Sacred (11 page)

I looked around, and this time Will was looking at me. He smiled, slow and sweet, and gestured for me to join him. All the kids were moving around the room, breaking into pairs, and as Brandon Becker moved to join Katie Ellis in the back of the room, I slid into his seat next to Will.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied. “So … have you read it?”

“Read what?”

“
Death of a Salesman.
”

“Um … yeah. Of course. It was on our summer reading list. Have you?”

He nodded. “I played Biff last year at my old school.”

This made me laugh. “You don’t look much like a Biff,” I told him.

“No,” he admitted. “I guess Connell would fit that role better. Or Andy.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You think so?” I kept my voice casual.

He didn’t back down. “Absolutely,” he said. “Either of them could play the dumb jock pretty well, I’d imagine.”

“Andy isn’t dumb,” I protested. As for Connell … well, I’d pick my battles.

“I didn’t say he was dumb … just that he could
act
dumb,
if it suited him. I’ll bet Andy could do just about anything if he thought it was in his best interest.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this. It sounded like a veiled insult, but I certainly couldn’t prove it. “Let’s just get to work.”

Will turned to a fresh page in his notebook, divided it down the middle, and labeled the columns “Pros” and “Cons.”

“You first,” he said.

“Well, I wouldn’t really classify
Death of a Salesman
as any kind of realism,” I began. “I mean, the play’s symbolic meanings form the real depth of the play … the expressionistic flashbacks are where most of the substance exists.”

“I don’t know,” Will said thoughtfully. “The reality is that our dreams, our misconceptions, our interpretations of the world around us are every bit as significant as the actual truth. They inform our decisions just as much, don’t they?”

Suddenly, I wondered if we were still talking about the play. “They shouldn’t,” I argued cautiously. “We should make our decisions only on what is
really
real, not on what we
wish
to be real, or what we fantasize about the world.”

“So you’re saying dreams are meaningless?” As I looked into Will’s eyes, I felt the press of the sand from my dream, and I felt again that he was saving me. The classroom, the students, Mrs. B and her blackboard full of terms seemed to melt away.

But then I remembered Ronny in his grave and my yellow notebook waiting for me at home, and I dropped my eyes. “Yes,” I whispered. “Dreams are meaningless.”

Will’s hand reached out and he tipped up my chin. His deep eyes searched my face. “What if you’re wrong?” His voice sounded desperate. “What if there is more to reality than you can see, more than you know?”

I was flooded with fear, so I pulled away. “Yeah, and what if the tooth fairy and Santa Claus threw a big party?” My voice was harsh with contempt. “Face it, Will. Loman’s fantasies trap him and keep him from dealing with reality. And his wife, Linda? She’s just as bad. She coddles her husband and lets him stay stuck in his stupid, vacuous daydreams. They deserve each other.”

We stared at each other, and I could tell that Will was as upset as I was, though I wasn’t sure why. This was just a stupid class activity, and here we were, all worked up as if any of this even mattered.

Class was nearly over. I would go to the stable, where I’d feel the real, warm, living flesh of Delilah, and I would climb on her wide back, and I would breathe the fresh air and feel the sun on my face.

I started to pack up my stuff, but Will’s hand stopped me. “I need you to consider,” he said, “that you might not be right about everything.”

That did it. Who
was
this guy? He thought he knew me so well—he thought he could see inside me. “I might not be right about everything,” I said, “but at least I know when to mind my own damned business.”

And then the bell rang, and the class filled with the sounds of the students ending their day, and I turned and left without looking back.

After that, Will left me alone. In the lunchroom, when he was there, he kept his back to my table, though he appeared at lunch less and less frequently. In Drama class, he paired up often with Katie Ellis, which I tried to convince myself didn’t bother me in the least, even when her lilting, flirtatious laugh carried across the classroom toward me.

I buried myself in my schoolwork, going straight up to my room after the stable each afternoon, telling my parents I was too busy to have dinner with them, even on Wednesdays and Sundays. They didn’t protest much; I could tell Daddy was getting more and more concerned about Mom, who looked as if she’d aged five years in the last six months.

Daddy decided not to take any more guests until the spring, so our rambling house felt like a ghost town. He spent most of his time out in the garden, tending to the flowers and the fish. Sometimes I wanted to go down and dig in the earth with him, feel the soft ground under my nails, plant something … but I just couldn’t. My room and the stable felt safe. The rest of the world, even our own back garden, did not.

And though I didn’t really want to lose any more weight, three more pounds slipped off of me in as many weeks, and as September ended, I found that I weighed less than I had when I’d started high school, when I’d been several inches shorter.

I was cold a lot now, even though September and October in California often feel like an extended Indian summer,
and I took to wearing layers of everything—jeans under skirts, long-sleeved thermals under tees.

And when Andy tried to snake his hand up under my shirt when we were alone together, I pushed him away, not so much because I didn’t want his touch, but because I was worried he might be disgusted by the feel of my ribs just beneath my skin, the slight concavity of my stomach, the protrusion of my hip bones jutting against my jeans.

The first Saturday in October, as the leaves were just beginning to change, Andy showed up uninvited on my doorstep after dinnertime. I was annoyed; I had wanted to finish up the final paper on
The Bell Jar
, and I’d planned to start the next trig chapter after that, just to get ahead.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, wrapping my hair in a bun and stabbing it with my pencil as I opened the door for him.

“Nice to see you too,” he said, leaning in to kiss me.

“Sorry.” I sighed. “That was rude. I was just in the middle of my homework is all.”

“Listen, Scar, I know how important homework is. I mean, I get it. I want to go to a good college too. But it’s Saturday night! Let’s have some fun.”

I had three or four good reasons to refuse him, but unfortunately my father overheard. “That’s a great idea,” he said, overenthusiastic. “Scarlett, you haven’t been out of the house in weeks.”

“I go to the stable almost every day.” It was weak, but it was the best I could do.

“Go on out, be kids, have some fun,” Daddy said, and
he dug a twenty out of his wallet and pressed it into my hand. “Go on, I insist.”

Andy laughed. “Your dad is cool, Scar,” he said, pulling me out of the house before I had a chance to argue.

We found our way down to the beach just as the sun slipped beneath the horizon. The beach was quieter now that summer was over; we wandered over to a small cove and tucked ourselves behind a large rock to get out of the wind.

I knew what Andy wanted. He kissed me and pulled the pencil from my hair. It tumbled down and Andy stroked it gently as he kissed me, his mouth eager but not pushy.

This time, when his hand reached up under the waist of my shirt, I didn’t push it away. He paused for a second, as if he couldn’t believe his luck, and then his warm fingers splayed against my bare skin. He moaned a little and pulled me even closer, his fingers pressing into my side.

He didn’t seem disgusted by the feel of my ribs; in fact, his breathing grew jagged as his fingers wandered tentatively upward, tracing the line of my bra. I considered stopping him then, but I felt strangely numb, as if I were somewhere else, far away.
If my body isn’t going to give me any pleasure
, I thought briefly,
why shouldn’t Andy enjoy it?

He managed the hook on the back of my bra, and his fingers caressed the underside of my breast. He moaned again, deeply this time, and pushed me back into the sand.

“Hey, hey, kids, enough of that.” Mr. Johnson, out for a walk with his toy poodles. He had three of them—Fancy, Prancer, and Fidget—and they were off their leashes. They growled and yipped when they saw our bodies tangled
together in the sand, and Mr. Johnson tried ineffectually to round them up.

Andy groaned in frustration and hauled himself to his feet, turning his back to me and Mr. Johnson while he adjusted his pants. Then he reached down and took my hand to help me up.

Under my shirt, my bra strap swung uncomfortably, but I couldn’t think of a way to gracefully reattach it without Mr. Johnson noticing.

“Plenty of time for that when you’re older,” Mr. Johnson blustered. “You kids head on home, now.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson,” Andy answered. “Come on, Scarlett.”

We wandered around town a while after that, but clearly all Andy could think about was getting me somewhere alone where he could pick up where he’d left off, so after a while I told him I needed to get home to finish up my paper.

“Okay,” he said, “but Scarlett, the night of the Halloween party … how about then?”

The numbness I had been feeling at the beach was wearing off, and I felt suddenly panicky and unsure. I nodded anyway, and the smile that lit up Andy’s face was almost enough to make me happy too.

That night, though, alone in my room with my yellow notebook, my anxiety grew like a harvest moon, pregnant with anticipation, and I felt my heart fluttering in my chest, and suddenly the hollowness I’d been relying on to keep me calm, to keep me neutral, was no longer enough. It felt that I would burst, so full of every emotion—anger and fear, excitement and anticipation, sorrow and dread.

Will’s story returned to me then, the one about the girl with the scars on her arms, and I reached into my little desk for my manicure scissors. Before I could stop myself, I drew its edge, once, across my wrist.

The scissors were sharp, and the cut they made was deeper than I had intended, and blood seeped to the surface. It was a beautiful color, deeply and richly red, and the thought crossed my mind in that moment that I had the perfect name, Scarlett.

And all my worry was gone, and all my fear and excitement and anticipation with it. Even my sorrow and dread receded, and I felt blissfully clear and free, standing there, watching my blood surface.

I took out my yellow notebook and flipped it to a new page. Then I pressed my wrist against the white paper. A thin line of my blood left proof, there, of what I had done.

SEVEN

W
hen I woke, the light filtering through my windows was bright and warm. I had a sensation of peace and happiness, as if suddenly everything was going to be okay.

A glance at my alarm clock told me that I had woken up earlier than usual; it was just past six in the morning. I stood and stretched, enjoying the swing of my long hair against my back as I arched.

My wrist, brushing against my side, felt tender. I looked at the mark there; it smiled up at me in a curve of red. It had scabbed over while I’d slept, but it was still pretty fresh. I dressed carefully, pulling my gray thermal gingerly over my arm, then folding up the cuff to keep it from rubbing on my wrist. I put on a second shirt, this one a short-sleeved pink tee with puffed sleeves, and pulled on my jeans and a short, gray fleece bubble skirt.

I braided my hair in a single, long plait, wrapping the end
in a rubber band before flinging it back over my shoulder, out of my way. Pushing my feet into my flip-flops—the air coming through the window portended a warm day—I felt a weirdness in my stomach.

I wondered if I was going to be sick. And then, surprised, I recognized the feeling. It was hunger.