Rodent (25 page)
“How did you get into this?” I ask one night, watching her knead bread dough.
She laughs. “It’s very therapeutic. Try it.”
I roll up my sleeves, and she shows me how to press the dough with the heel of my hand, pull it back and start again. Spongy mass in my hands. That warm yeasty smell.
Maisie and Evan do yoga with her on Saturday mornings, their short legs in the air, bodies wobbling. One of these days I’ll try it with them.
They always ask about Mom, if this is the week she’ll come home. Laina explains, over and over, how Mom needs time by herself to get better. She started a box for Mom, where Maisie and Evan put drawings, cards, schoolwork—things they want to show her when she gets home. I used Laina’s phone to take a picture of them making cinnamon twists with her.
I still get stuck cleaning bathrooms at work, but I get a small raise after passing my probationary period. And there’s the extra food. And them.
One night at the beginning of December, I wave goodbye to Rupa. A blast of icy air in my face as I push the door open.
She is on the sidewalk, her back to me. Long dark hair over a wool coat. Tight jeans. I stop.
She turns, red scarf streaming behind her, and crushes me in her arms. My feet off the ground. I must be dreaming. The smell of perfume and cigarettes.
I push her away. “Don’t ever take off like that again.”
She laughs, pulling me into a headlock. Jacquie. I don’t know where to start.
“I stopped by your place,” she says, “but some lady said you were at work.”
“Laina.”
She curses, then gives a low whistle. “I really have missed a lot.”
We go to a nearby diner, where they still have a jukebox, and order fries and Cokes. I call Laina to tell her I’m with a friend.
“Okay, you first,” I say, eyeing the inky tattoo on her wrist and twisting her arm to see it better.
“Don’t ask.” She shakes her head. She tells me about the night she left, calling up some guy who was always chasing her.
“A real grown-up. He’s twenty-two,” she says. “Thought I was ready for that. Turns out I’m not wife material.” She laughs and pulls out a cigarette. “Already trying to quit.
“I lived with him for almost a month,” she says. “Tried some new things.” I’m afraid to ask. “Then just ended up on couches for a while, which sucked.” She blows smoke into a nearby table until the manager comes and tells her to put it out.
“So are you back home now?” I ask.
“I’m going home tonight. Thought I would see you on my way.” She taps her nails against the table. “I needed a little boost first. Dad’s going to freak out.”
Probably. I haven’t seen him since that night, with Mom. “He’ll be happy though.”
She nods. “Okay, your turn.”
I tell her about Ainsley and Pole Dancer leaving me alone. (“See?” she says.) A few vague things about Will. Mom walking in when he was over and losing her mind.
“Wait,” Jacquie interrupts. “You got busted by your mom, on the couch with a guy.”
“Yeah.”
She laughs, slapping her hand against the tabletop. “There’s some hope for you yet, Bee Stings.”
I kill her with my eyes. She doesn’t seem to notice. “Can I go on now?” I talk about the police hauling Mom off. Staying with Jacquie’s dad for the night. Mom’s alcohol poisoning and rehab. Laina coming.
I don’t know if I should tell her what Mom told me, about Everett and all of that. I watch her while I talk and think
how she is part of that history too. Her entire life shaped by something she never knew about.
“There’s something else Mom told me, something you should probably know.” I tell her about Everett beating her dad and my mom on a daily basis, the leather belt and cigarette burns. I tell her about the other stuff—how Mom protected Laina, then left. How Laina was only eleven years old. Then how Laina walked away and why they hated her.
She doesn’t say a word the whole time I talk. Not one stupid comment.
When I’m finished, she shakes her head. “Well, that explains a lot.” We sit in silence. “Quite the family, eh?” After a minute she says, “Have Dad and Laina made up?”
“I don’t think so. I haven’t seen them talk.”
She slides from the booth, her coat on in two seconds. “Well, time to face the music.”
As she starts to walk away, I say, “Jacquie, I’m glad you’re back.”
“I know.” She winks. Then she’s gone.
Maybe we’ll never live together. I don’t know. Either way, I think I need a few of her explosions in my life. And she needs a little of my quiet reading in a coffee shop.
* * *
School falls into a routine too—a mix of new and old. Spare. English with Ms. Furbank. Zara waving her hand in the air
anytime the teacher looks my way. That’s okay. Invisibility has always been my main goal.
Lunch in the library, like old times. Biology, where everyone’s gone back to ignoring me again. Spanish with Daniela and Damien.
“It didn’t work out with you and the big guy, did it?” Damien says.
I shake my head. “A bird and a fish.”
He looks confused, about to say something else, when Mr. Dent chews him out for talking.
I do see Will one day as I’m walking by the cafeteria doors—a snatch through the glass window. He’s sitting with a short pimply guy. Amanda’s at the same table, and another girl I don’t recognize. I stand near the edge of the glass, peeking in like a
CIA
agent. He leans across the table to hear the short guy better and smiles.
I remember for a second what it was like to be on the receiving end of that smile, to touch that face.
Will
. Then the door swings open, and I’m standing there like a stalker without his hedge. I back away out of sight. Did he see me?
I run into Ainsley and Pole Dancer the same day at my locker. Acid voices behind me.
“Watch out for that one, Janine. She’ll sic her pit bull on you,” Ainsley says. Pole Dancer sniggers.
Without turning around, I say, “How’d that floor taste, Ainsley?” Then nothing. It doesn’t matter, them or anyone else. This is my school too. I picked it.
* * *
A week later I’m in the library, my biology textbook in front of me. Thinking about Mom, wondering what she’s doing.
A swish next to me and the scrape of a chair. I look up, the air all gone.
“Will.” I didn’t actually mean to say it out loud. I smile at him—can’t help it. He’s in some tacky sweater his mom probably bought him.
He smiles back. He’s here.
“What are you doing?” What am I saying?
“I thought it was time to say hello,” he says. “It’s been a while.”
“It has.” I think of the last words I said to him—and what happened right before that.
We talk about exams, holidays. When things get quiet, he says, “I’ve missed you.” I nod. Don’t trust my voice. “Why’d you drop English?”
“Ashamed,” I say. What’s the point in lying now? “What you saw. What I said to you. Especially what I said to you.”
He shrugs. “You did try to warn me, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“I think I understand,” he says. Quiet. I’m afraid he’s going to get up and leave now.
“What did your mom say about that night?” I ask. Never thought about it before.
“She doesn’t know. I was a little late getting back, so I told her I fell asleep watching
TV
and didn’t hear the phone.”
“Very devious, Will,” I say. “I think I’m rubbing off on you.”
He laughs. The good laugh. “Well, I just wanted to say hi.” Then he’s gone, leaving a draft like someone left the door open.
* * *
The next day I pretend not to be checking every thirty seconds for his head ducking through the library doorway. And there he is.
My stupid smile.
Keep it together, Isabelle
.
He pulls out homework today. I try not to watch his fingers grasp the pen, his messy scrawl across the page. The dip in his collarbone through his T-shirt. Tiny scar by his eyebrow.
He looks up and catches me staring. My cheeks prickle.
After a few minutes he says, “You seem different, you know? More calm.”
I tell him about my aunt staying with us while my mom gets help. “She almost died.”
His face falls. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, we weren’t really…together. I mean, I’d just cussed you out and had you interrogated by the police.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t think I can handle this stuff.”
“Can you?” He makes a face like I just waxed his eyebrows. “Our lives are very different, Will. You have no idea.”
He looks at me, his eyes clouding over. A vein pops in his neck.
He drops his pen in his bag and closes his books. Starts to pull his hoodie from the back of the chair.
“Will, wait.” It’s true I never gave him the chance, never thought he could handle it. In his world of walking the dog, refrigerator full of food, helicopter mom with her university agenda. Maybe it’s time to find out what he’s made of. “You want to know?”
He nods, jaw still out. Big baby.
“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I look around. Ms. Hillary’s hammering away at a keyboard on her desk, already giving us the stinkeye. “But not here.”
I take his arm—not gently—and drag him through the halls, bumping shoulders, stepping on feet. Down to where it’s quiet. Through one door, then another. He flicks on the light. I turn it off. These aren’t things I can say in fluorescent light, with go-go boots and pom-poms in my face.
“Sit down,” I say. Him against one wall. Me against the other.
I start with the stuff about Mom, taking care of her, Maisie and Evan. Calling in to work, cleaning up, the humiliation. All the lies. Living in shelters, basements. Going hungry. Claude, seeing him beat her. The names he called me, locking me in rooms, getting caught in the crossfire. The time I slapped Mom. Maisie’s birthday and every other special day that never was. Uncle Richie. The time I had a great boyfriend until my mom humiliated me and I screamed at him because
I got scared. Then when she almost died, walking in to see that. Facing foster care.
I don’t soften anything. Blunt words. Full details, all repulsive and in-your-face. When I finish, voice grating, I say, “There, Will. That’s my life. Can you handle that?” Hurling words through the darkness. Absolute silence. Through all my stories, through every word. Silence. “I didn’t think so.”
I push myself up from the wall, knocking shirts off a rack. Angry tremor in every vein. I’m at the door in less than a second.
As I twist the knob, the door’s stuck tight. An arm above my shoulder—his arm holding it closed.
“Move,” I say, bumping against him.
“Wait.”
“Move!”
His free arm pulls me to him, then the other one. I want to push him away, knee him. Scratch. I can’t leave that warm circle, his ribs under my fingers. Are his cheeks wet?
I stop fighting and lean into him. “It won’t always be like that,” he says. Then it’s my turn to cry.
I don’t know how much time passes. Bells ring. A class actually comes in to use the drama room, a crack of light under the door. If they need their prop room, they’ll find two bodies huddled in the corner. Probably drag us to Mr. Talmage. Then it’s quiet again.
“I feel like I’ve lived my whole life as some kind of a rodent,” I say. “Running from hole to hole. Picking up scraps to survive.”
Will listens, twirling my hair in his fingers. “Think of this,” he says. “Rodents are very resilient. They survive when nothing else can—even become immune to poisons. Did you know a rat can tread water for days?”
“No, I didn’t.” I laugh.
“Survive being flushed down a toilet?”
“No.”
“So if you’re a rodent,” he says, “you’ll probably outlive us all.”
When it’s time to get Maisie, this time I pull him to me. It’s been too long. Then I ask, “Will, how come you keep coming back?”
“Haven’t you figured that out yet?” He steps into the drama room, pulling my hand behind him.
The Tuesday before winter break, Mr. Drummond stops me as I leave Ms. Furbank’s class. “The deadline for play submissions is at the end of this week,” he says. “Have you finished yours yet?”
Finished it? I wrote a few pages in November, when I told him I’d stay, and nothing since. “You said it was in March,” I say, blocking the doorway and making everyone else move around me.
“The plays are performed in March, but they need time to judge submissions and prepare the plays. It’s a competition, for both the playwrights and the actors.”
I’ll be competing with other students? Mr. Drummond made it sound like the drama department would just fall all over anything I wrote. I blink. “I don’t think I can do it.” I’ve missed my chance.
Seeing my face, Mr. Drummond says, “Why don’t you come by my classroom over the lunch hour? I’ll help
you get started.” When I stand there, looking blank, he adds, “You have a few days. It’s enough.”
He’s wrong, but I follow him anyway.
We sit with some lined paper on the desk between us, and Mr. Drummond shows me how to properly format a play. I tell him what I’ve written so far, and we decide on three more characters: another sibling and two friends. There are five characters in total, including the original daughter and the mother. Mr. Drummond helps me decide on the role of each character and the basic plot line. By the end of the lunch hour, we have a sibling who doesn’t know anything about the poisoning, one who planned the murder, two evil friends and a dead mother. It’s a start.
“Now,” Mr. Drummond says, as the bell rings and students file in, “go home and write it.” Just like that.
“Thanks,” I say, gathering the sheets. If I don’t get it in on time, I’ll fail him too. I don’t know why I care about the stupid play at all, but I do. Maybe because I know I could actually write something good, something to be proud of. And Mom might even see it, if she’s back by then.
Will’s waiting at my locker after school. “What?” he says when he sees me. I guess I have my pre-Laina, I’m-about-to-whack-someone face.
I tell him about the play competition and how I have four days to finish writing a play and submit it.