My Life in Black and White (15 page)

Crap.

Mrs. Silver spun around. “Everything all right?”

Oh, yes. Everything’s peachy.

As I squatted to retrieve my pencils, a vision of Ryan and Taylor flashed across my mind—her coppery highlights, his tan legs. If only Ryan were wearing flip-flops right now: I would stab him in the foot. Which wouldn’t be nearly as bad as getting stabbed in the
back
, but still. You had to start somewhere.

After trigonometry, I tried to shake it off. I tried to pay attention to my teachers, but I couldn’t. Seeing Ryan again triggered all sorts of memories I didn’t want to think about.

Like this one time when he and I were hanging out at his grandparents’ house and he dragged their old tandem bicycle out of the garage because I told him I’d never ridden tandem before. He told me not to worry, he’d steer; all I had to do was pedal. He took me to the top of this really steep hill. I told him to go slow, and he promised he would. But when we started going down, he did the opposite. He went kamikaze: all pedals, no brakes. “Slow down!” I kept screaming. “Slow down!” I was so scared. But Ryan just yelled back, “Hold on!” When we got to the bottom of the hill, he was laughing. Then he saw that I was crying, and he said, “Shit.” He pulled me into this big hug and told me he was sorry. Probably, I should have slapped him. A lot of girlfriends would have done that, to get their point across. But I didn’t. I stayed right where I was, my face pressed against his shoulder, breathing in the grassy-sweet smell of his shirt, feeling safe in his arms.

My throat hurt, thinking about that moment.
See, dumb-ass?
part of me was saying.
He was always a jerk.
While the other part of me was saying,
No, he wasn’t. He loved you.

“These burritos smell like armpits,” Rae announced as we settled into our seats in the cafeteria.

“Why do you buy?” Kendall asked. “Why don’t you
bring
your lunch like a normal person?”

Heidi set her tray next to Rae’s and squeezed in beside her. “I
like
cafeteria food.”

“Shocker,” Kendall muttered. This was a clear reference to Heidi’s weight, a running joke that made me uncomfortable and the other girls at the table—a mixture of field hockey and soccer players—snigger.

“Seriously.” Piper Benson smirked into her Diet Coke. “Carbs much?”

Heidi, oblivious as always, started chowing on burritos. At the same time, Rae asked me how it felt to be back—was it weird?

“It’s okay,” I said.

And what about this random table we’d been relegated to, now that we were lowly sophomores?

“It’s different,” I admitted, more to my sandwich than to Rae.

“We’ve been demoted!” Kendall cried in faux outrage, like losing our center-table status was the worst thing that had ever happened.

I could feel my old teammates, Kelly Bartells, Ariana Ramos, and Laurel Popovich sneaking glances at me.

So I asked the obligatory question: “How’s field hockey going?”

Laurel, who’d played left wing to my center since seventh grade, said that the season was off to an awesome start, that—even though they were only on JV and didn’t have me or Taylor—they’d already won their first two games against Greenwich and Darien, which was
huge
, and that their coach, who looked like Angelina Jolie, used to play Division 1 for Boston College.

“Wow,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Yeah.”

Both Ariana and Kelly nodded and smiled in my direction, but they didn’t exactly meet my eyes.

“So,” Laurel said, “are you getting a late tryout?”

I was about to answer no when Heidi suddenly shrieked, “TayTayyy!” Which meant that Taylor, her lifeline, had arrived.

“Where have you
been
?” Heidi demanded. “I waited for you at your locker for, like,
ever
.”

Every cell in my body froze as I waited for Taylor’s next move.
If she sits next to me I’ll leave,
I thought.
I will stand up and I will walk straight out the door without a word
.

But Taylor took the seat between Heidi and Ariana. “Sorry I’m late,” she murmured. “Jarrod had a doctor’s appointment, and my mom was dropping him off. I wanted to find out how it went.”

Suddenly, the whole table was buzzing. “What did the doctor say? Can Jarrod play football yet? How’s his collarbone?”

I’d forgotten all about Jarrod and his collarbone. But clearly no one else had. Which, okay, I know not everyone felt the aversion to Taylor’s brother that I did. In fact, most of them worshipped him. But all this concern over how he was doing, when
he
was the pervert behind the wheel, driving us into a tree? Come on.

“Well,” Taylor said, glancing tentatively at me, then back at everyone else, “the collarbone is healing fine, but apparently he separated his shoulder, too, which they didn’t realize at first. That’s why he’s been in so much pain.”

Pain? Jarrod doesn’t know pain.

“Does he still need the sling?” Rae wanted to know.

“Yeah, for a few more weeks. Then he’ll start physical therapy. But it looks like he’s out for the season. He’ll still be captain, but…” Her voice trailed off and a chorus of
ohhhs
and
poor Jarrods
commenced.

Taylor grimaced, glancing at me as if to say,
I know. I’m sorry. You have it a million times worse
.

I knew what she was doing, trying to get back on my good side. As if that were even possible. As if I could ever, in a million years, forgive her for what she did.

Just as I averted my eyes from Taylor’s, the lights in the cafeteria flicked off, then on again. My head swiveled like everyone else’s, to see Jarrod at the far end of the room, standing on a chair.

“Omigod,” Heidi squealed. “Speak of the devil!”

We watched as he lifted a megaphone to his mouth with his non-sling arm. “Three words, people: Friday. Night. Lights. Millbridge versus Fairfield.”

That’s six words, moron.

“Be there.”

Eight.

Jarrod made a sweeping gesture with his megaphone and every football player in fifth-period lunch stood up. Taylor’s crush, Rob. A bunch of guys I recognized from the LeFevres’ pool. Kyle Humboldt. Jason Saccovitch. Ryan.

Slowly, and in complete unison, they began to clap.

Clap…

Clap…

Clap…

Until the entire cafeteria was clapping along with them. Clapping and cheering. Clapping and screaming.

My table, it seemed, was the loudest in the room—everyone shrieking and jumping up and down, like groupies at a rock concert. I wanted to feel it, too. But somehow this collective burst of Wildcat pride had the reverse effect, sucking the spirit right out of me.

Taylor’s face was lit up like Christmas morning. It hurt my eyes to look. It hurt my hands to clap.

It hurt.

It hurt.

It hurt.

The Point of Baked Chicken

“YOU MEAN YOU weren’t moved by the Wildcat Spirit?” Ruthie said in the car on our way home. “You weren’t tempted to bust out Mom’s old pom-poms and start straddle jumping?”

“Please,” I snorted, thinking of the cedar trunk in our mother’s closet—the one that held her most prized memorabilia. Beauty pageant sashes. Prom corsages. Pom-poms.

“You realize,” Ruthie deadpanned, “that football players are our heroes. Right up there with firefighters and Jesus. We’re
supposed
to worship them at mealtime.”

“Well,” I said, “Jarrod killed my appetite.
And
Ryan. The whole thing made me want to barf.”

I knew, even as I spoke, that I was being a hypocrite. Two months ago, I would have been cheering as loud as anyone. Louder. And the sad thing was that I actually
wanted
to be cheering. I
wished
that my only care in the world was whether Millbridge beat Fairfield on Friday night.

“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln,” Ruthie said, lifting an eyebrow at me, “how was the play?”

“What?”

“It’s a joke … Abraham Lincoln? Assassinated in the Ford Theater by John Wilkes Booth?”

“Whatever,” I muttered.

“I’m drawing a parallel to your day,” Ruthie explained, college professor to janitor. “Trying to add some levity.”

“Can you ever just talk like a normal person?”

“I don’t know, Lex. How does a normal person talk?”

I rolled my eyes and told her, “Never mind.”

“No, no. I want to be
normal
. I want to be just like everybody else.”

I knew she was messing with me. Ruthie loves to mess with people to make a point. It is one of her patented lawyer-in-the-making moves, designed to bamboozle her opposition.

“I hereby pledge,” Ruthie said in her best-little-Girl-Scout-in-the-world voice, “to avoid all historical references and multisyllabic words, so all the cool kids will like me—forever and ever, amen.”

“Good luck with that,” I said, letting the sarcasm flow right back at her. Which was better than tears, at least, which I’d spent most of sixth period shedding in the locker room while I avoided gym class. And Taylor.

And the whole world.

As soon as we got home, my mother began her interrogation. Ruthie pleaded physics quiz and took off for her room. I considered doing the same. I had a legitimate excuse—two weeks worth of homework to catch up on—but I knew that nothing would stop my mother. Wherever I went, she would follow.

“How was your day?” she asked the second I entered the kitchen. There were after-school snacks on the counter. Carrot and celery sticks arranged in the shape of a fan. Grapes. Ice water with slivers of lemon. My mother smiled, gesturing to a stool. “Why don’t you sit and tell me all about it?”

I sat. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything! How are your teachers? Your classes?”

“Okay.”

“How are your friends?”

I thought about Kendall’s and Rae’s forced smiles. The weird, sideways glances of my field hockey teammates at lunch.

“They’re okay,” I said, plucking a grape from its stem and holding it in my hand. I’d barely eaten all day, and I was starving, but I didn’t want rabbit food.

My mother raised her eyebrows, waiting for information. For fifteen years she’d been doing this. Hounding me for every last detail of my life. Who did I sit with at lunch? Which boys were cute? Who liked who? This time, I didn’t feel like giving her anything.

“Well,” she said in her infuriatingly chipper tone, “great! I’m glad the day went well.”

“Why?”

“Why?”
She frowned slightly.

I rolled the grape between my fingers. “Yeah.”

“
Why
am I glad you had a good day?”

I shook my head. “Never mind.” My mother hates when people say never mind; she thinks it’s the height of rudeness. “Forget it,” I muttered.

There was a beat of silence. My mother picked up a carrot then set it back on its plate. “Do you think I don’t know how hard this has been for you, Alexa? Do you think I don’t see those Band-Aids?”

I stared down at the counter.

“Well, let me tell you something … it hasn’t exactly—” Her voice cracked. For a moment I thought she was going to lose it, but then she recovered. “It hasn’t been easy for me, either.”

It was the craziest thing I had ever heard. It was even crazier than Kendall and Rae telling me I looked great. This hasn’t been easy for
my mother
? This wasn’t
about
her. It had nothing to do with her! I made my voice dead calm. “Oh. Right. I’m sorry this has been so difficult for you.”

“Alexa.” My mother shook her head. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, no,” I said before she could finish her sentence. “You must be devastated … to have a daughter who’s never going to be Miss Connecticut or prom queen or homecoming queen … or … you know … queen of any kind.” I was babbling now, a complete idiot. “I’m sorry I ruined your dreams for me!”

“Honey, no.” My mother’s voice was shocked, her eyes shiny. Any second now there would be waterworks, and I wasn’t about to stick around to watch.

“I have homework,” I said, realizing, as I turned to leave the kitchen, that the grape in my hand was now a pulpy mess.

I couldn’t call Taylor, obviously. Taylor, who had always been my go-to girl in times of angst—the ultimate giver of pep talks. I couldn’t call Ryan because … well … Ryan was dead to me. My dad was in court. Which left Kendall and Rae, who, although they had always been closer to Taylor than to me, seemed to be taking my side right now. I shouldn’t have faulted them for acting fake in school. At least they were showing some loyalty—walking me to class, saving me a seat at lunch. If that wasn’t friendship, what was?

I picked up my cell to call Kendall, but it went straight to voice mail. Rae, same thing. That’s when I remembered they had soccer practice.

So I left messages, and an hour later Kendall called me back.

“Lex!” she said. “I’ve been thinking about you. What’s up?”