Chapter 7 Bird
BIRD
I can’t believe I just did that. Why, why, why did I just do that? How did I convince myself that this would be good for me in any way? Because I am one million percent positive I’ve never felt worse about myself than I do right at this moment.
My legs are gelatin as I step down from the platform.
I’m zeroed in on the table, the open seat next to Kayla: my destination.
My heart is pounding, and I try to concentrate on my feet and not meet anyone’s eye, because every time I look up, my whole body is thrown off-balance.
But then my focus sways and I do make eye contact with her and she’s smiling and why is she sitting with the people who were just openly making fun of me?
Keep walking, I tell myself. People are watching.
When I finally, finally, finally reach the table, Kayla pops up and throws her arms around my neck, and I think she’s going to tell me it’s okay. It wasn’t that bad. But she doesn’t.
Instead, she introduces me—introduces me—to the people who just made my worst nightmare a reality, and I have the belated realization that this is Dade.
This guy unironically dressed up in a zoot suit and a fedora, all over the top like this is his special night.
And the girl. The blue-haired girl with the eyebrow piercing who was talking over me, laughing at me, is his friend.
I am supposed to make nice with these people.
My knees buckle when Kayla lets go of me and I nearly collapse into the open seat.
Before I can even take a breath, the rude goth-grunge girl jumps up and runs off, knocking her hip into the table and spilling some kind of whipped-cream rainbow-sprinkle coffee drink across the tabletop and down the front of my shirt.
Perfect.
Dade falls all over himself to get me a handful of napkins from the dispenser at the next table over. “Sorry about her,” he’s saying as he almost touches my boob with the wad of napkins. “She’s kind of a train wreck, I—”
“It’s okay, I got it,” I tell him, snatching the napkins from him. Then, as quietly as possible, to Kayla—who by the way I hate right now for even making me have to ask—I whisper, “How bad was it?”
Her eyes dip down, inspecting my shirt. “It’s not that bad.”
“No, I mean the reading.”
For fuck’s sake, was she even paying attention?
“Oh!” she shouts. “Right, yeah. You were great.”
“Really?” I try to ask quietly, with Dade literally leaning in to listen. “Are you sure it wasn’t terrible?”
“No, it wasn’t,” she says, adding, “Right, Dade? Wasn’t she great, Dade?” And then, closer to me, she lowers her voice. “You didn’t stutter at all, FYI.”
“Yeah, it was… it was rad. Really. Sorry, again.” And as he’s talking, he will not stop looking at my chest. “About Jessa. I mean, the drink. Spilling.”
“No, it’s okay,” I mutter, pointlessly dabbing at my shirt, the crumbs of napkin sticking to the fabric only making it worse.
“Here, lemme see.” Kayla is dunking a stack of napkins into her ice water, and when she presses it against my chest, the cold shocks a gaspy shriek out of me right in the middle of the next performer’s intro.
“Okay, okay!” I push away from the table. “You know wh-what? I’m just gonna go to the bathroom and try to…” I gesture to my humiliatingly stained shirt that is becoming increasingly transparent as the water spreads. “Just—I’ll be back.”
I make my way to the bathroom, weaving between mismatched tables and chairs and outstretched legs, trying to pull my jacket closed.
When I reach the bathroom doors—signaled by the Barbie and Ken dolls affixed to each like hood ornaments—I swing the Barbie door open, Barbie’s tangled mat of blond hair flopping in front of her face.
I try to hold my breath through the cloud of skunk smoke as I rush to the sink.
When I look up into the dirty mirror, there’s the rude blue-haired girl with another girl I recognize from school.
Natalia or Natasha or something like that.
God, I hope she wasn’t out there witnessing my train wreck too.
Both of them are squished together, giggling in the bathroom stall without a door, their voices too quiet to understand, the words only meant for each other, I guess.
Suddenly I feel like I’ve walked in on something intimate, but I can’t make myself stop watching as Blue Hair brings the joint to her mouth, inhales, and then presses her lips against Natalia/Natasha’s mouth.
God. The tendrils of smoke curl around their faces like strands of hair floating underwater.
I can’t remember ever witnessing anything as sensual as this.
At least, not in real life, anyway. When they part, the smoke escapes in puffs with their laughter.
I’m staring, I realize only when they both look over at me.
Then I do a fantastically horrible job of pretending that I was just looking at myself in the mirror and not at them.
Leaning in and squinting at the ridiculous stain all down the front of my shirt, I turn the hot and cold knobs all the way on to get even the smallest stream of water pressure.
I pull the bottom of my shirt into the water, but it’s barely reaching.
They’re clearing their throats and coughing and looking at their feet as I turn the water off.
I pretend they’re not there as I go into the next stall—the one with a door.
I hang Kayla’s jacket on the wobbly metal hook and try again to ignore their whispers next to me.
I hear the highlighted hisses of words like “she” and “shut up” and more coughs and wheezing laughter.
After pulling the shirt off over my head, I inspect the damage more closely.
Fucking ruined.
I pluck the jacket off the hook, weave my arms into the rough denim sleeves, and straighten it out, stretching the unforgiving fabric hard to close the buttons over my bra.
Kayla’s words replay in my head, the ones about how she never plans on fitting into this thing again.
Stained, damp shirt in hand, I exit the stall and go back to the sink.
In the mirror I see, first, my cleavage, embarrassingly obvious against strained buttons.
And then I see them again, Blue Hair passing the joint back to Whatshername, giving me a weak smile as our eyes meet in the mirror.
I plunge my shirt under the water now, scrubbing with palmfuls of milky pink soap from the ancient dispenser on the wall.
“You want some of this?” Whatshername asks me in the mirror.
“Wh-what?” I stutter in spite of how hard I’m trying to be cool and calm and not give either of them, especially Blue Hair, any indication of how utterly defeated and devastated I feel right now, or how my ruined shirt is making me want to actually cry, or how hard I’m working not to let that happen.
“Well, you keep staring at us,” Whatshername snaps. “You want some, or not?”
Blue Hair extends her arm toward me, holding the stump of joint delicately between her thumb and index finger. “Here,” she utters quietly, taking a step out of the stall. “I’ll share.”
“No thanks,” I tell her, and I watch as she brings it to her lips again and inhales, and before my brain gives me permission, the words are out of my mouth.
“I’m actually trying to keep all my brain cells.
” Oh. That felt good. Those tears instantly absorb back behind my eyes, that lump in my throat dissolves.
“No offense,” I add, and I hope she has enough brain cells left to be able to tell I definitely meant to offend.
“None taken,” she croaks, and then releases a lungful of smoke into the air, obstructing her reflection in the mirror.
Whatshername takes the joint back, pulling one last drag before she tosses it into the toilet. “Just say no, Jessa,” she whispers in Blue Hair’s—Jessa’s—ear. So close her lips almost touch the piercings that run in a delicate curve all the way from the cartilage to the lobe.
Jessa smirks, amused. At my expense once again.
Nice. Perfect.
How do I always end up feeling terrible about myself no matter what? I shouldn’t care what these two stoners think of me. I shouldn’t care if some random nobody laughs at my poem. So why do I?
Jessa is staring at me in the mirror. She looks at my ill-fitting jacket, its buttons barely closed. Then down at the shirt in my hands.
“Man, that shirt got really fucked up, a unicorn puke on it?”
“Almost,” I say, as defiantly as possible. “You managed to dump a rainbow latte all over me when you left the table just now.”
“Did I do that?” she asks, like she really doesn’t know.
“Did I do that?” No Name imitates in that nerdy, grating Urkel voice.
“Oh, shit,” Jessa says, and laughs. Again. “Sorry.”
Whatshername giggles too, spurting out, “Who the hell drinks that garbage?”
“Kay-laaaaa,” Jessa says in a stupid singsong voice.
Heat sparks in my chest. I might not be 100 percent happy with Kayla at the moment, but I’m not about to let this asshole say anything bad about her. “You know, you shouldn’t crap on people you don’t even know,” I say, defending my friend even if I can’t quite defend myself.
Her eyes narrow. “Really? I feel like I know that wannabe pretty well, since she’s attached herself to my bestie like a leech this summer.”
“Well, you don’t know her. Not at all! Kayla is a smart, decent, creative—”
“Skinny biotch!” she finishes, and bursts into laughter again, her friend joining in.
“Yeah, you would say that—obviously you get your kicks out of hurting people, so who’s the real bitch?” And I nearly run out of air before I finish what might be the most unkind thing I’ve ever said out loud to anyone in my life.
“Ooooh,” Nameless whistles. “Them’s fightin’ words! Should I pull up a seat or what?”
“Look,” Jessa says, and I finally turn around to face her.
It surprises me a bit that, eye to eye, she’s actually a couple of inches shorter than me; hardly anyone is shorter than me.
“I’m not trying to hurt anyone, but she’s been anything but a good influence on Dade.
He used to be at least a halfway decent dude.
He also used to be cool. And ever since Kay-la, he’s—”
“So she’s a bad influence?” I interrupt, unable to even contain myself. “Are you actually serious right now? He’s terrible for her!”
“I think you’ve got that a little backward.”
“Jessa,” I say. “It’s Jessa, right?”
She nods. “Right.”
“Okay. Jessa,” I say pointedly. “I left for the summer and I get back two days ago and I barely even recognize the person my best friend has become, and the only thing that’s changed is him.” Shit, am I actually yelling at this total stranger right now? “And you,” I add, quieter.
She crosses her arms and glances to the side at No Name, simply amused. “That’s some interesting math there. Bird, is it?”
I roll my eyes. “Making fun of my name now? That’s original.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You know what? You’re the bad influence, getting her high, then leaving her alone with him.
He almost…” I pause. I shouldn’t be saying any of this, I know.
She raises her eyebrows, waiting for me to finish.
“She almost…” I almost say she nearly lost her virginity while high, but I don’t need to share Kayla’s business.
“Wh-what were you thinking?” I try again.
“Great job watching out for your fellow women.”
“My ‘fellow women’?” she scoffs. “Who is this?” she says to the other girl, laughing again.
Then she turns back to me. “Um, she took the joint right out of my hand, like I would share with her. Green is for friends, and I am not planning on befriending her anytime soon. She just wanted to look cool, and that is by far the stupidest reason ever to get high.”
“Like there’s a smart reason for getting high?”
“Thanks, McGruff, I’ll make sure to alert the D.A.R.E. team.”
She turns to the mirror, checks her teeth, runs her hand through her blue hair, and darts her eyes at me. I have to come up with something; she’s making Kayla seem like this new Kayla is all she is.
“It’s not like Dade is all that much of a catch. Who wears a fedora to a coffee shop? And he could barely keep his eyes off my boobs, by the way. He’s slime in a suit.”
Her face flushes. Guess I finally hit a nerve.
“Dade’s a stand-up dude. He’s been there for me, and, well, what can I say, here you are covered in unicorn vomit and Kayla’s…
” She’s in my face now and I can smell the coffee on her breath, the clinging scents of cloves and weed in her hair.
I’m inches from her lips, full and rounded, and I see them twist into a cruel smile as she finishes, “Where is Kayla, exactly?”
“Damn, y’all,” Whatshername pipes up, “I think neither of you know shit. Your friends are both assholes. And I’m also pretty sure you two need to just get a stall and bang it out.”
She reaches up to open the stall door and waves her hand inside with a flourish.
“Seriously, I’ll watch the door. Go for it.”
Jessa turns beet red now, steels herself with a deep breath, and says, “I’d rather screw ninety-five dicks!” and storms out.
“Well. That’s a lot of dicks.” Whatshername hoists herself up from against the wall and comes to stand at the sink next to me, leaning in close to the mirror and puckering her lips for a moment while she studies herself.
“It’s a bit too tense here for me. I’m out.
But seriously, Jessa isn’t that bad of a chick.
You don’t have to be so mean. She’s just… like whiskey or something.”
“What, an acquired taste?” I ask, somehow doubting that.
“She kinda sets you on fire a bit,” she quips, and winks at me. Then swooshes out as well, leaving me and my stained shirt standing in their clouds.