When the World was Flat (and we were in love) (2 page)

“You used to be tidy,” Jo complained, tossing worn-out sneakers into a tub labeled “shoes”. “I think this summer has fried your brain.”

The summer, or the nightmares? I wondered, watching her wrinkle her nose at a sock before throwing it into my laundry basket.

While I rewound the film in my camera, Sylv pointed out that if I used a digital camera we could see the shots now.

“If you wanted instant photos, you should have used the booth at the Ezy-Buy,” I said. I liked to develop my own photos in the darkroom at school. I could spend hours in there. It was like being in another world.

“As long as you develop the roll before Thanksgiving,” Sylv said. “I have to be discovered before my folks start nagging me about the SATs. As if I want to go to college!”

“As if you could get into college,” Jo quipped.

Sylv stuck out her tongue, flashing the silver stud in its center. “I have contacts.”

“A one night stand with a college guy is not a contact.”

“What about a one night stand with a college professor?” Sylv asked.

Jo stuck her fingers in her ears and squealed. “Eew!”

We were constantly blocking our ears around Sylv. We had staged an intervention with her last year after she had pulled a packet of condoms out of her handbag during biology. We had been learning about the reproductive system and Sylv had decided to turn the lesson into a show and tell, which had not gone down well with our teacher, Ms French.

We had pointed out to Sylv that she was adding fuel to the fire that had been started by Melissa.

“When life gives you sour grapes, you make lemonade,” she had said.

“You mean lemons,” Jo had responded.

“I know you are, you said you are, so what am I?” Sylv had quipped and I have to admit that I laughed. Meanwhile, Jo had probably been wondering why we were even friends with Sylv.

Deb had a theory that we were friends because we were like the four elements – Water, Earth, Fire and Air. She said I was Water, because I was “as deep as Big Mac.” It sounded like a burger, but it was the deepest lake in Nebraska. Jo was grounded, which made her Earth. Sylv was burning out of control as Fire. And Melissa had drifted to another group of friends because she was Air.

“An airhead,” Jo had corrected.

 

The girls stayed for dinner – veggie burgers and tabouleh. We were joined by the latest couch surfer, an artist-slash-hippie called Bill who talked non-stop about making candles.

Sylv kicked me under the table whenever he said, “Hot wax.” That girl could make a sermon sound sexual.

When Bill invited Sylv to make candles with him, I choked on a mouthful of burger. It stuck in my windpipe and Jo had to give me a couple of thumps on the back.

As I sucked in a breath, a sudden shiver ran down my spine.

“Are you OK?” Jo asked.

“I think someone just walked over my grave,” I said with a cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Cold. Cold. Cold, I thought, as a now familiar chill settled in my stomach.

 

3

 

On the morning Tom started at Green Grove High – “T-Day” – the constant cold in my stomach was, at least temporarily, replaced by butterflies. I squashed them, telling myself I was being stupid.

I chanted the word “stupid” as I put on mascara and cherry lip gloss. At the last minute, I also put the gloss on my cheeks, for a healthy glow. Well, that was moronic. It shone like glitter. I smeared it with my hand and my chin shone too.

“Idiot!” I scolded, sticking a washcloth under the faucet. It squeaked as I turned on the water and the pipes banged inside the wall. Bang! Bang! Bang! “Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!” they seemed to shout.

This old house was falling down around our ears. I looked at the tiles, cracked and broken on the side of the bath, and then at the rusted drain hole, the chipped basin, the split and rotting windowsill. It was a dump, like half the houses in Green Grove. They had this temporary look about them, as if the builders thought no one would live here longer than a couple of years.

I continued to study myself in the mirror after I wiped my chin and decided I was wasting my time. Who was I kidding? As if the “new guy” was going to look twice at me: just look at my track record. Since my freshman year there had been three new additions to our grade at Green Grove High. Two had been male and neither had looked in my direction since they had set foot in this town. It was like I was invisible to the opposite sex. Maybe because girls like Melissa had breasts and I was as flat as an ironing board.

At least I had clear skin. Jo and Sylv both had spots, no matter how much they squeezed and scrubbed. They had more color in their complexions though. My skin was sallow and I had perpetual dark circles under my eyes, like smudged mascara.

I guess I could have blamed them on waking up at odd hours, gasping for breath like a fish in a bucket – the nightmares were like having sleep apnea – but I had basically been born with my dark circles. A guy who dated my mother when I was in Elementary used to call me “Panda Eyes”. I tilted my head this way and that to see if they were highlighted by the fluorescent light that flickered above the mirror. My eyes glinted green, my one remarkable feature. But no one called me “Emerald Eyes”.

“He probably has two heads anyway,” I said, mimicking Jo, and then laughed, half at what I had said and half at the fact that I had said it out loud.

I was running about ten minutes late thanks to my primping and preening. Normally, I would have rolled out of bed and pulled on a few worn-out clothes. Today, I had spent at least fifteen minutes selecting a white cheesecloth top to pair with my customary light blue jeans and a pair of gold-colored ballet flats. A couple of large plastic bangles jangled on my wrist.

My wardrobe came from Tree of Life, one of those stores that sold gemstones and incense. Deb worked there part-time and I pulled a few shifts here and there, which meant we got their clothes discounted or for free when they overstocked. I went for the non-hippie-ish items, meaning no tie-dyed dresses or crocheted vests. I did have a pair of hemp shorts though, and the cheesecloth top I was wearing that day. That being said, made by hand, as in knitted, stitched or dyed, was non-negotiable when you were shopping free trade.

I checked the clock and realized Jo was running late too. We had walked to school together rain, hail or shine since kindergarten. When she did arrive, I saw she was wearing about a gallon of perfume and a skirt.

“You have a tear in your tights,” I pointed out. The fact that she even owned a pair of tights or a skirt was kind of headline news, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Dammit,” she cursed, looking at the ladder, which ran from her knee to mid-thigh. “My only pair too.” She pulled at her hem, but she would have had to let it down about five inches to cover the hole. Jo was the opposite of a tart, but no one wore a skirt past their knee at Green Grove High, despite the efforts of Principal Turner – otherwise known as “Turnip” – and his tape measure.

Our school had a strict dress code which no one followed. Heavy make-up was banned, as were skirts above the knee. For boys it was rude T-shirts, sleeveless tops, torn jeans, jewelry and bandanas. Not that there were any gangs in Green Grove, unless you counted Melissa and her lapdogs, who we liked to call the Mutts.

I found Jo another pair of tights in my dresser.

“Thanks,” she said.

I nodded and knew well enough to face the wall while she pulled them on. She was modest, unlike Sylv.

 

It took us fifteen minutes on a good day and twenty on a bad day to walk to school. I thought it was going to be a good day until a red bird flew across my path and my legs locked-up as I recalled my nightmares.

“Look,” Jo said. “A red crossbill.”

I had to laugh, even though my chest was constricted, as if by a large rubber band. “When did you become an ornithologist?” I teased.

We got to school a few minutes before the bell. I could tell that every girl at Green Grove High had added an hour or so to their routine that morning. The corridors smelled like tanning lotion and teachers were busy sending students to the bathroom to wipe off eye make-up and lipstick. It was the routine whenever a new guy came to our school.

“Is he here yet?” Sylv asked breathlessly when she met us at my locker.

She was wearing a white micro miniskirt and black ankle boots. Her sparkly red top had a plunging neckline which showed a black lace bra. She was beyond breaking the dress code – she was annihilating it. Turnip was going to have a stroke.

“No,” Jo sighed, and I wondered if she was sighing about Tom or about Sylv and her choice of wardrobe. I guessed it was the latter when I saw her wince as she looked Sylv up and down. I heard a few giggles behind me and knew without looking who was the laughing stock.

“What I want to know is: what have you done to your hair?” I asked.

Hairdressing was Plan B for Sylv if modeling was a dead end. She had managed to flunk Hairdressing 101 overnight though, because she had dyed her hair as orange as a tangerine. She had also teased the roots and unloaded a can of hairspray into it, like they used to in the Eighties. She kind of looked like Cyndi Lauper.

“Why would you want to be a redhead?” Jo asked. Her own hair was strawberry blond, but she put a brown rinse through it once a month, turning it a mousey color with a hint of orange. It hung to her shoulders with a couple of kinks at the back, which gave it an unbrushed look. I wanted to smooth it constantly, like I was her mother, tucking in her shirt or dabbing at her face with a wet tissue. Jo would have slapped me silly though.

“The packet called it ‘Tangerine,'” Sylv said.

Well, whaddayaknow? I was right.

“Anyway, I like red hair,” Sylv continued, looking down the corridor at Taylor Blackwood. Sylv had been crushing on Taylor since he got suspended for riding his skateboard in the gymnasium last March. To her, he was a daredevil. To me and Jo, he was an oil slick, with greasy red hair that made a cheese pizza look fat-free.

“Ariel was a redhead,” I said, “and Jessica Rabbit.”

“They were cartoon characters,” Jo pointed out.

The bell rang, but no one moved. The boys continued to lean against their lockers, looking around for their competition. The girls were gathered in groups, wondering if Tom was going to be a no show. We were cutting into class time, but no one gave a hoot about English, except for Jo, and the teachers, who were shooing students out of the corridors, like we were a herd of cows blocking the road.

“Gotta go,” Jo said, leaving us in her wake.

“Give your lover a kiss for me,” Sylv called after her. It was an ongoing joke that Jo had it bad for her English teacher, Mr Bailey. She spoke about him like he had invented the English language. I guess he was kind of good-looking, if you were in the market for a father figure. He was about fifty-something with gray hair. Eew. That being said, me and Sylv were in the lower classes and had Mrs Baker, who had a moustache. Double Eew.

 

At lunch we sat in the cafeteria at our regular table opposite the double doors. There was a window behind us, but our view would be obscured by a layer of dirt or snow, depending on the season. At the moment, it was the former.

For nine months of the year, dirt swirled through the air, as if God had shaken a picnic blanket over Green Grove. It got into our clothes, our shoes, our houses, our cars. I often wondered what the town would look like naked, without its brown or white coats. Maybe the cars would look newer or the paint on the houses fresher, but I knew it was more likely to look like an actress on one of those stars without make-up specials.

The janitor did stretch himself to clean our window now and then, but when he did all you could see on the other side was a brick wall.

There was a commotion across the cafeteria.

Sylv nodded and gave a low whistle.

“Would you take a look at that?” Jo said. “One head.”

The butterflies filled my stomach again and I hesitated before turning in my chair, as if I could see the fork in the road. When I did turn, I saw Tom walking through the double doors of the cafeteria, looking like he belonged in an advertisement for Salvatore Ferragamo. Oh yes, I knew my labels. Thanks to Sylv.

He was wearing a gray T-shirt with roughed-up jeans. They looked brand new though, as did his white sneakers.

He ran a hand carelessly through his hair, which was brown and short, but not too short for that tousled, bed-head look. He was about thirty feet from me, but I could see his face as if it were inches away, his broad cheekbones, straight nose and strong jawline, as symmetrical as you like. There was a scar too, just under his chin. It was too small to see from where I sat, but I knew it was there, even though we were strangers.

How? I wondered, but then he met my eyes and it was like my thoughts were sucked into a vacuum. I saw that his irises were a light blue, rimmed by a darker blue. It was like looking into glaciers, unlike the plain brown or gray varieties that were common in Green Grove. Of course, I had guessed his eyes would be as remarkable as my own, if not more so.

It would have been nice to say it was like worlds colliding for him as well, but the look Tom gave me was not even that between a brother and sister. It was a dead-behind-the-eyes look and in that split second we locked gazes he was as connected with me as Jo was with her femininity. I may as well have been a piece of bubblegum stuck to the concrete or a dust mote floating on the breeze.

Looking back now, I understand the look he gave me. I know what was going through his mind. But at the time it was like being spat on.

I suddenly realized I was out of my seat and sat back down with a nervous giggle. Jo was giving me a what-the-hell look. I blushed like it was going out of fashion, staring at the ground and wondering if the entire cafeteria was laughing at me or if all eyes had been on Tom.