He finds me later in the bathroom when I’m brushing my teeth. He walks in and says, very low, “You shouldn’t have gone into my email. I’m sorry you saw what you thought you saw, but there’s the matter of respecting my privacy. There’s more to it than you know, so what you read there—it’s out of context. But I’m sorry.”
He says it nicely because Nate Masselin is a nice guy and it’s important for him to be liked, especially postcancer. I can tell he’s waiting for me to forgive him and move on the way everyone else does, and that pisses me off.
I take my time brushing, rinsing, wiping my mouth on a towel. Finally, I look at him. I’m taller than he is by a good inch, not counting my lion fro. I say, “You can’t use cancer as an excuse for shittiness anymore.” And of course I’m talking to me too, although he doesn’t know that.
I dream that I’m flying from airport to airport, and each one is mobbed with people. So mobbed, I can’t breathe or move, and every face is blank—no nose, mouth, eyes, eyebrows. I’m searching for someone I know, for anyone who looks familiar, and the more I search, the more my chest tightens and the less I can breathe.
But then I see her. Libby Strout. She’s lowered from the ceiling by a crane, larger than life, larger than anyone, and she’s the only one with a face.
SATURDAY
* * *
The locker room is enormous. It smells like feet and piss, or like Travis Kearns, whose main identifier is the fact that he sometimes reeks like a skunk because of all the weed he smokes. It’s pretty much the last place you want to spend a Saturday. But here we are, the seven of us and Mr. Sweeney (enormous belly, mullet, sideburns, slight limp). We spread out, and I purposely take a corner by myself because I don’t want to talk to anyone.
At noon, we break for lunch. Sweeney gives us forty-five minutes to eat outside on the bleachers we’ll be painting next weekend, and I take a seat away from everyone else. The bleachers are old and weatherworn, and just the sight of them makes me lose my appetite. Painting these bleachers is one more thing added to the shit pile that is my life. I pop the top on my soda and close my eyes. The sun feels good. Soak it in, brave soldier, I tell myself. While you can.
I almost drift off, but I hear someone yelling “Leave me alone,” over and over, and it’s a voice I recognize, bellowing and foghorn-like. I open my eyes and see a big guy lumbering past the school and there’s this group of guys following him. They’re all around my age, white, kind of interchangeable. I don’t recognize any of them, but the foghorn voice sounds like it belongs to Jonny Rumsford.
I’ve known Jonny since kindergarten, back when he was just Rum for short. He was always bigger than everyone else, a kind of gentle giant. For as long as I’ve known him, kids have been following Rum around, heckling him for being a little slow, a little simple, a little clumsy, like a pack of hyenas targeting a buffalo.
I’m watching these guys now, and they’re yelling stuff at him, even though I can’t hear what. The Boy Who May Be Rum’s shoulders are all hunched up, like he’s trying to pull his head into his neck or maybe right down into his chest. And then one of the guys throws something at him and hits him on the back of the head. Suddenly, I’m seeing myself like everyone else does—I’m one of those heckling, yelling hyena kids, throwing things at people who don’t deserve it.
I set my sandwich down, and I take off like I’m being launched to the moon. At first, May/May Not Be Rum thinks I’m running straight for him and he freezes, clearly terrified. The guys are laughing and throwing shit—rocks, trash, anything they can find—and I run right into the herd of them. They don’t even have time to think. One lands on his ass in the dirt, and suddenly they’re not laughing anymore.
“Did he do anything to you?” I point at Rum. “Did he?”
“What the hell, Mass?”
Of course they know me. I’m probably friends with these scumbags.
“Tell me one thing he did to you.”
One of the guys gets up in my face, and he’s as tall as I am and wider by a couple of feet. But I don’t back down because I’m at least three heads angrier. “Seriously, Mass? You’re gonna give us shit? What did that fat girl do to you? Huh? Tell me one thing She did.”
Another guy goes, “Yeah, how’s detention, jackass?”
I don’t think. I act. Maybe because I’m angry. At everyone. At myself. I feel like I could take on the whole world right now. I say to Rum, “Go home, Jonny. Get out of here.” And then I turn around and punch the first guy I see. He drops to the ground, and another one comes at me, and I haul off and punch him too. Even when my hand feels broken, even when I can’t feel my knuckles anymore, I keep pounding on these guys. And at some point, it’s as if I leave my body on the ground and float up into the sky, where I watch the fight like it’s happening to someone else.
Some part of me thinks, What if that’s it? What if whatever malfunction in my brain that’s causing this face blindness is spreading, so that I can’t even recognize where I am or what I’m doing? What if my brain is completely broken and I never get back down there to me again?
I’m not sure how much time passes, but at some point I’m aware of something or someone tugging at my arm. I turn around and I’m on the ground again, and it’s Libby Strout. She’s yanking me back.
One of the guys says to Libby, “Don’t hurt me, Flabby Stout! Don’t hurt me!” He pretend-cringes, his hands up in front of his face.