I lean back against the wall and chew on my lips, swallowing hard. It hurts being on the outside of something so honest. I want it, but I don’t know how I can have it when I’m so angry, and I feel so far from finished.
I spend lunch in my storage room .
I’m sitting on the floor, picking at my fingernails, waiting for the bell to ring. Legs crossed at the ankle. This is boring, but it’s okay because nothing is happening, and I’m trying not to think too much, because I think too much and I never think good things. I count the number of mats wedged at the back of the room (four). I find various pieces of broken equipment in a cobwebby cardboard box wedged in the corner and organize them into piles and then put them back.
When the bell rings, I press my ear against the door and wait until all the footsteps fade away, and then I sneak out and drift down the hall.
“Hey, Regina—”
I stiffen. That’s Michael’s voice. He’s somewhere behind me. I duck my shoulders and quicken my pace. He’ll get the message; he’s not stupid.
“Regina—”
His voice gets lost to hall noises, and I relax because that has to mean he’s fallen behind. I don’t know what he could possibly want with me. We’ve come to a natural end. There can’t be much left after you steal a car for someone and then stand around and watch while they decimate the paint job.
I slam shoulders with some freshman and slip around them, narrowly missing someone else. The hall is congested. I push past a few more stationary bodies because my locker’s here, and then I…
…feel it in my bones before my brain processes it.
Everything goes cold.
My red locker door is hanging open, guts splayed out for the whole world to see. The hall is congested because people are pausing so they can point at it and laugh. They make ridiculous faces as they go. I edge wordlessly through the crowd so I can get a good look at what they’ve done to my locker this time this time this time again.
Rancid, raw ground meat. All over everything. My books. My coat. Book bag. The sides of my locker. Everywhere. Everything is ruined. They must have raided the grocery store and bought up all the bargain meat and left it outside for days and days, because the smell is unbelievable. Acrid, sour.
I reach in. My fingers brush over slimy bits of some dead animal.
My heartbeat slows to nothing and then, when I’m sure I’m dead, it thumps once. Twice. Three times. Steady and even. I’m still here. I get to ten beats and then it beats faster—twenty, faster, thirty, faster, forty. Do something do something do something.
I slam the door so hard it recoils back.
The crowd murmurs.
“Regina—”
Michael’s voice sounds like it’s far away, but it’s closer than I want it to be. I storm down the hall, away from it. He calls me once more. Part of me wants to detach myself from this anger and go to him, but that part of me is very small. I head for the second floor. Kara’s locker. She might be there. Because it was her. Maybe it was Anna’s idea, but Kara would’ve done it.
Anna would never touch that stuff.
I crash into some moron who’s decided to go down the up stairs. Books fly. I grab the railing and push myself forward until I hear this: “Thanks a lot, bitch.”
And even though she hasn’t spoken to me in ages, I haven’t forgotten that blonde’s breathy voice yet. Jeanette bends down and gathers her books, muttering to herself. Seeing the back of her head gives me a prickly thrill in the pit of my stomach. One of her books has landed beyond her. I grab it. It’d be a dangerous move if it were anyone but Jeanette, but I’m better than her, even when I’m not.
She doesn’t catch sight of the book until I wave it in front of her face. Moron. She tries to snatch it out of my hands, but I back away and hold it out of her reach.
“Give me my book!”
The venom in her voice surprises me a little. I know she hates me, but I don’t think I ever disliked Jeanette. I think I liked her. I didn’t respect her, but I liked her.
“Who put the meat in my locker?” I demand. She gets uncomfortable all over, clutching her books like they’re a security blanket.
“I’m not allowed to talk to you.” She’s practically sweating. It’s really pathetic. “Give me my book back.”
“Tell me who put the meat in my locker and I’ll give you your book and I’ll leave you alone. If you don’t, I’ll stand here until Anna shows and sees you with me.”
“Bruce and Kara,” she blabs. “Now give me my book!”
I keep it out of her reach, because I can and because it feels good. Jeanette stamps her foot, and I can’t help but grin.
” Give me my fucking book, Regina!”
I let her rip it from my grasp and watch her storm her way down the up stairs, and then she stops at the bottom of them and turns to me, her face red.
“I’m telling Anna.”
“I’m totally shaking, Jeanette.” Wait. “Wait. Tell her—tell her you were talking to me and tell Kara to watch her back, but make sure you tell them—”
“Fuck you.”
She’s gone, she’s done, but I’m just getting started.
I jog down the steps, past my locker, down the hall. I can’t make a Web site about Kara. I turn down another hallway. I already trashed her locker. Can’t do that again. I make my way past people going wherever, and I try to block out their voices and the fact that they’re pointing and laughing at me again. I can’t make a Web site about Anna either. Too obvious. There’s no one they’d hate to be locked in a closet with. I turn down another hall, a deserted hall, a familiar hall. This is why I got drunk directly after what happened with Donnie. So I didn’t have to feel it, but now I feel it, I feel all of it, and it’s too much and I— Do something do something.
I push through the door to the storage room and slam it behind me because I don’t care, and I grab the box of broken things and throw it against the wall. It explodes.
And then it’s quiet.
I press my hand against my forehead. My head is throbbing. I’m breathing like I ran a marathon, and my stomach is churning and my throat is tight and I’m hot. I kick one of the old mats and then I kick it again, and then I bite my arm because I’m going to scream; I’m not going to scream and…okay.
It’s okay.
My chest caves in, deflates; my heart is calm, my heart is pumping calm. No—not calm. Nothing. I should go back. But I kneel down and press my hands against the cold floor and crawl until I’m against the wall instead. I’ll go home and talk to Mom and Dad about finishing out the year—not at school. I can’t do this anymore.
I bring my knees up and rest my head against them. I close my eyes. I run my hand over the floor, feeling grit and dust, and I have a problem.
Now that I’m down, I don’t want to get up. I guess I can stay here awhile.
I’m just starting to get into that peaceful, falling kind of place be tween dozing and actual sleep when the door opens slowly, and some vague alarm goes off inside me— Oh no, you’re caught —but I don’t care until the light from the hallway hits my eyelids and rudely jolts me into wakefulness, and then I do. I look up. Michael is standing in the doorway holding a black garbage bag. He flicks on the light and I wince.
“The stuff from your locker,” he says, holding the bag up. He sets it inside the door, which he closes quietly behind him, and then he faces the room. I watch him take it all in. The mess I made. “…Are you okay?”
“How did you know I was here?” My tongue feels thick. “I followed you,” he says. “I saw you come in here. I thought I’d give you a minute so I cleaned out your locker. It’s clean.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“I can’t believe they did that to you,” he says. “I mean, I can, but—”
“Yeah.”
He crosses the room and sits beside me, close. His shoulder against my shoulder. I tense and then I relax. It’s not like he can reject me twice, because I’m not going to make a move. I’m not saying anything. A few minutes pass, and he clears his throat.
“So what did you do to Kara?”
I look at him. He looks at me. I laugh a little, because even though it’s not funny, it’s not anything like what I thought he was going say.
“Uhm …” I bite my lower lip. “Kara couldn’t keep up. So we—I mean, I told her that a lot. It kind of fucked her up. A lot.”
And the rest is history.
“So I guess I deserve this,” I add absently.
And then my eyes catch sight of the garbage bag against the wall with all of my ruined things inside of it, and my face dissolves. Don’t cry. Don’t cry . It shouldn’t matter at this point. Michael’s seen me at my worst, but I press my hand against my eyes, taking short pathetic breaths in and out until I’m choking on air, and all I want to do is tell him about how paralyzing it was in that closet with Donnie and how we weren’t always like this and how sick it is, but all I can manage are these six, stilted words: “I-just-want-them-to-stop.”
“I can take you home,” he says. I shake my head and wipe my eyes. “You can’t stay here, Regina. Let me take you home.”
“No,” I say. I sound like a stubborn little kid. No. But I don’t want to step into the halls again, because I’m tired of being out there and this feels safe. He gets to his feet and holds his hand out, and I push him away. “Stop. Michael, stop it—”
“Remember when I told you my mom wouldn’t have hated you, even if she’d known what you’d done? She would’ve tried to help you.” He pauses. “That means something to me.” I close my eyes and shake my head. “Please let me help you.”
I open my eyes. I take his hand. His fingers close around mine and he helps me to my feet. We end up close and it hurts, because I want to be this close to someone who wants to be this close to me. He doesn’t want me.