Say the Word(17)
Mrs. Patel eyed me speculatively once again. Seemingly satisfied with whatever she saw in my bewildered expression, she nodded sharply and snatched my empty glass from the countertop. Within an instant it had disappeared beneath the counter along with the bottle of scotch, and she’d folded her hands back in a demure grip on her lap. I stared at her in wide-eyed expectation, waiting for some wise words of Indian wisdom or, at the very least, any kind of explanation for the past five minutes.
I should’ve known better, honestly.
“That will be $8.99,” Mrs. Patel said with her usual perfunctory disregard, one liver-spotted hand outstretched for my money.
Numbly, I handed over a ten-dollar bill and watched as she deposited it into the cash register.
“Thank you,” I told her haltingly, as I accepted my change.
“Come again,” she told me indifferently, as though I were a stranger rather than the girl who came in nearly every day spouting chitchat and who, at the moment, apparently looked like she could really use a good dose of high quality scotch.
Shaking my head in confusion, I walked outside with my bag of snacks and my bottles of wine, the door swinging shut with the telltale tinkling of bells at my back. And there on a busy New York sidewalk, with a shot of liquor in my bloodstream and the hot August sun beating down on me, at two thirty in the afternoon on the worst day of my life, I threw my head back and laughed and laughed until tears were streaming down my face and the passing tourists were eyeing me with a wariness generally reserved for hookers and homeless people.
My life was a freaking mess.
Chapter Seven
Then
“Do you see her outfit today?” The girl’s halfhearted attempt at a whisper carried easily across the small classroom to where I sat beside the window. With a stubborn set to my shoulders, I stared steadfastly out the pane to my left and refused to justify her slur with a reaction. Cursing the clear blue Georgia sky, I wished silently for a bizarrely-formed cloud or even a low-flying plane on which I could focus my attentions and use as a distraction from the catty words that were unquestionably about my wardrobe choices.
“Amber!” A second voice chimed in with a giggling rebuke. “Be nice! God, I hear her brother is, like, dying or something.”
I knew those voices well.
They found themselves hilarious — two miniature, Botox-free versions of Joan Rivers apparently hosting their own unofficial version of Fashion Police: Jackson High Edition. Nicole was the Skipper to Amber’s Barbie: a less popular, less blonde, and significantly less well-endowed version of her Queen Bee counterpart.
“No shit?” I could hear the maniacal snap of Amber’s gum from across the room. “That is so totally tragic. Like something out of a movie, you know?”
“I know, right? And Stacy’s mom told my mom that her parents are…” Cue dramatic pause. “Alcoholics.”
I’d come to the conclusion early — approximately five minutes after the start of junior high, if you wanted the specifics — that while girls like Amber were catty and manipulative on an almost laughably shallow level, it was the ones like Nicole who were the worst. They were the followers, the sheep; the seconds-in-command who, beneath the bad hair, self-esteem issues, and remaining layer of baby fat, were intelligent enough to know better than to cater to frivolous high-school-peakers like Amber. Nicole had been my friend once. Back before she’d traded her glasses for contacts and fried her hair with a bottle of peroxide in a desperate ploy to gain entry into the elite circle. Evidently the lure of popularity — even if it was the JV version — was too strong to resist.
“Jeeze. Some families in this town.” I heard Amber exhale sharply. “Did you catch One Tree Hill last night?”
It was at this point that I tuned out.
Fingernails biting harshly into my clenched fists, I pictured their words sliding around me, bouncing off my forcefield of indifference and never coming close enough to pierce my heart. Yet, like a tidal wave across the sand, the whispers left their mark each time — a dark, damp imprint that eroded the beach in infinitesimal amounts over days and decades. I could pretend they didn’t wound me with their insensitivity, but the callous words crashed against me in unrelenting, inevitable strikes, slowly eating away at my unaffected facade and disturbing an already fragile foundation.
“Sit down please, everyone.” Ms. Ingraham’s stern voice rang out, calling for the juniors loitering in groups at the back of the classroom and in the hallway to take their seats. Fighting off a yawn, I listened to the acquiescent groans, the shuffle of unwilling feet, and the scrape of metal-legged desks against the linoleum as my peers settled in. It had been another long night for me. After Sebastian had dropped me off at the hospital, my already bad day had descended even further on the shit scale. When I’d arrived at his room, Jamie had sensed immediately that something was off. His twin-spidey-senses must’ve been tingling.
“What’s wrong, light of my life?” he’d asked immediately, sitting up straighter in his gurneyed hospital bed. He’d called me that for years, his little nickname a play on my name’s Latin origins. “And why are you all wet?” He eyed my tangled damp blonde locks curiously.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, shrugging lightly and forcing the worry lines to smooth from my forehead. “Ms. Ingraham kept the entire class late today to conjugate a million extra verb tenses. She’s clearly gunning for teacher of the year.”