Save Yourself (5 page)

Verna wanted to disappear. She wanted to fold herself into her frizzy brown hair, vanish into the folds of her too-long skirt. At the end of class she stuffed her crippled textbook into her new purple backpack, the one she’d picked because the color was cheerful, almost sassy, just as Calleigh brushed by in a wave of shining red hair and sugary perfume. “Hey, Venereal, Barney called. He wants his bag back,” she said, and the two boys, right behind her, laughed as if they would split in two.

At her locker, Verna emptied the bag, stuffed it inside, and carried her books for the rest of the afternoon.

Verna had not expected her first day of high school to be fun, but she was surprised by how dreadful it actually was. In homeroom, the pretty young Spanish teacher, Ms. Kiser, read Verna’s name off the attendance list with a face that looked like she had a mouthful of soap. The math teacher’s expression would have melted sand into
glass, and the gym teacher actually rolled her eyes. The other girls in the locker room had giggled. Including Calleigh, the gorgeous redhead, who, once the teacher left them to change, had said, “So Freakshow Elshere has a little sister. You’d think their parents would have stopped fucking when they saw how the first one came out.”

Freakshow Elshere. She was surprised by that, too. People here hated her sister.

Her sister: beautiful, blond, beguiling Layla, who climbed trees fastest and highest, who testified most passionately at Worship Group, whose very name had brought forth enthusiastic smiles from church camp counselors and homeschool outing organizers for as long as Verna could remember. She had trailed her sister through life like a moth after a torch; unbeautiful, unblond, and unbeguiling, shy and mousy and utterly content to bask in her sister’s reflected light. Public school had been an experiment. Be in the world but not of the world, her father told them, and for a few months it had seemed that the experiment was working. Then one day, Layla had come home from school and reported that her biology teacher, one Karen Hensley, had taught them an unsanctioned sex-ed lesson, complete with condom demonstrations and lists of birth-control clinics. Her parents had complained to the school board, and the battle had quickly grown ugly. Local news crews started showing up at board meetings. The newspaper published editorials and letters to the editor. Dad had even done a twenty-second interview with a cable news network.

In the end, Karen Hensley retired. A week later, Layla came home from school with her lovely hair chopped to her chin and dyed jet-black. Her wardrobe quickly followed suit. Soon she was haunting the dinner table like a snarling, sarcastic ghost. The rapid transformation left Mother and Dad hurt and angry—they called it concern, but it felt like hurt and anger to Verna—and the members of her father’s home church baffled. Everyone blamed Layla’s new attitude on the corruption of the secular world. But now it seemed that even the secular world disapproved of her, and Verna didn’t know what to think.

Her last class of the day was Art. She’d been hoping for the refuge of a solitary desk where she could sit by herself and recover from Biology, but this room was full of tables, too. Most of them had already been staked out by obvious groups, but one, off to the side, was empty except for a boy in a gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his face. Sitting alone with a boy was risky, but there wasn’t anywhere else. She took the stool farthest away from him. He didn’t look up.

The studio smelled like the art room at camp: chalk and mud and wood shavings, not like school at all. Mr. Chionchio grinned and winked, saying, “Uh-oh, another Elshere. We’ll have to keep an eye on you.” But it was okay, somehow, it was friendly. Their first assignment was their own self-portraits, drawn in crayon, because—he said—this was one assignment he didn’t want them to take too seriously. As they worked, the teacher wandered around the room, glancing over shoulders and making comments.

When he came to her, he said, “Are those wings?” He was the silly-tie type of teacher; today’s was covered in white cartoon sheep, one black sheep among them next to an arrow and the word
me
printed in a childish chalk-scrawl.

“You said to have fun with it.” Verna could barely hear herself.

“Wings are fun.” He sounded amiable. “Hey, I’ve got your sister first period. Try to get her here on time once in a while, will you?”

Verna blushed and said she’d try. After he walked away, the boy in the sweatshirt raised his head. “Are you into fantasy?”

Verna shrunk away from him. “What?”

He pointed at the paper in front of her. His sandy bangs fell to the tip of his nose. Underneath them was a pair of glasses that couldn’t possibly be clean, not with his hair hanging down against them all day. “The wings. Are they, like, elf wings, or fairy wings, or what?”

Verna opened her mouth and closed it again. If she said yes, would she be Venereal Elfshere for the rest of the year? “Just wings,” she said. “Regular wings.”

Then, quickly, she picked up a crayon and bent over her drawing.
After a moment the boy muttered, “Whatever.” They didn’t talk again for the rest of the period.

After the final bell rang, Verna found Layla standing by her new car with a tall, lanky boy, a stranger. Their mouths were wide-open and pressed together, their eyes closed, and their expressions strangely solemn, as if the act were more communion than congress. (Verna’s grandmother was Catholic, she knew what Communion looked like.) The boy’s mouth moved on Layla’s as if he was eating her. He wore a long black coat despite the pleasant weather, and his hair was the same glossy raven-black as Layla’s. Layla’s olive-drab army surplus bag, hanging over her shoulder, was the most vivid color between them.

Verna did not want to stand around the parking lot watching Layla kiss a strange boy. She wanted to go home. “Layla,” she said.

The couple stopped kissing but didn’t move apart. The face Layla turned toward her sister, far from being embarrassed, was cool and annoyed. Which didn’t mean anything. Layla always looked like that. “Christ, Verna. Where’s your backpack?” Then the older girl shook her head. “You know what? I don’t even want to know. This is Justinian. We’re giving him a ride.” She hit the button on her remote and her car chirped.

Verna managed a thin smile, but this boy, this Justinian, only looked at her as though she were a music box or a snow globe, some small, curious thing with no actual use. He had blue eyes, just like the boy from Bio. She opened the back door, pushed aside an assortment of clothing and empty paper coffee cups, and climbed in. The car, with its tinted windows, was a black bubble in the sunny parking lot, and Verna felt safer the moment the door closed behind her.

Fifteen hours. Fifteen hours until she would have to come back.

“So,” Justinian said, as Layla buckled her seat belt. He sat in the front seat like the car belonged to him, and he was letting Layla drive
it because it pleased him to do so. With a long, thin hand—a dragon ring with red-jeweled eyes wrapped around his first finger—he tilted the rearview mirror so that his eyes met Verna’s. “You’re the child of God.”

His nose was long and hawkish. “We’re all the children of God,” Verna said.

Justinian raised an eyebrow. “Then God owes my mother a lot of back child support.”

His voice wasn’t exactly unkind. Layla snorted a laugh, tipped the mirror back, and hit the ignition button. The car filled with droning music. It was too loud to talk, for which Verna was grateful.

Layla drove them to a shabby, undistinguished corner in downtown Ratchetsburg. Then she pulled over. “You’ll come out later,” Justinian said to her. It should have been a question but it wasn’t, quite.

“If I can,” Layla said.

He leaned across and kissed her, then got out. Verna got out, too, to move to the front seat, and found him holding the door for her. “See you, Verna,” he said, and gave her a somehow-familiar smile. As Layla drove away, Verna could see him in the side mirror, walking purposefully in the opposite direction, his long coat billowing in the breeze. He’d lit a cigarette and smoke swirled around him like a halo.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Verna asked.

Layla didn’t take her eyes from the road. “
Boyfriend
is a word that the sheep use to make their lives feel less pointless.”

Verna didn’t know what to say to that. “Oh,” she finally said, and didn’t ask anything more.

Later, both girls were in the garage, putting together information packets for their father’s ministry. Verna was, anyway. Around and around the long table she went, picking up one piece of paper from every stack: rising incidences of venereal disease, explicit sexuality in
prime-time television, pregnancy rates, AIDS-related deaths. Each packet was tucked into its own folder, and each folder was printed with a glossy photograph of a smiling teenager under a blue sky, her sun-kissed face looking as if the photographer had caught her in between tennis sets. Her corn-silk hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail and a gold cross gleamed above her collar. Layla, two years ago.

Now-Layla was stretched out on the scratchy brown carpet among the fallen staples and lost paper clips, her combat boots propped up on a chair so that her skirt fell almost to her crotch. She wasn’t helping Verna collate. She was only in the garage at all because of the contract she’d signed with Dad, which was supposed to bring a little peace back to the family but which mostly resulted in moments like this, when Layla was somewhere she didn’t want to be, tasked with something she refused to do. According to the contract, Layla had to spend one night a week working for the ministry, attend all family meals, not leave the house on school nights, be in bed by ten thirty on weeknights and midnight on weekends, and drive Verna to and from school each day. In exchange for all of this, Layla had received a new car.

“Don’t get us wrong,” Dad had warned her. “All that we’re asking of you is that you fulfill your obligations to this family. The car isn’t a reward for that. The car is a sign of our faith in you and our recognition of how difficult it’s going to be for you to start making different life choices.” Dad was very into life choices, and contracts, and God. Because Proverbs said a virtuous woman was worth more than rubies, he called his ministry Price Above Rubies. Pledge your virginity to God, he told teenagers—primarily girls—and in return you’ll receive His love, and also a sterling silver ring set with a lab-created ruby. The rings were mass-produced in Mexico and came sealed in tiny plastic bags. (“Just like coke,” Layla liked to say, although Verna didn’t think she actually knew that firsthand.) The rings were cheap. Verna’s made her finger itch. Mother said the itching was a reminder of her pledge; Layla said she was probably just allergic to the metal.
Privately, Verna wondered if it wasn’t a sign that God found the whole thing vaguely ridiculous, because either He guided you or He didn’t and if He did then how could you really do anything wrong? When nobody was around, she slipped the ring off and kept it in her pocket. Until she felt guilty, wondered if maybe God at least appreciated the gesture, and put it back on.

Layla, of course, never wore hers at all anymore.

Dad had made the garage into an office by installing the brown carpet and snap-together modular walls. With the huge garage doors still intact, the space heater in the corner wasn’t nearly enough in the winter. “God’s love will keep us warm,” Mother always said, but she’d also knitted a box of scarves and fingerless gloves to wear during the winter. It was September now but Layla was wearing a pair of cherry-red gloves with yellow stripes, pulling at the stitches, trying to make a hole. As Verna dropped yet another completed folder with Layla’s face on it into the box, the door opened and their father’s assistant, Toby, walked in. He wore combat boots like Layla, but his jeans were clean and pressed and so was the long-sleeved shirt he wore. Verna could see the edges of his tattoos peeking around his cuffs and collar. He looked down at Layla and her skirt gathered mere millimeters away from indecency, and his face grew stern with disapproval. “Layla, you’re being immodest. Sit up.”

Layla smiled a slow, small smile, and Verna realized why Justinian’s smile had seemed so familiar: there it was in front of her, spreading across her sister’s face like a cold sore she’d caught from him. “C-c-caught you looking,” she said, uncrossing and recrossing her ankles. The movement was measured and deliberate.

Toby didn’t rise to the bait. He was used to Layla. “Do you need help, Verna?” The
V
sound was dogged by the faintest hint of the stutter the older girl had mocked. “I have some time.”

Verna nodded. The entire office smelled like Toby’s herbal cologne and spearmint nicotine gum. “So, how was your first day of school?” he said.

Verna picked up a flier.
Venereal Disease in Teenaged Girls: It’s Scarier Than You Think!
She looked away from the word
Venereal
. “Good.”

He asked about her teachers, then said he’d had Ms. Kiser ten years before, and she was nice. “Incorrect,” Layla said from the floor. “Kiser is not nice. Kiser is a dumb bitch who kisses up to the jocks and cheerleaders and completely ignores everyone else.”

“Don’t call her that,” he said. “Say she’s got a strong personality, or that she’s a challenging person.”

“Wouldn’t change the fact that she’s a bitch.”

“It might change the way you look at her, which might change the way she looks at you.”

Layla made a face. “Gee, Toby. You’re so wise. How did you get so wise? Was it the meth? I bet it was the meth.” Toby said nothing, just dropped another folder into the box. Layla turned back to Verna. “Now, Chionchio, I like. Guarda, of course, will hate you on principle. I thought he and Pastor Jeff were going to throw down at that last board meeting. It’s actually sort of ironic, because Guarda’s supermega-Catholic. Goes to St. Joe’s three times a week, gives shit up for Lent, everything. Sex ed was Hensley’s thing. Guarda wouldn’t touch it. But he’s the head of the department. So.”

They have the right to know how their own bodies work
, one of the letters to the editor had said.
All they need to know is that God wants them to wait
, Dad had written back. His response was still pinned to the refrigerator downstairs by a papier-mâché butterfly magnet that Verna had made when she was seven.