Someone I Wanted to Be (29 page)

We ate all the Red Vines. Anita pulled the pieces apart and dropped the strands one by one into her mouth. The show ended. Anita turned off the TV.

“Well, you guys, thanks for coming over. Cindy will be home in an hour.” They didn’t move.

“So,” said Anita. I felt weighted, crushed by my own heaviness onto the couch. I was getting both skinnier and heavier at the same time.

“Does everyone at school know?” The thought of school made me want to sob. It was like being locked into a crowded cage with no privacy, no protection, and constant surveillance, five days a week, all day. Our punishment for being alive and fifteen.

“Not sure. I don’t think so,” said Anita. “Shannon the nurse knows because she asked me about you today. Be prepared: I think she wants to have some heavy-duty therapy sessions. She seemed pretty pumped.”

“What the hell?” I said. “So . . . the guy’s name isn’t really Kurt King. It’s Edgar Dithers. He was wanted for armed robbery in Nevada. They picked him up the next day. He had a stolen gun and drugs in the car. Then Officer Romero called two days ago to tell us that Edgar Dithers stabbed a guard with a fork. I’ll be in college before he gets out, if he ever does.”

They had his phone with Kristy’s picture on it. It was evidence.

“And I don’t have to go to court. They were going to charge him with assault, but they dropped the charges.”

“What bullshit!
What bullshit!
They dropped the charges?” Anita let go of my hand and hammered on her knees.

Carl tightened his hands into fists. “I should go to law school and become a prosecutor.”

“We were frantic.” Anita swallowed. “Corinne had no idea where you were. Kristy was wasted and hanging with this total dick. We looked for you until after midnight. Carl caught some shit, of course. Stupid Patty. . . . We saw cop cars behind the Burger King, but we had no idea. I’m so sorry, Leah.”

Carl sat very straight and opened and closed his hands. He was breathing very deliberately. “Yeah, me, too,” he whispered. “Listen, sorry, but I got to go. I have a piano lesson. . . . God!” Carl clawed his head, then abruptly stood up. Wiping his eyes, he strode toward the door. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

Carl turned around and came back. He leaned down, pressed his forehead against mine, and breathed his warm tangerine breath onto me. He ran his thumb over my cheek. If I’d had a question, that was my answer.

He left. The front entryway door above us clicked shut. “I can stay till your mom gets home. Evelyn’s over at my aunt’s this week.” Anita took my hand again and squeezed it. “Hey, I forgot! I have a present for you.”

Anita dug through her backpack, pulled out a rolled-up tube of paper, and handed it to me. I untied the little string and opened up a periodic table. She’d colored in every box a different color and written the symbols in Gothic script; she hadn’t taken chemistry yet. It was gorgeous and crazy.

“I used every single color in Evelyn’s box of crayons. I left out the little numbers, hope that’s OK. It’s to help you study. For inspiration,” she said. She wound strands of hair around her finger. “What do you think?”

“It’s so beautiful. Thanks, Anita. I really love it.” I ran my finger down the noble gases.

“Really? Do you like how I varied the blues and greens and purples . . .?”

“Anita, can I tell you what happened?”

Her eyes were the same toward me, just sadder. “Sure,” she said.

“I can’t talk to Cindy about it. She gets too upset.”

“Of course,” Anita said. She held my hand in both of hers and sat very still.

It was like taking off a bandage and looking at a scar for the first time. You unwind and unwind the white bandages, and get closer and closer to the hurting part, and the last bandage comes off, and there it is out in the air and the light, still raw, hideous, gnarly, and gross-looking, both worse and not as bad as in your imagination, and you look at it and start to figure out how you’re going to live with it.

Cindy brought home a book about teen sexual assault from the library, but it was mostly too painful to read. The book was so worn, the pages smudged and dog-eared and the saddest parts underlined in pencil and purple pen.
Me exactly!
was written in the margin in little-girl handwriting, the dot of the exclamation mark a round ball. I stuck the book under the bed.

Time for school. Cindy drove me and waited in front while I climbed the steps and went in the door. Even though it was seventy degrees out, I wore jeans and a long-sleeved sweatshirt.

I had an overdue assignment for Mr. Calvino. It was ten pages long, handwritten, single-spaced, with footnotes, and titled “High School Social Hierarchies and Oppression in Hilton, Colorado.” In the introduction I wrote:

Dear Mr. Calvino,

This is the assignment for the last instructional unit. I went over the word limit. It’s also my submission for AP language arts. You can give me an F if you want, but I will not read this to the class. You are my intended and authentic audience.

In the school’s front hallway, Sergeant Motts was breaking up a fight — he gingerly stuck his nightstick between two girls who were ripping at each other’s hair. “Come on, girls! Behave like young ladies!” I walked by and handed Cindy’s note to the office lady — she wrinkled her nose and read it through her bifocals. She handed me a pass and hunched back over her computer keyboard.

Shannon the nurse rushed out from the back office. She skidded to a stop when she got up to me. “Is it OK if I touch you?” She gave me a shoulder hug. “Let me know when you can take two hours off in a row, and we’ll have a nice long talk. My schedule is completely open!”

Then the bell rang, and I was swept along. No sign of Anita or Carl. My default position of invisibility, except when ridiculed or attached to Kristy and Corinne, still held. No one saw me. No one noticed me. I had been gone one week but could have been gone a month or a year — it wouldn’t have mattered. Either no one knew what had happened or no one cared.

Kelsey Parker and friends swept past in shredded jean cutoffs, flip-flops, their long hair in topknots — they’d changed outfits for the season. I wasn’t even a blip on Kelsey Parker’s blue-contact-tinted retinas. But watching her, I noticed for the first time that Kelsey Parker was knock-kneed, and with her hair up, she looked narrow and snaky as an egg noodle and maybe even had a touch of scoliosis. Kelsey Parker in twenty years: huge inappropriate hair, a frozen expression, back problems, the top real-estate agent in Hilton.

All those shiny faces, shiny with sweat, makeup, and acne cream; shiny with hope; shiny with faked excitement. Except for the stoners, everyone tried to look so happy and be so loud, as if they were at the center of a nonstop, movable party. And everyone, even the stoners, tried desperately to make sure they were attached to at least one other person, and preferably three or four, because you must never, ever be seen alone.

And here came LaTeisha Morgan and Ray Ramirez, arms intertwined, cheeks brushing as Ray leaned in closer to hear what LaTeisha was saying, and they actually did look happy. I wondered if they’d break up after Ray went to college. He had a full scholarship to Notre Dame.

I walked alone up to Corinne. She was standing at her locker with Jason Coulter. “Just a sec, Jason,” she said, and pulled me a few feet away. He rolled his eyes and turned his back.

“Got to make it quick. God, you were sick for a long time, girl. Sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been really busy. So, everything’s good?” And there she was, Corinne, with her dimpled cheeks, and the faint lines in the freckly skin between her green eyes, and her serious mouth that she’d frosted with lip gloss. She had an enormous piece of grape bubble gum between her teeth and cheek.

“We’re going to prom,” she whispered. “Mom bought me a dress. Guess what? Jason’s going to Western University on a baseball scholarship. He talked my mom into letting me play softball. He convinced her. She stood up to Derrick. I get to practice with the team the rest of the year. Jason’s little sister is watching the boys for a couple hours in the afternoons. Next week, I get to start pitching in games. Will you come watch? I had to cut my nails off.” She wiggled her fingers at me, blew a bubble, and popped it with her tongue. “You won’t believe this, but I quit smoking.”

Jason Coulter turned around and crossed his arms. He tilted his head. “Come on, Corinne.”

She put on more lip gloss and blew into her cupped hand. “How’s my breath? I got to go but I’ll see you.”

“Where’s Kristy?”

Corinne stopped turning and looked at me. “Mrs. Baker died last night.”

Her eyes got big and wet-looking. She suddenly stood on her toes and waved. “Kelsey! See you at practice!”

Cindy held on to the steering wheel like it was a lifesaving ring. She’d sprayed on way too much perfume.

“You should wear your hair like that more often,” she said. “It’s very sleek.”

I was wearing an old-ladyish black dress Cindy had bought at a consignment store and the pumps we got when I was thirteen for my aunt Peg’s funeral. I’d had insomnia and then woke up late, and hadn’t had time to dry or straighten my hair, so I’d put it in a ponytail. I never wore my hair in a ponytail — it looked ridiculous, but who gave a shit? I was going to Mrs. Baker’s funeral. I wondered if her doctors had tried hard enough. Maybe there was just no way to fix her.

“You look lovely! You’re wearing the earrings I gave you!” Cindy turned her head and smiled in a hopeful way.

I laced my fingers together and stared straight ahead. “Thanks.”

“Leah, it’s so good of you to come with me to Mrs. Baker’s funeral. It will mean so much to Kristy, and it means so much to me —”

“Of course I’m going! She was like a mother to me.”

Cindy suddenly looked stricken and tilted up her chin. “So, you thought of Connie as your mother?”

“God, Mom!” I lowered my window. Cool air blew across my face and hair, and oxygen entered my lungs. “I said ‘like a mother.’ Like a mother. Let it go.”

Cindy’s face went still and blank. She swallowed and almost drove through a stop sign.

She hit the brakes, and we both flew forward. She smiled her tiny bitter smile as we drove through the intersection. “Well, Connie was an awfully nice lady. She did anything and everything for Kristy. She was able to be there for Kristy twenty-four/seven, as I have not been able to be for you as I’ve had to earn a living. I’m sure you do wish she was your mother —”

“Come on. Please. I just meant I loved her. Not more than you. God, I’m so tired.” I sighed, leaned on my fist, and looked out the window. “And by the way, you look lovely, too, Mom. I like your new lipstick.”

We drove down Tenth Avenue past the Safeway, the 7-Eleven, the EZPAWN, then along Costilla Street on the outskirts of the downtown. We passed the Stoplight Lounge. In the morning light, the trash-strewn sidewalk, purple glass lanterns, and fake river-stone facade looked extremely tragic, and I suddenly thought that maybe death was a bar like the Stoplight. Maybe Kristy’s mom was going in right this minute. She’d push the door open and shyly look around the dim room before spotting Paul Lobermeir at the far end of the bar’s counter. She’d scoot between the tables. “Excuse me! So sorry, dear.” She’d hold out her hand and say, “Are you, by chance, Paul Lobermeir? Leah is the living picture of you! My Lord, your daughter is a lovely, smart girl.” Then she’d sit in her fuzzy pajamas on a stool right next to Paul. She’d tell him how I wanted to be a doctor. And Paul would introduce his friend, the woman on the stool next to him. She had long black hair, tea-colored eyes, and a huge, movie-star smile.

We drove through the downtown to a neighborhood in the red hills on the outskirts of Hilton. The funeral home was a blank yellow-brick building, long, low, and windowless, as if to prevent leaks from what it contained. The only decoration was the fancy lettering on the sign:
PETERSON’S MEMORIAL CHAPEL
.

“No one’s outside. I hope we’re not late.” Cindy checked her tiny gold watch.

Cindy hurried toward the doors. She took little biting steps in her high heels. I tried to walk while pulling up and untwisting my panty hose — I was wearing a pair of Cindy’s. The crotch wouldn’t go much past my knees, and they had torn in three places — I’d stopped the runs with nail polish. As we got closer, we could hear a voice murmuring.