Alone at 90 Foot (2 page)

I wonder what they're doing in English. Probably
Mr. Bartell is reading a passage from
Lord of the Flies, which we're studying. He has this pompous, affected way of reading to us. And then he stands smugly, waiting for a reaction. Like we should give him credit or something for these great works of literature. Like if it weren't for him, we wouldn't have the intelligence to discover them ourselves. Or like he even wrote them. As if.

His scraggy beard and bug eyes give me the creeps. Sometimes, when he gets real excited and his face turns red reading Shakespeare or something, I'm afraid that if he got knocked on the back, those eyeballs might pop right out and come rolling down the aisle.

And he's always trying to suck up to the popular kids. Like Danielle Higgins. She's blond and perky and petite. Not like me, a hundred feet tall with arms and legs dangling like a vine maple. He laughs at her jokes and marks questions she answered the same as me right, when I was marked wrong. Teachers like that are so lame. What they don't realize is that the popular kids still think they're losers.

Last fall my best friend since kindergarten, Joanne Robertson, got asked to one of Danielle's parties. And somehow, I got dragged along. Her parents were out of town and her eighteen-year-old brother was supposed to be looking after her. He
was in the canyon at a bush party. Danielle was offering everyone her parents' booze, mixing it with Orange Crush and gulping it down by the tumblerful. I had one taste and nearly puked on the spot. Joanne drank two beer and a glass of Kahlua. She started acting like a complete moron, belching like a seal and smoking two cigarettes at once.

Then Danielle turned off the lights. People started pairing off, necking all over the floor and in the bedrooms. Even Joanne ended up with Carl Jenkins. I guess she was so drunk she'd forgotten his claim to fame was blowing a fart so loud Mr. Bartell called the custodian to check out the heating ducts.

So I was left alone, swallowed into a bean bag in the family room, listening to the sweating and grunting and sucking noises in the dark around me. People can be such pigs. But I couldn't move without drawing attention to the fact that I was unclaimed. Although, believe me, if you saw what was left, you would know it was by choice. Finally, I got up the nerve, and after tripping over several bodies which didn't notice me anyway, I made it to the front door. I put on my shoes and went home.

Joanne really burned me. She'd told her mother she was staying at my house. She never did come home with me. She spent the night at Danielle's, being cool. And she got away with it.

I'll never be cool. I don't even want to be. Not if
I have to get drunk as a monkey and make an idiot out of myself to do it. I have some pride.

I wonder sometimes what it is that makes us want everybody to like us. When I think about it, there are so few people that I really like being with, why should I expect that everyone should like being with me? I don't even like to talk all that much. I mostly keep my thoughts to myself. I guess, when it comes right down to it, I don't even like being around people.

Emily Carr was a lot like that. She preferred her dogs and monkey and her white rat to the company of most people. I think Emily and I would have made very good friends. We could have sat in the camaraderie of the forest for hours, not speaking, she working at her painting and me beading, only stopping to comment now and again on the color of a lady-slipper or a shift in the wind or a change in the sky. Communicating in silence through our crafts. We might even consult one another.

“I just can't capture the mood of that little spruce over there,” she might say. “Take a look, Pam. What do you think?”

And I'd set my beading aside and study her painting. “I'm impressed with the unity of movement,” I'd say, not because I know the least thing about art, but because I read that is what she aimed for. “I think it looks just fine, Emily

Joanne was cool for about a month. Then one Saturday she forced me to go to the mall with her and Danielle. God, it was boring hanging around the food court while Danielle flirted with all the guys. And Joanne tried to. Anyway, we were walking past Fairweather's and I saw this really gorgeous peach sweater in the window.

“Try it on,” said Joanne.

“No,” I said. “I don't have any money.”

“So? At least you'll know how it looks on you.”

Danielle was still in the food court, so the two of us went inside. This thirty-whatever woman with these giant fat lips opened the fitting-room door for us. Joanne came in with me. “No kidding, Pam. It looks incredible on you. I think you should get it.”

“I told you, I don't have any money. And my dad says I can't get any new clothes until the end of next month.” I pulled the sweater over my head and tossed it to Joanne to fold while I put my shirt back on. And then, I couldn't believe it, but she started ripping off the tags.

“What are you doing?”

“They can't pin it on you if there are no tags to prove it was theirs.”

“Pin what on me? Joanne? What are you doing?”

She didn't say anything. She just mashed the sweater in a ball, opened my purse and stuffed it
in. The tags lay scattered all over the floor.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Let's go.” At the same time as she threw my purse at me, she yanked me out the door. I had no choice but to walk stiffly, and swiftly, I might add, out into the mall.

“Joanne, this is so wrong.”

I could have smacked her over the head, scratched her eyes out, I was so mad at her. I was hurtling through the crowd like a bowling ball not sure of its lane. Then a hand clamped on my shoulder, nearly sending me into a somersault. I was spun around by it, to face the fat-lipped sales clerk.

“Let's have it,” she demanded.

Another clerk came up next to her. They glared at me accusingly. They stood as if they were ready to pounce on me if I bolted — or, if necessary, defend themselves if I attacked. I felt as loathsome as a twelve-inch slug.

I couldn't possibly deny I had taken it. Not when I was holding the flaming evidence in my hot little hand. I opened my purse and gave them the sweater. Through the tears racing from my eyes, I could see Joanne, standing in the doorway of a shoe store, watching the confession of a thief with the rest of the crowd. At that moment, I hated her more than I had ever hated anyone.

“Is this what it takes to be popular!” I wanted to
shriek. “Is this what it takes to be noticed? That you reduce yourself to a slimy cheat? You fool, Joanne. You stupid fool. I'd rather be one pale grain in a twenty-mile stretch of sand than the one that catches the sun, if this is how you do it.”

The clerk took the sweater. She asked me my name. In front of all those people, I stammered it out. I told her my entire three-piece name. It didn't even occur to me to make one up! I then slobbered on about how I'd never done anything like this before and would never do it again. Like, no duh. It was pretty obvious what an incompetent thief I was. She told me to make sure I didn't and then left me, quivering like a jellyfish, to slither home and consider what a poor excuse for a human being I was.

For a month I raced Dad for the telephone. I was terrified that the store clerk would change her mind and look me up, determined that my father should know what a delinquent child he had raised.

Dad laughed, thinking I had a boyfriend. To tease me, he would sometimes beat me in the race. He didn't know how freaked I was when he said hello.

Joanne never apologized, but instead she became annoyingly nice, oozing over things like my hair, which was the same, long and brown, as it had always been. Or a couple of times she bought
me stuff in the cafeteria that I didn't even want. Like this gross raisin pudding that I wouldn't feed to a dog. Finally, I told her to quit groveling, that I forgave her, but what she had done was a really jerky thing to do.

She agreed that it was.

A few weeks later I noticed that she and Danielle didn't hang out much anymore.

“We didn't really have a lot in common,” Joanne told me. “Besides, she has so many friends, she doesn't need me.”

I've watched Danielle since then. Know what I discovered? It isn't that she has a lot of friends — she just goes through a lot of friends. She uses people like Kleenex, then tosses them aside when she is finished with them.

I have the goose bumps. I look up to see a thick swatch of gray cloud hovering above the canyon — and me. There's not much point in lying here now. Besides, it's almost noon. I suppose I should go home, make some lousy sandwich or something and head back to school. We start social dance in gym after lunch. Both the boys' and girls' classes have to take it together. The thing is, they make it so we get thirty percent of this term's mark just for showing up. Like anyone would go if they didn't
use bribery. I know I wouldn't. If it weren't for my dad. I figure he's been through enough the last few years without me screwing up big time on my report card.

The whole thing about school is that, like I said before, I like to be alone. But I hate being lonely. And I mostly seem to be lonely around people. I'm always lonely at school. I'm lonely on a bus, or in the doctor's office, or even eating dinner at Nana Jean's with the whole family around me. Sometimes, I sit in class, with that talking head at the front, and I imagine my desk sinking slowly through the floor. And after I'm gone the other desks shift, like in some kind of dream sequence, to cover my spot. And no one is the wiser. No one even notices I'm gone. Particularly the head still talking at the front.

I grab my backpack, jump the rocks and start up the path leading to the canyon parking lot. It's straight uphill all the way. The earth forms tall steps where it is trapped by roots and compacted by feet and time. It's quite a stretch, but soon I'm looking down on a part of the gorge where water pours into a smooth tank, much like a granite toilet bowl. It looks very tropical. The water so green and ivy dripping from the rock shelves above — you'd almost expect to see parrots fly by. But you have to be real confident to jump into that pool. And I'm not. It's
way too dangerous. Which is why this whole area is restricted. Besides, it's directly below the suspension bridge. I never look up. It gives me the creeps.

I have been studying this area very closely for the last year, noticing this bunch of ferns and that burst of buds. I wish I'd paid more attention in the past. You know, stopped and smelled the roses. Maybe taken a few pictures. That way I'd know what was new growth and what had been here before. I wouldn't have to wonder about that huckleberry bush next to the chain-link fence. Like, was it there a year ago last Tuesday when Mom jumped off the bridge, or has it grown there since? Just a warning for future reference. Never be like me and take things for granted. All this forest around me and I've never really paid attention to it. I doubt there are forests like this anywhere you go in the world. I know for a fact there are no forests like this on Sanibel Island. Or in Medicine Hat. Could I describe it to someone in those places? Yeah, it's green, the trees are tall and there are slugs ten feet long on the paths. Big deal. That doesn't say anything about the way the tree trunks are so thick, your whole class could stand in a ring around them and still not be able to hold hands. Or about the way the rain rolls from the big floppy leaves onto your head after a storm until you're soaked through to the skin. Or how
the smell of cedar warms you as the sun stretches its long rays through the Douglas fir to dry out the ground. My point is, it's important to remember details. Of course, if I were Emily Carr, I could just paint it. No words would be needed then.

I know what you're thinking. Why are you going on like that when your mother jumped off the suspension bridge? Sometimes I wonder that myself. But I don't really have a choice, do I? And of course, more importantly to you, you're wondering why she did it. Can't answer that one either. My dad tried to explain that it had something to do with the way she felt after we lost April. I've always wanted to ask him more, but every time I try to, I can see he might just about fall apart. I know he tries real hard to be strong for me. So I don't want to be the one to push and make him crack. He's got to feel he's a support to someone in his life. The school counselor, Mrs. Dalrymple, told me basically the same thing about Mom. She was very, very depressed. But I, for one, can only think that for some reason her common sense didn't kick in that day. She must have felt good, invincible up on that bridge, hundreds of feet above the pool. Like she could fly with the peregrine falcons. And I guess that old flight of fancy just won out.

This is just so unreal I can't believe it. Guess who's teaching us social dance? Mr. Bartell! Ms. Turner, our regular gym teacher, says he puts her to shame. That next to him, she looks like Mr. Bean on the dance floor. So, lucky us, he's offered to take the dance unit. Well, I know I, for one, am ecstatic.

The man is multitalented. He can quote Robert Frost one minute and do the tango the next. I don't believe this. This is obscene. She's actually introducing him and he's waltzing across the floor, kicking his legs. Who does he think he is? If he starts to moonwalk, I'm out of here. He's smiling
like a hyena. Don't have a major heart attack, Mr. Bartell. I can guarantee we're not going to be tripping over each other to give you mouth-to-mouth. How can anyone be so happy about making such a fool out of himself?

He tells us we're going to learn the fox trot first. John Robbel wants to know what's the point of learning something straight out of the dark ages. Danny Kim wants to know if he's trying to turn us into pansies. Shauna Whittaker tells him there's no way she'll dance with just any geek in the class and if he doesn't let her choose her own partner, she'll go to Mrs. Lofts. Darla Miller says that it would probably be some kind of abuse or harassment or something if he forced us to.