I'll Be Here (7 page)

I remember that my mother dyed her hair red for a few months and that I had a bright purple bikini with a bow in the center. 

I remember that we roasted marshmallows on a burner on the top of the stove and we used them to make s’mores and that mom let me crawl into her bed if I was scared at night.  She would tuck my hair behind my ears and whisper me to sleep. 

I’ve always thought of it as selective memory and in a lot of cases it’s served me well.  Two years ago it may have been the only thing that got me through each day.  Now I’m wondering if this “selective memory” is the reason I am so blindsided by my boyfriend and my friend hooking up behind my back. 

Honestly, how could I have not known that something was happening between them? 

How did I miss it? 

How long was it going on? 

Who else knew about it?

After missing lunch and two entire class periods, I am able to pull myself together and come out of the bathroom stall.  With the scratchy school paper towels I wipe my face dry and stare into the mirror at my reflection.  Great.  I look like complete shit. 

The door swings open and Macy Jones walks in with a hall pass dangling from her hand.  She stops midstride when she sees me. 

“Are you okay Willow?”  She’s whispering even though there’s no one else around.

I just nod my head as best as I can manage and throw the wadded paper towel that I’ve been clutching into the trash.  Macie’s eyes feel like hands on my back as I walk out of the bathroom and down the deserted hall.  

The rest of the afternoon is a blur.  I stare vacantly at the board during Spanish and when Mrs. Freeman asks me to explain the answer to number twelve I don’t even know what page of the book we are supposed to be on.  I am too preoccupied with the mess in my head.

I try to remember every time that I ever saw them together.  Ever. 

I start a list.

1.
     
There was the time that Dustin drove her home from school junior year.  Taylor’s car had a flat tire and she needed a ride home.  Her house was on the way to Dustin’s house.  It seemed innocent enough at the time.

2.
     
Once, when Dustin and I were first dating I found out that their families had gone out to dinner together.  They’d shared one of those big tables at a Japanese steak house.  It bothered me at the time but Dustin told me that their fathers had a business arrangement and I was acting “clingy and jealous.”  I didn’t want to be
that
girl so I dropped it.

3.
     
They played tennis occasionally at the club where both of their families were members. 

4.
     
Last summer, the twins let it slip that Taylor and Dustin had kissed in the sixth grade.  Apparently, it was just on a dare and nothing came of it and Taylor called him “slobbery.”  Still, it irked me.

5.
     
When we dressed as the Spice Girls for Halloween Dustin had told Taylor that she “looked hot.”  He had said the same thing to me so I hadn’t been too annoyed at the time, but looking back, should a good boyfriend say that anyone but his girlfriend looks hot? 

And so on…

By the time I get to my car in the parking lot, the list reaches to thirty-four.  It might as well reach to two hundred. 

The hurt begins to soak in.  It seeps through my clothes and chills my skin.  I remember the phone conversation I’d had with Taylor.  Am I the dumbest girl in the world?

Of course she didn’t think it mattered whether or not Dustin was with someone else!  He was with her! 

I need to talk to Dustin.  The idea starts out like a small seed—a tiny black pumpernickel seed on the crust of my brain, but by the time I’ve found a parking spot downtown and locked my car door, it’s sprouted into a full-blown plant.  Wait.  Is there such a thing as a pumpernickel plant?

Ack!  It doesn’t matter!

The point is that I have made a decision to be a freaking adult and call Dustin.  If you look at all the stories about break-ups it always works about better for both parties when they stay civil and friendly.  Look at the cordial and incredible harmony of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis versus say, North Korea and South Korea.  I’m guessing that Bruce and Demi didn’t just happen.  It’s a matter of communication.

I swallow hard and pace back and forth between two parking meters going over and over the things that I intend to say.  There’s about ten minutes before I need to be to work so I sift through my purse and grasp my phone.  My fingers fumble twice, but I take in a large gulp of air and do it.  I’m calling.  

The ring is cut off and before Dustin can even muster a “hello” and I can lose my nerve, I launch into my quasi-prepared speech.

The phrase “love of my life” may in fact cross my lips and yes, that isn’t exactly holding my cards close, but I can’t help it as words nervously spill out of me.  Dustin’s completely quiet the entire time, letting me do all the talking and I’m shaky and breathing hard and not sure how to interpret his lack of conversation.  

“Ummm…  okay?”  I finish.

“No it’s not
okay
,” says a voice, decidedly female and un-Dustin like.

All the air whooshes out of me.

Oh. My. God.

It’s Taylor.  My friend.  My enemy.  My frenemy. 

It’s Taylor who answered the phone and it was Taylor that I just bared my heart to and now it’s Taylor that’s saying things that I don’t want to hear. 
La-la-la. 
It’s Taylor calling me all kinds of names and warning me to stay the hell away from
her
boyfriend.  The irony is not lost on me but I can’t think of a good retort so I just hang up. 

And then I stand in the center of the sidewalk feeling a bit shell-shocked and disgusted with myself.  There’s a sensation like I’m falling and about to take flight all at once.  Everything spins. 

With shaking legs, I sit down on the edge of my car’s hood and lean forward to rest my face in the palm of my hands.  Should I look for a paper bag to breathe into?  Is a panic attack the same as hyperventilating?  Where would I even get a paper bag?  Mom uses those reusable cloth bags and I’m not sure that will work because I’m not even clear on what the purpose of the paper bag is—it’s just something I’ve seen in movies and on television. 

Some guy who looks like he might be homeless is meandering awkwardly down the sidewalk and he pauses in front of me to ask if I’m okay.  He’s got a patch over his eye and he’s wearing a grimy pair of underwear on top of his pants and he’s concerned about
me
.  Lovely.

If you have to wear a tie on vacation then you’re visiting the wrong kinds of places.

~Jake Beagle

CHAPTER SEVEN

This morning the conversation with Taylor looms large in my mind as I find a parking space and walk through the main doors.  I wait in front of Allison’s locker because on Wednesdays we both have study hall first period and we usually walk to Mrs. Shaffer’s classroom together. 

Today she doesn’t show. 

The reason she gives when I pass her desk is fuzzy—something about an overdue assignment and having to stop at Sabine’s locker to grab a book.  For once I recognize an excuse for what it is. 

Sabine and I normally see each other in the hallway after third period but she whisks by me without even waving in my direction.  All I get from the masses is a sea of eager stares and deafening sniggers.  I’m sure that I hear my name and when I turn there’s a confusion of girl with their hands shielding their whispering mouths.    

So this is what being a leper feels like. 

In less time than it takes a potato to sprout leaves I’ve gone from Dustin Rant’s girlfriend to
this. 
This thing that no one wants to talk to or even look at.  I probably have barnacles growing from my eyelids. 
 

The only people that want to have anything to do with me are the hoard of gossips who want me to spill my guts to them so that they can spread more untruths about me around campus.  In an unfortunate bout of friskiness I tell Marie Vellar to go “suck it” when she corners me in the bathroom between the stalls and the mirror and asks if Dustin and Taylor and I had ever had a three way.  As it turns out, those catty girls are my last link to high school society. 

Taylor doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being easygoing once she starts a “thing” with someone.  I don’t know why I’m surprised.  I saw this happen to Aubree Tahan junior year.  She nicked Taylor’s car in the parking lot and didn’t leave a note.  When Taylor found out about it, she practically ruined the girl’s life by spreading a rumor that Aubree had slept with the entire basketball team.  Not surprisingly, Aubree opted to spend her senior year at a small private girl’s school on the outskirts of town.    

In Sociology we have to choose partners for an in-class project about stereo-typing and racism.  Normally this is the type of thing I don’t even think about.  But today my insides tighten as I hesitantly scan the classroom for a savior.  He comes in the form of Nate—a  lanky black kid with over-large jeans slung low on his hips and slight lisp who nods in my direction and claims the desk closest to mine. 

Nate plays on the basketball team.  He’s not a starter but he’s decent.  Back in middle school we were required to fulfill a certain number of community service hours and Nate and I worked a beach clean-up together.  We shared a trashbag for collecting the garbage and I let him eat the fruit roll-up from my lunch.  We haven’t really talked since then but I guess he remembers the fruit roll-up.  It was strawberry flavored. 

“Thanks,” I mutter when he flips his textbook open to the page our teacher has noted on the board. 

Nate smiles.  I notice that he has a gap between his two front teeth and that he smells like cinnamon.

“No problem,” he says and then he looks down at his book and grimaces.

“What’s wrong?”

When he looks up at me he’s got this tight smile on his face.  “Oh, you’ll love this.”  He laughs.  “Question number one: Have you ever felt like an outcast from your peer group?”

“Ha!”  I roll my eyes.  “Next question.”

The rest of the hour isn’t so bad.   Nate is funny and surprisingly smart and I enjoy the stories that he shares in response to the questions. 

I probably laugh more than I should when he launches into a whole tirade about being stereotyped as a juvenile delinquent that survives on a diet of fried chicken and watermelon just because he’s black.  He looks surprised when my giggle becomes a cackle.  I guess being starved for social interaction will do that to a person. 

As I walk out of the class, I’m actually smiling. 

It’s one of my first spontaneous, not forced-so-that-I-can hold-my-head-up smiles in days and the muscles in my cheeks are a little sore from the disuse.  It’s such a change that I almost expect a cartoonish bluebird to land on my shoulder and start whistling the “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” tune.

“Whoa!”  My foot gets caught up on something solid and I lurch forward catching myself against a desk before I can full-on face plant. 

“Whoops!”  Felicia Quinn smiles sweetly and yanks her foot out of the aisle as she stands with a bounce. 

She slides past me, her red ponytail swinging with the exaggerated motions of her stride.  “You should really be more careful where you step
Willow
.”

Sure, it could have been an accident, but Felicia is a junior on the pep squad with Taylor so probably not.   

As I walk to my next class I think that it’s like the past two years have been erased in mere days.  No more beach parties or late-night yacht runs for Willow James.  Clearly anyone and everyone think I am the wrong kind of people and I would only do when the Great and Powerful Dustin Rant was giving me the time of day. 

***

After the basketball fiasco in elementary school I’d given up the hope of being an athlete, but in the sixth grade my history teacher Mr. Dillon, who was also the junior varsity softball coach, talked me into joining the team with a promise that he could turn anyone into a “player.” 

Honestly, I joined mainly to bask in the glow of the dreamy Mr. Dillon, who wore too-short pants on purpose and a chunky leather bracelet on his left wrist.  I didn’t know at the time, but he was carrying on a covert relationship with Ms. Sue, the secretary from the front office whom he would later make an honest woman of.

“You’ll thank me when you get a scholarship,” he’d said, smiling from the swivel chair behind his desk.

Yeah right. 

I decided he would regret asking me to join his team, but I signed my name to the bottom of form and was issued an emerald green and white uniform shirt. 

I lasted four games.

Mr. Dillon didn’t kick me off the team.  No.  He was too much of a nice guy for that.  He spent extra time with me during practice and he gave me little pep talks as I filed out of his class.  I knew that these were supposed to inspire confidence in me, but the truth is that they only made me feel like more of a loser.  In the end, I quit on my own. 

I quit because I couldn’t handle going to the plate.  The outfield I could deal with—if I missed a ball or let my mind wander, no one noticed most of the time.  But stepping up to bat while all eyes fell to me—digging into my skin like tacks on a cork pinboard—was too much. 

My heart beat deeply in my chest and the blood swirled underneath the skin of my temples as the red dust of the field whirled around me and I felt all wrong.  I
knew
that I looked ridiculous up there waiting for the other girl to throw to me.  I hated the waiting for failure that would eventually come from the whole thing. 

As a rule, I liked beginnings and endings—not the middle parts.  And it seemed to me that going up to bat was an endless cycle of middles.  I was the kind of girl who snuck ahead to read the last chapter of a novel.  When I was little I would creep into my mom’s closet to find my birthday presents early because I couldn’t stand the not-knowing.