Counting Backwards (5 page)

“He’s so totally into you,” she says, and clasps her hands over her heart in a faux swoon.

“No, he’s not. He just
glared
at me.”

“That was not a glare, my friend. That was hot. That look was saturated with primal lust and longing.”

I laugh. “Whatever you say, Margo.”

She offers me her box of Tic Tacs, and I drop a couple on my tongue—sweet, citrusy sunshine. “A.J.’s a good guy,” she says, taking a few Tic Tacs for herself. “But he’s not always a
nice
guy.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Nice guys do what you tell them to. Good guys do what’s right.”

Important to know, I guess. But I’m not looking for a guy, nice or not. I’m looking for a way out.

After school I report to the dorms for “group activities,” which means all the girls from the third floor crowd into the common room to watch a “motivational” film. The room reeks of Secret deodorant and bad breath. Kayla shuts out the lights, and I go stand in the back of the room where it’s easier to breathe. Charlotte’s there already and glances over at me nervously. I back up in case she needs more space.

Kayla starts the movie, and it opens up with this man—Craig—playing fetch with a golden retriever on a massive TruGreen lawn behind a fancy house. Craig starts talking about how he used to be an alcoholic and how it got so bad that he lost his job and house and had to live on the streets. The film flashes to what’s supposed to be a dramatization of Craig as a homeless guy, then flashes back to present-day Craig on the lawn, scratching the dog’s chin as he launches into this revival speech on how he owes all his “financial success” and “emotional security” to the program.

AA, that is.

My mom went through Alcoholics Anonymous after she
and my dad split, and I went with her to meetings. I’d sit in a corner and do my homework while they had group. There was a lot of hugging and crying and talking. I tried not to listen, because it wasn’t my business, but I believed those meetings would keep my mom sober. For a while, they did.

I remember trying to convince my mom to go to a meeting one time, after she’d gone on a really bad drinking binge and wrecked her car, but she said she couldn’t face them. Because they looked up to her, and she didn’t want them to see how she’d failed.

And here’s Craig, the success story, who seems to have shed all those years of alcoholism like a too-small coat. He doesn’t act like any of the alcoholics I’ve known, recovering or not. He’s too cheesy and too . . . self-righteous. I don’t believe Craig has ever seen the bleak hopelessness of addiction, because if he had, then maybe he wouldn’t be so cheery about it.

Then I think, he’s probably just an actor playing an alcoholic on TV. I’m being lied to. We all are.

The video ends, and Kayla flips on the lights and asks us questions like, “How do we feel empowered by Craig’s story?” and “How can we apply Craig’s winning attitude to our own lives?”

I keep quiet. I’m not the only one.

Then she passes out worksheets for us to fill out, asking us to be “open and honest” with our responses. I scan the questions.

Have you ever experimented with drugs or alcohol?

Which ones? How many? How often?

How did it make you feel?

All I can think to write is “None of your business,” but I know that won’t fly, so I just sit down in the corner of the room with my head in my arms and pretend to be asleep.

“Participation is the first step to rehabilitation,” Kayla says tartly as she collects my blank worksheet.

After group we have “leisure,” a fancy word for lazing around. Most everyone else drifts out, so I stay in the common room and get comfortable on the couch.
Judge Judy
’s on TV. My mom and I are big fans of Judge Judy. She cuts right through the bull and doesn’t put up with a lot of drama in the courtroom, even though they seem to bring in the least rational people they can find. That’s entertainment.

Judge Judy’s in the middle of giving the business to this guy who’d accepted money for painting a house but then never finished the job, when I realize I’m alone in the room. A bad feeling washes over me as I glance left, then right. The Latina Queens. I scramble up off the couch. Someone yanks my hair so hard my neck pops. When I open up my mouth to scream, they stuff a gag in it.

They push me back on the couch and pile on top of me as I kick and thrash against them. I manage a garbled scream before they shove my face into the musty couch cushion.
Someone climbs on my back, digging their bony knees into my spine. I’m powerless to stop them, doing everything I can to just breathe. I wrench one arm free and swing blindly, connecting with some girl’s face.

“Bitch,” she utters, and falls back.

I’m about to grab for someone else when all of a sudden, they’re gone. I look around to find myself alone in the common room. I draw a few ragged breaths and push the gag out with my tongue. It’s somebody’s disgusting sock.

I flex my hand, and my fingers brush against something soft and animal-like. I glance down at a long serpentine tail lying next to me on the couch.

Not a tail. A black braid.

My hair
.

Next to it are the scissors from Mr. Chris’s class. The scissors
she
stole. I reach behind me to feel only the stubby ends of my hair, which now end right at my neck.

They cut off all my hair.

I grab the scissors and my braid and storm out to the hallway, heading straight for Brandi’s room, but Tracy cuts me off. She comes out of nowhere and gets right up in my face, so close I can smell the Fritos on her breath. “What’s going on here?” she demands.

“Taylor, what’d you do?” Kayla says, closing in from behind.

I’m trapped between them. I have the urge to shove Tracy
out of the way, but she’s huge, and I know there will be consequences. I feel as though I’ve been punched in the gut. All I can do now is tattle on them, something I hate doing.

“They did it,” I say to Tracy, and hold up my braid as proof. “In the common room. They cut off my hair.”

“Who?” Kayla asks.

“Brandi and her
gang
.”

Kayla frowns a little, denting the space between her eyebrows. “Brandi,” she calls.

Brandi appears in her doorway with a perfect poker face.

“Brandi, is this true?”

“Is what true?” she says oh-so-innocently.

“Did you cut Taylor’s hair?”

She looks at me like it hurts her feelings that I would accuse her of such a thing. “No, ma’am. I was just in my room listening to music with Trish.”

On cue, Trish appears in the doorway with one earbud in her ear. She holds the other one out like it’s meant for Brandi.

“Aren’t those the sharps from Mr. Chris’s class?” Trish says, pointing to the scissors in my fist. She’s reading a line they’ve already rehearsed. I squeeze the scissors with all my strength. I can’t believe this is happening.

“That’s right. Didn’t they find them in her backpack?” Brandi says.

“Taylor, where’d you get those?” Kayla asks me.

I can’t look at her or even speak. I’m so angry that they’re getting away with this. Then I see Charlotte standing in her doorway. Her room has a clear view of the common room and the couch. She must have seen something.

“You saw them,” I say to Charlotte. “You saw what they did, didn’t you?”

She looks at me like a scared rabbit, but I know it’s not me she’s afraid of. It’s them.

“Charlotte, did you see what happened?” Kayla asks.

“I was coloring.” She turns toward me. “It doesn’t look that bad.”

“Give me the scissors,” Tracy says, and I force myself to hand them over calmly. “Stay in your room until dinner.”

I don’t trust myself not to give Brandi and Trish a righteous stiff-arm, so I walk straight past them without looking up. In my room I scream into my pillow and pound the mattress with both fists.

When my anger subsides, I glance up to see my comb lying on the bureau and figure I won’t be needing it anymore. I pick it up, turn it over in my hands, then use the edge of the bureau to snap off its teeth, one after the other. I think again of Andy the security guard. He liked to drink, but he wasn’t an alcoholic, which is why he and my mom eventually broke up. My mom’s pretty good at faking sobriety, but never for very long.

Anyway, one time Andy was over at our house kicking back
a few when he decided to teach me and my mom some basic self-defense moves. It was all in all pretty hilarious, but the thing I remembered was that he used a sharpened pencil to show us how to attack. You could stab someone in the side of the neck, or for a direct hit, aim for the eyeball. If your assailant’s arms get in the way, stab them in the side, thrusting upward so the pencil gets under the rib cage and punctures something important.

I retrieve Margo’s matches from my backpack. With my back to the door, I light one, using the flame to melt the plastic into a fine, sharp point.

“Hey.”

A voice. A
guy’s
voice. In my room. I jump to my feet and survey the room in one fast sweep.

“You there?” he asks.

I open the closet and look under the bed, the only places he could hide, but I’m alone in the room. Then I realize his voice is coming from the air vent, same as the guitar.

“I heard screaming.”

It never occurred to me that if I could hear into someone else’s room, they might also be able to hear into mine. I glance out to the hallway—clear—then drop down on my hands and knees over the vent.

“That was me,” I say, “but it was . . . nothing.” Not nothing, but nothing I can explain through an air vent to a perfect stranger.

“So, you’re . . . okay?”

I notice his accent, a slight twang. Not like some of the other kids’ exaggerated drawls. More like a slow pour, like there’s no rush for words.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I pause for a moment, thinking it’s pretty considerate of him to ask, but also weird and slightly creepy that he can hear into my room at any time of day.

“Who are you?” I ask, but he doesn’t respond. Maybe he didn’t hear me or maybe he left the room. I sit back and wait for him to say something else, but there is nothing.

A few minutes later Kayla comes into my room and asks me what happened with my hair and the scissors, so I tell her. Again. She says she’s going to set up peer mediation between Brandi and me, which just sounds like more punishment, so I change my story and tell her I cut my hair myself.

“You’re sure that’s the truth?” Kayla asks.

“Does it even matter?”

“Of course it matters, Taylor. If Brandi did it, then she needs to admit to it and try to make it up to you.”

“Can she bring back my hair?”

“Well . . . no.”

“Then I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

But she keeps asking me to tell her what
really
happened. So I sit there—still as a stone—until she throws up her hands in frustration and a safety calls our floor to dinner.

Downstairs I tell Margo the true story of my run-in with the Latina Queens. My hair keeps falling in my face, irritating me, and I keep having to push it out of my eyes, since it’s now too short to pull back into a ponytail.

“The thing that really gets me,” I say to her over a slice of mystery meat and gritty mashed potatoes, “is that they were all in on it together. Even Charlotte saw what happened and didn’t say anything.”

Margo shakes her head. “Don’t take it personal, T. The Latina Queens rule the third floor. It’s the law of the jungle up there—eat or get eaten. Be the predator or be the prey.”

“I thought people here were supposed to be happy. Everyone in the brochure is smiling.”

Margo laughs. “Those are just models. Unattractive ones. But you’re better off than me. The girls on my floor are always cutting themselves with paper clips and accusing me of stealing things.”

“Stealing things? What things?”

She doesn’t answer me; she does that a lot. “Don’t worry about the Latina Queens. I’ll get them back for you. I’m kind of the expert at that.”

“How?”

Margo winks. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

We finish with our dinner and dump our trays—cardboard,
plasticware and all. I get this crazy impulse to jump into the garbage can and hide there until I get thrown out, eventually re-emerging at a landfill far, far away.

“Hustle your bustle,” Margo says. “I want us to get good seats for the show.”

I follow her into the media center, which is just this huge room with rows and rows of chairs with a podium in the front and a big-screen projector where they show movies and PowerPoint presentations. Last night the topic was teen suicide. Tonight it’s eating disorders. By “good seats,” Margo means the back row, where Victor’s saved us two spots between him and A.J. A.J. glances up at my hair, which I’m sure looks like crap. I reach back to try and fix it, but it can’t be helped.

“Where’s the popcorn?” Victor asks Margo.

“There were mice in the popcorn,” Margo says, “and the soda machine was out of order. I hope you brought the candy.”

Victor opens his jacket wide enough to reveal a bag of M&M’s, and she claps her hands with delight. The lights dim, and the movie begins with a doctor talking about the importance of a healthy body image. Margo and Victor break into the candy, and we pass it among us. It’s been a while since I’ve had any real junk food and I don’t want to lose it, so I’m careful to keep it out of sight. When I glance over at Margo and Victor, they’re holding hands and whispering to each other. Every once in a while, Victor steals a kiss. It’s sweet and
kind of sad, too, that this is probably the closest they get to going out on a date.

I glance over at A.J., who’s leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed, a thoughtful expression on his face. I wonder what he’s thinking right now. I hardly ever see him with anyone but Victor. I wonder what he did to wind up in a place like Sunny Meadows, but that’s not the sort of thing you ask someone you hardly know. Unless, of course, you’re Margo Blanchard.

I don’t realize I’m still staring until A.J. glances over at me. His gaze drifts from my eyes to my hair, and I suddenly feel hot and embarrassed.