Black Mirror (12 page)

I wondered bleakly if Daniel had felt anything like this—this senselessness, this fear, this despair—before he overdosed. I realized he must have despised me. Why else would Saskia be so sure he’d be pleased with her actions?

I had to lean against the wall for a minute or two. Then I put on my coat and marched myself over to the cafeteria and my fate.

Just after I arrived, I saw Andy Jankowski a few people ahead of me in the cafeteria line, carefully helping himself to a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and a heap of tomato slices. He looked so innocent; so absorbed in his task. I was filled with a wash of warmth for him. I lifted a hand to wave, but he was turned half away and didn’t see me. I let my hand drop. I thought about calling out, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

Andy, like all resident faculty and staff members, was entitled to eat as much school food as he wanted. But it was rare to actually encounter him in the cafeteria—although I did suddenly have a memory of seeing him talking with a woman who served food there, a quiet, nervous-seeming woman I hadn’t seen in weeks. The other “mentally challenged” Pettengill employee. People had tended to greet her overloudly or not at all. That included me. I couldn’t even remember her name. She had been nearly invisible … like Andy. Like me?

I wondered where that woman had gone. I wondered what it had been like for Andy, when he was a kid, when he went to school. It would have been twenty or more years ago, of course. Had he been in a regular school, or a special one? Had other kids tormented him? Had he been lonely? Had he welcomed invisibility, in the way that I—sort of—did?

Was Sayoko ever lonely in her monastery? My mother had chosen isolation—like me, I suddenly thought. Whereas my father had just accepted it, maybe. Unless that was also a choice?

Andy reached the end of the line. He transferred his food to a large lunchbox he’d brought, then walked quietly out of the cafeteria. The double doors swung easily shut behind him. The din continued. People moved up the line, banged trays, grabbed food, bugged the servers.

Invisible. Or a target. Were those the only possibilities for me?

I wasn’t going to cry. Not here, not now. I was not. I was not, I was not—

“Hey, Frances!” I swiveled. James! His abrupt appearance startled me—thank God—right out of crying. My heart involuntarily sped up, but it was just that his was a friendly voice …

“There are people in line behind you,” James continued, “so pick a dessert already.” He deftly slid in ahead of two kids and into place behind me in line, grabbed two puddings, and dumped one on my tray. “Let’s go!” He grinned down at me. “How ya doing?”

I couldn’t help it. I smiled back up at him. “Hi,” I said.

His sweatshirt said
QUANTICO
. It was dark blue, and I had to admit he looked good in that color. His hair was loose, for once, on his shoulders. Brown waves, very soft.

“Haven’t seen you lately,” he said. “Where you been?” James looks at you when he talks to you. He watches your
face—your eyes, your lips—like it matters to him what you say.

A small rubber ball had taken up residence in my chest and was bouncing wildly between my throat and my lungs. “Around,” I managed to answer.

“So, you okay these days?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” He was still looking at me. Looking right down into my eyes.
You.

I wanted to take a deep breath, but I couldn’t. There wasn’t enough air in the cafeteria for anything but a shallow gulp.

Oh. My. God.

Ms. Wiles had been right.

I was in love with a small-time prep school drug dealer.

W
e had reached the end of the cafeteria line. “You wanna find a table?” said my amoral love.

James was willing to eat lunch with me? And, presumably, to talk to me? I required nothing more. “Sure,” I said dizzily.

“Any preference where?”

“No.” I was reduced to words of one syllable. It was all I could do to speak. I followed James, eyes on his shining fall of hair, on his strong shoulders, on his hips in their faded jeans as he threaded his way through tables. All my other problems suddenly seemed like so much accumulated dust. While this one … or maybe it wasn’t a problem?

I didn’t
feel
like it was a problem. I felt wonderful! Spring was in the air! Flowers blossomed where I stepped! And at
any moment the soundtrack would swell. I couldn’t help wondering what music would be most appropriate. Something classic? Bonnie Raitt? Edith Piaf? No, it should be strange and new and lovely. It occurred to me that love was the root of the word lovely, and this seemed a miraculous discovery, a fact of immense significance.

I was going to read that book
Beloved.
Soon. Today.

But even as I had these thoughts, I knew I was nuts. I knew it was unlikely that James would love me back. I wasn’t pretty, or sexy, or witty, or popular, or anything desirable. And drug dealer or not, he was far above my social station. I didn’t have a station at all, come to think of it. But … I hadn’t heard that he was going out with anyone, not once since he’d started school here in the fall, in fact. That was something. Unless he was gay, which he couldn’t be, not the way he looked at girls. Even at me, just now.

And he was always nice to me. Always said hi, how are you. He’d defended me at the Unity meeting. In fact, he’d been practically my knight in shining armor there—he’d taken on Patrick Leyden himself. Imagine that.

The full extent of James’s extraordinary nature was now clear to me. Except for the drug dealing part. But everyone had faults.

And suppose by some miracle James did like me? Could I get him to abandon his evil ways? Of course, I would need to give up marijuana myself, or I wouldn’t make a credible reformer. It was a good thing I hadn’t had time to get to like
it too much. I resolved to flush the remaining weed down the toilet just as soon as I got back to my dorm.

Ahead of me James had found a table that had two empty seats facing each other at one end. He put his tray down and pushed it across the table, moving around the edge to sit across from the empty seat that was for me. Happily I put my own tray down and sat. We would talk. I would try, delicately, to get a sense of whether he felt anything for me …

“Hey,” James said easily to the table at large.

I looked to my right. Only then did the faces at the table resolve themselves from blurs into actual people. Unity people. We were sitting at the table where Unity members sat. I was, myself, right next to George de Witt.

It was like being hit in the face by a bucketful of cold water. No. Acid. Something that burned everything else away.

Automatically I scanned the rest of the table. It could have been worse; Saskia was at the other end, well away from me. Nonetheless, she was looking over. I forced myself to meet her gaze. It was empty, icy, like yesterday. After a second she turned her shoulder and continued her conversation.

I looked across at James. His mouth was full. He nodded at me genially, cluelessly, and then chased down his mouthful with half a glass of chocolate milk. “Cold out there today, huh?” he said. “Just getting across the quad, I thought my butt would freeze off.”

Small talk, James style. It was no colder today than it had
been the day before, or the day before that. “Yeah,” I said. I looked down at my plate. Stuffed shells with tomato sauce. Carrots. A roll and butter. The chocolate pudding James had gotten for me.

I had been hungry not long ago.

I stabbed a carrot with my fork and put it in my mouth. I chewed. I swallowed. I looked again at James. He was still beautiful, even with a milk mustache. I imagined myself sitting on his lap and licking it off. I thought about Daniel’s cache of condoms.

No! I wasn’t in love with James! I wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t self-destructive. I was infatuated, maybe. But James was a goddamned drug dealer and, worse, he had brought me here to sit amongst my enemies.

Rage filled me. I was a fool to have forgotten even for a few minutes who I was, and what was going on in my world, and that I had a decision I needed to make. A decision that felt as if it were—though I knew it couldn’t really be—mortal.

Suddenly, between one carrot and the next, I had decided. I’d die before I’d let Saskia Sweeney think she had intimidated me. I’d die before I’d disappoint Ms. Wiles. And, finally, I wouldn’t be a wimp in front of James. Even if he had no clue what was going on. I wouldn’t be—what was it he’d called me at that Unity meeting?—a kicked kitten.

“Saskia?” I called out down the table. Did I imagine it, or did most of the kids sitting there turn to look at me? “Saskia,” I repeated, “I wanted to ask you—I need to sign up
for my first shift at the food pantry. Stacking cans or doing whatever. Tomorrow afternoon would work for me. Is that okay?”

Saskia stared at me. Her lips pursed.

“Hey, could you do the noon to two o’clock shift?” Pammy Rosenfeld asked. She was sitting halfway down the table. “We need someone else there. I think a shipment of Green Giant corn and peas came in yesterday.” She smiled at me. “I’m in charge of scheduling this month.”

Clearly Pammy was not in on Saskia’s little plan. Maybe Saskia had been exaggerating? Speaking only for herself?

“Okay,” I said directly to Pammy. “I’m in.”

“Thanks,” said Pammy. “Welcome.”

“Thank you,” I said calmly. I did not look at Saskia. I looked across at James, trying to think of something innocuous to say. He was frowning as if puzzled—

“Oops!” said George de Witt, beside me. Only then—I swear it was after he spoke—did he elbow his second, full plate right off his tray.

The tomato sauce-soaked contents slid right into my lap. Startled, I yelped and looked at George—and he looked back, his eyes empty. Icy.

Saskia had not been bluffing. If I went ahead with this, so would she. She would make my life miserable.

Maybe I went a little bit crazy then. Or maybe I was still under the influence of the defiance that had just impelled me to challenge Saskia. I recall having the vague thought that I was
already
miserable; could it really get any worse?

I found myself shouting, “Food fight!” I grabbed my plate and ejected its contents directly into George’s face.

“Hey!” George yelled as I flung the dish away to the left. I heard it smash as it hit the floor, or a table, or the wall, or wherever. It sounded like a thunderclap.

I watched as a stuffed shell slid off George’s nose, fell to his chest, and then softly plopped down onto his jeans, leaving a blood-like trail of tomato sauce in its wake. It all seemed to happen in slow motion.

Around me—I could sense it even in the midst of my little fit—the entire cafeteria had come to a complete staring halt.

George’s expression was profoundly satisfying.

At that point I began giggling, and found I couldn’t stop. I had no control over myself. I roared. I wailed. I descended into convulsions of hysteria and had to clutch my stomach. Inside, I panicked. I wondered if you could die of laughter. Maybe it wasn’t a bad way to go, but this was hurting …

“Get a teacher!” I heard vaguely. “Run, quick!”

Then I felt somebody grab me by the shoulders and slap me, hard, across the right cheek. And then the left. Vaguely, I was relieved. I hiccuped for a minute or two, eyes closed, aware of the horror and shock and titillation of everyone around me. Then I opened my eyes and saw that, of course, it was James before me, one hand on my shoulder, his right hand still upraised.

“Creating an opportunity for violence?” I said. I was surprised; the words came out calmly, even quietly. I held his
eyes. I was aware that my own were filled with tears. Several had dripped down my face. “Or was that just payback?”

James’s voice was even quieter. I doubted that anyone but me could hear it. “No, Frances.” And then, as two teachers came running up, I saw his lips move. No sound came out, and I hadn’t realized I had lip-reading skills, but somehow I thought he was saying: “Oh, God. I don’t know what to do.”

I
was given a bed in the school infirmary for the night. Mention was made of a regular group therapy session in managing grief, held on Wednesday evenings at Lattimore Hospital. Ms. Wiles telephoned me, and so did my father. I told everyone I was very tired. I told everyone I was sorry. I told everyone that yes, I had been trying to suppress my despair over Daniel’s death, but that I could no longer manage alone and some help would be very welcome. If I had support, I said, then yes, I thought I could continue with school. I said again that I was very sorry. That I didn’t want to be a trouble to anyone.

There, there, people said. Everyone assured me that I’d get all the help and support I needed. Individual counseling too, if that was deemed appropriate, said the school nurse.

It felt as if there were someone else in my body, propped up in the infirmary bed, listening, nodding, saying what people wanted to hear. It was nice. I felt calm.

In the background, I was thinking. I was thinking oddly well.

When I was finally alone, I picked up the telephone with a steady hand. I dialed Saskia’s room. She answered on the first ring. And although I had not consciously planned a speech, I found that I knew exactly what to say, and that I was not in the least afraid.

“It’s Frances. Listen, if you or your friends do anything to me ever again, I
promise
: I’ll keep on reacting like a crazy person. It will freak everyone out. Like George today. I saw his eyes. He thought he’d pushed me over the edge and it terrified him. He’s a nice guy, strangely enough. He won’t lift a finger against me ever again. We both know that, Saskia.

“And maybe I really am just an inch away from insanity. I might be. I don’t know. Do you want to be the one who shoves me there? Do you want that on your tiny conscience? Even if
you
don’t mind, your so-called friends will. Like George. You might find you don’t have as many allies as you thought.”