What We Saw(14)

The four of us are laughing as we walk into geology. Ben slides into the desk behind mine as the tone beeps the beginning of class.

“Hey,” he whispers. “You look great.”

I try not to blush, but fail. Thankfully, Ben can’t see the grin spreading across my face. Rachel can, though. She tries to catch my eye, but I refuse to look at her because she’ll start laughing at me, and then my cheeks will never cool down. I will die the color of a flamingo.

Mr. Johnston starts taking attendance, and I smile the whole time he’s calling names, until he gets to “Stallard, Stacey.” There’s complete silence for a split second before Randy Coontz does a loud fake cough: “Whore.”

The word floats across the classroom, batted aloft by a laugh here or there. I glance at Christy, who chortles once before Rachel glares at her, and she bites her lip.

“That’s a detention for you, Randy.” Mr. Johnston tosses a pad of pink slips onto his desk, and scribbles across the top copy. “Anybody else want to join him?”

“What? I just coughed!” Randy squeaks, trying to sound cool. His freckles are popping out on his neck. His ears, which normally stick out like jug handles seem even bigger—blazing red.

Mr. Johnston holds up a hand. “I’m not an idiot, Mr. Coontz. I was doing the cough putdown before you were born.”

“But if I miss practice tonight, Coach won’t let me suit up next weekend.”

“Haven’t ever seen you leave the bench. Don’t think Coach Sanders will care.”

Ben huffs a silent laugh behind me, and I steal a glance over my shoulder. He is hiding a grin, staring straight down at his desk. My smile returns. Ben is so much smarter than the average doofus on the basketball team.

Mr. Johnston flips on a projector and opens his laptop to a series of slides showing different strata of sedimentary rock found in Iowa. He is talking about how these layers are usually only visible in vertical surfaces around our state, like boulders, or road cuts where dynamite was used to blast through hillsides so a highway could be built without curves.

I start to take notes, but I can’t focus on these pictures. The only image I can see is the one of Deacon with Stacey tossed over his shoulder. It’s burned into my brain. I glance over at the empty desk near the window where Stacey usually sits. We don’t have assigned seats in geology, but it’s funny how we all settle into a routine, static and predictable. I sit in the same desk almost every day in this class. Since September, Ben has sat behind me. Lindsey on my left, Rachel to my right, and Christy in front of her.

Stacey sits over by the window and usually spends the class period staring into the trees at the back edge of the parking lot. The light from the window makes her a silhouette, a shadow of the girl I used to know. Sometimes Mr. Johnston calls on us at random to answer a question—to see if we’re following along. Each time he calls on Stacey, she startles and gives him a blank stare from eyes ringed in too much black liner.

Is that a cliché? Too much eyeliner on the girl who isn’t paying attention in class?

This is just a thing we do, I guess—determine who people are by what they look like. A smoky eye means you’re mysterious and dangerous and a little wild, right? Too sexy to care about geology.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Mom is always saying that, but most of the time, I think that’s exactly what people are asking us to do: Please. Judge me by my cover. Judge me by exactly what I’ve worked so hard to show you.

Stacey used to play soccer with us, back in junior high. Now she’s on the drill team with the rest of the girls whose nails are long and bright and covered in sequins. Most of the girls on drill are dancers—or wanted to be when they were little.

When we were in first grade, there was a big flood, and Miss Candy’s School of Dance was nearly washed away. So was the factory where Candy’s husband, Jim, worked with my dad, making lightbulb sockets for the glove compartments of every GM car built in North America.

The factory owners decided not to rebuild and moved the plant to India to be near cheap labor. Miss Candy decided not to rebuild and moved Jim to Gary, Indiana, to be near her sick father. The ballet girls eventually found that their last dance option in Coral Sands was the drill team.

They all wear a lot of eyeliner during performances, but most of them wash it off afterward. Stacey doesn’t wash hers off. She has no problem attracting guys—any guys. All the guys. Jocks, preps, burnouts. Sometimes, it seems as though she’s dated half the junior class. But mostly Stacey likes the guys with long hair and trench coats. They’ve got the weed, after all.

I know that Dooney loves to smoke out. Maybe that’s how the party got moved to the basement after I left. Stacey had weed and Dooney wanted to smoke, so everybody went downstairs. There have been plenty of rumors that Stacey and Dooney have been talking to each other, even though Phoebe has been Dooney’s girlfriend since last summer.

Having a girlfriend has never stopped Dooney from flirting with other girls. A random kiss at a couple parties, an ass grab in the hallway; then Dooney and Phoebe fight and get back together a week later. I don’t know how Stacey ended up in that picture with Dooney and Deacon, but I have a hunch that her access to the best pot in Coral Sands was a factor.

I glance over at Lindsey’s desk. A page in her binder is already covered with notes I’ll have to borrow later. As I tune back in, Mr. Johnston clicks through some slides on his laptop.