Here So Far Away(69)

I sat on the floor with my back against the metal stall. Lisa was gazing down at me.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You were snoring.”

“What? No.”

“And not just a little. Big-daddy dinosaur snores.”

Closing my eyes made me dizzy again, so I focused on the toilet paper dispenser. “I think I fainted.” I pointed to my subnasal disaster zone. “Last night too.”

“Did it hurt?”

“No. I broke the fall with my face.”

She didn’t laugh. “When you came to, you were the wrong color,” she said. “Besides the shite makeup. Are you sick?”

“Sort of.”

“Do you . . . do you think you might be pregnant?”

What made her say that, when I’d gotten thinner, not heavier?

“No chance.”

Anymore.

“Sorry if that sounded . . . My cousin Deanna fainted a lot when she was in her first trimester. Remember her? She was in the skating club.”

“Yeah, I do. That brown cow bitch knocked me down during ‘The Farmer in the Dell.’”

I said it jokingly, but in the back of my mind I heard the echo of what Lisa said when I hit Christina. You bitch.

And yet Christina had apologized. If that was because she knew about Francis and me, wouldn’t she have told Lisa, if not the entire school? But Lisa wasn’t looking at me with that same pity, only worry. It was enough to make me hope that Christina had been talking about something else.

“You were totally going to skate in the Olympics if it weren’t for Deanna,” Lisa said.

“One hundred percent.”

She smiled, then caught herself and cleared her throat, the concern in her eyes retreating. “I’d better take you to the office.”

“That’s alright.”

“Come on. Oh, and sorry about your sweater.”

As she pulled me up I saw my sleeve was out of shape where she’d grabbed me and dragged my arse to the bathroom. Knowing Lisa, she may have meant that she was sorry that I’d worn it—except that her own sweater was ratty, and her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail with a regular elastic band, as though she’d just rolled out of bed. She hooked my arm in hers and we walked too fast, considering, saying nothing more. A silent march toward the school secretaries, who took one look at me and closed in. I felt Lisa release my arm. “Lise—wait,” I said. She was already walking away.





Thirty-Four


Since my mother couldn’t be reached at work and my dad couldn’t drive even if he were picking up the phone, Matthew had to come home with me in case I got woozy again. What he was supposed to do when I fainted at the wheel was unclear, so basically, it would be a two-for-one special if I wrapped the car around a telephone pole.

Which suited me fine. “Why are we going this way?” he said as I turned the car onto the old highway.

“It’s my fault you’re missing band practice,” I said. “Let me make it up to you.”

Matty was one of those winter ice cream people. I wasn’t, but the vanilla sludge at Dairy Queen felt good sliding down my throat. “It’s tasty, yeah?” he said, licking chocolate sauce off his spoon. “There’s no such thing as good food or bad food. Sometimes food just makes us happy.”

“Why are you talking like a Schoolhouse Rock! message?” Oh. “Do you think I have an eating disorder?”

“No, I . . . You don’t eat much lately.”

“You’re the one who kept saying I needed to lose weight.”

“Not really, though,” he said. “I was only kidding.” His face twisted with the regret of a thousand butt jokes. “You don’t need to be on a diet.”

“Aw, buddy, I’m not. Promise. I’ve just been kind of stressed out. You know what would make me feel better?”

“What?”

“If someone could tell me what’s going on with Christina.”

His spoon hovered in front of his mouth. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, she was being weird this morning. Did she and Joshua break up?”

“Someone said she dumped him for Skateboarder Brad.”

That was disappointing. Skateboarder Brad was the best of the Brads, a baby-faced bruiser with a confusing haircut. He deserved better. “Poor, dumb Brad,” I said.

“Yeah. But lucky Joshua, right? Better off without her.”

“Right, right. Here’s what I can’t work out. What it is that you, Matty, said to Christina to make her feel bad for me.”

“What I said?” He did a pretty good job of pretending to search his memory. “Can’t think of anything. Maybe now that she and Joshua are done, she’s sorry about being mean to you.”

I pulled his bowl out of reach. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, son.”

“Okay, I—I told her that I was on her side after what you did. Sorry, threw you under the bus.”

“And?”

“That’s it.” He tried to grab the bowl. “And . . . I might have also said I did that to you.”

“What, this?”

“I saw her by the principal’s office this morning, and was all like, ‘I took care of it; she won’t be bothering you again’ or something like that.”