You and Me and Him (20 page)

When the alarm clock jangles the next morning, I groan, slapping my hand on the snooze button to stop the electronic beeping. I have thrown off all my covers, but I am clutching Neshie by his trunk, which I have apparently been twisting for a good part of my REM cycles. It’s crinkled and frayed looking, and I try to smooth out the damage, kissing Neshie on the bindi as I lay him back on the bed. I feel frayed and crinkled as well, but I suck it up and head to school, determined that today will be better.

As I board the bus, Nash’s eyes lock on mine and he scoots to the middle of our seat, leaving no room for me. Tom is in the front row and tries to motion that I should sit with him. I smile but slide into a neutral row halfway between them. The sun is streaming in the windows, and I catch glimpses of the lake and hillsides through the houses. I spin my iPod to my perkiest playlist, psyching myself up for whatever the day has to offer.

English is the worst. Nash and Cece huddle together, whispering like long-lost besties. I say hi as I walk by them to a back row seat. Cece says hi back: courtesy is an instinct with her. Nash just watches me, his face blank. I know this look. It’s the look he has when he’s so messed up, he can barely keep his seams from unraveling. It’s the look he has when he doesn’t want to fall apart.

With Nash and me both avoiding Tom, Kayla has stepped into his friendship vacuum. During a brief foray into the cafeteria to buy a Diet Coke from the soda machine, I see Tom sitting with Kayla and her friends. He looks amused, and the girls giggle at something he says. Kayla puts her arm on his forearm, marking her territory for the others. With all his talk of spending time with people “worthy,” if Kayla’s the best he can do, his standards aren’t that high.

One of Kayla’s minions notices me and leans in to tell Kayla. Tom spots me. Our eyes lock for a second. He smiles, but his face clouds with worry. Seeing him smile, I feel my chest open, and I breathe for the first time all day. But I also feel naked, vulnerable, like everyone in the cafeteria can see my insides, can see all the pain and anger I’ve looped through the last couple days. He starts to get up. I reach into my bag for some of the cookies I baked last night, then put my chin up and walk over to the table.

“Hi, Tom,” I say, handing him a wrapped cookie.

“Maggie, hey!” he says. He keeps glancing between Kayla and me.

I smile and offer cookies to the skinny girls at the table. They look at me like I offered them freshly harvested rabbit turds.

“I’ll take one,” Kayla says. She reaches across Tom, rubbing against him to take the cookie I offer. “You know I love your cookies.” She places it on the table without unwrapping it.

“Anyone else?” I ask, but the other girls avert their eyes and shake their heads. “Okay, well, I’m off to spread the love elsewhere, then.” The girls stifle giggles. I turn and walk away, tossing cookies onto tables like grenades on my way out of the cafeteria.

I bake like mad the next few days, bringing cookies to school, trying to keep my giving ahead of my excess production. I pass them out three at a time, leave them on teachers’ desks. I even offer some to the janitor and give a whole batch to the skaters playing Hacky Sack in the quad.

“Thanks, dude!” they say, and dig right in.

The fall weather is holding, and the mornings are frosty but bright with sun. I walk to and from school so I don’t have to be trapped on the bus between Nash and Tom. The walks settle me down and give me time to think about what I’m going to do about the mess Kayla made.

In PE I fake an injury to keep from having to spend a twelve-minute mile in conversation with Tom. Unfortunately this means that when the wrestling jerks finish their runs, I have to sit in the bleachers and listen to their litany of unimaginative, off-color jokes.

“What’s brown and white and fat all over?”

“I think I see a mooooooooose!”

“We should ask Tommy Boy if her love handles really work?”

I know I should ignore it, but I find myself thinking surprisingly detailed thoughts about the damage I’d like to do to them.

Bio is a different story.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” Tom asks.

“I’m talking to you.”

“You’re talking to me, but we’re not really
talking.
”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I start paging through the massive bio book, looking for information on the mitosis lab we’re supposed to do the next day.

Tom waits for more, but I’m all business. Eventually he gives up.

Quinn knows something’s wrong, so I psych myself up for work in my post-school, pre–Square Peg time. This involves walking the bluff, eating cookies, and blasting my “Angry GRRRRL” playlist. Sonic Youth and Sleater-Kinney howl in my ears, obliterating for a few minutes the dull pain losing Nash has carved into my gut. It’s not a permanent solution, but it gets me through my shift.

None of this fools Quinn, but it’s better than disintegrating into a weeping pile of sludgy teen angst while I’m trying to help some customer find the album he was listening to when he packed for college, or when she lost her virginity, or whatever other life moments can only be recaptured by experiencing the sound of John Cougar’s “Jack and Diane” played on vinyl. Come on, some of these people are tipping into “ancient” on the timeline. Is it even legal for them to subject me to the horrifying imagery that comes with hearing stories that meld their first sexual experience with the crappy music now in heavy rotation on the local classic rock radio station?

After a week or so of my faking it, Quinn draws a line in the sand. Billie is singing “Glad to Be Unhappy,” weaving her spell over the store speakers. I ring up some lady’s purchase with my now-customary zombie verve. After she leaves, clutching
ELO’s Greatest Hits
like it’s the fountain of youth, Quinn switches Billie out for some random record in the RTP bin. A classical tune—Mozart, I think—comes over the speakers.

“Hey,” I say. “I was listening to that.”

Quinn slams the nearly one thousand pages of his collectible record price guide down on the counter. “Stop it, Maggie.” He slaps his hand on top of the book. “Just stop it. Enough Billie. Enough wallowing. Enough sad little Maggie.” He gets my attention with the potentially lethal price guide, and I glance around to make sure there aren’t any customers in the store before I answer.

“Um, Quinn? Are you okay?”

“Compared to you, I’m the picture of mental health,” he says.

I get quiet.

“How long have I known you? A year that you’ve been working here? And then a couple years before that when you were hanging out trying to score some eighties vinyl?”

I straighten the counter, putting pens back in the ceramic fish.

“So about three years? Give or take? And in all that time, have I ever tried to boss you around about your life, or your friends, or about anything that went beyond interested conversation about weather, school, and your slightly disturbing relationship with Nash?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Okay, yes, but this is different.”

“Quinn, listen . . .” I say, but he shakes his head.

“I know you think you screwed up, that you deserve whatever heaps of agony Nash is dishing out.”

“Because I do—”

“But friendship is a two-way street,” Quinn says, interrupting. “Denying yourself everything you want does not make you a good friend.”

“Neither does kissing the boy my friend likes.”

“Okay, okay,” Quinn says. “Maybe you have some apologies to make. That’s your business. But remember, you deserve to be happy too.”

I look away, but Quinn waits for me to meet his eyes before he continues.

“Maggie, you can’t see it. I know you can’t see it, but you have light. And you spend so much energy shoving that light down, making yourself small inside, and big outside, to hide yourself.” Quinn puts his hands on my shoulders and forces me to look him in the eye. “Stop hiding,” he whispers.

“I’m fine,” I say, twisting away from him, wiping my eyes. “Tears of a clown and all that shit.”

“Maggie, don’t,” Quinn says. “Don’t go. Don’t run away.”

I grab my pack and, pausing in the open doorway, I say, “Thanks, Quinn,” and make my escape.

About halfway down the block, I stop and let out a short burst of laughter as I realize that five seconds after Quinn tells me to stop running, I run. I know I’m in danger of becoming that awful cliché—the fat girl who eats her feelings—so I go to the mini-mart near the bluff and buy cigarettes. I have no idea which ones to buy; there’s a brand made with organic tobacco. I decide the lack of pesticides will offset some of the other bodily harm, so I buy those and a cheap lighter and take them to the bluff, finding a spot where I can watch the sun sag into the hills around the lake.

Settling in, I unwrap the thin cellophane and take out one of the cigarettes. It has an herbal, almost clean scent, way different from the menthol smoke I remember from sneaking one of Nash’s mom’s cigarettes in fifth grade. I put the filter in my mouth and light the end, inhaling as I do. After a prolonged hacking fit, I try again. More coughing. I give it one more try before deciding that I’m an absolute idiot.

I have to face the facts: food is my drug of choice. Not as glamorous as cigarettes or as tortured as alcohol. I could probably hang out with the cool kids if I numbed out to one of the more interesting substances. I sigh, stubbing out the cigarette, and pull out my phone.
I miss you,
I text Nash, and send the message out into the universe. I want to remain on the bluff, watch the stars come out, feel small again, like I did last summer on the dock. But it’s too cold to stay, and I know I can’t hide forever.

By the time I get home, my throat is raw and scratchy and there’s a screaming maw in the region of my stomach. I go to the kitchen, looking for something to feed the beast. The pantry, I realize too late, has turned into a health food market. I slam the door and make a fruitless search in several other cupboards before accepting that my mom has crossed over into eliminating every one of the foods that I need most on a day like today. We’re even out of chocolate chips. In desperation I decide to make a stripped-down cookie dough from the butter, raw sugar, eggs, and organic flour my mom still allows in the house.

By the time I get it mixed, I don’t feel like actually baking, so I scoop a large clump of dough into a bowl, throwing the rest into the trash can. I clean up after myself; I don’t want anyone to notice I’ve used the kitchen. In my bedroom I put on some vintage Morrissey, the ideal soundtrack for my self-piteous mood. I check my phone. Nothing from Nash. Nothing from anyone. Flopping onto my beanbag chair, I start in on the bowl of soft, raw dough. After a few bites, I feel a little sick, so I put the bowl aside and slip my headphones on, shutting out everything but Morrissey’s whiny lyrics.

I fall asleep like that, waking a couple hours later to my dad shaking my shoulder. I start, ripping off the headphones, and then look around sleepy and confused.

“Dad? What . . . ?” I sit up, taking in the bowl of half-eaten cookie dough, the headphones, and see how it must look to my dad.

“Dinner’s ready, if you’re still hungry,” he says.

My gut forms a hard little shame biscuit. “Dad, I . . .” I begin, but what can I say about this?

“Maggie, I wish . . .” he says, his words sticking. “I wish you could see yourself like I see you. I wish you could see . . .” He makes a vague gesture toward me and then lets his hands drop to his sides. “I don’t like to see you treat yourself this way.” He turns to go, and I let him.

I pull my grandma’s quilt off the bed, wrapping myself in its soft cotton, and spend the rest of the evening arcing between sobbing jags and numb lethargy. When sleep comes at last, it descends like a hammer blow, and I’m down hard, my face glued to the beanbag chair with saliva and snot from crying myself to sleep. Too soon the shrieking of the alarm and the glare of the bedside light drag me up through the deep layers, and I’m conscious again.

I slap my hand on the alarm, silencing it on the second try. I don’t even try to turn the light off. My fine motor skills were never at their best in the early morning, and my hand tingles, heavy from sleeping on it too long. Groaning, I throw my numb arm over my eyes. After a few minutes, the alarm starts screaming again. I hit the snooze again, with better aim this time, and let one foot fall to the floor. Progress. I’m up. Sort of.

There is a tentative knock on my door. “Honey?” my mom whispers, cracking the door open.

“I’m up.”

“Okay, I was worried . . . I heard the alarm.” She inches her way through the crack. One foot, one shoulder, her head, the rest of her still outside. I can’t tell if she’s trying to respect my privacy or provide herself a quick escape. “I missed you yesterday. I didn’t see you at all,” she says. “How are you?”

I shift my arm off my face enough to give her a dirty look. “Awesome!” I say. “Living the dream!”

“Maggie, come on, honey,” she says. “How bad could it be?”

I drop my arm back over my face.

“That bad?” She shifts her weight, still trying to decide if she wants to be in the room or out of it. “Can I help?”

“Mom, I appreciate the parental concern, and you are doing a bang-up job, believe me. But this is something I’m going to have to solve myself.”

“There must be something I can do,” she says.

“Mom. Sorry, but no. You’re going to have to take my word on this one.”

She watches me for a moment; I know a big part of her wants to advise me, to organize and arrange my life. “Okay, honey. You let me know if you change your mind.” She commits now and comes all the way into my room to kiss my forehead and give my knee a squeeze. “Hang in there, Maggie.”

“Excellent advice,” I mumble as she leaves. I swing my other leg onto the floor and propel myself up and to the shower.

I’m running late, not enough time to walk to school, so I catch the bus, barely. Nash shows no signs of softening, no sign of letting me in or even letting me get close. The bus empties, and I don’t even try to blend with the drivers from the student parking lot. I round the corner to my locker and stop short. Tom is there waiting for me. Looking around, I search for a place to hide, but he sees me before I can escape. Tom lifts his hand in a little half wave. My lips form a little involuntary smile.