It must be the bad energy, like Hiram said a few seconds ago. (Seconds? Minutes? Who cares?) The bad vibes must be seeping out of that building and heading straight toward me like they’re made of iron and I’m a magnet.
If I take Hiram up on his offer to get out of here, they could suspend me for cutting class.
I could miss a pop quiz and the big fat zero will bring down my GPA.
Colleges would frown at the blot on my transcripts.
Well, maybe I won’t go to college. Hiram isn’t going to college, right? He’s a senior, he’d be waiting for his admissions letters right about now if he’d applied anywhere, which I’m pretty sure he didn’t. Not that we ever talk about that kind of thing. Anyway, he seems a hell of a lot happier than I do.
I’m not, like, a stoner. If my mom knew, if my dad knew, if my best friend knew—they’d be shocked, probably alarmed. Maybe they’d insist on sending me to rehab or something. In fact, maybe I should tell them. Because at least rehab would be a way out of here.
But then I remember that Hiram just offered to get me out of here, even if it’s only for the afternoon.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “Let’s go.”
“You got it,” Hiram says. He turns the key, and his old car roars to life. It literally sounds like a lion, making all that noise so that the rest of the jungle knows he’s there.
Or knows he’s leaving.
Five
The Girlfriend
I don’t look at my mom. Instead, I stare at my beat-up sneakers just like I did in Principal Scott’s office. I’ll have to throw these shoes away. Every time I look at them from now on, I’ll remember this day.
“There’s nothing to explain,” I answer finally. The question was: Tell me how things went this far. Not like it’s my fault that it happened in the first place, Mom isn’t that insensitive, but more like why did things have to get so bad—black-eye bad—before I said anything.
We’re sitting at the kitchen table, something we pretty much never do because Mom rarely cooks, and even when she does, we eat in the living room with Jeopardy! on in the background. We talked earlier when I was still at school. Then later she texted, offering to leave work and pick me up, but I told her she didn’t have to come in from her job in the city because we’d have plenty of time to talk tonight. But Mom said she was still going to leave her office early because she was too upset to get any work done.
I press my feet into the floor and imagine I can feel the cool white tile through my sneakers. I’m still wearing Mike’s old sweater. I wonder if I have to give it back now. Maybe I was supposed to give it back weeks ago but Mike was too polite to mention it. He can be really polite about things like that.
The weird thing is, I don’t want to give the sweater back. Even now. I love this sweater. I love that it smells like Mike. I love that it feels like being held. I pull the sleeves down over my wrists and ball that material inside my fists.
“Of course there’s something to explain,” Mom insists.
“Like what?”
“Like, how often did this happen?”
I shrug, keeping my gaze focused on the kitchen counters, the stove, the sink—anywhere but Mom’s face. It’s weird that this kitchen can be so messy when no one who lives here cooks. My hands are sweating again, and I slide them under my thighs (again).
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like I was keeping track.” That’s not a lie.
“Well, when did it start?” Mom is staring at my eye. I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror before dinner. The bruise was even darker than it had been this morning. Magenta, maybe.
“I don’t know. A couple months ago.”
What would I have said if Principal Scott had asked the same question? She asked if it had happened before, but not exactly when. I don’t think I could have lied to her the way I just lied to Mom. Because I know exactly when it started. Three months ago. The middle of January. I sat in the bleachers during his track practice—the spring season doesn’t actually start until March—and I shivered in my too-light coat and the drizzling rain, and I cheered for him because I was a supportive girlfriend. We followed NCAA sports, and we’d decided that UCLA’s track team would be a good fit if it turned out they didn’t want him at Stanford.
He fell that day, rolling his ankle. He was so scared that it might cause real damage—bench him for a week or two—but by the next day it was good as new.
Sometime after that night—I don’t remember exactly when—I began watching other couples. I’d stare at them walking down the halls at school hand in hand, just like Mike and I did. Sometimes I find myself gazing at them, wondering what it must be like, to be in love but not to be hit. It’s not like I didn’t know that people weren’t supposed to do this. I knew it wasn’t normal or okay.
I’d think about the fact that before the divorce (long after they’d stopped being in love), my parents fought to the point of shouting—well, mostly Mom had shouted—but my dad never hit my mom in all the years they were together.
And then I’d think: That I know of.
And then I realized all those guys I assumed didn’t hit were just that—limited by that I know of.
And then I’d wonder if all boys hit, and all girls kept their secrets.
Until they didn’t.
“A couple of months?” Mom echoes, covering her mouth with her hand. She looks like she’s going to cry. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
I open my fists and push the sweater sleeves up over my elbows. It’s cold in our white kitchen, but I’m so hot.
“I don’t know.” Instead of looking at her, I concentrate on my fingernails, pressing the cuticles down.
I thought it wasn’t that big a deal. I thought it would stop, eventually. I thought it was worth it if I still got to be with him. It seemed like a small price to pay for how good things were the rest of the time.
Things were good the rest of the time, right? I loved him. He loved me. That’s good, isn’t it?
“Was it always this bad?” Mom gestures to my eye.
I shake my head, and she looks relieved. She doesn’t want to think that I stayed when it was this bad. She wants to think that the minute it crossed the line (what line? Who says where the line is?), I stood up for myself. That’s what any self-respecting girl would do in this day and age. That’s the kind of girl she wants to believe she raised me to be.
And she wants to think that if it had always been this bad, she would’ve seen it sooner.