The Weight of Zero (13 page)

In bed that night, after the parade of my troops, I open up the D-Day List on my phone and add a third entry.

1. L.V.

2. First Kiss, Michael Oct. 11

3. New Haven Museum Kristal Oct. 19

And something weird happens. Looking at this list, actually staring at the two newest entries, calms me. Maybe even more than my shoe box. Because it's proof, tangible proof that I might be able to experience some really good things before Zero moves up the Catherine coastline. After the troops are secured under my bed, I stand in the middle of my room and try a couple of fouetté pirouettes just for the hell of it. Just to see. And surprisingly, they're not too shabby.

As soon as Michael and I walk into history class on Wednesday, I can feel it. Everything looks normal, but there's a tension, an undercurrent of something in the air. Michael, oblivious to it, gives me a quick, “See you after,” and heads to his seat on the other side of the room. Something's off and it's not just the blessed absence of Louis Farricelli's Incredible Hulk body looming behind my desk for the second day in a row. There's a tittering that increases as I approach my seat. A folded sheet of paper is waiting for me. “Catherine” is written on it in block letters.

I knew it. It's from those theater fuckheads again. Instinctively, my eyes fly to Riley. She's got her white-blond head on her desk, shoulders spasming with laughter. I shift my gaze to Olivia. Her cheeks are flushed and her head is turned to hiss something to Riley. Next to Riley, some skinny guy with dyed black hair openly smirks at me. I spin to face front and slide down fast in my chair, trying to hide the burn in my checks. Mr. Oleck stands at his podium with another student, momentarily lost in the cyberworld of his iPad.

I unfold the paper. It's a photocopy of a DVD cover,
Girl, Interrupted,
an old movie about psycho girls in a mental hospital. The hum of white noise rises in my ears and the surface temperature of my skin rises to scorching. Who are Riley and Olivia now? Doesn't our history count for any decency? Why couldn't they just scrape me off their lives like I was a piece of shit on their shoes instead of inflicting this constant torture? Maybe our history does play a part, because they can't quite let me go. Like I turned bipolar and depressed on purpose. Like
I
rejected
them.

The paper wilts where my hot fingertips make contact. I want to crumble it into a ball and whip it right at Riley's face. I swallow compulsively to loosen the lump in my throat and slip the poisonous sheet into my binder.

Maybe I should bring this to St. Anne's today. Sandy would undoubtedly ask her typically dumb question, “How did this make you feel, Catherine?” And Tommy would get all riled up and curse a blue streak. Since the IOP started, I've passed Garrett a few times in the school hallway and he always acknowledges me with a polite “Hey, Catherine,” giving me an unexpected sense of solidarity. Maybe the Cranbury High contingent of St. Anne's—me and Garrett and John—could gang up against Olivia and Riley and the theater geeks. John could enlist his wrestling buddies, Garrett could get the stoners and, atop the roof of St. Anne's dirty white van, we could all do a sing-off or something to prove my worth. Just envisioning this twisted
Pitch Perfect
scene cools me down.

The classroom door swings open. It's Louis Farricelli, stiff and awkward with a thick white brace encasing his neck and one around his right knee. He moves slowly, crutches wedged firmly under his muscled arms. An aide, a woman in her forties, trails him like a serf, lugging his weighty backpack. The class is stunned into silence. Even the theater demons in the back are still. Cranbury High's Moses, perched to lead the Hornets to the promised land—a second consecutive state football championship—has fallen.

“Jesus, Farricelli, what happened to you?” is pitched from a boy behind me.

Another yells, “Tell me you're not out for the season? We need you, man!”

Instead of basking in the spotlight of their concern, Louis Farricelli ignores them. I don't turn around as he passes and apparently he's having trouble sitting down because the aide is saying in a tense whisper something like, “Put the crutches aside and I'll help you,” to which Louis growls a typically classy, “Back the fuck off. I got this.”

Mr. Oleck gives the aide a little shake of his head as she exits the classroom in a huff. Good for her for not putting up with Louis Farricelli's spew. In a low voice, Mr. Oleck asks Louis, “Want me to tell them?”

Louis grunts and Mr. Oleck interprets that as an affirmative response because he says, “People, Louis cracked a vertebra in his neck and tore his ACL. It happened during a workout. Freak accident kind of thing. He's gonna be out for the rest of the season.”

Immediately, the room resounds with the herd's horrified reactions.

“What the eff happened?”

“Can you even play anymore? What about your scholarship?”

“But it's your senior year!”

And the lone, reasonable: “You're so lucky you're not paralyzed.”

There's not a word from Louis until some guy spouts, “So that freshman, Gordon, he the new quarterback?”

Louis Farricelli responds in a tight voice, “I have no fucking clue, dude. This happened like two fucking days ago. Why don't you go ask him yourself?”

“All right, Louis,” Mr. Oleck says, displaying a newfound tolerance for Farricelli's favorite and maybe only adjective. “Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about your biography projects.”

My moronic classmates have a hard time refocusing after the earth-shattering news, their fingers alerting the rest of the Cranbury High community via text, Twitter, FB and a few covert photos of the injured hero on Snapchat. Michael and I make eye contact, and he subtly rolls his eyes. I feel the corners of my mouth lift.

After some repeated commands to focus and then threats to confiscate everyone's phones, Mr. Oleck finally gets the class to shut up. Before returning to the scintillating topic of the rise of the consumer pre–World War II, he rattles off another biography assignment. “I want a detailed outline on your soldier, with all the basic stats that we talked about before, like birthday, birth city, schooling, childhood, family, job and military service, including length of service, locations of service and specific rank. Was he a gunner aboard a B-17 or a paratrooper, a member of the infantry? Include any details regarding his death. And then I want a road map. Give me the next steps of your research: What do you need? Where is it? Stuff like that. The more detailed it is, the easier it's going to be to write this.”

“When's this due?” Sabita Gupta asks. In seventh grade, Sabita and I were elected co-captains of our Girl Scout Cadette troop. We got along great, but I was always too busy with Riley and Olivia to develop anything with Sabita outside Scout meetings. After a slew of rejections, she gave up on me. And she did just fine for herself as an honors student, gifted pianist and tennis player, with a wide circle of friends. Little did she know it was her lucky day when I blew her off.

Mr. Oleck answers her. “This is due on Monday, October twentieth.” The class groans and he adds, “Look, it's only Wednesday. For the rest of the week, I'm just assigning you reading. And not a lot of it, either. This is AP U.S. History, remember! You guys can handle it!”

After class, I rush for the door to avoid the hordes that instantly throng Louis Farricelli. The aide hasn't returned, and the boys jostle each other for the honor of schlepping the Great Horny One's backpack. Michael appears next to me in the hallway.

“The sky is falling,” he says softly, and we both smile. “Hey, about the assignment due on Monday, we're going to have to do it before Friday. I'm leaving for D.C. for a Model Congress conference this weekend. Can you stay after school today so we can work on it?”

A wave of kids crashes its way down the hall, causing Michael and me to split and then rejoin. My shoulder hits his arm and he presses it lightly into me, a secret hello. It seeps into me like psychic Neosporin on my latest cut.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “Work.”

“You work every day after school?” he asks, eyebrows raised in surprise and admiration.

I nod, my eyes shifting away. I hate lying to him now.

“Wow, that's really great. Racking up the bucks for college?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I lie again.

“Man, my folks would love if I did that,” he says, high-fiving some short kid who just greeted him with a high-pitched “Hey, Pit Man!” Michael focuses his brown eyes with their unfairly long lashes on me. “Well, I'll just bang out the assignment for us, then,” he says. “Sounds like you're really busy with work and all.” He gives me a goofy smile and from my vantage a couple of inches below him, I can see the cut on his chin from his shaving there.

“No, I'll do it,” I say. “You've done mostly everything so far.”

“Cath, that's okay,” he says as we approach our lockers. “I don't mind.”

“What? You don't trust me?” I say in a tone that sounds dangerously close to flirting.
WTF?
Who is this girl?

Michael flushes in response, a slow grin spreading across his face. “All right then, it's all yours. Just remember that you'll be held to the almost impossibly high PLA standard.”

“You mean MLA?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “The PLA—Pitoscia Language Association. Only a select few are invited to apply.”

“And how many members are there?”

“Just me and Tyler,” he says. “As I said, it's very select.”

“I'm honored,” I say.

And actually, I am.

It's 3:02 and Mom, as usual, is late. The buses are gone and only a few stragglers loiter near the front doors of Cranbury High. As I'm punching my passcode into my phone, I hear “Catherine! Cath!”

Michael jogs up to me waving some white papers in his hand. “Here!” He pushes the papers toward me. “I just printed out all of our work so far. You can use this for the biography.”

“Thank you.” I take them. “You could've just given them to me tomorrow. You didn't have to rush.”

Michael shakes his head. “I have a Model Congress meeting, maybe during Oleck's class. And then we leave for D.C. first thing on Friday. I didn't want to forget.”

With one hand, I unzip my backpack and retrieve my history binder. As I open it, the fucking DVD recommendation from Olivia and Riley floats to the ground. The paper stays folded, but good gentleman that he is, Michael automatically bends to get it for me.

Dropping to my knees, I shout, “I got it!” as my phone and the stack of papers he just gave me fly out of my hand. I snatch the paper with its ugly block-letter “Catherine” and jam it in my backpack as the Accord screeches to a stop at the curb.

With her usual impeccable timing, my warden arrives. “Everything okay?” Mom shouts to us from the open passenger window.

“Fine!” I yell to Mom, grabbing the papers and popping to my feet. “I'll see you tomorrow,” I say to Michael, barely looking back at him as I dive into the Accord for the trek to St. Anne's.

Kristal is waiting for me outside the front door, even though it's 3:15, armed with two copies of the exhibit flyer from the New Haven Museum. “That's Kristal,” I tell Mom as she pulls the Accord into the parking spot directly in front of Kristal.

As if our fight over Kristal and the museum never happened, Mom puts down her window. “Hi, Kristal!” she yells as I cringe. “I'm Jody, Catherine's mom. Nice to meet you!”

Jesus.

Kristal walks over, says hi to Mom and gives her a flyer and a brilliant smile.

Inside, Sandy's scheduled a therapy dog to visit our happy group today, and after completing our DBT mood rating forms, the rest of the time is spent lounging on the floor, playing with a white fluffy schnoodle named Lucky Boy. When Sandy declares today's session “open discussion”—anyone can talk about anything they want—I'm tempted for a nanosecond to bring up the hate note from Olivia and Riley. But then Lucky Boy drops to his belly in front of me and rolls onto his back, his legs sticking up in the air.

His trainer, Marcy, explains, “Catherine, he's asking you for a belly scratch.”

I comply, and Lil' Tommy immediately rushes next to me and assumes Lucky Boy's pose on the floor, flat on his back with his stumpy legs and red, chapped hands cycling in the air. He even play-pants, “Pet me too, Cath!” The room pops with a laughter that carries away the rest of the note's sting.