The Secret Side of Empty (22 page)

I
CAN
’
T
THINK
OF
ANYWHERE
TO
GO
. I
RIDE
TO
THE
APARTMENT
.
The stairs feel so long and exhausting. I go into my room and drop on the futon.

My eyes feel like they’re sinking into my head. I close them, trying to force myself to fall asleep. I stay in that position for a long time, the light in the room changing, dimming, until it’s gone. I drift off at some point. When I wake up, my head feels achy, like there is a hollow in my forehead that is filled with gray fog.

I go to the bathroom. I feel under the sink. There it is. The razor blade. My escape hatch. My ticket. Not today but one day maybe.
As the rivers run dry, making up my mind.

For now, I stare at my face. What a big nose. My skin is a mess. I am pale, and I have big circles under my eyes. No wonder Nate wants to go away and not be near me. No wonder I don’t belong here. I wash my face, hoping the cold water will make me feel better. It doesn’t. I root around the medicine cabinet and find an old jar of face cream I used to see my mother use. When I uncap it, it has a brown crust around the rim. The cream looks fine, though. I slather it on my face, and it feels like it has ice in it, something minty. I let it sit. Then I wipe it off, and wash the last of it off with cold water. I still feel exhausted, but awake.

I look around at my mother’s makeup. She’s got some garish red lipstick that I’ve never seen her wear. I uncap it, look at it, run it across my bottom lip. It is shocking against my pasty skin. I like how this makes me look like someone else.

I am looking at myself in the mirror this way when the door slams open. The old brass hook on the back of the door rattles to the floor.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” asks my father. I hadn’t even known he was home.

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t you hear me telling you I need to get in here?”

“No.” Truth.

His eyes focus on the makeup. “Why are you putting that crap on?”

“I’m just . . . I don’t know . . . I was just . . .”

He grabs a fistful of my hair and slams my face into the mirror, pinning the lipstick between me and the mirror. I feel the lipstick slither up my face, smushing against the mirror.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to. Your lies. I am totally sick of your disrespect. You think you’re so smart, ignoring me, making me wait for the bathroom? You are good for nothing, you know that?” He emphasizes his statements with a little press into the mirror, and I start to worry what will happen if the mirror breaks.

“Leave me alone!”

“Stop lying. I know you. I see right through you. You think you’re so smart. You’re just like I was at your age. Just wait until life teaches you a thing or two.”

That’s the worst insult of all, him thinking I’m like him at all.

“Get off me!” I scream.

“Or what?”

“Just get off me. What is your problem?”

“What is my problem?” He laughs, a dark, angry little sound. “I have a lot of problems,” he says, giving my face one last shove into the mirror. “Get the hell out of the bathroom. I told you I need to use it.”

I hate my eyeballs for betraying me with tears. I can’t let him see. I won’t give him that satisfaction. I grab some toilet paper and rub the red mark off my face and my lips. I wash with soap as fast as I can, then run in my room and grab a bag. I am done. I am leaving. Jeans. Underwear. As many shirts as will fit. My phone. My charger. A handful of pictures. Emily’s big scarf. No, not that, it takes up too much room. I drape it around my neck, although it’s getting a little warm for that. Rumi’s poems that Ms. North gave me. Not much else fits, so this will have to be enough, until I figure out where I’m going.

I ride and ride, opposite the way I normally go. I ride in the direction of the big park, not Nate and mine’s. I’m thinking of that little field house. Maybe the lock will be flimsy and I can sleep in there. If not, it’s not that cold. I’ll find a little out-of-the-way spot in the park. It’ll be fun. It will be like camping. And tomorrow I will figure out where I am going to go.

When I get to the field house, the lock is built into the metal door. Impossible to break in. I ride around, looking for some other open structure. Nothing. I am seriously unschooled in the art of being a hobo.

I pull out my phone. I ache to call someone. Chelsea. I could sleep over at Chelsea’s and tell her everything and finally it would be okay. Or Nate.

But I can’t. How would I explain anything that’s going on in my life to them? It would sound so ridiculous, so impossible next to the lives they’re living. Also, how do you explain to someone that you are so horrible and useless that your own father despises you? I am so ashamed. I don’t want them to know because I know they’ll figure out what that means about me. The dirty, ugly outcast I really am.

It’s getting really dark and I find an old willow in a quiet spot behind the soccer field. I sit under it for hours, until I’m too sleepy to sit up. The moon is a little slit. It turns out it’s a bunch colder at night. I put on the second pair of jeans over the ones I’m wearing, and a couple of the shirts, too. Then I put on my jacket over all that. Emily’s scarf makes a pretty good pillow. It gets all kinds of dirty, though.

I curl up and try to fall asleep. For a while, I hear some voices in the distance, laughter, and then nothing. I bet serial killers laugh like that. Who knew the park was this creepy at night? There are critters and noises that just don’t stop. I think the serial killers are getting closer.

I temporarily imagine building a little hut out of twigs. That sounds like so much work, though. Plus, the bugs. No way. I pull out my phone. Fifty percent charge. And it’s only 11:52. That seals it. I can’t do another seven hours of this.

I pick up my bike and start pedaling back home, slowly.

M
r. Abedifirouzjaie (or Mr. A, as he has mercifully allowed us to call him) tells me during lunchtime that he’d like to see me after school. I have skipped his class as I do on most days, so I’m assuming he wants to have a little powwow about that. So I go.

“Monserrat. Thank you for coming.” Strangely, his accent makes it so that he’s got the best pronunciation of my name I’ve heard in a while.

“Hi.”

“How are you finding my class?” he says.

I want to say, “I didn’t know it was lost,” but instead I say, “Good.”

“Also optional, I notice.”

“Ummm . . . this morning I had to go to the nurse . . .”

“Let’s both spare ourselves the indignity of your story, shall we?”

“Okay.”

“I thought perhaps you might be one of those with the . . . how do you say it here? Senior fever? But then I asked around and learned that you used to be quite an applied student.”

Applied student? Is that like a glue brand or something?

“And then I did the further inquiries and discovered that you were a special student to Ms. North, my predecessor.”

Stare. Say nothing.

“I must be quite a disappointment after your most beloved teacher leaves.” The skin around his eyes squints a little and he looks like someone’s grandfather, right at the moment when he’s going to give a lollipop.

“I . . . no . . . it’s just—”

“Look, we will never have what you and Ms. North had. Alas, we lack the time, and even if we did, there are some holes only one person can fill. Would you not say yes to this?”

His accent is goofy, but I am somehow starting to get it.

“I would say yes to that.”

“Good. I am an old and strange man with what must seem to you a very silly accent. Is that the way of it?”

“Well, sometimes it’s hard—”

“You know what it means when someone has an accent?” he asks, kindly, with a smile.

“That they were born—”

“It means that they speak one more language than you do. I myself speak five. And you?”

“Two. And a little Italian I guess.”

“That’s more than most. Although it would seem perhaps at least that you might have a few things to learn from me. Would you not say?”

“Yes.”

“It may seem funny for someone who speaks English with an accent to be teaching the English. But what I like to say is that you can only truly love a place when you have lived outside it.”

I think about the little things I’ve noticed, like how in Spanish there are two different kinds of “you,” the formal one for teachers and cops and elders and the informal for friends and younger people. He actually has a point.

“Have you read any Nabokov?” he asks me.

“No.”

“The ultimate example, I would say, of a nonnative speaker of English relishing the English language as only a nonnative can. Although do not let the nuns catch me recommending
Lolita
to you. Now we each have something on each other. I know you don’t come to class. You know I recommend literature absolutely inappropriate for young girls to young girls.”

“A mutual destruction pact.” I smile.

He’s quiet for a minute. “You only hurt yourself when you don’t come to class.”

I nod a little.

“I know the standard teacher thing to do is to call your parents, have the big conversation. This, I suspect, would not be of help with you.”

“Why?” I’m curious.

“Other teachers have spoken to your mother.”

“They have?”

“She’s right in the building next door. How would they not? Here is what I propose. Please come to class now. I will bore you, but it will be more informative than napping in the senior locker room. Read what you like and I will not shame you in class too much when you don’t know what I am talking about. You may even get enough information to do reasonably well on tests. Does this sound possible to you?”

“Maybe. Yes. I guess.”

“A resounding agreement. One last thing. I will also be expecting the final Ms. North described to you. The world view position paper. That one thing is not negotiable. I will look the other way if you are less than motivated in class, but you must write that paper. Imagine you are writing it to present to her. Deal?”

“Deal.”

N
ATE
ASKED
ME
YESTERDAY
IF
WE
COULD
HANG
OUT
TODAY
,
AND
although I’ve been avoiding him since Emily’s little revelation, I say yes. I miss him so badly, but I’m afraid I don’t have the energy to hold up the picture of me that he wants to see. I’m afraid to ask him about his summer plans because once I do that, they will be real.

When I get out of school, he’s waiting. I get in. I want to lean over and kiss him but I feel too shy to do it. He feels far away.

He doesn’t put the car in drive. He sits there, looking at the rearview mirror, like someone’s chasing him. Then he studies his thumbnail.

“M, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“What?”

“I . . . I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

And there go the waterworks. I need to get a better hold on that.

“Please don’t cry. I’m so sorry.” He puts his hand on mine.

“What happened?” I ask. Ugh. Too needy. There are times when the thing you fear the most turns out to not feel as bad as you thought it would. This is not one of those times. It hurts more than anything, ever.

“It’s just . . . I don’t know. You seem so sad. I seem to hurt you so much, and I’m not sure how.”

“
That’s
not it,” I say, loud, accusing. I think I blow some tears and snot on him. Not attractive. “It’s just that you planned all along to sneak off and not tell me anything. How long did you know you were going on this boat thing?”

“M, why do you have to raise your voice? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Like you’re always at the edge of exploding. I applied to the boat thing before I met you. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. But it’s not that. You’re always so sad or mad, like you’re unhappy with me and you won’t tell me why. I just feel so guilty around you all the time.”

I feel desperate, like I have to find the right combination of words to stop this from happening. I am losing the best of me: him. I have to help him see that he’s not the problem. I have to find the words to make him stay. “Why didn’t you tell me about the summer thing?”

“I thought about it so many times. But it never seemed like the right time.”

“If I’m such a mess, why did you stay with me at all? Why did you put up with me at all?” It feels so familiar, him deciding I’m not good enough for him. I’ve lived it so many times in my head that now that it’s finally here, I recognize it like something that’s already happened.

“I don’t think you’re a mess, M. I just don’t think I’m the guy for you. I can’t seem to . . . I don’t know. You don’t look happy when you’re around me. I’m always making you mad.”

“Please let’s try again. I’m so sorry if I seemed mad. It wasn’t you. It’s just stuff at home. I’m so sorry.” I’m slobbering big time on his shirt now, at his shoulder. He puts his arm around me, but he doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about it.