Total Constant Order (9 page)

I'd heard the “Just Say No” spiel since fifth grade. By now, it seemed like a joke.

“Put your finger over the hole while you hit it. Let go before you finish inhaling,” he said. This was the boy who was sent home from school, all for wearing a shirt that said D.A.R.E. in bold red letters. Beneath it were the words “Drugs Are Really Expensive.”

I took a deep breath, as if diving underwater. I had never smoked a cigarette before, much less pot. I tried to imitate the way Thayer took these tiny sips of smoke, but, of course, I coughed like a first timer.

“Hold it in,” he said.

That was the last thing I wanted to do. I pictured the human lungs in my biology book: twin willows with cascading branches. Now they burned like the rest of me, the flames twirling up my throat.

It didn't taste like anything I'd sniffed at concerts, that wet carpet stench that fogged up the air. So far, I wasn't blasting off or craving nachos or
seeing auras in the parking lot. I felt like a complete reject.

Sharon and her crew were a few feet away, watching. Normally, I would've crawled off and hid. Now I just laughed, my voice coming out strange, too high and skittery.

“Hey, Fin,” said Sharon. “I hear you don't like me.”

I turned around. “Yeah, that's right. What are you going to do about it?”

Sharon tried to giggle, but nobody joined in. It was just her, alone.

“Those girls are dogs with a capital
B
,” said Thayer.

I laughed even harder.

Thayer stared at me. “Don't Bogart that weed,” he said, snatching back the pipe.

A grungy sophomore (whose name I had forgotten) shuffled toward Thayer. He was the boy with the skully cap I'd seen at the park, but he looked so much older than us. Tufts of hair sprouted on his knuckles and knees, even between his eyes. Stretched over his gut was this lame Hawaiian shirt
(no doubt for “ironic” effect). At first, I thought he might call us out. My panic surged into words.

“Hey, what's up?” I said, looking at my shadow, which had merged with his.

He grabbed the pipe from Thayer without even asking.

“Yo, T-Puff,” the kid said. His voice was low and startling. “You used to get me some awesome chronic. Now you're dropping it on this chickenhead?”

“I got nada, bro,” said Thayer. “You out thievin' again?”

“Whatever, tool.” He turned and looked at me as if I had dropped out of the sky. “We met before?”

“I don't think so,” I said, watching the grass, which seemed to be swelling.

He snorted. “Must've been one of Thayer's other girlfriends.”

I glanced at Thayer, who looked away. He flicked the guy's head and they both started chattering in Spanish, which reminded me of ribbons curling. I can't stand it when people
habla Español
in front of me, as if I didn't exist. I always think that
they're saying something rude. In this case, it was probably true.

“You speak Spanish?” I asked Thayer.

He took a deep bow and said, “
Sí, chica.
My grandma? In New York, remember? She's from Cuba. But her blood goes back to Galicia, this part of Spain that was taken over by the Celts, which is why we've got light eyes and—”

“What's up with that freaky sweater?” said Mr. Oh-So-Cool Sophomore, blowing smoke straight up in the air.

I wasn't sure whether he was talking to me or about me. “I'm cold, you know?”

“Cold?”

“In class, right? Because they turn the air-conditioning up so high,” I answered.

“You mean ‘low,'” Thayer added.

“Then you go outside and it's like a hundred degrees. I'm roasting to death because I haven't figured out how to dress for this climate.”

Mr. Oh-So-Cool Sophomore took another hit, then passed the pipe to Thayer. “You going skiing in the Alps or something?” he said.

“You should talk,” I said, “with that knit cap on your head.”

Where had that come from?

He kept talking to Thayer as if I were invisible. Their conversation consisted of mumbles and grunts, along with outdated wigger slang and the occasional four-letter word. I stood back and watched the smoke signals pouring from the open locker. Alone with Thayer, I could talk about seahorses and secret dimensions. We had developed our own code words, like “gravy train,” for Sharon's doglike worshipers. And when some desperate girl tried to break into their clique, we'd say that she had “fallen into a trance,” because she couldn't think on her own. Now he was acting trancelike around this brain-dead poseur who was just one grade ahead of us. We weren't speaking the same language anymore.

Maybe it was the weed electrifying my nerves or the constant jolt from my chemical headache. I couldn't stand there, watching the trees flicker, being invisible, being “that girl.”

I got back in line with the rest of our class, which
had begun to file toward my homeroom.

“Fin, wait,” Thayer said, moving toward me and stumbling on nothing. That boy was such a klutz.

I kept walking. I couldn't help wondering how often Thayer got high and how I would handle going back to class stoned. Since I didn't talk much, I doubted anybody would notice. With twenty-three in our class, Ms. Armstrong was always distracted with louder, more attention-needy losers than me.

At the count of ten, I turned to see if Thayer was still behind me. He wasn't. Maybe he had gone to the canal to smoke with the manatees. All the stoners knew about that spot, though in the beginning, I'd believed it was our secret. I was just catching on to a lot of stuff. That was the difference between us.

Something rustled behind a car, catching my attention. Crouching down, I spied rows of plasticky legs rising in slow motion. Land crabs. The grass was swarming with them. I watched them, fascinated by their mechanical movements. If Thayer had stuck around, he might've given them names, as well as voices. He could be so many things.

Days later, I'd stumble over broken limbs—bits of crab pinchers that might crack open a beer. Then came the heat. Then the stink. Then I'd find only their holes—empty, abandoned, like a question waiting to be answered.

W
hen Mama wasn't giving me the silent treatment, just like she did with Dad, we were fighting over my emotions, which, apparently, she knew more about than me.

It started during another of Mama's cleaning fits. Mama always got a major thrill when she dumped out her purse. This was her religion. She shoved her keys and coins in plastic bags, the same kind in which Thayer carried his weed. She kept her credit cards in an old eyeglass holder, her loose change in a sock. Standing in the checkout line at Publix, I wanted to kick down the candy racks like dominoes after watching her whip that ratty thing at the cashier and pay completely in change.

When she spilled pennies all over the floor, I
kept finding them everywhere, wedged in the carpet. I'd step on one and it would stick to my heel. I hated pennies, all those single digits rolling on forever.

Just touching a gunked-up green penny made my skin crawl. I collected as many as I could find and threw them in the trash, making sure not to touch the rim. Then I scrubbed my hands with antibacterial soap. As I stood at the kitchen sink, pumping the dispenser (shaped, for some reason, like an aquarium), Mama said I'd made a mess.

“I just bleached that out. Now you're wasting water and it's dirty again,” she said, wiping the faucet with a paper towel. Talk about wasteful. Ten thousand trees were chopped down just because she refused to use a sponge, which, according to Mama, swarmed with bacteria.

“Big deal,” I said. “Sinks are supposed to be used, not looked at.”

Mama wadded up the paper towel and pitched it into the garbage bag. Not a trashcan like normal families keep in the kitchen. Mama preferred the brown paper bags we got from the grocery store.

“It's cleaner that way,” she said.

They filled so fast, they overflowed. How clean was that? On top of everything else, the bags were decorated with geometric snowflakes, not that it ever snowed in Miami.

“Something's leaking on the floor,” I said, taking a step backward.

“Oh, shoot,” said Mama, who never swore. Ever. She plunked the entire bag inside a Hefty Cinch Sack. “Would you like to take this outside?” she asked, dragging it toward me.

“Not really,” I said.

“Can you help me out?” she asked.

I could. But why should I?

That's when she heard the jingling.

“Fin, what did you put in here?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, scrubbing faster.

Of course, she had to peek inside. She must've spotted all those pennies rolling around with our banana peels and empty tuna cans.

“You threw away money,” she said, her voice rising. “Why would you do such a thing?”

I stood with my hands dripping. “I don't know.”

“Now you're getting the floor wet,” she said, ripping off another super-absorbent paper towel and shoving it at me. Down went another tree.

“They're just pennies,” I said. “It's not like you can buy anything with one cent. The government should stop making them.”

“Pennies add up to dollars,” she said, as if I hadn't passed kindergarten. An image flashed in my head: a hundred pennies sparkling in the fountain at the Boston Common park.

“I want you to take out those pennies,” said Mama. “Now.”

I tried to explain but you couldn't tell her anything. “There's no reason for you to be yelling at me right now. And I'm not putting my hands in there,” I said.

Mama gripped my arm in a death lock and tugged me toward the trash. She shoved my hand in deep. I rooted around the damp and gritty coffee grounds until I pulled out a penny.

“There. Are you satisfied?” I said, flinging it at her.

“I want all of them, Frances,” she said.

“Do it yourself,” I said. By this time, I was
sobbing. “I hate living with you. Why can't I be with Dad?”

Mama raised a finger to her lips as if she had said it instead of me. “I don't know you anymore,” she said. “You push me away. And the less I know, the more worried I am.”

“Well, you haven't a clue what's going on with me,” I said. My stomach was a lava pit. My head was an electrical storm.

How could she know what was going on? She spent the entire day talking to strangers, then dragged herself on the couch and plopped in front of the television. At night, she creeped around the house and stayed up until the newspaper zinged across the lawn. I would hear the TV's telltale hum, even with the volume muted. (Mama clicked across the dial without sound.) Once, I stuffed the remote under a sofa cushion. I watched Mama hunt for it. After a while, she propped her feet against the TV and changed channels with her toes.

“Why are you so angry all the time?” she asked.

I laughed. “I'm not.”

She threw up her hands. “Okay. You know everything.”

If I wasn't angry before, I was now. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I don't want to discuss it,” she said.

So I didn't tell her anything. I marched into my room and slammed the door. Behind it, I heard “smooth jazz” burbling from the so-called entertainment center in the living room—goosey saxophones and violins. How could she find that stuff relaxing? Listening to it made me want to stab myself. Repeatedly.

I grabbed my headphones, sat in the plastic chair by my desk, and cranked the volume. My outdated mix tapes pushed me back to a place I really couldn't handle anymore. The tape wasn't helping so I clicked over to FM. Nothing but reggaeton and people rapping in Spanglish. Radio in South Florida just plain sucked. At least the stations in Burlington played music, most of the time.

I missed my old life in Vermont so badly, even my body had fallen out of sync. For example, my period, which never checked in like clockwork, had
gone completely schizoid. Each month it grew lighter until it finally disappeared. But who cared? It wasn't like I had a reason to worry. Except for one thing: When it was AWOL, I battled the worst case of cramps, doubling over as an invisible rake scraped my guts.

Maybe I needed to put on a few more pounds. When I started taking Paxil, my appetite went out the window. I just couldn't keep anything down. The plastic chair dug into my bones, making me shift and fidget. No matter how I moved, I couldn't find a comfortable spot.

Moving to my bed, I thought about tweezing every blond hair on my big toe. Instead, I reread a note that Thayer had stuffed in my backpack:

“I am practicing looking up while I write this so that it will fool Ms. Armstrong. It has worked so far! She's so dumb she's falling for it. Notice how my handwriting changed? That's because I was writing on my book. But now I'm writing on my desk. Did you know that the Food Network is filmed like porn? Well, gotta go. Wow. I bet you feel good knowing all this stuff (just joking). Well, I have nothing else to say. I might even write again someday.”

This was proof: That kid was crazy.

When I finally got sick of sitting around, I left my room and heard Mama talking sickly sweet to her clients on the phone. So much for
her
emotions. She changed so fast, it made me want to vomit.

After hanging up, her smile melted.

“Did I say you could come out?” she said, not even looking at me.

“I'm starving. Can I eat dinner at least?”

“Dinner?” Mama said, pausing to think about it. Not a good sign. “I'm too tired to get dinner going. You can make yourself a tuna sandwich.”

I ignored her suggestion and opened the freezer. Mama stored everything in the freezer, including our ant-ridden baked goods, in case they spoiled and we caught a flesh-eating virus or mad cookie disease.

I was wearing Thayer's bandanna and hadn't washed my hair in three days. Lately, I liked staying dirty.

Mama said, “Take off that sloppy hat. Don't you know it's bad luck wearing a hat in the house?”

“It's not a hat, Mama. It's a bandanna.” I had even managed my own way of wearing it—not
flopped over my head, like a boy, but pulled back like Dr. Calaban's glittery scarf.

“Don't get fresh with me,” Mama said, pushing her sunglasses toward the bridge of her nose. Who wore sunglasses indoors? Rock stars and idiots, that's who. Mama refused to buy a regular pair of prescription lenses. She said they made her look like a bag lady.

I had totally forgotten about my split ends, which Thayer had dyed with a Sharpie pen. Then Mama tugged the bandanna off my head and saw his arts and crafts project.

“What happened to your hair?” she asked, inspecting every strand.

“Nothing,” I said, jerking away from her. “Let go of me.”

“It's not coming off,” she said. “What is this? Paint?”

I could've lied and said: “We were making anti-war posters in civics class and my hair fell into the paint can.” But I couldn't. I kept remembering how Mama and I used to be so close. I would tell her everything.

“It's marker,” I said.

“You colored your hair with marker?”

I sighed. “No. Let me finish. Just listen to me for a minute.”

“It's not coming out. My Lord. You'll have to cut it,” she said. “I'll make an appointment at Aruj and see if they can squeeze you in tomorrow.”

“Forget it. I'm not going. For your information, I'm trying to grow it out.”

“It looks absolutely appalling. I'm not asking you again,” she said.

“It's my hair. Don't tell me how to wear it.”

“Unbelievable,” she said. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? What have you been doing all day? I'm the only one who cleans around here.”

She took off her glasses, flicked her gaze over the bandanna, then at me. “Here,” she said, flinging it on the floor. “You'll understand when you're older.”

“I'll never understand!” I screeched at her retreating back. “I'm not perfect like you.”

Mama whirled around, the sunglasses clenched between her teeth. Then she launched into another
speech about something new: my voice. Apparently, I was too “defensive” and “sharp.” Not to mention angry.

I tried to tell her that it wasn't true, but I had a hard time convincing myself.