I scanned the hall, looking for Derek, for some sign of his cropped blond hair bobbing in the crowd. None of this would matter if he were on my side. One sweep of his arm around my shoulder would make everything else go away.
I wasn’t like Annie, who was too busy and cool to care what anyone else thought of her. I also wasn’t like the mass of popular copycats at school, with their manicured nails and matching outfits. I was more like a formless blob in between—the type of girl who blends into the background until something makes you stop and notice her. And for me, that something was Derek. Being his girlfriend gave me a place. Because of him, I belonged. Because of him, I was a part of something much bigger.
But when we got to our lockers, he was nowhere in sight. I was too late. A panicky feeling overcame me. What if he was avoiding me? I tried to push the thought away, to remind myself of all the other times I couldn’t reach Derek in the past. There was always a reason, like when he forgot to charge his cell battery or practice ran late. I was always scared that something was wrong, or worse, that it was over. But I had always been wrong. There was even the time he didn’t call for five days after our
first real fight, which ended up being a stupid misunderstanding. I kept telling myself that one day we’d be able to look back and chalk this time up to an even bigger misunderstanding.
My hands were shaking so much it took me three tries to punch in my locker combination. When I finally got it open, a goofy Polaroid of me and Derek from New Year’s Eve stared back at me. I was so nervous I felt like I was going to throw up.
“Want me to walk you to class?” Annie asked, sidling up next to me.
I reached inside for my books. “Thanks, but I’ll be okay.”
“Meet you back here for lunch then?”
I nodded yes as the second bell rang and watched Annie retreat the other way down the hall. The hushed voices seemed even louder now that I was alone, like the escalating rumble of an approaching wave.
Fixing my gaze on the floor, I waited until the hall cleared and began making the trek to homeroom.
I SPENT THE
rest of the morning in a fog, waiting for each period to end, for another chance to see Derek. We didn’t have a single subject together this semester, but I still knew his schedule by heart and had a mental map of where he was at all times. As soon as each bell rang, I was first out the door. I calculated which route to take so I had the best chance of intercepting him, even if it was in the completely wrong direction for my next class. It was worth lingering in the halls, enduring the whispers, if it meant I would see him. But I didn’t. It was like he’d somehow slipped through the cracks.
At least my teachers acted halfway normal and didn’t broadcast the fact that I had been gone for the last two weeks. It seemed as if they were instructed not to say anything. I didn’t get in trouble for having the wrong books or for not following along. I was normally a front row student, diligently taking notes, but I now found it was easier to bide my time in the back, away from the stares.
“Hey,” Annie said, approaching my locker. “Ready?”
It was finally lunch. “Just about.” I shoved my books in my locker then glanced back across the hall toward Derek’s.
“Have you seen him yet?” she asked, following my gaze.
I shook my head no. “Have you?”
“I have the unfortunate displeasure of being in three classes with him, so yes, I spent half the morning with him.”
I had begun to wonder if he was even here, if perhaps he was the one who had disappeared. But now that Annie confirmed he was at school, I knew where I could find him. “Do you mind if we eat in the cafeteria?”
Annie hated cafeteria food and always packed her own organic lunch, which she usually ate in the darkroom. She was the yearbook photo editor and always had tons of work she crammed into any spare minute. She also didn’t mind eating alone. She called it her “Zen time.” My so-called Zen time was when I was with Derek, which is why I ate right next to him in the cafeteria every day.
“Let’s go,” she said, dangling her compact navy blue cooler in her hand.
I tugged on the heart around my neck as we passed the debate team room. It was in the old teacher’s lounge, right next to the cafeteria.
“Ol?” Annie reached over and touched my arm. I didn’t realize I had stopped. I shook it off and released the pendant before continuing on toward the cafeteria.
I felt queasy as soon as we walked in. The air, heavy with the smell of fish and garlic, lingered in my nostrils. I scanned the packed room for Derek’s table. He and his friends had been
eating in the same spot since freshman year, but no one was there yet. I always liked the fact that he had such a close-knit group of friends, which seemed unusual for guys. Maybe it was just because they were all on the debate team, but they always stuck together, and made a pact to stay friends for the rest of their lives. They called themselves the Circle of Trust, or the COT for short. They even joked about the golf retreats they’d go on when they were older, how they’d leave the wives and kids behind, just like their dads. I always liked hearing them talk about the future like that, imagining that by then, I’d be Derek’s wife, and we’d have our own kids. It made it feel like we’d be together forever, too.
“Nerd Herd alert, twelve o’clock,” Annie said as we got to the back of the food line.
I whipped my head up to the front of the line, where Simon Glass, Dylan Nelson, and Max Samansky had just finished paying. They were carrying their trays off toward their table.
“Keep your voice down,” I whispered, glancing around to make sure no one heard her.
“What? If they get to give themselves a lame name, I can too.”
“I told you, it’s private.” Annie hated cliques of any kind, but I had always secretly wanted to belong to one. The COT may not have been mine, but it was the closest I’d come.
“Ooh, yum. Brown mystery meat, brown mystery fish, and brown potatoes. I’m sensing a theme here,” Annie said, inching her tray along the glass display.
I kept straining my neck toward the entrance, waiting for him to arrive. Where was he?
“Wow, that broccoli looks like it’s been sitting there so long it’s
also turning brown. I think I might even feel bad for it,” she said, nudging my arm.
“Mm-hmm,” I murmured, turning around to face her. “You feel bad for who?”
Just then something flashed in her eyes. I turned around. My heart raced. There he was. Like an apparition. With his neat, parted blond hair, in his uniform of khakis and a button-down, he greeted his friends as he sauntered into the line, flashing his perfect smile. He looked exactly the same.
That is, until he lifted his gaze, until his eyes locked on me, until his smile faded and his face went slack. He did an about face, went right to his table, and sat down without his lunch. That’s when I noticed that someone else was sitting in my place, right next to Derek. A cheerleader named Betsy Brill, the most popular girl in school. Her long, wavy blond hair cascaded over her shoulders like she’d just come from the salon, and her toned, tanned shoulders poked out of her sleeveless dress as if she were eating in a five star establishment, not the grimy cafeteria.
What the hell was she doing there?
A sharp pain worked its way up my spine. With one eye trained on me, Betsy leaned over and whispered something in Derek’s ear. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
The intense flapping sounds gushed back in. Like a caged bat struggling to be free, the escalating melody ricocheted against my skull, drowning everything else out. The notes climbed higher and higher, like they might take flight before coming to an abrupt stop, mid-note. It was just how I felt: stuck, unable to move forward, like the end was missing.
Boom.
My tray slipped through my fingers and crashed to the floor, splattering food and lemonade everywhere.
All conversation came to a grinding halt. Everyone turned and stared. I kept waiting for Derek to turn around, too. To stand up in front of the whole school and defend me. Instead, he kept acting like I didn’t exist.
I glanced toward the exit. It felt like it was fifty miles away.
Stay steady
, I told myself as I put one foot in front of the other, my flip-flops squeaking across the wet floor.
Don’t look back, just keep moving
.
Pretty soon I was running. Across the cafeteria, through the swinging door, down the hall, past the debate room. I didn’t slow down until I reached the girls’ bathroom and darted into the last stall. Doubled over the toilet, I began to dry heave, but nothing came out.
A group of girls came busting through the door. The clack of their heels and high-pitched chatter bounced against the linoleum tiles, breaking the silence. Peeking through the crack of the stall door, I could see who they were: Betsy Brill’s posse. The Queen Bees. Everyone always knew who the popular girls were, no matter what grade they were in. They were like local celebrities. As they crowded around the mirror, I watched them admiring their perfect reflections. That was another thing about the popular girls. Their skin always looked flawless, even under the bright glare of the fluorescent lights.
“Ohmygod,” one of them said. They were mid-conversation. It didn’t take long to figure out what they were talking about. “I can’t
believe she can show her face around here…”
Or who they were talking about: me. With nowhere to go, I retreated to the wall behind the toilet, closed my eyes, and tried to block them out. But I couldn’t. Their words came at me like daggers, even louder than the phantoms in my head.
“I heard she tried to run him down but he got out of the way just in time.”
“Can you imagine? That’d be, like, murder.”
“Yeah, instead it was just a suicide mission.”
“Too bad she didn’t succeed.”
“But she totally did! Didn’t you hear she was dead and came back to life?”
“Ew, she’s like a zombie!”
They roared with laughter. I slid down to the floor, my feet poking out from under the stall. They were too caught up to even notice. They had already made up their minds about me, anyway. Apparently everyone had. It didn’t matter that none of it was true. That I would never hurt Derek. That I didn’t want to die.
I laid my head down on the sticky floor and watched their feet retreat out the door. The melody erupted, each note more despondent than the one before. It was the sound of my pain, taunting me. I was reminded of the instructional video we watched for lifeguard training last summer, about how drowning is never the way it looks in the movies, with all sorts of screaming and splashing. It was the opposite: silent, stealthy, deadly. That’s when I realized there was no point resisting. This song was a part of me now, like a heartbeat, as fragmented and incomplete as I was.
“HONEY?” MY MOTHER
poked her head through the door, then proceeded to charge right in. In the last week, she’d perfected the art of simultaneously knocking and entering, like she might catch me in the middle of doing something dangerous. “You’re not dressed and we needed to leave ten minutes ago!”
I quickly tucked the wooden box under the pillows. I had been reading the fortunes over and over, like the act of repetition would give them a better chance of coming true. “I’m not going.”
She marched over to the windows and yanked open the drapes. The sunshine blinded me momentarily. “But it’s Easter!”
We weren’t religious, but my mom was on the club’s Easter brunch decorating committee (of course). My stomach constricted into knots as I thought about last year’s brunch, when I sat at Derek’s table, with his family. I’d barely seen him all week since the cafeteria incident. The few times we crossed paths in the halls, he looked the other way. “I don’t care,” I said, pulling the duvet over my head to shield my eyes from the bright glare.
“You might feel better if you put on a nice outfit and get some fresh air.”
“No, that’s what would make
you
feel better.” She was wearing a new coral dress with a matching cardigan and her fancy, triple strand pearls. She saved them for special occasions.
“I’m worried,” she said. “You’re not yourself.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I think you should talk to someone.”
“You mean you?” I said, kicking the covers.
“No, I mean a professional. Someone who can help.”
My body stiffened. Suddenly it seemed like I could hear the voices and laughter of the girls in the bathroom, like they were here, in my room, looming behind my mother, taunting
you’re crazy
over and over. “Aren’t you the one who said I could take my time?”
“There’s a difference between taking your time and hiding.” She sat down and ran her fingers through my tangled strands of hair, fanning them out on the pillow. “You can’t spend the rest of your life in bed.”
“I don’t need a shrink,” I said, springing out of bed. The sudden movement caused my blood to rush to my head. I steadied myself against the dresser so she wouldn’t notice I was dizzy. “I’ll be ready in five.”
The Buick was idling in the driveway when I finally emerged fifteen minutes later.
“You can’t go in jeans.” My mother threw her hands up in frustration.
“Leave it, Marian,” my father said.
“Fine.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a travel-size comb. “Just brush your hair, okay?”
As soon as I was buckled into the backseat next to Noah, my mother glanced at the clock and nudged my father to get moving. She was always anxious about getting to places early. She held back from chastising me for making them wait, but I could practically see her biting her tongue.
She pulled down the visor and began reapplying her already heavily coated coral lipstick. “Are those new sunglasses?” she asked, peering at me through the mirror.
“Sort of.” I was wearing Annie’s giant, pink plastic pair. It was easier to pretend no one was looking at me when I had them on. It reminded me of Buck, our black Lab, who died when I was eight. He would always cement his eyes shut when he was caught doing something bad, as if blocking out the world meant he too would become invisible. Now I understood why he did it and suddenly longed to be curled up in his warm, slick fur. My father and I had buried him together in the backyard. I cried myself to sleep for weeks after. My dad promised we’d get another puppy, but then we moved and my mom got pregnant and everyone forgot about Buck. Except for me.