Touch (4 page)

Once more, Chris and Kevin giggled and snorted through their noses. Who
were
these dorky guys? The
funny thing was, Shakes kept looking back and forth between me and the two guys, as if he was trying to figure out how he should be acting. Or maybe he’d just developed some new twitch when I was gone.

Kevin said, “Everyone saw them kissing in the hall outside the girls’ bathroom.”

Chris said, “Kissing isn’t sex.” And they laughed again. I wasn’t getting the joke.

After a silence, I said, “So what
is
on TV?”

“Let’s find out,” said Shakes.

They took the sofa. I grabbed a chair, and Kevin hit the remote.

“
Pimp My Ride
. Cool,” I said.

They all seemed a little surprised, but pleased, as if they’d been thinking that a person with breasts would insist on watching some girl show like
My Super Sweet Sixteen
. Slowly, the pressure leaked out of the room, like air from a punctured bike tire, as we watched the transformation of a wannabe Hollywood actor’s ten-year-old, beat-up Lincoln Town Car into a movie star limo with a screening room built in behind the backseat.

“Pathetic!” said Kevin.

“Loser!” I said. I could feel them relax a little more. Breasts or no breasts, I was still Maisie, who could still insult the people who got makeovers on TV. Next we watched a segment about a girl who worked for a veterinarian, picking up ill pets and returning them cured, getting her mom’s station wagon all cheesed up and made over into a vehicle with a comfy dog bed that folded down into a dog run. I wished the girl hadn’t squealed in such a high-pitched soprano. I felt as if my friends were blaming me for how girly and ridiculous she sounded.

I said, “So what have you guys been doing besides kissing girls and watching TV?”

Shakes said, “Making movies. I got a camera for my birthday.”

“What kind of movies?”

“Short films. Stupid stuff,” Shakes said. “But we put one up on YouTube and got more than a thousand hits.”

“What was it about?” I asked.

“I play Shakes the Detective,” he said. “These guys take turns being the murderer and the murder victim.”

I said, “If there were four of us, you could have a
crime-solving partner.”

“Or the victim could be a girl,” Kevin said.

“I guess it could,” I agreed. No one spoke for a while.

I said, “I could pretend to fall off a roof. You could film me going out a window, and then cut to a shot of me lying facedown on the ground.”

“That would be cool,” Shakes said. “But you wouldn’t always have to be the one who gets killed.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That would be good.”

All of a sudden, it was like I was back in the club, though no one could have said what I’d done, or what it had taken, to be readmitted. They were glad to have me back, and I was glad to be there.

We got through the rest of the summer. We had fun. It was just like before. Though actually, it wasn’t, not exactly. It was
sort of
just like before.

Now, when the guys went swimming, I pretended I had something else to do. If they saw me in my bathing suit, it might undo all the hard work I was doing to make them see me as the same person I was before I’d left. Or anyway, the same person in an older person’s body.

We made two episodes in the
Shakes the Detective
series. They were smart and funny and amazingly good considering we made them for no money with Shakes’s handheld camera. The best part was thinking them up. All of us had ideas, and we’d shout them out; it didn’t seem to matter which person had the idea.

Even though Shakes had said I didn’t always have to be the murder victim, that’s how it worked out. I told myself I didn’t care. I was the only girl. Since we seemed to have started thinking that way—who was a girl and who was a boy—I figured I might as well take advantage of everything that made me a girl. That is, besides having big boobs. It always seemed more criminal and tragic if the victim was a girl and more satisfying when Shakes found out whether Kevin or Chris was the perp. The films were sort of a cross between mystery and science fiction. As soon as Shakes figured out who’d done the deed, I—the victim—would immediately come back from the dead. And later, at home, Shakes would score the film to a woozy, outer-space sound track.

Once, we were shooting in the town park, and Daria Wells walked by. She didn’t seem at all surprised
to see us, so I figured that she and Chris had talked, and he’d told her we would be there. I couldn’t see how the boys thought she’d gotten so hot. She still looked chunky and snooty. Her breasts weren’t nearly as big as mine. It struck me how weird it was even to be thinking like that. But as I looked at her, I sort of got why Chris liked her. Either she’d gotten taller, or she held herself tall. She no longer rounded her shoulders. She looked really comfortable with the whole
thing
of being a girl. It seemed strange that she could get away with it, being as smart as she was. Obviously, math wasn’t the only thing she was smart at.

In a high, unnatural voice, Chris said, “Hey, Daria! Want to be in our movie? We could write you in.”

We could?
I thought.

“Oh, no, thank you, Chris,” Daria said. “Acting isn’t my thing. I’d prefer to produce someday.”

Produce?
I thought.
Pathetic!

“Gosh,” said Chris. “That’s amazing. I’ll bet you’d really be good at it.”

Shakes and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. It was hard not to laugh. Only then did I realize
that I’d been a little worried ever since Chris asked her to be in our movie.

Actually, acting was Daria’s thing. She made a big show of being superior and bored.

Finally, she said, “Bye, I guess.”

I said, “Bye, she
guesses
?” Shakes started to laugh, or maybe he was just shaking. Then I saw him look at Chris, and turn away and do his funny, hop-walk a few steps away, and then back.

In fact, our film wasn’t boring at all, though maybe that episode might have been better if Daria hadn’t made everybody self-conscious.

That was the episode in which Kevin shot and then strangled me because I’d cheated on him with Chris. In the installment after that, my body washed up on the shore of the lake and the three of them had to figure out who had killed me, and why. I can’t remember the details. I could look it up on YouTube. I could watch how happy we were that summer before school started. Or how happy we were
trying
to be. But it was happy, really, compared to what came after.

That’s why I don’t want to watch it, though I think
about it when I’m on YouTube. I know better than to go there. It would break my heart to see us still being best friends before we reached the point of no return, the point where we are now—the point at which I’m the accuser, and my best friends are the defendants. This time, Shakes the Detective can’t solve the crime and make everything all right.

Doctor Atwood says, “There’s one part of the story I don’t understand.”

“
One
part?” I say. “You don’t understand
one part
? There’s a zillion and one parts of the story I don’t get. So maybe if you tell me what that one part is, I can ask you about the other zillion.”

“I’m sorry,” says Doctor Atwood. “Obviously, there are mysteries here that need to be cleared up. That’s why
you’re coming to see me, Maisie. So we can figure it out together. Maybe I should have said there’s one
detail
that I don’t get.”

“Try me,” I say. I make my eyes go out of focus, and I concentrate on one of Doctor Atwood’s masks, until its eyes swim together and it turns into Cyclops. I can tell she thinks she’s onto something big. Maybe she imagines that she’s going to catch me in one of those tiny slipups that give the whole case away when the cops are interviewing a suspect on TV. Something that will prove I’m lying, that the
incident
didn’t happen the way I say it did.

Isn’t that what this is all about? Someone has to be lying. Either it’s me, or it’s Chris and Kevin and Shakes. Are these sessions with Doctor Atwood all about finding out whether the liar is me? I tell myself I’m just being a paranoid teen. Joan believes me, and she was the one who suggested I go see Doctor Atwood. The reason she set this up isn’t because she thinks I’m lying when I say the guys touched my breasts even though I told them not to. Or maybe it’s a legal thing, maybe they’ll call Doctor Atwood as their expert witness.

The problem is, it’s all gotten pretty jumbled. There’s the story I first told Joan, the story that got repeated, the story I told after that, the story I’m telling now. So if Doctor Atwood can help me figure it out, it’s worth all the money Dad and Joan are paying.

“Maisie,” Doctor Atwood is saying. “Try to focus, all right?”

“Sorry,” I say. “What were we talking about?”

Doctor Atwood says, “That one detail. Which is…you and your friends are in the ninth grade, right?”

“Right.” Hasn’t she heard a word I’ve said?

“And you rode on the high school bus? Which is where it happened?”

“Right again,” I say.

“In the backseat?”

“That’s correct.”

“So here’s the part I don’t understand. Unless things have changed dramatically since I was a kid, ninth graders don’t get to sit in the backseat of the bus. That’s senior territory. Reserved for seniors who don’t drive yet, or who don’t have cars or know anyone with a car. Or the ones who had their license revoked.”

I smile. It’s the first completely smart thing that Doctor Atwood has ever said.

“Good point.”

“So how come you were sitting there, you and your ninth-grade friends?”

I’m glad she asked. Because the answer involves the only part of this whole thing that I still like thinking about. Even though it’s going to hurt, I like remembering the way Shakes could be.

I say, “I was the first one on the bus. Just me and the driver, Big Maureen. I’d known that was going to happen. Joan had looked up the bus route, they had it at the post office, and she totally spazzed out that I had the longest ride of any kid in the district. But there was nothing she could do, the school blamed the bus company and vice versa, on and on.

“So I shouldn’t have been surprised. But the first day of school, when I got on the bus and realized that I was actually first, I said good morning to Big Maureen and sort of panicked and headed straight to the back of bus. You’d think if I was feeling nervous, I’d have stayed near Big Maureen, but Big Maureen isn’t the kind of
person you want to stay near. She was never mean or scary, just slumpy and depressed. Joan had told me she was a single mom with five kids who needed the job. It felt weird, to be one of two people on that huge bus. I don’t know why. It was almost like Big Maureen and I were in this huge yellow spaceship and we’d blasted off before the rest of the crew had shown up. I was glad when we slowed down to pick up someone else. And I was practically
ecstatic
when I saw we were picking up Shakes. I watched him do his little crablike hop down his driveway. I was so glad to see him, I wished I could have hugged him.”

“Why couldn’t you?” asks Doctor Atwood.

I say, “Is that a serious question?”

Now it’s Doctor Atwood’s turn to smile.

“Go on, Maisie,” she says.

“It would have been…uncomfortable.”

Why
couldn’t
I have hugged him? Maybe because it would have reminded everybody—that is, Shakes and me—of the fact that now I had a pair of breasts.

I say, “When Shakes got on, I was doing these giant semaphores, waving at him from the back. He smiled this
cool loopy grin and he came back and sat next to me.

“Soon after, we crossed the reservoir. We had maybe ten minutes with just the two of us alone on the bus before anyone else got on. The scenery was really pretty there, but it was so early. We were both really tired, and we sort of fell asleep.”

Leaning on each other’s shoulders.

That’s a little
detail
that might help the doctor make sense of all this, but I don’t want to tell it. In fact, the more I think about the story—the beginning of the story—the less I want to tell it. I just want to be quiet and think about it, by myself.

I say, “By the time we woke up, two seniors were standing over us. Big lacrosse-team types.”

Doctor Atwood laughs, though it’s not funny.

Here’s what I don’t say:

The seniors were both beefy, but one had a sort of sheeplike, lamb-y thing going, too. Mr. Beef and Mr. Lamb was how I thought of them right away.

They told Shakes and me that we were sitting in their seats.

Lamb said, “What part of ‘lowly ninth-grade turd’ are you midgets not getting?”

“Wow,” I said. “I’m amazed that a guy like you knows a fancy word like
turd
.”

They both turned and looked at me, as if they were trying to decide whether or not to do anything about me.

Beef said, “Hey, listen to Little Miss D Cup.”

Shakes stood. I pushed him back in his seat. I was so proud and happy that he would stand up for me against these two morons. On the other hand, I didn’t want to watch him get trashed.

“How much clearer can we say it? These seats are reserved,” said Beef. “We’re seniors.”

“How come you’re not driving?” Shakes asked.

Everything kind of hung in suspension until the seniors looked at each other and laughed.

“Party this summer,” Lamb said.

“Freaking blowout,” said Beef.

Lamb said, “At the end of the day, some license suspension went down.”

“At the end of the
night
, dude.” Beef guffawed like a moron.

“Sorry to hear it,” Shakes said.

“Thanks,” said Lamb. “We appreciate that. You and your girlfriend got to move up front now.”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” I said. They ignored me. They actually weren’t interested one way or the other.

“I’d like to, I’d really like to,” said Shakes. “But I have a disability. It’s state-mandated that I sit near the exit”—he nodded at the door between the two back-seats—“or else the county has to pay for one of those buses that stop and kneel down so I can get on. Adds at least another half hour to the ride, especially when we get rerouted so we pick up every crippled kid in the county. Have you ever been on one of those special buses when they have to load on a wheelchair?”

Beef and Lamb groaned. They were too stupid to figure out that by the time buses like that went into service, they would have graduated long before. It wasn’t going to happen, anyway. The school board was too cheap.

“What kind of disability do you have?” asked Lamb.

“Watch,” said Shakes. The bus was moving faster. Shakes stood up and started down the aisle. One of his legs was wobbly, and he kind of unhinged it further. The bus rounded a curve, and Shakes went into free fall, flying all over the bus, nearly falling. It was a real performance, it was like watching ballet. Or a car chase. At the very last minute, his arm shot out and grabbed the back of a seat.

“Please take your seats, gentlemen,” Big Maureen yelled into her rearview mirror.

“Watch it!” said Beef, who hadn’t breathed the whole time Shakes was flopping around in the aisle.

“Hey, man, be careful,” said Lamb. “That’s dangerous. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself.”

“Get your crazy ass in the seat.” Beef indicated the backseat.

“Take it easy,” Lamb told Shakes. “If I were you, I’d just sit tight until we come to a full stop.”

Neither of them wanted to sit next to Shakes. So they let me stay where I was. Beef claimed the seat in front of us, Lamb across the aisle from us, and they sprawled all over the seats so each one had a seat to himself and no one would dream of sitting beside them.

They ignored us; they never talked to us again. From that day on, Shakes and I had the backseat all to ourselves until Beef and Lamb got on. And then the best part of my day was over.

That first day, when Kevin got on, we watched him looking all around the bus for us. Before, we’d always saved seats for him and Chris, and all four of us always sat together. So he was looking for us to figure out where
to sit. He looked shocked when he finally saw us in back, with Beef and Lamb like big hunky walls between us and the rest of the bus. Kevin knew better than to try and get past them and invade sacred senior territory so he could sit near me and Shakes. He shrugged and took a seat near the front. He kept turning around and giving us weird, unfriendly looks. Like, what was up with the two of us? Who did we think we were, and why had we deserted them? It was too late for Shakes and me to move up—Big Maureen would have had a fit—and Shakes had already demonstrated what could happen when he tried to walk around when the bus was in motion. Besides, the truth was, I liked sitting next to Shakes in the back. I didn’t want to move.

When Chris got in, I watched him when he spotted Kevin—and then Shakes and me. What was going on? He sat beside Kevin, and they talked for a while, and then they both kept turning around and shooting us dirty looks. How come
we
got special treatment? I told myself that Chris didn’t mind all that much because Daria Wells was sitting in the seat right in front of his. But in my heart, I knew that something had happened
that was more serious than the four of us not sitting together on the bus, and sometimes I think that all our troubles began on that first bus ride.

That’s what happened. But this is what I tell Doctor Atwood:

“I don’t know why we got to sit in the back. I think it had something to do with Shakes’s disability.”

“That’s strange,” she says. “I would think they’d want him up front near the driver.”

“Exit door?” I say. This doesn’t make any sense, and Doctor Atwood knows it. Beef and Lamb might have been stupid enough to go for it, but she’s not. But for some reason she decides to let it pass. Maybe she wants to see where this will take me, as she always says.

“Wouldn’t they want a disabled boy sitting near the driver?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s what they told Shakes.”

I can tell she doesn’t believe me. But I’m not lying, really. The reason we got to sit in back
was
because of Shakes’s disability. I’m just leaving out the most important part of the story. The part I don’t want to tell—that I liked it that way, even though I didn’t know why then.