The Difference Between You and Me Page 13

  When Jesse thinks of what her mother’s going to do when she hears about this… she can’t think about what her mother’s going to do when she hears about this.

  In a burst of self-recrimination, Jesse thinks, See, this is why Emily is with Mike! Obviously, Mike McDade would never do something like this. Obviously, he would never dream of undermining his girlfriend’s student council project. And more than that, he would never be so idiotic as to be caught trying to take back something he had already irrevocably done. He would never be so inconsistent, so sloppy, so dumb. He would never end up outside Snediker’s office, waiting to be dragged in to answer for his own stupid actions. Mike McDade is a solid citizen. And Emily is, too.

  The door swings open, and Jesse looks up. Snediker is all the way across the wood-paneled room, perched behind her metal desk. With what dark art did she make the door open from so far away?

  “I’m ready for you now,” Snediker says tonelessly, and Jesse rises.

  The chair of the condemned, opposite the desk, is intentionally hard and straight-backed. When Jesse sits in it she immediately feels the seat bore into her butt in two knobbly places. Does Snediker have special butt-boring panels installed in her punishment chair? It’s possible.

  Snediker settles a little in her seat. Above her on the wall hangs a huge, framed painting of autumn trees fringing the edge of a rippling blue lake. In front of her, the desk is bare except for her computer monitor and keyboard, placed at an angle to her seat; a white mug filled with identical black-capped ball-point pens; and an ancient push-button phone the color of an Ace bandage.

  “I haven’t called your folks yet,” Snediker begins, and Jesse experiences a surge of relief so strong she has to hold herself back from weeping. She nods vigorously. “But I will when we’re done talking.” The relief drains away, and Jesse nods again listlessly. From a drawer in the right-hand side of her desk, Snediker produces a manila folder, which she opens casually in front of her. It’s full of brightly colored papers—familiar to Jesse from a year’s worth of manifesto work—which she pages through as she speaks.

  “Destruction of school property,” Snediker intones, and flips a neon-orange paper over facedown on the desk. Jesse recognizes it as her first-ever manifesto. “Destruction of school property.” Snediker flips an emerald-green paper over—Jesse’s second opus. “Vandalism.” Cherry-red paper—flip. “Destruction of school property.” Sky-blue paper—flip. “Destruction of school property and misuse of hall pass.” She holds this last paper—bright goldenrod yellow—up for Jesse to inspect. WAKE UP, VANDER! it reads across the top in 46-point font. SERIOUSLY!

  Jesse bites her lip. “I was trying to take that one down,” she explains again, but when she hears herself say this it sounds like such a feeble excuse that she wishes she had just kept her mouth shut.

  “You’ve accumulated quite an evidence file here over the past year,” Snediker observes. “What do you want to tell me about it?”

  Jesse opens her mouth. What does she want to tell glassy-eyed, monotonous Dean Snediker about her manifestos? About her passion, her life’s work, her best way of expressing herself, the thing that first brought her into contact with Esther, the thing that has ruined her love life and damaged her closest friendship and forced her to make up a series of pitifully stupid lies to explain to her mother why she kept burning through her toner? There’s nothing she wants to tell Snediker about her manifestos. She shrugs.

  “How do you know those are all mine?”

  “Don’t waste my time,” Snediker says curtly. Jesse looks down, chastened. “Here’s what I want to say to you about this file. A friendly warning from me to you. You might think these are a funny joke, but this kind of activity can land you in very hot water.”

  “I don’t think they’re a funny joke,” Jesse manages quietly.

  “You might think a little tape on a couple of walls is a trivial matter, but destruction of school property is not a trivial matter. It is a serious matter. Do you understand that this is a serious matter?”

  Jesse looks at Snediker directly now. Her pink face is a creepy old-young combination, like an aging baby doll. Her blinkless, light blue eyes rest on Jesse without quite seeming to take her in.

  “But people tape posters to the walls all the time,” Jesse objects. “Every day people tape things up about, like, SADD meetings and bake sales and auditions for The Pajama Game or whatever.”

  “Those are school-related posters.”

  “This is school related!” Jesse cries, pointing to the StarMart poster. “This is totally about the school and what’s happening to it without our permission!” She feels the righteous rage that has been so hard to tap into these past few days come surging back up to fill her again, warm and familiar.

  “It’s unofficial.”

  “Okay, so, so, wait, so a poster raising awareness about the corruption of the school by an outside corporation is unofficial, but a poster announcing a bake sale for Future Business Leaders of America is official?”

  “Correct.”

  “So if I had an official school-sponsored group, I could put up any poster I wanted, talking about anything I wanted to talk about, but if I’m just one person without official status I can’t put up any posters talking about anything at all?”

  “No one has carte blanche to put up whatever flyers they want to around the school. Even official posters must follow certain rules.”

  “But I have a first-amendment right to free speech.” This is Jesse’s trump card and she delivers it grandly, but Snediker shakes her head impassively. Her dense bosom rides a wave of breath—up, then down—as she sighs.

  “Your mistake, Ms. Halberstam,” Snediker says, “is in believing that a school is a democracy. A school is not a democracy. It is not a country, so it cannot be a free country. This school is a benevolent dictatorship, and I am its leader.”

  “But, but what about Mr. Greil?” Jesse demands, sputtery. Doesn’t the principal run the school?

  “Mr. Greil is in charge of your learning, but I am in charge of your behavior. And the behaviors associated with your postering campaigns are unacceptable.” Snediker ticks them off on her plump fingers. “Skipping class. Abusing hall passes. Damaging the paint job that Mr. Hubert and his crew spent so much time and effort refreshing over the summer. And quite frankly, disrupting the normal functioning of the school. Since this current campaign of yours began, I’ve gotten several quite threatening calls from parents and members of the community accusing Vander of selling its soul. One unhinged gentleman told me on the phone yesterday that I was personally ‘colluding with the military-industrial complex.’ Obviously, these accusations are groundless, but they’re unhelpful, particularly right now in the middle of budget review season. You don’t know what budget review season is, but it is in fact an important part of the school year that makes it possible for us to keep our doors open so that you and your fellow students can come here, study, learn, graduate, and go on to lead fulfilling lives. You should consider that there might be lots of other things you don’t know about that keep this school going, things you throw into jeopardy when you make unfounded claims like these.” Snediker pinches the yellow poster by its corner and holds it up again, a distasteful specimen.

  “But they’re not unfounded.” Jesse has inherited Fran’s dominant cross-examination gene; even though she spent the weekend renouncing the fight against StarMart, she can’t let Snediker’s misuse of the word unfounded go by without arguing it. “All the stuff on that poster is true. We did bunches of research on StarMart. And if that one poster, like, throws the school into jeopardy, maybe that’s a risk we have to take. Maybe it’s worth throwing some things into jeopardy to keep our school from being connected to an evil corporation.” On the word worth, Jesse feels herself make Fran’s signature power gesture—a chopping motion against the desk—with her right hand.

  “I would be careful how I threw around the word evil, if I were you,” Snediker reproach
es her. “But I do… I do…” Snediker blinks now, and blinks again. Her eyelashes flutter unsettlingly for a moment, as if her inner workings have hit a glitch. Then she recalibrates, regains her evenness. “In principle, I understand the points you’re trying to make here about StarMart. I may even agree with some of them. There was a time in my life when I might have been tempted to put up a couple of posters myself on behalf of a cause like this. But Jesse, I can’t allow you to plaster your personal opinions all over school in this way. Especially if you excuse yourself from class to do it.”

  Jesse squints. Did Snediker just say she agrees with her?

  “Listen. Some friendly advice from me to you. Have you ever heard the expression ‘Pick your battles’?”

  “Um… yes?”

  “All right. You need to pick your battles right now. You may think you’ve got some kind of David and Goliath thing going on with StarMart, but I can guarantee you, this is a losing proposition. You’re not going to change the way StarMart operates. They are an extremely powerful multinational corporation, and you’re deluding yourself if you think that you and a couple of friends and a roll of tape can succeed in changing their global business model. What you will succeed in doing, if you continue to pursue this, is damaging school property, creating unrest and unhappiness in the student body, upsetting the community, and throwing your own future into jeopardy by making decisions that have negative disciplinary consequences. I won’t hesitate to suspend you, or worse, if you continue to violate school rules. I will throw the book at you, Jesse. And I wouldn’t like to see you permanently limit your life options by making reckless choices. That would be a real shame. You have a lot of potential. When I look at you, in some ways I see a young me.”

  “What?” Jesse can’t keep the appalled look off her face. To her horror, Snediker laughs, a tinkly, dry little laugh.

  “Oh, you think I was always a dean of students? I have been some places and done some things that I’m sure you wouldn’t believe if I told you about them.” Snediker gets a brief, vivid look of mischief in her eyes—it skeeves Jesse out so much that she has to look away. “I learned the hard way that there’s nothing waiting at the end of that road down but pain and futility. Take it from me: pick your battles. Don’t be a hero. The flyering stops now.”

  Jesse doesn’t nod, doesn’t say anything. After a moment she asks, “Am I suspended or something?”

  “I’m going to issue you a warning at this time, because I believe that you listened well during our conversation and you understand what I’m saying to you about consequences. I’ll call your parents to let them know that we’ve talked. But that’s all. You’re done. Back to Ms. Yost.”

  Snediker dismisses Jesse with a single stiff wave of her hand. She picks up the receiver of her clunky phone as Jesse gets up to go.

  “Yes,” Jesse hears behind her as she heads for the door, “this is Janet Snediker calling for Frances Halberstam.”

  When Jesse opens the door to Snediker’s office, Emily is right there, in the first red chair by the door, slender legs crossed in her light blue jeans, hands folded on the neat stack of folders resting on her lap. She looks up, sees Jesse, and gasps faintly. Jesse closes the door so abruptly it almost slams.

  “Are you waiting for me?” Jesse says, her eyes wide. It can’t be, of course Emily’s not waiting for Jesse, but in a shimmering moment of hope Jesse sees it all in heartbreaking detail: somehow Emily heard that Jesse got busted taking down the last posters, and she was so touched by the gesture that she gave up her open period to sit in patient vigil outside this office door, waiting for the moment when Jesse would be released. Now she’ll grab Jesse’s hand and lead her to the parking lot and the two of them will jump into Emily’s little blue Honda, and kiss and kiss, and drive over to get lattes from Beverly Coffee—

  “I have a meeting with Dean Snediker,” Emily whispers. She looks around her furtively. They’re the only two in the hallway, but still she contracts away from Jesse, trying to put as much distance between them as she can without crawling out of her chair. “To talk about Starry Starry Night.”

  “Oh.” Jesse nods. “Cool. Hey, I did it. I took them all down.”

  “Took all what down?” Emily keeps shooting little looks over Jesse’s shoulder.

  “The anti-StarMart posters. I went through the whole school and took the last of them down this morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s what I got busted doing.” Jesse gestures with her thumb to Snediker’s closed door, a little swagger in the move.

  “Great.” Emily nods briefly. “Thanks.”

  Jesse stands there a minute in the narrow hallway, considering Emily. In some ways, this is an even more public moment for her and Emily than the student council meeting. Any second now they could be caught here alone together. What if she grabbed Emily’s hand just as Snediker was opening the door? What if she bent down to kiss Emily right as Ms. Ewing, the director of instruction, came around the corner to make a photocopy? What would Emily do? What would Jesse do? What would change in the world if this secret came out?

  Tempting fate, Jesse leans in close to Emily to whisper in her ear. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

  The thrilling fruit-and-flower scent of Emily wafts over Jesse, intoxicating her. She closes her eyes and breathes deep, lets it suffuse her completely.

  But Emily pulls back. “Actually… I don’t…” Her voice is so low it’s barely audible. “I don’t know if I can come this Tuesday.”

  “Oh.” Jesse straightens up. “Okay. The Tuesday after, then.” But somehow she already knows what Emily’s about to say next.

  “I don’t know, I feel like… I’m just so busy right now?” Emily’s whisper is regretful but vague. “The dance is taking up so much of my time, and things are so crazy in my life… I feel like I’ve been spreading myself too thin, you know?”

  “No.” Jesse says this at full volume, and Emily shushes her silently, one delicate finger to her lips.

  “I just…” Now Emily beckons Jesse closer. Jesse bends down mechanically. The familiar smell of her moves over Jesse again, but sharper this time, tangier, like a cleaning product. “I think maybe we should take a little break, just until things get calmer for me.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know, but soon.”

  “Like a year from now?”

  “Of course not.”

  “A month from now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jesse nods. It’s too awful to keep asking questions.

  “Soon, I promise.” Emily smiles at Jesse then, sweetly, encouragingly. “I’ll email you as soon as things get back to normal, and we can start up with our regular Tuesdays again.” She reaches out and runs her fingertips along the neckline of Jesse’s ringer tee.

  In her chest, in her throat, Jesse’s heart burns.

  From inside Snediker’s office comes a scraping noise, the sound of a chair being pushed back from a desk. Emily sits bolt upright in her seat. With the same hand that was just caressing Jesse, she pushes her firmly away.

  “Please,” she begs as Jesse staggers back a step. “Go. You can’t be here when she calls me in.”

  15

  Esther

  The first difference between Joan and other saints—girl saints anyway—is that Joan did stuff. She took action.

  Most girl saints are all about waiting, enduring, sacrificing. They live for twenty years in a stone cell eating only bread and water and contemplating God through a tiny window, or they quietly take care of lepers until they themselves die of leprosy, or they get tortured by heretics and never renounce their faith even while they’re being disemboweled or whatever. Those things are awesome, I totally admire those things. Frankly, I would love to work with lepers someday. But what I love about Joan is that she did things. She made big decisions, and she made other people carry out her ideas. She didn’t wait for permission. She just acted.

  Her voices told her, “
Get yourself to this neighboring village and dress up like a boy soldier”? She did it. Her voices told her, “Go inform the true king of France that even though you’ve never been to battle or ridden a horse and you are a skinny seventeen-year-old girl, you are his new general”? Done. They said, “Liberate the city of Orléans, which has been under siege by the English for months and which no other armies have been able to free”? Boom: she did it. At so many moments along the way she could have been like, “Wait a second, this is a terrible idea. This is going to end in tears. I’m out.” But she never did. She never stopped taking action.

  The first night Joan slept in her new armor, it was so heavy and she was so small that she woke up covered in bruises. She looked her body over, splashed her face with water, got up on her horse, and rode toward battle.

  When someone in your family gets sick, really sick, you spend a ton of time waiting, doing nothing. It starts to be your main family activity. You’re always waiting in some salmon-colored vinyl chair under a fluorescent light, waiting in a line to fill out an intake form, waiting for your name to be called, waiting in the kitchen for your parents to get home, waiting a week for the results to come in. People are always telling you, “We’re waiting for this screen to come back,” or “We have to wait to schedule the next treatment until your levels go up.” Meanwhile, all the time, the clock is ticking.

  My mom was the patient. I was impatient. I wanted someone—anyone—to do something big.

  In principle, I don’t believe in war or violence in any form. In that way, I’m not like Joan—I hardly ever get that kind of hot, bursting feeling in your chest that makes you want to grab a weapon and charge. But when my mother was being held prisoner in that hospital, at the end, and they were doing all those things to her that seemed like pure torture, I did fantasize all the time about blasting open the doors of the receiving area with a blowtorch, and marching down the halls with a machine gun and chains of ammunition strapped across my chest, picking her up out of that hospital bed, and carrying her out in my arms, through the automatic doors into the parking lot. Swinging her up over the back of my horse and riding off with her. Knocking down anyone who got in my way. It was pretty much the only time in my life when I ever wanted to commit a violent act. So I do know that I’m capable of it.