Surfacing (2 page)

“Hey, Maggie. You aren’t even listening to me,” Julie was saying.

“I am. I am.”

Julie kicked her friend under the table. “Then why are you looking over there the whole time? And so what was I just talking about?”

Maggie brought her attention back. “You were telling me about the test you have next period on
The Catcher in the Rye
and how you had no idea Holden Caulfield was really supposed to be in a mental hospital at the end and how you are so definitely going to fail. But you’re not, Julie. You just say that every time.”

Across the cafeteria, three boys stood up. One of them shot his balled-up garbage into a bin; the other two left theirs on the table.

Julie followed her friend’s gaze across the cafeteria and figured out what could have possibly captured Maggie’s attention more than Holden Caulfield. “Maggie, he’s a goon,” she said.

“Where do you get a word like that?
Goon
. What’s a goon?” Maggie asked. She glanced back at the boys.

“Matthew James is a goon. He’s short, he’s dumb, and he’s captain of the boys’ wrestling team. What more do I have to say?”

In truth, Maggie had wondered that herself. If you took Matthew out of the high-school context, there really wouldn’t be much, so to speak, other than the fact that he was three years older and had told Maggie he was interested in her. He didn’t say
that
exactly, but he did lean over her while she was at his house working on a poster with his younger sister, Jennifer, and say something like “You sure smell good.”

And then, instead of “Good-bye,” he had said, “See ya,” when he was leaving the house.

See ya?

He wanted to see her again.

And
he was popular, which still reigned supreme, nearly to the point of suppressing all common sense. Also to his credit, Matthew James had a girlfriend, and she was pretty, and she was cool. She was smart, and kind of an individual, so didn’t it stand to reason that if Sarah Lieman liked Matthew, there must be something more to him? Something attractive? Sarah and Matthew could be seen in the halls between classes exchanging all sorts of saliva, with enough passionate groping to have been put on warning by the vice principal. Twice, was the rumor.

Matthew James and his two friends walked out of the cafeteria, kind of swaying, with a sort of gorilla-like gait. He didn’t say “See ya” this time, but Maggie figured that was because he hadn’t noticed her sitting there.

“Maggie, he has a girlfriend.” Julie watched Maggie watching.

“I know. Sarah Lieman.”

Maggie and Sarah had actually been in a play together one summer. It was the first summer after Maggie’s family moved, five years after Leah drowned, before the twins were born, before Maggie started school, before she met Julie. Sarah was a year older, sixth grade. Her mom directed the community theater playhouse, and Mrs. Paris had put Maggie in the play in order to give her something to do over the summer and as a way to meet kids before school started. Maggie and Sarah got to be natives in the theater’s production of
South Pacific
, though once school began in September, they rarely saw each other. The fifth- and sixth-grade wings were on opposite ends of the school, but for those few weeks singing “Bali Ha’i” and painting their faces with dark makeup, Sarah was nice to Maggie, like a big sister, and it did help. She felt less alone.

“C’mon.” Julie took Maggie’s tray from the table, piled her own leftovers on top, and carried it to the trash. “And tell me why teachers always think we’re going to love
The Catcher in the Rye
, because I hated it.”

“Teenage rebellion and angst,” Maggie answered. “Even though the book is, like, sixty years old, they think we’ll relate. Hey, is that where you got the word
goon
?”

“No, that’s just a good word.” Julie put her arm around Maggie so they could head out into the hall, together. “I like it. And if the shoes fits.”

Fifth grade and everything was new. The teachers’ names, the hallways, where the bathroom was, all the faces of all the kids, even what to do during recess was all jumbled into a slide show of incomplete and interchangeable pictures. It felt like nearly every minute there was something new to figure out, and an unsettling homesickness followed Maggie around all day. It was October, and substantiating her mother’s expression that all you need is one friend, things hadn’t gotten better. Maggie sat alone at recess, and today, like yesterday, she watched. She saw one little girl run across the grass, turn, look back, and stumble for a few steps before her knees and palms hit the ground. The rest of her body kind of collapsed in defeat. The girl didn’t make any attempt to get up, so Maggie walked over and knelt down on the grass beside her.

“Are you all right?” Maggie asked.

“I fell,” the girl said.

The other girls she had been herding with had continued on. If they had noticed her fall, they didn’t seem particularly worried. They were all chanting in unison, singing a song Maggie thought she had heard on the car radio. It looked like a hard fall. Now she could see blood seeping through the knee of the girl’s pants.

“It hurts,” said the girl.

“I’ll get someone,” Maggie offered, though she really had no idea whom to get or where to go to find someone. There must be a playground monitor, but somehow all the bodies blended together and she could hardly tell who was a kid and who was an adult.

The girl reached out and touched Maggie’s arm. “No. Don’t. I’m fine. I’m Julie. Are you the new girl?”

Maggie settled down, crossing her legs. “I guess so. I’m Maggie.”

“I’m clumsy,” Julie said. She winced when she tried to straighten her leg. “My dad wants me to join the swim team. He says it will help me lose a little weight and be better balanced.”

By then, several years after Leah’s death, Maggie was used to people telling her things they didn’t want anyone to know. She also knew that after this girl had told her these personal things, she would never want to talk to Maggie again. She might even spread lies or start rumors to cover up for whatever it was she had revealed.

“You don’t need to lose weight. You look fine to me.”

Julie smiled. “Thanks.”

But maybe this time it wouldn’t happen that way. There was something about the way this little girl smiled and cried at the same time, and didn’t seem embarrassed by either, that seemed so real.

“Will you be my friend?” Maggie asked her.

“Sure,” Julie answered immediately. “Will you be mine?”

Maggie liked Sarah Lieman, respected her, even admired her. But Maggie was obsessed with Matthew, the kind of obsession that is a preoccupation that is like an occupation, so there is no leftover energy to worry about where it came from or where it’s going. All brainpower generally allocated to analysis is taken up with the insatiable fueling of that obsession. Lying in bed, before she fell asleep, exhausted by swim practice and whatever homework had kept her up till midnight, Maggie would channel her obsession. She would will her mind to begin dreaming before she entered the stage of rapid eye movement, before she fully lost control of her waking consciousness. She would take control of her dreaming and make it work for her, like a film director, creating a movie in which she was both the scriptwriter and the leading actor.

Like all mind skills, lucid dreaming required practice and hyperconcentration.

And it could only work if the dream was realistic.

The setting and situation had to be familiar and credible. For instance, in her lucid dream, she couldn’t run into Matthew on a beach somewhere in the Bahamas, or in some vineyard in Italy, even though that was certainly tempting. Maggie loved the movie
French Kiss
with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. Even suspect coincidences were limited. For instance, bumping into Matthew at the mall or on the street outside her house was not allowed. It had to be very close to possible — the more complicated and unpredictable, the more likely to actually occur, the better.

Maggie could feel her body slipping into the fantasy, into lucidity. She feels the roughness of his hands when he grabs her. She can create the pulse of his blood when he holds her. She can feel his breath on her neck when he stands very close to her.

And best of all, in her lucid dream she doesn’t have to ask herself or answer to anyone why she is with him, why he is watching her as closely as she watches him. He smells like beer and cigarettes. He talks about nothing but girls and wrestling and monster trucks. He is everything Maggie is not. He is her self-inflicted wound. It is precisely his hollowness and lack of responsibility that draws her to him.

And in her bed, alone at night, it is what draws him to her, until deep, restful sleep finally takes over.

The chance fire drill that brought Maggie and Matthew together probably would have been too contrived for lucid dreaming, but not for real life.

“You’re Maggie.”

Everyone — teachers, students, administrators — stood somewhere on the grass and behind the faculty parking lot. The signal to return to school hadn’t been sounded, and it was long past the normal six minutes, so teachers had given up trying to corral students into lines and keep them quiet. The firefighters and police had already run into the building and were filing out leisurely, so there was clearly no emergency, but no one had yet been allowed back inside.

“You’re my little sister’s friend, right? I saw you at the house the other day.”

“Yeah,” Maggie answered.

“You’re on the girls’ swim team, aren’t you?”

“That would be me.” Maggie had isolated herself on the grass by the far end of the parking lot. Julie was probably all the way on the other side of the school. She had gym this period, which let out by the main parking lot and the tennis courts.

“It keeps you in nice shape,” Matthew said.

His hair was dark, but his eyes were light. He was so close that Maggie could see his eyelashes. And his freckles. The size and shape of his teeth when he spoke. She suddenly became so aware of her own face, every blemish, dot, and asymmetrical arrangement of her features. But he had told her she had a nice shape. What exactly was he looking at? Her waist? Her shoulders? Her ass?

In her lucid sleep state, she would answer coyly.

“If you say so,” Maggie said. She licked her lips (they felt dry), untucked her hair from behind her ears (it was uncomfortable), and a second later tucked it back again (it was more uncomfortable).

“So what are you doing this weekend?” Matthew asked her. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Tonight?”

It was Friday and her parents were going out early, taking the twins to dinner and a kiddie show in the city. Maggie had known about it for weeks, and Julie was supposed to come over, but just this morning she had told Maggie that her mom needed her home.
I’m sorry Maggie
, Julie texted during first period.
I can’t come over tonight
.

So Maggie would be alone in an empty house.

That was a sign, wasn’t it? Like a symbol in a dream?

“I’m home by myself tonight,” Maggie told Matthew quickly, too quickly, thinking but not thinking, knowing she was presenting a possibility without really having to decide if she wanted to or not. “My parents are going out.”

“So maybe I’ll stop by,” Matthew told her.

Maggie neglected to mention any of this to Julie after everyone trucked back inside for the remaining half an hour of the school day, during which no one, neither teachers nor students, felt motivated to do any schoolwork. Matthew’s maybe-visit seemed to slip Maggie’s mind during swim practice as well, and so, by the time evening approached, the window of opportunity to blow the whole thing by her best friend had long since passed.

He probably wouldn’t show up anyway, so what was the point?

When she heard wheels pulling over her gravel driveway, an engine cutting off, Maggie darted to the window to look. It was him. He had come. Her parents had been gone for an hour and a half, leaving Maggie nearly the entire time to look at herself in the mirror and imagine what Matthew would see if he looked this closely at her. Or
this
closely. Or
this
closely. She moved back and forth from the glass, trying to approximate average human face-to-face distance, intimate distance, kissing distance even — supposing that was what was going to happen.