My Life in Black and White (17 page)

“Aren’t you proud of me?”

Ruthie turned the steering wheel and sighed. “Is that why you’re doing this? To make me proud of you?”

“Doing what?” I said.

Ruthie gave me that look again—the one from the closet. I could see in her eyes that she had something to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Which wasn’t Ruthie at all. Never, in all her seventeen years, had my sister kept her mouth shut about anything.
“What?”
I said, exasperated.

I waited.

Finally, Ruthie shook her head. “Nothing,” she said quietly. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Lex. I’m glad you’re back at school. Let’s just leave it at that.”

I stared at her.

“I know how you feel about the bus,” she continued, “and I’d love to help you out, but stage band starts today. It goes until five o’clock. You can hang out in the library until I’m done or call Mom to pick you up or … whatever you want to do.”

“Library,” I said.

Ruthie raised an eyebrow.

“What? An afternoon among the books will do me good.”

“It’s not just one afternoon, Lex. I have rehearsal every day but Friday, every week of the school year.”

I frowned. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Stage band, marching band, jazz band. Trombone is a serious commitment.”

It’s a serious waste of time,
I thought to myself. But instead of saying that, I shrugged. “Fine. I’ll hang out in the library four days a week. Rule number six, remember? Study!”

“Yeah,” Ruthie said, pulling into the parking lot. “I remember.”

When the car stopped, I combed my hair in front of my face but resisted the urge to look at myself in the side-view mirror. I knew what I looked like, and I didn’t need to be reminded. I wasn’t about to let anything ruin this perfect day.

For the first four periods, everything went great. I successfully ignored Taylor and Heidi, avoided Kendall and Rae, and, in trigonometry, didn’t look at Ryan once. I was the model student: attentive to my teachers, oblivious to the superficial chatter around me. I knew people were staring at my face. I knew they were whispering. I just refused to let it bother me.

But fifth period, after I’d dodged Laurel and Ariana in the hall and ducked into the girls’ room to steer clear of Jarrod LeFevre, I was in the lunch line, waiting for a tray and listening in on the conversation taking place a few feet ahead of me. It was football players, I could tell—even before I saw their sweats, MHS muscle shirts, and gold chains. As I contemplated fries versus onion rings, I heard one of them vow to “kick Fairfield’s pansy ass” on Friday night and the other complain about his “bee-atch of a mother,” who wouldn’t let him drive her car. Then the question arose, “Dude, have you seen that sophomore with the smokin’ bod?”

“Which one?”

“The blonde chick with the fucked-up face.”

“The one LeFevre hooked up with?”

“Yeah … lucky bastard.”

“
Hell
, yeah. She’s hot as shit from the neck down.”

“All she needs is a bag over her head.”

There was laughter, a high five, but I no longer heard what they were saying. Words were bouncing around my skull like pinballs.
Fucked-up face. Bag over her head. The one LeFevre hooked up with.

Jarrod told people we hooked up? We barely kissed. Hooking up could mean anything. It could mean
everything
.

My brain went numb, and I forgot all about the new Lexi. The walls were caving in and I couldn’t breathe and I needed to get out of there and I pushed my way back through the line and walked faster and faster until I came to a room and in that room was a door and I threw it open and—

“Hey!”

I froze.

“Shut the door!” a voice barked. “Shutthedoorshutthedoorshutthedoor!”

I shut the door.

“It’s called a darkroom for a reason.”

Darkroom,
I thought, my heart pounding against my rib cage.
Right.

There was a sharp, chemical smell in the air. I steadied myself against the wall, feeling my nose burn. But after a few breaths I got used to it. My eyes adjusted to the blackness. I didn’t care how dark it was. I didn’t care who else was in here. I was just happy not to be seen. I slouched against the wall, letting the darkness wrap me like a quilt, feeling my muscles loosen, my pulse return to normal.

“Damn,” the voice muttered.

“What?”

“My film’s ruined.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Didn’t you see the warning light? The big red one outside the door?”

It was a stupid question, because obviously I hadn’t. “Why don’t you just use a digital camera?”

“That,” the voice said, “would defeat the purpose.”

“Why?”

“Film development is an
art form.
”

Then, out of nowhere, the lights flicked on and a boy was squinting at me. A boy with black, wiry hair and skin so pale it looked like he hadn’t spent a single day of his life outside. He was two heads taller than I was, so I felt like a child looking up at him. Which, after the humiliation I’d just endured in the lunch line, was the last thing I needed. I felt my eyes sting, and I hated myself for being such a baby.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry, you idiot.

“Hey,” the boy said, his eyes softening. “I’m not mad at you.”

I shook my head, feeling my face grow hot, which made me remember my graft and the fact that I wasn’t wearing Band-Aids, which made me want to fling open the door and run.

I didn’t want to run.

New Lexi wouldn’t run.

She would do this: stare straight into Photo Boy’s eyes without moving a muscle, until he turned away. I needed to train my brain, make it completely blank.

Forget your face.

Forget what Jarrod said.

Forget the lunch line.

Just stare.

For a second, I was doing it—mind over matter. But then, for some reason I got distracted and realized I was in a small, enclosed space with a boy whose eyes were an unnerving shade of green, and he was staring at my face.

I ran because I couldn’t stand another second.

I stayed out of sight until the end of the day, avoiding everyone—except for the nurse who gave me Band-Aids—by skipping sixth, seventh, and eighth periods, holing up in a carrel in the library. At five o’clock, Ruthie found me.

“Oh my God. Are you
studying
? Alert the presses!”

I shut the random book I’d grabbed from the stacks, the same one I’d been staring at for the past four hours without reading a single word. “How can I be studying? I don’t even have my backpack.”

“Why don’t you have your backpack?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“It wasn’t a rhetorical question.”

“Never mind,” I told her. “Just walk me to my locker.”

Ruthie shrugged. “Whatever you say.” She picked up her trombone case. Then, as soon we got out into the hall, she started whistling.

What are
you
so happy about?
I thought, trudging along behind her.
You’ve never whistled a day in your life.
When we got to my locker, she was still whistling. “Could you stop?” I snapped. “That’s really annoying.”

“Well, excuuuuuse me,” Ruthie said. But she didn’t look offended. In fact, she was smiling.

“What’s
wrong
with you?”

Now, she laughed. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

I slammed my locker. “Never mind.”

We started walking again.

“Ask me about band,” Ruthie said suddenly.

“What?”

“If you really want to know, ask me about band practice.”

“Why?” I asked, with growing annoyance. “Who cares?”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Look, I’ve had a horrible day. I’m not in the mood.”

Ruthie nodded, no longer smiling. The whole way to the parking lot, she didn’t say word.

“What—now you’re mad?” I said as we got in car.

“I’m not mad.”

“You seem mad to me.”

Ruthie sighed, turning the key in the ignition. “I’m not mad. I’m not anything. Let’s just go.” This from the girl who loves to argue, who never backs down without a fight.

Now I
knew
something was wrong.

We drove all the way home in silence, during which I replayed, over and over, the events of my day.

By the time Ruthie pulled into the driveway, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Jarrod told the football team we hooked up!”

“Well, didn’t you?”

“No! All we did was kiss!”

Ruthie nodded. “Okay, but hooking up’s a continuum, right? Anything from kissing on.”

I stared at her, amazed she even knew this.

“If he told people you guys hooked up—if he used that precise term—he wasn’t necessarily being inaccurate.”

“Are you
defending
him?” I demanded.

“No. I’m just being logical.”

“There’s nothing
logical
about it,” I said. And I replayed the conversation from the lunch line, in sordid detail. “How could they say those things about me?” I cried. “How could they say those things about
anyone
?”

“I don’t know, Lex. It’s how they roll.”

“It’s how they
roll
?” I stared at my sister. “Do you even
know
any guys on the football team?”

“Yes.”

I snorted in disbelief.

“What—you think because I’m in band I couldn’t possibly interact with anyone
popular
?”

I shrugged. “Your words. Not mine.”

“Ty Mastrobattisto,” Ruthie said. “Marcus Burns. Jason Godomsky. Rob Stiles, Peter Moskowitz, Brendan Sutcliff … Do you want me to keep going? Because I’ll keep going….”

I shook my head, dumbfounded.

“You think you’re the only one they’ve ever insulted? Try getting called Godzitla every day for three years. You’ll get to know them really well.”

“Godzitla?”

“Yeah.”

“Because of your—”

“Yeah … forget it.”

“That’s the stupidest name I ever heard. Your skin isn’t even that bad.” I was saying this to be nice, but I realized, looking at her, that Ruthie’s face was clearer than I’d seen it in a long time.

“Forget it,”
she said again a little sharply. “I don’t care. Those guys are Neanderthals. They run around head-butting each other all day and treating girls like pieces of meat. Their opinion means nothing to me. That’s my whole point.”

“
What’s
your whole point?”

Ruthie sighed, like this conversation was suddenly too exhausting for words. “Get over it, Lex. Grow a backbone. Just like the rest of us.”

Specks of Dust, Atoms

WHEN RUTHIE AND I walked in the house, our father was waiting on the couch in the mudroom. He did not look happy.

“Tough day in court?” Ruthie asked.

But he didn’t even answer. He looked straight at me and said, “Alexa. My study. Now.”

I’d never heard him speak to me that way. As I took off my backpack and followed him down the hall, I felt a mounting sense of dread.

There were only two chairs in my dad’s study—both dark leather with cracked armrests—and he’d set them up to face each other.

“Sit,” he commanded.

I sat.

“I received a phone call from your principal this afternoon,” he said, “and do you know what he told me?”

I shook my head.

“He told me that in the two days you have been back in school—of the sixteen class periods you have been expected to attend throughout those two days—you have been absent a total of five class periods. Five.”

He looked at me, as though waiting for me to question his math.

I didn’t.

“While I understand, and your teachers understand, that this is a time of readjustment for you,
you
need to understand that skipping classes is absolutely unacceptable. The anti-truancy statute in the state of Connecticut is irrefutable. Your mother and I have given you plenty of leeway by allowing you to miss the first two weeks of school, but that grace period is over. You are too smart to repeat your sophomore year. Am I making myself clear?”