Cycler (16 page)

“Very funny.”

“Try me.”

I squirm away from her, holding my breath against the coconut scent of her hair. “I’ve got study hall,” I say. “I’m going to the library.” I grab my backpack from the table under the pitying gaze of Mrs. Warren, who, like everyone else at Winterhead High, believes I am moments away from death.

Ramie charges around me and plants her ass on the table, gripping both of my wrists in her talonlike fingers. “Jill, please.”

Mrs. Warren ambles over. “Come on, girls. You’re going to be late.”

Ramie hops off the table and clings to me as I head to the door. When we get to the hallway, she takes my wrist forcefully and charges me toward the band room.

“Ramie!”

“Shut up.”

The band room is empty and, more importantly, features its own exterior door, which none of the instrument-playing goody-goodies ever exploits.

“Come on,” she says.

She opens the door and yanks me outside. I don’t resist anymore, because when Ramie gets to this level of conviction, there’s no point. She takes my hand and we run across the football field and under the visitor bleachers to the woods. In a clearing, Mr. Gibbons’s dreaded obstacle course hangs ominously from some trees.

“Yuck.” I stare at the slats of wood nailed into a tree going up at least twenty feet. “I got halfway up that thing and panicked,” I tell Ramie. “Mr. Gibbons was holding the rappelling harness or whatever it’s called and he said he wouldn’t catch me if I bailed out. He said I had to climb all the way to the top, ring that lame-ass bell and then jump. What a psycho.”

Ramie lowers herself to a felled tree trunk. “Yeah,” she says, “you know it’s called Vietnam for a reason. Don’t know the full story. He came back a changed man or something. Definitely a sadist, but you can’t be too harsh on him.”

I sit down on a tree stump. “I guess.”

“So,” she says. “Obviously you’ve been avoiding me because you don’t want to talk about what happened to your hair.”

“Ramie—”

“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m not going to ask again.”

“Really?”

Ramie nods. “But I am going to ask about the bars on your window. What’s that about?”

“Oh,” I say. Then I try to think of something quick. “You know. Parents. Kind of paranoid. Crime and stuff.”

“They’re only on
your
window,” she says.

I poke at the dirt and pebbles with the toe of my shoe. “Yeah, well, they started with my window. They’re putting them up everywhere.”

“Why?”

I shrug and consider drawing my weirdo father into the hastily improvised cover story. Conversely, I could blame my control-freak mother. But I haven’t researched either of these lies and I am no good at improvised deception. “I don’t know,” I say. “Why do parents do any of the things they do?”

She stares at me and nods slowly. Then she leans back and looks up at the sky. “So I’ve been thinking.”

“Hold on. Let me put on some safety gear.”

She laughs. “About the prom.”

“Yeah?” I pick up a twig and start peeling the bark off. “What about it?”

“I was thinking maybe we could go together.”

“What?”

“Tommy’s not going, right?”

“I haven’t exactly given up on that yet, Rames.”

“Yeah, but, you know. This is his first and last year at Winter-head High. The prom doesn’t have any significance to him. But for us . . .”

“Since when does the prom have significance for you? I thought it was a stupid sexist tradition.”

“No, Jill, homecoming court is a stupid sexist tradition.

Prom is just stupid. At least I used to think that. Maybe I was wrong.”

“I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Rare,” she says, “but not impossible. Think about it.” Her face brightens as she walks over and crouches in front of me. “We can style ourselves to the teeth. I mean whole hog. All out.”

Visions of Ramie wrapping me in burlap and plastic sheeting dance in my head.

She puts her hands on my knees. “You never know. Might even make old Tommy jealous.” She winks at me, then walks back to her felled tree and sits down.

“What about Mr. No-name?” I say.

Her face falls.

I’m stunned. Why would I bring up Jack at a moment like this? Why would I bring up Jack ever?

Ramie rests her elbows on her knees and studies the dirt. “You were right about him.”

“I was?”

She stands up and paces in front of the log. “Yeah, I guess I can check One-Night Stand with Peeping Tom off my list of things to do.”

“Ramie,” I say. “I’m really sorry it turned out like that. You know you deserve better. He’s a jerk.”

She shrugs and kicks at the log. I wonder if Jack realizes how much he’s hurt her with his little stunt. He should have known we’d put an end to it. He was reckless and stupid and now Ramie’s paying the price. What a selfish jerk.

Between my feet, a black beetle emerges from behind a thick blade of grass. I position my gold flat above it, then decide at the last minute to spare its life. When I look up, Ramie is climbing the slats of the twenty-foot tree.

“Uh, Rames.” I get up and stand underneath her, my head level with her ankles. “What are you doing?”

“Climbing.”

“Well, stop it. Climbing down is much harder than climbing up. That’s how Mr. Gibbons made it so you’d have to jump.”

She keeps going, getting smaller and smaller as she rises.

“Ramie, stop it!” I step on the first slat and start to make my way up. But I only get about five feet off the ground when I realize that first, I’m too scared to go any higher, and second, I can’t exactly carry Ramie down on my shoulders. I feel for the lower slat with the toe of my gold flat and slowly, awkwardly make my way down.

Ramie keeps going. “Hey, you can see Daria’s house from up here.”

“Ramie, get down.”

“Why should I?”

I take a few steps back. Her long dark form looks so small against the green sun-dappled canopy. “What is wrong with you?” I say. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”

Hugging the tree with both arms, she climbs higher.

“Ramie!”

“Wow!” she says. “This is really high.”

“Ramie, you’re going to fall! Is that what you want? Is this some cry for attention?”

“Hah!” Her black boot finds another slat, but when she presses her foot to it, it slips off.

“Ramie!”

She slides down over three slats but stops herself by hugging the tree. I turn away and wait for the thud, but when I look up, she’s climbing again.

“Ramie, stop it right now!”

She places one foot on either side of a large slat of wood and loosens her grip on the tree. “So,” she says. “My woman of mystery.” She inches her torso away from the tree.

“What are you doing!”

She pushes herself farther out. “You think
this
is a cry for attention?”

“What?”

“You think I
like
making my friends worry about me?”

“Ramie, please don’t do this. I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

Clinging to the tree with both arms, Ramie lifts one foot off the slat and swings her leg out.

“Ramie!”

Her big silver belt buckle glistens in the sun.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry. Please just stay put and let me get Mr. Gibbons.”

“It’s too late for that,” she says. Then, in one breathless moment, she pushes herself off the tree, leaving a horrifying gap between it and her falling body.

My feet carry me forward to catch her, but her body does a strange thing. It stops falling downward and starts falling sideways, past the tree and over my head. Dumbfounded, I watch her fly across the clearing.

It wasn’t a big silver belt buckle. Ramie wasn’t wearing a belt.

“Kowabunga!” she screams as the now-visible rappelling rope carries her to a pile of sand at the edge of the clearing. With her legs hinged out in front of her, she lands with a thud and collapses in a heap on the sandpile.

I run to her, tripping over the tree stump.

“Ramie!”

When I get to the pile of sand, she rolls over and disconnects herself from the rope.

“I could kill you,” I say.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“You went up there without a safety rope.”

She shrugs, still lying in the sand.

“You could have fallen.”

“I know.”

She sits up and I drop to my knees in front of her.

“Why?” I say.

There are tears in her eyes.

“Why!” I say.

“I love you,” she says. “I’m supposed to be your best friend and you’re not telling me something so important it scares you.” She wipes her nose across the back of her hand. “If you think you’re sparing me, trust me, you’re not. I’m in hell I’m so worried about you. I don’t know if you’re sick or if your mother is locking you up and performing lobotomies on you.” She wipes her nose with the back of her arm, then dabs at her eyes with her knuckles. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

Still on my knees, I move closer to her. “Ramie, I . . .”

She sits up fully now, her face only inches from mine. “Tell me, Jill.
Please.
”

In the distance, Mr. Gibbons blows his whistle twice.

“Tell me,” she says.

There is so much hunger in Ramie’s eyes. So much fear. She takes my hand and interlaces her fingers with mine. “Tell me.”

The smell of coconut drifts up from her hair. “Please,” she says.

Her lips part, her white teeth just visible.

“I . . .”

“It’s okay,” she says. “Whatever it is, we can get through it together.”

Her red lips curl and stretch around the words.

“I . . .”

“Just say it, Jill.”

“But I . . .”

“You know I love you, no matter what.”

“Oh, Ramie.” I lean in and press my lips to hers.

For a brief moment, we connect, the warm fullness of her lips squishing against mine.

Then Ramie pulls away. Eyes wide, her body stiffens. “Oh.” Her face softens as she runs her hand down my arm. “Jill, I didn’t know. I mean . . .”

Leaning back on my heels, I rise to a standing position. The woods blur and sway. I keep my feet wide to steady myself. Faintly, I hear Ramie’s voice, but I don’t know what she’s saying. Turning my back to her, I walk through the clearing.

I think she follows me, but I can barely sense anything except the hard-packed dirt at my feet. Then something else impresses itself on my narrowed vision.

Tommy Knutson.

He stands at the edge of the clearing, openmouthed.

I pass him without a word, without even meeting his eyes. I cross in front of the bleachers, then walk right past the soccer field, where Mr. Gibbons hands out quivers and bows for archery lessons.

I think he says “Miss McTeague,” but I don’t stop. I do notice his attention turn to something behind me, presumably Ramie and/or Tommy. I focus my attention on putting one foot in front of the other, getting all the way to the band room door before I realize I’ve left my backpack in the clearing.

The rushed patter of footsteps in the grass gathers behind me, then stops.

“Jill?” Tommy says.

“You don’t have to run,” Ramie says.

I keep my back to them. “Ramie,” I say. “Did you, by any chance, pick up my backpack?”

“Yeah, it’s right here,” she says.

I reach back blindly, grab it and run for the parking lot.

Both of them call after me, but mercifully, they do not follow.

As I’m driving home, my cell phone never stops ringing. While I’m waiting at a red light, I listen to the succession of messages they’ve left. The first one is from Ramie, telling me how unbelievably okay she is with my feelings for her. She didn’t mean to make me feel mal or anything. The second one is from Tommy, who apologizes for spying on me in the clearing. He’s worried, just like Ramie. I shouldn’t feel bad about kissing Ramie, though. There’s nothing wrong with it. If that’s why I cut off all my hair, I should know that that’s okay too. He has a cousin who used to cut herself. She got therapy, though, and seems to be all right now. The third message is from Ramie, who tells me I’m not alone, no matter how much it feels that way.

But Ramie doesn’t know what alone is.

When I get home, I run up the front steps and close the door on the outside world for good.

When Mom comes home, I tell her everything and she agrees with my assessment that I can never, under any circumstances, return to Winterhead High. Ever. Somehow she has to figure out a way for me to take my final exams at home.

The next day, she makes some phone calls from her office and the job is done. My days at Winterhead High are over. I spend the rest of my phase at home, not answering my cell phone and hiding when Tommy or Ramie—or both of them together—come over to try to convince my dad to let them in. Dad is surprisingly good at sympathizing with their concerns without ever wavering in his refusal to let them in. I told him I’d kill myself if he wavered.

When the workers come to install the new Jack-proof security system in my room, I move my things into the TV room. It’s not easy filling up whole days without school. We don’t have the Internet, so I spend a lot of time watching daytime TV, which is unbelievably depressing. I have to endure way too frequent visits from Dad, who thinks it’s his new mission in life to emerge from the yoga hole to have one-sided heart-to-hearts with me.

One day, while I’m watching some hostage situation unfold on CNN, he comes up, shirtless and stinking of BO, with two jam jars full of jasmine tea.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says. He hands me an unasked-for jam jar, sits on the far corner of the leather sectional and nods benignly at me. “Cabin fever yet?”

“Huh?”

He presses his sweaty back into the beige leather and has a sip of his tea.

I hate jasmine tea, but it’s not worth starting a conversation with him over it.

“Just curious, Jilly-girl. How long do you plan to keep this up?”

A loud rug-cleaning commercial comes on the TV and I mute it.

“Keep what up?”

“Hiding out like this,” he says. “Look, sweetie, take it from me, it’s not an easy life.”

“Dad, please. I don’t have a choice here. Jack has destroyed my life at Winterhead High. He’s destroyed my life, period.”