Underneath Everything (17 page)

Garwood took some land from here, and Cranford from there. Same with Plainfield, Clark, Scotch Plains, and Fanwood. Westfield was pushed and plucked and starved and prodded until1903, when it finally pushed back. The town charter was signed, and the borders have barely shifted since. If I could just find that missing sheet, I’d have a near-perfect version of the earliest town outline.

My computer is taking forever to reboot, so I head down the hall to the bathroom, shove the shower handle all the way to the left, and step in, hoping to rinse away the restlessness—the itch under my skin that came alive on the cliff last night.

The first splash of scalding water hurts, but after a minute my muscles relax and my shoulders slump. I slide soap over my arms and across my collarbone, down my stomach, over the rise and dip of my ribs, and around my hips—the places where Hudson touched me. His skin was callused and tough, rougher than I’d expected.

I turn around. The burning water beats my back, plasters my hair along my cheeks. My skin is red from it. I work the shampoo into my hair, then extend my neck and tip my head into the stream. I feel the push of Hudson’s lips, the press of his jeans against me. I wrap my hair in my hands and ring it out. I hear his voice in my head—it was rough too, out of breath—see his lips still glistening with our kiss when he said,

“We should stop.”

I bet he never stopped with Jolene. I bet he couldn’t resist her.

I turn back around, let the hot water hit my face and reach for the tender spot on my hip where Jolene’s earring pierced me. The cut is small but deep. The scab on top is ridged and thick. Hard. Like Hudson’s hands, his voice. Like him. The way I want to be. Not soft and pulpy like cheap paper or open like the inside of a tree—rings exposed for everyone to see—but closed, hard, covered. Like bark.

If Jolene’s done with me, then I’ll be done with her too.

Just when I’m starting to feel weak from the heat, there’s a hard knock on the door. I shut off the water.

“Maitreya, it’s getting late,” my mom calls. How long have I been in here?

“I know what time it is!” I shout. “I’ll be down in five.”

After I get dressed I run down the stairs, swing myself around the bottom of the banister, pull my jacket from its hanger, and grab a bagel from the kitchen.

“Is that Jake’s shirt?” my mom asks, trailing me in her cotton pajamas and fuzzy slippers.

“Yeah,” I say, shoving my arms into my jacket and shouldering my bag. I push through the door into a sharp morning. “So what?”

“Won’t you be cold?” she calls. She’s holding the door open with one arm and wrapping the other around her waist. The collar of her pajama shirt flaps in the wind.

“I’m fine,” I shout over my shoulder as I throw my bag into the car.

“And you’ll be home for dinner?” she asks.

“That’s the deal, right?” I ask, sliding behind the wheel. It’s my day to pick up Kris.

“Right,” she says.

“Then I’ll see you for dinner.” I turn the key in the ignition.

She steps back and lets the storm door swing shut in front of her, but she doesn’t leave. She wraps her arms across her chest and watches me, squinting, like it’s hard to see, even though the glass is perfectly clean.

I wave. Then twist around to back out of the driveway.

It’s not until I catch myself in the rearview mirror that I realize I never checked my reflection this morning. My hair falls in wisps around my face. My cheeks burn red from the cold. My mouth seems wider, my eyes darker. And the cut collar of Jake’s shirt slants across my collarbone, hinting at the bare shoulder under my jacket.

I look like someone else.

She smiles.

I follow Kris into the journalism room before first period, shrug off my jacket, and throw it on the heater by the window. If she notices Jake’s shirt or the way it hangs off my shoulder, she doesn’t mention it.

She’s too busy analyzing the whiteboard in the corner of the room, making sure this week’s issue has enough article assignments. Our high school has one of the few weekly, independent papers in the nation, and Kris takes it seriously. Not just because it’s an approved venue for criticizing Westfield, but also because she thinks it’s her ticket out of here. Editor-in-chief of a nationally award-winning newspaper isn’t the worst thing for your college application. Plus, being a staff member has its perks: passes to leave campus during school hours; keys to the room, so you can come and go as you please.

The week after I walked out of Jolene’s room with rope burns on my wrists, Kris made me a set. I’d told Jolene to leave me alone. She’d done one better. She stopped talking to me, and so did every other girl in our class except for Kris. It was like Jolene had cast a spell over them, or rearranged the facts until I was a stranger. So instead of growing gills at sleepovers, I built up my map collection and hung out with my mom on the weekends. At school I was stone—no stares, shouts, or shoves could penetrate me. At night I was wet cement, pouring myself out drip by drip to reset and harden again by morning.

That was the year we studied symbiosis in biology. We learned about the shrimp and the goby fish.

How each has its strengths and weaknesses. The shrimp digs killer burrows but is basically blind; the gobies have excellent eyesight but nowhere to hide. So when they get together, the shrimp provides the protection and the gobies act as lookout. Without each other, they can’t survive. That hit home. But it was the gutless marine worm that really got to me—the one that needs bacteria to substitute for its missing stomach. Because that was Jolene—the bacteria that crept under my skin and found a place to live. She was my guts, and without her I felt like I couldn’t eat, breathe, or sleep. Like I might not make it. Like I was dying a little, from the inside, just from being me again, in my small box of a world. But if that were true, wouldn’t Jolene be dying a little too?

I watched her in the hall one afternoon, laughing with Bella. She seemed fine without me.

So a week later, after lots of convincing from Kris, I started hanging out with the journalism kids. I didn’t know most of them at the beginning, but the longer I hung out with them, the less they seemed like the staff of the paper and the more they seemed like potential friends. I even started doing some work with them. Turned out my lifelong map habit was good for something—during those endless hours spent staring at lines and fonts and colors, I’d developed an eye for design. I suggested a few changes to the front page one night, and pretty soon I was laying out the whole paper. It was only four pages—six for a special edition—but it was mine. Eventually Kris gave me the honorary title of Design Editor, even though it didn’t mean anything—it wasn’t on the masthead. I wasn’t even taking journalism. Yet. But I was starting to feel better. Like less of a gutless worm and more of a human.

I pass through the round tables, find a seat at one of the large monitors, wake up the computer, and open the file for the current issue. So far the only finished articles are Kris’s op-ed on the New Jersey school rankings system and Jim’s cover story on insufficient funding for the independent study program.

Usually I’d reset the text boxes, thin the lines above and below the pull quotes, make sure that the fonts match and the page pops, but today I can’t seem to take it all in. For some reason, I can’t immediately see what’s off about it, what needs to be changed in order to make it flow and fall into alignment. It just looks empty: blank columns gaping like wide eyes and open mouths, waiting to see, hoping to speak.

“By the way,” Kris says. I swivel in my chair and find the back of her fuzzy, chunky cardigan. Her red ringlets are held up by two pencils. Her blue, dry-erase marker squeaks against the whiteboard as she writes. “You’re giving Bella a lift home.”

“I am?”

“Yup. She doesn’t want to ride with Jolene after what happened at the party.” Kris caps her pen and grabs her backpack.

“Jolene’s not here.”

“She wasn’t here yesterday,” Kris corrects. “She’s back today. According to Bella.”

My eyes dart to the door, but all I see is the bland, tan tile of the hallway and the banner that shouts Be Your Best Selves!

“So you invited her to come with us?” I get up from the computer and swipe my jacket off the heater.

It’s hot where it covered the vent and stings my arm for a second, before the heat releases. “You sure that won’t ruin your untouchable status as a Nobody?”

The bell rings. Kris holds the door open for me. “Bella told off Jolene at her own party. The social hostesses of the senior class aren’t speaking. I’m pretty sure nobody’s status is untouchable at this point.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 17

HAVE YOU SEEN
Jolene?

The whispers begin by second period. Behind cupped hands and locker doors, her name snakes its way from mouths to ears.

She looks pale. Sick. She has the flu? No, mono. No, Lyme disease. No, she tried to kill herself.

Pills. She can barely move. She’s back in school, but only for a few periods. She doesn’t have the
strength for a full day. Trust me. We’re friends. I sat with her once at lunch. She liked my bangs. And
I’m telling you. She’s not okay. Yeah, she was beautiful. But now. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you too. I saw
her near the wall, crawling into class on all fours. It’s so, so sad. How does that happen? I mean, for
so long she was everything and then—well, Bella was the one with all the friends, I guess. Like I said,
I sat with her once. I could do it again. But if she’s going to hit on me, forget it. I heard what happened
at that party. No wonder Hudson dumped her for that new girl. Wait, you know her? Wait,
I
know her?

Tell me!

Kris was right. Now that Bella and Jolene aren’t speaking, everyone else is.

By the end of the day Jolene is in the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the scrape of metal against linoleum, the scratch of chalk across boards, and the hissing, bitter wind that follows me out the door and back in again. And even though I held her hair back and tucked her in after Bella’s party, I start to wonder: What really happened that night? What did it do to her? Where has she been? Where is she now

when Hudson presses me against the wall before physics, tips up my chin, and makes my lips wet with his—

when I give Bella a ride home from school. When she sits with me and Kris in the cafeteria—

when I leave lunch early—

when I spend afternoons in Hudson’s room, familiar now, with the feel of his hands on my hips, the sight of my shirt on his floor, the temperature of his sheets (how they’re cool when I get there and warm when I leave)—

when I abandon all other routes to trace the space between his freckles and the straight stretch of his collarbone—

when I ditch my phone in a pine-scented drawer, where I can’t check it for texts—

when I grow new skin where she’s been—

when I harden?

Has she seen me?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 18

I’M IN FIRST-PERIOD Spanish a week later, rearranging the desks for
¡Charlemos, Chicos!
, aka Talk Tuesday!—the day we play out these little skits. According to Señora, it’s the only way we can truly
experience español
. I lean over and push a metal desk across the room with both hands. It resists with groans and squeaks, but I keep shoving it. My shirt falls off my shoulder. Hudson’s shirt, actually. I grabbed it from his floor one afternoon. He told me to keep it. I didn’t ask before I cut off the collar. I blow my hair out of my eyes and stand up, leaving my shirt where it is.

Señora’s long skirt blooms behind her as she walks with purposeful strides around the room, pointing to a corner there, straightening a desk here, examining the room with puckered lips, squinted eyes, her hands on her hips. She’s always extra-energetic on Talk Tuesdays. It’s almost like she’s as bored with conjugating verbs as we are.

“¡Vamos chicos!”
Señora says, surveying the room with a satisfied grin.
“¡Hablemos!”

So far this year we’ve been to the market, made breakfast, introduced ourselves at a party, dumped our boyfriends and girlfriends, and ordered food in a restaurant.

Today we’re doing directions.

I spend half the period telling two girls in matching sweater vests to make a left and go straight to get to the bus station, then we switch places. The script says to introduce myself, explain I’m lost, and ask for help finding the nearest transportation.

I’m about to tell them I don’t know where I am when I feel it—a slight shift in the air. I stop midsentence. My eyes find the door. I see a flash of dark hair, chestnut on top, auburn underneath.

“¿Necesitas ayuda?”
asks one of the sweater vests.
Do you need help?
I turn back to them. They look sideways at each other, then toward me. I adjust my shirt and smooth my hair.

I thought I heard the sharp crack of Jolene’s laugh in the hall this morning, too, but when I turned, it wasn’t her.

For the past week Jolene has been as slippery and scattered as the whispers. She came back to school, but it’s like she’s not here. She doesn’t eat lunch in the cafeteria anymore or linger by her locker. She’s not on my long or short routes to psychology. And she’s obviously not talking to Bella outside history, since she and Bella aren’t talking at all.