Chapter 2 #3
Once outside the building, I took a deep, relieved breath.
My lungs and legs were burning, and my heart was racing.
I was badly shaken. Tears flooded my eyes as I realized that Chase might have been right about Mr. Miller.
Nausea crept up from my stomach, and my mouth instantly filled with bitterness.
My hands were shaking. I could barely fit the tiny key into my bicycle’s lock—it slipped out of my hands twice, which made me even more nervous.
I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
I wanted to get home, take a shower, brush my teeth—to wash the ugly gazes off my skin and to get rid of the taste of Chase Baker in my mouth.
The next morning, I tried to convince my parents that I was sick, but they didn’t buy the story—they never did and were strict about skipping school.
“It’s only a few days left, honey”, Mom kissed my hair.
Still, my stomach twisted into a knot. I wanted to tell her what I’d heard about Mr. Miller—and how he’d acted, but I was worried she wouldn’t believe me, just like she didn’t buy my supposed illness.
Even though I didn’t have to feign the nausea.
“Mom…” I said eventually.
“What is it?” she asked, taking a quick sip of her coffee.
“I… heard a rumor about my math teacher, and I don’t know what to think.” I gently bit my lip.
“Mr. Miller?” She raised her eyebrows in disapproval.
“Yes,” I blinked in surprise.
“Well, that rumor has been going around for years. That he…” she cleared her throat. “But there is no proof.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Did he touch you?” Mom slammed the mug on the table, her latte splashing onto the white tabletop. She stood up and grabbed my shoulders.
“If he did, tell me, Grace!”
I’d never seen her this worried before. The wrinkles around her eyes became more visible as if she had just aged a few years in an instant.
“Nothing serious happened,” I shrugged, “I just heard the rumor.”
Mom exhaled and the tension left her shoulders.
“If anything like that ever happens to you, please, tell us. We’d never blame you!” She pulled my head against her chest and kissed my hair. I hugged her slender figure, smiling as I inhaled her flowery scent deeply.
“I love you, Mom.”
“Me too, honey. But hurry up,” she said, glancing at her watch, “and I need to hurry up, too, otherwise, I’ll end up being late as well.
There is always a long line in front of the office by the time we open up.
I’ll definitely be brain-dead by the time I get home.
A true zombie. Aaaaah!” She struck an unnatural pose and pretended to be a zombie trying to eat my brain.
“Mom,” I shook my head smiling.
“Why do you have to be this lame?” Nikky asked derisively. She instantly soured the mood.
Mom straightened her posture and rearranged her white blouse and her black pencil skirt.
“Finally, you are awake,” she welcomed my sister warmly—kindness she didn’t always deserve, I thought. She stepped to Nikky and tried to give her a hello-and-goodbye kiss on her hair but she pulled away sullenly.
“I’m not a child anymore,” she grumbled.
She sat down and started eating the breakfast Mom had made for her.
Sure you aren’t. I rolled my eyes.
Mom took advantage of the fact that Nikky was sitting, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Her red lipstick left a bright mark on Nikky’s pale skin.
“Mom,” she grumbled again and rubbed her cheek red.
“It’s your turn,” she said, pointing at me, then jumped on me, kissing and tickling me. I laughed hard and tried to escape, but that was all just part of the game.
Mom missed how Nikky used to be. She wanted her blonde little girl back. It was difficult for her to accept that her children were growing up. It was the same with our brother, Jamie: she kept going on about how cute he had been as a little boy.
“Okay, I really have to get going, or I’ll be late. Take care, girls, and let Jamie sleep in the afternoon. The night shift is hard on him.”
At the door, she turned back and blew us a kiss.
While she was hurrying toward the car, I walked to the window and pulled the lace curtains open. I watched her get into our dove-blue Chevrolet, back out of the driveway, and honk the horn like crazy, while waving through the open car window.
“She is so lame,” Nikky sneered, lit a cigarette, then casually tossed the lighter on the table.
“Don’t talk about her like that. She changed your shitty diapers while all you did was stuff your fingers up your nose,” I said, smiling at her scornfully, then snatched her cigarette out of her mouth and threw it into her cereal. The cigarette fizzed in the milk, then went out.
“They told you that smoking was outside only. They can’t forbid you from smoking, but you should be considerate—neither of them smokes.”
“Wow.” She leaned back in her chair while I took a glass from the shelf and filled it with water.
“I don’t get why you’re so surprised. Can’t you see how fed up everyone is with you acting like an unbearable slut? Mom and Dad love us the same, but you can’t accept their love because you think loving your parents is lame. You’re pathetic.”
I finished my glass of water, then pushed myself away from the counter.
“See you at school. Don’t be late today,” I warned her.
“You’re not my mom,” she yelled after me.
I turned back to her.
“You’re lucky I’m not. If I were Mom, I’d have slapped you and stopped begging you for your love. Why do you hate them?” I asked.
Nikky walked toward me, swaying her hips provocatively.
“In a few years, you’ll feel the same, Grace. You might be Mommy’s and Daddy’s little girl now, but I’m curious how you’ll be in three years. Remember this conversation then,” she said, smiling derisively, and shoulder-bumped me as she walked past.
Whore. But I didn’t voice the thought. Instead, I bit my tongue. I took a deep breath and ran upstairs for my bag.
On the last day of school, Billy Ray asked me out on a date.
I was standing next to the bike rack, and when I heard him, I stumbled and almost fell over it, while Billy’s friends—watching from nearby—kept whistling throughout the scene, which was already uncomfortable for me without that.
I flailed my arms in the air, trying to regain my balance, and thought I must have misheard him.
“A date?” I asked, surprised. Billy nodded in a charming, childlike way.
We stood in silence for a long while. I was dizzy, sorting through a whirlwind of possible excuses—and the new possibilities that had just opened up—in my head.
The silence started to grow uncomfortable.
Billy scratched the back of his head, his face giving away how awkward he felt as his friends kept commenting from afar, trying to make him feel even worse than he already did.
I said yes—not because I wanted to save him, nor because he was the most handsome boy in our year without any shameful gossip circulating about him. I said yes because I thought that, at the end of the day, a date wasn’t a big deal. If others could survive a date, so could I.
“Okay”, I agreed, in a somewhat brusque, robotic voice.
Billy let out a sigh of relief, and placed his hand on his chest.
“You saved me,” he groaned, then quickly hopped over to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek—as if we were in kindergarten.
He made me laugh.
Just how Dad can make Mom laugh. The image of their initials inside a heart, carved into a bench, popped up in my head. I thought about how they’d been high school sweethearts.
Maybe it was too premature and corny, but my thoughts followed the white puff of cloud I saw drifting through the endless, bright blue sky. Ridiculous images of my future circled in my head, and I remembered what Mom used to say: “Every girl daydreams—that’s what girls are supposed to do.”
Billy walked back to his gang, and jumped into the air happily. I was still standing next to my bike, smiling. I couldn’t wait to tell Daisy the news on the phone—she was still home sick.
As I turned toward the park, my smile froze.
Chase Baker was leaning against the thick trunk of the tree he had kissed me under, smoking a cigarette.
It was a sight I couldn’t get enough of.
He wore worn-out blue jeans and a black T-shirt, and the wind was tugging at his messy dark brown hair, pulling locks down over his eyes.
My heart started beating faster, and I didn’t know why. My brain instantly did away with my daydreaming about Billy, and reality slapped me in the face. Yes, that was the tree he’d kissed me under.
I sternly warned myself to avoid him. I thought about how nice it would be if I could avoid Mr. Miller just as easily as I could Chase Baker. Still, I wasn’t worried about Mr. Miller for a second—if he tried to corner me again or did anything fishy, I would tell my parents immediately.
While I was watching Chase’s annoying figure, I was irritated to realize that I owed him—he’d saved and warned me. I had to thank him for his outrageous behavior—he had saved me from a very uncomfortable conversation, and God knows what else…
That sense of debt was much more annoying than Chase’s mere existence. As I walked back to my next class, I decided to find him after school—and then forget about him forever.
And… I needed all my courage to enter the lion’s den. I had to be careful not to provoke it. As I peeked into his van, I saw my sister’s blond, Cleopatra-style hair. She was hunched in an unnatural pose as if she’d just stood up from the front seat she’d been sitting in.
“What are you doing here, Grace?” she asked as she turned to me and blew smoke into my face. She pulled her red nails provocatively across her bare thigh, then sat in Chase’s lap, playing with his dark hair teasingly.
I looked away—it was awkward to see my sister unashamedly turn into a whore for a drug dealer.
Her disgusting behavior made my stomach turn—she was so much more than the friends she had always hung out with. Even though she was smart and pretty, she felt this was the only way people would notice her. I felt sorry for her.