100 Days (2 page)

The guy blinks, too, says, “What the…” He notes the way Agnes is smiling up at him and the way I am definitely not smiling.
What a piece of work,
he's no doubt thinking,
this whale of a girl I once knew bulging out of her Black Sabbath shirt. Skin like white paint now. Lips like coal.
He shakes his head and lets out a disgusted sigh before turning his back to us yet again.

My hands made indentations where I planted them against the rough fabric of his jacket. I stare at the handprints as the guy just stands there, not moving even when the line ahead of him thins out. “Sometime this
year
would be nice,” I say, insulted by what I know he's thinking about me.

The guy turns back around like it's all just too much. He wipes his hand down his face, dragging his lower eyelids down with it. Sighs. “What the hell did you just say?”

That's it. I belly up to him the way belligerent drunks do in movies, just before a bar brawl. I force my voice to come out as low and menacing as possible. “I said: Sometime. This year. Would be nice.”

“I'll move when I'm ready to move.
Shamu.
”

I shrink back at the sound of my old nickname. “It's Moira,” I say in a voice so soft and wounded that it surprises even me.
You know that,
I almost add, but then I think better of it.

Before I realize what's happening, Agnes is standing on tiptoe between the two of us. “That's mean!” she says, coming to my defense, her lower jaw thrust forward.

The guy lets out a bitter laugh, points his face in her direction. “Whatever, Gollum.”

Agnes looks dumbfounded. One hand rises up, index finger punctuating the air. “Shame on you! Just … just…”

Nervous laughter bubbles up from the line behind us. Nobody calls Agnes names. Not to her face, anyway.

“Agnes, don't. Let's get out of here.” I take hold of my best friend's hand and lower it down, my eyes never leaving Dickhead's face as I pull Agnes away from the line. God knows what he might do. It kills me that I can't come up with a decent comeback. No doubt I'll think of one tonight as I'm falling asleep.

Traces of adrenaline are still pulsing up my spine and through my veins once we get to home ec and start working on our dresses. We never did get to eat lunch. I don't say anything about it, though. Don't bring up the fact that I'm still feeling shaky and combative, even once the weather lets up and a strip of sunshine cuts through the clouds.

After school, Agnes climbs into the booster car seat I installed for her inside El-C, my beater of an El Camino. “You're lucky I have an old car,” I told her when I got my license a few months ago. “No airbags in this baby, so we can put your seat in front.” El-C does have a truck bed, though. Also big black polka dots that I painted all over her primer-gray paint job.

“Anarchy in the UK” blasts from the ancient speakers as soon as I turn the key in the ignition. Agnes puts her fingers in her ears, even though I know she likes this song. She once told me her favorite part is when Johnny Rotten's voice cracks as he's singing about the Irish Republican Army.

Ever since we left the cafeteria, Agnes has stayed quiet. Now she's staring out the passenger side window. When we're a few blocks away from school, she reaches toward the stereo and turns down the music. “Did you recognize him?” she asks me.

“Who?” I'm already pretending that what happened didn't happen. Already stuffing it down the way I do.

“That guy from the lunch line. Boone Craddock.”

“Of course,” I respond. “What an ass.” I'd say something worse about him, like the word that's been at the tip of my tongue since lunchtime—the one that starts with
mother
and ends with
-ucker
—but Agnes doesn't like it when I use words like that.

“He didn't use to be an ass.”

“People change, Agnes.” The words come out harsher than I mean for them to, and I instantly wish I could take them back. But just the name of that, that … I can hardly stand to even
think
his name, much less say it.

“Hmm. I guess so,” Agnes says. “I've never even seen him at school, probably because he's been in those at-risk classes.” Then she says, “I wonder if he remembers us.”

I almost say,
How could he not?
But I don't. Instead, I reach for the volume knob and crank up the Pistols as loud as they'll go.

 

3

BOONE

DAY 98: MARCH 19

I remember them, all right. Waking up Saturday morning, yesterday's incident replays itself over and over again in my head, like a scene from some lame after-school movie special.

Standing in that lunch line, I'd been ready to slug whoever just shoved their hands into my back. People are always giving me shit. And for what?
For what?
What have I ever done but try to survive? Just last week, some guy in the hallway called me “retard” under his breath, hit himself in the chest with the back of his wrist when I walked past. A girl standing nearby gave the guy a little slap on the arm. “That's so mean,” she said. And then she laughed at me, too.

It's the kind of thing that makes me miss the Alternative Classroom Experience track I've been on since starting high school last year. So what if being an ACE student marked me as an “at-risk youth”? The Bad Seed Track, some ACE kids liked to call it. Maybe we
were
bad seeds. At least there was a place where we could hang out and be bad seeds together without getting into too much trouble. Now, thanks to budget cuts, that place is gone. ACE has only been shut down for a few weeks, but I can already tell things aren't going to end well. Being mainstreamed into “normal” high school classes is going to mean constant vigilance. Daily navigation through a minefield of the kind of shit that might just get somebody killed because there won't be an ACE teacher there to talk me down.

I get out of bed and head for the bathroom, wonder if I have any reasonably clean clothes. I have to hustle if I'm going to make it to work on time.

Judging by how dark the kitchen is when I go in there, Mom's not up yet. Big surprise. I flick on the light and head to the cereal cabinet, the cafeteria scene from yesterday still replaying in my mind.

Feeling those hands shove against my spine, I turned around in slow motion, like whoever did it was going to get what they deserved. Who cared if there was no more Alternative Classroom Experience for guys like me? Who cared if juvie was my next stop? I was done.
Done.
The shover was about to learn what a heartless bitch nature could be.

But.

It was Moira Watkins who shoved me. Of all people. At first, I didn't even recognize her under all the makeup. We haven't said zip to each other in … well, it's been about four years now. And it didn't make sense why she would have put her hands on me. Then I saw the fight or whatever it was that had broken out farther back in line and realized she'd been shoved, too.

I tried to hide my double take by glaring at Moira for a second and then down at Agnes Delaney, who was standing between us, as easy to miss as always. Then I turned back around like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

But I kind of had to pull myself together. Had to just stand there for a minute and get the kinks worked out of my brain. Had to refocus and breathe. I was just waiting in the lunch line. That was all. It was fine. It was a normal day. Nobody had punched me. Nobody needed to be punched. One of the things ACE teachers kept trying to teach us before the program shut down was to listen to the voices of our higher selves when we felt overwhelmed. That was supposed to help neutralize whatever negative energy was about to get us in trouble.
Bring it down, dude,
the voice of my higher self urged as I stood in that line.
Everything's okay. Just bring it down.

Then Moira said, “Sometime this
year
would be nice.”

When I turned around again, it looked like she was trying to melt my face with her laser-beam eyes because I wasn't moving fast enough. Which made sense. I was, after all, standing between her and a counter full of food. Okay, so maybe that wasn't the most charitable thought, but with the adrenaline and the barely held back rage pumping through my bloodstream, it was the first thing that came to mind. At the same moment, images of a sixth-grade dodgeball game popped up before I could stop them. It was a pointless memory, one of those things you're embarrassed to think about. I've put it out of my mind in the four years since. Who wouldn't?

I took a deep breath. Thank God I hadn't knocked Moira out before realizing who she was or even that she was a girl. She definitely didn't make that second part easy with the black hair and lips, the white face, the crap around her eyes. Don't goths realize how ridiculous they look? Total freaks.
If you want to be dead, then be dead already! Stop inflicting your hideousness on the rest of us.

My father's voice in my own head stops me cold.

We had words, me and Moira. Then she crossed the line by getting right up in my face. If I'd done that to
her
, I'd be kicked out of school so fast, it would make your head spin. True, some part of me instinctively felt cornered when she came that close. Still, if I'd had time to think, I know I wouldn't have called her what I did. Agnes, either.

The second I said it, the second I called her “Shamu,” Moira's expression changed the way a just-punched guy's expression changes right before he hits the ground. Her face looked like something from the pain chart I saw in the school nurse's office after my first fight this year. Ten faces on the chart ranged from smiling (
Feeling good!
) to scowling and tearful (
The worst I've ever felt
). Moira's face was roughly a seven, but at least she backed the hell off when I insulted her.

God, my head is a muddle this morning. I look down and realize I've poured and eaten two bowls of cereal without knowing I was doing it. I don't even recall getting the milk out of the fridge.

*   *   *

That afternoon, when I get back home from hauling a load of water from the standpipe in town to our cistern out back, Mom's in the hallway. She's wearing her threadbare bathrobe and she looks like a nervous wreck, as usual. Trembly and drained of her life force. Standing in the doorway of her bedroom like she's just woken up (which she probably has).
Who are you?
I sometimes want to ask her.
And what have you done with the woman who used to get up before dawn?
That woman used to fry up a big skillet of bacon and eggs just about every morning. She'd squeeze oranges and make French press coffee before waking me and Dad up so the three of us could start the day together.

“How was your day?” she asks me in the small, defeated voice she uses all the time now.

“Fine,” I tell her. “You okay?”

Mom nods before disappearing into the bedroom. As soon as she closes the door, I grab my dad's hunting jacket to wear while I feed Diablo and chop some wood for tomorrow's fire. It still feels subzero outside, but at least the worst of the sleet has let up a little.

Sometimes I think the hunting jacket still smells like my dad. He was wearing it the first and last time he ever took me elk hunting. At one point, I had a clean shot at a mature bull, but I couldn't kill it. Instead, I raised the barrel of the rifle just a hair and missed on purpose, fired off the round just over the animal's shoulder. The bull bolted, and my father cussed as if he hadn't realized all along how misguided it was to bring me out there. I could punch guys out all day long for teasing me about being dumb, but I loved elk too much to kill one. I've always been much happier hunting for their antlers, which tend to break free in winter from the impact of the bulls landing hard on their forelegs after jumping over forest service fences. If I look carefully enough, I always find discarded racks along those fence lines come spring.

To keep my hands warm now, I bury them in the pockets of the hunting jacket as I walk toward Diablo's paddock. My right hand encounters something solid, and I pull it out. It's an empty snuff can I found in the forest last week. I hate litter, so I picked it up, meaning to throw it away later. I didn't give it any more thought at the time, but now a memory from out of nowhere catapults me backward to the day I first found a full can just like it. I couldn't have been older than eight or nine. The can was resting on the edge of the truck bed, beckoning me. I twisted off the wide, flat cap quick, before my father returned from whatever he was doing. Then I pinched out a gob of the mysterious brown substance that reminded me of wet mulch and stuffed it inside my bottom lip, the way I'd seen him do.

I didn't know you're not supposed to swallow. Within moments, I could have easily passed for the lead singer of a metal band called the Heaving Vomits.

My father returned shortly thereafter. It didn't take him long to put two and two together. Those cool gray eyes of his moved from the open snuff can to my pea-green face. He didn't cuss or remove his belt like I thought he would, though. Instead, he came toward me, looming large and blocking out the sun. I remember how huge his frame seemed to me at the time, even though he probably wasn't as big as I am now. “Well,” he said, “I suppose you've been punished enough.”

Back then, he could still be merciful like that.

 

4

AGNES

DAY 97: MARCH 20

Moira is my shade tree.

I first met her when I changed schools halfway through fifth grade. I needed better help with my work as I missed more and more school due to doctor appointments, visits to out-of-town specialists, and time spent at home feeling generally not well. By then, I already had the blood vessels of a seventy-year-old and the beginnings of cardiovascular issues to match. No other Resource room in the district compared with Ms. Marilyn's Resource room at my new school.