Skinny (24 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

At lunch, I approached Lewis, who was standing by the salad bar making a cat’s cradle out of the shoelace that held his whistle. I told him I needed the rest of the day off.

“But after rest hour, we’re going to play dodgeball.”

“I need to go to bed.”

“But you love dodgeball.”

“Since when do I love dodgeball?”

“Who’s going to cover your campers?”

“I don’t care,” I said.

“Excusez-moi?”
He let the cradle collapse and caught the whistle in his hand.

“I’m sick,” I said, heading for the door. “I’ve never felt worse in my life.”

Outside, the air was hot and moist. For the first time all summer, I hadn’t bothered with sunglasses. I wanted the sun to burn my irises. I wanted to feel the weight of the heat like bags of sand behind my eyeballs.

Alex was sitting on the steps, his knees tucked, his arms wrapped around his pasty shins. I knew he was supposed to be inside eating lunch, but I couldn’t imagine caring less about anything than I did about whether Alex ate lunch.

“If you’re out here to make me go inside,” he said, “you won’t succeed.” Tears streamed from behind his tinted glasses.

I’d been planning to head to the dorm, to lie on my miserable mattress and stare at my ceiling, but how could I ignore Alex? Moreover, how could I walk to the dorm, open the door to the stairwell where I’d found Mikey, climb the stairs to my room where I hardly lived, and let the window fan blow August at me and the humidity crawl on my skin?

Because then what? What would I do after that?

I remembered once, as a child, thinking hard about my breathing until I practically hyperventilated. Life felt like that now; a thing that had been involuntary had all at once become unmanageable. How would I swallow the next minute, and the one after that, and all the minutes that would comprise the rest of my life from this moment forward?

“I’m not out here to make anyone do anything,” I told Alex. I touched the top of his head, wondering about the people who loved him. His parents. Perhaps a sibling or two. As he got older, less awkward, would his circle of love expand? Would he ever be a person who was surrounded and bolstered by love? And if he did become that person, if he became an adult whose friends affectionately called him a nerd, who adored him
because
of his terrible glasses and his inability to dance, would he ever be able to shake the fear that no one could be trusted?

I thought of Mikey speeding north in his parents’ car, his window down, his elbow resting in that open space. I tried to conjure his expression. And I wondered not,
How will I ever earn his forgiveness?
but,
How can I trick him into thinking that I didn’t do anything wrong?

I sat a couple of steps below Alex. “What is it?” I asked. “Why are you crying?”

“Because everyone sucks.” Alex wiped his nose with the back of his wrist and dropped his forehead onto his knees. His hair was greasy, stuck to the back of his neck. Some orangey wax was worming its way out of the hole of his ear. I wondered if he had a mother who would dampen a washcloth and wipe it away. “Eden’s a jerk,” he said. “She makes me pretend she’s not my girlfriend because she’s embarrassed of me. And then today before we got on the bus, she said, ‘I can’t talk to you at all anymore. Pretend for the rest of the summer that you don’t know me.’ She said, ‘Don’t even say hi to me ever again.’ She’s a turncoat!”

“How do you know that word?”

“From history class.” Alex sniffled.

“Good word.”

I thought of Eden’s claim that Sheena had harmed her. I thought of Sheena’s grand exit, and of the tear Eden had shed that sealed her popularity. I thought of Eden lying on my bed while I sat on the floor, and of the way she was now barely willing to glance at me. I wondered if she and Whitney and Miss knew about Sheena’s e-mail to Mikey. I thought the answer to that question was probably yes.

I also remembered that Eden was only sixteen. And besides, I had taken her father from her. And planted myself in her path. And chosen to cheat on my boyfriend. Who was I to have opinions on loyalty, to pass judgment on Eden’s allegiances?

“Do you know what this means?” Alex said. “It means that I’m more embarrassing than Pudge and Brendan. Those guys are way fatter than me, but Miss isn’t embarrassed of Brendan, and Pudge and Whitney make out all over the place. I’m worse than Pudge and Brendan!” Alex lay back on the steps, his limbs splayed. “I could just lie here forever,” he said. “I weigh a million pounds. No one would be able to lift me.”

I watched Alex’s chest rise and lower with his breath. Then I lay back beside him and closed my eyes. We were layers of sweat glands and hair follicles and fat cells, two bodies laden with million-pound losses.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Back in my dorm room, I slept like someone from a Disney movie. I slept for many years while the kingdom crumbled around me. I woke up every few centuries and there was sun on the window. Or rain. There were voices in the hall or no voices. And always, my mouth was dry, as if I’d chewed up the summer. But every time, I was too tired, too confused, to figure out how to get water.

It had been so long since I’d slept like I meant it.

“Wake up, babe.”

I thought it was Mikey. I opened my eyes. The windows were black with night, but someone had flipped the light switch, and the naked bulb on the ceiling glared. I covered my face with my palms.

“Angeline.”

I spread my fingers and saw Bennett through the cracks, standing on my threshold. When he saw me look at him, he slipped into my room and closed the door behind him.

“You’re not going to believe what’s going on.”

“What?” My voice was full of sawdust.

“Lewis got arrested.”

I sat up.

“Everyone’s in the canteen.”

“What?”

“No one knows yet. Except Nurse.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s almost Lights Out. We can’t tell the kids tonight. It would be chaos.”

“What are they doing in the canteen?”

“Watching
Bugsy Malone
.”

I rubbed my fists into my eyes. “I’m so confused.”

“I’m confused, too.” Bennett sat on the bed beside me. “The cops came. They handcuffed him, and then I saw them push his head down when he was getting into the car. Like in the movies.”

“So . . .”

“So I’m in charge.” He smacked his thighs. “I guess. This is the most doggone thing. Are you feeling better?” He took my hand.

I looked at him as my eyes adjusted. He looked old. There were lines all over his face. His forehead. Beneath his eyes. I thought—Why did I think this? What did it matter?—
I will never again be loved by a man who knew me at twenty-two.

“I feel okay.”

“Think you have a bug or something?”

I wondered if I should tell him about Mikey. But I was so much better at not telling.

“I think I’m just thirsty.”

“Well, then let’s get you some water.” Bennett smoothed the hair back from my face. “I’ll bring you some, and then I gotta run. You’ll meet me in the canteen?” He kissed my forehead. It felt like nothing. It felt like kisses I received from my parents’ friends, who told me they’d known me when I was
this big
, whose names I could never remember.

While we were watching the end of
Bugsy Malone
, Bennett’s cell phone rang. I watched him pull it out of his pocket, and then disappear from the canteen for the rest of the evening. When the movie ended, I herded my campers back to the dorm.

As we walked, Eden asked, “Can Miss and Whitney sleep in my room tonight?”

I looked at the three of them. I almost grabbed Miss by her gorgeous blond hair and yanked her to the ground.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?” they all said together.

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“If you ask me another question, we’re going to have a problem,” I said.

“This is so
unfair
,” Miss whined.

“Miss,” I said. “Life is—” I stopped myself before I could finish. “Tomorrow night,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow you can all have a sleepover.”

Half an hour later, Bennett was back in my room. It didn’t matter anymore. Who would see us? Who cared if anyone saw us? He sat on the foot of my bed, his cell phone in his hand.

“Was that Lewis who called you?”

Bennett looked at his cell phone, and then shoved it into his pocket. “Nope. Some policeman. Real nice guy. Melrose PD, I guess. He sounded like he felt bad. Anyway, I guess Sheena called the cops and said that there were rumors all summer that Lewis was touching the kids.”

“What?”

“I mean, messing with them. Like—”

“No. Right. I understand what ‘touching the kids’ means. I’m just . . .”

“She said she heard all kinds of stories all summer. She told him the campers always told her everything.”

“Well, they did.”

“She told the cops everything she’d heard. Or supposedly heard. He wouldn’t give me details. I told him she’s a disgruntled employee. That we fired her for taking the kids to McDonald’s. Which made the cop about wet himself.”

“Why?”

Bennett laughed. “It didn’t sound strange to me either when I said it. We’ve been here too long. Our reality’s all out of whack. It’s actually funny, but I didn’t even realize it.”

“I don’t think it’s funny.”

“Anyway, the cop said she might be telling tall tales, but they had to check it out. Lewis is going to have to answer some questions. And then they’ll decide whether he’s a pervert, I guess. I think tomorrow’s going to get crazy. I think kids are going to get questioned. That kind of thing. I have a feeling tomorrow will be the last day of camp. Once the kids find out what’s going on, they’ll call home. And then . . .” He opened his palms on his lap.

“Don’t say that.”

“Which part?”

“That tomorrow will be the last day of camp. We still have nine days.”

“I doubt that at this point.”

“Nine days. The banquet. We’ll have to have the banquet. It’s all Lewis talks about. How we won’t eat all day, and then we’ll have eighteen hundred calories for dinner.”

“Apparently, Sheena also ran her mouth about what happened with Spider.”

“She’s the one who
did
that to Spider. Eden saw her switch up Spider’s food.”

“And about how the kids swim in the pool every day with no lifeguard. Some other stuff, too. It’s not good. We’re probably going to get shut down.”

“Where will everyone go?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if camp closes.”

Bennett laughed. “Home.”

“But . . .”

“That’s not the problem. Everyone’s got a home. Lewis is the one who’s got a big problem on his hands.”

I looked at my window and chewed my thumbnail.

“I doubt I’ll be getting any sleep,” Bennett said. “Nurse is waiting for me in her office. I have to fill her in. And you’d best stay here tonight with your kids.”

“Right. And then tomorrow . . .”

“Let’s just take things minute by minute.”

I closed my eyes.

“Everything will be okay, Angeline.”

I didn’t answer.

“Won’t you go home? To your boyfriend?”

I opened my eyes and shook my head.

Bennett took a long look at me, and then reached out and touched my bald spot. I flinched. “You never were going to, were you?”

I looked at the dark window again, at our reflections on it. I thought of my vacuum cleaner, my computer printer, my winter coat—all the bits of my life that I’d stuffed into my father’s car. The past year, when I’d fantasized about breaking away from Mikey, about leaving behind the life that reminded me of all that I’d tried to prove, I’d never imagined cheating and then returning. I’d always imagined starting over. Or, not just starting over, but becoming some other person. Thin and lithe with wind blowing my hair, laughing on a beach, running, holding my sarong like a flag in the breeze. Like a woman in a feminine hygiene commercial.

“You’re right,” I told Bennett. “I guess I never was.”

I thought of the last winter in New York, Mikey crawling into bed late with cold skin. I’d pretended that I couldn’t feel him. But the night before I left for camp, we’d been briefly happy again, eating dinner at a restaurant with an outdoor garden, getting into bed early and talking for hours, my head on his hairy stomach. I drifted to sleep that night, and then woke abruptly, saw the moon out the window, and felt Mikey tracing my hand with his finger, as if to memorize, before I left, the part of me that touched him.

I thought now of a friend who’d had to put her old, sick dog to sleep. When the vet administered the injection, the dog sprang to life, hopped off the table, and bounded around the room like a puppy. She’d teared up telling me about it. “I thought maybe he was going to be healthy again. I thought maybe he could be saved.”

Bennett opened my door. “I have to go.”

I stared at him. The muscles in my face wouldn’t move. My voice wouldn’t come. I wanted to beg him not to leave me. But what would my request have meant? Don’t leave this room? Don’t leave my life? Marry me? Never die?

Bennett closed the door and came back to me. He knelt on the floor and took my hands. “You’re a crazy woman,” he said. He kissed each of my knuckles. “But you’re pretty cute.”

Then he got to his feet and left.