I could feel my face turning red. He had no idea that he was part of the reason she had made me so mad. “Oh, she … you know, I …” I couldn’t figure out what to say. “Just stupid stuff, I guess.”
“Right,” Viper said with an unbelieving look on his face. “Well, I better get back to class. See you later.”
“Yeah, bye,” I said.
I didn’t want him to go; I liked having someone to talk to while I waited for the verdict and punishment awaiting me. But it wasn’t long before Principal Woodson opened the door and said I could join them inside the office.
“Okay, Miss Larnex, we have decided to put you on a week-long suspension,” she said after I had a seat in her office.
I heaved a sigh of relief so they would think I was at least a little worried about the situation. To seem sensitive about what I had done to Emily I asked how she was doing.
“They have taken her to the hospital; you broke her nose in two places,” Mrs. Woodson said.
“Oh,” I said, holding back my satisfaction, “I do hope she gets better soon.”
“Yes, well you will tell her that in person,” she said.
I looked at her. “Pardon?”
“You are going to the hospital to apologize to Miss Lynch.”
She said it in a way that suggested it wasn’t asking the world of me, which it pretty much was.
“I’m sure this won’t be a problem, considering how sorry you feel about what happened. Right, Miss Larnex?”
I forced a smile on my face. “Of course not, Mrs. Woodson.”
“Okay then. Mrs. Lynch, Ms. Larnex, thank you for meeting with me. Emmeline, I will see you back in school in a week.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
I couldn’t believe I’d gotten out of a permanent expulsion. Now I just had to survive going to visit Emily in the hospital.
* * *
“Come to assault me again?” Emily said from the bed in her private hospital room.
“No,” I said. “Part of my punishment is to come and apologize to you.”
I couldn’t believe I was actually at the hospital doing what I was. I’d had no intention of going to apologize to her, but Mom made sure that it was the first thing I did.
“So, I’m sorry for breaking your nose, Emily.”
It actually felt good saying it, though I was sure for totally different reasons than it should have.
“Well, you know what?” she said. “You’re not forgiven. I have two black eyes because of you, and the Christmas dance is coming up.” Tears gathered in her eyes.
I tried to keep my face straight. “Well, it’s two weeks away. I’m sure you’ll be okay by then—”
“Do you know that for a fact?” she yelled at me.
“No, I do not,” I said, deciding to drop the concerned act. “But I did what I was told to do so I’m leaving now.”
I turned, pushed the door open, and left. I was relieved that the task was now out of the way. I looked down at my knuckles. The red marks from colliding with Emily’s face had long since gone.
* * *
I unlocked my bike from the rack outside of the hospital and started down the road. Everything was starting to die down from the after school and work hustle, and it was already dark. The December weather was cooler than I liked, but it wasn’t unbearable yet. It took no time at all to reach my neighborhood and turn into the alley that led behind our house. I waved to Mrs. Trocki as she watered her roses and dismounted my bike to open our back gate. I leaned my bike against the porch and opened the door to the house.
“Mom, I’m home,” I said, removing my jacket and hanging it in the closet.
“Hey, honey,” Mom said. I heard a couple of loud thumps before I walked into the kitchen.
She was standing at the stove. There was a knife on the floor along with the pepper shaker, a pan, and a bag of uncooked noodles.
“Wow, I didn’t know you cooked anything,” I said.
“Don’t be silly, of course I can cook
something
,” she said. “Now go change. We have guests coming over for dinner tonight. They’ll be here at seven so be quick about it.”
“Who’s coming over?”
“Some old friends of mine,” she said.
“Oh, ok,” I said and walked into the hallway.
I didn’t know what I was expecting to hear, but that was not it. Mom never ever talked about her past. It was exciting to meet someone that was a part of it. I walked upstairs for a quick shower before I changed. I went into my room, unbuttoned my school shirt, threw it on the bed, and opened my closet to grab my robe. When I reached for my robe I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror on the door. I turned my shoulder so I could get a better look at my back.
I stared at what Emily had threatened me with just hours earlier. There were two eight-inch-long lumps between my shoulder blades. They were exactly parallel and had three inches between them. They only stuck out an inch or so from my skin, however, so it was fairly easy to hide them under clothes.
Doctors had looked at them, scanned, poked, prodded, and everything else imaginable, but they had no idea what they were or what had caused them. Every time an offer was made to remove them, Mom turned it down saying that if they weren’t doing me any harm there was no reason. Even though we’d found out they weren’t cancerous or harmful in any other way, Mom still looked at them with fear in her eyes. Every time I tried to ask her why, she always acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about and changed the subject. I smiled to myself and slammed the closet door— not doing me any harm. Perhaps not any physical harm.
I walked into my bathroom. The abominations on my back couldn’t help but remind me of the previous school year. I turned on the water in my shower. It was always exciting and nerve-wracking to start at a new school. It was my first year attending a private school so I was especially nervous about leaving the friends I had made in elementary school and junior high. I was sure it was surprising that for the first one and a half days of the school year I was considered one of the most popular girls in our class. Emily, Madison, and Hannah befriended me almost from the moment I walked through the doors. Popular girls have radar that seeks out other potentially popular girls. I’m pretty sure that’s how they found each other, too. But last year their radar picked up on me.
There was always a lot of tension between Emily and me starting from the day she invited me into the group. The thing about Emily was that she was power hungry. She was not any prettier than Madison or Hannah, but somehow she made it to the head of the group. Something inside me warned that she didn’t really like me; that it was just a formality for the group to suck in everyone that they felt
should
be in their group. All those red flags should have told me she’d jump at the first chance to run my life straight into the ground. I didn’t want to see it. I was so happy that I had made friends so easily.
It’s not particularly cruel that high school requires P.E. classes during the first two years, but sharing a locker room where you are pretty much on display for the other girls in the class is. I knew there was no way I’d be able to hide my back from all of those eyes. Maybe I hoped that since I had been accepted the girls wouldn’t notice them or that I could get all of them to laugh it off with me. I should have known that Emily was looking for any and all imperfections. To say the least, she found them.
“What’s that?” she said, eying my back while we were changing.
“Oh,” I said with a shaky laugh, not having to ask her what she was talking about. I had done my best to keep my back to the wall, but my attempts were in vain. “It’s nothing—”
She put a hand on my shoulder and pushed so hard that I whirled around and slammed into the wall so everyone could see what she was talking about.
“Oh, my God,” she said, revolted. “There are two of them.”
“It’s nothing,” I said again trying to turn myself around, but Emily only pushed me harder into the wall.
“Those are
not
nothing,” she said, barely able to hide the glee in her voice. “What do you think, girls?” She asked everyone in the locker room so that there wasn’t a chance in hell that there was someone that didn’t take notice of what was going on. “Think there’s some sort of insect’s eggs under her skin waiting to hatch? Maybe if I poke one some sort of gross puss will explode out of it.”
“Please, they won’t—” I trying to move again but was only able to arch my back.
“Ew,” Emily stepped away when my back got a little closer to her. “Don’t touch me with those. They’re probably contagious.”
“They won’t do anything to you,” I said, feeling the heat rise off my face. Tears gathered in my eyes.
“Still,” she said looking at me with disgust. “I wouldn’t want any of your freakishness to rub off on me.”
The girls laughed and the warning bell sounded. They hurried to get dressed for lunch.
“Emily, please—” I said.
She took a couple more steps back and looked at me. “Don’t come near me,
freak
.”
At those words the tears overflowed and rolled down my cheeks. She picked up her things and edged around me making sure to keep a safe distance.
I walked to lunch trying to figure out how I was going to talk to the girls about what happened, but as soon as I walked into the cafeteria it grew quiet. I saw a smug smirk on Emily’s face. People actually started to back away from me when I walked toward her.
“Emily, I—”
“Don’t talk to us, freak,” Madison said. Everyone who could hear her laughed.
I knew that there was nothing I could do or say at that point so I exited the cafeteria and walked home. That night was the first and only time I cried and begged Mom to remove them from my back. I could tell she wanted to and was sorry for the pain I was feeling, but she still said no. That I shouldn’t care what other people thought about me. For months after that, all I seemed able to do was care what people thought about me. They kept whispering behind my back, pointing, and laughing at me. I was so self-conscious I stopped talking to everyone.
I got out of the shower and put on some clean clothes. The silence didn’t last forever. After a few more months my self-consciousness turned into anger and then later it turned to apathy. I was finally able to ignore everyone. I still couldn’t stand it when someone touched me without my permission or if I wasn’t expecting it. I started taking kick-boxing lessons after the incident and told myself I’d be ready to defend myself if something like that ever happened again.
I walked into the kitchen and looked at Mom.
“So, Mom, who’s com—”
Soon she will come…
I put a hand to my chest where I wore a necklace Mom had given me years ago. The necklace was my most prized possession. It had a blue crystal in the shape of a teardrop. It was half an inch long and had a slim piece of silver wrapped around it like a vine. There was a little silver dragonfly perched on the top right-hand corner of the stone. I hadn’t unlatched the silver chain from around my neck since the day I received it. Mainly because it had never fallen off or tarnished in the slightest, even from the millions of fitful nights and showers I had taken with it on.
I looked down at my necklace. The blue stone had turned purple and was vibrating on my chest.
“Honey? What’s wrong?” Mom said.
I looked up at her with an expression on my face that I’m sure worried her even more.
“My necklace.” I looked down at it again. “It’s…”
Whatever happened to it was over; it was back to its normal blue color and perfectly still.
“It’s what?” she looked frightened.
I kept staring at the necklace not knowing what to say. All I needed was for Mom to think I was crazy and put me into therapy.
“Nothing,” I was so sure stress was making me imagine things. “I thought it had fallen off my neck.”
“Oh,” she said with a sigh. “Okay, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Soon who will come?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You just said
soon she will come
,” I said.
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
“Oh.” I looked around.
“Emma, are you hearing things?” The worried expression on her face still hadn’t changed.
“What?” My eyes stopped wandering and I looked at her. “No, of course not. I think I’m just stressed.”
She looked skeptical and opened her mouth to say something. It was unbelievable timing that at that exact moment the doorbell rang.
Her expression changed dramatically when she heard it.
“They’re here,” she said.
I couldn’t imagine why she was acting so neurotic.
“I’ll get it,” I said and walked into the hallway.
“Okay, I’ll be right there. I just have to finish this.”
“No problem,” I walked to the door and opened it and thought I would die of shock when I did.
“Viper,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I should believe my eyes.
I found myself looking at Viper Amest, standing on our front porch dressed in black slacks and a red dress shirt. I stared at him, amazed that he was at my house, though for some reason he didn’t look the least bit surprised to see me. I looked down at the pie he was holding and was brought crashing back to reality.
“Hey, Emma,” he smiled the smile I was sure was going to haunt my dreams for the next few weeks.
“Hi,” I said with a quick shake of my head. “So you’re the one over for dinner?”
I stepped aside and held the door open so he could enter the house.
“Indeed I am,” he said, still smiling. “My parents are still at the car getting the ice cream.” He stepped into the house.
“Hi, Ms. Larnex.”
Mom had entered the room.
“Hello,” she said, walking toward us holding out her hand. “You must be Viper, or so I heard from the kitchen.” She shot a look at me. I looked at the floor.
“I am,” he shifted the pie into his left hand to shake Mom’s hand. “It’s great to meet you.”
“Yes, likewise,” Mom said. Her eyes moved over his shoulder and filled with such emotion I thought she was going to explode. “Arian. Corinne.”
Viper’s parents made their way into the house. I took the ice cream they were holding as Mom rushed forward and gave each of them a hug.
“Hi, Cordelia,” Viper’s mom said with a big, beautiful smile.