Read Online Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online Page B

us—if anything is wrong.”
    Merissa stood silent. How she resented these strangers, conferring about her! The secret little wounds, scratches thin as pencil lines but rough to the touch like stitches in the flesh, pulsed with heat, inside her clothes.
    She felt a thrill of elation. He can’t know. None of them can know.
    â€œWe all realize, seniors are under tremendous strain. You do so many things—activities—there seems to be no letup, sometimes. And your personal lives, we know, can be very intense. . . .”
    Where was this going? Merissa wondered. Personal lives!
    Did Mr. Kessler know of rumors about Merissa Carmichael’s “separated” parents?
    Were there rumors, or was Merissa only just imagining that there might be?
    Like rumors about Nadia Stillinger.
    (Merissa hadn’t seen any text messages or posts about Nadia, but then, she hadn’t wanted to look.)
    â€œMaybe I’m just tired of the obstacle course. Like the equestrian competitions you see on TV—poor horses made to jump over ever-higher obstacles, until they trip and fall and break their legs—and have to be put down.”
    Merissa spoke bitterly but with a smile. Mr. Kessler stared at her in astonishment.
    â€œWhy, Merissa—is that how you feel? Is that why you dropped out of the play?”
    â€œI didn’t ‘drop out’ of the stupid senior play! I resigned the role of Elizabeth Bennet because I don’t respect the character, and because I’m not really an actress . People who can act , and who would do a better job than I could, should be in the play—not me.”
    Merissa snatched up her backpack and turned to walk away.
    She was trembling with indignation and hated it that tears had sprung into her eyes.
    Wanting to call back over her shoulder the phrase that had caught in her brain like litter blown against a chain-link fence— No big deal!
    She knew she’d made things worse. Mr. Kessler would talk of her with her other teachers—at Quaker Heights, it was joked that the staff obsessed about students, since each student paid so high a tuition; the ratio of faculty to students was approximately one to twelve, unlike public schools in the vicinity, where the ratio might be more than twice that figure.
    Mr. Kessler called after Merissa, “If you want to discuss this further, Merissa, just see me. Will you?”
    Merissa hurried out of the room without seeming to have heard.
    No, no, no, no, no! Damn you, just leave me alone.
    Â 
    Leaving Mr. Kessler staring after her: Merissa Carmichael, who’d always been, in his classes, both smart and sweet .
    Merissa Carmichael, who’d been, as Mr. Kessler recalled, a friend of the girl who’d killed herself the previous June, just before the end of classes—the red-haired ex–child actress who’d called herself Tink.
    So that in his bewilderment Mr. Kessler was led to wonder—(but of course he rejected thinking anything so ridiculous)—if the rebellious and self-destructive spirit of Tink Traumer had somehow entered the exemplary Merissa.
    Â 
    Ugly rumors spread fastest.
    Rumors that Merissa Carmichael’s father had left Merissa and her mother and was living just a few miles away from them, in the new condominium village on the river.
    Like small flames, a wildfire was spreading among people who knew Merissa Carmichael and people who half knew Merissa Carmichael and people who didn’t know Merissa Carmichael at all.
    Merissa didn’t want to know. She tossed her cell phone into a drawer, not caring if the damn thing broke.
    Merissa had been thinking she was becoming immune to him .
    If he didn’t call her when he’d promised—No Big Deal.
    If he failed even to invent reasonable excuses for these failings, as he’d once done—No Big Deal.
    â€œIt’s just a—phase. A stage. He’s overworked, he isn’t thinking