The File on Angelyn Stark (8 page)

Jeni looks up from her book. “Angelyn?”

“Yep. I’m back.”

“I didn’t figure you’d be back here,” she says.

“I’ve got nowhere else to go,” I say. “For I don’t know how long.”

I settle cross-legged against the wall outside my English classroom.

“Did that girl get the same time off as you?” Jeni asks.

“We both got two days. That’s what you get here when you fight unless it’s real serious.”

“Oh.” Jeni rests her head on bent knee.

“I know you talked to Miss Bass about me.”

“I guess it didn’t help.”

“My mom heard. One more person saying it wasn’t all me.”

Jeni nods. “Nathan said she’s really rough on you.”

“Hey! Don’t talk about Nathan. Don’t talk about my mother.”

“Sorry.”

“Why’d she get to keep the friends?” Jeni asks after a while.

“Charity? It’s complicated.”

“The whole
friend
thing is,” she says.

“Why did you talk to Miss Bass?” I ask.

Jeni looks at me. Shrugs.

“I know it was
his
idea,” I say.

“Nathan says you’re always in trouble.”

I rise. “What?”

“Angelyn!” Jeni stands too. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

“Who’s fighting?” I ask, my back to the wall.

“I think I shouldn’t wait here.”

“Don’t leave. I just don’t get it. Why’d you speak for me?”

“You mean, after what you said about me in class?”

We both look at her shoes. They’re the same shoes.

“I shouldn’t have said it. We don’t have much either.”

“Okay, Angelyn,” Jeni says. “Okay.”

“It isn’t. Unless you are way different than I am.”

“Well …,” she says.

I cross to the steps. “Sit down. We can sit.”

Jeni does. I do. She keeps an eye on me.

“I can’t keep up with my friends,” I say. “On clothes. Most all of my stuff is discount. They know it.”

“Do they get on you for that?” Jeni asks.

“Charity will. I’ll tell you something. I got to be friends with them in fourth grade because we were always the ones getting called out by the teacher. It was always
us
on the punishment bench at lunch recess, you know? I never thought Jacey and Charity were any different from me. But the day before
Christmas break, they came to school with big paper sacks. They gave them to me.”

Jeni’s wincing. “Clothes inside?”

“Yeah.
Their
clothes. Their moms were working on a Christmas clothing drive, and they got the idea. Like I would wear their stuff. Like I
could
. Charity’s fatter than me and Jacey’s thinner.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I got mad. I kicked the bags around. Everyone saw. Everybody knew.”

“And those girls are still your friends?”

“We got to be, again. I had to hang with someone.”

“I got suspended a few times in junior high,” Jeni says. “Always because some
friend
talked me into doing something stupid. Half the time they’d get off.”

I listen. “Never you?”

“I’m a bad liar. A terrible liar. I’d say it all. About myself.”

“I never tell,” I say, “but I still get in trouble. Once Jacey and me got into trouble together. Mom grounded me and I had to do extra chores and stuff. All that happened to Jacey was I couldn’t come to her house anymore. Charity’s mother got in on it and I couldn’t go
there
either. I used to be tight with Jacey, and Charity ran after us. It was never like that again.”

“This is my seventh school,” Jeni says. “No, eighth. It’s my eighth. And, it’s always been—the smart kids don’t want me because I don’t look or dress like them. The poor kids don’t like me because I don’t talk like them. I used to try to fit in. Now I know I don’t need friends.”

“I don’t need friends either,” I say.

She looks at me. “I think ahead, Angelyn.”

I shift. “Ahead to what?”

“My life. When I’m living how I want. I can’t wait.”

“Oh,” I say.

“I’m going to be a nurse,” Jeni says. Like she’s sure of it. “How about you?”

I reach for something. “The Coast Guard?”

“You’re going to join the Coast Guard? That’s cool.”

It does sound cool. All I have to do is find out what it means.

Voices at the corner. Ms. Hinsley, my English teacher, comes around.

“Angelyn Stark is off suspension,” she says.

You can hear the
ick
in her voice.

Mr. Rossi is next, cradling a steaming mug.

“Don’t let her fool you,” he says. “Angelyn Stark is one smart girl.”

“I am not opening the classroom this early, Angelyn,” Ms. Hinsley says.

I slouch on the steps. “Didn’t ask you to.”

“Yeah, we’ve got some donuts to walk off,” Mr. Rossi says.

Ms. Hinsley
clickety-clack
s by.

After her, Mr. Rossi winks.

I’m laughing.

“What do you think of him?” I ask.

“He gave me detention first day,” Jeni says.

I watch them go. “I think he’s pretty great.”

Charity’s foot is parked on my desk when I walk into World Cultures.

“Move it,” I say, staring down the aisle.

She points to Jeni at the window. “Sit
there
. We don’t want you.”

One row over, Jacey is zombielike. No help.

I start to argue, then—
why not?

“Mr. Rossi?”

He lowers his newspaper. “Yes, Angelyn?”

“Can I change seats?”

Mr. Rossi takes me in. Charity with her foot on my desk. Jeni by the window.

“You bet,” he says.

At lunch I climb with Jeni toward town.

“You’re all right with us being partners?” she says.

“I don’t mind, but I didn’t get everything he was saying.”

Jeni talks about the project Mr. Rossi assigned:

Choose a country; research an issue that affects it
.

“Those girls were pissed not to have you in their group,” she says.

“They were not. We’d all three fail together.”

Her words lift me.

The sidewalk rises steeply. Jeni falls behind. I wait and walk slower. It’s strange to walk with someone new. Two instead of three.

“We could work on the report before school,” she says. “In the library.”

“The library?” I make a face. “I guess I don’t have anywhere else to be then.”

“It’s got to be there,” Jeni says. “We can’t work where I’m living.”

“We sure can’t work at my place.”

Near the top of the hill a truck pulls even with us. Stays even.

I know the sound.

“Whatever you hear,” I say, “
don’t
hear it.
Don’t
look.”

Jeni says, “What?”

“The truck,” I say. “It’s my boyfriend. He’s following us.”

As we step into the crosswalk: “I know that ass!” some guy calls.

Not even Steve’s voice.

Into town we’re trailed by the
squeal-stop
of Steve’s brakes.

“Why is he following?” Jeni sounds scared.

I toss my hair. “They’re not after you.”

“Angelyn. Angelyn!” That same guy’s voice that I can’t place.

We pass a parking garage. City Hall. A Mexican restaurant.

Then: “ANGELYN!” My name in chorus. Finally, I look.

Steve is rolling next to us. Three hangers-on from our group are in the back of the truck. Young kids. The ones without girls. My choir.

In the cab with him, a friend from last year. Kal somebody. He’s graduated.

“It takes five of you to make
one
,” I shout.

Kal slings an arm out the window. “How ’bout we all make
you
?”

I look to Steve. “You let him say that?”

Steve shoots me the finger. Wiggles it.

Jeni tugs at me. “Angelyn—”

I whirl on her. “Hands off.”

She reels away. Hurt eyes.

Two lawyer types look us over, passing. We’re close to Courthouse Park.

“Come on, let’s go,” I say.

The boys yell after us. Steve honks.

“They’re stopped in traffic,” Jeni says.

In the park I take a bench that faces the street.

“Leave if you want,” I say.

Jeni sinks onto the bench.

I swallow. “When they come, pretend—”

“Like we don’t care,” she says. “No matter what.”

I look at her. “Yes.”

Steve is heavy on the bumper of the car in front. The boys in the back are pointing to the park like they’ve discovered land.

“What’s he need all those guys for?” I wonder out loud.

“I’ve got some gummy worms,” Jeni says.

“And you’re telling me because?”

“We could look busy eating them.”

“Dig them out,” I say.

She pulls a bag from her purse, and we each take some.

“These are horrible,” I say, chewing. Like globs of stale Jell-O.

She folds a leg under. I stretch my arms along the bench back.

“Lesbos!” the boys shout as the truck inches to the park.

I blow them a kiss across the empty sidewalk.

Jeni’s hand trembles as she passes me the bag.

“Look at that slut,” Kal calls as the truck pulls parallel to us.

“Hey!” I say, standing. “Steve! Shut him up. Talk for yourself.”

Steve is slumped, shades on. The car he’s tailing surges ahead.

“Go!” I call as traffic builds behind him.

He throws down his shades, puts the truck in park, and jumps out.

Jeni chokes my name.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. Thinking:
Is it?

Steve stomps around the truck and onto the sidewalk. People are honking.

“What?” I call. “What?” when he’s closer.

“We are on our way to Taco Bell,” he says. Steaming.

I tilt my chin. “And you’re driving the bus? The
short
bus.”

“It ain’t about you, Angelyn! That’s what I’m saying.”

“Then tell them to stop.”

Steve thumbs back. “I don’t tell them what to say! They say it.”

“Like on the field?” My breath hitches. “They don’t hear it first from you?”

He frowns. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Holding out,” Steve says.

We eye each other.

“I’m not your bitch,” I say.

“Since when?” Steve asks.

“Since right this second.” I fire the words at him.

“Angelyn, damn.”

I point. “I’d be looking at
that.
”

Kal is jerking the truck down Main, the boys in back bouncing like beans.

“Shit.” Steve takes off running.

I sit back on the bench.

“That was great,” Jeni says.

“That was acting,” I say, working my cold fingers.

“He never saw me.”

“Steve can be single-minded.”

“My mom meets guys off the Internet,” Jeni says.

“What?”

“That’s how she got with Nathan’s dad. That’s why we’re in this town.”

“Okay, why are you telling me?”

“Just thinking out loud, Angelyn.”

“Your mom trolls the Net for sex buddies and I need to know.”

Jeni laughs. “
Romance
, she calls it.”

I’m not sure how to take her. “Well, I’m not like that.”

“I’m not either.” Deadly serious now. “I won’t be. Not ever.”

A clump of regular people goes by, coffee and cigarettes in hand. A jury, I decide, on break from one of the courts.

“My mother hates me,” I say.

“Why?” Jeni asks.

“She just does. Forget it.” My face is hot.

“Okay.” She checks her watch. “Maybe we should go.”

We leave the park.

“You think we’ll get back to school before those guys do?” Jeni asks.

“Yep.” Taco Bell is on the far end of town.

“Angelyn, I feel like I said the wrong thing, but I don’t know what it is.”

I exhale. “No, I did. There’s no point in talking about it.”

“My mom is kind of—out there,” Jeni says.

“But do you get along with her?” I ask.

“She’s not a grown-up. Sometimes I have to think for both of us. But, yeah, we get along.”

“Any of her Net friends ever go for you?”

“They get her, not me.” Jeni is calm. “We are real clear on that one.”

I scuff along the sidewalk.

We pass lawyers’ offices done up in cozy brick-red. Superior Court, its sparkling glass door stuck between yellow brick walls.

I point. “They hear custody cases in there. My mom used to say I’d best watch myself, or that’s where we’d all wind up.”

Jeni is looking at me. “You mean, like, your dad would try to get you?”

Rage starts through me. It dies. “No. Like the state would try to get me.”

“Oh.” Her voice is careful.

“Nathan told you all about me, I bet.”

“He said some things. Not in a bad way. He likes you, for sure.”

“It’s all bad. And Nathan’s a punk.”

We’re quiet, climbing. We stop at the intersection.

“I think about what comes next,” Jeni says. “What
I
can do. I already know I won’t be like my mom, waiting on some guy. I’m going to make my own life.”

She’s shiny-faced, breathless, her hair escaping from its knot.

“I don’t see ahead,” I say. “For me it’s all about getting by.”

“I
have
to see ahead. My life would suck too much if I didn’t.”