Chapter Seven
Then
“Do youseeher outfit today?” The girl’s halfhearted attempt at a whisper carried easily across the small classroom to where I sat beside the window. With a stubborn set to my shoulders, I stared steadfastly out the pane to my left and refused to justify her slur with a reaction. Cursing the clear blue Georgia sky, I wished silently for a bizarrely-formed cloud or even a low-flying plane on which I could focus my attentions and use as a distraction from the catty words that were unquestionably about my wardrobe choices.
“Amber!” A second voice chimed in with a giggling rebuke. “Be nice! God, I hear her brother is, like, dying or something.”
I knew those voices well.
They found themselves hilarious — two miniature, Botox-free versions of Joan Rivers apparently hosting their own unofficial version ofFashion Police: Jackson High Edition. Nicole was the Skipper to Amber’s Barbie: a less popular, less blonde, and significantly less well-endowed version of her Queen Bee counterpart.
“No shit?” I could hear the maniacal snap ofAmber’s gum from across the room. “That is so totally tragic. Like something out of a movie, you know?”
“I know, right? And Stacy’s mom told my mom that her parents are…” Cue dramatic pause. “Alcoholics.”
I’d come to the conclusion early — approximately five minutes after the start of junior high, if you wanted the specifics — that while girls likeAmber were catty and manipulative on an almost laughably shallow level, it was the ones like Nicole who were the worst. They were the followers, the sheep; the seconds-in-command who, beneath the bad hair, self-esteem issues, and remaining layer of baby fat, were intelligent enough to know better than to cater to frivolous high-school-peakers like Amber. Nicole had been my friend once. Back before she’d traded her glasses for contacts and fried her hair with a bottle of peroxide in a desperate ploy to gain entry into the elite circle. Evidently the lure of popularity — even if it was the JV version — was too strong to resist.
“Jeeze. Some families in this town.” I heardAmber exhale sharply. “Did you catchOne Tree Hilllast night?”
It was at this point that I tuned out.
Fingernails biting harshly into my clenched fists, I pictured their words sliding around me, bouncing off my forcefield of indifference and never coming close enough to pierce my heart. Yet, like a tidal wave across the sand, the whispers left their mark each time — a dark, damp imprint that eroded the beach in infinitesimal amounts over days and decades. I could pretend they didn’t wound me with their insensitivity, but the callous words crashed against me in unrelenting, inevitable strikes, slowly eating away at my unaffected facade and disturbing an already fragile foundation.
“Sit down please, everyone.” Ms. Ingraham’s stern voice rang out, calling for the juniors loitering in groups at the back of the classroom and in the hallway to take their seats. Fighting off a yawn, I listened to the acquiescent groans, the shuffle of unwilling feet, and the scrape of metal-legged desks against the linoleum as my peers settled in. It had been another long night for me. After Sebastian had dropped me off at the hospital, my already bad day had descended even further on the shit scale. When I’d arrived at his room, Jamie had sensed immediately that something was off. His twin-spidey-senses must’ve been tingling.
“What’s wrong, light of my life?” he’d asked immediately, sitting up straighter in his gurneyed hospital bed. He’d called me that for years, his little nickname a play on my name’s Latin origins. “And why are you all wet?” He eyed my tangled damp blonde locks curiously.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, shrugging lightly and forcing the worry lines to smooth from my forehead. “Ms. Ingraham kept the entire class late today to conjugate a million extra verb tenses. She’s clearly gunning for teacher of the year.”
Jamie smiled easily, but his face was too pale. His latest surgery had taken more out of him than any of his previous ones. He tired easily these days and, though still his ever-cheery self, he must’ve been in considerable pain.
“The lonely old bag probably just didn’t want to go home to her cats,” Jamie said, scooting over so I could join him on the bed. Once I’d settled in, I dropped my head on his shoulder and he slid a comforting arm around my back.
“My thoughts exactly.” I sighed, letting my tired eyes droop closed. This was always the best part of my day. Though school had never been my favorite place, the last year without Jamie there with me had made it exponentially worse. “Missed you, Jamie.”
“Missed you too, sis,” he said, his arm tightening in a brief reassuring squeeze. “But I’ll be back on my feet in no time and we’ll rule Jackson High, you mark my words,” he joked lightly, knowing that in all likelihood he would never again walk the halls alongside me. “Ms. Ingraham will be so infatuatedwith my handsome mug, she’ll give both of us A’s for the term. Oh, and we’ll have a free pass to skip out of classes. I mean, seriously, what hall monitor is going to stop me? I can pull the cancer card. You’ve gotta be a real dick to turn in the kid with osteosarcoma, even if he is tardy three days in a row.”
I tried to smile at his attempts to lighten the mood but I couldn’t quite find the strength within myself. Squeezing my eyelids together harshly, I did my best to get control over mygathering tears. Jamie hated it when I cried — he’d much rather joke about his illness than weep about it. He didn’t do self-pity and, while most days I admired that, sometimes I just needed to be sad. I needed to cry and rage against the world for its injustice. Shake my fists at whatever god was up there, for slowly draining the life from the best person I’d ever known.
We fell silent for a time. Jamie likely sensed I wasn’t in the mood to joke with him and instead gave me the quiet solace I desperately needed. His very presence recharged me whenever my batteries dropped to dangerously low levels and I’d begun to fear that I couldn’t go on juggling school, work, his illness, and my scatterbrained parents.
“So who do I have to beat up?” he whispered quietly, breaking the silence.
“What?” I lifted my head to look him in the eyes.
“The boy, sis. Whoever he is, brotherly duty requires that I give him a piece of my mind.” Jamie lifted his hand to touch his chin in a gesture of deep contemplation. “Perhaps even a beat down is in order. Put the fear of god into him, and all that jazz.” As if he could even stand, let alone give someone abeat down. I rolled my eyes affectionately.
“There’s no boy, Jamie.”
“The size large, $200 cashmere you’re wearing would suggest otherwise,” he said, staring pointedly at my torso. Sebastian’s warm sweater was swimming on my petite form, cocooning me from neck to mid-thigh — I’d forgotten to give it back in my rush to escape both the confines of his car and the perceptive look in his eyes. “Thought we didn’t lie to each other, Lux?” Jamie’s voice held an unusual note of hurt.
“We don’t!” I protested immediately. “This is nothing! It’s nothing. I’d tell you if there was a boy.”
“Well, if it’snothing, then explain.” He looked at me expectantly.
I sighed in resignation.
“I was walking here in the rain and apparently some guy was practicing for the Indy 500 in his Mercedes. The maniac took a turn too fast and doused me with a puddle in the process. He felt bad so he gave me his sweater and a ride here. That’s it. End of story.”