worries,” the girl says, and pretends not to be stung by his rejection, though it’s clear she is. In response, she sits on another girl’s lap in the opposite chair, another blond, who looks so much like her that I think they might be twins, and faux-cuddles her. I know how this show goes.

I walk by, eager to get to the bench just outside the door. A lonely place to eat lunch, maybe, but also an anxiety-free zone. No way to screw it up.

“What are you staring at?” the first blonde barks at me.

And there they are, the first words another student has voluntarily said to me since I started at Wood Valley two weeks ago:
What are you staring at?

Welcome to the jungle,
I think.
Welcome. To. The. Jungle.

I
t’s not so bad here, I tell myself, now that I’m sitting on a bench with my back to the Batman and those bitchy girls, the cafeteria and the rest of my class safely behind him. So people here are mean. No big deal. People are mean everywhere.

I remind myself of the blissful weather. It’s sunny, because apparently it’s always sunny in LA. I’ve noticed that all the kids have designer sunglasses, and I’d get all snarky about people trying to look cool, but it turns out they need them. I spend my days all squinty, with one hand cupped over my eyes like a saluting Boy Scout.

My biggest problem is that I miss my best friend, Scarlett. She’s my five-foot-tall half-Jewish, half-Korean bouncer, and she would have had the perfect comeback for that girl, something with bite and edge. Instead, I’ve only got me: me and my delayed response time and my burning retinas. I’ve been trying to convince myself that I can go it alone for the next two years. That if I need a boost, I can just text Scarlett and it will feel like she’s nearby, not halfway across the country. She’s fast on the trigger. I just wish I felt a little less stupid about how this place works. Actually, SN is right: I have lots of practical questions. I could totally use a Wood Valley app that would tell me how to use the lunch credit cards, what the hell Wood Valley Giving Day is, and why I’m supposed to wear closed-toed shoes that day. Maybe most importantly, who is off-limits for accidental eye contact.
What are you staring at?

The flirting blondes now walk by my bench—guess their attempt to get Batman to walk was fruitless—and giggle as they pass.

Are they laughing at me?

“Is she for real?” the blonder girl mock-whispers to her only slightly less blond friend, and then glances back at me. They are both pretty in that lucky, conventional way. Shiny, freshly blown yellow hair, blue eyes, clear skin, skinny. Oddly big boobs. Short skirts that I’m pretty sure violate the school’s dress code, and four coats of makeup that was probably applied with the help of a YouTube tutorial. I’ll be honest: I wouldn’t mind being lucky in precisely that way, being that rare teenager who has never stared down the head of a pimple. My face, even on its clearest days, has what my grandmother has always not-so-charitably called character. It takes a second, maybe a third look for someone to notice my potential. That is, if I have any. “Did you see that scrunchie?”

Oh crap. I was right. They are talking about me. Not only will I spend the next two years without a single friend, but all those
20/20
specials on school bullying will finally make sense. Somebody Nobody may be a prank, but he/she is right: this place is a war zone. I’m going to need my own personal “It Gets Better” video.

My face burns. I touch my finger to my head, a sign of weakness, yes, but also a reflex. There’s nothing wrong with my scrunchie. I read on Rookie that they’re back. Scarlett wears one too sometimes, and she won Best Dressed last year. I fight the tears filling my eyes. No, they will not see me cry. Scratch that. They will not
make
me cry.

Screw them.

“Shhh, she can hear you,” the other one says, and then looks back at me, at once apologetic and gleeful. She’s high with a vicarious bitch thrill. Then they walk on—sashay, really, as if they think there’s an audience watching and whistling. I glance behind me, just to make sure, but no, I’m the only one here. They are swaying their perfect asses for my benefit.

I pull out my phone. Text Scarlett. It’s lunchtime for me, but she’s just getting out of school. I hate that we are far apart in both space
and
time.

We have never been the types who are all, “I hate my left pinky finger! It’s just so…bendy.” Scarlett is right. I have better things to do than compare myself with the unattainable ideals established by magazine art directors who shave off thighs with a finger swipe. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to noticing that I’m on the bigger side of things here. How is that possible? Do they put laxatives in the water?

I quickly snap a selfie of me alone on a bench with my half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I smile instead of pout, though, and label with the hashtag #Day14. Those blondes would pout, turn it into an
I’m so sexy
picture, and then Instagram it.
Look how hot I am not eating my sandwich!

I pull my hair loose. This is why I need Scarlett here. Maybe she’s the reason I’ve never been teased before. If we hadn’t met at the age of four, I’d likely be an even bigger dork.

I squint at my phone. The Batman was looking out the window just as I took my shot. Not photobombing exactly, but captured for posterity. So it turns out Blond and Blonder did have an audience after all. Of course they did. Girls like that
always
have an audience.

My face flushes red again. Not only am I a big fat loser who eats lunch alone with an unironic scrunchie in her hair, but I’m stupid enough to get caught taking a selfie of this wonderful moment in my life. By a cute guy, no less.

I check the little box next to the picture. Hit delete. Wish it were that easy to erase everything else.

“
T
. S. Eliot’s
‘The Waste Land.’
Anyone read it?” asks Mrs. Pollack, my new AP English teacher. Nobody raises their hand, myself included, though I did read it a couple of years ago, in what now feels like a different lifetime. My mom used to leave poetry books strewn around our house, as if they were part of some unspoken scavenger hunt, a scattering of convoluted clues leading to I don’t know what. When I was bored, I’d pick up the books off her nightstand or from the pile next to the bathtub and randomly flip them open. I wanted to read wherever she had highlighted or scribbled illegible margin notes. I often wondered why a certain line was marked with faded yellow.

I never asked her. Why didn’t I ask her? One of the worst parts about someone dying is thinking back to all those times you didn’t ask the right questions, all those times you stupidly assumed you’d have all the time in the world. And this too: how all that time feels like not much time at all. What’s left feels like something manufactured. The overexposed ghosts of memories.

In “The Waste Land,” my mother had underlined the first sentence and marked it with two exuberant asterisks: “April is the cruellest month.”

Why is April the cruellest month? I’m not sure. Lately, they all seem cruel in their own way. It’s September now: sharp pencils. A new year and not a new year at all. Both too early and too late for resolutions and fresh starts.

My mother’s books are packed up in cardboard boxes and getting moldy in a self-storage unit in Chicago, their paper smell turned damp and dusty. I don’t let myself think about that or about how all matter disintegrates. About how all that highlighting was a waste.

“It’s a four-hundred-thirty-four-line poem. So that’s what, like, four hundred thirty-four tweets?” Mrs. Pollack gets a laugh. She’s young—maybe late twenties—and attractive: leopard-print leggings, leather peep-toe wedges, a silk tank top that shows off her freckled shoulders. She’s better dressed than I am. One of those teachers who the kids have all tacitly agreed to root for, maybe even to admire, since her life doesn’t seem so far out of our reach. She’s something recognizable.

On my first day, she introduced me to the class but didn’t make me stand up and say something about myself, like the rest of my teachers had done. Considerate of Mrs. Pollack to spare me that indignity.

“So, guys, ‘The Waste Land’ is hard. Really, really hard. Like, college-level hard, but I think you’re up for it. Are you up for it?”

She gets a few halfhearted yeses. I don’t say anything. No need to let my nerd flag fly just yet.

“Nuh-uh. You can do better than that. Are you up for it?” Now she gets full-on cheers, which impresses me. I thought the kids here only got excited about clothes and
Us Weekly
and expensive trips to pad their college applications. Maybe I’ve written them off too quickly. “Okay, here’s how we’re going to do this. You’re going to partner up into teams of two, and over the next two months, on a weekly basis, you are going tackle this poem together.” Oh no. No. No. No. You know the only thing worse than being the new kid in school? Being the new kid who needs to find a partner. Crap.

My eyes bounce around the room. Theo and Ashby are in the front, and it’s a given that Theo will not help a stepsister out. The two blondes who made fun of me earlier are sitting to my right. Turns out their names are Crystal (blond) and Gem (blonder), which would be hilarious if they weren’t nasty. Look left. The girl next to me wears cool big black Warby Parker frames and ripped jeans and looks like the kind of person who would have been my friend back home. But before I can think of a way to ask her to team up, she’s already turned to the person next to her and done the whole
let’s be partners
thing without exchanging a word.

Suddenly, the whole room is paired up. I look around, try not to seem too desperate, though there is a pleading in my eyes. Will I have to raise my hand and tell Mrs. Pollack that I don’t have a partner?
Please, God, no.
Just as I bend my arm, ready to raise it in defeat, someone taps my shoulder from behind with a pen. I breathe a sigh of relief and turn. I don’t care who it is. Beggars and all that.

No. Way.

The Batman.

My stomach does an embarrassing squeeze. He gives me a little nod, like Theo’s guy nod, but this time, there’s no mistaking it: he’s clearly asking me to be his partner. His blue eyes are piercing, almost violating, like he isn’t just looking
at
me but
inside
me too. Measuring something. Seeing if I’m worth his time. I blink, look down, nod back, give him the slightest smile as a thanks. I turn forward again and use all of my willpower not to put my hands against my cheeks to cool them down.

I spend the rest of class wondering why the Batman picked me. Maybe I look smart? And if I look smart, does that mean I look dorky? I mentally scan my outfit: plaid button-down, Gap jeans cuffed up, my old beat-up Vans. My Chicago uniform, minus the heavy jacket. Nothing too telling there, especially now that I’m scrunchie-free. My first instinct is that, for whatever reason, he’s just doing a good deed. I must have looked pathetic, wildly scanning the room for a willing face, especially after he saw me getting bitched out by Gem earlier and embarrassing myself on the first day of school. Even Ken Abernathy, who according to SN has a farting problem, found a partner immediately.

When the bell rings and we’re all packing up our laptops—of course I’m the only one here without a fancy, slim computer—the Batman stops at my desk, stares me down again with those killer eyes. Am I just imagining that they have a sociopathic hint to them? He can’t be that mean. Picking me was actually a nice thing to do. I don’t remember taking the time to befriend a new kid back home. Hot and nice. That. Is. So. Not. Good.

I realize just in time that I need to stop staring and speak up.

“So do you want to exchange numbers or something?” I ask, and hate the nervous lilt in my voice that makes me sound way too much like the girls who gather around him at lunchtime. It’s just that I haven’t really spoken much in weeks. Scarlett and I mostly text. My dad has been so busy looking for a new job and spending time with his new wife that we’ve barely seen each other. He’s not my favorite person right now anyway. I don’t like this new version of him, distracted and married to a stranger, forcing me into an unrecognizable life without a say in the matter.

And that’s it. The sum total of people left in my world.

“Nah. I’ll just do the assignment and put both of our names on it.” This guy doesn’t wait for my okay. He just nods again, like I’ve said yes. Like he asked and I answered a question.

Right. Maybe not so nice after all.

“But—” But what?
I was looking forward to being your partner? I like your serial killer eyes?
Or worst of all:
Please?
I don’t finish speaking. Just look back down at my leather book bag, which I thought was cool until I got here and realized everyone else’s was a fancy French brand that you hear about in rap songs.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get an A.”

Then the Batman walks out so fast that it’s almost like I imagined him there. Some perverse version of a superhero. And I am left alone to gather up my stuff, wondering how long it will be till someone talks to me again.