Exposed (14 page)

I have to smile at my father because he’s being so sweet. So I get up, put on my shoes, and head out with
him for a walk, even though most of my brain would really rather go back to chat and wait for Paul, and talk to him forever.

Dad and I take a long walk, though, a lot longer than usual.

“Sharp shoes,” I tell Dad as we circle the block for the third time. His breath comes in frosty puffs as the streetlights flicker to life. “They new?”

Dad grins at me, making his red freckled cheeks plump way out. “Had to do something to keep up with you.” He’s out of breath, and he’s limping a little because one of his knees hurts him sometimes. “You’re running me into the dirt. What’s got you so motivated to exercise right now? Some new boy I should know about?”

I feel myself blushing.

Boy. Sort of. Man, more like it. But to Dad, Paul would still be a “boy,” right?

I jog ahead of Dad to the end of the road, then circle back and jog around him. He grunts at me when I tag his shoulder.

“Maybe—about the boy.” I tag him again and then take off.

“You know I’ll want to know everything if it gets serious.” He pumps his arms, trying to catch up to me. “If Mystery Boy hurts you like that Adam Pierpont kid did, I’ll whip his ass. Just so you know.”

“No mentioning the A-word.” I wave my hands as I
slow to a walk beside him. “Bad mojo. No A-words allowed.”

Dad presses his lips together and nods, then goes back to huffing and puffing.

When I told my parents about having herpes, I figured they would flip out, but they just … took care of things. Grim. No smiles. A lot of serious conversations about actions, consequences, condoms, and the pill that I had first gotten through Planned Parenthood, but I didn’t get grounded or hollered at or anything.

The night I told them, I did hear Dad say to Mom, “Won’t do any good to slam the barn door if the horses are already gone.”

Weird. But … true, I guess. I didn’t like how disappointed and sad he sounded, though.

I don’t plan to tell him about Paul unless Paul and I are still together when I get out of college. I don’t ever want to hear Dad sound that sad or disappointed again.

Dad reaches behind himself and massages his lower back. “Does your twirling coach focus on weight much?”

His question catches me off guard, and I almost spill the truth. As it is, I start to sweat big-time. The way Dad’s looking at me with his green eyes all wide and steady as he puffs away, pumping those arms, I think he already knows the answer.

“Sort of,” I say, as honest as I think I can be. “She wants us to stay healthy so we can be graceful and co-ordinated
and have a shot at college twirling.” I move my arms up and down, out and back in, like I would if I was marching in front of the band at halftime. “Most colleges have pretty strict height-weight requirements for twirlers, and you know Devin and I want to make the squad wherever we decide to go.”

“That’s college, though.” Dad keeps trying to walk faster, but he’s going slower and slower. “This is high school. I want you to enjoy yourself. Too much pressure—well, it’s not good at your age. You’d tell me if you were under too much pressure, right?”

Dad stops walking and leans over, putting his hands on his thighs, but he keeps his head up, looking at me. So worried. I hate it when he worries.

“I’d tell you,” I say, careful not to promise. “I know you’d help me.”

Dad nods. “That’s the most important thing,” he says around gulps of air. “I’m here for you. Don’t ever forget that, okay?”

I’m here for you.

His words bounce inside my head, bumping against the memories of him lying in that hospital bed, tubes running everywhere, and the doctor telling us things like
cardiac arrest
and
morbidly obese
and
shortened life span
and
critical to make changes in diet and lifestyle
.

“I won’t forget.” I make myself smile, even though I don’t know how many changes he’s really made. Well,
the whole family. We’d all have to do stuff differently, right?

I never feel like Mom and Lauren and I are doing enough to help Dad.

Is our diet, our lifestyle, good enough now?

Are we helping Dad stick around—or still hurting him, or letting him hurt himself?

He smiles up at me, his face so red it looks like his freckles might catch on fire. “Ready to go back to the house?”

I nod, even though I have another lap to do.

I can always do it later.

In American lit on Monday morning, after everyone else has left the class, Devin waits to kill me.

Jets of fire blast out of her eyes.

Haggerty stands beside my desk, shaking her head and telling me how disappointed she is that I didn’t turn in the outline for our Emily paper.

“It’s not like you to be irresponsible, Chan.” Haggerty’s white eyebrows join over her nose, and her frown reaches all the way to her neck.

“I just forgot,” I say again, letting her—and Devin—think I forgot to bring it, not that I totally forgot to do the stupid thing, that it didn’t even cross my mind even after all her reminders. “The cards, the outline, I’ll bring it all tomorrow, I promise.”

“You’ll lose a letter grade.” Haggerty shakes her head again and sighs.

“I’ll deliver,” I say at the same time Devin says, “Our
cards are good. Just wait until you see what we’ve found out about Emily’s private life.”

Haggerty glances from Devin to me, and her eyebrows finally come apart. She looks interested. “I hope that’s true.”

Devin folds her hands like she’s praying. “It’s so totally true. Trust me. Right, Chan?”

That last part, Devin says through her teeth.

So much for protecting Emily’s secret things. “The Wild Dyke of Amherst” it is.

“Right,” I say, surprised I can talk with all the air squeezed out of my lungs.

By the time Haggerty lets us go and we get to the hallway, Devin’s glare could wilt Mom’s flowers in their pots.

She keeps it up, too, all the way to our lockers.

I know better than to open my mouth.

I can’t believe I screwed up this badly. I’ve never, repeat never ever
ever
, forgotten a school assignment before. And English?

Emily
, for God’s sake?

Devin works her combination, then slams open her locker and throws her books inside. “I count on you for my A’s in English, Chan,” she says more to the locker than to me. “I’m sunk without you. You know that.”

“I’m really, really, really sorry.” I can’t look at her, so I stare at the blue cinder block walls or the uglier blue
hallway tile instead. I don’t need anything out of my locker. “I’ll make up for it on the final draft.”

“You letters. Me numbers.” Devin thumps her chest with her free hand. “
Comprende
?”

“
Comprende
. I’m so sorry.”

She flashes me another look. Flowers wouldn’t die from this one, but I’m not sure they’d bloom, either. “Well, I guess I forgive you, but only if you spill.”

My heart skips and I almost step on a freshman who bumped into me. “About what?”

Devin rolls her eyes. “About the guy. Merwood Spit-ball. You’re still hooked up with him, aren’t you? You’ve been chatting nonstop, and that’s why you didn’t do the outline?”

“I—uh …” I fiddle with my lock even though I don’t want to open it.

People elbow and bang around us. The noise in the hall seems like thunder and waterfalls made out of voices, and all of a sudden, the whole place smells like Pine-Sol and strawberry and bubble gum. I want to gag.

“Your salvation depends on your answer right here.” Devin leans toward me, her face a few inches from mine, so close I can see each hair in her eyebrows. The flower-withering glare comes back. “Heave it up, honey, or stay in purgatory forever.”

“I’m still hooked up with him,” I admit, and hope Devin doesn’t find a way to wilt me in my pot. “We’ve
been chatting nonstop, and that’s why I completely spaced on the outline.”

Devin looks shocked for a few seconds, then worried, then a sly smile spreads across her face. “Honey, you are so gonna get busted and put in Mommy-prison forever.”

“God, I know.” I laugh, more from nerves and relief than anything else.

Devin laughs, too.

Oh, no. It can’t be this easy. Why haven’t I been telling her everything? I can’t remember all of a sudden, because she’s Devin, and she’s my best friend.

I can be so stupid.

We close our lockers and start toward our next class. “He’s so cute and sweet,” I say, “And he’s helping me and everything.”

All the rest of the way down the hall, I tell her everything about Paul I can think of except for his age, and answer every question she fires at me. I kind of leave out the big stuff, though, like my confession to Paul about herpes….

Paul and I will have to come up with something, to put Devin off the scent a little. He has to understand about best friends, even if he’s twenty-three. It wasn’t that long ago that he had best friends, right?

Does Paul have best friends? He said he got in trouble at my age. I wonder if he has best friends now, or if he lost most of them like I did last year. Guess there’s more stuff to ask after all….

By the time we get Devin to her next class, she seems satisfied—but she still says, “You need to be careful, Chan. Promise me you’ll be careful and you
won’t
go to meet him in person unless you take me.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And you’ll get the outline for the Emily paper done by tomorrow, too,” Devin continues. “In straight-A style, right?”

Guilt jabs at me. Devin has dragged me through every math class we’ve ever had, and I
know
I owe her. “Absolutely. I promise.”

She elbows me as she walks through the door to her class. “And we’re definitely calling the paper ‘The Wild Dyke of Amherst.’ Total A. All the way.”

Sorry, Emily.

“Done.”

• • •

Monday afternoon, my weights come, but I refuse to “pay” Paul until I learn how to use them properly. Then I end up staying in my closet for two hours after I talk to him, working on that stupid Emily outline.

I’ve just given up for the night and gotten out of the closet when Lauren comes into my room again.

Only, it’s a little different this time. She’s not all wild-eyed and fully into panic-drama. In fact, she’s only half-awake, scratching under both armpits like she’s got a bunch of crawly, biting bugs.

“Bad dream,” she mutters.

Then she just stands there and doesn’t do anything pushy or angsty or demanding at all. She doesn’t do a thing but dig at herself like a monkey.

After a second or two, I turn back the covers and pat the bed.

Lauren wanders forward.

I help her get in, then climb in beside her and shake her shoulder just enough to get her to quit scratching and look at me.

“What did you dream about?”

I can’t be sure in the low moonlight slipping in over my shutters, but I think her face might be turning red. I definitely see tears pool in her big round eyes. Not the fake-freak-out kind, but real ones.

“People … people looking at me,” she whispers. Her fists tighten, and she presses one against her cheek. She used to do that when she was really little, when she still sucked her thumb. “I was Brigitta and I started to sing ‘Edelweiss’ with my family at the big competition, only I didn’t have any clothes on.” She presses her other fist into her cheeks and starts to cry. “I was naked and everybody laughed at me.”

“It’s probably the stress from all your rehearsals.” I wrap my arms around her. “Are you sure being in
Sound of Music
is worth all these bad dreams?”

“Yes,” she mumbles into my shoulder.

What can I say?

Look at what I go through to beat myself half to death with a couple of spinning silver sticks.

“Okay. Well. If this kind of bad dream keeps happening, we’re going to have to talk to Mom.”

But Lauren’s getting quiet already, waiting for me to start the princess story. So I tell it again until I hear her snoring. Then I roll over and do my best to doze off, too, in between Lauren’s scratching and kicking. She gets my calf once, though, really frogs it, which keeps me up awhile. In the end, I get exactly two hours of sleep, but at least I get the Emily outline done during all that awake time.

• • •

On Tuesday, I turn the outline in before class and we get a major thumbs-up on our “Wild Dyke of Amherst” theme. Then I get sent to the principal’s office for sleeping through physics.

Lectures I hate, yeah, but I can take them okay from school people, especially since nobody calls Mom. And Tuesday night, Paul and I agree to make 1:00 a.m. our limit, so I won’t totally blow school.

Then I spend the rest of my week and the next week, too, eating and exercising according to the plan.

Well, the plans.

Nutrition, exercise, including Dad in the exercise
whenever he’ll do it, keeping Mom off my back about the computer, working through my competition routine two thousand times, talking to Devin whenever she calls so she won’t get too uptight about Paul, talking to Paul—

There
are
a lot of plans to keep up with.

Two weeks—and the Bear’s grace period on my weighing in—really did just fly by, even though I haven’t been having total fun.

The Thursday I have to step on the scales comes way too fast.

All my chances are up now. It’s either make weight, or I’m out.

Devin and I both get to the gym early, but we get in line last. She holds my hand. I don’t think I can breathe much longer. The gym-sock-cleanser smell hangs so strong in the locker room that it makes my eyes water, and Devin keeps sniffing. Can’t tell much by that, though, because Devin sniffs whenever she gets nervous.

Over our heads, the ceiling lights flicker because the janitor keeps running his buffer across the gym floor. The loud hum of the machine blocks the whispers of the witch-monster and all the other girls, but I feel pretty
sure they’re talking about me and whether or not I’ll make weight.