Whisper to Me(9)

And heard a laugh, somewhere behind me.

I eased myself into a sitting position, started picking up the books that had spilled from my bag. My hands were grazed, and now there were blood smudges on my calculus.

Mr. Nakomoto held out his hand and lifted me up. “Did you see who did it?” he asked kindly. He had a round face and round glasses; circles suited him. He was like someone with no edges, you know? No sharpness about him.

“No,” I said.

“Shame,” he said. “These bullies.” He shook his head. “I don’t like to see them getting away with it.”

“They always get away with it,” I said.

“Not always.” But even he didn’t look convinced.

I shrugged. I could have said, People who hurt other people always get away with it, because it was the truth or at least the truth as I saw it then, but hey. What would have been the point?

I picked up one more book, and he picked up one and handed it to me, and then he coughed and walked away.





Later, I was in English class with Ms. Gilbert. I always felt kind of sorry for Ms. Gilbert. I mean, she knew I’d read most of the novels in the library, let alone the ones we were studying, so she was forever firing questions at me, trying to draw me into the discussion.

“Why do you think Fitzgerald tells us that Gatsby hasn’t cut open the pages in his books, Cassie?”

That kind of thing. And I would shrug and not answer, which I could see really disappointed her. I hated disappointing her. I mean, I wasn’t being a brat, I just couldn’t do it. I hated to speak in front of other people. Even if I was on a bus, and someone called me on my cell, I wouldn’t answer. I didn’t want anyone nearby to hear my voice.

When I say “someone called me on my cell”: don’t get the wrong idea of my social life; I mean Mom, before she died, or Dad. Most of the class was there when the pi?ata incident happened, or they’d heard about it, and the few friends I’d made since then dropped away after the whole thing with Mom. I think I made it pretty hard for them to be friends with me; I don’t blame them.

I should explain about the pi?ata:

It was my seventh birthday. Mom and Dad went big on the theme, which for some reason was Mexican. I don’t think I asked for it, I don’t know. And Dad is like tenth-generation Italian American, and Mom’s family came from Holland, originally, so I really don’t get it. But that’s what it was.

The whole front yard was decorated with hay bales, flags, plastic cactuses. Cacti?

Google says cacti.

Okay, yes, and they had little ponchos for all the kids who came, and there was a table with tacos and cheese and guacamole. The thing I loved most: they had a donkey they’d hired from somewhere, and there was an old wizened guy who was giving kids rides on it. I think I asked for the donkey—in fact, maybe that’s why the whole Mexican theme. They got the donkey, and then they figured they could turn it into a thing.

I rode that donkey maybe five times; I loved animals back then. I was so happy.

It’s not like I remember every detail. All I know is that at a certain point, Dad produced the pi?ata and tied it to the apple tree. The pi?ata was a donkey too, every color patchworked onto it in a coat of ribbons. A big fat one. Dad bent down and grabbed a branch that had fallen from the tree, snapped a stick from it.

And here’s the thing: It wasn’t even me. It wasn’t me who did it.

This is what happened:

They blindfolded me, and I tried and tried to smash open that donkey. I really did. But I wasn’t a real coordinated kid, and I only gave it a couple of glancing blows.

Dad was going, “Come on, Cassie! You can do it! You can do it, Cassie!”

He was more excited than I was, I think. I just wanted to ride the real donkey, not smash up this fake one.

And I couldn’t do it.

Dad shouted louder and louder. In my memory, his words are colored red. “Cassie, IT’S EASY. JUST SWING.”

I sat down, and I started to cry.

According to Mom, Dane Armstrong kind of volunteered. He wasn’t pushy about it. Dane was my best friend—he loved animals too and his family had tons of them, rabbits in the yard, dogs, cats, even a goat. I used to hang out with him all the time, when my parents let me. After what happened next, his parents left town though.

Anyway, Dane apparently stepped forward and said, “Hey, I’ll do it for her.” Dad wasn’t happy about it, but Mom calmed him down. She was always good at that, which is one of the thousand terrible things about her dying, and pretty soon Dane had the stick and the cloth over his eyes.

I don’t remember how long he swung at the pi?ata for—I know he broke it open a little and candy started spilling out, because in my mind is an image of the little packs on the grass like jewels, shining, all colors and foils, golden and silver, and that of course was what made the kids run to try to grab them, which was when Dane, who was still swinging wildly with the stick, brought it around in a wide arc and smashed the somehow-now-sharp end of it into Molly Van Buren’s face, spearing her eye.





If you ever want to know what it’s like to be a pariah, to be so far outside the social circle you’re not even bullied, just ignored, it’s easy: arrange for everyone you know to come to a party, then make them watch as a kid gets her eye gouged out. They couldn’t rescue Molly’s—she wore a glass eye after that. She still does. She wants to go into the Peace Corps. I don’t know that from her; I overheard it somewhere. She doesn’t speak to me anymore.