When the World was Flat (and we were in love) (11 page)

I tossed my drink into a trashcan on the street. I needed caffeine like I needed a hole in the head.

 

“Poor Jackson,” I said to the girls when we congregated in my bedroom that afternoon. I imagined the cops putting him in the slammer, making him share a cell with a few of the local drunks and the Peck brothers who had a history of breaking and entering.

“Poor Jackson?” Sylv asked. “He could have killed you, Lillie. Good on Tom for smashing him.” She sighed and looked dreamy. “Talk about loaded with testosterone. He would be great in bed.”

“I thought you had the hots for Jackson,” I said.

Sylv shrugged. “Do they both have Y chromosomes?”

I raised my eyebrows. It seemed the biology flashcards were also working.

“Just what you want,” Jo suddenly said. She had been sitting at my desk in silence for the past twenty minutes, flicking through a magazine, as lukewarm as she had been in Wal-Mart. “A violent boyfriend.” Her voice was soaked in sarcasm. “I guess his money makes up for it though.”

I furrowed my eyebrows at the venom in her voice, but she continued to flick through the pages, stopping now and then to underline a mistake with a pen. I knew she would email the editor later to point out the errors.

“Who wants to hear my good news?” Sylv asked, changing the subject. Without waiting for an answer, she announced she had been scouted.

I clapped my hands and gave a hooray, but it was short-lived. It turned out Sylv had been tarting around Main Street in her white micro miniskirt and knee-high boots when a middle-aged out-of-towner had given her his card and asked her to call him, claiming to be a photographer for some posh magazine.

“He said it was based in Europe,” Sylv bragged.

“I knew those hours you put into slathering on the make-up would pay off,” Jo sneered.

I frowned at Jo, but then bit my lip. “Are you sure about this guy, Sylv?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” I spoke slowly, knowing I was treading on thin ice. “Why would a fashion photographer come to Green Grove?”

“Kate Moss was discovered at an airport,” she reminded me.

Jo snorted. “He sounds like some sleazy guy who wants you to take your clothes off.”

Sylv stood up. “I knew it! I knew you would bring me down.”

“She has a point,” I ventured, even though Jo was being a bit of a bitch.

Sylv went as red as a beet. “What are you saying, Lillie?” she demanded. “Am I not model material? Am I not pretty enough? Jo?”

Jo held up her hands, backing down. “I never said that.”

“You say it all the time,” Sylv spat. “I slather on the make-up, do I? Well, I would rather slather it on than look like a man. Would a lick of mascara kill you? Huh?”

Jo looked like Sylv had punched her in the gut. She looked down at her magazine, blinking a few times before circling a headline.

“Sylv!”

Sylv whirled on me, her gray eyes flashing like lightning in storm clouds. “And you! You think you have it all, because guys like Jackson and Tom like you. Well, guys like me too. This guy thinks I can be a model, unlike my so-called friends.” She grabbed her shoulder bag from my bed. “Excuse me. I have to go call some sleazy guy who wants me to take my clothes off.”

I thought the bedroom door would come off its hinges when she slammed it.

The room seemed to shudder in the wake of what had happened and we sat in silence until Deb poked her head in. She was carrying a bowl of orange chips. “Pumpkin chips?”

We both shook our heads.

“This room has a lot of negative energy,” Deb observed. “I think it needs to be cleansed.”

Jo went home a few minutes later, as Deb sat in the lotus position on my bed chanting to Hestia, the Goddess of Home and Hearth. I sat down at my desk and tried to do my homework, as my mother performed three concentric circles of the room in both clockwise and anti-clockwise directions.

Needless to say, Algebra was making about as much sense as a guy like Tom moving to a town like Green Grove. I stared at the string of formulas on the page, thinking of the tattoo behind his ear. What did it mean? It was as if the meaning was buried in my memories, like everything else about Tom.

When Deb left me in peace, I took his coat from the back of my chair and put it around my shoulders. I lifted the collar and breathed in his scent again. If I closed my eyes I could feel him pulling me close, like the girl in the photo. My heart seemed to shrink, but then it then swelled again when I remember he had mentioned me to Lorraine. Yeah. He had probably said, I have this stalker called Lillie, I thought, letting my heart shrivel up like a prune.

I took off the coat and folded it carefully, before placing it in my bag. I would return it to Tom on Tuesday, tomorrow being Labor Day. I sighed, thinking of how the girls and I used to get excited about long weekends, planning slumber parties and late nights with bottomless coffee at the Duck-In Diner.

 

The dream returned that night; the one where I was calling out to Tom, screaming his name. I was in the courtyard. The speckled sunlight had dimmed and my killer was there in front of me, his or her hands reaching out. I stumbled against the edge of the fountain, but before I fell backwards into the water I reached out and pulled off the balaclava, my fingernails catching in the scratchy wool.

Long brown hair tumbled down around narrow shoulders and a fine-featured face looked back at me, flushed with anger. I gasped before I was pushed under the surface of the pond and the cold enveloped me.

It was confirmed. The man in the balaclava was a woman. But what was more, she was… me.

When I woke in a cold sweat, I wondered what Deb would make of my dream. It seemed symbolic. Maybe I was having an identity crisis. That was typical for a teenager. Right?

My heart pounded in my ears as I lay in the gray light of dawn, wondering whether or not to go back to sleep. I finally rolled out of bed, deciding I was not ready to face myself again.

 

12

 

Tom skipped school on Tuesday. I looked for him all morning, scanning the faces that passed me in the corridors and hurrying to my locker between classes. My heart rose whenever I caught a glimpse of short brown hair or the blue of his favorite sweater in the crowd, and then sank like a stone when I saw it was just one of the jocks or the blue of a backpack.

Melissa cornered me before third period, demanding to know what had happened between me and Tom on Saturday.

“None of your business,” I said, as I opened my locker.

She flicked her mane and stamped her foot, like a bad-tempered pony. “He was supposed to meet me for lunch on Sunday, but he stood me up.” These last three words were said with a what-the-fuck tone.

“I think you should talk to him, not to me,” I said, loading my books into my bag. “Call him.” Maybe she could let me know what had happened between us too once she had talked to Tom.

She adjusted the yellow handbag on her shoulder. “I would if he had a cell.” She trailed off, as if hearing his lie in her own voice. Of course it was a lie. Tom was rich enough to have every piece of technology ever invented, five weeks before it came on the market. He probably owned half of Apple.

“Is that his jacket?” she suddenly asked.

I slammed my locker shut, concealing the evidence.

Her eyes became tiny slits of mascara and pink eye-shadow as she stepped forward, getting up in my personal space. “Listen to me, you skank.”

Her grape bubblegum perfume gave me a headache. Or maybe it was the chemicals in her fake tan.

“You think you have a shot with Tom? Talk about pathetic.” She laughed nastily. “As if he would be into a freakshow like you, whose mom thinks she is Cleopatra reincarnated or some stupid shit like that.”

I blushed, wishing Deb had passed on the interview with the
Green Grove Post
when she was invited to become a member of the American Society of Psychics and Mediums last year.

“Let me keep that in mind next time I go to his house,” I said coldly. Her eyebrows shot up. Of course, she had no clue that his house was Rose Hill.

I picked up my bag and turned on my heel, well aware that I was at the top of her hit list now. I knew what they said about friends in high places, which meant I could guess what they said about enemies.

 

Like Tom, Sylv had skipped school, leaving me to spend lunch with a girl who told me she was Jo, but who bore no resemblance to my best friend of sixteen years.

Her mousey hair had been dyed jet black overnight and hacked into a ragged bob with blunt bangs. It looked alternative and I guess you could say sophisticated. It was kind of 1920s flapper. I half-expected her to pull out a cigarette and smoke it in one of those long holders while using words like “sugar” and “toots”.

“Who are you supposed to be? Liza Minnelli?” I asked, but there was no smile, even though we both loved her character Sally Bowles in
Cabaret
. There was no answer either. She sat through lunch in silence, not touching her tray of nachos.

She was reading
The Catcher in the Rye
, which I knew she had read a thousand times before. I rolled my eyes whenever I saw her circle a word, wondering what mistakes she could find in a book that had been in print for over fifty years.

But when the bell rang I realized I would rather sit there for another forty minutes watching Jo edit than go to fifth period – Art Studies.

I knew Jackson would be there with his puppy-dog eyes – or one puppy-dog eye, because the other was bruised and swollen. I had seen it at lunch, before I had turned my head and pretended to be deep in conversation with Jo. Yeah, right. As if. She had already shut down my attempts to ask her about her new look and whether her dad was OK. “I will let you know when he dies,” she had said snippily, leaving me as stunned as a mounted deer head.

When I walked into the Art Block I was, for all intents and purposes, going to sit on my own or even with Dirk and Mary Sunshine, otherwise known as Kate. But then I saw Jackson, sitting there with an empty seat beside him and those aforementioned eyes. His left eye was the bruised one, a mottle of blue-black tinged with red and yellow that ran down the side of his nose, courtesy of Tom.

I slumped in the seat next to him, realizing I was going to have to talk to him sooner or later if I wanted to pass Art Studies.

Mr Hastings was talking about the Renaissance. I noticed his voice was animated and above twenty decibels. I looked around the classroom, checking if Turnip was sitting up the back assessing him or something. Nope. Maybe the school board had a camera installed. I decided to work on my acting skills too, by impersonating a model student. I opened up my folder and began taking notes on a fresh, lined page.

“Lillie,” Jackson whispered.

I chewed on the end of my pen, looking at the front of the classroom, as if spellbound by Mr Hastings and his talk on linear perspective in painting.

“Lillie,” Jackson whispered again.

I wrote, “The Renaissance began in the Fourteenth Century”, taking my time with my cursive, like those monks who wrote in old-fashioned calligraphy. They say a lot of them died of poisoning from the mercury in their ink.

“I want to apologize.” He drew in a deep breath. “Sorry.”

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, I thought with each stroke of my pen.

“I was an idiot,” Jackson continued. “Why did I do it?” He groaned dramatically. “Why?”

“I think they call it peer pressure,” I hissed.

Mr Hastings gave us a look.

Jackson sighed. “I know. I have a problem.”

“Maybe you should see someone about that,” I said snidely.

“Lillie,” Mr Hastings warned. OK, there must have been a camera, because normally you could talk on your cell in his class without complaint.

A moment or two passed before Jackson muttered, “I would have thought three years of therapy after I left Green Grove had done the trick.”

My eyebrows shot up.

“Spare me your surprise, Lillie. You know how it was for me in Elementary.”

“Then why did you come back to Green Grove?”

Mr Hastings raised his voice another twenty decibels. “The first Renaissance artists emerged in Florence in the 15th century during a competition to sculpt a set of bronze doors for a cathedral.”

Jackson bent down to scribble a few notes and I thought that was the end of our discussion, until he slid his notebook across the desk.

I looked at the words, “At the end of a fear of flying course you have to take a flight.”

I looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. “And?”

“Green Grove is my flight,” he whispered.

“And your parents agreed with your therapist?” I pictured them uprooting their new life to return to their old one.

“My mom is my therapist. My parents are both shrinks.”

Mr Hastings cut into our conversation. “Jackson, please move to the other side of the classroom.”

My mouth fell open. Mr Hastings was doling out discipline? It was as if both he and Jo had gone through extreme makeovers overnight.

Jackson swept his books and pens into his bag. I touched his hand, as he stood up.

“Sorry.”

He looked at my hand and then at me, his lips twitching into a small smile. “Me too.”

“Jackson,” Mr Hastings warned.

“I hope no one turns you in,” I added.

“Me too.”

 

That afternoon I waited for Jo in the quad as usual, scanning the sea of bobbing heads for her new haircut.

I checked the time on my cell at the four minute mark. And again at the six. And then at the seven.

“Two more minutes, Betty Boop,” I muttered, as if she were telepathic. “OK. Three.” It was about five minutes later that I spotted her across the quad, at the entrance to the cafeteria. She was talking to Mr Bailey. I groaned and slouched against a brick wall, realizing we could be here for hours.