Unwelcome Bodies (22 page)

* * * *

September 7, 2018

Kay’s stopped eating with us. When I asked her why, she said we all seemed strained around her, and she didn’t want to bring us down. “It’s like you’re trying really hard not to talk about what I did,” she said.

“Well, you keep telling me that you don’t want to talk about it. So I told everyone else not to bring it up either.”

“But it’s all you want to talk about, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. How could it not be?”

She got quiet for a moment after I said that, and traced a nail along a ridge of scar tissue on the back of her hand. “I thought about going to college online,” she said. “Or maybe waiting until people had forgotten who I was—”

“And postpone Wellesley?” I joked.

She laughed a little at that. “Exactly.” Her expression darkened. “I don’t want to bring everyone down.”

“You’re not bringing us down,” I said. “You’re just…well, you’re keeping yourself from us.”

In a small voice, she said, “There’s not much to me anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m not a person. I’m just a symbol. A mascot. If I were still in the hospital, I’d be a campaign photo-op.”

“What you did was—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It doesn’t matter if you want to talk about it. Everyone else is talking about it. That makes it important.”

She looked back down at her hands and sighed.

“Maybe…” I took a deep breath, hoping that the time was finally right for what I was about to propose. “Maybe you should just sit down with all of us. You know, so we can get it out in the open and over with.”

Kay stared out the window at the lamp-lit dumpster and said, “Just our table. No one else. Tomorrow, before lunch.”

The little fan girl inside me jumped up and squealed. The rest of me felt vaguely ashamed of the fan girl. But only vaguely.

Ugh, I think the fan girl is winning.

* * * *

September 8, 2018

Someone blabbed about our little get-together. There were a couple dozen people waiting outside our room at 11:00. I was furious! Kay wanted to call the talk off, but I told her I was willing to be the angry black bitch who turned people away. (The stereotype ought to be good for something, after all.) And I was. I also turned on the radio and put it in front of the door so that anyone trying to record the conversation through the door would get a block of oldies instead (Hannah Montana—ugh).

I have to say, it was a real honor to be Kay’s protector, if only for this.

Poor Kay, she was too upset to let us ask questions. “I’m just going to talk,” she said. “I know what you want to ask anyway. It’s always the same.”

She reached up, pulled off her wig, and said, “No, I don’t have any hair.” She set the wig down next to her on the bed and added, “My eyebrows and eyelashes are implants. No, I don’t want to get implanted fingernails, but yes, the hospital offered them. Yes, Green Day paid for my artificial skin. Yes, I did get to meet them. Yes, I’ll get you tickets to their next concert.”

Deena opened her mouth, but Kay held her hand up and said, “No.”

I glared at Deena. We all did.

Kay took a deep breath. “Yes, it hurt worse than anything you can imagine. Yes, the smell of grilling meat still makes me want to throw up. Yes, the Kennedy family pulled the strings to get me access to the replacement eye program at Mass General. Yes, I was still conscious when the fire was put out. Yes, I’m glad I didn’t die. Yes, it was a mistake to set myself on fire in the first place.”

“But Kay—” Celeste clapped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from saying anymore.

“It was a stupid mistake,” Kay said. “It didn’t change anything. I was just a stupid drama queen of a fifteen-year-old has-been pop star who wanted attention so badly that I was willing to die for it. Or at least to pretend I was. If I’d really wanted to die, I wouldn’t have set fire to myself in the chem lab.”

She put her wig in her lap and twisted it in her scarred fingers. “The worst part was all the copycats that came after me, that said that I’d inspired them. That’s not what I’d wanted to… I… I don’t want to talk any more.”

I ushered everyone out, and when I turned back, Kay was straightening her wig on her head, staring at herself in the mirror with a far-off expression.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” I said.

“The Buddhist monks we were copying knew what they were doing,” Kay said. “The rest of us were too young to know any better.”

“That’s not true. You showed the world—”

“They already knew. They’d known for a long time.”

“But they weren’t doing anything about it. And you—”

Kay wrapped her arms around herself and said, “Please don’t shout.”

I slapped my hands over my mouth, horrified. “I didn’t mean to.”

She tucked her knees up, her fake eyes staring at the floor. “You probably weren’t. I’ve just…when I lost my skin, I lost my armor. This fake skin I’m wrapped up in, it’s so porous. It lets everything through.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Would you…” She looked back up at me. “Would you mind leaving me alone for a little while?”

Leaving was the hardest thing I could do. I wanted to hold her, to explain to her how important she was, how much she meant to my generation, to the world. But being a good roommate right now meant doing what she wanted. So I went to Deena’s room, where we spent the next hour talking about how horrible it was that Kay regretted her heroic action. What a terrible thing it must be not to see how important you are.

I wish there were some way to get her to understand.

* * * *

September 9, 2018

I am FURIOUS! Someone from the lunch bunch went to the press, and now the whole world knows that Kay thinks that what she did was a mistake. No one will fess up to doing it, either. There were only seven people in the room besides Kay and me. It had to have been one of them.

Me, I think it was Celeste. When I confronted her, she said someone had probably slipped a mike into the room before the talk. She’s the only one of the seven who tried to make an excuse. It has to be her. Screw “innocent until proven guilty.” I don’t have time for friends I can’t trust.

The whole campus is steaming mad, and the administration is launching an investigation, although there’s really nothing they can do if they find the culprit. There’s nothing in the honor code that says you can’t talk to the press about a fellow student.

The media’s going nuts with this. On the one side are the people who feel personally slighted that Kay’s abandoned the cause she helped popularize. And then there’s the people who still don’t think that climate change is a big deal and are claiming that Kay’s on their side now.

I understand the people who feel slighted. I just feel so sick when I think that she might not care anymore. I’m trying not to let it show, but it’s not easy. My inner fan girl feels like she’s been stabbed in the gut.

And Kay…

She’s been holed up in our room all day. I’ve been bringing her meals from the cafeteria, but she’s barely touching them. “Maybe I shouldn’t have started college so soon,” she told me.

“It’ll blow over.”

“Not soon enough.”

Maybe this will spur her to get involved again, just so people can’t harbor the wrong ideas about where she stands. I think I’ll suggest that to her.

Just as soon as she stops looking like someone stomped on her puppy.

I wish she’d let me hug her.

* * * *

September 20, 2018

The chemistry labs are killing me. I’d forgotten how much math was involved. But I’m not letting Kay know that. I want her to see how happy I am to be working to do my part to save the planet. If I take enough chemistry and then get the right graduate degree, I’ll be able to help build the next generation of fuel cells, or maybe help formulate a truly effective, clean-burning, ecologically-sound biofuel. We’re even working with biofuels in the lab. It’s great. I just wish I understood what we were doing with them.

Meanwhile, another Florida key just went underwater and no one seems to care.

This’ll probably be easier if I drop Spanish.
¡Adios
,
Cien años de soledad!
I can always read you later.

Things have gotten a little easier for Kay. They never did figure out who went to the press (I’m still convinced it was Celeste, and the rest of the group is too—she’s no longer welcome at our table), but the news has finally moved on to other topics. I think some drunken starlet just had her third DUI or something. It’s so nice to see important news in the headlines again. Urgh.

Kay still isn’t eating in the cafeteria. She fills her tray with whatever’s quickest to grab and takes it up to our room. I eat with her at breakfast, sometimes at lunch, but she insists that I not spend all of my meals with her. “Just because I’m a hermit, that doesn’t mean you should be too.”

I’ve asked her if she’s bothered that so many people seem to have the wrong impression of her.

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“The media’s always gotten me wrong. Back in HippieChix, they made me out to be some stupid tweeny party girl, which was total crap. I worked my ass off for that band
and
kept my grades up to honor roll levels. Who had time for parties? And then later when I…” She trailed off, staring down at her hands.

“Made your statement?” I offered.

“Hurt myself,” she said, very deliberately. “I know I wrote up a manifesto explaining why I was doing it, but I can’t believe they took my excuse at face value.”

“Kay, what are you saying?”

“That no fifteen-year-old sets herself on fire unless she secretly wants to die.”

I reached out and grabbed her hands—lightly, so as not to hurt her—and said, “It doesn’t matter if your motives weren’t pure. All that matters is what you inspired.”

She gently pulled her hands away and clasped them to her belly. “I inspired copycats. They all died.”

“You inspired—”

“People died. Because of me. I… I need to go to the library.” She grabbed her book bag and dashed out the door.

I wish she could see that seven dead teenagers are a small price to pay for the future of our planet.

But I suppose I can see how that would be tough to stomach.

* * * *

September 21, 2018

I emailed my mother yesterday to tell her about my decision to major in chemistry. This morning, she emailed back to tell me how concerned she was about it. “I don’t understand. You hated chemistry in high school. And you loved Spanish. I understand your desire to change the world, but you don’t have to take the entire weight of it onto your shoulders. Kay’s a bad influence on you. You worshipped her band when you were twelve, and you worshiped her suicide attempt when you were fifteen. How could anyone in your situation be rational around their idol? You should seriously think about getting another roommate. I’d hate to see this ruin your college career. You didn’t work so hard to get into Wellesley just to take courses that you hate.”

I don’t even know where to start, but one thing’s for sure. I won’t be confiding in my mother again.

And for the record, I didn’t hate chemistry. It wasn’t my favorite subject, but there’s a big difference between “not favorite” and “hated.” Math, now that I hated.

I’m going to check to make sure Mom can’t ask the administration to give me a new roommate, just to be safe.

* * * *

September 22, 2018

A group of us went to a frat party at MIT last night so we could meet guys, which is something that’s pretty impossible to do at Wellesley, unless you want to date a professor or a cafeteria worker (I’m not interested in either). I asked Kay if she wanted to go with us, but I knew her answer before she even said it. I tried to joke it off by saying, “Well, if you’re more interested in meeting a nice girl, you’re better off spending the night here.”

“Oh, no. That’s not it.”

Well, at least that kills all of those HippieChix lesbian rumors.

The party was okay. I had to explain to three clueless white boys that no, I didn’t talk this way because I was adopted by a white family, and then I had to explain to a clueless black boy that no, I didn’t talk this way because I was ashamed of my race. “We
all
talk this way in Maine!”

I don’t think he believed me.

And then Deena told someone that we were friends with Kay Myerson, and suddenly we were the center of attention.

“She’s your roommate?”

“Did she really say that she was sorry she’d done it?”

“What’s her major?”

“Can you set me up with her? I totally want to do her.”

“What’s her problem? Is global warming beneath her now or something?”

“Do her grafts smell?”

“Oh, man, if I could interview her for the school paper, that would be sweet. Can you give her my email?”

“I can’t believe she’s such a bitch.”

The clueless black boy smiled at me and said, “You poor thing. Come on, let’s get out of here.” And I let him take me to Toscanini’s for ice cream.

What can I say? He had a really lovely smile. His name’s Rashid, and we’ve got a date next Saturday. But I can’t help but think that he’s only dating me to get close to Kay.

* * * *

September 23, 2018

Somehow, Kay forgot that today was the big campus barbecue. As soon as the scent of grilling meat drifted up the hill from Severance Green and through our open window, she ran to the bathroom and started retching.

I closed the windows, borrowed someone’s fan, and did my best to get the smell out before Kay came back, but the damage had been done. She curled up in the center of her bed and started sobbing. I tried to comfort her, but she begged me to just leave her alone.

I hate that she won’t let me in.

So I went to Brinda and Elizabeth’s room next door and did a core dump all over them. They both think that I need to give Kay a good talking to once she’s calmed down. “She shouldn’t push you away like she does,” Brinda said. “That’s not what roommates do. Roommates share, and I don’t mean clothes.”