Falling From Grace (35 page)

“No.
 
My looks, even my clothes can change.
 
But the real me is where the problem is.
 
The part of me that no one really knows, but they whisper about when they think I’m not listening.
 
I know what they’re saying.

“They say that I’m stupid for thinking that Graham loves me and wants to be with me.
 
I probably am.
 
He’s one of the most popular guys in school while I’m just the freak, so how could we even make a friendship work?
 
What do we have in common besides our addresses?
 
And if I can’t land him, what makes me think I’ll land Robert Bellegarde?
 
A guy like him can get any girl he wants.
 
Shouldn’t I have learned with Graham that if guys are nice to me, it’s only because they feel sorry for me?

“Why is it that I never get just how desperate I really am?
 
I’ve thrown myself at two guys now, and both have rejected me for someone else.
 
I don’t understand why I simply cannot give up like a normal person would.

“The answer is simple, of course.
 
I’m
not
normal.
 
That’s the point I need to grasp that I just can’t.
 
Everyone else knows what kind of person I am, and I know what they think I’m capable of.
 
I know by the way that they look at me that they wonder if I did it, if I was to blame for it.

“They all think I’m responsible for my mother’s death; they all think I killed her.
 
Maybe I did.
 
Maybe
I
drove her to crash the car.
 
Maybe I was being such a brat that she simply couldn’t take it anymore and decided that the best thing was to take out both of us.
 
She always had a hard time controlling me, and everyone knew that I was a handful at that time.
 
It’s why none of those other girls would ever be my friend.
 
It’s why Graham was the only one who ever talked to me.
 
It was why Dad was always out of town.
 
I was difficult.

“No.
 
I was more than difficult.
 
I was a terror.
 
A monster.
 
I don’t blame my mother for picturing eleven more years of living with me and thinking it was too much to deal with.
 
I always made things much too difficult for everyone.
 
Maybe I should have been drowned at birth.
 
And there I go: Making it about me again.
 
It’s always about me.

“Why do I have to make it about me?
 
Even now, talking to myself, it’s about me!
 
I should be talking about the country or poor, starving children in Africa, but all I can think about is myself!
 
It’s like I’m obsessed or something.
 
I just don’t get it.
 
This is why people stare at me all the time, why no one wants to be my friend, why I’m always the butt of everyone’s joke.
“I’m too self-involved.
 
I’m too needy.
 
I want too much from people.
 
It’s like I’m an emotional leech and I’m just looking for my next victim to feed off of.
 
Perhaps…maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t survived the hit and run.
 
Maybe it wasn’t even a hit and run.
 
Maybe it was me being so needy, I threw myself in front of some poor guy’s car.
 
Maybe I was just trying to finish what my mother had started.
 
Maybe…”

When that last word left my lips, and I heard my voice echo off of the walls, only then did I actually feel the trembling in my arms and legs, even through the casts.
 
The casts!
 
They were rattling against the music stand and the floor, and the sound was like one of Dad’s antique word processors typing up a twenty page essay.
 
It was the only sound in the entire auditorium once my voice stopped echoing.

I had done it.
 
Spastic shaking and all, I had done it without stopping, without crying, without screaming out denials, and most importantly, I had done it without a single audience member saying anything.
 
I couldn’t see them, the lights were far too bright in my face, but I knew the faces that were the most important were not looking at me with the same disgust I felt for having said those words.
 
They were looking at me with disgust for the person who had written them.

And that person was standing off to the side with a smile that would brighten even the darkest room plastered on her gleeful face.
 
Cheshire cat indeed; she was the red queen and the cat all rolled into one.
 
One great, big, sadistic, scepter carrying, red and purple smile with a tail.

“Well…thank you, Miss Shelley, for sailing through that…uninspired and absolutely predictable diatribe written by Miss Hamilton.
 
I think that were it not for the person reading it, most of us would have walked out before the third line was ever uttered.
 
You were the only redeeming thing about that piece, and I applaud you for sticking with it and completing it even though I’m certain that it disgusted you as much as it did the rest of us.”
 
Mr. Danielson stood up and ushered me off of the stage.
 

I clumsily sat down near the stairwell, numb and speechless, my crutches leaning up against the wall behind me while he gathered the sheets of paper that were still on the music stand and unceremoniously tore them in half lengthwise.
 
The sound of the paper tearing, more so than the actual tearing itself, caused a few gasps to ripple across the auditorium.
 
I turned around in disbelief, afraid that I had just embarrassed myself for nothing.

I watched as Erica walked out on to the stage, my blue folder in her hand, that evil smile still stretching from ear to ear, and stood in front of the microphone.
 
Whatever her thoughts, the tearing of her three page ode to me wasn’t enough to disturb them.
 
She opened the folder and removed the two neatly typed sheets of paper that had been placed inside.

With utter confidence, a confidence I certainly hadn’t possessed when I started, she placed those papers directly on top of the folder and placed that on top of the music stand.
 
She seemed so comfortable, so at ease, and I knew it was because she had enjoyed the reaction of the audience, and more importantly, my own.

It had bolstered her.
 
If I hadn’t known who she was, what she was capable of, I would have thought her to be the most approachable person in the world.
 
But I knew exactly what type of person she was, and she had demonstrated in black and white just what she was willing to do in order to get her way.
 
What exactly she was trying to get, I wasn’t quite sure yet, but I knew that after today I would definitely find out.
 
She had already embarrassed me, and planted seeds of doubt amongst the people who had witnessed my reading.
 
What else was left?

I heard someone cough, and realized that the no one had uttered a single sound other than the few gasps at the tearing of my script.
 
Erica had herself a captive audience, and she liked that.

I held my breath as I saw her take a deep one to start.
 
And then her voice began to read the words that I had agonized over for what had, at the time, seemed like a lifetime but now felt as though I had rushed through it instead.

“He loves me.
 
There is no doubt that he loves me.
 
The way he smiles at me, the way he listens to me and the things that I say; there couldn’t be any more proof necessary to convince me that he feels so deeply for me.

“In my own little tea party of life, he is my ultimate guest; one who never needed an invitation, and who has always been and will always be welcome.
 
He enjoys my crooked, funny little mixed up world.
 
He accepts me for who I am, and that’s an amazing, beautiful, incredible thing.
 
But, most importantly, he sees behind the mask that so many people like me wear to protect our real selves.

“But, what if the me he knows isn’t the real me?
 
What if it’s just another mask that I wear as well?
 
Two masks, one underneath the other, both hiding the me underneath; Victor, Victoria, and Erica.
 

“Everyone sees the first mask.
 
Cold.
 
Mean.
 
Angry.
 
Beautiful Erica wears that mask very well.
 
People fear me, rather than respect me.
 
But, cracked, cold, mean, and angry, I still fit into this mask wearing world like a round peg in its equally round hole.
 
And, as cracked as that mask is, it still doesn’t let the second mask beneath it show through.
 
No one knows what’s under that except him.

“That second mask shows me off as someone softer, more vulnerable.
 
He sees me as sweet, caring, and loving.
 
He sees the part of me that could be kind.
 
He’s seen it be generous, and he’s enjoyed it.
 
It’s helped to justify so many of his actions; it made him believe that all of it was worth it.
 
And even that mask, soft and sweet, giving and loving, has allowed me to be as much a part of everyone and everything as anyone would want.
 
I’m just as accepted as anyone else.

“But underneath that mask, underneath everything that everyone thinks they know, is the real me; the person that they’d never expect
—
the person that they’ll never, ever see.

“The cruel me, the evil me, the heartless me.
 
To show the real me would mean losing everything that I’ve worked so hard to set up.
 
I cannot show him, or anyone, to what lengths I would go to get my way.
 
I cannot let him see to what lengths I’d go to get rid of something as insignificant as a dormouse.
 
I cannot let him think that his love is wasted on me.

“But, what happens if I’m honest?
 
What happens when I reveal that beneath the first mask of ice, and beneath the second mask of down, lays someone who wears no mask at all, but instead a hat.
 
And that hat is of someone quite mad?
 
Will he still be willing to sit down at this Mad Hatter’s table and have tea?
 
Will I be two masks too late?
 
Can I set back my watch to a time before truth?
 
What was it the Mad Hatter said?
 
‘…it’s very easy to take more than nothing.’
 
And that’s exactly it, isn’t it?

“I have given nothing, and have taken so much more.
 
I’ve taken his trust, and I’ve given him back nothing but lies which only take more themselves.
 
I’ve taken his love and I’ve given him back nothing but hurt in pretty little sugar coated packages.
 
Mask one and two.
 
So perhaps I simply remove the hat, and keep the masks on.
 
He doesn’t need to know.

“I can simply try to put more cracks in the first mask, and polish up the second.
 
The person that he loves wouldn’t be hurtful and spiteful.
 
The person he loves wouldn’t be cruel and hateful.
 
He loves me, and I have to be that person, because the truth is that he loves everyone
—
if he can’t love me, then that makes me different in a way all my own.
 
There are no cakes or drinks that can change me so that I’ll fit into that slot he has opened in his life for me.
 
And, I can’t sit at my own tea party alone, different, while the rest of the world’s story goes on.”

The confusion on Erica’s face was plain.
 
The lines between her brows threw off the smile she kept planted on her mouth.
 
It was as if her face were comprised of two halves, but both seemed intent on losing to the inner struggle she seemed to be having with herself.

“Um, I don’t get it, Mr. Danielson.
 
I thought this was supposed to be about me, and not about some silly kid’s story.”

Mr. Danielson, who had sat down on the stage to listen to Erica’s monologue, shook his head, himself seeming confused.
 
 
The way he brushed his hand through his hair, and the sigh that came out of him seemed a far more passive reaction than the one that he had given after my reading, but could he be just as disappointed, too?
 
Perhaps I wasn’t plain enough?

“Miss Hamilton, I don’t understand what exactly it is that you don’t get.
 
Is it perhaps the symbolism?
 
Or could it be that you don’t get why Miss Shelley wasn’t as spiteful with her words as you were with yours?”

Erica’s face morphed through a few different shades of red before finally settling on an irate sort of rouge.
 
“She wasn’t spiteful?
 
Calling me cruel and evil and heartless isn’t spiteful?”