The Chaos (2 page)

4. Dancing. Even though I’ve been missing practice lately, and I can’t get that new move that stupid ol’ Gloria came up with for the life of me, but I’m still the only one on our team that can do that move where you lean backward until your upper body is parallel to the ground. It’s because of my thunder thighs. They’re strong enough to hold me up, no matter what I do. To me, all kinds of things dance. The words of a poem are a dance. My dad’s Jamaican accent is a dance. I can memorize anything, if it dances. That’s how I used to be able to make fun of the way my dad speaks, even when I didn’t understand all the words. I don’t make fun of him anymore, though. There’s no fun at all in our house anymore. And it’s Dad’s and Mum’s fault.

5. Boys. The geeky, awkward kind that never seem to know where to look, but they always end up staring right at your chest and then they’re embarrassed they did that so they try really hard not to but it’s like they can’t drag their eyes away, and all the time they’re going on and on at you about the coefficient of a polynomial or how
many rare issues of the very first Dolphin Man comic they have, or something else that no one cares about but them. And the first time you kiss them, they think it was an accident, and they always ask you if it was good for you, too, and yeah, that’s a total cliché. But they mean it, and I think that’s sweet. Don’t get me wrong; I like the fine-looking guys too, with their muscles and their baggy jeans and their swagger. But with them, it’s like you’re seeing a package in a pretty wrapper; you’re never sure whether you’re going to open it and find the bestest present you ever wanted, or something that totally sucks. The geek boys wear their insides all on the outside, you know? With them, you know what you’re getting, because they have no talent for hiding who they are.

Mrs. Kuwabara had said we should keep all the sheets in one place, to review when we’d filled them all out. So I folded the piece of paper and stuffed it into the front pocket of my knapsack, where I’d put “My Five Favorite Colors and Why I Like Them” (one of them is kelly green, because it’s the color of that amazing dress that Lil’ Bliss wore on the BET Awards this summer) and “Five of the Best Things I Did on My Summer Vacation” (I’d crossed out things one, three, and four because they were all things I’d done with Glory, so now when I thought about them, the happy was spoiled by knowing what a bitch she was being). I pushed the three sheets down to the bottom of the knapsack pocket, ignoring the rustling sound they made when I crumpled them. Jimmy Tidwell held a sheet of paper out to me. I reached for it, but took him by the wrist instead. I swear his face went purple. “Hey,” I murmured, “wanna hang out during break?”

“Uh, you mean, like, with you?”

“Yeah, with me. What’d you think?”

“But we already worked on next week’s math homework.”

“So, what; we can’t just hang out?”

From behind me, I heard Gunther Patel snicker. I turned in my seat. He was leering at me.

“What’s with you?” I asked, sneering.

He used his tongue to puff out the side of his cheek, twice. He hated it that I laughed whenever he whistled at me in the parking lot. I said, loudly, “You wish.” Mrs. Kuwabara heard me, just like I’d planned. She looked up from her desk.

“Is something the matter, Sojourner?”

Gunther scowled. I smiled sweetly at him. “Nothing at all, Miss,” I said.

Ben whispered, “Good for you.” I grinned my thanks. He’d coached me well.

Gunther mumbled, “What do you know about it, you fag?”

Ben picked his pencil up and started writing on his sheet, but I saw the devilish grin on his face, and I knew that Gunther was going to get it good. “Honey,” Ben said, squeezing every ounce of his blackness into that one word and speaking just loud enough for the few people around us to hear, “I’m more man than you will ever be, and more woman than you’ll ever get.”

Panama whooped. “Lord have mercy! Sorry, Mrs. Kuwabara. I’ll behave myself now, Miss.”

For the umpteenth time I envied Panama’s strong Jamaican accent. Mrs. Kuwabara called out, “Jimmy, now’s not the time to be talking with your friends, dear. Please keep handing those sheets out.”

Panama looked up in mock alarm. “
Me
, Jimmy’s friend? As if.”

God, girls can be so mean. Jimmy’d been kinda gaping stupidly at us. He blushed and scurried along on his task. Gunther pressed his lips together and stared furiously down at his paper. Served him right. When boys try to embarrass you like that, it’s easy to stop them. So long as the girls don’t get into it. Because once the girls decide to turn against you, next thing you know, you’re the school slut and everybody’s spreading these insane rumors about you blowing the whole basketball team in the locker room, and people are throwing rocks at you when you’re trying to walk home from school. I took my sheets out of my knapsack and erased my answer to number five on the “Five Things That Make You Happy” sheet and wrote:

5. I am thrilled to pieces to not be in my old school anymore.

I looked at the new questionnaire, and groaned under my breath. This one read, “Five Things That Scare You.” I sighed and started filling it out. I wrote:

1. Gunther Patel’s haircut. Didn’t that bowl cut thing go out in the old days with, like, the Beatles?

2. Getting someone else’s chewed-up wad of gum on me. It really freaks me out. I’m terrified it’s going to get into my hair. With all these curls I have, I’d never get it out.

3. Letting my big brother, Rich, down.

I tugged my right sleeve down over my wrist. Last night’s dream had been the usual kind of odd dream
I’d been having lately. I was walking in the sun on someone’s crop acreage, past beds of spinach, vines of beans climbing wire cones, knee-high eggplant bushes weighed down with shiny purple eggplants. Daddy’s voice was murmuring something indistinct in my ear, although I couldn’t see him. His happy voice, not the fretful, angry one in which he spoke almost all the time nowadays since we’d moved. But then his voice started getting a little angrier and a little more fretful every second as I trudged past stalks of corn, beds of tomato bushes. And I knew that when I went around the next patch of tomato bushes, there would be something horrible waiting for me. . . .

4. This stupid skin condition I’ve got. Just when everything was starting to go great. I thought I’d finally figured out this school, and Rich was finally back home. And then this crap started happening. I don’t think the ointment is working.

What else was I really scared of? I gave the classroom a quick scan. It looked perfectly normal at the moment. Whew. On the lavender sheet, I wrote;

5. None of your damned business.

If I’d been being honest, I would have written,
People finding out about me
.

The bell rang.

“Thank God,” growled Ben. I think the whole class probably felt the same way he did. You could almost hear the relief in how quickly the chairs scraped back as people gathered their things and leapt up. Second to last period of the day! One more class, and then it was hello, weekend.

“Okay, people,” said Mrs. Kuwabara. Cheerily. Again. “Hang on to that sheet, and we’ll finish filling it out on Monday.”

Ben whispered into my ear, “Which ‘we’ she talking about? She not filling out this blasted questionnaire.”

I giggled. “It’s teacher speak. You know how it is.” As we stepped out into the hallway, we were hit by the deafening noise of hundreds of teenagers laughing, arguing at the tops of their voices, banging locker doors, shouting greetings to each other in the last precious fifteen-minute break of the school day.

Ben asked me, “Did you just invite Jim Tidwell to hang out with us during break?”

“Yeah.”

Ben looked incredulous. “But he’s such a dork!”

“A sweet dork. Sweet counts for a lot.”

Jimmy was standing by one of the water fountains, trying to look casual. I waved at him. “Hey, Jimmy!”

Ben sighed.

Jimmy came over. “Uh, look, I gotta meet my friends. We have this, uh, thing . . .” He stared shyly at the ground.

“That’s okay, Jimmy. Next time, all right?” I patted his shoulder. He started, like he didn’t expect anyone to touch him.

“Really? That’d be cool. Yeah. Okay. Um . . .”

He wandered off before he’d actually finished his sentence.

“Oh, thank God for Jesus,” said Ben once Jimmy was out of earshot. With one hand, he made like he was waving Jimmy away. “Yes, you go meet up with your friends, my love. Go and synchronize your iPhones, or whatever it is you guys do.”

I giggled. “Ben!”

A Horseless Head Man zipped past my ear, doing its chittering giggle and being chased by another one. I just managed to turn my flinch into linking my arm through
Ben’s. “Let’s go outside. It’s sunny out.” Besides, the Horseless Head Men were harder to see in full light.

We pushed open one of the big glass doors and stepped out into the watery September light. The weather hadn’t turned anywhere near cold yet, but the sun didn’t seem to rise as high in the sky as it had during the summer, and there was a dampness to the air. Some days were colder than others. Today was a warmish one.

We sat on one of the broad stone stairs that led down to the parking lot. Claudia, Simon, and Mark were scrunched happily together on one of the picnic benches in the school yard. Simon was in the middle. Mark put his hand on Simon’s thigh so that he could lean over to say something to Claudia. Claudia and Simon were holding hands.

Glory was hanging out on the sidewalk with Panama and Kavi. Ben smiled and waved. I didn’t. I turned sideways so that my back was to Gloria.

Ben had already pulled his cell phone out of his bag and was texting away. He gave a happy sigh. “Stephen says I’m the best boo he’s ever had. I love having a boyfriend!”

“You guys on again, then?”

He slid the phone back into his bag. “Yeah. It was just a little fight.”

“And your parents are really cool about you dating a guy?” Ben had blossomed since ninth grade. He’d started wearing cute jeans and fancy shirts instead of baggy clothes, and a silver stud in one ear and a cowrie shell on a black leather thong around his neck. His jewelry looked amazing against his brown skin. He walked with more confidence. This summer he’d started dating guys. Stephen was his second boyfriend.

“Dad’s still a little freaked out, but Mom says she wasn’t surprised.
She’s just worried that Stephen’s a white guy. She’s afraid he might break my heart.”

“Your folks are so cool. Mine would lose their shit if they found out I’d been dating Tafari. Or anyone. You know what I keep trying to figure out?”

“What?”

“Are all three of the Thompson Twins sluts, or just Claudia?”

“Obviously, Claudia’s the slut! You know how this works. Girls get called sluts.”

“And guys who sleep around get called what? Studs?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. And when people call a guy a stud, it’s kind of a compliment. But when they call a girl a slut—”

“Then the next step is chewing gum in her hair and talking shit about her on MyFace.”

“I know it blows, but that’s how it is.”

I sighed. “Okay, but check it out.” I counted off on my fingers. “So Claudia’s dating Simon and Mark. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“And Simon’s dating Mark and Claudia.”

“Yup.”

“And—hold on, my head always spins, trying to figure this one out—Mark’s dating Claudia and Simon.”

“You got it.”

“And each of them knows about the other two, and all three of them go on dates together? With each other? At the same time?”

Ben said, “Uh-huh. I saw the three of them at the movies once, all holding hands and snuggling! I don’t know how they do it. I’d be too jealous.”

Claudia’s happy tinkle of a laugh cut through the break-time noise. She leaned over and kissed Mark on the cheek. She
never seemed to notice the glares she got from some of the girls in school.

I continued, “Why does everyone call them the Thompson Twins, anyway? There are three of them. And none of them’s named Thompson.”

He grinned. “Ah. For the answer to that question, my pretty, you need my fairy-certified sparkle dust obsession with pop music. ‘The Thompson Twins’ was the name of an old eighties band. There were three of them, too.”

I shook my head. “If high school’s this complicated, how am I ever going to figure out being a grown-up?”

Ben crossed his arms, cocked his head to one side, and looked at me. “Okay, I hate to even ask this, but you’re not thinking of hooking up with Jimmy Tidwell, are you?”

Glory and Panama were shrieking happily over something or other. I didn’t look over there. “Maybe I am. So what?”

He took my hands. Gently, I pulled the telltale hand away, leaving him holding just the other one. He didn’t seem to notice. “Darling, the boy’s a total geek!”

“Which means he might actually take me seriously when I say we’re going to use rubbers.”

“Scotch, for real, what’re you thinking?”

“I dunno. I think it might be fun.” That was what was so cool about having changed schools. At LeBrun High I’d been the school slut even though I wasn’t having sex with anyone. Here I was one of the cool girls and I could do whatever I wanted. I could experiment. So long as my parents didn’t find out.

“But you only just broke up with Tafari! Like he really didn’t mean anything to you, or what?”

“He did! You know he did. But he’s not the only boy in the world.”

Ben looked doubtful. “So, are you drowning your sorrows
or whatever by hooking up with some random guy?”

I sighed. “No! At least, it’s not because I’m drowning my sorrows. I’m just exploring, okay?” Like I’d been doing before Taf. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed me while I’ve been dating Taf. I’d known all these guys since grade nine, when they were shy, awkward boy-men with voices still breaking, and I was the new girl with the chest bigger than anyone else’s in my class, who was too scared to speak to the boys for fear the girls would get jealous and it would be like LeBrun High all over again. For fear it was something to do with me that had made the harassing and the jeering and spitballs happen.