Unlovable (5 page)

My mom used to have lots
of
friends
coming
by to visit until I realized they were using her for what little
money we had. After I’d gone to the bank and set up a checking
account
with
direct deposit,
and
kept the checkbook hidden, the supposed
friendships evaporated. Except for Hoffman. He’d moved in a few
months ago and they’d become fast friends. He gave me the
creeps.

I set about cleaning the house so not
to think about the aching hunger in the pit of my stomach. It was a
pocket-sized trailer consisting of an extremely small living
room-dining room-kitchen combination. The sparse mismatched
furnishings were tattered beyond repair.

There was a brown couch that sagged
horribly in the middle, a blue armchair—minus an arm- and a rickety
kitchen table with two wobbly folding chairs  Toward the back
of the trailer was our micro-chip sized bathroom, and opposite the
bathroom, were two 9 by 7 foot bedrooms. My mother rarely used
hers, preferring to spend most of her days and nights passed out on
the couch.

The floors throughout were a linoleum,
cold brown linoleum, and it was normally littered with an empty
booze bottle or two and a few stray tissues. The walls were painted
a blanched white and were bare and tedious, mostly because we
didn’t have the money to decorate them. I’d used thumbtacks to hang
some old beige pillowcases over the tall narrow windows to afford
us privacy.

My frantic cleaning efforts were
rewarded. I found 83 cents under the chair’s flattened cushion. I
finished my housework and ran to the store to buy some day-old
bread.

***

Most of my lunch hours were spent in
the library studying, that way I didn’t have to watch others eat,
but not today. I had a peanut butter sandwich, and I ate in the
cafeteria sitting alongside Melody who had asked me to sit with her
before anyone else did. On any given day, I battled hunger
headaches, this afternoon, however, it was a tension headache from
listening to Melody’s insipid gossiping. I made several attempts to
change the subject and finally gave up. The girl was like a dog
with a bone. I tried to chew loudly on my dry bread and crunchy
peanut butter, nevertheless, her voice still hacked through the
white noise.

“
Hillary said you are riding
with Seth to CaL class now.” Melody adjusting her black polka dot
shirt as she spoke. “How many times did pretty boy fix his hair on
the ride over?” I shrugged my shoulders, dropping my head back down
to my lunch. “You’re trying to be nice by not saying anything, but
you know I’m right. Look at them. They’re the perfect
couple.”

They were sitting a few tables away
from us, and I hoped they couldn’t hear her this time. I didn’t
dare look, and instead nodded silently and continued staring down
at my dehydrated bread.

“
They sit there never
speaking to anyone who isn’t in their little clique. They think
they’re better than any of us because they’re rich and
good-looking.” She snorted loudly. “They’re totally self-absorbed,
it's as if the rest of us don’t exist.”

I wiggled around uncomfortably in my
seat, debating whether to say something about Seth and the way he
loved the CaL kids, or that I had indeed seen him hanging out with
lots of different kids around school, not just the popular ones.
But I didn’t. Instead, I swallowed the last of my sandwich and
gathered up my things.

“
I have to go, Melody.
Thanks for sitting with me today.” Some of what she said was
probably true, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about him yesterday
with the children. I rushed to culinary class, relieved to be away
from her.

The advantage of a cooking class was
you got to eat what you created, and hungry as I was most of the
time, I’d even eat my cooking. The classroom was close to the
cafeteria, and with my hasty departure, I arrived ten minutes
early. I chose a desk in the far back corner and hoped the teacher
wasn’t one of those control freaks with a seating chart.

The classroom was huge. On one side
were twelve two-person desks, and on the opposite end of the room
were twelve white stoves with small counters to the left of each,
along with four stainless steel refrigerators spaced out across the
back.

Soon the class began filling up.
Several of my friends stopped at my desk to ask how my Christmas
was. Since everyone had already partnered up before coming in, I
was still sitting alone at my desk when the teacher arrived. I
hoped that she’d pair me up with someone who cooked better than I
did.

“
Alright everyone, take your
seat.” The teacher, Mrs. Gianchi, was a feisty Italian woman with
dark hair she wrapped tightly in a bun and anchored to the top of
her head with several clips. Her smile was warm and generous, and
her cheeks glowed bright pink, presumably from the heat of the
ovens in the room. I’d seen her walking around in the halls before
with her flowered aprons, and they usually looked nice, but today
she had on a striped dress and the combination of the two made my
eyes hurt.

 “
Good afternoon.” She
stepped her petite frame up onto a small stool so everyone could
see her better. “We’re going to jump right into cooking today with
an easy lesson on candy making.” She explained how we were to mix
up the ingredients and record the effect the various temperatures
had on the candy mixture as it heated up. She directed us toward
the stoves, dividing everyone up into pairs. When she came to me, I
still didn’t have a partner.

“
How can this be?” She
pulled out her roll book. “There’s an even number of students
enrolled in class.” Before she could find the list, Seth appeared
out of nowhere, startling me.

“
Sorry I’m late,” he said
with a grin.

Oh, no! This can’t be! We now had
three classes together!

“
There you are,” Mrs.
Gianchi said to him, closing her book.

“
I was held up, it won’t
happen again.” He looked over at me and quietly added, “I had to
fix my hair.” Heat overtook my face, and I looked away.

“
I need
you to partner with Maggie.” He smiled broadly at Mrs. Gianchi’s
request. I turned my back on him as he slid up behind me, standing
much too close. I moved a few inches away, hoping he wouldn’t
realize it. He did and scooted even closer. I got the distinct
impression he was teasing me. I folded my arms across my stomach
and glued my feet to the floor. He would have to walk over me if he
thought I’d give him another inch. My eyes stayed fixed on the
teacher, and yet I could
feel
his smile burrowing into the
back of my head. She handed me the instructions, and I accidentally
bumped into him moving toward the small counter. Still ignoring
him, I began measuring and pouring items into the pan.

“
Would you like my help, or
am I supposed to stand here and look pretty?” he asked. I passed
the recipe over and signaled for him to continue. He poured and
measured so quickly I had a hard time keeping up with what he was
doing.

Neither of us spoke as the
temperature of our candy mixture slowly rose. Bore the Snore’s
class was more thrilling than this… well, maybe it wasn’t
quite
that
bad.
Thankfully, Mrs. Gianchi interrupted our rampant excitement.
“Class, remember drop a small amount of your mixture in cold water
at each temperature gauge, and record the reaction on your
worksheet.”

An eternity later, the stupid mixture
finally reached 230 degrees, our first test temperature. I reached
into the pot, scooped up a spoonful of the sugary substance and was
about to drop it into the glass of cold water, when an
all-too-familiar voice startled me, causing me to spill the liquid
candy.

“
Seth, what did you do in a
previous life that doomed you to be stuck with her for a partner?”
Hillary. She was dressed in jeans and a cute black shearing jacket
with a white fleece collar that made her alabaster skin glow. I
never felt uglier. She gave me a supercilious look as she folded
her arms across her chest. Her perfect chest. I quickly folded my
arms cross my not so perfect chest, as if it was a big secret God
had forgotten to give me breasts. “Nice sweater, by the way,” she
added. “It just screams trailer trash.”

“
That’s enough, Hillary.”
Seth frowned and glanced over at me. I was surprised that he
actually shut her down. Impressive, though it didn’t seem to bother
her at all since she just flipped her hair and twisted his face
back to hers.

“
My notebook is still in
your car from last night.” She actually purred as she walked her
fingers up his arm. “I need it for my history class. May I have
your keys?

“
I put the notebook in my
bag this morning, wait here, I'll go got it.” Hillary and I both
watched him walk over to the desk and rifle through his book
bag.

Abruptly, she coiled back to me.
“You’re so out of your league, girlfriend.” Her voice was low and
her face, tight. “Even if he were to go out with you, it’d be for
one reason and one reason only. Your kind are merely toys for boys
like him.”

Racking my brain for a witty comeback,
I came up flat and turned back to the thermometer. It now read 315
degrees. Sure, now the dumb mixture heats up fast! We’d missed
every reading in between. I pulled the pan off the burner as Seth
returned with the red notebook. Hillary tucked it under her arm and
blew him a kiss as she left.

“
It’s ruined.” I slammed the
pot onto the back of the stove, causing the contents to splash
everywhere. “If your airhead girlfriend hadn’t come in and
interrupted us we wouldn’t have failed this cooking lab. Now we’re
going to get an F on the assignment!” For the life of me I couldn’t
figure out why I was letting those two upset me like
this.

His jaw tightened. “Hillary’s on the
honor roll, so I guess that blows your airhead theory, and she’s
not my girlfriend. Please let Melody know, won’t you?”

He snagged the candy worksheet, wrote
down the answers, and tossed it back at me, muttering that
something wasn’t working and he needed to make a phone call. He
turned and stormed out the door without saying another word. Mrs.
Gianchi rushed over.

“
What is the matter with
Seth?” I shrugged my shoulders trying not to look guilty. She
picked up the worksheet and smiled. “He’s such a nice boy and what
wonderful penmanship.”

Geez, even the adults were bedazzled
by him!

“
This worksheet looks
correct. Once you’ve cleaned up this mess, you may leave,” she
said, pointing at the candy splattered on the stove. She walked
away leaving me to wallow in my misery. It took me the rest of the
class period to clean up the now hardened mess.

My mind kept replaying Seth’s angry
words in culinary class on my walk home, and I took offense to his
comment. Melody was the bad guy here, I had never said anything
about him.

On the other hand, I didn’t stop her
from maligning him or Hillary either, and I did laugh at a few of
her comments. As hard as I tried to appease my guilty conscience, I
still felt terrible. I had been a victim of false rumors before and
even though they were lies, it still hurt. I swore to myself that
the next time Melody started ranting about Seth, I was going to
speak up. My decision helped ease the guilt somewhat, and I picked
up the pace. It was cold.

I got home and took a long hot shower
to warm up my frigid body. My mom had already ingested her daily
allotment of booze and was passed out on the couch. I thought about
helping her into bed, only the last two times I’d tried, I was
rewarded with some pretty nasty bruises. She was an ornery drunk.
Sometimes it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

3

With a ten-page research
paper for my Mythology class looming over my head, Sunday morning I
got up early and went to the library while my mom slept. I could
have chosen to
do
ten hours of community service, the alternative Bore offered
those who didn’t want to do a paper, but without a car I didn’t
have that option. He insisted we become mindful of our community.
To quote Bore, ’The needs of our community are not a myth.’ A
pretty good idea, only for me it meant spending more time away from
home since we didn’t have a computer.

In my rush to leave, I accidentally
pushed my big toe out the end of my worn blue sneaker. “Great!” I
hurriedly tied the ruined shoe and said goodbye to my mother,
mostly out of habit. She was still sleeping off yesterday’s vodka
and resting up for today’s onslaught. She didn’t stir. Even though
I knew she wouldn’t acknowledge me, a slight twinge still tugged at
my heart. I ignored it and left.

The frigid morning welcomed me with a
bone chilling blast of icy cold as I stepped off the porch and
right into a slush puddle. “Yuck!” I shook the mess out of my shoe
and trudged off.

While tracking down
information on local children’s charities,
m
y eye caught the calendar hanging on the
wall above the reference desk
.
January 9
^th.
It was thirteen years ago today my world changed
forever.