Pieces of Me (15 page)

“Hey, phlegm-face. Haven’t heard you cough much today.” A couple of the jerks pretended to hack up innards in coughing fits so bad they should break ribs.

The alcove offered no escape route, but Vivian shimmied toward the side and leaned around the corner with her back to lockers. With the acumen of a veteran, she tried to ignore their taunts. And on the outside it appeared she did quite well.
Inside, not so much
.

I wanted to shout at them, they were so common. There was nothing special about picking on the tiny girl who coughed a lot.

Nothing
.

Rage (Pantone 485) and fear (Pantone 5405) and weariness (Pantone 15-0942) battled inside Vivian until she choked on emotion, breathing around tangible colors. This was why she hated school. This was what her parents didn’t understand. This was the uselessness incarnate of why she didn’t belong here.

At least be creative in your targets, you craptastic Neanderthals
.

“Come on, we’re just kidding. Don’t cry.”

“Yeah, don’t cry. Your snot will drown us all.” They chuckled and high-fived.

Inside Vivian’s head, I heard our middle-school guidance counselor repeat that bullies must feel powerless in their own lives to get a rush out of this behavior.
I wish we believed him
.

A teacher poked her head out of her classroom with a frown—maybe it was the volume of their taunts, or maybe a special teacher sense finally kicked in—but it was enough to give Vivian room to squeeze past and hurry away.

Vivian refused to allow them to witness her tears. She’d long ago given up crying because people were mean. If she cried every time someone made fun of her she’d never stop.

She simply wished—

Her phone beeped. Incoming message.

Vivian read the words without really seeing them. As if the message downloaded the situation, the emotions, in one fell swoop. “Sally in ICU. Time is short. She wants to see you.”

Another friend dying.

Someone give her a break. Please?

Vivian stashed her books in her locker and left her homework in there too. This was why she didn’t bother to worry about school any more. What was the point?

What is the point?
I echoed her thoughts in agreement.

She headed toward the exit and passed Leif, who was bent over a drinking fountain.

“Hi, Leif,” she said, slowing her step.

He didn’t look up. Didn’t stop drinking.

The jerks followed her and began coughing again.

Vivian didn’t want Leif to see them, or hear them, or ask her about them. He never looked at her as though she was sick. She didn’t want that to change. So she rushed on, wondering if he’d noticed her and ignored her, or if he really hadn’t heard her say hello.

She headed toward Memorial Hospital. Sally was barely thirteen. Why can’t she get lungs and a heart? Why had Vivian instead?

Why had I lost mine?

Misty snuck a wad of papers
from the recycle bin, under the copy machines, on the library’s first floor. The bright papers and crazy prints were a total score, even if wonky and wacky on the misprinted pages because the copier was drunk, or high, making concert flyers. White copy paper made boringly white cranes.

She weaved through tables of college kids studying for finals and a couple of senior citizens playing chess, to the nook she considered her real home.

Everything appeared just as she’d left it. The computer wasn’t even turned on.

While the screen spun and booted, Misty sharpened a pencil and logged the latest set of medical bills into a makeshift ledger of lined paper. Notices about overdue, and unpaid, and lots of red stamps made her shrink deeper and deeper inside herself. She’d pay them.
How?
She wasn’t trying to get away with anything. But if they’d asked her? She would have picked an easy death last October over this constant fight to just not be miserable.

She means it; she’d rather be dead than misery’s burden to the world
.

My heart ached. She logged on to MiracleMakers’ message center and waited.

Nothing but the blinking cursor, and her friend Sam, seemed easy. Nothing was. Misty typed again.

After several weeks of messages, she’d picked up Sam’s favorite phrase. When he didn’t immediately respond, she assumed him busy. He was always there. Always available to chat with her. She depended on that. On him.

He’s getting sausage and sauerkraut, but he’ll be right back
.

I worried that Misty depended on this cyber connection to get her through each day. How fast had this relationship become her whole world?

It’s amazing how time loses meaning when there is only one good thing in a sea of pain
.

While she waited, Misty began making the rectangles into squares of all sizes. Folded creases ripped quietly against the corner of the desk.

Misty’s delight when Sam’s message popped up was effervescent, as if she’d swallowed happy and it poured out each pore.

With each typed line, Misty folded a crease, or two, of her origami cranes. So that every few minutes her flock hatched another bird.

Sweat went from damp to dripping along her brow and caused a shiver of goose bumps to line her arms.

There’s something wrong with her
.

I knew she worked up to asking Samuel her question of the day. She’d been thinking about it constantly.

No
. Misty meant families like hers, working until they died, trying to find purchase on the ledge. Her obligations to them. To the world. To this miracle she had been given and would like to give back. God couldn’t be present in any of that.

I haven’t seen him either. Just saying
.

The cursor added layers of hurt and rejection to the screen without Misty saying anything about how she felt them.

Huh? Sometimes Sam made me dumb by default
.

Puzzled, Misty frowned. What was he talking about? She thought of all the check boxes on the forms she had to fill out. Wasn’t it a simple question? Christian? Jewish? Muslim?

Other?

Her thoughts immediately went to her grandmother’s shrine of gold paint and beads and burning spit.

Vivian would add color to that list
.

Misty’s eyes watered, but she refused to call them tears.

Thrilled that he was answering rather than asking her why she cared, Misty fell a little more in love with Sam.

She doesn’t even know he’s a teenager, too. He could be elderly, and in prison, and she’d be thrilled
.

Misty laughed, but stifled herself, fearful of calling attention to her hiding place in the stacks.

Don’t, Sam. Don’t say it
.

Sam let the cursor blink and Misty waited, her fingers frozen on the printout of a tie-dye album cover, soon to be the neck of a crane. I hoped he’d follow his intuition or listen to me for once and change the subject.

She finally typed to him.

Panic ripped through Misty’s gut.

She stumbled down the stairs, leaving her bags behind her, and headed for the handicapped bathroom tucked near the children’s section.

She locked the door and flipped on the light.

Bent over the sink, Misty stared in the mirror and saw a monster superimposed over the real her. The her she used to be. Five feet and delicate, waist-length black hair that was so shiny the light hit it and zapped all color away, leaving a mirrorlike reflection. Her eyes were bright with humor. Her lips a perfect pink bow. Her skin clear and clean.

But the monster outside was hideous. Puffy and bloated. Her face round, her fingers stubby and meaty. Her skin was mottled with spots, pigment rashes, and dry, flaky patches that were astonishingly slick with oil. Her hair seemed permanently dirty, slick at the roots but dry and brittle at the ends. It frizzed up as if she was standing near too much static electricity. Her eyes were beady, and sunken, behind the bags and doughy lids. She alternated between too cold and too hot. Sweat pitted out every shirt. So no matter the temperature, she wore a thick, heavy fleece to cover herself. She was sure she reeked of rot.

She saw nothing in the mirror of her true self. Should she describe her real self or the new monster to Sam? He never needed to know the truth.

Gathering her hair into a knot, she tucked it up under the hood of her sweatshirt. She wet her face, then filled her palms with mounds of foaming antibacterial hand soap. Scrubbing until the pale skin was red and the inflamed places angry. With her nails, she scratched off the whiteheads of pimples and the crusty scabs of healing ones, the flakes of dead cells collected under her nails, and still she knew the oil lurked. She hit the water faucet continually, keeping it roaring and steamy, as hot as it could possibly get in those fifteen-second intervals.

Stop, Misty. Stop hurting yourself
.

I tried to stop her. Hug her. Soothe her. I wanted to rub lotion on her skin and salve on her broken heart. The self-loathing radiated out until the bathroom filled and I felt like we drowned in it, like treading water in the middle of the ocean without reprieve. It was killing us.

The handle jiggled and someone knocked.
Finally
. Someone noticed her suffering. At least, they needed the toilet.

Misty wadded up the recycled fibers of paper towels and scrubbed at her face. Taking away the water, the soap, and trying to diminish the horror of what she saw.

Describe herself?

Misty no longer knew herself.

Returning to the computer, determined to change the subject, she hoped he never asked again.

Leif felt antsy and awkward
. He’d negotiated a cease-fire with his parents. If he ran five miles a day, they’d let him out of the house to socialize. He lied about the running. They’d freaked when he stopped using the home gym, when his mother no longer did six loads of sweaty workout wear a week.

Vivian greeted him at Art & Soul and he got to work. He wasn’t about to upset her again. He wished he knew what he’d said.

“Can I see what you’re working on?” he asked Vivian.

“Take off your pants,” she answered without looking up.

He must have heard wrong. “What?”

“You heard me,” she said, smiling in her voice and on her face.

He liked seeing her bright smile. It lit her from the inside out and reminded him of summer vacations. He wanted her to do it more often. She’d been full of frowns and degrees of sadness since he got there, and he didn’t think it was because of him. He wished she’d tell him what she thought so hard about. If he thought she’d laugh, he would strip in a heartbeat. His hands stayed planted firmly in his pockets. “But—”

She set down her chisel and microscopic brush. “It’s not that easy to get naked in front of a stranger, is it?”

“You’re not a stranger.” Leif showed her his fingers and made a move toward his waistband. He called her bluff.

The blush that heated her neck to forehead flew up at the speed of light. She coughed as if clearing her throat of a tickle, but really she floundered for a response.

“So, you’re not really asking …” He stopped fingering the button.

And this sounds like a dare
.…

Vivian crossed her arms and I knew she was about to return his bravado. “Only if you want to see my work in progress.” An excited kind of fear sent shock waves through their bodies. I wasn’t sure who was more amped, but neither wanted to back down first.

I’m about to see more than I want to
.…