Drowning Instinct

Page 6

Of course, at the time, you hadn‘t met me.
Anyway . . . my grandmother was Stephanie A. MacAllister. To everyone else, my mom‘s mom was this brilliant writer who started sleeping around when she was ten.
Honestly, Bob, if you believed her, Grandma MacAllister had sex with just about everything but a gerbil and then wrote about it. Give her enough time, she might have figured out the gerbil, too.
Of course, the book— Memoirs of a Very Good Girl—was banned and burned and trashed, so just about everyone read and talked about it. My mom always says there is no such thing as bad publicity. By the time she was thirty-five, Grandma MacAllister had made a fortune, started a pretty famous artists‘ colony, opened up her bookstore, discovered new talent, promoted reading, blah, blah, blah. She never wrote another book. I never asked why because I hadn‘t been born when she hanged herself from a sturdy wooden closet dowel in a swank New York hotel the night she won some award for lifetime achievement.
She left the store to Mom, which pissed off Grandpa—he of the drunken, chain-smoking, torch-the-house rampage. Mom used to be a poet and did pretty well.
Although after Matt was gone, she bought up all the copies of her one collection she could find and burned them in this giant bonfire in the old, pre-McMansion backyard.
After Grandma died, Mom poured everything into the bookstore. That hummed along fairly smoothly until 2003, which is when Matt left. Since then, sales have crashed, publishing has cratered, and Mom and the store . . . well, it‘s like handing a bucket to a bulimic, Bob. No matter how much you vomit, the bucket‘s never quite full enough.
c
As Dewerman rambled on, my back began to burn, and I felt the wings of my skin grafts, the ones between my shoulder blades, straining to tug free. My throat tried to close against the memory of thick, acrid smoke. Until that instant, I had been the new kid, a nobody, just another transfer. Only my teachers knew anything about my little episode, but no one had made the connection to my gerbil-screwing, sex-crazed grandmother. Now everyone would look her up, if only to suck up to Dewerman.
Would there be anything about our family? Me?
. . . comparison analysis. Dewerman‘s voice leaked through. Suicide is a highly individual choice. The psychoanalysts would tell you there‘s an intimate connection between creativity and madness.
Danielle raised her hand. Doesn‘t suicide run in families?
Dewerman opened his mouth, but I beat him to it. Well, I said, trying to sound all jokey, thinking—stupidly—I could salvage something by being so very über-cool, I’m still alive.
Well, said Danielle, so far.
8: a
I motored out of English fast enough to blur. If David was there, I didn‘t see him. I don‘t know what freaked me out more: Dewerman‘s gushing, people finding out about my crazy grandma, or Danielle‘s razor-sharp eyes.
I clicked to crisis mode, my go-to where the world smears and I slide into a parallel reality, like when I‘m running. Rebecca called it depersonalization, but that‘s bullshit, Bob.
I never float along and watch myself. I watch you guys. Think Ariel in a fishbowl. The world becomes water and I bob along in my glass bubble, right alongside. You see me, I see you, but we inhabit different bodies of water. You can‘t touch me, and I can‘t touch you and that‘s just fine.
I floated like that through honors-level world studies and on to fourth period gym where I made like Clark Kent‘s girlie clone, changing in a bathroom stall instead of a phone booth. No one cared. The teacher spent half the period talking about safety and the other half making us shoot hoops. No stress, no fuss.
So, by lunch, I was starting to relax.
Big mistake.
b
I don‘t know what I was thinking. Once the fire happened—and especially once Matt was gone—I learned to hate the cafeteria, that momentary pause when a thousand eyes scanned and then dismissed me, the whispers trailing like bad odors as I made my way to a solitary corner. But this was a new school, right? My get-normal campaign? Things had to get better. Besides, David said he‘d save a seat.
Right away, I spotted Mr. Anderson standing just inside the door. Okay, good omen. He was talking to another student, but as I scooted by, he nodded and said, Ms.
Lord. I kept on another four steps, heard my name and, yes, there was David standing at a far table, waving both arms. I started that way—
And then spotted Danielle on his right.
Okay, this was bad. Even across the lunchroom, I read her expression: Stay away or I’ll scrape your tonsils out with a fork.
Yeah, see, this was just more trouble I didn‘t need. So, without breaking stride, I did this abrupt midcourse correction, a complete one-eighty—which was my second big mistake.
Someone yelped, Hey!
A split second later, I collided with a taco salad, salsa, French fries, and a large Coke. The guy carrying the tray cursed. Sticky brown fluid sloshed across my chest. Ice chattered to the floor like dice. A squishy gob of sour cream and black beans glued itself to my left thigh.
And there was Absolute. Complete. Total. Silence.
I could hear Coke raining onto the floor. No one was moving except Mr. Anderson, who was already starting over. Everyone else gawked at the freak, the alien who‘d just beamed down. David stood, a look of shock leaking across his face. Danielle smirked.
Whoa, said the kid whose lunch I was wearing. Are you okay?
Mr. Anderson was ten feet away. Ms. Lord . . .
I‘m okay. My voice was strangled, gargly, strange, and then I was moving fast, scuttling out of the cafeteria and down the hall, banging into the bathroom. Empty. No one at the sinks. I gulped air like a hooked salmon dying of slow suffocation. The remnants of the kid‘s taco salad had oozed down my thigh and fallen off somewhere along the way. I looked around for paper towels and found nothing but a bank of blow-dryers. Great. A very progressive, environmentally minded school. I dove into the first stall and slammed the door. Hunkering on the toilet, I hugged my knees. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
A few minutes later, the bathroom door opened again. A swell of hall chatter ballooned in. Peeking, I saw four feet as the girls crossed to the sinks. I heard the unzipping of purses, rummaging sounds.
Oh my God, one girl said. I almost died, it was so funny. Did you see her face?
She‘s in my English class, said the other, and I recognized Danielle‘s voice. Her grandmother was some kind of crazy famous writer. Dewerman almost had an orgasm.
I saw David with her.
So? Smacking noises as Danielle inspected her lipstick. He was just being nice.
That boy and his strays . . . The more broken they are, the better he likes them, just like Anderson.
Mr. Anderson‘s nice. The click of a compact. I thought you liked him. You said he was cool.
A pause. He is. You know, he talks to everybody, and he writes these killer recommendations. I just wish he‘d decide already if I can take over David‘s TA slot once the fencing season gets started. God, I hope that girl‘s got Schroeder for chemistry.
Otherwise . . . They went on like that for a while, eventually moving on to other losers.
Then they left.
I stayed in my stall. Not in school a full day and I‘d already made the gossip rounds of the mascara-and-lipstick crowd. At least, I now knew why Danielle hated me. She didn‘t have to worry. From that moment on, David Melman wouldn‘t get a drop of encouragement.
I peeled off my soggy shirt to inspect the damage. My skin was alien and yellow under the bathroom fluorescents, the lumpy scars pale as tapeworms, the donor sites on my thighs only the faintest of rectangles.
My body was a memory quilt, a patchwork of scars and moods and deeds best left to fester in the dark. Here, Matt ran with me from the house as my back boiled. There is where Mom smothered me with her coat. And that pucker on my belly there is where Grandpa MacAllister, still alive after the fire and senile, tried pinching my ass so I twisted a staple out of an informational pamphlet on Alzheimer‘s and jabbed until the blood bubbled.
(Mom, screaming: Don’t you dare save . . . )
I wanted so badly to cut, I could taste it. But the thought that someone like Danielle would tip the balance made me mad. No way would I give that bitch the satisfaction.
c
I crept out about thirty seconds after the second bell. The river of kids had dwindled to a trickle. Mr. Anderson was leaning against the wall at the foot of the stairs but pushed off when he saw me coming. Too late, nowhere to run. The day wasn‘t even done, and I felt as if I‘d spent my whole life running into things and away from him.
Here. He dealt me a late pass. You might need this. You okay?
No. But I gave an all-purpose shrug, hoping he‘d read it as yes and let me slink away.
It‘ll get better. Just give it time.
I should get to class. Then I remembered: Actually, the library. I‘ve got study hall.
Then walk with me for a second.
I remembered what Danielle had said about Mr. Anderson liking the broken ones.
Well, if that was true, what was her problem? Whatever. I‘m okay.
All right, he said, easily. No pressure.
All of a sudden, I felt bad. He was just being nice. I‘m sorry.
What for? You have nothing to apologize about, Ms. Lord. You‘re allowed your feelings. He hesitated then said, Look, I run or bike every other morning. You get here so early, if you ever want to come along, you‘re welcome to. Runs are always nicer when you‘ve got a partner. And no pressure to join the team, I promise.
Thanks. I knew I wouldn‘t take him up on his offer, but the fact that he had bothered made me feel better. I‘ll think about it.
Liar, but he smiled as he said it. Well, the offer always stands. Come on, we‘ll go to my room. It‘s my planning period, and I‘ve got a blow-dryer you can use for that shirt. Back room will give you plenty of privacy.
What about study hall? Shouldn‘t I go to the library?