She looks at Lucy. “Wait, did I interrupt some classic high school bullying? Goodness, it’s certainly started early this year. The first day! A-plus for effort, Lucy.”
“You shut your—”
Liza holds up a hand. “Listen, Lucy. I know you’re effin heartbroken. I know that. But it isn’t Emory’s fault. She wasn’t drunk or driving. It was a rainy night. A wet road. Driving too fast. It’s all shit. It all sucks.”
I wish Liza would stop talking. I don’t want to think about this at school. In front of Lucy Kerr, of all people. But here it comes.
Rainy night. Slick road. Luther laughing and then getting angry when we kept asking him to drive slower. Candy crying for us to let her out. There was so much rain it was hard to see where we even were. Luther’s hands on the wheel, jerking hard. So much screaming, but not from Joey, because he was passed out, dead to the world.
Luther, stop, I kept saying.
And then we were flying, the world slowing down as it turned and turned and turned and finally stopped.
I squeeze my hands together, hard, under the table, where Liza and Lucy can’t see.
“Dumping on Emory and Jeremy isn’t going to make you feel better,” Liza says. “You think they don’t feel terrible? Emory was in the car, too. How do you think she feels? You’re just adding pain onto pain here. It’s a useless circle of shit. If you want to do something, get Candy’s photo up in the memorial cabinet. It’s not there yet, and it should be. Candy was a cool person, and this isn’t any way she’d want you to act, you know?”
Lucy Kerr’s mouth trembles.
“Stay out of my way,” she tells me, her voice shaking. “Or I cannot be responsible for my actions.”
As soon as she’s gone, Jeremy lets out a tremendous breath.
“Thanks,” I say softly to Liza. “You didn’t have to do that.”
She shakes her head angrily. “For god’s sake, Emmy. I stuck up for you our whole childhoods, remember that? But back then, it was kind of cute, this meek mouse thing. It’s not anymore. I would tell you to grow a pair of balls, but that’s too patriarchal. I would tell you to grow some tits, but that seems antiwoman.
“So I’ll just tell you this: grow a spine. Grow a goddamn spine or this whole next year is going to suck ass.”
We stare at each other, her face unsmiling and flat and mine flaming red. Liza has always been good at nailing a person or situation down. Maybe because she had to deal with her parents for so long. There isn’t really time for nuance when your parents are constantly high.
And even though I want to hate her right now, she’s right. It’s only the first day and it’s already sucked, and I’m going to have to figure out how to deal with it. If they can make handbooks for bringing addicts home, they should have one for surviving high school life.
Liza turns to Jeremy. “I got the new issue,” she says, in a nice, normal voice now, tugging a comic from her backpack. They spread the pages on the table between them, leaning their heads close, and I’m on the outside, looking in. Liza might have just saved me, but she didn’t make room for me.
I don’t want to look at them looking at the comic and I’m not hungry anymore, so I raise my head, just a little, to see where he is.
And I catch him, out of the corner of my eye, at the baseball table by the wall. They’re all laughing about something.
Did they see what happened with me and Lucy Kerr? A couple of girls are there, too. One girl puts her hand on Gage’s arm. He moves smoothly, almost imperceptibly, so that her hand falls away.
If Gage was my boyfriend, I would be sitting there. Lucy Kerr would never say things to me. Gage and his shiny perfection would protect me from everyone.
I will him to glance over, look at me, anything. Acknowledge me.
He doesn’t.
But I notice someone else, over by the exit doors.
Daniel Wankel. Leaning against the wall in his black sport coat, the same jacket he wears even in the coldest of months, fingerless gloves, black-and-gray scarf wound around his neck, even though it’s September and still warm.
He missed most of fall and spring semester last year. There were whispers about why he went away. Got drunk, fell in the river, sent to rehab. I heard pray the gay away. I heard he bit the shop teacher. I heard he went nuts.
Daniel Wankel’s face is steady, watching me. And then he smiles. But it isn’t a happy Hey how ya doin smile.
It’s more like Sucks to be you.
15
IN MR. WATSON’S LIT class, I take a seat in the back, by the window. I like being by the windows. The flowers are nice outside and if there’s a breeze, I like to look at the leaves in the trees weaving back and forth. I wonder how Joey is doing. I checked for him in the hallways after lunch but didn’t see him. I send him a quick text while Watson is fussing about at the whiteboard.
Hope you’re good
I still feel a little shaky after what happened with Lucy Kerr in the cafeteria. Maybe I should eat lunch in the library from now on.
“Good afternoon, gentle people,” Mr. Watson says, writing his name on the whiteboard at the front of the room. “Welcome to American Classics, where we’ll delve deep into works that define our culture. The reading list went up on the student portal two weeks ago, so I hope—”
Liza Hernandez raises her hand.
He pauses. “Yes, Liza. Lovely to see you again.”
Watson is kind of a crusty old guy. Navy-blue tie, white button-up shirt. Black shoes. Why do men’s eyebrows get so bushy and wild when they grow old? It’s like he’s got two crazy caterpillars crawling across his forehead.
“Why did you assign a book about a pedophile?” Liza’s voice is clipped and strong. She’s sitting a few rows in front of me on the right.
Someone snickers. A couple of kids shuffle in their seats. I’m glad she said it, though. I know what that book’s about and it sounds gross and I’ve been avoiding reading it since it doesn’t come until further in the semester.
“Excuse me?” Watson’s caterpillars crease together.
“Lolita. By Nabokov. Am I pronouncing that right?”
“You are.” He writes it on the board. Says it out loud, slowly, for all of us.
“It’s a book about a man who sexually assaults a girl.”
“Oh, shit,” someone says. “Here we go.”
Watson blinks rapidly. You can tell he’s really working to get some words out. Finally, he says, “Well, I hesitate to use those words or to say that’s the subject of the book, as a whole.”
Mandy Hinkle’s sitting next to Liza. She clears her throat. “It is actually the whole subject of the book. He preys on her and her mom, who’s like totally loopy and out of it, for the entire book. And then, like, another old guy comes along and basically does the same thing to her.”
“I think that guy kidnapped her, didn’t he?” says Amani McKinney. “I couldn’t tell. This book is weird and creepy and the writer made it seem like maybe she liked it? But technically, you can’t consent under the age of eighteen and besides, isn’t she, like, twelve when everything starts?”
“My point is,” Liza says, “this is a really problematic book about the assault of a child by an adult, some hellacious gaslighting, and there could be, you never know, some people in this very room who may be sexual assault survivors. Did you ever think of that?”