You and Me and Him (18 page)

“You are not who I thought you were, Maggie Bower. Not at all.” She grabs her backpack, flings open the door, and marches out into the hallway.

The bell rings before I make it to English. Cece and Nash are huddled together across the room, far from where the three of us usually sit, and Nash shoots me a look that’s three parts venom and one part heartbreak. I slide into an empty desk, my stomach already clenching with the ache of isolation.

Just before lunch, I get a note from the office saying Ms. Perry wants to see me. I gather my things and head to the gym, preparing myself for another layer of mortification. Ms. Perry is obviously waiting for me. She waves me in, closes the door, and indicates that I should sit. She seems very cautious, and I have a fleeting impression that she’s a little afraid of what I might do. She sits at her desk, turning her body and leaning forward so we can talk face-to-face.

I press myself into the back of the chair, trying to maintain a safe distance.

“Maggie,” Ms. Perry begins, then pauses, like she’s trying to decide what to say. “I was wondering how things are going?” Her left leg moves up and down like a sewing machine, and she’s rubbing her thumb over each of her fingernails in turn. She waits, I guess hoping I will spill my guts, but I can’t help her. There will be no more honesty between me and, well, pretty much anybody in the near or distant future. She waits.

I wait.

I wait longer.

She tries again. “I’ve been . . . concerned for a while now. About you. I see you’re getting teased in class.”

I groan. “Ms. Perry, this is really not a good day to have this conversation.”

“I know it must be embarrassing for you. Boys can be cruel, especially to a girl like you.”

“A girl like me?” I start to get up.

“Sit,” she says.

I sit.

“Okay. Let’s start over. I’ve noticed there have been some comments directed toward you in class.”

“I’ve noticed that too.”

“I was wondering if you thought we should do anything about that?”

“I’ve thought of all kinds of things I’d like to do about that.”

“Good! Good. Wonderful.” She claps her hands together in what I can only assume is relief. “I’ve also been thinking of how we can change the situation.” Ms. Perry digs in her file cabinet, pulling out pamphlets and piling them on her desk.

“How ‘we’ can change the situation?”

“If you took a few steps to take better care of yourself, I think you’d find those boys wouldn’t have anything to tease you about. I have some information here about how to be more active—”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say under my breath. I look around at her office, at the posters of buff men and women in athletic gear, tanned muscles shining with oil and airbrushing. Then I look at Ms. Perry, all sharp angles and bony self-denial, and I get brave. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Asking questions is never a bad idea, Maggie. I want students to feel they can talk to me.”

“Well, you seem to have it in for the fat kids, and I was wondering why you find us, me, so revolting?”

“I don’t—”

“Please, Ms. Perry. I’m not trying to get you in trouble or make you feel bad. Well, maybe I am trying to make you feel a little bad. You obviously have some strong feelings about me, about ‘girls like me.’ I’m just trying to figure out why?”

“Maggie, my job is to help people be healthier.” She leans toward me. “I take that work very seriously. My methods may seem harsh, but I have your best interests at heart.” She pushes the pamphlets into my hands. “These have some great information about diet and exercise that could help you—”

“Thanks, Ms. Perry. But I know everything people like you think people like me should do. I was mostly wondering why you’re so mean about it. But now, I think I understand. I thought I had a problem, but you’re the one with problems.”

“Just a minute, young lady!”

My voice has an edge to it that is keeping both my anger and my tears at bay. “I can handle the jerks in PE. So don’t worry: you can keep doing what you’ve been doing, which I guess is nothing.” I toss a cookie onto the desk, and she recoils. “Good luck.”

Leaving the locker room, I glance through the pamphlets Ms. Perry handed me. Mixed in with the ones on diet and exercise is one on teen pregnancy and another on STDs. I let out a bark of laughter and dump the whole pile in the trash.

I can’t stay at school. I have to be outside, to breathe. I stop by my locker, where I shove the rest of my books in my backpack, and race-walk down the hall and through the double doors to the fields in back of the school.

As I make my way to the trees that line the fence at the edge of the school property, I say a silent prayer that the stoner patrol hasn’t made their way to the woods yet today. I am not in the mood to deal with the positive vibes of the newly baked. I shiver as I walk among the frosted trees, trying to stay out of sight of the building.

Leaning against a tree, I realize I have gone from never been kissed to boy-stealing ex–best friend in one weekend. I feel somehow both wounded and ashamed. Kayla screwed me. Again. And I’d like to kick her perky little ass. But I’m the one who kissed Tom. I hurt Nash. And I have no idea how to make it right. I make my way up the ridge toward town, walking until the trees and the fresh air blunt the edges of my frayed nerves.

I can’t go back to school, and I can’t go home, so I spend most of the day drifting from one coffee shop to another. I slide into Square Peg about five minutes late. My gut roils from too much espresso and a pre-work chocolate-scarfing session. But as the sugar winds through my system, I feel less frantic than I did when I left Cedar Ridge’s hallowed halls.

“Hey, Mags,” Quinn says, looking up from his computer with a wide smile. He glances at the clock and his smile morphs into a scowl, what he calls his “boss face.” “You’re late again!”

I look around the empty store. “I’m sorry. Did I leave you in a lurch while you were trying to serve the zombie hoards hungry for vinyl?” I throw my backpack under the counter and lean against the chipped Formica, looking through a milk crate of records. “What’s this?” I pull one from the crate, studying the artwork on the worn jacket.

Quinn looks up. “Record collection someone wants to sell. Short on cash, moving, blah, blah, yadda, yadda.” He peers at me. “What’s that on your face?”

My hand darts to my face, covering as much of it as possible. I wipe at a dab of chocolate smeared above my lip. “Nothing.” I turn back to the milk crate. “So what’s on the agenda today?”

“The ‘agenda’ today is pretty much like every day here at Square Peg Records: Pray for customers and winning lottery numbers while listening to rock and roll as it was meant to be heard.”

“Um, don’t you have to play the lottery to win?” I ask.

“Details, my dear. A technicality.” Quinn dismisses me with a wave of his hand. “But come to think, the bathroom could use a bit of a scrub.”

The public bathroom at Square Peg is one of the few things Quinn and I totally disagree on. He thinks it keeps people in the store longer, and therefore gives them a higher likelihood of purchasing some quality vinyl from him. I think it gives the losers downtown an opportunity to pretend to be interested in records for about twelve seconds before they lock themselves into the bathroom with the singular intention of trashing it with various body fluids. I have cleaned up pretty much every one of those fluids in that tiny water closet. On occasion I send Quinn e-mails with advertisements for biohazard gear, asking that we purchase some for bathroom cleaning duties, but so far he’s declined. We both hold our hands out for Rock, Paper, Scissors, and as usual, I lose.

I grab the bucket full of cleaning supplies.

“Use the gloves!” Quinn calls to me as I disappear into the hallway that holds the bathroom.

The gloves are another point of contention with us. I want to use them; believe me, the thought of my bare skin against any surface in the Square Peg public bathroom is abhorrent to me. However, the gloves may be, if it’s possible, even more disgusting than the bathroom, and Quinn has not replaced them in all the time I’ve been working here. I know where they’ve been, and with that history they should have been disposed of long ago with the care given to nuclear waste.

I clean the bathroom, using as much bleach as is safe in an enclosed area. When I emerge several minutes later, gloves still on, my face is hot and I’m sweating from exertion in a confined space. I hack from the bleach fumes, a sound reminiscent of a cat expelling a hairball. When I look up, the store is no longer empty. Nash is there with some friends from an LGBT group he goes to sometimes in Seattle. Nash doesn’t like them that much; he says they cause too much drama (hello, pot; meet kettle). Nash goes there if he’s feeling lonely and needs to be reminded he’s not the only gay teenager in the world, or if they’re having a dance and he wants to see if anyone new has emerged from the closet.

I know he called them because he doesn’t have anyone else. The fact that he’s here, and that he’s here with them, is meant to remind me of that. It’s a message to me about how serious this is to him, how big a betrayal. And here I stand, looking ridiculous and awful in disgusting gloves, holding a cleaning bucket, sweat pouring down my face. The boys all give me a once-over, and Nash makes a face like he’s the one who had to clean the bathroom. Now that they’ve seen me, there’s no point in avoiding things.

“Hey, Nash,” I say. “I was going to talk to you earlier but I . . . um . . . I had to leave school unexpectedly.”

Nash looks at his friends, then back at me. He’s smiling a tight little smile. “I didn’t really notice you were gone.”

“Yep. Gone for the whole afternoon,” I say. “Maybe you could call me after work?”

“I don’t think I’ll have time.” Nash runs his fingers along the edges of the albums in the bin nearest him. His friends are all watching, listening. Quinn looks through the milk crate of records, but I know he’s hanging on every word.

“Okay,” I say. “Well, when you do have time, I think we should talk.”

Nash gives a little head jerk to the boys. They head for the door, and the minute they leave, I make an about-face into the bathroom to pull myself together.

“Trouble in paradise?” Quinn asks when I return.

“There’s been some talk about Tom and me . . .” I grab lotion out of my bag and start applying it to the hands I just scrubbed into raw, red blotches in the freshly cleaned bathroom.

“Talk?” Quinn asks.

I shake my head, trying to rid it of the disastrous scenarios that have been dive-bombing my brain all day. “Nash has his panties in a bunch. You know how he can be. It’s nothing. It’ll blow over.” But my stomach is twisting, and I know this time Nash is hurt for real. And I hate that I’m the one who hurt him. I start thinking I need to move, or eat something. I need to distract myself from this awful feeling.

“Didn’t look like he’s going to get over it to me, but what do I know?” Quinn’s still looking at me. “Maggie, you know if you ever need to talk . . .”

“Quinn, we talk all the time.” I punch him in the arm super slow-mo.

“I’m glad. But I know how things can be, especially when love and friendship get tangled up.” Then he says in an accent I think is supposed to be sort of a New York mobster type, “You want I should rough anybody up for you?” At that moment Tom walks in. Quinn waggles his eyebrows at me and hooks a thumb at Tom. “Like him, maybe?”

I shake my head, giving him a big hug. “You rock,” I whisper.

“What was that all about?” Tom asks when I join him in the R&B section.

“Nothing. Quinn’s just taking care of me.”

“You disappeared today.”

“Yep.” I avoid his eyes. “I needed a little ‘me’ time.”

“Well, I was worried,” he says. “And I had to do the lab with Kayla.”

“Oh, poor baby. You had to put up with a gorgeous blonde fawning all over you.”

“She didn’t fawn. She flirted but didn’t fawn.”

I can see he’s trying to get a reaction, but I don’t bite.

“So do you want to get together after work?” he says. “Maybe have a cup of coffee or something? I think we need to talk.”

“Tom, listen,” I begin, but I’m not sure what I want to say. “Nash knows.”

“Maggie, does it really matter? He’s not an idiot. He must have already known you were into me.”

“Into you? I’m not . . . Okay, whatever. That’s not the point.” I think I know the answer, but I ask anyway. “Did you tell Nash?”

“No. No. Not all of it.”

“What part did you tell him?”

“I was trying to break it to him that I wasn’t . . . that I didn’t like him, and before I knew it, I was telling him how much I liked hanging out with you. I started out trying to make him feel better, but I guess it kind of backfired.”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“He’ll get over it, though. Right?”

“Nash was here a few minutes ago. He won’t even talk to me.”

Tom still doesn’t get it.

“Nash is my best friend. He has been for so long that not talking to him feels like I lost an appendage. A day without Nash is like a day without . . .” I search for something that communicates how basic Nash’s presence is to me.

“Is like a day without drama?” Tom offers.

It’s the first really snarky thing I’ve heard him say. I want to congratulate him on shedding the nice-guy thing for once, but my loyalty to Nash won’t let me.

“He’s really not like that,” I mumble.

“Could have fooled me.” Tom shoves the record he’s holding back into the bin. “I don’t get it. I’m not gay. I would never have liked Nash in that way. I think he’s cool and all, but I don’t really understand what that has to do with us.” Tom puts his hands on his head and kicks a bin of sale records near the counter.

“Hey! Gentle with the merchandise!” Quinn says.

Tom takes a deep breath. “Sorry. I honestly don’t know what the big deal is, Maggie. All I know is I like being friends with you. Can’t we keep hanging out like we have been? You know, just as friends?”

“Just friends?” My skin goes cold, then hot, and I grab the counter, clutching it until my knuckles whiten. I knew this was probably coming, but it stings all the same.