A Map of the Known World (2 page)

S
hould I wear my pink sundress or the lavender miniskirt with the white ruffly tuxedo shirt?” Rachel’s voice pours through the phone. Her intonation seems to have acquired a twang, a sort of valley girl twang to it, and I have no idea where it’s come from. Rachel spent the summer with her family in Michigan, as she always does. Do they talk like valley girls in northern Michigan? Wherever it comes from, I am beginning to find it grating. Very grating.

“Why are you talking like that?” I interrupt.

“What?”

“Why do you have this stupid accent all of a sudden?” I demand.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rachel snaps defensively.

“Yeah,” I snarl. “Whatever.”

“What’s your problem, Cora?” Bolts of hurt shoot through her voice.

“Nothing, Rach. Look, I should go,” I say lamely.

“Well, okay. But, wait, tell me what I should wear!”

“The skirt.”

“Really? Because I was thinking the sundress.” Rachel sighs.

“So wear the sundress.” I shake my head. Rachel and I have been best friends since first grade and never, in the last nine years, has Rachel ever seemed so completely possessed by frivolity. Yet, something about the very inanity of the conversation is also comforting, a glint of ordinary life.

“You don’t have to bite my head off,” Rachel retorts.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” I say, trying to placate her and regretting my stupid temper—it’s new…since The Accident. “I’m just nervous about starting school.”

“I know, me too! I mean, I want this year to be perfect! It’s
high school
! It’s our chance!” I imagine every sentence out of Rachel’s mouth as punctuated by exclamation points with little bubble-heart dots.

“Our chance for what?” I have a bad feeling I know where this is heading. South. I just can’t get excited.

“Our chance to be popular, to be
in
—”

“In with the Nasties?” I ask disbelievingly, accusingly.

“I’m just saying
in
with everyone. I want to go out on a date, Cora, I want to be kissed, I want high school to be
fun.
Everyone says it’s the best years of our lives. Don’t you—” She doesn’t get to finish as I cut in.

“I don’t think it’s the best years for
everyone,”
I sneer. It is cruel. I know. I just can’t help it.

“I’m sorry, Cor,” Rachel immediately apologizes, contrite as a puppy.

“No. No, I’m sorry, Rach,” I say. “I know what you mean. It’ll be great.” I try to sound cheerful, but even to my ears, my voice sounds hollow.

“So, what are you going to wear?” Rachel asks after a brief pause, as if nothing has happened. Pretending.

“Um, not sure. I haven’t really thought about it. What do you think?” I’m desperate for normalcy to return, but I realize I don’t know how to feel
normal.
Dread begins to churn in my stomach; is this what the entire year will be like?

We stay on the phone for another five minutes, as Rachel launches into a detailed analysis of my wardrobe, while I only half-listen. The conversation finally comes to a close, and I welcome it with relief.

Since The Accident, I get the sense that Rachel doesn’t know how to talk to me anymore. She has taken to babbling. Now, I appreciate that having a best friend with a dead brother might be awkward for her and that she probably doesn’t know what to say. Most people don’t. But, aren’t best friends supposed to know how to find the words?

Rachel did stand by my side at the funeral, wreathed in black as we three remaining Bradleys were, and she hugged me, and hugged my mother. She helped trolley out the platters of fruit salad and cold cuts, gather the dozens of flower
arrangements, and clean up the mess after the funeral. She was quiet, afraid. She was there, and not.

Now, though, I’m sensing a deeper change in Rachel. The valley girl drawl and the pronouncement that she wants a boyfriend are new. We used to mock the girls who lived to find boyfriends. We called them “pathetic” and we even pinkie-swore to despise the Nasties for life. Now, though, I suspect that Rachel might be backing out of our pact. Or maybe she’s growing out of it?

Rachel and I had named Kellie Gibbon, Macie Jax, and Pearl O’Riley the Nasties, because for as long as we have been in school together—which is basically our whole lives—this trio has lorded their popularity over the rest of the class, meting out kindness and cruelty among the other kids unevenly, randomly.

In fourth grade, they were fixing their lip gloss in the mirror of the girls’ room and deciding who was cool, and by fifth grade, they dictated who was
so
not. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, the Nasties solidified their clique and labeled the rest, the jocks, the nerds, the goths, the losers. Rachel and I have always sort of floated outside of clique boundaries. We were never subjected to the worst of the terrible Nasties torment—although they weren’t kind to us—but we never really fit in anywhere, either. Now Rachel wants to be “in” with them?

Great. School is going to be just great.

I stop pacing in front of my dresser mirror and take a look.
Long frizzy waves of brown hair, vampire pale skin, freckles on my nose, and big muddy brown eyes that are so dull, I would fall asleep if I had to look into them. Nate had the same hair, the same brown eyes, but his eyes glinted with a ferocity that never looked boring.

The bleating of the alarm clock pulls me abruptly from sleep. It isn’t difficult; these days I don’t sleep so well, restless with anxiety. My eyes are open, but it takes a few minutes before I can bring myself to sit up. Then, as I plant unsteady feet, the floor crackles and slides away. Startled, I look down and smile. A pile of pencil sketches is scattered across the floor. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to draw—a map of Edinburgh. Dark lines molding the shape of a city, finer strokes of gray for the castle and moody fall sky.

Quickly, I wash and dress and make my way down to the kitchen. My father is already gone, without a farewell, of course. I can feel the tension practically smothering all of the air from the room with my mom’s nervous pacing. She flits around here and there as she waits for me. The kitchen is filled with early morning sunlight, the yellow gingham curtains and seat covers adding to the cheery effect.
A false front,
I think. The smell of cooking oil lingers, and there are pans and plates strewn across the counter.

“Oh, good, you’re ready,” my mother says breathlessly.

“Hey, Mom,” I reply, dropping my backpack on a chair.

“Sweetie, did you sleep well? You look a bit tired. Here, I made you breakfast; look, scrambled eggs, toast. Have some orange juice.” She is talking a mile a minute, practically doing a jig as she dances from one side of the kitchen to the other. “High school! I can’t believe my baby is starting high school. Take a vitamin!”

“Wow. Okay, you can stop hovering, Mom. It’s just the first day of school. I’ve already been through eight of them before this.”

“But it’s the first day of
high
school! You’re all grown up. I can’t believe it,” my mother repeats. She pauses and her forehead tightens. “You’ll come home immediately after school, right, Cora?” she asks.

“Yes, Mom,” I answer. I can feel the irritation inching into my voice. I try to push it down, but I need to get out of the house.
Now.

“I don’t want you hanging around anywhere,” my mother warns. “And you’ll watch out for traffic?”

“I understand, Mom. I’ll come straight home and I’ll be careful. Promise.”

“All right. I love you. Be careful, and have a good day. I can’t believe it’s your first day…”

“I love you, too, Mom.” I wave good-bye as my mother gathers her belongings and moves into the garage. I scoop a couple of forkfuls of runny eggs into my mouth and take a hurried bite of toast, then throw the rest in the trash, toss my dishes in the
sink, and get ready to dash out of the house without drinking any orange juice or taking my vitamin pill. Very rebellious.

Suddenly, my mother pops her head back in through the door to the garage. “You’ll come home straight after—”

“Yes, Mom!” A flash of ire rises into my throat, onto my tongue. It tastes bitter. “I promise!” I pull my backpack onto my shoulder and move past her, stalking through the garage, then, guilt getting the better of me, turn and tell her again, “I love you.”

When will she get off my back? And when will I stop worrying that an angry word to her will…make her fall apart?

My mother just raises her hand and gets into her car.

My ten-speed bicycle is a smoky, silvery blue, and it’s beautiful. I caress the frame, lovingly squeeze the tires. They are both soft. Quickly, I grab the pump. I am so stupid for not checking the air pressure last night. Ugh. My hands are covered in grease, but I at least manage to avoid getting it on my clothes. And then I am on my way, and as I cruise down the street, my legs pumping hard to regain familiarity with the pedals, I can just about forget to feel anxious. The scenery is a blur and I hardly remember to notice it, to resent it. My mind is as blissfully blank as the wind.

Not for long.

As I pull up to the high school, with its tan brick facade, and dull, darkened windows that peer back at me like listless aliens, the churning in my stomach returns.

Quickly, I wheel my bike over to the crowded bike rack and chain it up. The parking lot is filled mostly with dusty older cars that look like hand-me-downs, probably from parents to kids or from older siblings to younger ones. The last part of that thought is accompanied by a twitch in my gut.

My gut. I never felt like I had a gut before The Accident. I’d gotten stomachaches—or tummy aches as my mom calls them—but my gut hadn’t ever been a part of my anatomy I was aware of. Now I know just what that metaphor, to feel like you’ve been punched or kicked or any other manner of battering in the gut, means.

Anyway, I had better snap out of it. I can’t just hang around here staring at the cars all day. People will really think I’m weird.

I steel myself, take a deep breath, and walk toward the front doors. The doors swing shut after each body that passes through them, beating the air as if to say,
There’s no coming back out.
Dozens of kids are pouring past me, like salmon swimming upstream. Everyone is pushing to get in here, and I’ll bet no one even actually wants to be here. As I look all around, the urge to turn and run is strong. Very strong. Oh my gosh, I
so
don’t want to be here.

Well, tough.

The corridors of the school are narrow and dimly lit. The walls are painted mustard yellow, and the linoleum floor tiles are a grayish white like dirty dishwater. So different from the
cheery hallways of my middle school. Even the classrooms in Lincoln Grove Middle School had been painted in bright, happy colors: sky blue and buttercup yellow, with encouraging posters and artwork welcoming the students. By the time I’d started the eighth grade at LGMS, coming to school felt like being enveloped in a warm, fleecy blanket. If not the most fun place to be, it was familiar and safe. But this, Lincoln Grove High School, is just foreboding. It’s cold and scary.

I stop in the middle of the hallway, trying to get my bearings. I came in here once during the summer for freshman orientation and a pair of bored-looking seniors showed me, and a group of other kids whose last names started with the letters A-F, around. I can’t remember where any of the classrooms are, where these hallways go. Kids stream by me, swiftly dodging and moving past in circling eddies, like a river will wash around a tall rock or log. The tide of faces shows worry and excitement, eagerness and despondency. Upperclassmen find their friends and younger kids wander alone, searching.

Most of the kids look old. The girls have chests, actual chests, and bouncy, movie-star hair. I look down. It’s a flat slope all the way, and I can feel my blue jeans hanging loose at my waist, gathering at my ankles, pooling over the tops of my sneakers. I still look like a little kid. I don’t feel any different, no more grown up. But I’m in high school now. Shouldn’t I feel older? Shouldn’t I have good hair and curves and a boyfriend? Instead, I’m still flat and straight and hopelessly single. No one
wants to date the dead guy’s sister. And probably, no one ever will. I glance around again and feel my stomach clench. This is it. I’m really here.

Yet, I can’t shake this awful sense that the next four years will be another kind of prison. I just have to get through this. Four years and then I’ll be free.

I feel myself floating adrift in the whirlpool of bodies, but in a strange way, I find the sea of the hallway almost reassuring. Maybe if I see the others as this muddled, huddled mass, maybe no one will notice me at all.

I shuffle along, letting the current pull me, and I have the sense that I am like a rat caught in a maze of tunnels, moving endlessly toward some promise of…of what? Light? Life? Cheese?

The thought tiptoes idly through my mind, when suddenly I see something that makes me stop abruptly. That blonde hair. I know it. It’s Julie. Julie Castor, Nate’s ex-girlfriend. More specifically, the girlfriend who dumped him the night he died. The girlfriend whose ex-ness triggered Nate’s nighttime automotive antics. She is talking to some scruffy-looking guy with saggy jeans.

Julie glances up; her heavily lined green eyes meet my own and widen slightly. Then she looks away. I bow my head, afraid to look up and meet her hard green glare again. I was not prepared to see Julie. Well, I guess this is how it is…
high school.
I’d better get used to seeing people from Nate’s life, here, every day.

I finally find my locker in the next hallway and put a combination lock on it. Then I move along to my homeroom. As I enter into the classroom, a gradual hush descends, and twenty-nine heads swivel toward the door. I feel dizzy, and for a second, just a second, I think I might be sick. But Rachel is there, waving to me, and as I gratefully make my way to sit down beside her, the buzz of chatter and gossip resumes.

“You’d think no one ever saw a girl with a dead brother before,” I say softly.