Backwards (17 page)

I left the house and crossed the yard, thrilled to be out during the day for a change. Maybe it was only a trick of perception, but I actually felt warmed by the sun.

All around me, the world pulsed with movement and sound — cars rushed past on the street; an elderly man walked his dog; a cat prowled the bushes, sending a pair of doves flapping into the sky. I hurried to school. The closer I got, the more the air hummed with activity. Gym class must have been taking place, because Coach blew his whistle and shouted at a group of guys walking the track. I’d neglected to check the clock before leaving, but given that several students were hanging around, eating chips and kicking a Hacky Sack, it must have been close to noon.

I passed through the front doors and coasted down halls teeming with students. In the anonymous herd, I felt surprisingly present. I’d never realized how exhausting inhabiting a body could be, but now I didn’t have to worry about how people saw me or what I should do.

I spotted Trent talking to a few guys by his locker and drifted closer. Normally, I got edgy around him since I never knew how Dan might react, but without a body all that anxiety fell away. There was nothing to do but watch. Almost immediately, I noticed things I never had before. The nervous bob of his head when he spoke. The way his smirk twitched at the corners of his mouth. How he kept glancing around, even while talking to someone, as if looking for someone else.

A sophomore wearing a scarf walked past and brushed his fingers across the small of Trent’s back. Trent didn’t turn, but his smile tightened and he laughed too loud at something someone said. The sophomore ducked into the boys’ bathroom. A few minutes later, the bell rang and students cleared out of the hall, darting into their classes. Trent waited until almost everyone had gone, then he slipped into the bathroom. I followed, caught in his current.

“Hey, fag,” he said, once the door had shut behind him. “What was that?”

“No one saw,” replied the sophomore. I’d noticed him hanging out with the jazz-band kids before, but I didn’t know his name. I think he played guitar. “No one’s here.”

Trent stepped closer. I expected him to throw the sophomore against the wall or say something threatening, only the moment they touched, everything changed. They spilled into a stall, kissing.

Every time I’d seen Trent before, he’d been partially obscured, but now he came into focus.
This
was why he made obnoxious comments and teased people. He constantly feared being himself. An exquisite rush of understanding filled me.

I drifted through walls into classrooms, eager to see more. The people I looked at shimmered like artifacts on museum shelves, with all their facets and details illuminated. A girl in Dan’s math class who often raised her hand when the teacher asked a question crumpled up a test and pressed a compass point against her thigh because she’d missed one problem. A boy in the music practice room who’d never once spoken a word in Dan’s English class played a drum set with wild abandon. A senior who looked like a marine snuck out of class to write a poem in marker on the inside of someone’s locker, while a few doors down a teacher watched and didn’t say a word. Everyone concealed a secret self that almost no one else knew.

During the time between classes, eyeglasses got crushed beneath feet. Notes were exchanged. Drugs changed hands. Some people were shoved or kicked. Others hugged. Some said yes. Others, no. So much could happen in a minute, in a second even — moments of kindness and cruelty, declarations of love and loneliness, possibilities found and lost — while people walked by, fumbling in their own self-conscious worlds.

In the cafeteria, I spotted Cat at the salad bar, surrounded by Kendra, Bella, and Laney. “Did you have a nice weekend, slut?” Kendra asked. “What made you think you could go to that party, anyway?”

Bella said something, too, but I didn’t hear it because Cat was walking away. She hurried out of the cafeteria, struggling to keep a brave face.

Tricia caught up to her in the hallway. “You all right?” she asked.

Cat nodded, but her eyes were wet and her voice shook. “I’m great,” she said. “Blue skies.”

“What did they say to you?” asked Tricia.

“Does it matter?”

“If they said something about what happened, God help me, I’ll beat the crap out of them. Literally.”

“Let it go, Tricia.”

“I’m not going to let it go. Not this. They can’t throw this in your face.” She scowled at the cafeteria doors. “Kendra told Laney you tried to sleep with the whole team.”

Cat glared at her. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because people need to know the truth.”

“What truth? That I was drunk and stupid?”

“You weren’t just drunk,” said Tricia. “Trust me. One drink wouldn’t make you pass out.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Cat leaned against the lockers and slid down until she was sitting. “I’m not even sure what happened.”

“Bullshit,” said Tricia. “You
know
what happened.”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t see me,” said Cat. “A lot of people are telling the same story.”

“So? People are always telling stories.”

“What if it’s true? There are pictures of me online. Everyone’s seen them. I can tell by the way they look at me. Everyone thinks I’m a slut.”

“You’re not.” Tricia sat next to Cat. “I know you. And I know what you told me. You can’t let Dan get away with this.”

Cat hugged her knees.

“If you don’t tell someone, he’ll do it again,” added Tricia.

“So it will be my fault?”

“Of course not. It’s not your fault at all.”

Cat scoffed. “Did you read that in a pamphlet somewhere?”

“What are you getting mad at me for?”

“Because I’m sick of you playing psychologist,” said Cat. “All you do is follow me around. Live through me. I don’t want to be part of your freak show anymore.”

Tricia’s face reddened. “Cat, you need to deal with this.”

“There’s
nothing
to deal with,” Cat said, standing. “I’m not going to talk about this ever again.”

After the last bell rang, I watched Cat leave school. She walked home alone. I didn’t see Tricia anywhere. A car slowed alongside Cat as she approached the end of the parking lot. The passenger window rolled down, then a guy yelled, “Hey, Cat-Lip! What about me? I play football.”

Cat looked over, stony-faced and dazed. Someone tossed a soda at her and laughed.

Dozens of people in the parking lot saw, but no one did anything. Most people just looked away. Others sneered or smirked.

Cat wiped her face on her sleeve and continued walking, eyes locked on the concrete in front of her. She didn’t slow down until she was a couple blocks away. Then she tried to wipe more of the soda off her face, but it had mostly dried, leaving a sticky brown mess.

I followed her home. Her father was in the kitchen, getting ready for another long night at the bar. “I made waffles,” he said. Tattoos of children’s book characters decorated his arms — the dancing monsters from
Where the Wild Things Are,
Eeyore and Piglet from
Winnie-the-Pooh,
and Alice falling in a blue dress.

Cat looked at the waffle her dad set on the counter. It had two halves of a strawberry arranged for eyes and a whipped-cream smile.

Her blank expression started to crack. She ducked into her room and locked the door.

Cat’s dad asked what was wrong. She tried to tell him she wasn’t hungry, but she couldn’t get her voice to sound normal. He lingered in the hallway, fiddling with the cigarettes in his pocket. “I have to go to work,” he said through the door. “There are eggs for dinner if you don’t want the waffle.”

Once he was gone, she opened her soda-splattered backpack, pulled out her notebook, and turned to a blank page. At the top, she wrote two words:
The Party.

After that, she didn’t write a thing. She just stared at the blank page like she wanted to remember more, but she couldn’t. Then she tore the page out and lit a candle — the same candle she’d use to burn the pictures of herself, only now it was taller. She opened her window and held the corner of the page over the flame until the paper caught.

When the flames were halfway up the page, she seemed to realize she had no place to drop it. She turned her hand so the flames curled away from her. Still the fire inched toward her fingers. She winced and clenched her teeth, but she didn’t let go.

Flames licked her fingers, singeing her nails and skin.

Let it go,
I urged.

She didn’t. Perhaps she couldn’t. Not really. How do you let go of something you can’t remember?

At last, she shook the page away from her hand. There was only a tiny triangle of paper left where her fingers had been. It burned in the air, leaving a gray skein of ashes that broke apart and scattered into thousands of pieces, so light they barely even fell.

As soon as I returned to Dan’s house, I checked the message on the wall, but it hadn’t changed.
WHATEVER YOU DO WILL MAKE THINGS WORSE.

The drugs wore off, leaving me jittery and out of sorts for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get Dan’s body to fall asleep until late, probably because of the four-hour nap he’d taken. By the time I finally managed to slip out again, it was almost two in the morning.

I found TR lying on a picnic table in the courtyard of Cat’s apartment complex, staring at the stars.

“You been inside?” I asked.

He nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

I passed through Cat’s walls into her room, fearing what I’d find. She lay in bed, trying to sleep, but her hand seemed to be bothering her. She had an icepack by her pillow and she kept pressing her fingers against it and cringing. I hated that I hadn’t been able to help her. When I slipped free of Dan, I was powerless. And when I was in him, I was the last person Cat would ever want to see.

Whatever you do will make things worse,
I muttered. Such a pointless, paradoxical message. Trying to do nothing was the same as doing something. There was no way
not
to make things worse. So what the hell was I supposed to do?

TR stepped in a few minutes later. “When you didn’t show up at the C Spot, I came here to look for you,” he said. “She was asleep by then. I think she burned her hand.” TR must have seen that I was upset, because he added, “Don’t blame yourself, dude. There was nothing you could do.”

“You’re right,” I said. “
I’d
only make things worse.”

“I didn’t say that,” replied TR.

“There was nothing
I
could do,” I repeated, suddenly getting the message.

“It’s just, you know, shit happens,” TR continued. “You can’t fix everything.” He rambled on, trying to make me feel better, but I was too caught up in my thoughts to respond.

If the message was right, and everything I did, or Dan did, would make things worse, then there was only one solution. Someone else had to do something for Cat.

But who?

I read the message several times. Outside, the sun was shining. Birds were chirping. The world seemed full of possibilities, while I contemplated death threats from a wall. Hell of a way to start the day.