Hoarsely,
in fear.
Fear.
Stumbling about
between the seats,
the action on the movie screen
flickered across his T-shirt
while shouts of disapproval
peppered the air.
I tried to stand, too.
But Nick’s gruff voice
held me in place.
“Sit the fuck down,”
he said to Jayden.
Obviously pissed.
Obviously already putting up
with quite enough
just being here.
Obviously having no idea
what the hell was going on.
Jayden dumped himself
into his chair, and
once again,
we were separated.
On screen, tropical trees
bent sideways in
hurricane-force winds while
rain pounded a broiling sea and the
blades of a helicopter
beat against the sound system.
The world was being
blown apart and there was
nothing I could do but
watch it happen.
Your heads moved together.
Ear to ear. Cheek to cheek. It was
your voice I heard.
Whispering hoarsely.
In fear.
Fear.
I couldn’t hear the words,
not that they mattered.
What mattered was him.
Jayden of the grin.
He looked down in your lap.
The whispers continued.
The movie continued.
Nick continued to watch the screen,
oblivious of the tension around him.
In fact, he looked relaxed. The movie
making him forget
about me.
Suddenly,
Jayden of the grin stood up and
my heart dropped
to the sticky theater floor. But
he didn’t push past me. Instead,
he leaned deeply over the seats
and retrieved the hat.
For you.
In this small exchange,
I saw your face for the first time.
Triumphant.
You’d taken the chance,
and it had worked out.
Proving once again,
Lidia Banks never needed two hands. Lidia Banks
never needed two hands. Lidia
Banks never needed
two hands. LidiaBanksne
verneededtwoh
andsLid
iaBan
ksne
vernee
dedtwo
hands.
I’ll Be Waiting
LURCHING AWAKE, I QUICKLY WIPE THE DROOL FROM MY mouth and look around to be sure no one saw me sleeping before I stumble inside the school dragging both my backpack and my head.
“Hey, missy.” Ms. Kisner, the school nurse, calls everyone “missy.” “Spine not okay?”
She swooshes back a curtain revealing a cot where I lie down, shoes and all. She talks for a bit, covers me with a blanket. Her voice is kind, high-pitched. Her sneakers squeak now and then as she makes her way around her office. Drawers slide in and out. A crowd hums in the distance… then all is silent. I think I hear the birds again. Chirping. I definitely hear the birds.
And then I feel him.
“Eve,” he says.
I’m smiling now.
He’s what I need right now.
I keep my eyes closed, afraid he won’t be there if I open them. I hear him sit in the chair near my cot and imagine him crossing his arms in front of him. He has nice arms. Big arms. I feel them catching me outside of school this morning.
Wait. What? Not his arms.
Those were not his arms.
“What’s wrong, Eve?”
His voice? I don’t know whose voice.
“Nothing.” I sigh, my eyes still closed. “I’m just busy trying to figure out exactly how out of my mind I am.”
“I’ll help you,” he says. “Way out.”
The warmth in his voice makes me feel
close to him. Connected.
The buzzer ends a class period.
“I better go,” he says.
“Don’t.”
Silence surrounds the word,
surrounds us—a silence
neither of us fill.
He leans nearer. I can feel his presence pressing in on me.
“I’ll be waiting, after school. Under the portico.” He whispers it—and I remain perfectly still, experiencing every beautiful syllable.
I hear him stand, move away. And feeling a little braver, although not brave enough to open my eyes, I say, “Don’t show up all cool on a motorcycle or something.”
He laughs. The sound of it tingles down the scaffolding attached to my
spine, and for a second… less than a second even, I’m hoping.
An Exact Replica
MS. KISNER IS GENTLY SHAKING MY ARM, SUGGESTING I TRY attending a class or two.
School.
I’m at school.
Yawning, I roll off the cot and use one of the nurse’s paper water cones to take a Roxy, sipping slowly, putting off the inevitable—going out there.
By the time I arrive at English Lit, the class is in full swing. Miss Mason stops lecturing.
“Hey, Eve, welcome back.”
I nod and take my seat, avoiding eye contact with Thomas Aquinas while attempting to shrug off the attention Mason is throwing my way.
She immediately understands. “Okay, let’s get back to transcendentalism.”
Oh, how I need Thomas Aquinas’s paper! Especially because I most likely am not going to listen to a word of this lecture.
I open my notebook and fuss about trying to find a way to tolerate the hard chair. Then I fix my gaze up at the front of the room… and think about him.
I’ll be waiting.
Like a date.
No. Not a date. This isn’t a date.
It’s just him… in the human form. So I sit in class, walk through the halls, sit in the next class, answer a question or two, pop another Roxy or two—I don’t want to overdo it and end up back in pain, as per my doctor—even throw an opinion out about something. Because he will be there. Waiting. And I smile.
In fact, I spend the rest of the day smiling.
They say your own attitude can change everything. Well, I might have to start believing these they people because they are right. It seems that an Eve flashing her carefree self all through the halls is an Eve everybody needs to chat up. I’m late to every class because I’m extremely busy being greeted by everyone and being told how good I look.
Inside the classroom, I double down on the joy by picturing him waiting outside for me, while the other one sits behind me.
When Mr. Bogdani calls on me in Gov, I confess I don’t know what the heck is going on.
“Good drugs, right, Eve?” Rodney Papageorgiou calls out.
“Yes,” I admit.
The whole class cracks up. Even Mr. B.
I feel a slight kick at the back of my chair and ignore it.
“May I use the bathroom, Mr. B.?
“At your leisure,” he answers.
The hall is eerily quiet.
I meant to head to the water
fountain but take a
wrong turn or two,
or
three.
I’m in no hurry, just
contentedly wandering
when I round a corner and
find myself in front of
Lidia’s locker.
She is there.
Surrounded by a small
crowd, along with
her hand.
Her hand.
I step back against the lockers in surprise.
She is explaining how
the hand is an
exact replica of her
real hand.
How she sent a
million pictures
of her existing hand
to the company.
I took those pictures.
“I can even paint
the fingernails.”
We bought a
shit ton of nail polish
that afternoon.
I wrap my arms around
my brace, the only
thing holding me
together.
Without it
my heart, my lungs, my intestines
would splash out
onto the stained brown carpet.
When I blink, Lidia
and I are standing
in the hall
alone.
“Lid!” I croak.
She looks up and
smiles that Lidia smile that shows up in
her eyes even more than
her mouth.
“Eve,” she says. “You
look great!”
My heart soars.
Soars.
“Lidia, Lidia, Lidia,”
I sing.
“Eve,” she
groans. But it’s her
loving groan. I
love her
loving groan.
I struggle
to hold back
a hundred more happy
Lidias
while she swings
her backpack over her shoulder, and
using her new hand,
slams the metal locker
shut.
The bell is ringing. I look around at Ms. Kisner’s office, hearing the scratchy sound of the cot paper beneath my head. The halls fill with whoops and shouts—end-of-the-day kinds of whoops and shouts. I lie on the cot, knowing I’ve been here all along.
The Real One
You stood before the credits
started to roll. Jayden stood,
too, stretching slowly, like he was
some sort of grandfather
leaving his overstuffed chair
after hours of watching TV.
I waited for Nick to stand,
but he didn’t.
He kept his eyes on the screen
like he was super-interested in the credits,
though I knew he was
just putting off reentry into a world where he
might have to interact
with me. So I stood—
using Jayden’s technique—
pretending to stretch.
I peeked over but
purposely avoided your eye.
Knowing you wouldn’t want me
looking at you, making sure you were okay.
Because you
were okay.
You were
always okay.
Finally,
Nick rose to his feet with a long sigh,
as if I needed
another signal
that this night wasn’t going
well for him.
Although, even in this act of standing,
Nick took his time,
and Jayden,
at an obvious loss for what to do
with these extra moments,
turned around in the aisle and
adjusted the black fedora
at a jaunty angle
on your head.
You smiled up at him
from under the brim, and
my heart nearly exploded.
That smile. The one that showed up more in your eyes
than your mouth, a smile that said,
The whole fucking world is mine.
It’s all mine.
How could he not be in awe of you?
I’d always been in awe of you.
I followed Nick up the aisle and
through the theater hallway
toward the front concession stand
without looking back. I
wanted to look back. I was
dying to look back.
I also felt
completely weird
shuffling after this absolute asshole
who refused to acknowledge my existence.
So when you called out for me to wait,
I was thrilled.
You needed to use the bathroom.
I did, too,
though I didn’t feel like
I had enough power to ask.
This was the difference between us,
Lidia.
Power.
You were so
powerful.
You called me back
and I came.
You called Jayden and Nick back
and they came.
We left them standing
across from the bathrooms
by a giant cardboard cutout of
two cartoon aliens. Nick
crumpled to the carpeted floor
next to the advertisement. Jayden
leaned against the windowsill, arms folded.
You and I
headed in.
Just before the door closed,
you playfully took the hat from your head and
tossed it over to Jayden.
“Think fast.” You laughed.
He caught it and
grinned.
Take Me Somewhere
IT’S QUIET IN THE NURSE’S BATHROOM AND SAFE FROM THE after-school hordes streaming through the hallways. Safe. Sitting on the closed toilet seat. All I need to do is stay in this bathroom. Five more minutes? Six? Who knows how long it takes to change everything.
But bathrooms are temporary. You can’t stay in them forever.
“You all right in there?” Nurse Kisner calls, proving my point.
“Yes.” My voice bounces off the close walls, shocking me.
Temporary.
But I’m not ready to leave.
Still playing at normalcy, I begin to fool around with my hair in the mirror. Pulling out my hair tie, I fluff it up a bit. Yet it hangs all wonky, so I twist it back on top of my head in the same messy bun I had it up in when I entered. My eyes pass quickly over my face and land on my brace.
It’s difficult to see how different I look with it on. Difficult, though not impossible.
Nineteen degrees.
The Velcro echoes off the tile. My shirt, a wrinkled mess. I pull it over my head. Toss it on top of the brace sitting upright on the floor, leaving me in a body sock and sweats. A body sock hugging my body. My body that is different. I look different. Everything is different. Just like she knew it would be.
I’m back in my brace with my shirt on and another half a Roxy in my mouth before I even remember doing it. I suck on this one. Wanting to punish myself for the incredible feeling already pulsing through me that everything is right in the world, yet… I’m sitting locked in a bathroom. And the funny thing is, even this thought can’t break through the everything’s-right-in-the-world feeling.
Picturing him out there waiting. That breaks through. A bit. And I suck harder on my Roxy.
“Miss Abbott? Either you come out or I come in.”
He is leaning on a light-gray minivan under the portico, between a line of yellow buses. Reading a book. His long hair is tied back, and his gold-framed glasses sit at the end of his nose. He’s completely absorbed, although the din under the massive portico is wild with shouts, laughter, and the deafening roar of the last school buses pulling out.
He? Him? Thomas Aquinas? Do I care who?
No. I don’t. I do. I do care.
I’m just about to turn around, find another bathroom to never come out of when he looks up. His eyes find mine, and I don’t turn around.
I walk slowly toward him,
confident,
because I am looking out
through the grinning
teeth of a hamburger.
He stares back at me,
with a straight-on smile.
Acknowledgment.
Approval.
Acceptance.
“Better than a motorcycle?” he asks, waving his hand at the minivan behind him.
“Not much.”
My body is stiff—not from metal rods and plates but from fear.
“You really are a complete coconut, Eve.” He laughs as he takes my backpack from me and opens my door.
I need to place my hand on his forearm to hoist myself up into the van. The warmth of him creeps right up my arm, through my chest, and up into my neck and cheeks. I let go, scooting onto the seat.
He hands me my backpack. “See,” he says, raising his eyebrows, “easy-peasy getting in, huh?”
“How could I have ever thought you were the devil?” I ask him, before I can stop myself.
“Aw,” he says, “an Eve compliment. Thank you.” And he closes my door.
The quiet sends a shiver down my spine. A shiver that doesn’t hurt. His close presence is wedging itself in between the nerves in my body. No message. No pain. He opens his door, gets in, and shuts it, and I’m enclosed. With Thomas Aquinas.
He starts the van. I can’t take my eyes off his hand on the stick shift, a terrible urge washes over me to reach out, to place my palm over his thick knuckles. The thought has me pulling my eyes away from his side of the van altogether and staring out my own window, fogging it up with my breath.
It starts to rain. The movement of the van and the long day catch up to me. And maybe that last Roxy. I lean back and close my eyes. As soon as I do, I see her smiling in front of her locker. She’s wearing the fedora.
“Take me somewhere.”
My voice bounces off the window.
He clears his throat. “What?”
I can’t turn my head toward him. I can’t face him. “Take me somewhere,” I repeat, placing my hands in my lap. “Somewhere you go when you want to be alone.”
He doesn’t say anything… though I feel the acceleration of the van, and another mile later, we do not take the turn onto Ashmont toward home. I’m going wherever he takes me.