What Happens Next (19 page)

After a few minutes, I am really getting into the spirit of the song, my voice is getting louder, and both the closet cleanout and the singing are reaching an animated pitch. Ronan decides he’s had enough estrogen and gets up and goes into my brother’s room. The pile of clothes on my bed is growing bigger and bigger and the song is coming up on its big soaring chorus.

Out of nowhere the merriment comes to a screeching halt. In the back of my closet, stuffed behind a ton of junk, I see something bright green peeking out. It’s the coat that I wore on the ski trip, the one I borrowed from Kirsten because I didn’t have any gear of my own. The mere glimpse of it slams into me like a bus and knocks me on my ass.

I pull it out and stare at it hanging limp in my hands. The lift ticket is still attached to the front of it. Then my stomach slides down into my feet as I pull the coat off the hanger. The music is blaring and has gone from girly and chipper to a shrieking sort of mockery.

I never even noticed the lift ticket when I put the coat in my closet all those months ago. As I look at it, really look at it, I feel dizzy and I have to sit on my bed to keep from falling over. The print blurs in and out of focus as I make sense of what it says:SNOW RIDGE SKI LODGE GROUP DISCOUNTED LIFT PASS. C. MURPHY. LHS SKI CLUB, CLEVELAND, OHIO.

As Petula sings, I reach a clammy, trembling hand into the pocket of the coat and pull out the receipt that he had written on.

CLEVELAND ROCKS!!!

I start to see fuzzy blackness and flitting little dots of light. “Seeing stars,” I guess it’s called. I’ve never seen stars before, and I’ve always wondered what “seeing stars” looks like and now I know.

The music is even louder now. Petula is really belting out her anthem, really giving it all she’s got, and I clench my teeth because this primal sort of anger and fear is building up inside of me, a panicked fury that is burning me up from the inside out. I stand up and stagger a bit. I take off my shoe and throw it at the radio to stop the singing but I miss and it just bounces on the floor. I walk over, and with a swooping hand, swat the radio off my dresser; it rattles over the side and is lodged between my dresser and nightstand. I jerk at the cord until it comes unplugged and the music stops. None of this helps because the music is replaced with the ringing hiss of the Truth. I sit back on my bed, put my head between my knees, and breathe deeply so I don’t pass out. I put my hands to my ears to try and stop the ringing hiss and I am shaking badly now and my stomach is swimming with greasy meatloaf, gravy, and yams. The Urge is tadpoling around inside it, feeding off it and growing bigger and bigger. The Truth ridicules me, in a singsong voice from inside my own heart….
I took a course on shedding accents. I can pinpoint where you live by the way you talk. Blah, blah, blabbity-blah. God, you are so stupid. Cleveland rocks? Ha! You had it plastered on the front of you the whole time!

I cross my arms snugly over my chest. Hot tears spill down my cheeks. I wipe them away and try not to listen to the voices inside me, but the Truth, it just gets angrier….

You are a fat, stupid slut, Sid Murphy. Your chest and ass are still huge. God, you’re begging for it, walking around with that disgusting shit bouncing around. Three sizes? Come on! You can do better than that…

“No,” I whisper.

But the Truth is stronger than I am. And as I get up and stumble toward the bathroom, I know what I need to make it quiet. The Urge swims around inside me, so happy to be called upon.

I close the bathroom door behind me and turn on the water.

I run the water loud and flush repeatedly so Liam won’t hear.

19

Corey and I
are friends now and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it. He is the only person at school who was truly nice to me during those winter months when I had no real friends, and I haven’t forgotten it. It means a lot to me now. In fact, he means a lot to me now. As a friend, I mean.

I go to the bakery sometimes in the early mornings to visit him. I get up at four thirty, run for an hour, and then stop in and hang out with him and Mr. DiRusso until six. Mr. DiRusso always reminds me that “he no pay me” whenever I so much as pick up a spatula or look at a measuring cup, but he sends me home with loot every time—a six-pack of doughnuts, a few scones, a cinnamon raisin loaf. I’ve been good about not eating them, though. It’s like a contest I have with myself. If I can make it home without opening the box, I win. I give the prize to my mom and Liam for breakfast, telling my mom that I ate already. Then I run up to get a shower before school.

Today, I am getting a ride to school from Corey. Kirsten’s car is in the shop and I was going to jog there, but I lost my mind temporarily and asked Corey for a ride. I think the dieting is going to my brain. He got this surprised look on his face, and at first I thought it was a bad surprised. I thought maybe I’d overstepped somehow. A flush began to creep up my neck and I immediately went into recovery mode, looking around at everything in the bakery except his face. The ovens, the marble slab kneading table, the cooling racks, babbling like a fool.

“It’s okay, I mean, my mom can take me. You’re probably in a hurry anyway. It’s like right on her way to work and—”

He interrupted, saying, “No, that’s not—I mean, yes. I can give you a ride. For sure. Your friend, too.”

So I knew that the look had been a good surprised look. But still, I had to turn away because the flush kept creeping and I’m sure I was full-on blushing at that point. Tragic, I know. All I could manage was a quick “okay cool, see ya then” before bolting toward the front of the store, walking Mach ten.

It wasn’t until I was already out the door and onto the street that I realized I had never even given him my address. I almost kept walking but turned around to go back and tell him where I live. As soon as I turned around, he was already hanging out the door, calling my name and waving me down. “It’s seven seventy-five Berry Blossom, off Clifton!” I yelled to him.

“What about your friend?” he asked.

“I’ll call her and ask if she needs a ride. Thanks again!”

He threw me a nod and I turned and raced for home. I didn’t bother calling Kirsten. I’m not ready for Corey and my friends, or Corey and my family, for that matter, to be in the same spaces together. I can see it now: everyone over-talking, sizing one another up, being careful and polite, all the while searching for defects and shortfalls to pick apart later. So I’ll be keeping things and people in my life separated for now. It’s easier to manage things that way.

I’m getting ready for him to pick me up and I’m so nervous and the nervousness is making me sweaty. I’m used to seeing Corey in certain settings, the bakery mostly. Sometimes we see each other with our respective friends at lunchtime. We wave or nod to each other from across Burger King or Taco Bell. He goes back to talking to his group of friends, detention-type kids who make
woo-hoo
noises, and I can always hear the words
cheerleader
or
smart girl
or
redhead
thrown in somewhere. Corey will shrug and say something that I can’t make out from across the room, but I know it’s probably something like, “Shut your hole, Carzetti,” or “Eat your burger, Olshansky. Idiots.” I just go back to picking at my fries and talking to Paige and Kirsten or whomever we may be sitting with from school, mostly smart kids who are scared to death of the stoner crowd and don’t say anything to me about Corey for fear of getting an earful.

We rarely see each other in school, though. He doesn’t take the same sort of classes I do, so he’s always in a different section of the building. He’s more an auto shop, woodshop, remedial math type student, while I’m more honors and college prep. I asked him once why he doesn’t take cooking since he’s so good at that sort of thing, and he immediately stopped kneading the big mound of dough he was working on and looked at me with a face that said,
Are you high?

“Because I’d get my ass pounded, Sid. Jeez.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry,” I said, chuckling.

Duh. I’d just gotten so used to him wearing an apron and being a baker that I’d lost my mind, I guess.

God, I’m really nervous. Did I say that already? I’m nervous because even though I know it’s just a ride to school and we are totally just friends, it feels like he’s picking me up for a date or something. And I’ve never been inside his truck before. It feels like a step toward something. A leap, in fact.

I know I’m being ridiculous. We’re just friends and I’m acting like a freak.

I’ve picked out a billion different outfits and my room looks like a Laundromat blew up—there are clothes everywhere. I can’t figure out what to wear. I mean, all he ever really sees me in is sweats with no makeup and that’s been fine, safe for me actually, so why should I care now? I should just put on my usual sweats and be done with it.

But I don’t want to; I want to look nice when he picks me up.

I haven’t worn the clothes I bought yet. I went to put them on one day, but chickened out. I have been getting by with just sweats, and also wearing belts and long baggy shirts to cover up the shlumpiness of my old pants. I was going to return everything this weekend. After I came out of the bathroom that day when I flipped out from finding the ski jacket, I shoved all the clothes back in the bag and stuffed it under my bed. Then I immediately took the coat to Kirsten’s house so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. I ripped the lift ticket and receipt into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet, and I haven’t had the Urge since. I haven’t done you-know-what for a week now. I think that the “taking back, ripping up, and flushing away” ritual might have cured me of it. I’m just watching what I eat now and running a lot, which is fine.

I finally bite the bullet, removing the tags from a pair of jeans and then sliding them on. I decide to wear this cute turquoise baby doll top that has little daisies around the neck. I go to the bathroom and pull out the makeup bag that has sat untouched under the sink since the ski trip. I put on a little makeup, and even though it’s very minimalist, I still feel like a hooker. I have to force my hand away from the wet washcloth on the sink. A voice is creeping into my head, saying,
Wipe your face. You look like an overeager tramp,
so I grab my hair stuff and go to my room. I sit on my bed and try not to look at the mirror as I towel-dry my hair.

Ronan is on the front lawn while I stand fidgeting on my front porch, my backpack at my feet. I cross my arms. Then I uncross them. I look down at my shoes, a pair of peep-toe pumps that have been collecting dust since last fall.

I try to think about nice things—birds, blossoms, summertime, the smell of Irish Spring and doughnuts—but all I can think about is how massive my boobs must look in this top and how big my butt feels in these jeans. I’m wearing one of my mom’s bras because my bra cups have started to wrinkle in all the wrong places. But her C-cup is still too small and cuts into my sides. I’m glad, though, in a way, that my bras don’t fit right anymore, because it means my boobs are shrinking.

“Come on Ronan! Get it done already!” I yell.

Ronan yawns, looks away from me, and continues milling around, looking for a nice spot to take care of business. It’s a week into May and unusually warm out, like seventy-five degrees, and it’s only seven thirty in the morning. I know that no one else will be wearing a jacket, so I have to force myself not to put a coat on. I adjust my neckline so there is no sign of cleavage. Then I continue to fidget, getting more and more nervous. I turn around and look at my reflection in the glass storm door to Mrs. O’Leary’s half of the house. I turn my backside and look at my jeans. Yep, the ass is still—

—I look away. I look at the FOR RENT sign in the window and am stung with sadness. I can’t even look at a newspaper anymore without thinking of her. We still haven’t been able to find a suitable renter for her apartment, and we are fast going broke. My mom has dropped all the premium channels on our cable and switched gas companies to get a better deal. The cereals Liam likes have been replaced with imposter brands, and we’re eating a lot of pasta these days. Well, Mom and Liam are, anyway. I try to dodge dinner whenever possible and tell myself that I’m helping out with the grocery bill.

I look down at myself again and think of my mom and feel guilty about the clothes I bought. I had no right to go and blow all my money like that. I should have bought something for the family. That’s it. I’m going back inside. I’m putting the tags back on these jeans and returning them. It’s for my mom, not because I feel naked in them.

Just as I reach for the doorknob, Corey’s truck pulls into my driveway. He beeps and throws up a wave. Ronan barks and runs to greet him. Corey lowers his window and pets Ronan’s head, then Ronan runs back toward the house. I let Ronan inside, lock up, and then head to the truck.

“Hey,” Corey says. He leans over to the passenger side to open the door for me.

“Hey,” I say, tossing my backpack into the backseat.