The Other Side(9)

Chapter Three





Present, February 1987

Toby



Mondays are always hard; a hectic start to the week is inevitable. It snowed last night, so I was up extra early to shovel and salt the stairs and sidewalk. Snow also means I can’t ride my skateboard to school, which doubles my travel time. Trudging a mile through half a foot of snow in sneakers isn’t my favorite thing in the world.

By the time I arrive at East High School, my fingers and toes burn with numbness and my face stings from the cold. Usually I’d stall at my locker until a minute before the bell, but due to my frozen predicament, I walk directly to Miss Montgomery’s English classroom. There’s one table in the second row that butts up to the radiator, and even though I normally sit in the back row, today that warm and toasty seat will be mine. When your walk to school is a mile long, you stake out things like this for days Mother Nature decides to assert her authority and be a pain in the ass.

The quiet solitude the extra time before the bell provides vanishes when I hear voices approaching the door a fraction of a second before it opens. I don’t look up; my eyes are focused on the desktop and my thawing legs and feet stretched out under it. That is until Miss Montgomery says, “You’re welcome to sit at the table nearest the door. It’s directly in front of you, Miss Eliot.” There’s a pause, and Miss Montgomery coaches, “That’s it, the chair’s just around on the other side; you’re facing the rear wall of the classroom now.”

It’s then that my eyes drift up and see Alice feeling her way around the desk. She props her white cane up against the side of the desk and removes her backpack and places it under the desk, before sitting down.

“Thank you,” she says, the same way she said it to me in her bathroom, like she means it.

“You’re welcome, dear. Don’t be afraid to speak up if you need anything at all.” Miss Montgomery has always been nice, accommodating—most kids walk all over her like a doormat because of it. She’s one of those people who’s oblivious to how the rest of the world views her. Blissfully unaware that she’s the butt of jokes and constantly mocked. I admire her ability to tune it all out.

“Thank you,” Alice repeats. Again, she means it.

When Miss Montgomery walks toward her desk on my side of the classroom, she greets, “Good morning, Mr. Page.”

My eyes don’t lift to greet her in return, but my chin does. I don’t talk much; she knows it and doesn’t expect more out of me.

Pulling papers from her beat-up, leather satchel, she walks my way. Standing in front of me she rifles through the stack, humming something upbeat. When the humming stops, a folder is slid into my view on the tabletop. It’s my Walden essay. We read the book last month and then took a rare field trip to the mountains near Boulder so she could immerse inner city kids in the sights and sounds of pine trees and tranquility. She didn’t think we could appreciate Henry David Thoreau wholly unless we “frolicked in the bosom of nature.” Which made me want to immediately ban frolic and bosom from the English language because they should never be used in any sentence, let alone the same sentence.

“The only A in the class. The writing was splendid. Well done. I would like to hear more of your thoughts during class. Participate, Mr. Page, you have a lot to say. Dazzle us.”

Of course when I’m being told to talk, the last thing I’m going to do is respond with actual words. I do my work, I study, I read, and I do it all well, but I will not participate in class. I don’t react and tuck the unopened folder in my backpack; all the while, I can hear my mom’s drunk, grating voice in my head: You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Well, I’ve got news for you, you ain’t. You’ll never amount to anything, you stupid little shit. I could replay insults for hours and never get a repeat because I have fifteen years’ worth of them in my memory bank courtesy of Marilyn Page.

The humming recommences and Miss Montgomery returns to her desk knowing she’s lost the battle but feeling good about her effort.

The solitude gone, I’m anxious for the room to fill. Anxious for bodies to flow in and blot out my line of sight to Alice, because I can’t stop stealing glances. Every time I pull my gaze back to my desktop, it’s as if there’s a tug-of-war and she pulls it back toward her. Except she doesn’t know I’m here, she can’t see me. Which means she’s not pulling—I’m pushing. I’m also, apparently, a voyeur. But my curiosity seems to get the better of me where she’s concerned. It’s not that I want to know her, but that I want to know about her. Is it as hard as I imagine it would be to be blind? What’s her homelife like? Where did she move here from? Is she wearing red panties again? This makes me uncomfortable because I’m rarely so focused on one person unless it’s Friday night at Dan’s. Usually the only people I attempt to puzzle out are people I have some sort of a stake in, people I’m constantly surrounded by like Cliff and Johnny. And I only pay attention to them to try and stay a few steps ahead of their shenanigans. I never fixate…until now. Everyone else in my life is filler. For the most part, I ignore filler.

Speaking of grade-A filler, Jessie Tolken drops into the seat next to me with the distinct sluggishness of a stoner who wholeheartedly earns his title. He looks in my direction and his eyes look glazed, almost dreamy, as does the dopey smile on his face. He’s feeling no pain and flying high. Ether: the unmistakable scent is strong and it’s clinging to him like he’s still holding the rag soaked in it to his nose, huffing. It’s also invading my space, which is unfortunate because I know what this shit does. Last semester, Gina Ramirez and Alicia Fogle traipsed into American history, sat down behind me and bathed me in the remnant fumes for an hour. When I walked out of class, I couldn’t feel my limbs and my mind floated somewhere outside my body, hallucinations at the ready. I can still remember stumbling on the stairs, and when I dropped my books, the noise I registered in my fogged-up brain sounded more like I’d dropped two hundred instead of two. The sound echoed in the corridor for what seemed like forever. My senses toyed with me in the hour that followed—some heightened, some muted—and then I felt nauseous for the rest of the day. I hated it. I can’t figure out why drugs are so appealing to some people. I mean, sure I drink, but drugs are different. They just are. I already feel like I’m not in control of my thoughts most of the time, with my depression holding me hostage inside my own skin, but willingly handing over the last of my control to chemicals and rolling the dice with the unpredictability of drugs, is terrifying. I consider moving away from Jessie, but the heat seeping through my clothing and into my bones where the left side of my body is pressed up against the radiator is enough to tether me in place.