Cornered (13 page)

Your cell phone vibrated in your pocket, and without even checking you realized two things: that it was your parents on the other end, and that it must have been past 11 p.m. You
pulled out your cell and immediately confirmed both theories: it was your mom, and it was a quarter to midnight.

You felt nervous that you would get in trouble, and at the same time angry with your parents that you had to leave her. The girl looked at you funny.

“I forgot,” you explained. “I have to go.”

She nodded, clearly disappointed, and suddenly it felt like the energy in the room changed, like the hot air was suddenly sucked out of the basement. Should you kiss her goodnight? In your head you wondered what one did in situations like this; you couldn't decide if you should lean in or punch her in the shoulder or ask for her number, but then she giggled and wrapped her arms around you for a hug. You squeezed her back, counting the seconds as they passed—almost fifteen seconds, twelve more than what would fall into the category of friendly. This was something else, and it was you who eventually parted first, initiating the end of the hug. She definitely blushed when you made eye contact afterward and instead of saying anything, she very cutely waved at you from point blank, mouthing the word, “Bye.”

You wanted to say something cool, especially because you felt shaky inside, like your heart was going to explode, and without thinking you patted her on the shoulder and shouted in her ear, “I'll leave you to it,” and walked off, feeling smooth.

You stood for a minute outside Luke's darkened house, listening to the music and laughter. You wanted to peek through the basement window to see if the girl looked sad, but you
didn't want to get caught acting like a total weirdo. The cell phone vibrated again, and you sprinted across the road and up your driveway.

“Why didn't you call back?” your mother shouted the second you entered the living room. “I almost went over to get you.”

“The phone was on ‘silence all,'” you replied sheepishly. Her tone immediately softened as she realized you were now home safe. She asked how the party was and if you met some new people, but you weren't really listening because you were now trying to remember what the girl looked like. You'd stood with her for over an hour, but in the bright white light of your living room it was like you'd accidentally misplaced the image of her face. You wanted to sneak back over just to see her again.

You left your parents and made your way up the stairs with a bright smile on your face, thinking about seeing the girl on Monday. You imagined the soccer guys teasing you about her, and you hanging out with her during study hall or visiting her table—no, gracing her freshman girl table with your varsity soccer playing presence—and her friends swooning.

You started giggling, uncontrollably, and opened up the window by your bed. That old habit again, but instead of listening for the party you just laughed freely out the window, watching your breath puff out in clouds. Things were different. You could feel it.

• • •

On Monday at school you didn't see her all morning. Where did she hang out? Would she be keeping her eye out for you? Between every class you practically raced up and down the halls, seeking her out, ready to pretend casually bumping into her. But to no avail; she was nowhere in sight. Luke and Co. nodded dully at you in classes, and at lunch it seemed like you could have sat with them if you'd wanted. Instead you opted to sit at the “randoms” table by the entrance, with students who were busy studying for tests in the afternoon and barely nibbling their square pizzas. Again, the freshman girl was nowhere in sight.

You just wanted to see her. Maybe she'd be shy around you, which would be adorable, but you wanted to make sure you'd made a connection. Friday night had been the start of something, hadn't it? Finally, you spotted her at the end of the day. She was immediately friendly when she saw you. Her eyes lit up for a moment, and she kind of leaned forward a bit before pulling back, as if she thought about hugging you. This meant she definitely remembered you, and your heart felt like it would explode again.

“I can't talk right now. My ride is waiting,” she said.

“That's fine,” you replied. “I have soccer practice anyway.” You barely recognized the sound of your own voice.

“I was looking for you all day,” she added. And that's all you needed to hear. It was something. There was a future for the two of you, after all. You could barely breathe as she said goodbye and went over to talk with her friends. At that point, Luke
playfully crashed into you and together you headed for the cluster of soccer players standing in a corner by the exit doors, like old chums.

The roving crowd of soccer guys, you included, moved down to the locker room and you changed into your soccer clothes. Greg and Robbie were messing with the freshmen, but your thoughts were on the girl. You wished you were hanging out with her. You slung cleats over your shoulders by the laces and headed out the back door to do a little juggling with the guys in the back parking lot. Greg was kicking a ball against the brick wall. Luke was lacing up his cleats and yelled over to Jason, “Later, man.”

Jason had sprained his ankle a week earlier and was out for another week from practice and games. He gave Luke a nod as he slid into his red Beamer. In the passenger seat was the freshman girl.
Your
freshman girl. You did a double take. You couldn't believe what you were seeing. They smiled warmly at each other before he drove off. It was a surreal, sunny day nightmare. You stared at the empty parking spot where his car had once been, unable to blink even when your eyes started itching.

Amazing how in an instant you hated the freshman girl. Your eyes saw red. Your hands were fists. In fact, your hands stayed in fists the entire bus ride to the practice soccer fields, which is where you found yourself grabbing Warren Feldman during a water break and pushing him back onto the field. You lined him up against the goalpost so his legs wouldn't buckle,
and there'd be no room to cushion the blow when you would deliver the world's most thumping toe job directly against his shin.

Robbie and Greg are giggling, thinking you're just scaring Warren, since you've never shown any real interest in torturing the frosh guys like they do. They follow suit and shove other freshmen against the other goalpost and pretend to shoot them.

You think of Frankie—who manages to sneak into your head as if your brain is pleading with you to stop—and for a moment you remember the fear you'd felt the previous fall. But the image of the freshman girl in Jason's Beamer pops in your head again, and you shove it out by shutting your eyes hard. You glare at Jason as he dissolves in your brain. That he watched over you during practice a year earlier—it was all bullshit. He wasn't a friend.

With your eyes still shut, the only thing you can see is Warren Feldman.

He looks as if he's made of wood, the way his features are sculpted. He looks like a fucking marionette. His defenseless right shin looks invitingly weak, like balsa. Warren can't kick lefty, can't trap a square pass to save his life, is always last when the coach makes everyone run around the lake next to the soccer fields.

You block everything out and start your run from the eighteen-yard line. You can't see your teammates' expressions, but instinctively, you know it changes from bemusement to
horror. You can barely see at all because of the red clouding your vision, except to notice Warren is stiff as a board and clearly scared shitless—and for a flicker you almost feel the guilt for what you're about to do before you do it.

BY
E
LIZABETH
M
ILES

I
T'S GETTING WORSE.
Even when they're not behind me, they're following me. I hear them in the bathroom at home, at night when I am brushing my teeth. I feel them around me in the hallways at school, near my locker, and by the water fountain. Sometimes when I'm biking home, I do this paranoid thing where I have to look over each of my shoulders three times before I'm convinced that no one is behind me.

My best friend, Erin, an old teammate from all those years in the swimmers' youth league, laughs at me—but at the same time I think she's starting to get worried. And you know what? She's not the only one.

It's not like I hear voices in my head or anything crazy like that. It's just that Brian Doyle and his posse will not leave me alone. Like now, on the second-to-last day of school before Spring Break. As I bike away from Cornwall High there's a loud
POP
and then something sharp sails past me, nicking my arm before it falls to the road. A tiny BB pellet. There's a car a few paces behind me, and before I even hear their macho warchanting, I know it's them. They're shooting an air gun at me. I don't stop, or even slow down.

Instead I pedal harder, faster, with my head down and my hands clenched. They're speeding up, trying to run me off the paved road and into the gravel ditch. Their insults and catcalls get lost in the wind. A hard, hot lump sits at the top of my throat, waiting to come out as a sob.
Faster
, I whisper to myself.
Go, go, faster.
My curly brown hair whips at my face and gets stuck in my mouth and eyes. Eventually I cut up onto the bike path, where the car cannot follow. And as I hear the engine and their whooping fade into the distance, I slow, stop, lean over the handlebars, and cry.

• • •

It all started just a couple of months ago, around Halloween of this, our junior year at Cornwall High School. That's when I got my first-ever boyfriend—Brian Doyle. I liked him okay. He was one of the hottest guys in our grade, but he always seemed a little too perfect. And everyone has faults, don't they? Anyone who appears to be so put together must have something terribly wrong with them, right?

At first I couldn't believe that Brian was into me. Him with his sandy, tousled hair and perfect body, and me with my wide swimmer's shoulders and ski-jump nose. I had transferred in from South Hills High my sophomore year, and I'd sort-of been adopted by the girls who ran with Brian's crew. On Saturdays, Brian and I took a CPR class at the local community college—me to renew my lifeguard certification and him so he could coach Little League this summer. As the only two high school
students in the course, naturally we'd talk. We were friendly enough, if not friends. The only other time we really saw each other was fourth-period environmental science, and a few weeks into the semester, we all went on a school trip to the Boston Aquarium.

“Hey, Cera,” he'd said while I stood by the shark tank, watching them glide past. “Cool field trip, huh?”

I nodded, hoping my freckled cheeks would camouflage the hot blush I felt forming on my face and neck. Part of me wished I could step through the glass, enter the cool water, and swim away. I couldn't understand why I was so embarrassed. I talked to dudes all the time. But not like this. I could feel the undercurrent of
something happening
. And lest I be sent back to remedial school for girls, I had to go with the flow.

“Would you want to go see a movie sometime?” he asked.

It turned out that on the bus ride to the aquarium, Anya and Lily, my two most beautiful friends, had told Brian's friends that I liked him. I didn't really, but I knew I was supposed to, because as Anya and Lily pointed out—what
wasn't
there to like?

“I dunno, guys,” I'd said to them. “I'm not sure I want a boyfriend. I really want to focus on school and swimming right now. I need to qualify for a scholarship if I want to—”

“You'd rather
swim
than hang out with Brian Doyle?” Anya asked, cutting me off.

“It's not just that,” I said. “He's cute and everything, but he's not really my type.” Maybe that excuse would go over better?

Not so much. “He's
everyone's
type!” Katie shrieked. “You are so adorable. Are you just, like, supershy?”

I was the girls' pet project—always encouraged to wear their clothes, try their makeup, and, most of all,
kiss a boy for chrissakes
—and I started to feel kind of obligated to play along. They would absolutely kill me if I turned down Brian Doyle. And that's how it started, how the boy who wore well-fitting J. Crew T-shirts and loved to snowboard ended up being my boyfriend. We spent the first few months talking on the phone a lot, going to parties together, and sometimes going on “dates” to the Olive Garden and a movie. I was crossing a lot of “firsts” off of my list, like first boyfriend-kiss and first meeting of boyfriend-parents. Sometimes it seemed worth it because he was popular and others expected me to be part of a couple, but other times I wondered why I did it. My fears about losing practice time were totally realized—I was barely doing Saturday morning swims anymore—and I didn't get to see Erin half as much as I usually did.

Then one afternoon after school about three months ago, when we were hanging out at his house “doing homework,” Brian tried to stick his hand down my pants. (It was actually the second time he'd tried it; the first time was in Sean Talcott's laundry room around Thanksgiving.) I pushed his hand away but he moved it back, pressing his weight on to me.

“Come on, Cera,” he'd whispered. It makes my skin prickle just to think about the way his breath had left a cold wetness on my earlobe. I remember picturing myself as a bullet, shooting
upstairs, out of the house, and far away from him. In that moment, I realized I just wasn't attracted to him. Where were the fireworks when his bare skin brushed against mine? The goose bumps and the heart flutters? I was pretty sure you're
not
supposed to feel something like disgust when your boyfriend touches you.