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“Bethy,” she gasped.
“Noe,” I wailed.
The street at night was empty and quiet, the moon a sliver.
I wondered what it would be like not to know her anymore.
73
THE WEEK AFTER CAMPUS VISITS, OUR school was buzzing with stories of what everyone had gotten up to. Michael Lavelle had gotten drunk with a college basketball team and woke up with a string bikini drawn over his nipples in permanent marker. Eleanor Watchless had attended a 400-level physics seminar and astounded the professor by turning in the solution to every problem she had written on the board. Mallory Davis had cheated on Tim Xiu with her campus tour guide.
Steven had taken the train south to NYU to check out their drama department. In Art, he chattered about it nonstop. “It’s like an entire school full of pee sisters,” he confessed gleefully. “Perhaps an entire city.” He’d stayed with his rich uncle in Manhattan, and the uncle had taken him to see The Lion King, Avenue Q, and a ballet called Petrushka. He brandished a pink slipper the lead dancer had signed for him after the show. After Art, we went to the bathroom together to wash the paint off our hands, an endeavor that proved to be surprisingly labor-intensive.
“What about you, A
“It was—very interesting,” I said.
“Interesting how?”
“A lot of ways. Every way.”
I pumped more soap into my hands and scrubbed at my fingernails, which were caked with tenacious blue paint. I thought we’d reverted to friendly silence, but after a moment Steven said, “Are you going to tell me about it, or is the privilege reserved for first-degree friends?”
“Steven—” I groaned.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Whatever it is, you probably told Noe the minute you saw her, but I’m just the person you kill time with in Art.”
I froze, hot water blasting over my hands. “We are friends,” I said. “We talk all the time.”
“I talk all the time,” said Steven. “You demur.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m a private person.”
“A picket fence is private. You’re the freaking Berlin Wall.”
I blushed hard. I remembered the way Noe’s gym friends had badgered me at the restaurant, the night of the homecoming dance: Why are you so quiet? Why don’t you ever talk? I hadn’t managed to make a co
“Don’t you think I’d talk if I could?” I said.
“Why can’t you?”
The bathroom tiles were flecked with shiny bits of copper. I’d never noticed that before. My hands were red and throbbing from being under the hot water for too long. I was thinking about Scott’s face in the camping trip photograph. Maybe I’d never be normal. Maybe I’d never have a real friend. Steven was right. Friendship was more than laughing at someone’s jokes. It was more like ski
“I’m not like you and Noe,” I said. “Sometimes I feel like everyone else has this thing that I’m missing.”
On thing, my hand moved to the place on my rib cage where my heart used to live. I drew it away quickly.
“Do you really believe that?” said Steven.
“If someone amputated your leg, would you believe that you still had it?” I said.
The bathroom door creaked open, and Kaylee and Rhia
“Hey, Kaylee, hey, Rhia
“Hey, A
I glanced at Steven. “Pee Sisters Convention,” I sighed. “We were just leaving.”
On the way down the hall, Steven gave me a high five. “That was great,” he said.
“What was great?”
“We had a fight. You said things.”
He seemed to consider this a victory, but my shoulders slumped.
“I still haven’t told you about Northern,” I burst out. “And I’ve never made it . . . okay . . . for you to be anything other than a fu
We paused outside the cafeteria. The bulletin boards were cluttered with a
“I suck,” I said. “It’s like I’m not even human. You’ve been trying so hard to be friends with me, and I haven’t been a friend to you.”
Steven could tell he’d triggered something bigger than he’d intended. He reached out and gently touched my sleeve. “The thing that’s actually wrong with you is probably tiny to nonexistent compared to the things you’ve made yourself believe are wrong with you. At least, that’s what Ricardo says.”
“What if the thing is big?” I said. “And it’s not in your imagination?”
The bell began to ring for fourth period. We turned from the cafeteria without going in and walked back down the hall. For once, the space between us was heavy and quiet instead of being filled with witty banter.
It felt strange, the heaviness and quiet. It scared me.
Some kinds of scary are better than others, I guess. When I sank into my desk for Media Studies, I felt like a swimmer come in from the sea.
74
DECEMBER WAS COLD AND WHITE AND blinding. The trees bent and creaked under the weight of the snow. I tried to get excited about exams and Secret Santas and all that stuff, but it was hard.
In Art, Mr. Lim called me up to his desk. “Ms. Schultz, you have a redo outstanding on your self-portrait.” At lunch, I filled a jar with rocks and left it in his office with a title card that said, RAW MATERIALS II: Portrait of the Artist as a Jar Full of Stones. It would make a nice diptych, I thought.
I got an email from Loren Wilder, my tour guide from Northern. Thought you might be interested in this poem by Wilda McClure. He signed the message with a smiley and his initials. I wondered how he had gotten my email address, then remembered it was on the form Mom had filled out to book the tour.
The poem was about wolves in a castle of wind. I tried to read it, but zoned out after a line or two.
I guess I wasn’t in the mood for poetry just then.
Noe was always busy studying with friends from her classes. In Art, Steven showed me the Christmas present he was making for her: a leotard with purple and silver feathers, which he was calling the Noe Suit. I told him about Ava and Pauline, and let him smell the bottle of lavender oil Ava had given me before the abortion. He wanted some on his wrists. I dabbed it on carefully.
“Who smells like perfume?” Noe said later as we walked down the hall.
I was feeling bad about putting off Bob for so long, so I stopped by his office with a list of vegetarian food requests for the cafeteria. He was in the sagging swivel chair studying for a nutritionist exam and listening to a program on NPR.
“What happened to Kingdom of Stones?” I said.
“I finished it. Do you want to borrow the CDs?”
I was going to say no, but changed my mind. “Sure.”
He rummaged around in the desk and handed me a five-disc box. “Don’t start listening before you’ve finished exams. The story is very addictive.”
“Okay,” I said.
On the last day of exams, Noe, Steven, and I went downtown to use up my pizza coupons. It turned out the pizzeria in question was a dingy joint beside the Anaconda Nite Club. The hairy-browed guy at the cash register looked at my coupons, flicked them back across the counter, and said, “Nice-a try, kids. These-a been expired for three years.”