My Stupid Girl (3 page)

"Mike," (ahh, it was Mike) some
grownup said to Mr. Perfect, "You’re going to have to drive the van and
get everyone home. You can come to the hospital afterwards." He had his
hand on Mike’s chest, holding him away from the car, and was talking fast. Not
fast enough if you asked me.

"I think I should take her."
Mike’s brow was knit. His voice was concerned, and he stood there shuffling the
snow back and forth with his feet. I bet he felt guilty for being so useless
while his girlfriend was drowning. But he looked wet and cold himself, and no
one was even paying attention to him except to get him out of the way. I had to
give it to the guy, he did try when no one else was. Granted, he was a complete
idiot and almost killed them both, but he obviously cared for the girl.

"Mike, buddy,” the counselor must have
realized Mike’s concern as well, “I have to take her, it’s my job. Please just
take everyone home." He didn’t wait for an answer from the guilty teen,
just walked around to the driver’s side of the car and started to climb in.
Mike, eyes still furrowed, leaned into the back seat, to talk to his ice queen
before she vanished.

"Don't worry, there is a hospital a
few miles away," he said with slight panic in his voice. He knew he was in
trouble. Mike had been responsible for his gal and, with his own dumb actions,
got shown up by one of the town rejects. Yours truly. Superhero reject.

"I'm no-ot worried," I heard her
say through frozen lips. Mike’s shoulders relaxed a little but he glanced in
the rearview mirror twice before pulling back from the car, trying to figure
out what to say or what to think about me. Thankfully, he wasn’t able to come
up with anything.

Another counselor settled in the front,
buckling quickly. Random hands slammed the back doors shut from the outside. I
nervously flattened my hair against my face then realized I was pretty much
leaning on the girl next to me, who didn’t even seem to notice. She looked
really bad.

"Put the blanket around your neck and
head," I told her. "That’s where most of your body heat
escapes." Thank you, PE class.

She opened her eyes and looked at me but
didn't move. She probably couldn't. She just lay at an awkward angle against
the seat, shivering sporadically. Her lips were blue and her eyes were bright
red. The white down comforter was actually a nice touch, very patriotic. I
freed my arms and pulled the blanket around her face till nothing but her eyes and
nose were sticking out.

"Try to relax," I said to her,
“shivering and locking up your muscles uses up energy and you need that to keep
warm." She didn’t respond, but a corner of her frozen eyebrows wrinkled
into a “yeah, right” smirk. Might have just been muscle spasms, though.

I couldn't remember, ever in my whole life,
talking this much to one person. Even though she hadn’t responded, I could feel
her trying to control the shivering and relax. It took a few minutes but she
seemed to loosen up a little. We sat there in silence as the huge vehicle
lumbered toward the hospital. My seatmate kept going in and out of shivering
spells. The passenger counselor turned around every once and a while to check
on us. Never saying anything. We were still breathing.

I closed my eyes and wondered what on earth
I had just done. I couldn’t believe all that had actually just worked. A knife
and a belt, seriously? How was I alive right now?

"Hi," I heard a whisper coming
from the seat next to me. She was looking at me, I could feel it.

"Hi," I answered back quickly.

"Thank you." She was still
whispering. I could barely hear her through that comforter.

"It’s okay," I shot back, willing
her to shut up. When I woke up this morning I never would have thought that I
would be riding in a car, basically naked, talking to the prettiest girl in
school. Overload. I snuck a glance at the abominable snow girl.

She smiled at me. The blanket had slipped down
so I could see her whole face, though she was holding it shut around her neck.
She had a pretty smile.

I closed my eyes and I tried to hunch my
blanket over my head. Disappearing was my goal, but the dumb comforter wasn’t
doing very well at swallowing me whole like I wanted it to.

"Are you ok?"

This girl really wanted to talk to me.
"I can’t feel my toes."

She laughed. She had a loud, obnoxious
laugh that sent sparks flying thru me. I had heard it before and my body had
the same reaction to it then. Both the counselors spun around to look back at
us, startled by the laugh. They faced the road again when they saw us talking
to each other. They seemed relieved.

"I'm Lucy." I guess she didn’t
realize I knew who she was. I just nodded at her. A little hand poked out from
the folds of her blanket, ready for a shake.

"I just saved your life, I think we
have passed the point of shaking hands." I sunk deeper into my blanket.
There had to be a trap door in this car somewhere. Didn’t mobsters drive
Cadillacs?

She let her arm fall and her head went down
a little. I felt bad for refusing her. It wouldn't have hurt to shake the
girl’s hand, it’s not like she didn’t deserve it or anything. She was just
trying to be nice, and besides, she was one of the only people at school who
never looked at me like I was a walking plague. I tried taking my hand out of
my blanket-cage but apparently I had succeeded in disappearing. She looked back
up at me, eyebrows lifted hopefully, when I moved. Stupid down-comforter
cocoon.

I felt the cloth that was wrapped around my
neck and face move slightly, and then there was pressure on the top of my head.
Immediately, I stopped moving, afraid of what was happening. I looked over and
saw that her bare arm was completely out of her blankets. The girl put her
fingers through the back of my hair and stopped at the base of my neck. I was
torn between snapping at her fingers like a wild turkey or completely melting
through the non-existent trapdoor in this non-Mob car.  

"Thank you," she said again,
looking straight at me, forehead bent toward me. And she gave my neck the
slightest pull for emphasis. This chick would not allow herself to be ignored
or shrugged off. My throat had mysteriously lost all moisture, so I just nodded
to her. It was either accept her thanks or get strangled, apparently.

She tucked back into her blanket, closed
her eyes and put her head back against the seat. I felt myself being drawn to
her. She didn't shy away from the way I looked, or flinch when she touched me.
I felt a wall around a little room in my heart beginning to collapse; I tried
to mentally reconstruct it but it continued to crumble. This was the most
absurd thing that could ever happen to someone like me. I save some beautiful
girl from drowning in a frozen lake, with a crowd of well-meaning people
looking on (doing nothing), and then she turns around and cuts through every
mental defense I’d built over years in, like, two seconds. Soulful eyes and the
threat of death by strangulation are my kryptonite, I guess.

"Yeah, you’re welcome," I said
quietly as the Caddy slid into the ER parking lot.

She kept her eyes closed, but smiled.

2. IT’S A PARTY

Life is funny.

Not haha funny but
what-is-happening-to-me-right-now kind of funny.

We were carried into the emergency room
like two newborns, bright red and swaddled in blankets. They hooked the two of
us up to heart monitors in the same room, on two hospital beds separated by a
thin curtain. They put these disgusting gray heated blankets on us, wool socks,
and great big hospital-issued beanies. We had heating pads under our armpits,
our knees and on our feet. I was waiting for someone to walk up to me with a
cup of hot chocolate.

A husky woman with little smile-wrinkles
fanning out from the corner of both eyes walked in with a small white box in
her hand, singing, “let’s get those temps!” I was in the bed closest to the
door so she stopped hesitantly in front of me. I opened my mouth and looked
away, ready for the “don’t talk, keep it under your tongue” spiel, but she
recoiled when she saw me which made me snap my mouth shut like an irritated
rattle snake. Denied.

"No, Hun, it’s an ear
thermometer," she smiled at me for a second and then walked around the
bed, to my left ear, the side with less hair in her way. I heard a little
giggle from the other side of the curtain. Nice. I jump into a freezing lake to
save the girl’s life and she laughs at me.

"Okay sweetie pie, rate how you’re
doing for me, on a scale from one to ten. One is the worst, ten is the best.”
She busied herself by checking monitors and scribbling in my chart while she
spoke.

"I feel fine," I answered her.

"What’s your number dear?" She
still didn’t look at me. A part of me seriously wanted to mess with her.
"How can you put a number on fine? It means I’m feeling fine." Her
head snapped up and I made sure to glare at her but she smiled, ruffled my
hair, and then glared right back. “Oh, are numbers too hard for you, dear? Do
you need me to show you the smile chart?” She started to grab for a laminated
sheet with a row of faces on it, ranging from frowns to smiles. “If you want
you can just point to the face that looks like how ‘fine’ feels to you. We
normally only need to pull this out for small children but if you’re having a
hard time with numbers…” I assessed the situation, especially with the
smile-chart hanging in front of my face, and realized how uninterested I was in
dealing with this person anymore so I just decided to answer.

"One..." The smile chart whipped
away from my face and went back onto the shelf. Nurse Evil put a big check mark
on her paper and opened the curtain between our beds. I saw Lucy briefly; she
looked like her head was tilted towards us. Eavesdropper. She wasn’t at all
ashamed at being caught. She just looked at me and smiled brightly. The nurse
pulled the curtain closed behind her, shutting Lucy’s bed out like it was the
law and it would protect the two of them from the angry punk kid.

"How you doing, sweetie?" Nurse
Evil said, all chipper and sweet. I heard the thermometer beep and the
"number" question. She didn’t offer the smile chart.

"I don’t know. Three maybe? I still
can’t really feel my toes, but that’s not really painful is it? I mean, if you
can’t feel it..." I heard a charming laugh and it pissed me off. As cute
as that little line was, I knew if I had tried it I would have gotten flogged
with an ear thermometer.

"You let me know if you need anything,
anything at all, okay hun? Just press that little red button and I’ll be right
here in a jiff!"

"Thank you!” I heard Lucy say, all
sugar and spice. The curtains opened and shut quickly, spewing Nurse
Crankypants back into my side of the room. She looked at me, considering for a
moment.

"If you need me there is a call button
right next to you."

She left the room shaking her head like she
was trying to figure something out. Probably how the pair of us made it in here
together. I shook my head, too.

I looked over at the call button that was
"right next to me.” I hate those buttons. You have to crawl out of the
bed, untangle yourself from the maze of wires, then call a cab to take you over
to the freaking thing so you can call a nurse. It's actually easier to just
walk around looking for a real human being than to press that thing. Then, when
they see you they panic, because instead of a mild beep they can ignore for
five minutes, it's some random patient wandering around the ER with fake socks
and a butt hanging out for everyone to look at. I contemplated getting up to
hit the button a few times, just for kicks.

Thin fingers interrupted my plan for ER
mayhem. Lucy pulled the curtain open. I peeked at her from the corner of my eye
without moving my head and knew she’d seen me. I closed my eyes and sighed. I
turned my face towards her, hiding my lips behind one of the many hospital
blankets and making sure my hair fell in a solid, impenetrable sheet across my
eye.

"I feel really bad," she paused
and her big bottom lip went down in a mock frown, "I don't know what your
name is, I can’t remember if you told me or not." Her eyebrows went up as
her eyes opened even wider. She looked like she was confessing some great sin.

"That’s ok." I shrugged, acting
like it didn’t matter to me that a girl I just saved from a horrific frozen
drowning death, not to mention who'd also been a classmate of mine since first
grade, didn’t know my name. "I'm David." 

"David!" She squealed. "I
like that name. That was my grandfather’s name!" She looked excitedly at
me, like me and her grandfather were the only two Davids in the world. Can it
be?! Another David?! It’s a miracle!

"I was named after his wife
actually." She didn't seem bothered by the fact that I wasn’t speaking at
all. In fact, I was freaking out a little, sitting here in this bed like three
feet from her. I wondered if she even noticed. I had a million things going
thru my head about this girl. All I knew about her was that she was a part of
the popular Christian crowd. Kalispell is a small town with a lot of religion,
and all the kids who went to the one big church also tended to stick together
at school. They were like a group of double-whammies. They all had money, so
they were smug about that, and they all knew they were for sure headed to
heaven, so they were smug about that, too. Most people seemed to buy it, but I
tried to steer clear.

This one in particular smiled at everyone
and, in turn, people fell at her feet. This made me leery. I didn't want to be
another victim in the latest collection of “souls” just because some chick
smiled at me. Maybe she was nice, maybe not. I wasn’t incredibly interested in
finding out what her motives were for her many random acts of kindness.