Almost Home (2 page)

The next time I see Jenny Kirchner after that, in B hall before lab science, she makes this gross-out face, then leans in to the other Ashlees and starts whispering at exactly the amount of loudness that I can tell it’s about me but exactly the amount of quietness that I can’t hear what it is. For I don’t know what reason the feeling I get makes me think of Brian and the spastic butterflies start again. It’s retarded that I’m embarrassed by the Ashlees whispering when I don’t even know what they’re saying; usually I just hate them, but somehow Matt Ditkus seeing me see Jenny made the whole thing different, not to mention that he and Marco have now taken to calling me Lesbo in addition to Tits. When the bell rings Jenny goes “So we’ll see you after seventh period, right? Bye!!” like she’s inviting me to the mall with them but I know that isn’t what she’s doing.

If they were just going to throw my stuff on the ground again I don’t know why she’d make such a thing about it. They’ve got some kind of other idea I’m sure and all through lab science I watch the clock, willing the seconds to stretch out like rubber bands, each one pulled out three times its length and so, so skinny. Eventually they hit their limit and the bell rings, making my face sting like a thousand rubber bands snapped back all at once, and I almost cry.

In the parking lot, Jenny Kirchner has a plan. She and Julia and the Ashlees are standing halfway to the buses in a cluster; they’re watching the doors when I come out, and I can tell they’ve been waiting. I stalled in the girls’ bathroom for fifteen minutes after last bell, hoping I would miss them. Everyone else is loaded on the bus, doors closed, but they’re still here. The weird thing is no backpacks. They’ve got their hands free and I wonder where their stuff went till I see the JV guys off to the side, laughing in their baggy shirts and shoving each other, the girls’ matching backpacks piled at their feet. It’s the guys’ job to stand near them because the girls all have another job; I know it even though I don’t know what it is.

There’s no other option but to walk right toward them. If I walked back into the building it would mark me for life. It’s one of those face-off things, like
West Side Story
or some cowboy movie. You can’t turn around; they’d just shoot you in the back anyway. So I keep going, even though the sweat from my armpits is cutting cold trails all the way down to the waist of my jeans and my ears are burning up. I figure I’ll just watch the asphalt till they’re done calling me whatever names and then they’ll let me go.

When I’m ten feet away, Julia Birmingham starts walking toward me. She looks like Brian when he’s playing soccer, eyes fixed on me like I’m the ball and the team’ll lose if she doesn’t kick me hard enough. Behind her is this curly red-haired girl whose name I don’t know; she’s stocky like me but stronger and I wonder why she’s there with Julia like some bodyguard. Then Julia makes a run and before I can even look up she’s got the bottom of my hoodie in her fists and she’s pulling up, so hard I have to lift my arms or it feels like they’d break, and then some other girl’s unbuckling my belt and I almost need to pee. I wiggle around like a goldfish spilled from a Baggie but it’s just as pointless as the fish because then they’re all on top of me, ripping at my clothes from ten directions and I try to keep my eyes on the asphalt but there’s just no way because their hands are in my face every five seconds. I think they’re all about to hit me but they don’t, they just keep tearing at my clothes till all that’s left on top is my ugly fucking grandma bra, and that’s half gone too; my jeans are down around my ankles and the rest of my clothes torn up. I can see out the corner of my eye that Jenny Kirchner is just standing there with her arms crossed, untouched and smiling, like she’s the fucking queen of everything and didn’t even break a nail. I feel a hundred pairs of eyes on me as I hear the buses shift into gear to leave.

I try to bend over, grab my waist and curl around it, not caring that they might jump on me again; but Julia and the redhead grab my wrists and stand me up, hold my arms behind my back so hard it feels like my shoulder blades overlap, and they turn me toward Mike and Marco and the guys. The guys are laughing, hitting each other and staring at me; I can’t even tell what they’re yelling. About a thousand different things. The snot is salty in my mouth, my neck and chin sticky with tears. I feel like a dog pinned to the ground by a pack of bigger ones, my stomach fat and naked, like all they’d have to do is dig in and I’d be dead.

But then the fingernails pull out of my skin and the knuckles loosen around my wrists and the laughing gets quieter, like a car stereo driving away, and I crumple down to the ground and no one stops me. When I open my eyes the girls are all clustered up by the guys, picking up their backpacks, backs to me. I wait to look at them till I can tell from the corners of my eyes that they’re headed somewhere else, and I wait to pull my clothes on till they’re closer to the somewhere else than they are to me.

The lot’s almost empty, except a couple seniors smoking by their cars and the after-school monitor, whistle around her neck like a gym teacher, so far on the other side of the lot that she’s just a little pinprick dot. Linda always says to call her if I miss the bus, but I’m sure she’s In a Meeting and if she’s not her first question will be what I did to be so late and I am not ever ever telling her why I missed the bus today, not ever. I’m thinking about walking, even though I’m about to puke and my eyes are so bloodshot the veins in them actually hurt, when I feel someone standing there again. I pull my breath in and hold it, ready for Julia or Jenny or the redhead, but then nothing happens so I look up. It’s Tracy.

“Come on,” she says. “I’m not supposed to be on school property.” I don’t know what she’s talking about but somehow I know if I do what she says it’ll be better.

I wipe the snot off from above my mouth and then go for my eyes. I don’t know what Tracy saw and what she didn’t so if there’s any way I can look like less of a pathetic dork I’m gonna try. But then she says “Come
on
” again like she thinks it’s way more lame that I’m wiping my face off than she does that I was crying. I leave the rest of the wet on my face. When I stand up I get a head rush and my stomach flops over inside and everything goes spotty and black. Before I even realize I’m about to fall down I think: shit I can’t fall on my ass in front of Tracy, and get this panicky feeling like right before Julia started running toward me. But Tracy just grabs my arm and even though I practically weigh twice as much as her she holds me up, even when I get dizzy again and lean all the way into her hand.

Then the head rush goes away and I stand up straight but Tracy’s still holding on to my arm. Her fingers feel like they’re made only out of bones with no skin or anything around them but somehow they’re strong. She pulls on me and starts walking and I follow.

Once we’re off the parking lot and across the street she turns to me. She’s four or five years older, Brian’s age, but also there’s this other thing I don’t know what it is that makes her look really old, like forty, which I’ve never seen before. Up close I can see her zits and the circles under her eyes which are really more like shadows and her eyes are the color of ice. Then she says “Are you okay?” to me and the look she has is the look that Linda’s always trying to fake when she asks me how school was but I can tell Tracy actually wants to know the answer.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I say but I can’t look at her and talk at the same time. I try to wipe some more snot off so she won’t see. By now what’s left is crusty.

“Those kids are fuckin’ assholes,” she says to me.

“Yeah, whatever, I know.” Still trying to get the crust off.

“No, those kids are fucking assholes. They’re
shit
.” She says it like it’s really important that I understand; it kind of scares me. I look up at her. “Those kids are little shits, they don’t fucking know about anything and they’ll do that to people the rest of their lives because they’re fucking weak. You can’t let them make you fucking cry.”

She has this look in her eyes like a really sharp knife and all I can say is “Okay.” It comes out really quiet.

“What?” she says, all pissed.

I can’t tell if I said the wrong thing or I just said it too soft but I have to answer so I say “Okay” again, louder. I look at her eyes after. For practically thirty seconds she just watches me and I know I’m not supposed to look away so I don’t.

Finally she goes “All right” and stops seeming mad. “They’re assholes, okay?”

“Okay,” I say again, but I breathe first and look at her when I say it this time, and she looks at me back. She’s beautiful. I can’t really explain it since she has a face full of zits and her teeth are yellow like her hair and she looks like she hasn’t slept or showered in a week or eaten in a month. It’s not anything about the pieces of her fitting together right like Jenny Kirchner or matching up with anything I’ve seen before. It’s more about how Tracy’s got all this metal in her eyes like she knows five million things I’ve never even heard of, but then she looks at me like I know all those things too.

I still can’t look at her, though, because I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next. I can’t get home unless I call Linda or walk, which’ll take at least an hour. And the idea of showing up two hours late, all bloodshot with my clothes ripped up, and getting the third degree is worse than what already happened. Not to even mention Brian. Who probably saw the whole thing. And when I realize that I actually almost throw up.

“Wanna go get a taco?” Tracy asks me.

I follow her all the way under the 101 and down to Sunset.

The place on Sunset has some guy she doesn’t want to see, she says when we’re close enough to know, so she tells me keep going down to Benito’s on Santa Monica. When she says that I get a kind of flutter in my throat: Linda and I pass Benito’s sometimes on the way to the highway and there are always transvestites there, and I’m pretty sure they’re hookers. They’re tall and loud with big lips and leopard print and faces that look more like billboards than like either a man or a woman. On the way to Route 10 I always watch them out the window without letting Linda see my eyes.

I’m kind of nervous to be near them and I wonder if Tracy knows that they hang out there. She doesn’t look nervous so I think she must not know. When we get close up their makeup is so thick you can’t see skin underneath but you can tell that it’s bumpy. They have long fake eyelashes and little red purses and their lip liner is perfect. One of them has a Spanish accent; I try to eavesdrop but Tracy interrupts. “Do you have five dollars? I’m out,” she says, and I’ve got some allowance left over so I buy her two chicken tacos and a large horchata. My stomach doesn’t feel great but I get a taco anyway: I know I always feel dumb when I’m the only one eating and I don’t want to make her feel bad.

We sit on the stools while we’re waiting for the food; Tracy spins hers around and I watch the big slabs of meat sizzle on the grill. I’ve never gotten food someplace with anyone besides my dad or Linda. Jenny and Julia and the JV guys all go to In-N-Out Burger when they get a ride from someone’s older brother, or the food court at Hollywood and Highland, but I never have. It’s a whole different thing, being able to get whatever you want and having someone to eat it with too. I could have a large Coke for dinner or just some chips, and nobody’s going to tell me to watch my nutrition.

I feel like a grown-up next to Tracy waiting for our food. Or not like a grown-up really, but something different from a kid. I feel like if someone saw me they would think that I looked cool. I’ve only ever thought that about other people. But now I think that I could lean against the counter and look just like a picture. I try it: lift my chin up, sort of squint my eyes. Tracy spins a half-circle toward me. “What are you doing?” she says. “You look fuckin’ weird.”

My face gets hot and I know it’s red which makes it hotter. “Who’re you making that face for, anyway?” she asks me. I don’t want to tell her the answer, which is her.

Just then our food comes up and I’m totally relieved: I can change my face without looking like I’m doing it on purpose. Tracy tears up the tinfoil around her tacos; the way she eats them reminds me of a dog who just got people food. “What’s your name?” she asks when she’s done swallowing.

It’s weird she doesn’t know since I know hers, but I guess why would she. I tell her and she scrunches up her nose. “That’s not your name,” she says and I wonder if she heard people call me Tits and that’s what she means. I can’t ask her though so I just sit there and chew. “Who gave you that name? Your parents?” and I nod through the taco. “Yeah,” she says. “That’s why you need a new one.”

I never thought you could just change your name. Just decide it was something else and make it that. Names were something that you came with; they got decided somewhere way before you and then were part of you just like your skin or face. But Tracy goes “So what’ll it be?” and looks at me and I know I have to pick and once I do she’ll call me it and even if she’s the only one I won’t be exactly Elly anymore. I think: Amy Stacy Sarah Laura Beth but all of them are weird and sound like dolls. “Does it have to be a girl’s name?” I ask.

“Fuck no,” Tracy snorts. “Who told you that? Pick a word or something,” but then there are so many words, and I can’t think of any except Taco or Pepsi, which are both retarded. She breathes out like I’m stupid. “Fine,” she goes finally. “What’s your favorite cartoon?” and my life fucking sucks because the true answer is Winnie the Pooh. And if she makes my name Pooh I’d honestly rather be Tits. But I have this feeling with Tracy that if I hide anything she’ll see right through to where it is, so I tell her.

She spins her stool around again and thinks and when she comes back around to face me she says “Eeyore,” and then stands up, and that’s my name. The Spanish one of the transvestite hookers watches Tracy pick my backpack up and sling it on her back. I can tell she’s still watching when Tracy grabs my arm and pulls me down the sidewalk; I want to look back but I don’t.

By now the sun is setting and the sky is orange and I’m starting to get kind of scared. You can see the hills from where we are, and the lights in the windows all gold-colored like polka dots in the dark green of the trees. I think about Whole Foods, prepackaged pesto pasta and the dinner table, and wonder if my dad has made a phone call to school or if he’s even home. Linda must be freaking out. That part makes me happy.