Guilty that maybe I don’t feel guilty enough.
You name it, I feel guilty about it.
Guilt and me, we’re conjoined. One. When it isn’t stabbing me, I drag it around like a ball and chain.
When I arrive backat the Victorian on Clarkson, I walk up the first flight of stairs as stealthily as I can, tiptoe down the hall to 2A, and listen at the door. Okay, I don’t literally tiptoe, but I’m cautious of how lightly I tread my beat-up Chuck Taylors. When I hear the melody of a cordial conversation, male and female, coming from behind the door, I turn and immediately go up to 3A, satisfied she’s no longer alone.
Chapter Three
Present,February 1987
Toby
Mondays are always hard;a hectic start to the week is inevitable. It snowed last night, so I was up extra early to shovel and salt the stairs and sidewalk. Snow also means I can’t ride my skateboard to school, which doubles my travel time. Trudging a mile through half a foot of snow in sneakers isn’t my favorite thing in the world.
By the time I arrive at East High School, my fingers and toes burn with numbness and my face stings from the cold. Usually I’d stall at my locker until a minute before the bell, but due to my frozen predicament, I walk directly to Miss Montgomery’s English classroom. There’s one table in the second row that butts up to the radiator, and even though I normally sit in the back row, today that warm and toasty seat will be mine. When your walk to school is a mile long, you stake out things like this for days Mother Nature decides to assert her authority and be a pain in the ass.
The quiet solitude the extra time before the bell provides vanishes when I hear voices approaching the door a fraction of a second before it opens. I don’t look up; my eyes are focused on the desktop and my thawing legs and feet stretched out under it. That is until Miss Montgomery says, “You’re welcome to sit at the table nearest the door. It’s directly in front of you, Miss Eliot.” There’s a pause, and Miss Montgomery coaches, “That’s it, the chair’s just around on the other side; you’re facing the rear wall of the classroom now.”
It’s then that my eyes drift up and see Alice feeling her way around the desk. She props her white cane up against the side of the desk and removes her backpack and places it under the desk, before sitting down.
“Thank you,” she says, the same way she said it to me in her bathroom, like she means it.
“You’re welcome, dear. Don’t be afraid to speak up if you need anything at all.” Miss Montgomery has always been nice, accommodating—most kids walk all over her like a doormat because of it. She’s one of those people who’s oblivious to how the rest of the world views her. Blissfully unaware that she’s the butt of jokes and constantly mocked. I admire her ability to tune it all out.
“Thank you,” Alice repeats. Again, she means it.
When Miss Montgomery walks toward her desk on my side of the classroom, she greets, “Good morning, Mr. Page.”
My eyes don’t lift to greet her in return, but my chin does. I don’t talk much; she knows it and doesn’t expect more out of me.
Pulling papers from her beat-up, leather satchel, she walks my way. Standing in front of me she rifles through the stack, humming something upbeat. When the humming stops, a folder is slid into my view on the tabletop. It’s myWaldenessay. We read the book last month and then took a rare field trip to the mountains near Boulder so she could immerse inner city kids in the sights and sounds of pine trees and tranquility. She didn’t think we could appreciate Henry David Thoreau wholly unless we “frolicked in the bosom of nature.” Which made me want to immediately banfrolicandbosomfrom the English language because they should never be used inanysentence, let alone thesamesentence.
“The onlyAin the class. The writing was splendid. Well done. I would like to hear more of your thoughts during class. Participate, Mr. Page, you have a lot to say. Dazzle us.”
Of course when I’m being told to talk, the last thing I’m going to do is respond with actual words. I do my work, I study, I read, and I do it all well, but I will not participate in class. I don’t react and tuck the unopened folder in my backpack; all the while, I can hear my mom’s drunk, grating voice in my head:You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Well, I’ve got news for you, you ain’t. You’ll never amount to anything, you stupid little shit.I could replay insults for hours and never get a repeat because I have fifteen years’ worth of them in my memory bank courtesy of Marilyn Page.
The humming recommences and Miss Montgomery returns to her desk knowing she’s lost the battle but feeling good about her effort.
The solitude gone, I’m anxious for the room to fill. Anxious for bodies to flow in and blot out my line of sight to Alice, because I can’t stop stealing glances. Every time I pull my gaze back to my desktop, it’s as if there’s a tug-of-war and she pulls it back toward her. Except she doesn’t know I’m here, she can’t see me. Which means she’s not pulling—I’mpushing. I’m also, apparently, a voyeur. But my curiosity seems to get the better of me where she’s concerned. It’s not that I want to know her, but that I want to knowabouther. Is it as hard as I imagine it would be to be blind? What’s her homelife like? Where did she move here from? Is she wearing red panties again? This makes me uncomfortable because I’m rarely so focused on one person unless it’s Friday night at Dan’s. Usually the only people I attempt to puzzle out are people I have some sort of a stake in, people I’m constantly surrounded by like Cliff and Johnny. And I only pay attention to them to try and stay a few steps ahead of their shenanigans. I never fixate…until now. Everyone else in my life is filler. For the most part, I ignore filler.
Speaking of grade-A filler, Jessie Tolken drops into the seat next to me with the distinct sluggishness of a stoner who wholeheartedly earns his title. He looks in my direction and his eyes look glazed, almost dreamy, as does the dopey smile on his face. He’s feeling no pain and flying high. Ether: the unmistakable scent is strong and it’s clinging to him like he’s still holding the rag soaked in it to his nose, huffing. It’s also invading my space, which is unfortunate because I know what this shit does. Last semester, Gina Ramirez and Alicia Fogle traipsed into American history, sat down behind me and bathed me in the remnant fumes for an hour. When I walked out of class, I couldn’t feel my limbs and my mind floated somewhere outside my body, hallucinations at the ready. I can still remember stumbling on the stairs, and when I dropped my books, the noise I registered in my fogged-up brain sounded more like I’d dropped two hundred instead of two. The sound echoed in the corridor for what seemed like forever. My senses toyed with me in the hour that followed—some heightened, some muted—and then I felt nauseous for the rest of the day. I hated it. I can’t figure out why drugs are so appealing to some people. I mean, sure I drink, but drugs are different. They just are. I already feel like I’m not in control of my thoughts most of the time, with my depression holding me hostage inside my own skin, but willingly handing over the last of my control to chemicals and rolling the dice with the unpredictability of drugs, is terrifying. I consider moving away from Jessie, but the heat seeping through my clothing and into my bones where the left side of my body is pressed up against the radiator is enough to tether me in place.
I spend the entire class period with my elbow on the desk, chin resting in the hammock of my cupped palm, breathing shallowly, nose and mouth, through the cuff of my sweatshirt that’s pulled up over my hand.
The makeshift poly-cotton blend filter works well because when I stand up post-bell, I’m a tad light-headed, but other than that, I’m fine. I’m fine until I walk past Alice sitting in her seat by the door and I don’t say anything. I feel guilty about that the entire walk to my next class. Guilty because I took advantage of her—she couldn’t see me. I walk past people all day, every day, and don’t acknowledge them, even the few who used to acknowledge me. But theycan see mesnubbing them, that’s the difference. They know I’m being an asshole. Alicedoesn’t. To her, I’m the guy who fixes things, who makes things better.
That’s definitely not me.
I only make things worse.
When lunch rolls around,I scan the halls for her. I even walk to the lunchroom and peek in through the window in the door but don’t see her. Not sure why I’m stalking, I just need something to do. Something to keep my thoughts diverted away from the darkness. I don’t eat during lunch. I more than qualify for the free lunch program in the cafeteria, but free lunches are a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an apple, and a carton of milk. That’s different than the hot lunch you receive if you actually have the money to pay for it, and believe me, people notice. They notice you’re poor and can’t afford to pay for lunch. That’s not the part I’m worried about—my clothes, pretty much everything about me—already advertises I’m poor like a neon sign, and I don’t give a rat’s ass, becauseI am. I always have been. The part I worry about is being judged for taking a handout. I don’t take handouts. They make me feel like acompletefailure. I’m already a card-carrying member of theFuck-Ups Association; I don’t need any additional help with that.
I decide to go to the library because there’s an alcove in the back corner where no one ever goes. Comfy couch and all, it’s a respite about once a week. I like to keep my lunch landing spots on rotation and usually I end up walking, wandering. I, myself, love routine—I think because my mom never provided it when I was younger. But in a setting like school where everything is routine and predictable, I like to mix things up. That means finding new spots to escape to; it’s a game to discover places the masses avoid. I know every square inch of this school, public and private. As I walk through the library, I notice a few people milling in the aisles. Two girls are rifling through the shelves, searching for their next read. I can appreciate their dedication; I’m the same way around comics. And then there’s a guy and girl in the biography section making out. He’s backed into a corner and her hands are lost inside his coat, up his shirt. I can appreciate their dedication as well; nothing obliterates the outside world like surrendering all senses to the depths of a kiss. A kiss should feel like you’ve been plunged into an abyss that you may never surface from, or it isn’t worth doing.
Sitting at a table alone at the opening of the alcove I’m headed for, is a girl. Slouched down, her back is to me and her long hair spills over the back of the chair like a waterfall. Headphones wrap her ears and must be delivering something serene because she looks asleep; she’s utterly relaxed and unmoving. The closer I get, the static hum tingles in my eardrums. And when I’m directly behind her, I pause because the volume is turned up so loud I can make out every word. It’s Echo and the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon,” which drags my pause out because good music has the power to control me entirely, it’s soul-steering. I’m pushing the limits of a typical pause toward what feels like lingering—I don’t linger—so I move on and tuck into the corner of the couch in the alcove.
The back of the sleeping girl’s head is visible in the two-inch gap between the top of the books on the third shelf and the bottom of the fourth. I’m staring at her, not luridly ogling her physically, but mildly envying the sounds being fed to her ears by those headphones. A great song is like catnip, a few notes can wind my insides up like a top, and always leaves me wanting more. Never mind that there are no good radio stations in Denver, no way to dial in new wave or punk on demand. I rely on my paltry cassette collection, trips to Wax Trax to hang out and listen to whatever they’re playing over the in-store speakers, or on the off chance that I’m near a TV late on Sunday nights and can catchTeletuneson public television.Teletunesis basically poor man’s MTV but with way better music, all crammed into an hour a week. There’s no Martha Quinn, but seeing Depeche Mode videos is a fair trade. Music is fleeting; it’s chance. So when I hear a good song, it feels like fate because it can’t be planned or predicted. Like the universe has turned it on to flirt with me, to blindfold my dark thoughts and lord over them, lulling them into a submissive union for three or four minutes.
