aubrey; chapter three

Speak to me in a language I can hear
Humor me before I have to go

I know, I can't be late
Supper's waiting on the table
Tomorrow's just an excuse away
So I pull my collar up and face the cold, on my own

The earth laughs beneath my heavy feet
At the blasphemy in my old jangly walk

Thirty-three; The Smashing Pumpkins

I would usually be downstairs and ready before Jesse even gets in the shower, but now I’m stripped down trying to find something semi-clean to wear. Clean and dirty clothes are strewn across every surface but the floor—remnants of some system I had in my head and have since forgotten. My neck and back are aching from using the wall as a pillow. Even shrugging on my oversized Breeders shirt (it smells fine enough) has me groaning like a grandpa.
     I’m digging around, trying to find my jean jacket, when my aunt knocks on the door.
     “Morning, sweetie. Almost time to leave. You getting up?” Her muffled voice sounds sickly sweet. It makes me want to puke.
     “Yeah, I’m just . . .” I trail off, pulling my jacket out from behind a neon purple bean bag chair. I do a frantic glance around the room. I know I’m forgetting something. Like it even matters. I yank open the door.
     “Oh!” Aunt Debbie jumps back, poised to knock again. “Good morning, sweetie. You doing alright?”
     “I overslept.” I slide past her and rush toward the stairs.
     “You need some breakfast?” she whispers from behind me. “Coffee? I can make you a cup.”
     “I’m fine,” I say too loudly, but she doesn’t shush me.
     The shower shuts off, and as Jesse creaks around the bathroom upstairs, I’m gathering items that I left scattered from last night/this morning. Books piled by the corner wood-frame chair. Dishes and wrappers littering the kitchen island. Bills spread out on my aunt’s desk, and her wallet poking out of her purse at an odd angle. As I pass, I quickly push it back in. Maybe she won’t notice the bills.
     Jesse tromps down the stairs as I’m shoving everything into my backpack. He stares at me like I just teleported here from Saturn.
     “Uh, you ready?” he asks. He doesn’t usually need to. I’m the one who waits for him.
     “Yeah.”
     I zip up, and we head down to the garage.
     “Love you! Have a good day!” my aunt whisper-calls down the stairwell.
     Neither of us acknowledge her.

It’s a twenty minute drive to Franklin Senior High School, and if it weren’t for 1480AM, we would ride it in complete silence.
     My head is heavy on the window as I watch the trees dwindle into fields, and some whiny punk is crooning me back to sleep—not what I’d pick for a 7AM radio show.
     “And that was The Smashing Pumpkins’ Thirty-three from their brand new album “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.”
     “Bruce, I don’t know, it’s an awful long way from Siamese Dream. What the heck happened?”
     “Oh, Paul, I love it.”
     “Really?”
     “You listen to these lyrics: ‘Speak to me in a language I can hear. Humor me before I have to go . . . The earth laughs beneath my heavy feet at the blasphemy in my old jangly walk . . .’ I mean, Paul, that is poetry.”
     “Eh, if you say so, Bruce. I mean, it sounds pretty, but where’s the meat? Huh? Where’s the grunge? Hey, you want a chill morning? Sounds like you need to take a trip to Nirvana. Here’s Stay Away.”
     Jesse grunt-hums, a slight frown on his full mouth.
     He can’t be serious.
     “You don’t like Nirvana?” I hear myself say.
     “They’re . . . fine.”
     I’m genuinely speechless, and I must look disgusted because after a glance at me, Jesse shrugs apologetically.
     “I just don’t think they’re the best. And nobody’ll shut up about ‘em now. I mean, they were always pretty good, but just ‘cause the guy killed h—”
     I turn away. God, here it comes.
     “I mean, I just—would appreciate—you know, a little more diversity,” he stutters, trying to save the situation for godknows what reason. It doesn’t matter.
     He has at least an ounce of tact and decides to leave it. About time we got back to our regularly scheduled silence.

My neck is killing me. I forgot my pen and have to swipe one from some kid in homeroom. And all the teachers are making me talk today. I guess my introductory period is over.
     Zelinsky calls me to the board to solve some impossible problem that looks like it's written in Russian. Weissman asks me, quite pointedly, to talk about the implications of impish Pearl Prynne, and then praises me with an absolute stomach-ache of a smile. Patterson, the biology teacher, makes me label on the projector all the innards of a pregnant frog. Barry makes me the unflattering example of one of his laborious and labyrinthine stories that devolves alarmingly quickly from the cotton gin to his inflated adventures as a cross-country trucker.
     It’s only fourth period, and I’m ready to drown myself in the bathroom.
So when I hear Nikki call my name when the lunch bell rings, I duck as low as my tall-ass allows, and I literally run away from her.
     I don’t know why I think I’ll find solace in my locker—it’s not nearly big enough to stuff myself into but maybe if I lob off my spindle arms and giraffe legs and snap off my neck the rest of the way—
     “Aubrey!”
     Ms Weissman calls from her doorway. Her classroom is right across the hall from my locker. I reluctantly turn.
     “Good work in class earlier! I’ve never thought of Pearl as fulfilling the “Imp” stereotype. So cool relating her to Puck. That should be your paper topic!”
     I nod awkwardly. (If I tore out the shelf, I could probably fit in my locker and still keep my legs. Maybe not my feet.)
     The bell rings. She steps aside to let a few stragglers in. “Keep it up!” She turns and closes the door behind her.
     “You know, she’s a lezzie.”
     I don’t actually hear it at first, and I certainly don’t realize who’s talking to me, otherwise I would never look around and ask, “Pardon me?”
     Ah. It’s my locker neighbor and resident asshole jock, Erickson.
     “Pardon me?” he mocks. “Weissman. You know she’s a lesbian, right?”
     “And what about that should I care?”
     He guffaws, forcefully, in my face. “You talk weird.”
     I turn and glare into the back of my locker. I can feel (if you can believe it) an actual snarl on my lips. He’s looking at me like this is my turn to speak, but what do you even say to that? It’s weirdly, dumbass. His face is splitting slowly into a grin, and I just know my face is betraying me by going red.
     I know better than to engage. Stupid girl. Keep your damn mouth shut.
     “Oh, maybe you’re one, too?” he sneers.
     I wish I could say that I didn’t give a shit about this guy. I wish I could smash my books into his face or shove his head into the locker and lick the blood from my hand like I’m some high and unhinged punk and not just a nerdy over-read little girl in a too-big body.
     I slam my locker shut and walk away and try not to feel his eyes on my back.

“Hey!” Curley yells at me as I approach the lunch table. (Reminiscent but not quite the same as the “Hey! It’s you!” he yelled at me when I entered English three periods ago.) I grimace in a way that could be called a smile and sit a reasonable distance away from him. Bethany, one of the seniors Nikki introduced me to yesterday, approaches and nods a “Sup” when Curley points at me and yells again.
     “Audrey, right? What if we all just called you Aud? Like odd? ODDree! Ha!”
     Bethany interjects his guffawing: “Stupid, that’d be like if we all called you Weird. Hey, WEIRD.” She leans over into his face. “HOW’S IT GOING, WEIRD?” She drops her tray down next to him. “Don’t be an asshole.”
Curley laughs once more, the heart taken out of it. “Yeah, that’s dumb. Sorry, Audrey.” He stands up, starts heading for the lunch line.
     Before he gets too far, Bethany flicks him with her long nails. “It’s Aubrey! Note the B, dumbass.” She turns to me with this tortured lunatic kind of face, like Curley’s literally the start of her villain arc. I grin and huff a genuine laugh.
     I wonder how long it’s been since I last laughed? It sounds gravelly and dry—a desert of bitterness, Cactaceae Cynismus the sole sign of life.
     I’m aware of the loud hum of voices around us. It feels comfortable knowing no one gives a shit that I’m sitting here, an extraneous, alien stranger, who’s forgotten how it feels to laugh.
     “So what is your deal exactly?” Bethany asks suddenly. It sounds like the middle of a conversation.
     I blink twice. “My deal?”
     “Yeah, there are way too many things going around. They can’t all be true.”
     “People are talking about me?”
     I can feel the ghost of some wild animal scrabbling at my insides, scraping and clawing and beating—
     “Duh. You’re kind of hard to miss.”
     Every face and every voice is suddenly so present and not at all comfortable. I want to hide. I want to run. I want to disappear.
     “I mean, to these hicks, anybody they didn’t know in diapers is the new kid. I moved here in sixth grade, and I still get looks. Well, different kind of looks . . . Are you okay? You gotta take a shit or something?”
     I stand up, throwing my chair back two feet, when Nikki finally appears beside me, her glossy blue eyes wide with concern.
     “Hey, Aubrey. You okay?”
     “Bathroom,” I grit out and get the fuck out of there.

Every wing has its own bathroom, I remember some geek telling me at my rushed orientation, but fuck me because I can’t seem to find even one at the moment. I spot a gaggle of little eighth graders trickling out of a door labeled “Ladies” and I push past them. I go to the farthest stall, next to the glazed and bare window, and slide down the cold cinderblock wall to the floor.
     The cold is refreshing in the way I imagine a wolf bite is. Sharp and sudden and sobers you up right quick. The biting cold sinks in through my worn long-sleeve. I stretch out my too-long legs under the old metal stall and try to situate my sore neck against the wall.
     The bathroom door squeaks open. I swear to myself not to move for anyone.
     “So not a shit then?” Bethany calls.
     She steps into a stall, and I’m subjected to the insane female practice of talking while peeing.
     “Nik’s a little worried. You’ll find that’s common. I had to pee anyway, so here I am. Don’t know why you’d go to the kid’s bathroom though. There’s one right around the corner from the cafeteria. I can show you.”
     She flushes and walks over to my stall, knocks, hits my foot sticking out, “Yo,” she says.
     For the life of me, I don’t know why I say, “You didn’t wash your hands.”
     “You’re sitting on a bathroom floor, bitch. You gonna come for me?”
     I unlock the stall door and move aside so it doesn’t smash my face in. Bethany stares down at me, a hand on her shapely hip.
     “What’s up?”
     “You got any cigs?” I ask (and damn me, I’m hopeful).
     “No way. Those things’ll kill ya. And have you seen what it does to your skin? Barf.”
     I sigh and rigidly get up.
     “What’s up?” she parrots.
     “I fucking hate this town is what’s up,” I snap in her face and stalk over to the sink. I wash my hands and scrub my face and dry everything with those god-awful sheets of parchment they call “paper towels.”
     Bethany doesn’t seem phased, just stands by the door waiting for me. “Ugh, tell me about it. There’s not even a good record store. You have to go all the way over to the mall—”
     “There’s a mall in this town?” I don’t say it very graciously.
     She shakes her head. “It’s over in Chambersburg,” she says. “About thirty minutes down the highway. So if you got a car, you can go and do things, but here—Snoresville.”
     I shutter and walk back into the hall. “Ugh, don’t say that.”
     “Why not?”
     “It is so lame, and you don’t strike me as a lame person.”
     “Aw, thank you!” She punches my arm playfully, and we approach the roar of the cafeteria.
     Nikki and Curley are still sitting in the same place, chatting animatedly with the mish-mash of punks and nerds that fill the surrounding seats. Bethany and I approach ours, when Curley’s boisterous voice booms over the noise.
     “Well, you would know. You screwing her yet, Nik?”
     Nikki—in a flash of anger I’ve never seen from something so cute and round—stands up harshly, knocking over her chair, and leans menacingly over the table.
     “Shut up, Leonard!”
     Curley’s mischievous grin disappears as he jabs a finger in her face.      “Don’t fucking call me that, you dyke!”
     The sudden hush is mortifying, even as a bystander, and I can feel the eyes of every student and teacher turn toward us.
     A clatter sounds down the table. I turn to see a short, burly, black-haired guy, who just tossed his tray onto the table, hustle over to Curley, grab the arm pointed at Nicole, and twist it. Curley curses.
     The new guy speaks low and sharp, “You gotta chill out, dude. Casey is two seconds from expelling your ass.” He releases Curley’s wrist. “Say you’re sorry.”
     “What are you, my—”
     “Just do it,” he says, all up in his face.
     “She called me—”
     “You deserved it,” he said. “Say it.”
     Curley glances across the table sheepishly. “Sorry, Nik.”
     Nikki hesitates only a breath, then picks up her chair and sits back down. The mediator guy heads back to his tray.
     “Oooh-kay, what is up today?” Bethany chuckles and takes her seat. “Usually I’m the crazy one.” She nudges Curley not-quite-playfully in the arm. “Curls, stop showing up me up and be your goofy asshole self, kay? Emphasis on the goof.”
     “Yeah,” he mutters, his eyes focused solely on the food on his tray. His ears have turned bright red.
     Bethany sighs, pulls her cold lunch tray toward her then, distracted, looks around. “Where the hell is Ben?”
     Nikki turns to me, shy, and says privately, “I’m sorry about that.”
     “Whatever,” I say. I am so exhausted. I open my boxed milk and chug.
     “Were you okay, in the bathroom?”
     “Don’t worry about it.” I shovel cold peas into my mouth. They taste like puke and sand.
     “Oh, I just thought—was B nice, right? She can be a bit—”
          “I’m fine,” I stress, not kindly.
     I hate myself for the look of shock and embarrassment on her face.
On her other side, the black-haired guy places his stuff and sits down. He leans around Nikki and says, “Hey, so I’m Travis. Aubrey, right?” He extends a hand to me.
     His black hair is shaggy, longer than mine, and falls in soft whorls around his face. Did he try to make it look like he just got off a motorcycle, or does he actually have one? I can see the several ear piercings shine through the curls, and around his neck he’s got a collection of dark chains and a bright red guitar pick.
     This guy—all punk and no stop—has his eyes locked on mine, and I can’t look away quickly enough. There's something there that makes my skin crawl and my heart race. I instead look pointedly at his out-stretched hand, callused and stained, then go back to my cold lunch.
     He withdraws his hand. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Nik says you just moved here from New York.”
     “As in New York City?” Bethany’s eyes brighten.
     I shake my head, take a bite. “Rochester.”
     “Where’s that?” Curley spits out between his food.
     Bethany backhands him and snipes, “Do you mind not being gross for three minutes? God.”
     “Is that where you’re from originally?” Travis seems intent on drawing out this conversation. When is this lunch period over? Already I feel a bit too much like a dissected frog on a sterile table.
     “Nope,” is all I say.
     “How many states have you lived in?” Bethany asks, mouth full.
     “Six.”
     Nikki slips in to remind everyone: “But she was born here. We went to elementary school together. She moved away in second grade.”
     This bitch cannot keep her trap shut.
     “Oh?” Travis asks. “What made you leave in the first place?”
     He sounds polite, and maybe he is.
     I try not to squirm in my seat. I deliberately slow my chewing, swallow hard.
     “We just did.”
     Ben finally comes sulking over, hall pass in hand, and the whole group turns to him with unequalled enthusiasm. I take the blessed opportunity to grab my stuff and ditch—and I make sure that this time I’m not followed.

*Stay tuned for the next chapter.*