life part 3

WALKING AND TALKING

b a c k w a r d

Daddy tosses things over the table, his face angry. Papers flutter to the floor, so peaceful compared to his actions. The room feels like its spinning. I close my eyes, for only a moment.

When I open them, Daddy is leaning against the table, his arms shaking and his eyes crying. I want to touch him, to hug him. But he’s too angry. He’ll hit me. He sees me, his face goes blank. I stare at him. He looks angry again.

“Get out of here!” he roars. “GET OUT!” I go down the hall to my room and shut the door, listening to the raging of the TV, and of Daddy yelling and crying and the brokenness of it all.

Where is Mommy?

s t i l l

I take a deep breath. I feel sick. All the girls in front of me and stripping from their day clothes and pulling on the gym clothes. Most of them look so fit. The ones that don’t look uncomfortable. But no one looks like me. Skinny as a stick, with bruises on their ribs from when things get thrown around. None of them have burns on their arms when anger got the best of humanity.

I shiver in the heat.

The coach looks at me with abhor. “Hurry,” she says. I nod, but wait for the rest of the kids to leave. Soon, it’s only a fat girl and me. I just look at her. She looks back. To myself, I think that she’s very pretty. Her eyes are big and blue and her skin is olive. Her hair is long and straight and black.

She looks away from me, sparks in her eyes. I turn around, and start to pull off my jeans. I’m in the very corner of my room, hoping to remain unseen. The door closes and the room goes quiet. The coach forgot about us. Or maybe she used to be ugly and knows how we feel.

As I’m putting on the shorts, the fat girl asks me a question.

“What do you have to be insecure about?”

I turn around. She’s already dressed, watching me in my huge black shorts that I’ve rolled up about ten times. They still slip down low. I try to hold them up. My top isn’t even off yet.

“I…” I start.

“Look at you,” she says softly. “I would kill to look like you.”

“I…” I can’t finish this time. She looks like she’s about to cry. I feel all of a sudden like we have a connection. The fat girl and the one that looks anorexic. My bones shiver. We’re complete opposites, yet we’re so similar. Both out of the norm.

So I decide to take of my shirt. She looks at the bruises on my prominent ribs and the mottled scars on my arm. Her face reels backward, and she grows silent. I feel tempted to cover them up, to wrap up in myself. But the birdmen are there, shielding me from her big green eyes. We stare at each other.

A breakthrough.

A beginning.

An end.

The birdmen split between the two of us, wrapping their wings around my bruises and touching the girl’s face, marveling at her eyes. What hell has she gone through? I wonder, in the second.

The world is still changing, shifting, the future rearranging all because of the nervous sparrows that fluttered out of her mouth. They have changed us, altered us, and we both know it.

All in a second.

“Oh,” she says. “I’m Tiffany.”

“I’m Sam.”

She smiles. I smile, nervously. I pull the blue gym shirt on. We both walk out with a flood of questions on our minds.

ii.

Tiffany and I walk the track together.

At first, we don’t talk, but then I feel her looking at me, and I look back, playing with my blonde hair sort of nervously. She is biting her nails, which are painted neon blue. I really like that color. It makes her eyes look like stars. I don’t tell her so.

“So you hang out with Alex, right?” she blurts out, sort of in a long string without any spaces if we were in a movie. Like, “SoyouhangoutwithAlex,right?” Her face is red underneath her dark hair.

The corners of my mouth are pulled up by some invisible power. “Sort of,” I reply. Who else thinks he’s perfect?

Tiffany’s eyes are eggs on those breakfast plates, her mouth bacon. “Are you guys, like, a thing or something?”

I shake my head. “He’s mad at me because I don’t want to go to his party. He hasn’t talked to me for a week.”

“Why don’t you want to go?” Confusion. “If Alex asked me to a party, I’d probably fall over myself trying to say yes,” she confesses honestly.

The day is blue. The faces around me are yellow. The girls on the field playing soccer are red. Pink dances around Tiffany, the same color as her lip gloss. The coach is doing a crossword in the New York Times, surrounded in green.

“I just don’t like dancing,” I say, only halfway lying. Or halfway truthing. But I tend to be more of a pessimist.

THE TRUCK

f o r w a r d

She plays the piano.

I marvel at her, marvel that I can see her from the back of the pews. So this is what has happened. Why it happened. Her tiny fingers arch over the black and white keys, dancing like little ballerinas in a lovely dance. Tears threaten to win me over. I’m so jealous, so jealous of this girl and her piano hands.

Next to me, the old woman’s lips move in synch with the choir’s words. This place is too perfect. Too unscarred. I stand, and the woman looks at me, her smoker mouth pursed into a thin angry line. I look back calmly, pain in my eyes.

And I leave.

If only I could play the piano.

Would she love me more? Would she have stayed? Would things have stayed firm?

What if.

s t i l l

He touches my shoulder. I turn around, finding myself stuck in his image. Alex looks tired, his hair even more mussed than usual, a crooked smile on his chapped lips. The birdmen draw closer to me, their wings lifting my hair like they to when they are unsure. I stuff my hands into my pockets, and meet his brown eyes with my blue ones.

“Hey Sam,” he sighs. His breath smells like peppermints and sweet things. “Are you hungry?” The school is dissipating around us, happy to be free from teachers and obligations.

“No,” I lie.

Alex frowns. “Just chill with me, then.”

“No,” I say firmly.

The frown is gone. In it’s place is a grin. “You’re funny, Sam.” I regard him with hostility. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, at where I assume a group of his friends are waiting. I assume because I can’t see them at all. If only I had glasses.

“We’re going to go get some dinner, then we’re heading over to Thomas’s house for a movie,” Alex says. “I want you to come.” Smiling, he adds, “There won’t be any dancing, or anything. Just a movie and some fast food. We’ll pay for you and stuff.”

“Who’s Thomas?” I ask.

“Just a kid I know. His girlfriend is my best friend’s ex, but they’re totally cool, so…” he looks at me from underneath a sheath of dark hair “… do you wanna come? It’ll be awesome, and I really wanna chill with you… so yeah.”

I squint really hard trying to make them out. But I can’t see them. Last month, Daddy came home for three weeks, but he’s been gone for two. He won’t be back for a while. There aren’t any excuses to make, plus we don’t have any food at home.

“Uh, sure,” I say softly.

Alex grins and takes me over to meet his friends.

Thomas is tall and skinny and quiet. He has a red Mohawk and snake bites and a goofy smile. His girlfriend’s name is Maybell, but everyone calls her MB. She’s tall too, and is bald, except for her eyebrows that are dyed bright green. She has a tongue piercing, which I know because she likes to show it off. It’ funny, because MB was wearing a flowered skirt and a white tank top and Thomas had just a pair of jeans and a Sex Pistols t-shirt. It just wasn't what you would expect them to be wearing.

Alex’s friend who used to date MB introduces himself as Oliver. He’s just average height and weight, and walks with a limp because one of his legs is shorter than the other. He has bleached blonde hair and big glasses with black rims. Oliver’s personal hero is Andy Warhol, because of his influence on the world and his art.

Oliver’s girlfriend is named Vanessa, but everyone calls her Nessa. She doesn’t say very much to me, and is from Brazil. She likes Oliver a lot, I can tell. Her hair is really long and dark and curly and she wears vintage clothes and combat boots and wants a tattoo of a star on her left upper thigh.

All of them seem to think I’m really weird, but that’s okay because I think they’re weird too.

We all climb into Thomas’s truck. MB slides into the passanger seat with a giggle. Oliver and Nessa climb in next, her perched on his lap. Then Alex clambers into the last seat. I still stand outside the truck, wishing Alex had told me how small it was.

MB notices my reluctance first. I guess she maybe it’s happened to her before. She leans over to Thomas and whispers something and the two seem to be have a very deep coversation.

“Just get in,” Alex says. I don’t answer. Nessa leans over and slaps him.

“Idiot! God, you are such a jerk,” she says heatedly. He just gives her an innocent stare. “This is totally why you’re single, asshole.”

“What!” he cries.

“Dude,” Oliver laments, “Nessa is totally right. You can’t just ask a chick to get in your lap and have her be totally OK with it, man.”

I look down at my red sneakers. Alex looks upset. I feel bad. MB climbs out, and grabs my hand.

“Dudes, I’m riding in the back. Whoever wants to chill with me, come on.” She pulls down the back and ushers me in, climbing in after me. I smile at her, she sticks out her tongue in response.

Next come Alex, and Nessa and Oliver. Thomas screams that he’s lonely, and pretends to cry. Grinning, MB says she votes Alex off. Nessa and Oliver agree. He looks over at me very briefly, but then climbs off and rides shotgun.

“Hon!” MB shouts over the wind of the moving car. “Sit next to me.” She pulls me over and wraps her arm around my shoulders. Soon she’s playing with my hair and talking with Nessa about how pretty it is. Oliver just sleeps on her shoulder. The girls start asking questions about me and I answer them the best I can without revealing too much about myself and Daddy.

When we finally stop, MB is still questioning me, and I’m still trying to answer. She buys me a milkshake, some fries and a grill cheese sandwich. I eat it all, but am still hungry. The entire group stares at me. I can feel my face heat up.

“Dude,” Oliver says.

Nessa cries, indignant, “How can you eat so much and still be so freaking scrawny?”

Alex and Thomas are falling over themselves with laughter, at me, imitating me, like boys will do. MB slaps them both, which only makes them laugh harder. Then she launches herself at them, and starts throwing kisses on Thomas's face. Everyone fake-gags, and then a waitress comes over and we get kicked out.

By this time, it’s about six at night, and starting to get dark. We sit in the back of Thomas’s red truck – all six of us. The couples are huddled together against the sunset and the cold spell. MB makes cracks the entire time. I let Alex sit next to me, but not hug me, even though I’m freezing. I won’t even let him hand me his coat. He looks dejected. All I want is for him to be comfortable. Everyone is too wrapped up in each other to notice.