Out of Order (16 page)

“You know how I used to live in Ontario? In Georgetown?”

Max nods.

“Well...don't tell anyone this, okay?”

“I won't.”

I want Max to know me. I want to tell her the truth, but it's hard. Having kept it a secret for so long makes it seem like such a big deal. “I should have told you this before,” I say. “When we first started getting to know each other. I don't know. I feel like I'm doing everything backward, telling you now. All out of order.”

“It's okay,” Max says. “Just tell me. If you want to.”

I sigh. “I was...different then, you know? In middle school. Grade eight and nine.”

“Yeah? Well, I guess we all were.”

I pick at a loose thread on the quilt. “No, I mean, I was really...I got picked on a lot. Bullied, I guess you'd call it.”

Max looks surprised, but her voice is soft. “Sophie, I'm really sorry. That's awful.”

“It was my fault, really. I was such a loser.”

Max frowns. “No one deserves to be bullied.”

“No, I know.”I want to make sure she understands. “All I'm saying is that I wasn't like I am now. I didn't fit in, you know? I was kind of fat. I wore stupid clothes. I acted like a little kid. stupid like that.”

Max interrupts me. “That's a load of crap. You're just letting the kids who bullied you off the hook. How come you're not mad at them?” Her voice is getting loud.

I'm not sure what reaction I had expected, but this wasn't it. I think for a moment. “I don't know. I guess maybe I should be?”

“Damn right you should,” Max says passionately. “No one
has a right to treat you like that. No one should make you feel bad about yourself.”

Something inside me loosens, lightens. I meet Max's eyes. Relief is bubbling up from deep inside me. She knows and she doesn't care. More than that: She knows and she's on my side.

I reach out and touch her hand. “Thanks,” I say softly.

Max shrugs. “Just saying what I think.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I know. You do that.” That's why I trust her, I think. She never says anything she doesn't mean.

It's only later that I realize she never told me her own secret.

I SPEND THE
evening working on my English paper. I've written pages and pages, but I won't be able to hand it in. It's by far the weirdest paper I've ever written. It has bits of poems tossed in, and sketches of scared faces and echoes of voices from my own past. It's about
Lord of the Flies,
I guess, but it's about Georgetown and Chloe and Patrice too.

It's a paper about things falling apart, and if I hand it in, Mr. Farley will be calling my mother for sure. I sigh and try to figure out if I can salvage anything useful from the mess of words. I've never had a grade below an A– in my life. I wouldn't admit this to anyone—I took enough crap about being a keener back in Georgetown—but I don't really want to start screwing my grades up now.

Every couple of minutes I glance at the phone. I try not to think about Zelia. If she doesn't call, then forget it—I'm not calling her. She's the one who owes me an apology. I look at the phone again. Zelia never apologizes. If she calls, she'll be full of bright chatter, reeling me back in like a fish with a hook through its lip. She'll pretend nothing happened.

THE NEXT DAY
, Zelia doesn't show up for school. At lunchtime I wait by Max's locker and persuade her to go for a walk with me. It's still clear and sunny outside, and we walk through the little square, browse in the small gallery on the corner, sit and talk on the steps in front of the theater.

“Did you bring lunch?” Max asks.

I shake my head.

“Come on, I'll buy you something.” Max pulls me into the pizza place and orders a slice for herself. “What do you want?”

“Coffee?”

“You have to eat something. Come on, Sophie. I'm buying.”

Max is watching me intently.

I scan the menu. “Umm, okay. Vegetarian pizza then. Thanks.”

We sit at a small round table in the back corner. After the bright sunlight, the café is dark and quiet.

“Have you heard from Zelia yet?” Max asks.

“No, and she's not at school today.”

Max gives me a look. “Yeah, well, I figured you wouldn't be hanging out with me if she was.”

I lean across the table. “I'm sorry. It's not that I'd rather be with her, you know. Honestly. I wish...I don't know...it's just that I was friends with her first.”

Max takes a bite of pizza. She chews slowly and swallows before answering. “I know. It's okay. I didn't say that to make you feel bad. My feelings aren't hurt or anything. It's just a fact.”

I shake my head. “Max...”

She shushes me. “It's okay. I just...you're pretty easy to talk to, you know? I like hanging out with you. But I don't want to cause problems for you. Or Zelia.”

I stare at my pizza. “Max?”

“Yeah.”

“Zelia...she was shoplifting. And I think she might have cut herself, one time. On purpose.”

Max puts her elbows on the table and balances her chin on her folded hands. “I guess that's what you meant when you said she was doing things that weren't good for her.”

I pick a mushroom off my pizza and chew it slowly. “Other stuff too. I'm...I'm worried about her.”

Max is watching me silently.

“What?” I say.

Frowning, she unfolds her hands, pulls the straw out of her glass of water and sticks one end in her mouth.

“What?” I ask again.

“Promise you won't get mad.”

“It's okay,” I say. “I know you don't like Zelia much.”

Max holds the straw like it's a cigarette, between two fingers. “It's not about Zelia exactly.”

I stare at her. “Tell me, already.”

She points at my cold congealing pizza with her straw. “You. Never eating. Thinking you're fat. How is that any different from what Zelia is doing?”

I stare at her. I want to argue, to tell her it's not the same, but her eyes hold mine, dark and steady, and the words dissolve like salt in my mouth.

Max gives a little shrug and sticks her straw back in her glass. “Just think about it, okay?”

There is a roaring in my ears and a lump in my throat, and I'm scared I might start to cry. I nod. “Okay,” I whisper.

THAT NIGHT, I
undress in front of the bathroom mirror. I look at myself, trying to be objective. My ribs are sharply outlined, my chest bony, my shoulders knobby, my arms and legs long and angular.
See,
I tell an imaginary Max,
I know I'm skinny. I can see I'm too skinny. I'm not crazy. I just don't want to get fat, that's all.

Mom knocks on the door. “Sophie? Are you almost done in there? I wouldn't mind taking a quick bath before I go to bed.”

I pull an oversize T-shirt over my head, brush my teeth and retreat to my bedroom. I drop to my knees and jerk open the stiff bottom drawer of my dresser. All the stuff Zelia gave me—the stuff she stole—is crammed in here. I scoop it out—makeup, jewelry, sunglasses—and wonder if I should get rid of it.

Underneath it all lies a red photo album. I run my hand over the cheap plastic cover and try to remember when I last looked at these pictures. Not since we left Georgetown. A life­time ago.

I flip open the front cover. There I am with Dragonfly, the tall gray mare I used to ride. I turn the pages, slowly at first and then faster. Staring. I'm not seeing what I expected to see. These pictures don't fit with my memories.

I stop and scrutinize my grade nine self. I am standing on a bale of hay, reaching up to braid Dragonfly's forelock. My hair is longer and lighter, and my body looks different—stronger, more solid—but I look fine. I am smiling into the camera and I'm not fat. I'm not fat at all. I trace the tiny outline of my face with my fingertip, confused.

My mom took this picture. I can remember it clearly. It was early one spring morning, not long before we moved, and I was getting ready for a schooling show. We got to the barn at 6:00
AM
and my mother, who doesn't even like horses, helped me wash Dragonfly, braid her mane and groom her to perfection. It was my first show, and Dragonfly and I placed first in an equitation class and second over fences. It was a good day— a great day.

I look at the picture again, trying to clear the fog in my head. The old Sophie looks a little different, I guess. Younger. And I definitely have a better haircut now. But there is nothing in this photograph to explain the things that happened, noth­ing to explain the shoves in the hall, the names I was called. Nothing to explain two years of no friends. Nothing to explain my believing that I was fat.

There is a knock at the door. I quickly shove all Zelia's stolen stuff back into the drawer and drop the photo album on top. “Come in.”

Mom opens the door a few inches and pokes her head in.

“Hi, Sophie,” she says. “I'm just off to bed.”

“Okay. 'Night.”

She stands there for a moment, looking at me. “Sophie...”

“What?”

She opens her mouth. Then she shuts it again and smiles tentatively. “Nothing. Just good night, that's all.”

I think about that photograph, about her helping me with Dragonfly that morning. I wish Mom would come into my room, sit on my bed and talk to me like she used to talk to the old Sophie Keller. I want to ask her why those girls used to call me fat and why I believed them. I want to know why they wrote those words on my locker. I want everything to feel okay between us again.

I look at her, standing there in her nightdress, a towel tied around her wet hair. I don't know why I never told her about the bullying. I just never told anyone.

“Good night,” I say.

I AM ASLEEP
when the phone rings twice and stops. The digital alarm clock beside my bed says 11:52. I wonder who would call this late. My first thought is of Gran: Is she okay? What if she has had a heart attack or something? I slip out of bed and tiptoe down the hall toward my mother's bedroom. Her door is open a crack and the soft light of her reading lamp spills out into the dark hallway. I stand close and strain to hear what she is saying.

“Is she okay?”

It is Gran, I think. I push my hands against my chest. My heart is fluttering oddly. For the first time, I really grasp that Gran is Mom's mother, just like Mom is my own, and even
though I don't like Gran very much, I want desperately for her to be okay.

“So they're keeping her in the hospital?” my mother asks. Her voice is surprisingly calm. All I can think is that I've never really talked to Gran. We haven't even gotten to know each other. She never did tell my mother about that day she caught Zelia and me panhandling, and again I wonder why not.

“Okay,” my mother says. A pause. “Okay, I will.” Another long pause.

I feel frantic with anxiety. I dig my bare toes into the carpet and wonder whether I should go in.

“Not tonight,” she is saying. “It's almost midnight. I'm not waking her up.”

I slip through the door. “Mom,” I whisper. “It's okay, I'm up.”

Mom is sitting up in bed, covers pulled over her bent knees. She looks up, startled, and motions to me to be quiet.

“You're not on your own there, are you?” she asks. “Mmm. Okay, good.” She pauses, listening. “I know. But she'll be taken good care of. She's safe there. I'll talk to Sophie and call you in the morning.”

I can't follow this; I wonder who she is talking to. Gran has lived alone since Granddad died.

“Mmm-hmm,” my mother is saying. “I know. I know. She's going to be okay.” She leans back on the pillows. “There's nothing more you can do tonight. Just hang in there. Mmm-hmm...I know, but try not to worry too much. Mmm-hmm... Okay. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

Mom puts the phone down. The soft click sounds loud in the quiet of the dim bedroom. She pats the bed beside her. “Come sit here, honey.”

I cross the room and sit on the edge of her bed. “Is it Gran?” I ask. My breath catches oddly in my throat.

My mother shakes her head. She reaches out and puts her arm around my shoulders. “It's Zelia.”

“Zelia?”

“She...oh, honey. Apparently she tried to kill herself.”

“Tried to...”

Mom pulls me closer to her, and I don't resist.

“That was Lee on the phone,” she says. She pulls her comforter over my legs. “She was pretty upset, so I'm not totally clear on what happened, but it sounds like Zelia tried to cut her wrists.”

“Is she...will she be okay?”

Mom nods. “She's had stitches, and they're keeping her at the hospital for now. She's still in emergency, but they'll admit her for a psych assessment. You can go in and see her tomorrow.”

I stare at her, feeling slow and stupid. The words are barely making sense to me. I keep thinking about the cut I saw on her arm. Had she been thinking about doing this even back then?

Mom lifts my hair off my face and tucks it behind my ears. “Sophie, honey...has Zelia ever talked about suicide?”

“No,” I say. I think of that little rhyme she recited, sitting on the sidewalk outside the bookstore:
Guns aren't legal
...I can't remember how it went, but I remember what she said afterward.
There's supposed to be some line in there about razors too.
And, clear as if it were yesterday, I can see her tossing her hair back and saying,
If I decided to do it, I'd just do it.

I look at my mother, and then look away, down at the comforter over our knees. “Not seriously,” I say. “I was kind of worried about her, but then we had that fight...I never thought she would do something like this.” The comforter blurs into swirls of burgundy. I blink and let fat tears drop onto the bed.