and her smooth hair and all those adoring girls wreathed at her feet?
But of course, I know better. I know things, even though I’m not sure what, exactly.
The way she never meets Matt French’s eyes. Watching him help her unload the dishwasher one evening, late, and she would not turn her head.
And the thing I saw, felt, under that creamy duvet of hers, that silk sucking into my mouth, the feeling of something weighing on me, on her, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
Friday, Coach doesn’t cancel. She just doesn’t show up for practice at all.
“Maybe it’s feminine medical problems,” RiRi says. “That happens to my Aunt Kaylie a lot. Sometimes she has to take off all her clothes. She sits on the sun porch in her bra, rubbing ice cubes all across herself.”
“That’s for old ladies,” Beth says. “Maybe she’s just sick of your face. Can you blame her?”
Emily, dizzy from Coach’s x-treme juice fast, sucking on ginger peel all day, has to lean against the padded gym wall.
“She was going to bring me the potassium broth recipe,” she whispers, her face feverish.
She starts to tell everyone about the broth, counting off the ingredients on her gum-sticky fingers: raw garlic, beet tops, turnip tops, parsley, red pepper seeds, it alkalizes and then you…
I nod and nod while Emily chirps and peeps, her little twigged legs trembling against the wall.
“Someone give her a fucking Kit Kat,” Beth growls.
I throw an energy bar at Emily because I can’t stand it anymore either.
We all watch as she eats it slowly, picking at it with shaking fingers, and then, turning greenish white, throws it all back up again in the wrapper.
Beth leans back on the long bench, extending one Aruba-tanned leg and examining it.
“Personally, I am sick of every one of you,” she continues, eyes on perpetual roll. “Sick of everything and everybody.”
Beth touches these things inside us sometimes. Inside me. It is one of her gifts, deeply misunderstood by others. It sounds like she’s being mean, but she’s not. Sick, sick, sick. It’s something you feel constantly, the thing you fight off all the time. The knot of hot boredom lodged behind your eyes, so thick and grievous you want to bang your head into the wall, knock it loose.
I wonder if that’s the thing Coach feels, at home, standing next to Matt French, loading the dishwasher, scrubbing her daughter’s face.
“Hanlon,” Beth says, jumping to her feet. “Let’s trawl.”
I look at her. “But if Coach shows…”
But I can tell where that will get me, Beth with her clenched jaw, about to unsnap. It reminds me of something I learned once in biology: a crocodile’s teeth are constantly replaced. Their whole life, they never stop growing new teeth.
I get up, I follow.
There’s something—always, even as late as junior year, us weary veterans now—about walking the echoing corridors after school. The whole cavernous place, a place we know so well that all our dreams take place here, feels different.
It’s more than the new stillness, more than the heavy bleach swabbed over every skidded, gum-streaked inch.
By day, we walk as if in a force field, surrounded only by one another—our great colored swirl of cheerness. It is not aloofness, superiority. It’s a protection. Who in this ravaged battlefield doesn’t want to gather close her comrades?
But after three o’clock, the school day’s gush of misery rushing into the streets, TV rooms, fluorescent-lit fast-food counters all over town. And the school-after-school becomes a foreign place, exotic.
There are kids here, and teachers in odd lurking pockets, you never know when or where, a huddle of physics grinds on the third-floor landing timing the velocity of falling super balls, the barking Forensics Clubbers snarking about capital punishment in the language lab, shaggy stoners slouching, their eyes bliss-glazed, outside the shop room—now called industrial design lab—the flash
But of course, I know better. I know things, even though I’m not sure what, exactly.
The way she never meets Matt French’s eyes. Watching him help her unload the dishwasher one evening, late, and she would not turn her head.
And the thing I saw, felt, under that creamy duvet of hers, that silk sucking into my mouth, the feeling of something weighing on me, on her, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
Friday, Coach doesn’t cancel. She just doesn’t show up for practice at all.
“Maybe it’s feminine medical problems,” RiRi says. “That happens to my Aunt Kaylie a lot. Sometimes she has to take off all her clothes. She sits on the sun porch in her bra, rubbing ice cubes all across herself.”
“That’s for old ladies,” Beth says. “Maybe she’s just sick of your face. Can you blame her?”
Emily, dizzy from Coach’s x-treme juice fast, sucking on ginger peel all day, has to lean against the padded gym wall.
“She was going to bring me the potassium broth recipe,” she whispers, her face feverish.
She starts to tell everyone about the broth, counting off the ingredients on her gum-sticky fingers: raw garlic, beet tops, turnip tops, parsley, red pepper seeds, it alkalizes and then you…
I nod and nod while Emily chirps and peeps, her little twigged legs trembling against the wall.
“Someone give her a fucking Kit Kat,” Beth growls.
I throw an energy bar at Emily because I can’t stand it anymore either.
We all watch as she eats it slowly, picking at it with shaking fingers, and then, turning greenish white, throws it all back up again in the wrapper.
Beth leans back on the long bench, extending one Aruba-tanned leg and examining it.
“Personally, I am sick of every one of you,” she continues, eyes on perpetual roll. “Sick of everything and everybody.”
Beth touches these things inside us sometimes. Inside me. It is one of her gifts, deeply misunderstood by others. It sounds like she’s being mean, but she’s not. Sick, sick, sick. It’s something you feel constantly, the thing you fight off all the time. The knot of hot boredom lodged behind your eyes, so thick and grievous you want to bang your head into the wall, knock it loose.
I wonder if that’s the thing Coach feels, at home, standing next to Matt French, loading the dishwasher, scrubbing her daughter’s face.
“Hanlon,” Beth says, jumping to her feet. “Let’s trawl.”
I look at her. “But if Coach shows…”
But I can tell where that will get me, Beth with her clenched jaw, about to unsnap. It reminds me of something I learned once in biology: a crocodile’s teeth are constantly replaced. Their whole life, they never stop growing new teeth.
I get up, I follow.
There’s something—always, even as late as junior year, us weary veterans now—about walking the echoing corridors after school. The whole cavernous place, a place we know so well that all our dreams take place here, feels different.
It’s more than the new stillness, more than the heavy bleach swabbed over every skidded, gum-streaked inch.
By day, we walk as if in a force field, surrounded only by one another—our great colored swirl of cheerness. It is not aloofness, superiority. It’s a protection. Who in this ravaged battlefield doesn’t want to gather close her comrades?
But after three o’clock, the school day’s gush of misery rushing into the streets, TV rooms, fluorescent-lit fast-food counters all over town. And the school-after-school becomes a foreign place, exotic.
There are kids here, and teachers in odd lurking pockets, you never know when or where, a huddle of physics grinds on the third-floor landing timing the velocity of falling super balls, the barking Forensics Clubbers snarking about capital punishment in the language lab, shaggy stoners slouching, their eyes bliss-glazed, outside the shop room—now called industrial design lab—the flash
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