Chapter 11 Bird
BIRD
Monday officially marks the second week of school.
Which means no more pretending that it’s technically still summer for another few days.
No more leniency with the volume of homework assignments, no more dipping of toes into the shallows of the semester, and no more excuses for why everything’s feeling so off since I’ve been back home.
I need to start getting on board with this “new normal”—new normal, that’s something Daniel said a lot after he and Olivia moved in with us. Olivia could complain about anything and everything, big and small, and Daniel’s response was always that she needed to get on board with the new normal.
My new normal is suddenly feeling like I don’t have a place anywhere. I’ve never felt particularly grounded or wanted or accepted. But at least I had Kayla. A place, just one, where I felt secure.
My new normal is I barely see Kayla.
We were supposed to be taking an art class together.
But she dropped it to take a film elective with Dade.
I tried to convince her not to, but she said it was too late.
She didn’t think I would care anyway. I didn’t care that much about the art class; I just wanted to be in a class with her.
Like she was supposed to be in journalism with me.
But Kayla is an artist. She’s been wanting to go to art school since eighth grade, so she really shouldn’t be dropping her art class for any reason, especially not for a guy.
When I made that point, minus the for a guy part, she said film is art too.
We played the “Yes, but” game back and forth for an hour on the phone before she pretended to get another call.
My new normal is outcast lunch with Jessa.
On Wednesday, Kayla actually shows up for lunch unattached to Dade.
She saunters over, all mopey and dragging her feet, to where Jessa and I are sitting, backs against the brick wall, pretending we don’t notice the security guard eyeing us like we’re plotting something terrible.
I mean, we are, but not the kind of terrible he’s worried about.
“Hey!” I call out to Kayla, with a little extra enthusiasm—enough to show the guard that we’re just average students here, hating our school and our lives in an average way that won’t put anyone in mortal danger.
“Hi,” she murmurs, her voice low and exhausted. She sits across from us on the sidewalk, her knees and elbows forming all these pointy angles I’m still not used to.
“Did you bring lunch?” I ask her, noticing her lack of a brown paper bag. “Want some of my sandwich?” I hold out my plastic baggie.
She eyes it suspiciously, then shakes her head. “I can’t eat. I’m too upset.”
Jessa and I exchange a glance, both of us maybe thinking the same thing: they broke up.
“Why?” I ask.
“It’s so unfair,” Kayla says. “Dade got in-school suspension for the rest of the day.”
“What did he do?”
“He didn’t do anything, Bird!” Kayla snaps at me. “God.”
“Well, what happened?” Jessa tries, and it’s the first time Kayla actually looks at her.
“We were just walking down the hall, not doing anything wrong, and that teacher who looks like Ricki Lake stopped us and literally walked him to the principal’s office.”
“But why?”
“The stupid coat,” Jessa mutters.
“It’s not stupid,” Kayla argues.
The trench coat. Right. It is stupid. But I don’t say that. “I mean, he knows it’s against dress code this year. Can’t really blame them for—”
“Whose side are you on?” she shrieks at me. “It’s not Dade’s fault two psycho mass-murdering kids in Colorado had the same fashion sense. He was wearing trench coats before it was ever a thing. I don’t see why he should be punished for something that has nothing to do with him.”
“There’re no sides, Kayla,” I start, and look to Jessa for some support. “It’s just…” Wrong.
“Besides, that thing was like a year ago,” she continues. “Something like that would never happen here and everybody knows it.”
“You don’t know that. Nobody knows that!” Jessa finally says, nearly yelling. “And no, it wasn’t a year ago. It was five months ago, and Dade knows how goddamn stupid and insensitive and against the rules it is, and if you actually cared about him, you’d tell him to stop too.”
Jessa barely has enough air in her lungs to finish her sentence, her voice shaking by the time she gets to the end, and I have the strongest urge to reach out and put my arm around her.
I know it’s a sore spot for her. We talked about Columbine in journalism, she spoke up about how people can just snap, how it scared her because someone seems fine or a little odd, and then all of a sudden becomes violent.
I don’t think she meant to say so much because after she did, and the silence in the room expanded, she looked like she wanted to gather all those words up and swallow them back down.
I get it. I know we’re all supposed act like it’s so unimaginable here, that kind of sheer violence happening in a place we’re supposed to be safe, at the hands of people we’re supposed to know and trust. But it is imaginable now.
And the proof stares us in the face every morning when we have to walk through the metal detectors.
Or witness random locker searches, police with German shepherds now periodically stalking the halls.
Or during lockdown drills where the teachers look at us like any one of us could be the enemy.
They make sure we’re all locked in—as if the shooter couldn’t blow the locks off the doors, or shoot through the windows.
Maybe we’re supposed to pretend that we weren’t all horrified at the news footage forever imprinted on our brains.
Just talking about it now makes me feel a little queasy.
I start to reach my hand toward Jessa, but she jumps to her feet, picks up her Discman, and slings her bag over her shoulder, all in one catlike motion.
“Jessa?” I call after her, unable to follow up with what I really want to say, which is, Don’t go.
“See you in class,” she tells me, and then she’s stomping off toward E building, pulling her headphones up over her ears.
When I look back, Kayla has my sandwich bag in her lap and is picking microscopic pieces of crust off my bread. She mutters, “Good riddance.” Then looks up at me, rolls her eyes in Jessa’s direction, and says, “What a freak.”
“Hey!” I shout, shocking even myself.
She jumps, kohl-lined eyes wide. “Whoa. What did I miss? Since when are you all chummy-chum with Jessa?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble, but then—fuck that, Kayla should hear this. “Actually, I do know. I guess we’ve figured out we have a lot in common, being third wheels to you and Dade all the time.”
“Okay, retract claws, please.”
“No, it’s true, Kayla. You’ve been b-bailing on me since I got back, and yes, okay, I get that you have a boyfriend, but not every minute has to be spent with him, you know.”
“You sound like Paige and Brianne.”
“Well, maybe they weren’t so completely wrong.”
She stares at me, her eyes hard, like she’s deciding between cutting me down completely and telling me she’s sorry, telling me I’m right.
“Okay, fine,” she finally says. “I know we haven’t gotten a lot of time together since you’ve been home. What about Friday? Spend the night. Bring your stuff to school and just come home with me, all right? We’ll catch up. I promise.”
I wait to see if there’s more, some undercut or passive-aggressive comment.
“Please?” she says, smiling now. Pushing herself to her knees, she drops the half sandwich to the ground and clasps her hands together and makes a big show of begging me.
“Pretty please? Please!” she shouts. “Please, oh Birdie, my queen, do me the honor of a sleepover this Friday.” Then she’s throwing her arms around me, pretending to wail and sob into my shoulder.
“Okay, okay. People are staring, you weirdo.”
She lets go of me and sits back on her heels and then gives one last sniffle, reaching for a strand of my hair to wipe her non-tears.
I wait on my front steps for her to pick me up Friday morning.
I have my overnight bag with me. I stand there way too long, waiting like an idiot.
I miss the bus. Daniel has to drive me—late, of course—because Liv refused to let me ride with her and her mouth-breather boyfriend, Garrett.
God forbid anyone at school sees us together.
At lunch, when I go find Jessa, Dade is already there with her. Alone. No Kayla.
“She’s sick,” he tells me, thinking somehow I knew already.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask him.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs, adding, “She just said she didn’t feel good and was staying home today.”
“You didn’t ask what was wrong?”
“She said she’d be fine for homecoming tomorrow.” He shrugs again like it’s nothing and mumbles, “Can’t be too bad.”
I use the pay phone outside the gym to call her. It rings and rings, until the answering machine picks up. Her dad’s voice tells me to leave a message.
“Kayla, are you there? It’s Bird. I was just calling to check on you. I heard you’re home sick…. You there?” I pause. “Maybe you’re sleeping.” Pause again. “Well, feel better. I’ll talk to you later.”
I can barely pay attention the rest of the school day, because I can’t help feeling like either she’s sick, like really sick because of the food stuff, or else she’s gone to a whole lot of trouble to make sure we don’t have our sleepover.
I call her three more times after I get home. I even check my email to see if maybe there’s something there. There isn’t. But there is a message from Charlie. He must’ve been in a rush to class because it’s all in the subject line, nothing in the body: I have an update. Call you tonight after 9.
I try Kayla again, and this time her mom answers. She tells me Kayla’s been in bed all day. Stomach flu. I don’t buy it. I mean, I can believe she’s sick, but I don’t believe it’s the stomach flu. She’s doing something to herself, something worse than eating a bunch of Olean Doritos.