Authors: Carolee Dean
Elijah tries to get up, but the Hangman kicks him in the ribs, causing him to double over.
ELIJAH
(to me)
I don’t have long. You have to make a run for it.
I try to break away, but Rotceo’s grip is too strong.
HANGMAN
Ally’s decided to stay.
ALLY
No, I changed my mind.
HANGMAN
It’s a little late for that, but Elijah can always join you.
Elijah tries to get up, but the Hangman kicks him down again.
ELIJAH
Ally, this is the last time. I can’t come back here again. You have to make a run for it.
HANGMAN
(to Elijah)
But why don’t you want to come back? You know you want her. Look at her. Isn’t she beautiful? Besides, everybody else has had her. Why shouldn’t you have her too?
Elijah looks at me, and then looks away.
HANGMAN
She might not be so beautiful if she ends up like Smith and Wesson. And what if she doesn’t make it? Are you going to spend the rest of your life playing board games with Oscar? What kind of life is that? You’d be better off dead. Even your parents think so. They wouldn’t miss you. Frankie was the only one they ever cared about.
ELIJAH
(covering his ears)
Shut up!
HANGMAN
Oh, you worshipped him. Didn’t you? But he didn’t even tell you he was checking out.
Elijah groans in pain.
ELIJAH
Ally! Hurry.
There is so much sadness and desperation on Elijah’s face that I can’t bear it. I grab Rotceo by the shoulders and knee him in the groin. He falters and I run past him, barreling into the Hangman with everything I’ve got. Elijah stumbles to the door and opens it, and we both run out.
down the G Hall
and through the front door,
going outside
to the second-floor balcony.
Elijah collapses on the
stairs leading down
to the quad
and starts to cry.
I sit beside him
and put my arm around him,
at least I try. He feels good and
solid and real, but there’s
something between his skin
and mine. It takes me a minute
to remember I’m not really
here. “Don’t think about what he
said. It’s all lies,” I tell him.
“Oh, Ally, haven’t you figured it out?
It’s all true. That’s how he gets to you.
You want to know the real
truth about me?” Elijah asks.
“My parents can’t stand me.
As for my brother, he didn’t trust me enough
to talk to me about how shook up he was
after Pam died. He gave me his CD
collection. It was his last good-bye
and I didn’t even know it.
Now I can’t play a single song to even
remember him by, because every time I do,
I think I should have known what he was planning.
I should have done something.”
He looks so lost that it scares me.
I think about how the Hangman called me
a whore and how maybe I am.
And maybe Elijah is right.
Nothing hurts quite like the truth.
On the other hand,
maybe I’m just a girl who liked a guy
and got screwed.
“You told me the pain wouldn’t last, Elijah.”
“I know.”
He tries to take my hand in his,
but his fingers slip through mine,
and Oh, God!
How I wish I could
feel him.
“Come on,” he says, standing up.
“There’s some more truth
I want you to see,
and you haven’t got
a lot of time.”
We walk in late and everyone
is working on the free write that will
consume the first ten minutes of class.
It’s a different prompt every afternoon and I
wonder what today’s subject is, because
every single person in the class
is writing furiously.
Elijah takes his seat.
Ms. Lane opens a notebook
and starts writing too.
I peek over her shoulder
to see if she’s secretly
working on a trashy romance
novel she’s planning to submit to
Harlequin, but what I see
is much more surprising.
She’s writing a letter to me.
Dear Ally, please hang in there.
Come back to us. We want to hear
the rest of your story.
My breath catches in my throat,
or what used to be my throat.
Funny how I keep thinking in
body metaphors even when I
don’t have a body.
I look around the room and realize
that they’re all writing letters to me,
and my whole imaginary body begins to quiver.
I walk among my classmates and look
over their shoulders to read what they’re writing.
Dear Ally, We miss you. Please come back.
Hang in there, Ally. This too shall pass.
You can fight this, Ally, and you can win.
Ten percent of the people at this school make
all the trouble and the other ninety percent of
us don’t give a rat’s ass what they think.
—from Corwin, the girl with the emo haircut
who draws manga figures in her writing journal.
Ally, homegirl,
You can beat this rap.
—from Dwayne, who looks very stoned
and seems to think I’m someplace
besides the hospital.
Dwayne walks up to Ms. Lane and points at something
hanging on the wall behind her desk, and I see
my poem. “We should have known,” he tells her.
He takes my poem down from the wall
and starts to read it out loud.
Once upon a Friday morning, almost all the class was snoring.
Our teacher left a vocab worksheet for a sub who was a bore.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
followed by a man’s voice rapping, rapping lines I’d heard before.
“I’m Skandalouz,” the voice it muttered, rapping at the classroom door.
“Open up, or I’ll kick in this door.”
Ah, distinctly, I remember, it was a bleak day in September.
Dude told the sub he came to send her to a class on the second floor.
She grabbed her books and packed her bag, running past the man in black.
And then I saw it was 2Pac, standing at the classroom door.
“All Eyez on me,” yelled the man, standing on the cold tile floor.
“I’m your new sub, Mr. Shakur.
“I’m here to wake you from your dreaming, give your simple lives some meaning.”
He smiled at us, his white teeth gleaming, then he pointed at the door.
“If you’re thinking about jetting, don’t want to get caught here abetting
someone who’ll have you forgetting what the h—this class is for.
If you get out now, I won’t detain you, block you, trap you, or restrain your
exit.” No one touched the door.
“Ah, I see you’ve all decided to listen to your uninvited
guest get down. I must confide that I’ve got a special treat in store.
Forgive me if my words are cryptic. Guess I’m just 2Pacalyptic.
Get off your butts, we’re gonna kick it, like you’ve never kicked before.”
And soon he had the whole class rapping and break-dancing on the floor.
Dancing on the classroom floor.
He rolled his sleeves and there I saw it, a tattoo of a black bird on his
arm, and then I heard the haunted whisper of the raven’s words:
“Keep ya heads up, no regrets, don’t know if heaven’s got a ghetto,
but only God can judge what debt you’ll have to pay forevermore.
He don’t care if you scream and shout, ’cause big G knows there’s no way out.
Once you’ve crossed the line—you’re down, and you won’t be getting up no more.
Hope you’re open to suggestion, ’cause there only is one question
left. I’m pretty sure you’ve guessed it. Heard it many times before.”
Ah, distinctly, I remember, it was a bleak day in September,
when I heard the raven whisper,
“What are you willing 2 die 4?”
When Dwayne says
that last line, he just stops—
dead. Then all my classmates
look at each other
in guilt.
It’s just a poem, guys, don’t
you remember the day I
stood up in front of the class
to recite it and you all
cheered for me?
It was in September. I’d just
hooked up with Davis and
my life was perfect.
I wasn’t thinking
about dying.
I wasn’t.
You’re wrong. Don’t look
at each other that way. Like
it should have been a sign.
I was happy then.
I was.
Okay, I admit I was a little
worried about having to keep
such a big secret.
I didn’t have
anybody to talk to, but
I wasn’t desperate.
I wasn’t.
I really wasn’t.
Was I?
I tell Elijah,
“I don’t like the way
they were all standing around
feeling sorry for me.”
“No, what you didn’t like was
that they know the truth.”
“Oh, and what is that?”
“That you’re broken.
That you have been for a long time.”
I feel indignation bubbling up inside of me.
“You’re a fine one to talk.
You’re a train wreck,”
I say, but then I feel bad,
because he’s risked everything
for me,
and I’ve done nothing
for him.
Maybe I am broken.
But if he’s insulted, he doesn’t show it.
He just shrugs.
“We’re all a little ruined, I guess.”
Perhaps he’s right.
“I just don’t want pity.”
“A lot of people care about you,
but they don’t care about you because
they think you’re some kind of superstar.
They care because they know deep
down inside, you’re as
lost and confused as they are.
The problem is, you don’t give a damn
what those people think.
You only care about the beautiful people.
Well, there they are.” He points to where the girls
from the dance team are standing.
“Go ahead and check them out,
your former so-called friends.
See what they’re saying now.”
stand together talking
in the middle of the quad.
Darla walks up to them and says,
“Have you guys voted on
Ally’s web poll?”
The other girls edge away from her.
“Are you serious?” says Lauren Payne.
“She’s in a coma. Don’t you think
you’ve done enough damage?”
“I’m just getting started,” Darla replies.
My blood, or what used to be my blood,
boils inside of me. Oh, how I wish I was
in my body right now, because I’d use
my fist to knock that smirk
right off her face.
“I want to kill her,” I tell Elijah when
I rejoin him by the gym.
“Good,” he replies. “It was a turning point
for me when I wrote letters to my brother,
telling him I thought he was
a selfish bastard. Sometimes I still cry
for him, but I’ve given up the need
to throw away my dreams and die for him.
What are you willing to die for, Ally?
Are you willing to die for her?”
He points to Darla
and I shake my head.
“Then get on with your life.”
“How?” I ask.
“You have to go back up there.”
He points to the FAB.
“You have to remember
why you wanted to die
and you have to feel what it was
you weren’t willing to feel before.”
I shake my head.
“What if I can’t?”
He looks at me
with his piercing blue eyes
and says,
“I know you can.”
Could I really
go up there again?
Could I face my pain,
then click my
heels like Dorothy,
say, “There’s no
place like home,”
and wake up
from this nightmare?
Could I
just slip back in
as quickly as I
slipped out?
What would it take?
Could I
close my eyes,
open them again, and find
myself back in the hospital room?
What if I never walk again
or talk again?
It would be a long road back.
So many things broken.
Elijah would help me.
And Oscar. And Nana.
And Dad.
Maybe Elijah is right.
Maybe just one or two
people are enough