Someone I Wanted to Be (18 page)

In chemistry, I was so tired that my eyes wouldn’t focus. The cabinets and tables and chairs and people blurred into a bad fluorescent-lit dream. Kristy stared at me from the back row, and Carl Lancaster swiveled on his stool and pretended not to look at me. I couldn’t cope with either of them. I pretended Carl Lancaster was not there and Kristy had never been born. Mrs. McCleary was giving a lecture on oxidation numbers. “The last quiz showed me that you guys really do not get this!” she said.

I stuck a magazine inside the chemistry book and read.

“Leah . . .”

“Leave me alone, Carl. I cannot deal with anything today.”
You don’t exist. I don’t exist. Kurt King doesn’t exist. I will never be a doctor.

We had a new instructional unit in language arts. In the next two weeks, each of us would have to present a piece of original writing to an authentic and intended audience, and then be judged as to whether our writing had the effect we’d intended it to have.

“In other words, you have to write a commentary on our society and make a presentation to our class,” said Mr. Calvino. “You can write about anything you want as long as it’s not racist, violent, threatening, homophobic, obscene, or bigoted.”

Everyone groaned. “That’s not fair!” someone said.

“Write about something you care about! Write about something you feel strongly about!” Mr. Calvino paced back and forth in front of his desk and waved his hairy hands around. “There are so many fantastic, amazing things to write about. Obscenity and violence aren’t actually very interesting.” He stopped walking and looked us. He really, really looked at us.

Dan Manke farted, his on-demand specialty, and said, “Bulllllsheeeeeet.”

LaTeisha whipped around in her desk. “Please, Dan! That is so disgusting.”

Mr. Calvino gazed sadly at Dan Manke. His shoulders slumped as if he’d lost all his wind. He picked up a Diet Coke can and shook it.

He’d lost weight since he started at West. He was picking up weird mannerisms. When he graded our five-paragraph essays, he held his fingers against his mouth as if to keep from screaming, and his head ticked like a woodpecker’s.

The bell rang. Mr. Calvino stood near the door and watched our faces as we crowded out. He caught me by the shoulder. “Stop by after school. I’d like to talk to you, Leah.”

After Mr. Calvino’s class was fourth-period lunch.

I turned away from my locker. Kristy stared at me with her glassy blue eyes. Corinne stood behind her. They both smiled. Kristy’s earlobes sparkled in the fluorescent lights — she was wearing the diamond studs she’d gotten for her thirteenth birthday.

I did not allow any expression to form on my face. I waited silently, prepared for an insult, possibly a physical attack. I protected my chest with my books.

Kristy and Corinne looked at each other, then turned back to me. “Hey,” they said in unison.

“What do you want?”

“What do we want?” Kristy raised one of her white eyebrows. “Come on, Leah, let’s let it go. I can’t even remember why we’re not talking.”

I allowed my mouth to fall open and stared at this girl with white curls sprouting out of her little skull. She squinted back at me. She was there, behind the blue, hiding from me.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. But it was too dangerous to get into again. Kristy had the ace in the hole — her mom was dying.

She stretched her arms over her head and scrunched up her face. “Come on, Leah!” She swung her arms down and opened those eyes again. “Let it go! Come have lunch with us. We’re going down to the park Saturday night. . . .”

“I probably can’t go. I’m grounded.” Anita and I had planned to eat lunch together.

“You’re grounded? How come?” said Kristy. We began to walk down the hall. It was disgustingly comfortable to fall back in step slightly behind Kristy and Corinne, sort of like lighting up a smoke after you’d quit for a week. Something massive pounded in the back of my head. Every wall we passed was decorated with a Coke poster or banner, but I had no money for a Coke. “God, I’m thirsty.”

Kristy stopped walking, grabbed my arm, and held me. “Why. Are. You. Grounded?”

“Uh . . . the other night I was out late and got busted. I’m dying of thirst.” We began walking again. The water fountain was covered with a black garbage bag and a hand-printed sign:
DO NOT USE
.

“What the hell were you doing out late?”

“Sometimes I go for walks at night.” I was so tired. I just wanted to topple over and disappear.

“How weird. OK.”

Kelsey Parker and her friends approached, heading straight toward us. An army of five, the girls wore tiny crosses on gold necklaces, string friendship bracelets, fleece jackets unzipped to the same point on their chests. All five girls stared at their phones.

Suddenly, Kelsey stopped and grabbed Corinne’s arm. “Corinne, I need to talk for a sec. Meet you at our table,” she said to her friends, who’d stopped in a pack and swiveled their heads.

Kelsey pulled Corinne over by the lockers. Kristy and I trailed behind.

“Corinne, did you hear about the game yesterday? It was horrible.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Kelsey.”

“Hey, Kelsey.” Kristy stood at Kelsey’s elbow. She was practically trembling.

Kelsey squinched up her face like she had a bad headache. “Can I just talk to Corinne for a second, Kristy? We had a really horrible, shitty game yesterday. There’s something else that’s totally stressing me out.”

Corinne wore her zoned-out look of concern. “What’s wrong, Kelsey?”

“I heard”— Kelsey lowered her voice —“that Dean and LaTeisha sat together on the band field trip yesterday and were talking the entire time. I’m like, what the fuck? I heard LaTeisha and Ray Ramirez are breaking up ’cause he’s going to college. Dean hasn’t asked me to prom yet. Corinne, have you heard if Dean likes LaTeisha?”

Corinne started to yawn and quickly hid it behind her hand. “Um, no . . . not at all,” she said.

“There’s no way. No way, Kelsey!” Kristy was standing on tiptoes, jiggling up and down. “First of all, he acts like he really, really likes you. Plus, I heard LaTeisha and Ray aren’t breaking up. They’re going to try it long-distance. LaTeisha was probably trying to turn Dean into a Christian. Everyone thinks that Dean’s practically in love with you.”

Corinne started to hum and stared down the hallway. I leaned against her and put my head on her shoulder.

“Seriously, Kristy?” Kelsey finally looked at Kristy.

“Yeah, and, Kelsey” — Kristy cautiously took Kelsey’s arm — “I’m pretty sure you and Dean were voted cutest couple in the yearbook. First or second place, for sure.”

“That would be cool. We should go to Tea Garden sometime. . . .”

“I’d love to. Anytime. Text me,” said Kristy.

“Sure. I’ll text you. Gotta go.”

I stood by, taking up space but invisible, while Kelsey, Corinne, and Kristy all shoulder-hugged. Kelsey plunged into the crowd, her blond head bobbing as a path to the cafeteria opened up for her.

“Oh my God,” said Kristy. Her nose turned pink. “Cool. I always knew Kelsey and I would start hanging out.” She pulled out her phone and maniacally tapped with her thumbs. “Maybe Kelsey and I can go to Tea Garden today after her practice.”

The next water fountain was full of lumpy black liquid, as if a squid had been massacred in the bowl. The pounding in my head was getting louder and louder. I could hardly hear anything but the pounding. “I saw Mr. Corduroy. I talked to him at 7-Eleven.”

“What!” Kristy screeched. She stopped in the middle of the hallway and put her hands on her knees as if to keep herself from falling over. She flung her hair around like she was onstage at a club. The other kids shoved past us and stared at her just the way she wanted them to. Corinne crossed her arms, snapped her gum, and looked down the hall.

Kristy stood up, hooked my arm, and pulled me close to her bony little body. “How long did you talk to him?”

“I don’t know, half an hour, forty-five minutes. He’s old, Kristy. He’s weird.”

“You talked to him for forty-five minutes?” she said. Out of the smear of faces, one came into focus. Anita stood against a locker. She watched me walk down the hall with Kristy. I lifted my free hand and waved. She didn’t move.

“Kristy, you’re not listening. He’s old. He’s a creeper.”

We came to the cafeteria. Kristy said, “Corinne, go save us a table.” Corinne blew out a breath and walked toward the tables.

Kristy said to me, “I’m gonna just get a Coke. Hurry up, before the line gets long, and then I want to hear every word. Oh my God, there’s Kelsey.” Kelsey Parker looked quickly at Kristy, then scooted her chair around so her back was to us.

On the way back with my tray, I stopped at the Anita’s table. “Hey.”

Iris and Maria glared. Jamie Lopez sat reading at the end of the table. He was wearing a Bullet for My Valentine T-shirt and reading a book about Zen Buddhism. He used his thumb as a bookmark and calmly looked up at me. I sat down on the edge of a chair. “Anita, I really, really want to talk to you, but there’s something going on with Kristy. . . . I have a test after school, but maybe I’ll see you tomorrow morning on the bus?”

“Fabulous. See you later. Oh, and I couldn’t do anything today anyway.” She looked up from the drawing that she was shading and gave me a big fake smile. I stiffly got up and walked over to Kristy’s table. It felt like an ocean crossing.

Lunch was sloppy joes with canned green beans. The green beans were gray. I touched one with my fork, and bean mush squirted between the tines. Kristy pulled me down into a seat. “I want to know every detail. First off, what’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, shit,” she said, “what did you talk about?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What’s he like? Did he ask about me?”

“Yeah, he asked about you, Kristy. He’s a creeper.” I picked up the sandwich and took a bite. Red grease dripped down my hand.

Across the table, Corinne shook her head and mouthed, “He’s so gross.” She was watching a cooking show on Kristy’s phone.

Kristy yanked my arm while I tried to wipe off the grease with a shredding napkin. “He asked about me? Hey, tell him anything he wants to know. Dude is gorgeous.”

“You’re not listening to me. He’s old. He’s creepy. Kristy . . .”

She chewed on her lip, trying not to smile. She pulled out her strawberry lip gloss and smeared some on, then rubbed gloss off her thumb onto her jeans. She laughed into her Coke can, then chugged it.

The pounding drowned out all the voices and crashes in the cafeteria. I heard myself say from deep inside my hollow head. “Kristy, he’s been talking on the phone with a girl named Ashley. He thought he was talking to you. He thinks you like him.”

It sounded ridiculous. It didn’t even make sense. But it made sense to Kristy.

“He thinks I like him? Ha-ha-ha. Uh . . . that’s cool! God, I hate the name Ashley. I’m so glad my parents didn’t name me Ashley. That name sucks. Corinne, don’t you detest the name Ashley?” Kristy lunged across the table and grabbed Corinne’s arm. Corinne shook Kristy off and kept watching the show.

Kristy closed her eyes and ran her fingertips over her eyebrows. She patted her cheeks and squawked. “My mom is going to shit if I start dating a guy in his twenties!”

I was still extremely thirsty and tore open the carton of milk. I drank half of it before I remembered that Mrs. McCleary had said that milk glands were modified sweat glands, so milk was in a way a kind of cow sweat.

Kristy opened up her lunch bag and took out a hummus-spelt wrap that her dad had made. Her mom was too sick to make lunch anymore. I had pushed Mrs. Baker out of my mind because all the feelings I had for her took up too much space. Now she came back in, sat down in her pink fuzzy pajamas, and looked at me with her sad eyes.

Kristy put her earbuds in. She picked the carrots and cucumbers out of her hummus wrap and threw them on the table.

“Kristy!” I said. “Kristy, you’re not listening to me.”

She squinched her eyes shut. “Today is such a great day,” she said really loudly. “Corinne, give me my phone back! I want to see if Kelsey texted yet.”

“He’s got your picture,” I whispered. She threw a piece of cucumber at me and laughed.

In study hall, Carl and I sat on opposite sides of the library and didn’t look at each other. The entire hour I was aware of him — it felt like he was sitting right next to me — but when I turned around, he’d already left.

After school, Kristy wanted me to skip a makeup algebra test.

“No way.” I walked down the hallway and sat in Mr. Bauer’s empty classroom and attempted to do eighteen math problems while he graded papers and scratched his head and snorted and sneezed and looked at what was in his tissue. My head felt funny, like a balloon that was trying to float away. I laid my head on the test and slept for a couple of minutes until Mr. Bauer let out a huge snort and a
kak-kak-kak
like an angry goose. I sat up.

After the test, I remembered Mr. Calvino.

I walked down the dim, empty hall toward language arts. Notebook papers, wrappers, pen caps, and broken pencils lay scattered on the floor. Way down the hall, a custodian pushed a broom past the lockers.