When we get off the bus on Valentine's Day, a girl with white-blond hair bursts into tears. "I Love You, Anjela!" is spray-painted into the snowbank along the parking lot. I don't know if Angela is crying because she is happy or because her heart's desire can't spell. Her honey is waiting with a red rose. They kiss right there in front of everybody. Happy Valentine's Day.
It's caught me by surprise. Valentine Day's was a big hairy deal in elementary school because you had to give cards to everyone in your class, even the kid who made you step in dog poop. Then the class mom brought in pink frosted cupcakes and we traded those little candy hearts that said "Hot Baby!" and "Be Mine!"
The holiday went underground in middle school. No parties. No shoe boxes with red cutout hearts for your drugstore valentines. To tell someone you liked them, you had to use layers and layers of friends, as in "Janet told me to tell you that Steven told me that Dougie said Carom was talking to April and she hinted that Sara's brother Mark has a friend named Tony who might like you. What are you going to do?"
It is easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.
I go with the flow toward my locker. We are all dressed in down jackets and vests, so we collide and roll like bumper cars at the state fair. I notice envelopes taped to some lockers but don't really think about it until I find one on mine. It says "Melinda." It has to be a joke. Someone put it there to make me look stupid. I peer over my left shoulder, then my right, for groups of evil kids pointing at me. All I see are the backs of heads.
What if it is real? What if it's from a boy? My heart stops, then stutters and pumps again. No, not Andy. His style is definitely not romantic. Maybe David Petrakis My Lab Partner. He watches me when he thinks I can't see him, afraid I'm going to break lab equipment or faint again. Sometimes he smiles at me, an anxious smile, the kind you use on a dog that might bite. All I have to do is open the envelope. I can't stand it. I walk past my locker and go straight to biology.
Ms. Keen decided it would be cute to review birds and bees in honor of Valentine's Day. Nothing practical, of course, no information about why hormones can make you crazy, or why your face only breaks out at the worst time, or how to tell if somebody really gave you a Valentine's card on your locker. No, she really teaches us about the birds and the bees. Notes of love and betrayal are passed hand over hand as if the lab tables were lanes on Cupid's Highway. Ms. Keen draws a picture of an egg with a baby chick inside it.
David Petrakis is fighting to stay awake. Does he like me? I make him nervous. He thinks I'm going to ruin his grade. But maybe I'm growing on him. Do I want him to like me? I chew my thumbnail. No. I just want anyone to like me. I want a note with a heart on it. I pull the edge of my thumbnail back too far and it bleeds. I squeeze my thumb so the blood gathers in a perfect sphere before it collapses and slides toward the palm of my hand. David hands me a tissue. I press it into the cut. The white cells of paper dissolve as the red floods them. It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts except the small smiles and blushes that flash across the room like tiny sparrows.
I open my notebook and write a note to David: "Thanks!" I slide the notebook over to him. He swallows hard, his Adam's apple bouncing to the bottom of his neck and back up again. He writes back: "You are welcome." Now what? I squeeze the tissue harder on my thumb to concentrate. Ms. Keen's baby bird hatches on the board. I draw a picture of Ms. Keen as a robin. David smiles. He draws a branch under her feet and slides the notebook back to me. I try to connect the branch to a tree. It looks pretty good, better than anything I have drawn so far in art. The bell rings, and David's hand brushes against mine as he picks up his books. I bolt from my seat. I'm afraid to look at him. What if he thinks I already opened his card and I hate his guts, which was why I didn't say anything? But I can't say anything because the card could be a joke, or from some other silent watcher who blends in with the blur of lockers and doors.
My locker. The card is still there, a white patch of hope with my name on it. I tear it off and open it. Something falls to my feet. The card has a picture of two cutesy teddy bears sharing a pot of honey. I open it. "Thanks for understanding. You're the sweetest!" It is signed with a purple pen. "Good Luck!!! Heather."
I bend down to find what dropped from the card. It was the friendship necklace I had given Heather in a fit of insanity around Christmas. Stupid stupid stupid. How stupid could I be? I hear a cracking inside me, my ribs are collapsing in on my lungs, which is why I can't breathe. I stumble down the hall, down another hall, down another hall, till I find my very own door and slip inside and throw the lock, not even bothering to turn on the lights, just falling falling a mile downhill to the bottom of my brown chair, where I can sink my teeth into the soft white skin of my wrist and cry like the baby I am. I rock, thumping my head against the cinder-block wall. A half-forgotten holiday has unveiled every knife that sticks inside me, every cut. No Rachel, no Heather, not even a silly, geeky boy who would like the inside girl I think I am.
I find Lady of Mercy Hospital by accident. I fall asleep on the bus and miss the mall completely. The hospital is worth a try. Maybe I can learn some pre-med stuff for David.
In a sick kind of way, I love it. There are waiting rooms on almost every floor. I don't want to attract too much attention to myself, so I stay on the move, checking my watch constantly, trying to look as if I have a reason for being here. I'm afraid I'll get caught, but the people around me have other things to worry about. The hospital is the perfect place to be invisible and the cafeteria food is better than the school's.
The worst waiting room is on the heart-attack floor. It is crowded with gray-faced women twisting their wedding rings and watching the doors for a familiar doctor. One lady just sobs, she doesn't care that total strangers watch her nose drip or that people can hear her as soon as they get off the elevator. Her cries stop just short of screaming. They make me shiver. I snag a couple of copies of People magazine and I am out of there.
The maternity ward is dangerous because people there are happy. They ask me questions, who am I waiting for, when is the baby due, is it my mother, a sister? If I wanted people to ask me questions, I would have gone to school. I say I have to call my father and flee.
The cafeteria is cool. Huge. Full of people wearing doctor-nurse clothes with college-degree posture and beepers. I always thought hospital people would be real health nuts, but these guys eat junk food like it's going out of style. Big piles of nachos, cheeseburgers as wide as plates, cherry pie, potato chips, all the good stuff. One lone cafeteria worker named Lola stands by the steamed-fish and onion tray. I feel bad for her, so I buy the fish platter. I also buy a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy and a yogurt. I find a seat next to a table of serious, frowning, silver-haired men who use words so long I'm surprised they don't choke. Very official. Nice to hang around people who sound like they know what they're doing.
After lunch I wander up to the fifth floor, to an adult surgery wing where waiting family members concentrate on the television. I sit where I can watch the nurses' station and, beyond that, a couple of hospital rooms. It looks like a good place to get sick. The doctors and nurses seem smart, but they smile every once in a while.
A laundry-room worker pushes an enormous basket of green hospital gowns (the kind that shows your butt if you don't hold it closed) to a storage area. I follow him. If anyone asks, I'm looking for a water fountain. No one asks. I pick up a gown. I want to put it on and crawl under the white knobbly blanket and white sheets in one of those high-off-the-ground beds and sleep. It is getting harder to sleep at home. How long would it take for the nurses to figure out I don't belong here? Would they let me rest for a few days?
A stretcher pushed by a tall guy with muscles sweeps down the hall. One woman walks beside it, a nurse. I have no idea what is wrong with the patient, but his eyes are closed and a thin line of blood seeps through a bandage on his neck.
I put the gown back. There is nothing wrong with me. These are really sick people, sick that you can see. I head for the elevator. The bus is on its way.
We have a meeting with Principal Principal. Someone has noticed that I've been absent. And that I don't talk. They figure I'm more a head case than a criminal, so they call in the guidance counselor, too.
Mother's mouth twitches with words she doesn't want to say in front of strangers. Dad keeps checking his beeper, hoping someone will call.
I sip water from a paper cup. If the cup were lead crystal, I would open my mouth and take a bite. Crunch, crunch, swallow.
They want me to speak.
"Why won't you say anything?" "For the love of God, open your mouth!" "This is childish, Melinda." "Say something." "You are only hurting yourself by refusing to cooperate." "I don't know why she's doing this to us."
The Principal ha-hums loudly and gets in the middle.
Principal Principal: "We all agree we are here to help. Let's start with these grades. They are not what we expected from you, Melissa."
Dad: "Melinda."
Principal Principal: "Melinda. Last year you were a straight-B student, no behavioral problem, few absences. But the reports I've been getting … well, what can we say?"
Mother: "That's the point, she won't say anything! I can't get a word out of her. She's mute."
Guidance Counselor: "I think we need to explore the family dynamics at play here."
Mother: "She's jerking us around to get attention."
Me: [inside my head] Would you listen? Would you believe me? Fat chance.
Dad: "Well, something is wrong. What have you done to her? I had a sweet, loving little girl last year, but as soon as she comes up here, she clams up, skips school, and flushes her grades down the toilet. I golf with the school board president, you know."
Mother: "We don't care who you know, Jack. We have to get Melinda to talk."
Guidance Counselor: [leaning forward, looking at Mom and Dad] "Do the two of you have marriage issues?"
Mother responds with unladylike language. Father suggests that the guidance counselor visit that hot, scary underground world. The guidance counselor grows quiet. Maybe she understands why I keep it zipped. Principal Principal sits back in his chair and doodles a hornet.
Tickticktick. I'm missing study hall for this. Nap time. How many days until graduation? I lost track. Have to find a calendar.
Mother and Father apologize. They sing a show tune: "What are we to do? What are we to do? She's so blue, we're just two. What, oh what, are we supposed to do?"
In my headworld, they jump on Principal Principal's desk and perform a tap-dance routine. A spotlight flashes on them. A chorus line joins in, and the guidance counselor dances around a spangled cane. I giggle.
Zap. Back in their world.
Mother: "You think this is funny? We are talking about your future, your life, Melinda!"
Father: "I don't know where you picked up that slacker attitude, but you certainly didn't learn it at home. Probably from the bad influences up here."
G.C.: "Actually, Melinda has some very nice friends. I've seen her helping that group of girls who volunteer so much. Meg Harcutt, Emily Briggs, Siobhan Falon …"
Principal Principal: [Stops doodling] "Very nice girls. They all come from good families." He looks at me for the first time and tilts his head to one side. "Those are your friends?"
Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing. I wonder how long it takes to ride a bus to Arizona.
Merryweather In-School Suspension. This is my Consequence. It is in my contract. It's true what they tell you about not signing anything without reading it carefully. Even better, pay a lawyer to read it carefully.
The guidance counselor dreamed up the contract after our cozy get-together in the principal's office. It lists a million things I'm not supposed to do and the consequences I'll suffer if I do them. The consequences for minor offenses like being late to class or not participating were stupid—they wanted me to write an essay—so I took another day off school and Bingo! I earned a trip to MISS.
It's a classroom painted white, with uncomfortable chairs and a lamp that buzzes like an angry hive. The inmates of MISS are commanded to sit and stare at the empty walls. It is supposed to bore us into submission or prepare us for an insane asylum.
Our guard dog today is Mr. Neck. He curls his lip and growls at me. I think this is part of his punishment for that bigoted crap he pulled in class. There are two other convicts with me. One has a cross tattooed on his shaved skull. He sits like a graniteboy waiting for a chisel so he can carve himself out of the mountainside. The other kid looks completely normal. His clothes are a little freaky maybe, but that's a misdemeanor here, not a felony. When Mr. Neck gets up to greet a late arival, the normal-looking kid tells me he likes to start fires.
Our last companion is Andy Evans. My breakfast turns to hydrochloric acid. He grins at Mr. Neck and sits down next to me.
Mr. Neck: "Cutting again, Andy?"
Andy Beast: "No sir. One of your colleagues thinks I have an authority problem. Can you believe it?"
Mr. Neck: "No more talking."
I am BunnyRabbit again, hiding in the open. I sit like I have an egg in my mouth. One move, one word, and the egg will shatter and blow up the world.
I am getting seriously weird in the head.
When Mr. Neck isn't looking, Andy blows in my ear.
I want to kill him.
I can't do anything, not even in art class. Mr. Freeman, a pro at staring out the window himself, thinks he knows what's wrong. "Your imagination is paralyzed," he declares. "You need to take a trip." Ears perk up all over the classroom and someone turns down the radio. A trip? Is he planning a field trip? "You need to visit the mind of a Great One," continues Mr. Freeman. Papers flutter as the class sighs. The radio sings louder again.
He pushes my pitiful linoleum block aside and gently sets down an enormous book. "Picasso." He whispers like a priest. "Picasso. Who saw the truth. Who painted the truth, molded it, ripped from the earth with two angry hands." He pauses. "But I'm getting carried away." I nod. "See Picasso," he commands. "I can't do everything for you. You must walk alone to find your soul."
Blah, blah, yeah. Looking at pictures would be better than watching snow drift. I open the book.
Picasso sure had a thing for naked women. Why not draw them with their clothes on? Who sits around without a shirt on, plucking a mandolin? Why not draw naked guys, just to be fair? Naked women is art, naked guys a no-no, I bet. Probably because most painters are men.
I don't like the first chapters. Besides all the naked women, he painted these blue pictures, like he ran out of red and green for a few weeks. He painted circus people and some dancers who look like they are standing in smog. He should have made them cough.
The next chapter steals my breath away. It takes me out of the room. It confuses me, while one little part of my brain jumps up and down screaming, "I get it! I get it!" Cubism. Seeing beyond what is on the surface. Moving both eyes and a nose to the side of the face. Dicing bodies and tables and guitars as if they were celery sticks, and rearranging them so that you have to really see them to see them. Amazing. What did the world look like to him?
I wish he had gone to high school at Merryweather. I bet we could have hung out. I search the whole book and never see one picture of a tree. Maybe Picasso couldn't do trees either. Why did I get stuck with such a lame idea? I sketch a Cubist tree with hundreds of skinny rectangles for branches. They look like lockers, boxes, glass shards, lips with triangle brown leaves. I drop the sketch on Mr. Freeman's desk. "Now you're getting somewhere," he says. He gives me a thumbs-up.
I am a good girl. I go to every single class for a week. It feels good to know what the teachers are talking about again. My parents get the news flash from the guidance counselor. They aren't sure how to react—happy because I'm behaving, or angrier still that they have to be happy about such a minor thing as a kid who goes to class every day.
The guidance counselor convinces them I need a reward—a chew toy or something. They settle on new clothes. I'm outgrowing everything I own.
But shopping with my mother? Just shoot me and put me out of my misery. Anything but a shopping trip with Mom. She hates shopping with me. At the mall she stalks ahead, chin high, eyelids twitching because I won't try on the practical, "stylish" clothes she likes. Mother is the rock, I am the ocean. I have to pout and roll my eyes for hours until she finally wears down and crumbles into a thousand grains of beach sand. It takes a lot of energy. I don't think I have it in me.
Apparently, Mom isn't up to the drag 'n' whine mall gig either. When they announce I've earned new clothes, they add that I have to get them at Effert's, so Mom can use her discount. I'm supposed to take the bus after school and meet her at the store. In a way, I'm glad. Get in, buy, get out, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
It seems like a good idea until I'm standing at the bus stop in front of school as a blizzard rips through the county. The wind chill must be twenty below and I don't have a hat or mittens. I try keeping my back to the wind, but my rear end freezes. Facing it is impossible. The snow blows up under my eyelids and fills my ears. That's why I don't hear the car pull up next to me. When the horn blows, I nearly jump out of my skin. It's Mr. Freeman. "Need a ride?"
Mr. Freeman's car shocks me. It is a blue Volvo, a safe Swedish box. I had him figured for an old VW bus. It is clean. I had visions of art supplies, posters and rotting fruit everywhere. When I get in, classical music plays quietly. Will wonders never cease.
He says dropping me off in the city is only a little out of his way. He'd love to meet my mother. My eyes widen in fear. "Maybe not," he says. I brush the melting snow from my head and hold my hands in front of the heating vent. He turns the fan up full-blast.
As I thaw, I count the mileage markers on the side of the road, keeping an eye out for interesting roadkill. We get a lot of dead deer in the suburbs. Sometimes poor people take the venison for their winter's meat, but most of the time the carcasses rot until their skin hangs like ribbons over their bones. We head west to the big city.
"You did a good job with that Cubist sketch," he says. I don't know what to say. We pass a dead dog. It doesn't have a collar. "I'm seeing a lot of growth in your work. You are learning more than you know."
Me: "I don't know anything. My trees suck."
Mr. Freeman puts on his turn signal, looks in the rearview mirror, pulls into the left lane, and passes a beer truck. "Don't be so hard on yourself. Art is about making mistakes and learning from them." He pulls back into the right lane.
I watch the beer truck fade into the snowstorm in the side mirror. Part of me thinks maybe he is driving a bit too fast, what with all the snow, but the car is heavy and doesn't slip. The snow that had caked on my socks melts into my sneakers.
Me: "All right, but you said we had to put emotion into our art. I don't know what that means. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel." My fingers fly up and cover my mouth. What am I doing?
Mr. Freeman: "Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag." He sticks his finger down his throat. "The next time you work on your trees, don't think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or rage—whatever makes you feel something, makes your palms sweat or your toes curl. Focus on that feeling. When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know."
He pulls off the exit and stops at the light at the bottom of the ramp. Something small and furry and dead is crumpled by the storm sewer. I chew off a scab on my thumb. The Effert's sign blinks in the middle of the block. "Over there," I say. "You can drop me off in front." We sit for a moment, the snow hiding the other side of the street, a cello solo thrumming from the speakers. "Um, thanks," I say. "Don't mention it," he answers. "If you ever need to talk, you know where to find me." I unbuckle the seat belt and open the door.
"Melinda," Mr. Freeman says. Snow filters into the car and melts on the dashboard. "You're a good kid. I think you have a lot to say. I'd like to hear it."
I close the door.
I stop by the manager's office, and the secretary says my mother is on the phone. Just as well. It will be easier to find a pair of jeans without her around. I head for the "Young Ladies" section of the store. (Another reason they don't make any money. Who wants to be called a young lady?)
I need a size ten, as much as it kills me to admit that. Everything I own is an eight or a small. I look at my canoe feet and my wet, obnoxious anklebones. Aren't girls supposed to stop growing at this age?
When I was in sixth grade, my mom bought me all these books about puberty and adolescence, so I would appreciate what a "beautiful" and "natural" and "miraculous" transformation I was going through. Crap. That's what it is. She complains all the time about her hair turning gray and her butt sagging and her skin wrinkling, but I'm supposed to be grateful for a face full of zits, hair in embarrassing places, and feet that grow an inch a night. Utter crap.
No matter what I try on, I know I'll hate it. Effert's has cornered the market on completely unfashionable clothes. Clothes that grandmas buy for your birthday. It's a fashion graveyard. Just get a pair that fits, I tell myself. One pair—that's the goal. I look around. No Mom. I carry three pairs of the least offensive jeans into the dressing room. I am the only person trying anything on. The first pair is way too small—I can't even get them over my butt. I don't bother with the second pair; they are a smaller size. The third pair is huge. Exactly what I'm looking for.
I scurry out to the three-way mirror. With an extra-large sweatshirt over the top, you can hardly tell that they are Effert's jeans. Still no Mom. I adjust the mirror so I can see reflections of reflections, miles and miles of me and my new jeans. I hook my hair behind my ears. I should have washed it. My face is dirty. I lean into the mirror. Eyes after eyes after eyes stare back at me. Am I in there somewhere? A thousand eyes blink. No makeup. Dark circles. I pull the side flaps of the mirror in closer, folding myself into the looking glass and blocking out the rest of the store.
My face becomes a Picasso sketch, my body slicing into dissecting cubes. I saw a movie once where a woman was burned over eighty percent of her body and they had to wash all the dead skin off. They wrapped her in bandages, kept her drugged, and waited for skin grafts. They actually sewed her into a new skin.
I push my ragged mouth against the mirror. A thousand bleeding, crusted lips push back. What does it feel like to walk in a new skin? Was she completely sensitive like a baby, or numb, without nerve endings, just walking in a skin bag? I exhale and my mouth disappears in a fog. I feel like my skin has been burned off. I stumble from thornbush to thornbush—my mother and father who hate each other, Rachel who hates me, a school that gags on me like I'm a hairball. And Heather.
I just need to hang on long enough for my new skin to graft. Mr. Freeman thinks I need to find my feelings. How can I not find them? They are chewing me alive like an infestation of thoughts, shame, mistakes. I squeeze my eyes shut. Jeans that fit, that's a good start. I have to stay away from the closet, go to all my classes. I will make myself normal. Forget the rest of it.
We've finished the plant unit in biology. Ms. Keen drops ten-pound hints that the test will focus on seeds. I study.
How seeds get planted: This is actually cool. Some plants spit their seeds into the wind. Others make seeds yummy enough for birds to eat, so they get pooped out on passing cars. Plants make way more seeds than they need, because they know that life is not perfect and all the seeds won't make it. Kind of smart, when you think about it. People used to do that, too—have twelve or fifteen kids because they figured some would die, some would turn out rotten, and a couple would be hardworking, honest farmers. Who knew how to plant seeds.
What seeds need to germinate: Seeds are inefficient. If the seed is planted too deep, it doesn't warm up at the right time. Plant it too close to the surface and a crow eats it. Too much rain and the seed molds. Not enough rain and it never gets started. Even if it does manage to sprout, it can be choked by weeds, rooted up by a dog, mashed by a soccer ball, or asphyxiated by car exhaust.
It's amazing anything survives.
How plants grow: Quickly. Most plants grow fast and die young. People get seventy years, a bean plant gets four months, maybe five. Once the itty-bitty baby plant peeks out of the ground, it sprouts leaves, so it can absorb more sun. Then it sleeps, eats, and sunbathes until it's ready to flower—a teenage plant. This is a bad time to be a rose or a zinnia or a marigold, because people attack with scissors and cut off what's pretty. But plants are cool. If the rose is picked, the plant grows another one. It needs to bloom to produce more seeds.
I am going to ace this test.