Gravity Brings Me Down (7 page)

I read the letter to make sure it’s okay, enclosing sixty dollars from my piggy bank before sealing the envelope. I know it’s a lot of money, but if Mabel goes to Giovanni’s and gets a real haircut, it’ll be worth it. I just hate the idea of her going to Bizarro J. He’s probably not even a real hairstylist, by the looks of it. I mean, how much talent can it take to spin hair into cotton candy for a living?

Writing Mabel’s address on the envelope, I place a stamp in the corner and decorate it with a heart on the back. I’ll mail it on my way to school tomorrow—if I decide to go. At this point it might be better to just drop out and ride the rails the way my great-grandfather
supposedly did. Whenever things got too weird, he would just take off and live like a hobo. Maybe he felt tyrannized by invisible forces. Or maybe he had a teacher like Chocko, or knew someone like Biff, I don’t know. In any case, he was definitely a man of mystery. Yet, in spite of all his tramping around, he somehow managed to have thirteen kids. Who can explain anything?

Placing Mabel’s letter on my night table, I crawl into bed. I actually do feel a bit better, but not enough to sleep. Thinking about my name on the bathroom wall starts making me crazy again. After tossing and turning for hours, I decide there’s only one solution: I have to go to school and erase what Biff Johnson wrote.

I
manage to sneak from the house undetected, equipment bag in hand. Contents: window cleaner, a can of orange spray paint (stolen from my dad, in case the window cleaner doesn’t work), a scrub pad, some credit cards for jimmying door locks (I saw this in a movie once) and a nylon to hide my identity. I’m kind of scared to do this myself, but there’s no way I’m calling Sharon. It would take her forever to get ready and she’d ask a million questions, so it’s best to go it alone.

I mail Mabel’s letter in the box on the corner, then approach the school through the alley. The building is lit up like a Christmas tree but I find a dark spot near the bushes on one side. There’s a window that I may be able to open, it looks so old. I pull the nylon over my head, sling my equipment bag over my shoulder and scale the wall. Gripping the window ledge, I haul myself up, but there’s hardly enough room to stand. If I cling to the wall with one hand, I can just reach the sash with the other. I’m just about to give it a tug
when I lose my balance and the forces prevail, throwing me into the bushes. The equipment bag lands first, the bottle of cleaner tumbling onto the ground. I land on it and the bottle bursts, showering cleaner all over my pants. My back feels broken. I lie there, staring at the sky, wishing I could just end my misery once and for all.

Then Tod appears in my field of vision, leaning over me with concern. I can’t believe he’s tracking me at night. He should hunt vampires, he’s so relentless.

“Are you okay?” he says.

I pull the nylon up. “Do I
look
okay?”

He points to the wet spot on my pants. “Is that…?”

“It’s window cleaner. God, Tod. What are you doing here?”

“I knew you’d try something like this.” He goes to help me up but I refuse his hand, standing on my own.

“It’s a felony to break into a school,” he says.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I have a better idea, if you care to hear it.”

I yank the nylon from my head. “Sure, what the hell.”

So Tod tells me his plan. We go to school really early, before the other students arrive, and erase what Biff Johnson wrote. At first, Tod proposes that I play lookout while he removes the offending script but I immediately veto that. Biff is less likely to dunk my head in the toilet if we get caught. So we agree that I should be the sharpshooter while Tod mans the door.
I have to admit, it’s not a bad idea. It’s certainly better than playing Spider-Man in the dark.

“Okay, fine. Let’s do it,” I say.

You’d think I’d agreed to marry him, he’s so happy. He insists on walking me home. I don’t even bother saying no. When we reach my house, we settle on a time and part ways.

Tuesday morning, I sleep through my alarm. I’m going to be late meeting Tod. There’s no time to find clean clothes so I jump into the pants I wore yesterday. Everything I own is black anyway, so it’s not as if anyone’s going to notice. Quickly brushing my teeth, I mess up my hair, grab another bottle of cleaner from under the sink and stuff it in my purse. Downstairs, Mom tries to stop me for breakfast. I give her a wave and leave before she can slow me down.

Tod’s waiting in front of the school.

“We were supposed to meet at 8:15,” he says.

“Which stall?” I ask as we enter the building and approach the boys’ washroom.

“Third from the front.”

Tod stations himself outside the entrance while I steal into the bathroom with the bottle of cleaner. Grabbing some paper towels from the dispenser, I shoulder my way into the stall. There’s a loud yell, and then I’m yelling as I nearly collide with Steve Ryan sitting on the John.

“Oh my God!”

I stumble backwards, dropping the cleaner to the floor as Steve yanks his pants to his knees. He slams the door shut, kicking the bottle of cleaner after me.

“What’s happening?” Tod calls, craning his neck into the bathroom.

“Someone’s in there! Thanks a lot, Tod.”

“Is it Biff? Did you manage to erase the message?”

“I’m not going back.”

“I can do it.”

Just then, we hear the toilet flush and the bell rings. Tod picks up the bottle of cleaner as students flood through the doors into the school, Biff among them. He shoves Tod into the stream of zombies, ruining our chances of erasing the offensive message. I quickly make my exit before Steve Ryan comes out of the bathroom. I will never be able to look at him again.

On the way to my locker, Sharon glides up beside me.

“Why are you here so early?” she asks.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Gus called last night,” she begins, then stops, pointing in horror at my feet. “Oh my God … what is that?”

I look down to see a pair of dirty underwear creeping across my shoe—grody side up. They must have been trapped in my pant leg when I took my clothes off yesterday. I was in such a hurry this morning I didn’t notice them when I got dressed. What’s more, they aren’t one of my sexy little pairs of black underwear: they’re white briefs, the size of a pillow case, the kind my grandmother wore.

I have one stupid pair like this and I only wear them when I’ve hit the rocks in the panty department. They’re the last desperate measure before deploying my bikini bottoms.

“Oh my God.” I jerk my leg to dislodge the underwear. They crawl off my shoe and into the crowd of moving bodies. A girl screams and kicks them down the hall. Then everyone is screaming and running and kicking. I retreat into CP class, praying no one actually saw my pants give birth to the dirty knickers. I can tell you one thing: this is way worse than having my name written on the bathroom wall.

Miss B., my CP teacher, stares into the hallway in shock. “Is there some kind of emergency out there?”

I totally ignore her. The master stoner, Dennis Carson, answers for me.

“If you call discovering dirty underwear an emergency, then yes.”

“Were those yours?” Sharon asks as she sits next to me. “You will
never
live this down.”

Thanks, Sharon. I hate her for saying it but she’s right. I
will
never live this down. Now I really wish I were
dead. I can never show my face at school again. Ever. I’d rather have a thousand stupid jocks writing my name on a thousand bathroom walls than this. My life is so over. My only hope is to find the underwear and hide the evidence.

When the screaming stops and the halls are finally empty I ask to be excused. Miss B. raises her eyebrows but lets me go. She’s pretty good about that sort of thing because she’s a feminist and feels women should be allowed to go to the bathroom whenever they like. She even belongs to a group that fights for women who get bladder infections from working in factories in Third World countries where they aren’t allowed to take breaks.

Leaving the classroom, I turn left toward the bathrooms, then go up the stairs to the second floor so I can double back and scope things out. I try to move as casually as possible. I don’t want to attract any unwanted attention from teachers in other classrooms, especially Chocko. Most of them keep their doors open so they can gawk around for suspicious student activity.

No sooner do I touch down on the first floor again than Chocko steps out in front of me. He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there with this dumb smirk on his face. I stare back at him, then employ an evasive manoeuvre, stepping to one side as though to pass. He cuts me off.

“We need to talk about your term paper.”

“Right now?”

He looks at me smugly but can’t think of a good enough retort. He eventually moves and lets me continue my search.

I wait until I’m sure Chocko’s back in his lair, then comb the hall for my wayward underwear. To my despair, they’re nowhere in sight. Someone must have picked them up. I’m done for.

Just in case, I nonchalantly check the trashcans. As I’m looking in the garbage, Mr. Ricketts, our principal, appears at the end of the hall and starts gunning toward me. I pretend to take a drink from the fountain. He scans me like a Cylon as he walks past, just long enough to let me know he’s onto whatever diabolical scheme I may be hatching. After he disappears, I continue checking the garbage but come up empty. I guess I have to accept the fact that my life really is over. Someone, anyone, could have my dirty underwear in their possession. This is too much for me. I consider walking out of school right there, leaving my books and everything, and never coming back. Until I hear Miss B.’s voice.

“Are you lost, Miss Smith?”

I don’t even answer. I turn around and walk past her, into the classroom, taking my seat.

The next hour and twenty-three minutes is the longest hour and twenty-three minutes of my life. I’m not just falling toward a black hole; I’m being crushed in the middle of it. The underwear has me so freaked I can barely breathe, let alone plot my own demise.

Overtop of my torment, Miss B. lectures us about how badly written our last essays were. She says she’s disappointed in us, we’re capable of better things, blah, blah, blah. By the time the bell rings for class change
I’m completely derailed. To make things worse, Miss B. calls me to her desk.

“Do you have a topic for your term project, Sue?”

“Yes.”

She smiles at me and waits for me to explain.

“Oh… uh … I’m doing suicide … you know… why people do it and … the differences between men and women … etc.”

Miss B. furrows her brow. “Oh.” She looks intently up at me. “What reference material are you going to use?”

“Well… lots of personal research … and the Internet and stuff.”

“… personal research …?”

“You don’t have to worry or anything.”

Miss B. continues to study my face. “Okay, well, I’ll be interested to see what you come up with,” she says, then hands me my essay. There’s a big “B-”written in red ink at the top.

B-minus?! I’ve never gotten anything below an A before, ever. This is definitely the
worst
day of my life.

I’m so flipped out, I don’t even bother going to my locker. I don’t bother to look for Sharon. I just hit the bar on the door of the school and leave, never to return.

I can’t go home, and I don’t want to go to the Tip, so I wander downtown and sit on one of the benches near the naked family. I just sit there, with all the other bench-sitters, staring into space. I can say one thing for sure: I’ll never say bad things about people who sit on benches again. Now I understand how people come to this. Maybe dirty underwear crawled out of their pants
in high school. Maybe they got a crappy mark on a term paper, or had to deal with miscreants like Chocko and Biff, and the building blocks of despair got stacked so high, their only recourse was to sit on a bench until they die.

I put a Gauloise to my lips but I’m too depressed to bring myself to light it. I wonder, if I sit on this bench long enough, will I succumb to exposure? I hope so, because I don’t think I can go on any more with anything. I really mean it this time. I run endlessly through my litany of choices, over and over and over.

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting when I hear a familiar voice.

“Hello.”