I didn’t reply. I just ate with my gaze focused on nothing, least of all her.
“Is it true what we hear?” she asked. “About you and Ricky Burns?”
I put my sandwich down and leaned toward her. The expression on my face frightened her, and she pulled back.
“I don’t know what you heard, and I really don’t care.”
“We heard that you threw yourself at him on his boat. You called him from a stateroom, and you were naked,” she blurted.
“They’re spreading lies about me,” I said, even though I knew it would be useless and a waste of time to defend myself. It was like holding back a waterfall with your bare hands. They were a chorus of gossipers, and I was a lone, lost voice.
“I’d never guess you were like that,” Lisa said, ignoring my denial. “To go after a senior boy so desperately is sad.”
“Sad?”
I was holding back a flood of truth with a dam made of paper. It was charging down my tongue. I was moments away from telling it all. I’m not Kiera’s cousin. While she was high on some drug, Kiera ran my mother and me over and killed my mother. Her mother took me in, enrolled me in this school, and made up that story.
For a moment, I thought I had actually shouted it all, broken through the dam, but I quickly realized that what kept the dam secure was my fear that telling the truth about myself would only alienate me even more from my classmates. Who would want to be friends with a homeless girl? No one in that school would want to be seen talking to me. That was for sure.
I couldn’t skip all of that and defend myself by telling Lisa I had been raped, either. Mr. March had forbidden me to say it. I could only swallow it all back and ignore everyone, but that was hard to do. By the end of the day, I felt covered in cobwebs of lies and distortions. There wasn’t an eye not looking my way or a tongue not wagging about me. I might just as well have been walking around naked. My limping was nothing when it came to drawing attention compared with the globs of mud thrown at me. In fact, they almost didn’t notice my limp, because they were too busy elaborating on the lies about my sexual exploits and sly ways. They saw only this promiscuous new student who probably had a bad reputation at her old school. In their minds, that was why I was so mysterious when it came to my past.
I did the best I could in my favorite class, art, but when I tried to start a new calligraphy project, I could only think of the horrible tattoo on my back and sat there for the longest time staring at blank paper. Mr. Longo kept coming over and encouraging me, but by the time the bell rang, I had hardly begun anything. I was the same earlier in music. I played my clarinet mechanically and so poorly that Mr. Denacio threw one of his famous fits.
“If I don’t see an improvement in you soon,” he threatened, “I will have to reconsider appointing you to a position in the school band.”
I didn’t protest. I had no enthusiasm for anything and plodded my way through the corridors from class to class. Occasionally, I caught sight of Kiera looking at me from across a hallway. At one point, I thought she looked amazed at how well her plan had succeeded. She seemed in awe of herself.
Ricky never gave me a second glance. A few times, I was tempted to walk up to him to ask him how he could be so cruel, but he and Boyd were always laughing, and I was sure that if I did speak to either of them, they would make me feel foolish and even more embarrassed than I already was.
Except for band practice on Tuesday and Thursday, I returned home immediately after school and went up to the guest room. I didn’t start right in on my homework as I used to do. I sat for quite a while just looking out the window, wondering what I could possibly do now and where I would eventually end up. I was terribly worried about becoming pregnant. I had no idea what I would do if my period didn’t come. I wanted to visit Mama’s grave, hoping that somehow she would talk to me and tell me what I should do, but I was afraid to ask Mrs. March for anything.
Mrs. March didn’t say much to me all week. When we confronted each other, she looked as sad and as lost as I did. I was numb by now, but she still appeared to be on the verge of new tears. She did tell me that Mr. March was still researching what was best for me under the new circumstances. I understood that this didn’t include my staying with them even like this. Sometimes, when I thought about all that Kiera had managed and how they had accepted everything she and her friends said as being true, I became more angry than sad for myself. I recalled the advice from Jackie, the nurse, and was tempted to threaten them with a lawsuit. I’d find my father, and he’d come back to do it.
Oddly, though, no matter how poorly I was being treated now, I couldn’t harden my heart against Mrs. March, and I actually felt sorrier for Mr. March. Kiera had him so tightly wrapped around her finger that he couldn’t see. Eventually, he would suffer some great tragedy. I went from wishing for it to chastising myself for wishing such evil things on someone.
In the midst of my misery, my loneliness in the dark side of the March mansion where my own footsteps echoed, I w
ould find myself recalling some happier, sunnier moments with Mama, even on the streets after we had sold more than we had expected. She would splurge, and we’d have ice cream sundaes or get foot-long submarine sandwiches and sit out on the beach as if we were back to being as we once were. She didn’t buy any alcohol with the extra money, so she was more like my mother again. She would tell me stories about her own youthful days in Portland, her boyfriends in high school, the plays she had been in, and the parties afterward.
I had heard many of the stories before, but for me, they were like the fairy tales other parents read to their children. Kids never heard them enough. You could recite them and know exactly what was coming next, but there was something special about having your mother or father read them repeatedly to you. It made you feel safe, wrapped securely in their love and in the magic they could conjure with their voices. The hard, cold world was kept outside. Nothing bad could happen, and you could slip softly into a comfortable sleep, unafraid of the darkness it necessarily had to bring along with it. There was always the promise of tomorrow.
Now there was no promise of tomorrow, and the cold, hard world had found its way to come back at me. There was no escape, no safety, and the darkness that came with sleep now was terrifying, not because it brought old ghosts and nightmares but because it made me blind and afraid to take another step forward, to have another thought, to dare to make another wish.
On Friday, Kiera broke her vow of silence when it came to me and approached me in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t to express any regret or remorse. She didn’t sit at my table. She stood across from me, keeping her distance as if she were afraid I might attack her.
“I see you’re still having trouble making new friends,” she began, nodding at the empty chairs.
“I’m not looking for new friends yet, but when I do, I’ll be more careful about choosing them,” I replied.
“You don’t have to be careful about it or worry about it. I doubt you’ll be here that much longer, anyway.”
“Wherever I go can’t be worse,” I said, and she laughed.
“Ricky’s having a party tonight at his house. His parents are beginning a short Mexican Riviera vacation. We’d invite you just for entertainment, but everyone’s afraid you might steal away another boyfriend.”
I was silent. I felt my insides trembling, but I wasn’t going to cry or even look sad and frightened. Instead, I said, “I feel sorry for you.”
“You feel sorry for me? That’s a laugh. When you end up in some foster home, sleeping in a two-by-four bedroom and going to some inferior public school, think of me. I’m going to think of you tonight. You can call it a celebration of sorts.”