When We Were Animals(23)

And one day after the last night of the full moon, Polly came to my house and told me that Wendy Spencer had gotten an empty soda bottle stuck up in her the night before. She lurched all the way home with it inside her, and the paramedics had to break it this morning to get it out.

“Can you imagine!” Polly said. “It was stuck. How deep must it have gone to get stuck?”

“Suction,” I said, picking at the cover of my history textbook.

“What?”

“It’s not how deep. It’s suction. They probably had to break the bottom to let the air in.”

“Oh. How do you know that?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t know. It just makes sense.”

And so that was something else for me to think about when I couldn’t sleep.

Something was coming, and it had broken glass for teeth. I was running from it, hiding. But in the middle of the night, when I lay awake in my bed listening to the howling outside, I didn’t know which I really and truly wanted: this life or that one.

*



I pleaded with Mr. Hunter not to read my essay in front of the whole class, but he said modesty would get me nowhere in life. I said it wasn’t modesty, it was just that I didn’t like people reading my writing.

He gave me one of his curious looks, one that I could feel in my belly.

“You’ve got a toughness in you, Lumen. More spine than all of them put together,” he said in a low tone. “Why do you hide it?”

I didn’t know what to say. Why was he talking about my spine?

“If you want me not to read it,” he said, “tell me not to. Don’t ask, tell.”

But I could say nothing.

So he read it aloud and told everyone to pay attention to the diction and the transitions. He didn’t say it was mine, but everyone knew anyway. I hunched in my seat.

“You’re an excellent writer,” said Rose Lincoln after class. “You’re a master scribe.”

Later, in math class, when we were all supposed to be working through a sheet of problems, she leaned over and whispered to me.

“How’s your boyfriend?”

“What boyfriend?”

“You know, Peter Meechum.”

I hadn’t thought about him as my boyfriend.

“Things got pretty vicious last night, you know,” Rose continued. “He got into a fight with Blackhat Roy.”

I had seen the scrapes and bruises on Peter’s face, but he was avoiding me in school that day so I hadn’t had a chance to ask him about it.

“Why?” I asked Rose.

“Why what, sweetie?”

“Why were they fighting?”

“Come on, Lumen. I know you’re a little behind us, but you must’ve heard something about what happens. There is no why. Instinct. Besides, you know how Roy is. He’s got a meanness you can’t do much about. So Peter did what he had to.”

I didn’t look at her. I tried to concentrate on the math problem in front of me. But the lines and numbers seemed to wobble and blur.

“Anyway, Peter showed himself a real leader,” Rose went on. “Like a warrior-prince, you know? His skin was smeared all over with blood and sweat—you just wanted to lick him. And he deserved something—I mean, for taking care of that little creep Roy. So I let him have me. To the victor go the spoils, right? That’s me—I’m the spoils.”

I stood up from my desk so suddenly that I knocked my book and worksheet and pencil to the floor. Mr. Goodwin looked at me curiously. I picked up my things and put them on the desk, then walked quickly out of the room, down the hall, and into the girls’ bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror, my diminutive, ugly little self, and it wasn’t until I could see my eyes filling up with tears that I knew I was going to cry. So I shut myself in a stall and unrolled thick wads of toilet paper to cry into. I made no sound. I’m a silent crier when I wish to be.

When I was done, I splashed cold water on my face and waited for the redness to lessen. I was in the bathroom so long that the end-of-period bell rang before I got back to the classroom. When I went in to collect my things, Mr. Goodwin asked me if everything was all right.

I told him yes, everything was fine.

Then, on an impulse, I added:

“I was cutting class.”

Mr. Goodwin gave me a confused smile, as though he didn’t understand the joke. Then he just shrugged it off.

“Are you coming to math clinic today? A lot of kids could really use your help.”

*



Later, when Peter came to my house to study, I remained conspicuously silent about his injuries. At first he tried to hide them or distract me with questions from the textbook. But the more time passed without my asking about it, the more indignant he became.

Finally he said, “Aren’t you going to ask what happened to me?”

I shrugged.

“I figure it happened when you were breaching last night.”

“But don’t you want to ask how? Don’t you want to know if I’m all right?”

“Did you have sex with Rose Lincoln?”

His face changed. Whatever ire he had been fostering toward me was suddenly gone—replaced by twitchy panic.

“What?” he said lamely.

“You had sex with her.”