Looks Page 13

The girls’ room smells like old pee and paper towels—Aimee makes it into the last stall and pulls the door shut behind her before the howling metallic waves crash over her. The floor billows up around her like a gray-tiled sail—the cinder-block walls ripple in and press against her on all sides. The reaction is inside her and outside her at the same time, a pulsing, glittering helix of noise and tremor.

  Nothing, Aimee keeps hearing at the back of her mind, in the one tiny space that hasn’t been completely engulfed by the reaction. I’ve eaten nothing all day, nothing, nothing, nothing.

  This must be how the body reacts to deception. This must be how the immune system fights off the feeling of being violated by a friend. This must be what it’s like to have every white blood cell in your system come rushing to attack a morsel of betrayal on your tongue.

  It’s hours before Aimee stumbles out the front door of the school and scans the parking lot for the presidential Jeep. She spots it, with Cara standing beside it, over by the access road leading to the playing fields. Aimee weaves her way through the parked cars and calls out, as soon as she gets within shouting range, “Cara. Hey, Cara!”

  Cara turns around and blossoms into openmouthed joy when she sees Aimee coming.

  “Hey, you, where did you get to in there? We missed you during the rest of the meeting!”

  “Yeah, I had something to—I had a, um, thing.” Aimee swallows. How is she going to get these words out of her mouth without breaking them into bits?

  “What is it?” Cara’s face morphs into a portrait of concern. “What’s wrong, Aimee, is something wrong?”

  “Your poem—” Aimee begins.

  As if she’s flipped an invisible switch, Cara’s face changes back instantly to sweet, glowing pleasure. “Thank you so much,” she says before Aimee has a chance to finish. “I knew that poem would speak to you. I really wrote it with you in mind.”

  “With my poem in mind,” Aimee blurts out.

  Cara’s face empties of expression for a split second, goes as blank as the screen of a dead TV set. Then her brow knits into the shape of confusion.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  She’s going to make me actually say it. Aimee relaxes her mouth, tries to loosen her tongue.

  “You . . . you . . . copied my poem,” Aimee breathes.

  Cara raises her eyebrows in shock. “What are you talking about?”

  “You, I—your poem is, basically a total copy of mine, the one I read to you and gave you to keep at your house.” Aimee can’t tell if she’s about to faint or throw up or burst into tears.

  Cara shakes her head slowly side to side in stunned disbelief.

  “What are you saying?” she asks tremulously, her eyes shining with the beginnings of tears. “You’re accusing me of . . . Aimee, I . . . God, I don’t even know what to say.” Cara fights to maintain her composure, breathing heavily and swallowing hard.

  “Say you’ll take it back,” Aimee says quietly. “Go back in there and tell Mr. Handsley you want to withdraw your poem from the competition.”

  Now Cara stares at Aimee stonily.

  “I just won the competition. You want me to go in there and tell our advisor that I withdraw my poem from the competition, after I just won? Because why, am I supposed to tell him? Because I didn’t actually write it? Is that what you want me to say to him?”

  “Well, um, you didn’t.”

  A flicker of anger darkens Cara’s clear eyes.

  “I—I mean, I hardly know what to say to you right now, because I can’t believe you would walk up to me and talk to me like this, like we don’t even have—like we never even had—I mean, okay, I’m not going to deny that there are some common themes in our two poems, but that’s only because of what we were talking about when you came over! Maybe you don’t remember that we had a whole conversation about how I had the same experiences as the ones you were writing about? And we talked all about how your poem reminded me of that terrible, awful time in my life and like, took me right back to when I used to be sick? And I’m sorry but I actually thought that conversation was meaningful, I thought we were like, connecting at that moment, and like sharing something, and getting close. And now you’re accusing me of . . . plagiarizing your ideas?”

  Cara has worked herself up into a tearful rage; her face is burning pink and her hairline is damp with sweat.

  “I . . .” In the face of Cara’s wild, torn-up anger Aimee feels the resolve to expose her faltering.

  “I guess it’s sort of amazing to me that you weren’t feeling that at all. I guess I sort of feel like an idiot. Here I thought we were bonding in a serious way at that moment and becoming the kind of friends who could share really deep, really scary things with each other, and you were, what? Faking it the whole time? I mean, I never told anyone before about how I used to be sick. I never told anyone about Carol. You’re the first person I ever talked to about that stuff, and I would never have admitted any of it to you and told you all my secrets like that if I thought you were going to make me pay for it like this. I guess I was just totally wrong about you.”

  Now Cara cries for real, covering her face with her hands.

  Aimee’s at a loss for words. On the one hand she wants to put her arms around Cara and comfort her, say No no no, I’m sorry, take me back, trust me again, we were bonding! Be my best friend and don’t ever leave my side! But something keeps her from begging like that—a scrap of steel lodged in her heart that says, No no no, stand up for yourself.

  “I’m sorry?” she ventures noncommittally.

  “Whatever.” Cara turns away to unlock the Jeep door, then pivots back around to face Aimee, her eyes hard. “I just think you need to remember,” she says, “that nobody owns ideas. Ideas belong to everybody. You think you’ve had some special unique experience that only you can describe but actually a million other people have had that same experience, and they might describe it just the way that you would. And um, that’s why poetry works, by the way. If we were all totally unique and special we wouldn’t ever understand each other when we talked or wrote. The only reason we can love another person’s poems is because we’re all basically the same, we know what other people are talking about because we’ve had the same experiences they have. You might have been hungry but so have I. You don’t own hungry. Remember that, Aimee.”

  Wordlessly Aimee watches as Cara slips into the driver’s seat of the Jeep, pulls the door shut, and drives away.

  At home Aimee dials Bill’s number and sits down numbly at the kitchen table, waiting to hear his voice. But Bill’s phone just rings, and rings, and rings.

  13

  There is no Aimee Zorn. Fog morning, dull morning. Smoke and mist.

  Meghan searches for no one in the crowd outside school.

  Inside the front hall Meghan scans for no particular hat, no particular skirt, no particular boots. Kids swirl around her, undifferentiated as surf. Words fall from mouths in shattered fragments:

  “—totally and I was like what and she—”

  “—gave me one that freaking sucks can you—”

  “—didn’t you told you to—”

  “—shut it—”

  “—him stupid—”

  “—yeah but homework whatever—”

  “—I said anyway—”

  “—anyway—”

  Words break like waves on the rock of Meghan’s ear. The meaninglessness makes Meghan long for silence.

  The first bell rings.

  Meghan looks around for no one, makes a note of nothing, and heads for homeroom.

  There is no Aimee Zorn.

  “Good morning students faculty and staff it is. My pleasure to welcome you. To Thursday. Morning.”

  No J-Bar this morning in homeroom. Nothing to worry about or keep tabs on in her peripheral vision. Still Meghan’s head aches dully, a vine of pain growing around and through it.

  “This mornin
g we have for. Morning meditation. Eh selection from thee poet Langford Hayes thee poet Langley Hoyes thee ahem. Ahem. Poet Lang . . . ston Hughes.”

  Kids are paying attention to nothing, staring out the windows and up at the ceiling; the heat is on and it’s stuffy and the whole room feels stupid. Meghan’s eyes are shrinking in their sockets.

  “Please listen and remain. Listening for thirty seconds after thee. Selection concludes.”

  Meghan’s whole self is draining into a hole at her center. Her edges collapse in as she slowly implodes.

  “‘A Dream Deferred,’” drones Ms. Champoux.

  Going to class is not going to work today; Meghan makes an executive decision to go AWOL.

  Mr. Cox is lodged at his desk, shoulders hunched like a gargoyle, glowering down at the morning memo and waiting for the poem to be over.

  Meghan doesn’t even make the effort to disappear. She just gets up, slings her backpack over one shoulder, and walks quietly up to the front of the room. If anyone notices her go, no one has the energy to say anything about it. She’s alone and moving through the empty sophomore hall in seconds.

  There is no Aimee Zorn.

  Music Practice Room D opens to anyone’s touch now; somebody—nobody—busted the trick lock so that it stays open all the time. It’s only a matter of time before the stoner kids or gaming kids discover this fact and colonize the room for themselves. Meghan steps in and surveys the damage. Somebody—nobody—has left three curled foil Jell-O cup covers on top of the piano. Sticky garbage. Somebody—nobody—has no respect for this space.

  Meghan closes her eyes and turns 360 degrees, slowly and deliberately, trying to vanish, but she can feel the persistent presence of someone—no one!—who never should have been in this room in the first place. It feels like there’s static in the corners of the room, cobwebs of dirty energy. Meghan turns and turns, trying to clear the air, trying to make the room magic—and hers—again. Sixteen times around and she’s getting dizzy, and she hasn’t even started to disappear. No one has ruined the only safe space Meghan ever had in this school.

  There is no Aimee Zorn.

  Late in the day. Meghan floats, exhausted, in the dark of the sick room, tethered lightly to the vinyl bed but hovering a couple of inches above the wax paper surface, buoyed by currents of warm, rising air. Mrs. Chuddy’s words spill over her ears, her skin, her closed eyes, falling into coherence and then scattering into sparkles like the reflection of sun on rippling water.

  “. . . heard them going at it all, yes, afternoon . . . deeper but what he didn’t say then . . . oh yes skating he’s skating on very thin ice . . . never would have if I didn’t . . . no no . . . so worried about him . . . three strikes he’s gone . . . Deborah and Myra said . . . yes I said . . . said . . .”

  Meghan phases in and out of twilight sleep, floats and dozes and bobs.

  Nobody comes in with an allergic reaction. Nobody lies down on the bed beside her. Nobody curls away from her on the crinkly wax paper, and Meghan lies in the dark not waiting for no one.

  14

  Aimee wakes to the sensation that her left eyelid is being pried open by a crowbar of sunlight.

  She rolls over and her bones clank against the floor she’s lying on like old tools rattling against the bottom of a junk drawer. She peels both sticky eyes open and finds herself on the floor of Bill’s study, in a tangle of blankets taken off her own bed. The sun is pouring through the unshaded windows, lighting the room as loudly as the blast from a foghorn. Dimly, like a scene from a movie she saw long ago, Aimee remembers stumbling in here late last night after lying awake in her own bed for hours, too scrambled with stuttery thoughts of Cara to fall asleep. Bill’s brown shag carpet must have cast a spell over her as powerful as the Wicked Witch of the West’s field of poppies—she doesn’t even remember lying down on it before she passed out.

  From the other end of the hall come the sounds of her mother going through her morning bathroom routine—the shush and silence of water being turned on and off, the clatter of a dropped lipstick hitting the sink. If her mother’s already doing her makeup it’s late—she’ll be heading out to the Toyota soon, and suddenly Aimee knows that if she is discovered here, having slept on Bill’s floor, it will somehow constitute a serious betrayal. It will somehow be a very big deal, and she will somehow be in very big trouble. Hurriedly she gets up, tugging the blanket nest around her shoulders like a huge heavy stole, and eases the door to Bill’s office open.

  The coast is clear, and Aimee scuttles back to her bedroom. She heaves herself, covers and all, across her bed, so that her head is hanging off one side and her feet are hanging off the other. As soon as she hits the mattress she hears the click of the bathroom door opening, and moments later her mother is standing beside her. Aimee’s head is so close to the floor that all she can see are her mother’s nylon-shimmery shins and navy blue Naturalizers, but she can feel the air change shape above her as her mother puts her hands on her hips.

  “Honey, you’re sick?” her mom asks, both weary and concerned.

  Aimee nods her hanging head.

  “Come up here and let me look at you.” Her mother settles on the edge of Aimee’s bed and Aimee hoists herself up with a groaning show of exhaustion, as if she’s extracting her head from a bog where it’s been buried for centuries. She rubs her eyes with the backs of her hands, uncrusting their corners, and peers out blearily at her mom.

  Her mother is morning-perfect, dry where she should be dry and glossy wet where she should be glossy wet. Her just-styled hair is both a solid and a liquid, a blonde breeze frozen mid-swirl around her head. Her silk-blend blouse flows into two neat collar points on either side of her neck; at her waist it’s tucked in crisply, like a beautifully wrapped present.

  She puts her cool hand on Aimee’s forehead and peers at it, as if trying to read words developing in magic ink on her own skin.

  “You don’t have a fever, but you’re clammy. Actually your temperature feels a little low. And look at these circles under your eyes—did you sleep at all last night?”

  Aimee shrugs noncommittally.

  Her mother swallows, preparing herself for something.

  “Can I ask what you ate yesterday?”

  Aimee looks away.

  “Honey . . .” Aimee’s mother takes her palm off Aimee’s forehead and folds her hands tensely in her lap. “I know you might not feel up to it right now, but we have to have a Conversation.”

  Aimee groans and collapses back against her nest of blankets. “Now?” she objects.

  “Yes, honey, now. This Conversation is really long overdue.”

  “Don’t you have to get to work?”

  “I’ll pay attention to when I have to get to work. You pay attention to the question I asked you. What did you eat yesterday?”

  “I was getting sick!” Aimee cries.

  Her mother shakes her head grimly, and Aimee sees that her hands are trembling as she smoothes her tweedy skirt out over her thighs.

  “Sweetheart, I think it’s safe to say that part of the reason you’re sick right now is because you’re not eating a balanced diet anymore. Food is fuel, you know. Food is what keeps our bodies healthy and strong.”

  Aimee rolls her eyes. Is this going to be a Conversation about basic health facts?

  “Honey, listen, I’ve been reading about this and—”

  “Reading about what?” Aimee demands.

  “About . . .” Her mother adjusts the hem of her skirt. “About different eating problems that people sometimes have, and—”

  “I don’t have an eating problem,” Aimee asserts. “I have allergies to a couple of foods, that’s all.”

  “I know, I know that’s how it feels to you. And you know that I’m committed to giving you your space and not trying to control your decisions. You know that when I was growing up my mother imposed a lot of things on me about the kind of person she wanted me to be, and I have tried very hard not to do that with you. I have
tried as much as possible to respect you as an individual and let you take responsibility for yourself. But honey, this is getting out of hand. Even you have to admit that it’s getting out of hand. Whole days go by now where I never see you eat, I don’t know whether you ever eat at school, and now you’re starting to get sick—”

  “I eat every, single, day,” Aimee declares, hitting each word hard and clear, like a xylophone bar.

  “Okay.” Her mother looks sad. “I believe you if you say that you do. But all the same, I think it’s time for a visit to Dr. Petrarca.”

  “No!” Aimee sits bolt upright out of her nest of blankets.

  “Honey, we need some professional help. Even if it’s just allergies, you never used to have allergies like this, so if you’ve developed them all of a sudden, something could be seriously wrong.”

  “Mom, I’m fine. I’m handling it and I’m fine!”

  The thought of visiting Dr. Petrarca, the big-bellied, fake-jolly, rubber-smelling pediatrician, makes Aimee weak with dread.

  “This isn’t going to be a big deal. We’ll just ask him to recommend an allergy specialist for us to talk to”—her mother swallows, then blurts out the next part all in a rush—“and maybe he knows a good psychologist and maybe he’ll know about some nutritional supplements we can give you to help keep you nourished while you’re staying away from the foods that make you feel bad.”

  Psychologist. Nutritional supplements. Revulsion surges into Aimee’s throat as she flashes back on Cara’s description of the protein shakes—she imagines a tube of thick white liquid spiraling toward her, tasteless as tile grout, slipping like a pale snake into her mouth, forcing open her throat, coiling in a pile in her gut—

  “No,” Aimee says. “No, I can’t.”

  “Sweetheart, what do you mean you can’t?” Her mother’s face is getting that look of anguished pleading that makes Aimee want to shut her eyes and scream.

  “I just can’t.”

  “Well I may have to put my foot down here.”

  “No!”