The Tragedy Paper (22 page)

I was hoping she would just take my word for it and give me a few pills and let me go. But she went to the cabinet and found my file, standing for a while to read through it. Then she took out her light and looked in my ears, and then my mouth, and then my eyes. She looked in my eyes for a long time.

“Have you had pain in your eyes?” she asked.

“A little,” I admitted. “But nothing too bad.”

“Have you been wearing your glasses?” she asked, pointing to my file. “Especially in the sun?”

“I was,” I said. “But I lost them,” I lied.

“Do you sometimes feel dizzy?” she asked, slight alarm showing in her eyes.

“Sometimes,” I said. “But not often,” I lied.

“I’m going to send you into town later today to see an eye doctor,” she said. “Your eyes don’t look good, and that coupled with the headache you’re complaining of makes me think it wouldn’t hurt to see someone. Plus, he can give you a new pair of glasses.”

The way she said it—that it wouldn’t hurt—told me I
had a good chance of talking her out of it. So I did: I told her I was stressed about the Tragedy Paper and that was what was causing my headaches. I told her that I got an eyelash in my right eye last night and rubbed it way too hard, that I would be more careful. And I told her that I did have another pair of glasses, a pair I didn’t like as much. I promised I would take them out and wear them. I also told her that I couldn’t lose any time this afternoon, that I planned to work on my paper, and that if I didn’t, it would just add to my stress. She thought for a minute and nodded.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “But if anything changes, or you experience any severe pain or dizziness, I want you to come back right away—I don’t care what time of day or night it is. And either way, I want you to find me early next week and let me take another look. If I don’t like what I see, I’m going to drive you to the eye doctor myself. Is that a deal?”

“Yes,” I said, hopping off the exam table. “It’s a deal.”

She wrote a few sentences in my file and scribbled a separate note that she handed to me, which said I had a legitimate excuse for being late to class.

I followed her to the locked medicine cabinet. I stood as she unlocked it and pulled out a huge bottle of white capsules. She shook out two long pills and handed them to me. She turned and pulled down a plastic cup, leaned over a water cooler to fill it, and handed me the cold cup.

“Thank you,” I said again, taking the pills.

“Now get to class,” she said, smiling.

Class was the last place I wanted to go but I had no choice, and by then, there were only about fifteen minutes left anyway.

Vanessa found me later, as promised. Now, at this point I am pretty sure you just want to get on with it. I’m sure you have figured some things out and simply want me to confirm them. But I have to tell you about that afternoon—which I look back on as the worst and best afternoon of my life for a bunch of different reasons, some I didn’t even consider until very recently. You might remember at the beginning of my story I said Vanessa was the only other person who would hear this story. It’s true—I sent her the same CDs I had Kyle leave on your desk. I have no way of knowing if she did or ever will listen to them, but on the off chance that she does, I have to take my time with this. I want her to know how much it meant to me. I want her to understand my thought processes that week—how I thought one thing, then another. Dare I use the word
monomania
here? Obsessed with one goal? Well, it depends on what that goal would be. And if I am allowed to be more liberal with the meaning of the word and look at it as obsessed with one thing—well, then, maybe.

Vanessa found me at lunch. I was starving and feeling pretty good. The pills that the nurse had given me that morning were like a miracle drug. The menu that day was
grilled cheese and garden tomato soup. As I was dropping the tiny round crackers into my thick red broth, trying not to splatter it on my flannel shirt, Vanessa came up behind me. I had expected one of her usual brushes in the hall, a muttered word that I would spend the rest of the day trying to figure out. But she walked right up and said hi.

“Hi,” I said back.

Her hands were empty, so I assumed she’d just arrived.

“Are you going to eat that?” she asked.

I glanced at my tray: the crackers were starting to soften in the soup, just the way I liked it.

“I was planning to,” I said.

“Would you consider not eating it and come with me?” she asked.

I hesitated, but only for a second. Food or Vanessa—seriously?

“Sure,” I said. “Just let me put the tray away.”

As always, I wondered if it was some kind of trick, but I dropped off my full tray, hoping nobody would notice how much food I was wasting, and I walked back to her. She was just standing there waiting for me and smiled even wider as I got closer. When I was about a foot away from her, she turned and walked out. I followed. She walked through the main room and toward the door, under the enter here to be and find a friend arch, and out onto the quad. I followed, thinking it was going to be freezing since neither of us had our coats. But I was surprised by the balmy late-February
air. It was mild and breezy, and I closed my eyes and breathed it in.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I followed her down the path toward the lower school.

“You’ll see,” she said. I liked walking behind her. I could watch her—the way she walked; the way her ponytail, fastened with a turquoise rubber band, swung back and forth; the way she placed her feet on the ground with her toes turned slightly outward—but feel completely protected because she couldn’t see me. I was quiet as we made our way through the playground and into the main building. She walked right to the office and said we were there, reporting for duty.

I had no idea what was going on but went along with it. I liked seeing the little kids around me. I liked being away from our familiar life for a short while; it’s something we don’t get to do very often at a boarding school.

“They asked if we wanted to do art or writing, and I chose art,” she said.

“Art or writing what?” I asked.

“To mentor the little kids,” she said. “I do this a few times a year, and I thought you would like to come with me. It’s fun.”

I nodded, holding back the question that was forming in my mind: why didn’t she ask Patrick? But I knew the answer to that. This was probably the last thing he would want to do. He was way too busy being cool and playing
sports and putting together—or should I say “fixing”?—the senior outing.

A teacher greeted us. He looked so young I wondered how he could possibly have finished enough school to be qualified to teach here. But when he spoke, I could tell he was older than I thought he was. Vanessa introduced us. I loved hearing her say my name.

“Thanks for coming, you guys,” he said. “The kids love having older students hang out with them. You’ll be working with the second graders. They’re seven and eight years old—that’s the age you asked for, right?”

Vanessa nodded, a bit sheepishly, I thought.

“Great,” he continued, leading us down a long hall covered with kids’ art projects. There were spiral paper mobiles hanging from the ceiling, what looked like decorated body outlines hanging on the walls, and the floor was covered with different animal prints.

“The project we had in mind is a winter collage,” we were told. “They’ve already walked through the woods and picked tons of things to work with—dried leaves, pinecones, pine needles. But I want you guys to decide what materials to use from the art room to enhance the collage. Anything you find there is fair game.”

“Sounds good,” Vanessa said confidently. The teacher stopped walking and gestured toward an open door. Inside, there were about twelve kids spread between two big square tables covered with brown paper, smiling. I hoped I wouldn’t
freak them out. A few waved when we walked in. Others called hello. I didn’t notice anyone doing a double take or staring at me. If anything, they couldn’t take their eyes off Vanessa.

“This is Vanessa and Tim,” the teacher said, and I realized he’d never told us his name. “Be nice to them if you want them to come back.” He turned to us. “They’re all yours.”

Vanessa jumped right in. She asked one kid at a time to come up and look through the bins and choose one type of item that would be placed on the table for everyone to use. That way, she explained, they could each make a choice and benefit from everyone else’s choices. I was amazed by how easy she was with the kids. I stood back, unsure of what to say or do. I had spent so little time with young kids, they were like alien life-forms to me.

One girl chose feathers, explaining that they could symbolize the birds in the woods; someone else chose colorful rocks; a third child picked green confetti. “For rain,” he said.

“That’s a great idea,” Vanessa said. “Because even though it gets really cold, there are still warmer days in the winter, so it does rain. That gives me an idea. Can I make my choice now and put it on the table?”

Everyone nodded, mesmerized.

“I’m going to pick the white confetti,” she said. “Do you know what that can represent?”

“Snow!!” everyone called out.

“Yes, snow, my favorite.”

It was at that moment that a little boy I hadn’t noticed before peeked up from behind the far table. His hair was a shocking white, and his skin was like paper. The other kids didn’t seem to be aware of him at all. Maybe he always hung out below the table. He stared at me, and at first I wanted to run; I didn’t want to be connected to the little kid who was too scared to come out from behind the table. That had been me—my whole life! But the farther he lifted up his head, the more amazing he looked to me. He was the same size as the other kids, but he seemed more compact. His eyes were a pale blue.

“I like snow,” he said, his voice a bit deeper than I would have expected. “Do you?”

He was looking right at me. Without thinking, I walked over to him. There was an empty seat next to the one that was his but he hadn’t been sitting on. I sat down.

“I do like snow,” I said. “But not as much as Vanessa does.”

That did what I hoped it would do, put the focus back on her. She led the class through the activity. I sat quietly next to the albino boy, who told me his name was Nathan.

“I’m a little like snow,” he said after a while. “So are you!”

“Yes, we are,” I said. “And snow is a pretty special thing, I guess.”

I spent the rest of the time sitting with Nathan. I figured that was what Vanessa had had in mind, so I don’t think I was letting her down. Although when I look back to that
day and remember her face, I realize that when she looked at us from her place in the front of the room, her expression was one of surprise and concern. The collages at the end were amazing—they each looked like they had been done by kids far older than the ones in that class. I wasn’t sure I was even seeing them all that clearly, to be perfectly honest, my eyes were so bad by then. I was fairly sure I was missing a lot.

We were thanked over and over again by the teachers as we left. Vanessa started heading back to school.

“Do you want to take a walk?” I asked. The sun had come out and the sky was as blue as I could ever remember seeing it, I thought. “I don’t have any more classes today. Do you?”

“No,” she said. “Sure, let’s take a walk.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“How about the lower school nature trail?” she asked. “It’s really nice.”

As soon as we were about twenty feet in, I took her hand. She let me and I was grateful for that. Her hand was soft and full of energy. I hoped mine felt the same to her.

“Thanks for coming with me,” she said. “I like little kids. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a teacher.”

“You’d be a good teacher,” I said.

“Do you think so? Really?” she asked. It was so uncharacteristically insecure of her that I laughed. She didn’t need me to tell her she’d make a good teacher. Still holding her
hand, I turned and pulled her toward me. She didn’t resist. I leaned in and kissed her. She kissed me back, for a long time. It was better than our kiss in the elevator. It was better than any kiss I had ever had and, I fear now, any I will ever have again.

And then she pulled away slightly and nuzzled her face into my neck. I drew her closer, and we stood there for a long time. My eyes were stinging in the bright sunlight, but I didn’t want her to notice; I wanted to stand there forever. She stepped away and, still holding my hand, moved back out toward the playground. She didn’t say a word. When we were within sight, I dropped her hand and we quietly walked back to school, across the quad, under the
ENTER HERE TO BE AND FIND A FRIEND
arch, and into the main, paneled room. I was going to keep walking up the stairs, but she stopped me.

“I just want to say—” she started. Suddenly her eyes moved behind me, and I turned and there was Patrick. I expected Vanessa to take a step back or make some excuse, but she didn’t. She waved to Patrick and he joined us, standing next to both of us, completing the circle.

“See you later,” I said after we made a little small talk. She hesitated, I saw it. But there was no point anymore. There would never be a point. Whatever she had meant to achieve with that little teacher stunt—no matter how good-hearted it may have been—it told me only one thing.
For Vanessa, Patrick would always come first, and she would always see me as an albino—that was all I would ever be to her.

Duncan sat back on his bed, then he lay on his side and curled up. He faced the wall and waited to see what came next. It was too much to process, and now, more than wishing he could talk to Tim, he wished he could talk to Vanessa. She truly seemed to like Tim, way more than Patrick, or at least on a much more important level than she liked Patrick. Would she ever take Patrick to mentor the little kids? He bet not. And was it only because there was an albino boy there that she took Tim, or was that just a coincidence?

Duncan knew girls like Vanessa. Or maybe he didn’t and just thought he did because the way she was behaving, or at least the way Tim described it, was far beyond what he ever would have expected from her. But why keep Patrick around, then? Because under all those layers there was still nothing more than a superficial girl? Even as he thought it, he wasn’t sure he believed it. His mind flashed to Daisy, in her pajamas, looking so sad. He pushed himself up to sitting, thinking he would go find her, but when he glanced at the clock and saw there was still so much day left, he gave up. He just couldn’t pretend to be happy for that long.