Crossing (7 page)

M
iss Winters rapped the chalk against the blackboard like a jackhammer. Waiting a few dramatic seconds, she took a deep breath then informed us that we had a “special project” that day. She waved her meaty hand as she spoke.

“I understand that many of us have been under a strain lately. I understand that we’ve lost our sense of normalcy. Things are no longer the same. We don’t have the same sense of security as we go about our daily business. We don’t ‘hang out’ very much anymore, do we? Perhaps we’re not sleeping as well at night.”

She went on and on, interminably.

About five minutes later, she finally said, “So what I’m trying to say is we should do something different today.” She bit her lower lip, her eyes glistening with maudlin wetness. “Yes, we shall do something different. For Winston. For Justin. For getting our minds off this mess. So I propose that we put away our books and, well, draw our feelings today.”

A few heads turned to look at one another. Draw? “What I’d like you to do is to find yourself a quiet spot in school and draw your feelings out. I’m handing out blank pieces of paper on which I’d like you to, oh, I don’t know, to put your feelings down.”

“Draw what?” somebody asked from the back.

“Your feelings. Express your feelings on paper.”

“You want me to write down how I’m feeling,” said the same voice.

“No. Draw. Draw your feelings out.”

There was a pause. “I don’t understand.”

“Draw. Draw your feelings out,” she said emphatically. Another pause. “Oh. Draw my feelings out.”

“Yes,” she said, a little excitedly now, “let your feelings feel by expressing them. Through a drawing. Through
you
drawing.”

There was another pause. Somebody else spoke up. “I don’t get it.”

Welcome to the wonderful world of learning at Slackenkill High.

We were paired up as a precautionary measure—Miss Winters thought it would be safer for us to do that “in light of recent affairs”—and though I was hoping to be assigned with Naomi, I was paired up with, of all people, Jan Blair. We dispersed, each pair cradling pencils, erasers, and two sheets of paper.

Jan Blair and I milled around the hallways for a while, trying to find a good spot. Personally, I thought the library would be the ideal place. There were tables and chairs to position ourselves, and if I got bored I could always check out that day’s paper. Plus, I had a suspicion that Naomi and her partner were heading there.

But Jan Blair had other ideas. This surprised me; I didn’t think she possessed any ideas. Yet she led me away from the library and told me that she had another place in mind. A place where it would be nice to draw.

She led me towards the auditorium. I could hear the chatter of other students thinning out as they headed—no surprise here—to the cafeteria, where there would no doubt join other friends who were chowing down. Whatever “feelings” they drew would probably be accompanied by ketchup smears and greasy hot dog stains.

The auditorium was empty. At first I thought we were going to sit on the stage, but she led me towards the back of the stage. She started climbing up some scaffolding that was being used to add lighting fixtures for the musical.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

She shimmied her way up to the planked platform about twenty feet up. Reaching the top, she swung her legs around and pulled herself onto the platform. Her chest heaved up and down from the exertion of her climb. “C’mon up!” she said. “It’s awesome up here.”

“I’ll stay here,” I said, trying to make my voice authoritative. “Anyway, I don’t think we should be up there.”

I had never spoken with this girl before, but she was looking at me with a directness I found unnerving.

“Scaredy cat,” she sneered.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, ‘Scaredy cat.’” She paused, studying me. “What are you going to do? Just sit there?” she asked.

“No. I’ve got my feelings to draw.” I grimaced at the words.

“Well, good luck. ’Cause guess who’s got all the paper and pencils.”

She was right. “Oh, come on!” I protested.

“What d’ja say? You talk funny.”

“C’mon! Throw them down.”

“Come up and get ’em!”

I paused, then began to climb up the scaffolding. The rungs were unsteady.

“Careful,” she said when I swung my feet onto the platform, “it’s kind of wobbly and unstable. Walk here slowly.”

I warily edged my way up. The platform was nothing more than a few planks of wood placed together. It felt woefully thin under me. I knelt down, breathing hard.

“I like climbing,” she said gazing out to the empty rows of seats before us. “I climb all the time. Don’t think there’s a single tree in my woods I haven’t climbed.”

“I’m not sure I like it up here. We should go back down.” But she was looking at me with an idea in her eyes. “Wait. Gonna show you something real neat.”

She stood up quickly and traversed her way down the plank. I felt it bounce and jostle under me.

“Where are you going? Just sit down.”

She leaned over a rail, precariously, stretching her body taut as an anchor rope; her fingers at the end of her outstretched arm wriggled towards a light switch on the far wall. She came up short by about a foot or so, and I assumed she was going to give up.

But instead, she tiptoed and perched forward even more. Her skinny body went past the point of equilibrium, and she pitched forward, the whole force of momentum behind her now. My breath caught. But as her body toppled forward and almost over the rail, her fingers landed on the switch, turned it off, and pushed off against it. Her body nudged back past the railing. The whole auditorium plunged into semidarkness.

“I found that switch the other day when I was here,” she said, sitting down next to me again, closer this time. “I love it when it’s dark like this. Makes me feel like I’m a performer. All I can see are the first three rows, and everything else is just black. I can pretend it’s a packed house, and out there are all my adoring fans. Like I’m performing at my very own concert.” She flung up an arm in dramatic fashion and shimmied her lanky body.

Only the dim lights from above the stage were on now, lights frosted over with blue paint. They washed everything in a surreal glow. The lighting actually accommodated her, smoothing out a rash of acne and adding texture to her pasty skin. It brought shadows over her mouth, too, important for a girl whose smile exposed a crowded row of teeth all at Xs and Ys with each other.

I didn’t really know anything about Jan Blair. Since her disastrous first-day introduction to the class, she’d proven herself to be as bland as the sound of her name. She hardly spoke and mostly kept to herself. There were some ugly rumors about her.

“I hear you got the backup thingie in the musical,” she said to me. She was shy about it, not looking at me. She played with the chewed laces of her boots.

“Listen, let’s go back down. What if someone comes in?”

“So?”

“Well, they might see us and think…” I didn’t go on. “Just give me the paper.”

She handed it over. In the dead center was her shoe print. “Don’t complain,” she said. “The other sheet is even worse. It’s ripped almost in half. But I’ll use it.” She started chewing on her pencil, humming something unrecognizable.

Wait till I tell Naomi about this
, I thought to myself. That’d get a laugh out of her.

Perched up on the scaffolding offered me a bird’s-eye view of the stage. It was my first time seeing it. And the half-built stables, the mural of shepherds, and the metallic-wire frame of the Bethlehem star all made the show suddenly so real to me. Its magnitude. Its imminence.

“So is it true?” she asked. She wore an open look on her face.

“What is?” I murmured. Anytime now, somebody would walk in, turn on the lights, and catch us two sitting together. I could see it now: an endless stream of jokes about the two of us frolicking in the dark.

“The whole deal with you being the backup in the musical. Is it true?”

“I guess so.” I worked my pencil up and down, etches of lines above an oval shape. A head, I realized.

“Hey, maybe Hasbourd will disappear just like the others. Then you’ll have the lead.”

“You shouldn’t talk that way.”

“OK, Dad.”

I ignored her.

“Hey, why don’t you sing now?” she suddenly suggested, her voice spry. She smiled, exposing her ramshackle teeth. “Let me hear you.”

I decided the best approach was to ignore her. I concentrated on my drawing, thickening the lines, making the strokes thicker, more feral.

She persisted. “Can I come to watch you practice sometime?”

I didn’t respond.

“Isn’t there some song you could do right now?” She slapped me on the arm. “Oh, c’mon!”

“Look, why don’t we not talk,” I said, drawing a few more strokes.

She was quiet for a short time. “You know, I heard about your dad dyin’ and all.”

My pencil paused momentarily.

“I was askin’ some girls in the locker room after gym class about you—”

“Who did you talk to?”

“Just some girls. They said your dad died in a real bad accident. Hit and run and all that s—”

“Listen, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“How long ago was it? Huh? How long ago?” she pestered.

“About five years,” I said, hoping an answer would shut her up.

She counted off on her hands some crude math. “You must have been like in fourth or fifth grade.”

“I suppose.”

“Well, at least you were kind of young. Easier to get over.” She paused, hesitating. “Right?”

“Listen, I don’t know you. Why don’t we just draw?”

“My ma’s dead, too,” she said quietly. Then, haltingly, she said, “It was a suicide.”

I looked at her. She was wearing tight-fitting, faded jeans and a flimsy blouse with rakish spaghetti straps. Whitish lines of flecked skin were etched along her arms. “Let’s just draw, OK?” I said.

“My father. He looks after me now. Just me and him and no one else in the whole world.” She looked at me as if for a response.

I got back to my drawing.

“What cha drawing?”

“Nothing. Don’t you think you should draw a little bit yourself?”

“Looks like it’s something.”

“Nothing.”

“Well, sure now, it is something.” She swiveled around to get a better angle, brushing up against me. “Looks like a boy or something.”

I was momentarily taken aback. I’d been drawing no more than a head; but now, looking down, there had seemingly surfaced a whole portrait of a short, hulking figure. Running through the woods, a crescent moon hung above, wearing a jacket. A child’s amateurish delineation, crude circles, distorted and disproportionate. I blinked.

Jan Blair was studying the drawing with a concentration I didn’t think she was capable of. “Looks like…” she said before her voice drifted off. She turned to me and moved closer suddenly. I could smell a foul puff of rotten-egg breath wafting past my nose. “The jacket. I’d draw the same if I could. Make it red.”

“Well, why don’t you?” I said, not looking at her.

“Ain’t got no artist in me.”

“Well, just try,” I answered, irritated. “Nothing to be lost in just trying. A person can do a lot simply by trying.” I stared at the pencil; its lead end was whittled down into a smooth nub.

“You a preacher or something? Getting philosophysics…philosp…gettin’ all religious on me now, are you?” She looked down at my drawing again. “What’s with this person running in the woods?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Then why did you draw him?”

“No reason. Just, you know. Just because.”

“Cause what?”

“Nothing, really,” I said.

“C’mon. Tell me.” Her eyes sharpened into a sudden fierceness, keen and frantic. “Tell me, tell me, tell me,” she said, tugging at my sleeve.

“It’s nothing. Quit bugging me—”

“Why won’t you just tell me?”

“Tell you what? I have no idea what you’re going on about—”

“I saw you that day,” she said. She hooked her body perpendicular to mine; a blue light hovering just behind her blurred the lineament of her face. “I saw you, Kris. That day when Winston Barnes went nuts in the classroom. I saw the way you looked. Like spooked out of your mind.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what she was referring to. My heart was suddenly racing, cawing in my ribcage like a bird.

“The day when Winston shouted about the boy.
The red jacket! The red jacket!
He went off on that. I saw the way you looked, man—you were freaked out. I saw. I know. Don’t deny it. You were worried about something.”

I remembered—of course I did. And I also remembered the way she looked, too: tarnished with fear. I lifted my head and looked at her: now, just as then, she was hugging herself, pulling her sleeves inward, cocooning herself in a disheveled shell.

“You know, too?” I asked before I could think to restrain myself, think through the situation. “You know about the person in the woods? The one with the red jacket?”

She stared back at me a little blankly. It was her natural look, the parted mouth, the loose cheeks, the slightly furrowed forehead. I’d seen her with that look on her face walking the corridors, sitting in class, running about in gym. A vapid expression sitting square on her face. Her natural look.

“I thought only I knew,” I went on. “I didn’t think anyone else was suspicious or connecting the dots. It was like my own terrible secret—” I stopped myself. For a brief second, she seemed incredulous. But then she shifted her head slightly, and a shaft of blue light blazed into my eyes. Her face disappeared into a corona of blue haze.

There was a long pause, a bloated, paralyzed moment. From somewhere within the nimbus of blue, she spoke in a husky whisper. “You can tell me your secrets.”

I paused, thinking what to ask—but just then, the auditorium door opened at the far end. Framed within the doorway against the harsh light was the silhouette of two figures.

“Oh, the lights are off! It’s pitch black in here.” I recognized the voice. Zach Mayo, captain of the varsity soccer team, sought after by just about every girl who dared. “Where’s the light switch?”