Someone I Wanted to Be (4 page)

“Yeah.”

He said in a slow voice, “What’s going on, Ashley?”

I got up from the table and left the last bite of French toast floating in a puddle of syrup. I lay down on the couch. “I’m really tired. I was out late. . . .”

I talked softly through my nose in my Kristy voice. It was easy. It was like floating above the world.

Monday morning, I smoked and waited for Kristy to pick me up. The sky was a smoggy blue. Old cigarette butts were mashed between the little sticks of grass. The night before, I’d had a dream that I was lying on my back in tall thick grass next to Damien Rogers. It was dark, and I couldn’t see him through the grass but I knew it was him. He was pointing out the constellations.

That morning I felt like a girl in a movie, as if cameras were pointing at me. My first real phone conversation with a guy, Kurt King, had lasted fifteen minutes. He said, “I’m gonna call you again tomorrow, little girl.” I wore a new pair of jeans with iridescent stitching on the back pockets that made me look skinnier, and the gold hoop earrings that Cindy let me have, though I wasn’t supposed to wear them to school.

A plant with fuzzy leaves was growing by the curb. The sunlight flashed, birds chirped, little baby leaves unfolded on the tree branches. A block away, my bus pulled to a stop and flashed its lights. Three kids climbed on, and the bus roared off. Fifteen minutes passed. Since Kristy had gotten her car, she’d driven me and Corinne to school every day. She’d never been late before.

Maybe her mom had died. The gigantic nature of this possibility made my head feel like it was full of helium. I texted and texted, but she didn’t text back. Kristy was never late. At seven thirty, when the last bell rang, I started walking.

I walked down Vargas Avenue, and the sidewalks glistened with little bits of mica. Lit in the orange sunlight, my neighborhood looked like a stage set. I barged in front of a woman loading Amway boxes into her car trunk. She stepped back with her boxes and glared at me. I glared back; she had no idea what was going on in my life.

Mrs. Baker was dying and maybe actually dead. Her heart might have stopped. They might have taken her off a respirator. My throat throbbed. I forced the thought of Mrs. Baker out of my mind and considered instead my complicated love life — I was still pretty much in love with Damien Rogers, but the memory of Kurt King’s scratchy voice made me woozy. He was calling later. The windows of the 7-Eleven, the Safeway, the check-cashing place, the car wash, and EZPAWN all shone like gold in the morning sun.

On the corner of Santa Fe Street and Tenth Avenue, a lilac bush covered with cones of tiny purple flowers hung over the sidewalk. The air reeked of lilacs. Every spring, Kelsey Parker and her friends walked to school with armfuls of lilacs like they were beauty queens in a pageant. I had never walked to school with an armful of lilacs before. I reached into the bush and twisted off a branch. I walked the rest of the way with my mouth buried in cool, purple flowers.

I left the flowers on the steps as a memorial to Mrs. Baker. Above the doors stretched a new red-and-white Coke banner with
WEST HIGH SCHOOL
in small white letters. I climbed the rest of the steps and entered the building at ten after eight. Duct tape covered a new sunburst of cracks in the front window.

I said good morning to the cop who stood by the door all day with a Taser, club, and gun strapped under his belly. He was heavily armed but a sweet old guy who’d never squash a fly. The back of his spotted, bald head flattened into his neck; the kids called him the Iguana. “Good morning, Sergeant Motts.”

“Morning, Leah,” he said in a low croaky voice; he’d smoked way too many cigarettes. I walked into the office and waited for the office lady to look up.

“I need a pass, please. My ride didn’t show.” I was calm and sad. Soon my role in the tragedy would be revealed.

“Can a parent or guardian vouch for that?” The office lady drew her eyebrows on with an orange pencil. She wore silver and turquoise bracelets on her skinny freckled arms.

“My mom’s at work. I can only call if it’s an emergency.” I tried to be patient with this old lady; she didn’t realize that I was part of something bigger than her little day.

She rolled her chair to the computer. “Who was supposed to be your ride?”

“Kristy Baker.” I tried to assume an appropriate solemn expression. The only dead people I’d known were my aunt Peg, whom I’d met once, and my dad, but I was two years old when he died.

She scrolled down the screen. “Kristy Baker is not absent today. You, not Kristy Baker, are responsible for getting yourself to school on time.” She scribbled on a pad. “Here’s your pass. Automatic detention after school.”

I got to my locker just as the bell rang. Kids burst out the doors and flooded the hallway. Kristy, Corinne, and a girl named Victoria pushed through the crowd without looking at me. Kristy’s arm was hooked through Victoria’s. Two days before, Kristy had said that Victoria Miller was an incredibly stupid, diseased skank.

Corinne hung on to Kristy’s shoulder with one hand. When they were farther down the hall, Corinne looked back and mouthed, “Call me.”

In chemistry, second period, Victoria sat in my seat next to Kristy. Mrs. McCleary called me to the front. She blinked slowly like a cow and explained that she’d decided to switch a few lab partners around. I would be working with Carl Lancaster.

I walked to my new seat with humiliating flames on my cheeks. Some guy said, “Porker,” as I passed him. Lard-Ass, Porker, Cow, Fat Pig. It usually sounded like the chirping of crickets, but that morning it felt like a sharp blade aimed and thrown hard.

“Hello, Leah,” Carl Lancaster whispered. “I’m glad we get to work together.” Mrs. McCleary was fiddling with the laptop and overhead projector, trying to get them to work.

“Whatever.”

Carl had what Cindy called excellent bone structure. His cheekbones were covered with a mash of light-brown freckles and a little acne. He had thick, brushy hair the color of an old penny. His breath smelled like tangerines.

He glanced at Mrs. McCleary. She bent over, checking plugs and swearing under her breath. He said, “Our sink doesn’t work, but Andrew and Kevin said that we were welcome to use their sink when we need to.” The laminated
LAB SAFETY
poster behind him had holes in it from being splattered with acid. Carl leaned over to get a pen out of his backpack and poked me in the boob with his elbow. He closed his eyes and said in his low voice, “Oh God. Pardon me.”

We were starting a new section in chemistry : Acids, Bases, and Solutions. Mrs. McCleary dimmed the lights and turned on the overhead. “OK, heads up, key vocab for this section:
Solution. Solute. Solvent. Solubility. Insoluble.
Can anyone give me a clear working definition of the term
solution
?”

Carl glanced around the room, waited ten seconds, then raised his hand.

“Carl!”

“A solution is a homogeneous mixture of . . .” Carl leaned forward and answered Mrs. McCleary in his deep man voice. He was famous around the school. In December, he’d played classical music on the school piano at an assembly for a South Korean official. No one had forgotten or forgiven him, and people still tripped him in the hallways. At least once a day, a little paper football ricocheted off his back or neck.

Just then a paper football flew across the room and hit him in the shoulder. He didn’t flinch.

“Carl, can you tell us the definition of
solute
?”

“Yeah. A solute is the substance that gets dissolved. . . .”

I looked back. Kristy and Victoria Miller slouched on their stools and stared at me.

My favorite teacher — everyone’s favorite teacher, Mr. Calvino, language arts — was even more depressed than usual. He was young and would have been good-looking except for the black pits from insomnia under his eyes. He was addicted to Diet Coke. Though he never said it out loud, I suspected he cursed himself for having left New Jersey.

For the first few minutes of class, he sat on the edge of his desk and stared out the window at the mountain. Suddenly, he clapped and scared the crap out of us. “So, kids! What standards do you think we should meet today? Any competencies you feel like working on?”

LaTeisha Morgan laughed from her front-row seat. “Mr. Calvino, you’re a trip.”

He shook the Diet Coke cans on his desk until he found one that swished. He tipped back his head and poured the brown liquid straight down his throat.

Mr. Calvino wiped soda off his chin. “OK,” he said. “Let’s get started. First, did anyone do the extra-credit assignment? Just one page, imagining your life in ten years, your educational and career paths, relationships, travels, technological changes, shifts in society? It was worth ten points! Anyone? LaTeisha? Wonderful! Leah?” I shook my head.

LaTeisha and I were Mr. Calvino’s best students. We were the only ones who paid attention. LaTeisha should have been in AP. She was even bigger than me, but she didn’t seem to know it. She moved around like a queen. She had straightened hair with bangs, dark eyes and skin that glowed with vitamins and happiness, and a huge, fantastic smile. She wore shiny red lip gloss. Her dad was a minister, and she was Ray Ramirez’s longtime girlfriend. They got dressed up and went to church together.

Mr. Calvino liked LaTeisha for obvious reasons, and for some reason, he liked me. He would look for me in the crowd of faces. He’d smile when he handed back my papers. He’d gaze at me in the middle of class, shake his head, and say, “Leah, you belong in AP.” Me and LaTeisha. LaTeisha was moving up the next year, but Cindy wouldn’t let me. She said, “Don’t fly too high. You’ll crash. It’s better to get good grades in normal classes.” I was also the only kid in the school without a smartphone or Internet — Cindy wouldn’t pay for them, and Cindy wouldn’t let me get a job until I turned sixteen. Cindy was deranged.

On the way out of the room, I stopped at Mr. Calvino’s bookshelf, his famous lending library. He’d been called in front of the school board twice by Christian parent groups because he lent out books about being gay. He lent out all kinds of books, not just fiction, because he said literature was about the world and being alive. I’d borrowed a couple books from him about becoming a doctor.

There were new books on the top shelf, but the titles blurred. “Go on, Leah. Take something,” he said behind me.

“Nah.” I didn’t look back and walked out of the room.

I hadn’t been feeling very well. I couldn’t concentrate. I forced myself through my homework but, other than that, only felt like reading magazines and little-kid books. Simple things you could read in a kind of daze and not have to think or feel. How to lose ten pounds in four days on a raw-food diet. The hairstyle that is best for your face shape. What kind of personality do you have?
Little House on the Prairie.
Ma and Pa and poor blind Mary and Laura and Carrie, and
Farmer Boy
and all the cakes and pies and fried chicken Almanzo ate. I was apparently regressing. Not AP material, after all.

After third period, it was time for lunch.

I stood by the pop machine at the edge of the cafeteria. The windowless room was lit by long, thin rectangles of fluorescent lights. It was a sea of chewing, talking faces. There were a couple of tables of black kids, a third of the tables were Mexican kids, and the rest were white. With a few exceptions, each group sat together. At each table, everyone wore the same shoes, jeans, jackets, had the same hair and the same expressions on their faces. Everybody laughed on cue, especially if someone was being made fun of. The tables were like petri dishes of almost-indistinguishable bacteria.