When the World was Flat (and we were in love) (12 page)

Jo turned into Jell-O around Mr Bailey, stuttering and stammering to the point where it took her about ten minutes to say hello. It made me wonder how she had managed to top his class, considering he had been her teacher for two years and counting.

Today she seemed to have developed a nervous tick too, punctuating each sentence with a flick of her jet-black hair. Hold on. I squinted across the quad. Was that her hand on his arm? Seriously? I straightened up, as Jo threw back her head and let out a laugh that echoed around the quad. Oh my God. She was flirting with Mr Bailey. Flirting!

My mouth hung open as Jo waved goodbye with a flutter of her fingers.

“Are you… OK?” I asked, as we walked down the driveway.

“Fine.”

I bit my lip. “Cross your heart?”

“And hope to die.”

Wrong answer. I frowned. “But–”

“What are you? My mother? I said I was fine.” She quickened her pace and I had to skip a few steps to keep up.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

 

There was a stack of books next to my bedside table which Deb had given me after I had asked about the meaning of dreams. I shook my head at myself as I opened one of them – a dream dictionary – and flipped through the pages until I got to “death”.

“To dream you are dying indicates a transitional phase. You are about to reach enlightenment.”

I closed the book and leaned against the pillows. Good news, I guess. I was about to become enlightened. I picked up another book. This one was a dream guide. My eyes scanned the chapter headings, “Premonition”.

“Dreams can be a message from the universe,” I read, skipping the boring bits. “You may be visited by a loved one, or even by yourself. Blah, blah, blah. Bad news or a warning. OK. Prophetic.” And then this: “Abraham Lincoln dreamed about his death two weeks before his assassination.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered. Maybe the dreams had been warning me about the railroad crossing. But that had come and gone, and the dreams had continued. I bit my lip as I considered this conundrum. When had the dreams started? The beginning of summer? I sat in bed with the book open for a long while, not reading.

How much longer do I have? I wondered.

 

13

 

My breath caught in my throat when I saw Tom at his locker the next morning. It was like my body temperature increased to a thousand degrees whenever he was around. I noticed his hair was less tousled. He must have had a haircut.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he responded, his attention on the contents of his locker.

I dropped my bag at my feet and looked at him sideways. His lips were slightly parted, as he busied himself with his books, and I realized he was drawing in deep breaths, as if calming himself. I was the one who needed to be calmed though, as I watched his chiseled chest rise and fall under his T-shirt.

I spun the dial on my own locker. “I missed you yesterday,” I said quietly and then blushed. Of course, I meant he had cut school yesterday, not that I had missed him, even though I had. I needed to change the subject ASAP. “You got a haircut.” And now I sounded like a stalker. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

“Lillie.”

“Yes?” I asked breathlessly.

“What do you want?”

You, I thought, looking at him like a junkie at a crack pipe. What had Melissa called me? Pathetic? Yeah, no kidding. I turned my head from side to side and whispered, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

I returned to my locker, but in my peripheral vision I could see him looking at me, one hand fiddling with his locker door. I kept my eyes on my Algebra book, thinking how stupid it was that I had spelled “Mathematics” in full on the front. Not once had I said, “I have Mathematics homework tonight,” or “I have a Mathematics quiz next period.” It was always Math, short and simple. It would be like calling Tom, Thomas. I wondered if his full name was Thomas. Thomas Windsor-Smith.

Thomas William Windsor-Smith, a voice whispered in my mind. “Is your middle name William?” I suddenly asked.

Tom looked alarmed, but then composed himself. “I made a mistake last weekend,” he said.

I closed my eyes, telling myself he was talking about being at the railroad crossing with Melissa and the Mutts, not about driving me home. But I was kidding myself. If Melissa was a pony then Tom was a stallion. And me? Well, I was a donkey. Yep. Like the T-shirt I happened to be wearing at that exact-same second. A complete and utter ass.

I pulled his coat from my locker. “Here,” I said, pushing it at him.

He caught it in the stomach, like a medicine ball. “Lillie,” he said in a pleading voice. “Please understand. I came to Green Grove to be on my own – not to get involved with anyone, especially you.”

His last words were like a slap across the face. Especially me? I glared at him. “If you want to be on your own then maybe you should stop hanging out with Melissa.” I slammed my locker shut and hauled my bag over my shoulder.

Loser. Loser. Loser, I chanted in my mind as I walked through the corridors, not sure if I meant him or me. The sound of my shoes on the linoleum seemed to echo the rhythm. Click. Clack. Click. Clack. “Lo-ser. Lo-ser,” until it became, “Lil-lie. Lil- lie.”

 

I took a break from the world at lunchtime and went down to the darkroom to develop the film from the weekend.

As I watched the negatives develop in the tray I realized there would be no break from Tom, because there he was in the first frame, walking down the front steps of Rose Hill.

His association with Rose Hill meant I saw him in all of the negatives after that. He was there in the ballroom, leaning against a pillar. He was standing on the grand staircase in the foyer. He was walking towards me, out of the frame and although the image was in black and white I could see the pale blue of his eyes, burning through me like the center of a Bunsen burner.

I cringed as I thought about wearing his jacket, about smelling the collar. I really was pathetic.

I was relieved when the bell rang and I was able to leave the negatives behind on the line to dry. I took my time with walking to my locker, knowing I had World History with Tom.

I spotted Jo in the quad and called out her name.

“Want to cut class?” I asked when I had caught up. “I think we both need a break.”

She shook her head. She was wearing a bucket load of gray eye shadow and heavy black eyeliner today, which had smudged under her left eye, giving her a look that was half-goth, half-hooker. “I have English last period.”

I rolled my eyes. “Mr Bailey will be here tomorrow and the next day. He probably comes in on weekends too.”

“I have to hand in an assignment.”

“But we can get rocky road milkshakes from the Duck-In Diner,” I angled. “My shout.”

She glowered. “What? Do you think you can bribe the fat girl with food?”

“Jo. No. You know I–”

She raised her hand like a traffic cop. “I said ‘no' and I mean ‘no,' Lillie. Maybe next time you should throw in a couple of Twinkies.”

My blood boiled as I watched her walk to class. Who was this girl and what had she done with my best friend? I wanted to bombard her with photos of us swimming in the river at the Rainbow Retreat. I wanted to tape her eyes open and make her watch a twenty-four hour musical marathon. I wanted her to be Jo again.

“Have fun with your boyfriend Mr Bailey!” I yelled, my voice bouncing off the brick buildings and turning a few heads.

Jo spun around with a face like fury.

I stood my ground as she stalked towards me, her black boots clomping on the concrete.

“And you have fun with Tom and Jackson,” she spat, stabbing a finger into my chest. “Maybe you could spare a few for the rest of us.”

I raised my eyebrows. Was she calling me a slut? “Maybe I would if you dressed like yourself, instead of like a freakshow.” It was what Melissa had called me and I was sorry as soon as I said it.

Jo stared at me for a moment and I saw her chin wobble, before she turned and clomped across the quad to class.

Shit. Shit. Shit, I thought as she went.

I decided to cut class on my own. I went via the playing fields, instead of the driveway, where Turnip would have swooped on me in a second.

Jo and I had agreed to disagree a thousand times during our friendship, but I could count our fights on two fingers.

Once was when we were ten years old. Jo had accused me of cheating while playing Casino, a card game made up by Sylv, where we had dressed up like hookers and smoked twigs like they were cigarettes. Sylv had decided to start a fire with a lighter and our twigs, and I had thrown a couple of cards onto the flames. Jo had hit the roof because one of the cards happened to be from her hand and she had been about to win for the eighth time in a row. It was three years before I admitted that I had known it was the ace of hearts, which trumped all other cards in Casino.

The second was when Deb had bought me a training bra. Jo had thrown a tantrum because her dad was as likely to buy his little girl a bra as he was to turn vegetarian.

Jo had snarked that I was as flat as a tack and I had told her she sounded like Melissa. “Are you going to spread rumors about me and Simon Caster?” I had asked.

We had stopped talking for three days and fourteen hours and twenty-five minutes, which was when she admitted that she had been taping her breasts for three months.

We ended up asking her dad about the training bra together. You know what they say about safety in numbers.

“What are you in training for?” he had asked.

“Big boobs,” I had responded.

Deb ended up buying the bra for Jo, which she had to hide from her dad, washing it in the bathroom sink and drying it in her cupboard.

As I walked around the corner of the art block, I collided with the defensive tackle on our football team. At least, I thought it was the defensive tackle, because it was like being hit by a wrecking ball, but then a hand closed around my arm, holding me up, and I realized that if it were a jock he would have let me fall.

“Sorry,” I muttered, glancing up.

“Lillie?” It was Tom. His forehead was creased with concern. “Are you OK?”

I pushed past him and broke into a half-run, suddenly needing to get away from school – from Jo, Tom and Green Grove altogether.

From Green Grove with Love. Yeah, right.

 

Deb was working at the Tree of Life, so I went home and drew a bath, dissolving three bags of lavender in the water before pulling down the blind and lighting a candle. I looked for my dancers in the flame, but instead I saw two figures pushing and pulling each other, wrestling, fighting, until they merged into one. Then the figure was gone and all I could see was a flame.

For the first time in my life I wished I had learned meditation from Deb. I thought of how relaxed she looked as she performed yoga in the morning, chanting “Om.” She had told me the sound of om represents the four states of the Supreme Being.

The four states of Tom, I thought miserably.

I sank down into the water until it reached my chin, letting the warmth wash over me.

“Ommmmmmmmmm,” I said, and then spluttered and choked as water entered my mouth.

Once I had recovered from my near drowning, I let myself slide into the bath until I was floating with my face above water, but my ears below. My knees were tucked up tight given the small dimensions of our tub.

“Ommmmmmmmmm,” I said. I could hear the sound loud and clear in my head, like it was echoing within my skull. I repeated it over and over.

Suddenly I felt a hand grip my throat and I was pushed under the water. I screamed, bubbles coming from my mouth and nose as I thrashed in the tub, sloshing water over the sides. The water went cold, as if a bag of ice had been poured into the bath and then as suddenly as it had happened my neck was released. I sat upright in alarm, water coursing from my hair and ears. The bathroom was empty. It had been another hallucination.

The door flew open. It was Deb.

“Lillie! Thank the Great Goddess. The school called and said you had cut class. I checked the Duck-In Diner…” She trailed off and put a hand on her chest. “I was calling you and calling you.”

“I was under the water,” I said in a daze.

“Are you OK?” She sat down on the toilet lid. “Why did you ditch school?”

I have to say that was one of the perks of having a hippie as a mother. Most parents would be yelling at their kids, grounding them for a century, etc., but Deb was a firm believer in sick days. She called them Mental Health Days and took them regularly herself from the Tree of Life.

“I had a fight with Jo,” I said and then burst into tears.

“Oh, Lillie. Let me make you a hot drink. It will calm you down.”

And that was the downside. I ended up spending the evening having homeopathic remedies shoved down my throat until I smelled of mugwort and peppermint.

 

14

 

The next morning I got to school an hour and a half before the bell. It was either that or lay in bed staring at the ceiling like a corpse in an open casket, thinking about my life going to hell. At least I could finish developing my photos from the weekend, tick that off my to-do list. And I mean that literally. I was a to-do list kind of girl. Told you I used to be organized.

When the first bell rang I made a beeline for my locker, where I was relieved to see Jackson waiting for me instead of Tom. The two were like apples and oranges. Jackson was an open book, easy to read, his thoughts were there on the page in black and white. Tom, on the other hand, was like a locked diary.

“Load me up,” Jackson said, as I pulled a stack of photography books from my locker. He pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and stuck out his arms. “Five hours of weights a week,” he said with a wink, as if I had commented on his bulging biceps.

“Thanks,” I said, piling the books on one by one.