Cornered (37 page)

“He's been out of school for over a week,” Sam mumbles into his half-eaten toaster pastry. “I mean, besides being so obviously a gay.”

“Not
a gay
,” I remind him. “Just
gay
will do. And for the record, we don't know that Justin is gay. Not for sure.”

“Please,” Sam rolls his eyes.

Mom hands me an extra sandwich, and tells me to give it to Justin when I see him in the cafeteria.

“He doesn't eat,” I say. But she doesn't understand and looks at me as though I'm joking.

“Everybody eats,” she replies and to prove that she knows what she's taking about, she stuffs the sandwich into my backpack.

“Even if I did see Justin in the cafeteria,” I say with a bit of scold in my voice, “he would flat-out refuse a ham-and-cheese-whatever from me. To Justin, we are ALL the enemy, and food is poison.”

“There's something seriously wrong with that kid,” Sam announces. “I mean besides being a gay.”

“I simply asked why the boy has been missing school,” says Mom. “And I don't need a personality assessment from the
peanut gallery, thank you very much.”

Personally, I appreciate Justin's eccentricities. Ever since grade school when he moved here from Atlanta, I've been grateful that he's around in just the way he is. He's always been
so obviously gay
that any discussion about homosexuality naturally begins and ends with the mention of his name. “
Don't be such a Justin
,” is a phrase we kids have used since middle school. Back then he was teased mercilessly and occasionally beaten up. He had walked around for three clueless days with the word
FAG
written in Sharpie on the back of his jacket. I've been witness to the kind of cruelty that kids my own age inflict on other kids who happen to be different. Only now, I'm the one who is different, and I wish I wasn't.

Today I went to Mrs. Sweeney and told her that I wanted to discuss the final scene of
Hamlet
. She was sitting in her empty classroom eating her bagged lunch and reading a fat novel.

“It's crazy,” I said to her, “By the end of the play the whole cast is lying dead on the floor. What's that about?”

She closed her novel and began to explain what Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote
Hamlet
, but to tell you the truth I wasn't listening. Instead I was examining the highlights in her hair and wondering about her apartment. I've never been there, but sometimes I imagine her standing in front of the bathroom mirror and preparing herself for the day. There
was a tiny crumb from her bologna sandwich stuck to her cheek.
Do I tell her?
I wondered. And then the thought occurred to me that if I were dead I wouldn't be sitting there with her and then maybe no one would tell her about the crumb. I imagined her during the next period, standing in front of her students, becrumbed. The whole class would laugh behind her back.

That's when I started to cry.

“What's wrong,” Ms. Sweeney said, putting down her novel and leaning toward me.

I told her the whole story. In between sobs I explained how Kyra had been terrorizing me and how I had felt my life just wasn't worth living. She placed her hand on my shoulder.

“Things will change,” she said.

“But how do you know that?” I asked. I swooped big gulps of air into my lungs and then cried fresh tears. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because I'm going to help you,” she replied.

”I'm sorry,” I said. Then repeated it, over and over.

“You haven't done anything wrong, Emma. In fact, you did the right thing coming to me.”

She handed me a napkin, and I blew my nose into it mightily.

“What warlike noise is this?” she said, which caused me to laugh out loud. It's a quote from Hamlet, something he says just moments before he takes his final breath. Then Ms. Sweeney leaned back in her chair, smiling, and I knew that she was right. It would get better, she would help me and unlike Hamlet, I would live through this ordeal.

“I hope you don't mind my saying this,” I told her. “But there's a crumb on your cheek.”

The weirdest thing—Kyra was ignoring me at school today. Totally. It was as though I didn't exist. I couldn't tell if this was a blessing or if I should have been prepared for something really bad. I thought that maybe Ms. Sweeney said something to her, gave her a warning because as she passed by me in the hallway she didn't sneer or scoff or curse or push or shove or in any way take notice of me. But my heart breaks a little as I notice Fiona has joined her posse. She looks at me now as though we never knew each other's secrets, never slept over one another's house, never read each other sonnets or kissed on the mouth.

Then I opened my locker and found a note from Kyra. Though her penmanship is not the best, I was able to make out the message:
YOU ARE SO DEAD.
I faked being sick and was sent home early.

Sam came home late last night, and this morning after breakfast, I overheard a conversation between him and Mom that went like this:

“You were with that girl last night,” Mom said bitterly.
When Sam didn't answer, she pressed him, “You were. Weren't you?”

“Mom . . .”

“Don't Mom me,” she said point blank. “I can smell her perfume from over here.”

“Just for the record,” he answered deadpan. “That's my deodorant you're smelling. And seriously, Mom, the thing is, she's not just some girl. I'm in love with Courtney. I mean, for real.”

“Love?” Mom said, and I could almost hear her raising her eyebrows at him.

“Something like that,” Sam replied. “I'm going to ask her to the prom anyway.”

“Oh honey,” I heard her sigh, “however you feel about her, wherever you take her, there will be
no more
sneaking out or staying out all night.
Especially
after prom. Got it?”

Mom is pretty cool for a Christian, but I think if I ever stayed out almost all night kissing some girl she hardly liked—and
then
announced the next morning that I was in love—she'd probably lose it. It's just a hunch on my part, but it's one I'm not looking forward to proving true or false. However much my mother loves me, she will never be able to come close to the world in which I intend to live my life. I exist in a parallel universe, one that is second-class and takes place mostly off stage, sotto voce.

Mom wheeled around the corner and found me standing there. I tried to look as though I hadn't been ear-hustling on
her conversation, but pretending to tie my shoes gave me away, because in fact, I was standing there in my socks. Mom just shook her head and continued to breeze past me.

“Come on, everyone!” she called out. “Shoes on. Let's go. This train is pulling out the station in exactly two minutes. Anyone not on board has the privilege of walking to school.”

I found my sneakers and quickly laced up. As always, I thought about my father at that moment. He's the one who taught me to tie my shoes in the first place. After he died, I made a promise to myself that every time I stopped to tie my laces I'd remember him. I gave up wearing slip-ons or flipflops. It's my way of keeping my dad in my life on a daily basis, honoring him. Sometimes I use the time to speak to him, give him an update or ask him questions about whatever's troubling me. I've decided not to discuss the idea of suicide with him because the possibility that he and I might be reunited very soon would really piss him off.

School is no picnic, but at least we're reading
Hamlet
in Mrs. Sweeney's class, and this guy seems as confused about life as I am. Thing is, English class takes up only a fraction of the time spent in that hive of adolescent angst known as Jefferson High. Whose idea was school anyway? A sadist, no doubt. My particular torture is being trapped in an environment in which everyone goes around saying that I am a muff-diver. That's fun.

In the hallway on my way to my locker I usually have time to scan the sea of faces looking for Kyra Connors to appear. I hadn't seen her for a whole day, and I knew this couldn't be good. Somehow her absence in the hallways loomed larger than her actual presence.

I imagine that years from now, the bully known as Kyra Connors will be living in a one-bedroom, high-rise apartment overlooking a parking lot. She'll be in an unremarkable third-tier American city that is in a state of steep decline. Lonely, fat, and with a skin condition which will discourage her from dating, she'll stay at home most nights waiting for the timer to announce her microwave dinner is fully nuked. Looking back, she'll try to figure out where she went wrong in life. How did she end up with nothing? She will conduct a not-so-instant playback of her life's story, which will go on for months. Then one evening while petting her cat, she will understand. “I see now! I should not have been so rough on that Emma Taylor girl back in high school.” Before she has finished eating dinner, she will decide to make it up to me and look me up on the Internet or whatever. But she won't be able to find me, because by then I will be dead.

“Hey, you,” I heard Kyra's voice call out in the hallway. I turned around and there she was, her hair and bobblehead cruising above the crowd, her face flashing mean in my direction.

My heart began to bang against my rib cage as though it was making a desperate attempt to escape. Suddenly my legs
were making a run for it, my arms pushing open the side door as I moved quickly through the teacher's parking lot. I didn't know where I was headed—I wasn't going home and I wasn't going back to school—but I needed to get as far away from Kyra as possible. I wanted out. Of everything. I ran and ran up the hill behind the high school until my lungs burned and my sides ached. I started thinking I might die right there on the spotty grass beyond the football field.

There was a chain link fence at the far end of the school property, and I knew I wasn't allowed to go beyond this point. I've heard stories about seniors who smoke cigarettes and have sex there on a regular basis, and this seemed a much better option than anything I could think of on my own. I'd rather face whatever awaited me in the shady cool of the unknown than get beat up on school property. I hopped the fence and continued to make my way into the woods. Trees and bushes grew tall and wild there; they had never been pruned or clipped or shaped to be anything other than what they naturally were.
This was where I'll live
, I thought to myself. This is where I'll spend my school time until the whole Kyra thing blows over. Pretty soon she'll find some other target, and then I'll go back to being just another unremarkable face in the hallways of Jefferson High.

Up ahead I noticed a flash of color through, and as I came into a clearing, I saw a pattern that involved electric blue and lime green paisley. Not something you see every day in the wild. It looked as though someone had tied a sheet between
two trees and pulled it taut to make a kind of tented area. As I approached, I heard a low, rhythmic humming and I caught sight of a foot sticking out from under the tented area. The toes were long and ladylike, the nails polished pink, and the ankle kept the beat of the hummed tune. Whoever this person was she hardly seemed a threat to my personal safety, so I decided to get closer and see what was up.

There was Justin Guns, sitting with legs outstretched and his earphones on, wearing an expression of pure delight. He wore enormous sunglasses and moved in time to a song playing on his iPod. I guess his eyes were closed because I stood in front of him for a full minute as he moved to the music, blissed-out and unaware of my presence.

I don't think I've ever said two words to Justin. He's not the type that people tend to talk to unless they have something rough to say, something mean, something to remind him that he's not normal. But seeing him working a deep personal groove, I realized that no one had ever really known Justin. He never had a friend. Even weird girls (like me) steer clear of his freakish fashion sense and outsider status. No one in their right mind would actually choose to go that far afield of the norm. No one other than Justin.

When he finally looked up and saw me he jumped to his feet. His earbuds went flying from his head and he backed away, like he was some kind of wild animal and I was the hunter.

“What?” he asked.

The earbuds were lying in the dirt, pumping out the once
glorious beat of his former bliss. When I took a step toward him, he quickly covered his face with his hands and leaned away from the punch, the insult, the assault that he figured was about to rain down on him.

“WHAT?” he said again, only louder this time.

My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I felt that anything I said would be heard through his ears, which had been tuned for too long to hear the worst. So I reached into my bag and pulled out my sandwich, the one mom made for me that morning. I held it out for him to take. He eyed it suspiciously, and then looked at me as if trying to figure out my connection to it. We stood there like that forever. Tears welled up in his eyes and his chin quivered.

“'S aright,” I told him. “I've been sent to bring you back.”