Absent (9 page)

“I’m sorry,” I tell Usha’s reflection, but the words come out in her voice, not mine. “I’m going to make it better.”

But how? If only I could become more people, different people, then it’d be easy to reverse the gossip and set the record straight. To do that, though, I’d need more people to think about me more often. Or I’d need to predict when they’d think about me.

I stop.

I look in the mirror. Usha’s face is smiling at me. I’m smiling at me. And I deserve it, this smile, because I’ve just had the best idea.

Mr. Fisk is in the middle of another glazing explanation when I show up in the doorway to his classroom. When he sees me lingering there, he signals for the class to pause, setting the lump of clay on the mat in front of him and walking to me while wiping earthy streaks onto his pants.

“Usha, what is it?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“That’s all right. You look flushed.”

“I do?” I touch my cheeks.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. But . . .”

“Yes? You’re okay?”

“I’m okay, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“About what?”

“I want to paint the memorial mural.” My words are answered with a shove so enormous that I nearly take a step back. I hold on tight, though, wrapping my arms around my body. (Usha’s body.)

“You’re sure?” Mr. Fisk asks.

“Completely.” I nod emphatically. “I want to paint the mural. I want people to remember Paige.”

SMALL PROBLEM
:
I CAN
’
T PAINT
.

During that afternoon’s illustration class, Mr. Fisk has me wait by his desk while he gathers the mural materials. I wait for more resistance to come, but it doesn’t.
I know you don’t want to
, I tell Usha silently,
but you don’t understand. Let me fix this, and you’ll understand
.

Greenvale Greene sits quietly in her corner of the classroom. She doesn’t look crazy today; she doesn’t look at me at all. Wes Nolan is on time for once and bent over his sketchbook, drawing away. The ponies roll eyes at him and nicker. Kelsey, though, seems more concerned with stealing worried glances at me. I must’ve scared her in the cafeteria. Good. The pony next to Kelsey whispers something and nods at Wes. Is he drawing me again? I wander to the window by Wes’s table and try to peek over his shoulder. I’m not used to casting shadows, though, and when I lean over, he immediately looks up.

“Eyes on your own paper, Das,” he says with a grin. As usual, everything’s a joke. Too bad death isn’t that funny, Wes Nolan.

“Sorry,” I mutter. “Just curious.”

“Oh, this?” He flashes the page. “Bowl of fruit.”

And that’s just what it is, the grapes at odd angles on their vine, the orange a little lumpy. It’s not a picture of me after all. A relief, of course, and never mind that twinge of disappointment. It’s just that when I close my eyes, she’s painted on the backs of my lids, that girl he drew, the branches of her tree spread out above her. I thought if maybe I saw her one more time, I could get her out of my head.

“I don’t even like to eat fruit, much less draw it,” Wes grumbles.

“What do you like to draw?” I ask, then think,
Duh. You
. And I wish I could unask the question.

Wes answers, “People.”

“Just . . . just anyone?”

He thinks for a moment. “Anyone who sticks in my mind.”

“Oh,” I say, not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed.
What is it?
I want to ask him.
What is it that makes someone stick in your mind?

“Usha,” Mr. Fisk calls me from the doorway. I turn, but Wes calls me back. “Hey, are you painting that mural? For Wheels?”
Paige
, his mind whispers.

“Who?” I ask belligerently.

“For Paige,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say cautiously. “Why?”

“No reason.” He shrugs, crooked shoulders, crooked smile. “Just . . . I’ll look forward to seeing it when it’s done.”

Mr. Fisk takes me to the blank stretch of wall by the doors to the student parking lot. He sets me up with a ladder, a drop cloth, cans of paint, and brushes. He reminds me that Principal Bosworth has given me creative control, but with the understanding that he, Mr. Fisk, is overseeing the project. “No pressure,” he says. “Just let me know when you have some of it up on the wall.” He also rolls out an overhead projector, in case I want to draw the design first and project it onto the wall to trace over with paint. I definitely don’t want to
do this, as it would make it immediately obvious that I have no idea what I’m doing. Instead, I content myself with dipping the brushes in and out of the paint cans and staring at the wall. I tell myself that Usha is here with me. She’s here, and she’ll guide my hand.

I stare at my hand.

It doesn’t move.

After half an hour, I have succeeded in creating two eyes, or at least two ovalish shapes that I intend to be eyes: one oval is a little higher than the other, and both of them leak drips of paint. I try to make them like the eyes in Wes’s sketchbook—round, dark, glimmering with humor and life. Half a can of paint, three different brushes, and numerous drips on the drop cloth later, I’m proud to say that they look exactly like uneven, blobby black ovals.

People pass by as I paint, pausing for a moment to watch. Though none of them speak to me, all of their minds whisper my name. I grin. It’s already working.

Brooke and Evan show up near the end of the hour. I’m careful to let my gaze pass over them like I can’t see them. For a moment, I worry that they’ll be able to see me, Paige, standing here plain as can be in Usha’s clothing. Or maybe I’ll appear as a misty apparition, smothering Usha in a Paige-shaped fog.

“So this is it?” Brooke asks archly. “That chick better not paint me fat.”

“Paige should see this,” Evan says.

“Paige should see two mucky dots of black paint?”

“Yeah, let’s find her.”

“Oh, yes. Let’s hurry,” Brooke says sarcastically.

“Come on,” Evan cajoles. “Even if she pretends to be all tough, this will make her totally happy.”

On the ladder, my brush pauses.
I don’t do that
, I think, annoyed.

But Brooke snorts laughter. “Want to make a bet about how many times she shrugs and says, ‘I don’t care’?”

“I bet five times,” Evan says.

“Fine. I bet six.”

“That’s cheap,” Evan says, “betting one over mine.”

“That’s how the game is played, mister,” Brooke replies. Then there’s silence, and I’m about to turn around to see if they’re still there when Brooke speaks again. “Do you think there will ever be a time when we don’t care? When this—here, now—is our new life? And what came before was just . . . before?”

“I hope not,” Evan says.

“Why? Don’t you want to forget about all that?”

“It was my life,” he says simply.

“I’d forget it all if I could,” Brooke says, “but then they gotta go and paint a damn mural to remind me.”

“I don’t know,” Evan says as they walk away. “I think a mural might be kind of nice. Think of it. Something there just for you.”

After they leave, I climb down off the ladder and paint something tiny, right by the baseboard. Sure it’s still a little blobby and uneven, but it’s recognizably a moth. A miniature secret moth, something there just for Evan.

That’s when Lucas Hayes marches past, telltale gold pass in his hand. He doesn’t think my name; he’s too busy glancing over his shoulder to even notice the mural or me, crouched behind my ladder. I expect to see his requisite group of testos following behind as if the coach has ordered them to practice formation even as they walk down the hall. But when Lucas glances over his shoulder once more, I realize that he’s not waiting for his friends, but rather making sure that no one is following him.

Which is when I decide to do just that.

The girls’ bathroom in the hall outside the gym is pristine. No knots of shed hair on the floor, no lipstick kisses on the mirror, or soap grime in the sink basins. Even the tile looks new here, its grout bright white, although it’s years old.

Why so clean?

No one uses it.

If you’re near the gym and you have to go, you use the bathrooms in the locker room or you backtrack to the one near the art room because, despite appearances, this bathroom isn’t a bathroom. It’s a trading depot. What’s traded here? A variety of goods and services: cigarettes, pot, soda bottles half-drained and refilled with booze, gropes, cheat sheets, gossip, swirlies, clothing ensembles, fake IDs, burner saliva and (it’s rumored) other bodily fluids, forged hall passes, reputations, and, this past September, a girl’s life.

Since Brooke’s death, most kids skirt the bathroom, though a few still linger when they pass, as if the door might swing open, revealing some whirling vortex, some forbidden fruit, a crimson-skinned secret of mortality offered just to them.

I follow Lucas at a distance, watching him walk into the girls’ bathroom without breaking his stride. After counting to ten, with pulse pounding, I follow him in. Thankfully, the tiled entryway is empty. Two voices float from around the corner, where the sinks and stalls are.

“. . . have to choose here?” Lucas says.

“But this is the best spot,” the other voice says. A guy. He sounds familiar, but I can’t place him. “Everyone thinks it’s creepy, so they don’t come here.”

“I’d rather not come here either.”

“That’s new.”

“No it’s not,” Lucas says in a dangerous tone. “You think I like coming back here?”

“Calm down. Let’s just do it and you can leave.”

Then, a rustling, and I can barely keep myself from peeking around the corner to see what they’re doing. But I can’t. I’ve already embarrassed Usha with the scene in the cafeteria; I won’t have her blunder into God-knows-what secret meeting. Then I realize I don’t have to blunder anywhere. If I sneak out, back into the hallway, eventually Lucas and the mystery guy will leave the bathroom, and I’ll see them when they do.

Back in the hall, I post myself by the trophy case across from the bathroom and stare at it as if I’m actually interested in these lumps of metal earned for jumping high, bouncing a rubber ball, or knocking some poor sucker unconscious. What I’m really interested in is the reflection in the glass case of the bathroom door behind me. In fact, I’m concentrating so hard on that door that I jump when I hear the whisper.

“Usha?” a tiny voice says.

Greenvale Greene stands just next to me. Even though she’s come from art class, she’s still in her gym clothes—an oversized Paul Revere sweatshirt and shorts that pull into a tight V over her crotch. The paddle of Mr. Fisk’s bathroom pass is pressed against her thigh, which is so pale that I can see the marbling of blue veins underneath the skin.

“You weren’t by the mural,” she says, her voice phlegmy, as if she hasn’t spoken yet today.

“I took a walk. For inspiration.”

“All that paint is still there.” She fidgets. “You might want to put it away before someone pours it over the wall or floor or something.”

“I don’t think anyone would do that.”

“You don’t?”

“It’s a memorial mural, so vandalizing it would be pretty harsh.”

“Oh. I guess so.” She pulls at the hem of her shorts, not that the extra quarter inch covers much of her stick legs.

I wait patiently for her to leave. She’s odd and, well, exasperating. No wonder people make fun of her. Why is she standing silent and fidgeting? Why not head on her way?

Finally she says, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Thanks,” I say; then, on impulse, “what happened to your regular clothes?”

She looks down at her gym clothes as if she’s only just realized she’s wearing them. “Oh,” she says. “The toilet.”

“The, um, what?”

“Someone put them in the toilet while I was in gym class.”

“That’s awful.”

She sways in place. “I guess. After the last time it happened, I started keeping a spare set of gym clothes in my locker. See?” She plucks at the armpit of her sweatshirt, pulling the fabric up toward my face. “Freshly washed. Doesn’t smell.”

“That’s okay.” I pull back. “I believe you.”