chapter 6
september 6, still.

I walk into the school twenty-two minutes late, out of breath, heart pounding, stinking. The halls are empty, which is the way I like it. For some reason, crowds make me nervous. They make me think of maggots. Fat white worms swarming over something dead. I never used to think like this and now I can’t stop.

Things like the maggots. Why am I thinking about maggots?

I don’t even hate maggots. I like to know they are there, under the dirt.

Waiting.

Oh, fuck you, Dex.

I think about maggots, and then I wish there was a crowd. At least Tanis. Or T-dot. T-dot was my best friend when we were kids. I went to Vancouver. He stayed here.

I changed.

He stayed the same.

The thing is that he wouldn’t understand about the maggots.

Tanis might. But Tanis would have been on time for class. Tanis is a girl who is on time for things.

The emptiness in the hallway is freaking me out. My breath is loud and scratchy, and my mouth is as dry as sandpaper. I stop at the fountain and drink gum-flavored water until I’m sputtering. I come up coughing.

I go to the office to grab my schedule from the wooden tray on the front desk labeled SCHEDULES. Someone’s turned the heat up too high in here and my glasses steam up and I’m already overheated and sweat runs into my eyes. I practice breathing normally. The air is muddy and too thick. I am probably gasping, so it’s lucky there is no one there. I concentrate on the paper.

The paper is pale pink with my name at the top, handwritten. Dex Pratt! Exclamation point! The whole schedule is peppered with exclamation points. Is it supposed to make it more fun to go to Math! than just math?

I flick the paper with my fingers and there is a thwack sound in the silence of the room. The thwack brings me back to myself and I am okay. It’s like I just slipped out of the frame for a minute but now I’m back. I’m okay. There is a clock ticking. The empty sound of people’s absence.

“Hey, Stacey,” I say. Her chair is empty, at a half-spin, like it just propelled her out the door. I fold the paper into a plane. You have to check in with Stacey when you’re late or else risk the wrath of Mr. V. I know the drill. I’ve always been late. Before. Then. Now.

I’ve never really given a fuck, to be honest.

“STACEY,” I say, louder.

Someone clears her throat and I turn around. And she is there. Her.

Not Stacey.

My girl. My imaginary girl.

The Girl.

The room twists and heaves.

I say something. It’s probably, “No way.” Then I choke on nothing, really choke, an I-need-a-Heimlich kind of choke. For a second I totally can’t breathe. The air clusters in my throat like clay and hardens. I gasp. No air.

Panic.

Then my lungs right themselves.

The pink paper in my hand is shaking. Dex Pratt! Math!

The girl has blond hair, wavy, like she’s just been surfing. Skin so white it looks like porcelain. Same glasses as me. The girl who can’t possibly even exist smiles at me, and even her teeth are exactly as I had pictured.

I nod at this imaginary girl and say, “Hey.” Just to see if my voice is working or if this is one of those dreams where you can’t speak, can’t move, eventually die at the hands of an ax murderer or a doll with a chainsaw.

My voice sounds normal. I move my legs. Also normal. I guess I’m crazy then. I don’t know what to do with that. I jump up on the balls of my feet and look behind me. Where is Stacey?

“You got what you need there, Dex?” Stacey says. I didn’t see her come in. She’s looking at me like she ’d like to eat me, and pounces into her chair, which squeaks in protest. Stacey is an eyeful. Not in a good way. In a leopard-print-cardigan-over-leggings way. She licks her lips, which are a shade of bluish metallic pink that shouldn’t exist. Her tongue makes me think of sea cucumbers. “You’re muddy!” she says, like this is a good thing.

“Got it. Thanks much,” I say, just as she’s saying, “You’re late, Dexter Pratt.”

The hair on the back of my neck is prickling. I pretend it isn’t. I scratch my neck hard with my nails. I can’t say to Stacey, “Hey, so I’m hallucinating the girl in that green chair in the corner and I’m completely freaking out here.” My brain sends me a random electrical jolt that shoots down my spine. Which is fine; I understand that, at least. It’s a symptom of coming off the antidepressants that I’ve been taking for a while. My doctor calls it a brainstorm.

I like how that sounds.

“Just put that I had to help my dad,” I tell Stacey, for the record. I shrug. “Put that down for every day, probably.”

“Sure, sweetie,” she says. Her eyes never once drift over to the girl in the corner.

So she is a hallucination.

A side effect.

She couldn’t be there.

She isn’t there.

That’s okay then. I take a deep breath in and hold it, like toking an imaginary fattie. Hold your breath. There. It’s all good. It’s fine.

Safe.

Stacey slowly pulls out the ledger to write my excuse down. She writes with her left hand in a fist, like a kindergartner struggling with chalk. While she writes, she says, “How is your dad?” Her pen makes a horrible scratching noise on the paper. The hairs on my arms stand up.

I shrug and go, “Same old.”

She smiles and says, “He’s such a survivor.” There’s lipstick on her teeth. I can picture her applying that ugly lipstick in the rearview mirror of her car, and it makes me fucking sad, that’s what it does. I know she’s faking herself too. She’s just a character. We’re all just characters.

I swallow hard. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

“Oh, he is,” she says. “He really is.”

I shrug because is it supposed to be heroic when you survive a jump you made by choice? I mean, come on. Give me a break. Maybe if you half died to cure cancer, people should be nice about it. But a failed suicide attempt doesn’t warrant applause.

Not from me anyway.

“Good summer?” she says.

I shrug again. “Good enough,” I say. I don’t ask about hers. I don’t care about hers. Besides, the weather outside makes summer seem like it’s been gone long enough to be forgotten.

Mr. Vermillion stomps into the room, looking furious and distracted like he always does. Last night’s bourbon stinking up the room as effectively as a spray can of Febreze shooting you right in the face. His belly peeks out between the pulling buttons on his shirt. “Pratt,” he says, like saying my first name is far too much trouble. “Pratt, you gonna win this season?”

“I guess,” I say. “Not up to me, man. It’s the whole team.”

“You in shape?” he says.

“Sure am,” I say like I care about basketball, which I don’t. I lift my shirt and thump my abdomen. He stares.

“Huh,” he says. The veins in his cheeks look like failure. You just know he never wanted to end up here. And now he drinks this whole fucking depressing town away every night on his sagging couch, jerking off to porn and imagining a different life. That’s the thing about this place: it stinks of failure.

It’s rife with it.

You cannot get away from the smell.

No one, not one person—not Stacey, not Mr. V, not anyone—came here because they succeeded, because their dreams came true.

My dream is sitting in the corner on a green vinyl chair.

I keep my eyes on Mr. V and away from the girl who is clearing her throat so much I wonder if she isn’t having some kind of asthma attack. I glance back. She pushes her blond hair out of her face and I swear to God I nearly faint. She smells like some kind of coconut soap and a candle that’s melting. Why can I smell her? She’s too far away. Can you have smell hallucinations? I must stink. I have to go to class, but my legs don’t seem to want to take me. We are all just standing there like actors waiting for our cues.

This is not real.

“Pratt,” says Mr. Vermillion, “show Olivia where your homeroom is. You two are later than shit.”

“Nice, Mr. V,” I say. I think for a second about Mr. McAllum, Head of St. Joe’s. He would never say, “Later than shit.” He would never say “shit.” He probably doesn’t even shit. He would…

Fuck it, who cares? St. Joe’s may as well be the moon or a movie or something that I dreamed. See, right now my old friends there are all piling into the gym for the annual first-day-assembly, ties flapping, shirts untucked, comparing summer vacations in Europe with those spent on the boat. The life I borrowed for a while. The life I thought was one thing but turned out to be another.

I instinctively press on the bend in my elbow. Where Feral stuck that first needle into his own arm, I have a tattoo of a nautical star. It was Feral’s idea. His meant something else. Mine doesn’t mean anything to anyone but me. It’s so small it looks like a cancerous mole. A spiky black mark.

A target.

Olivia is standing behind me. I can feel her as much as see her.

“We have the same glasses,” she says. Even her voice is what I’d imagined, no joke.

“Uh-huh,” I say. I am aware of how I smell—like sweat, so much sweat, and weed and my dad’s Old Spice deodorant. The ass of my jeans is drenched and clammy. The mud makes me look like I’ve been smeared in shit, and let’s face it, farm mud is mostly shit, so I have been.

My sneakers make a high-pitched fart on the lino floor. The sun is coming out, and for a second I lose her in the wet glare from the window. I catch a glimpse of a rainbow.

Olivia laughs, a strange high sound that makes me think of bats. She nudges me. The place where she touches me feels like something small has landed on me with cold feet. But not in a bad way, in a good one, like when you find the cool spot on the sheets with your foot and your body soaks that up and for a few seconds you feel okay.

I am dizzy in the kind of way that you are when you drink too much. I hate that feeling.

Mr. V is saying something, but I can’t hear him because my ears feel funny. I brace myself against the doorjamb. The girl’s teeth have a small space between them. She has four freckles on her cheek.

“I directed those,” I almost say. “I did that.”

“Yeah,” I say instead. “Let’s go. I’ll show you.” My voice sounds strange and tinny, like it is coming to my own ears across a long, impossible distance.

“Good day!” Stacey chirps. “First day of your last year!”

“So,” Olivia says. She has a faint accent that makes me think of Africa. We climb stairs that are red linoleum crisscrossed with diamonds, which are meant to give your feet something to grip. For a second, the “so” sounds slowed down, like something melting. “So,” she starts again, “you’re Dex.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I am.” I cough, and the sound is too loud. She seems to flinch or flicker, I’m not sure which.

“Have you, um, always gone to this school?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s the only school. Here. I mean, there are other schools obviously. All over the world. Millions. But just this one, here.” I am not making sense. I squint. The hall seems to be stretching away from us, a million miles long. I sneak another look at the girl…this girl.

She is wearing jeans that are tight all the way to her ankles, but instead of looking like a slut, she looks like she’s, I don’t know, on a catwalk or something. She makes Glass look ordinary, and no one, not ever, said Glass was plain. But while Glass glittered, Olivia gleams.

She is more naked in those jeans than anyone I’ve ever seen, including naked people, if you know what I mean. Her jacket is oversize and looks military. Something pale-colored is underneath that shimmers and demands to be touched. Looking right at her hurts my eyes. And, let’s face it, my dick. I keep my eyes averted, away from the shiny thing she’s wearing, away from the shiny thing that she is.

Imagine walking down a long hallway with your fantasy. I am tripping bad. My mouth is so dry now that it hurts, it’s cracking. Bleeding. I taste tin. I press my fingers again and again on my tattoo, like it’s a button that can help me escape.

The lockers are multiplying in the corner of my eyes. Rows and rows of puke-green lockers. The floor is red lino. Our school is decorated like innards.

Our voices echo. “If you had a choice,” she says. “Where would you go?”

I shrug. “Doesn’t matter. School is school.” I think about St. Joe’s. Different. School is not just school. I am lying. I want to stop talking. My voice is bothering me, like feedback from a speaker. “Maybe I’d go to…” I shake my head. “It’s high school. Who cares?”

“Well, I’d choose a school in New York,” she says. “Like a dramatic arts school. Something other. Something…you know. Different.”

It’s like I put the words in her mouth, wrote them down on white paper, and now they are hanging over her head in cartoon speech bubbles, bubbles that drift like kites down the endless hall. “New York,” they say. “The Himalayas.” “My guitar.” “Acting or modeling.” I stop, stock still. I can’t move. I can feel sweat trickling down my forehead.

“This kind of school is so…,” she says. “I kind of hate my dad for making us come here. It feels so…predictable or something.” She shudders or she doesn’t, and then flips her hair around her head in a swirl that looks like something moving down a drain.

“Yeah,” I say. “I knew you’d say that.”

“How do you know?” she says.

“I don’t,” I say. “But I bet I know what you’d say about a lot of things. Like I bet you’re a vegetarian, right? I bet you play the guitar and sing. I bet…well. I don’t want to bet. I think I know you. I don’t want to sound crazy, but you…” I am talking too fast. I can see her face, just out of focus, looking at my quizzically. “I guess I just know your type,” I finish. “Anyway, we ’re here. This is it. Our classroom. Homeroom. Whatever.”

The door to the classroom is liver brown. Someone has written on it with a black pen, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. She touches the words with her finger. Her nails are pale pink but also bitten to the quick, and she hides them when she notices me noticing.

I didn’t give her bitten nails. I relax a little.

Then the door swings open and Tanis rushes out. “Bathroom!” she says, seeing me, but she stops to grab me, hug me, I guess, and I’m not ready for it. For her. I fall on the floor, hard, smashing my funny bone and pushing her off at the same time, and when I look up again, Olivia has vanished and Tanis is laughing, sitting on me.

“I really have to pee!” she says.

And Mrs. Singh is saying, “That’s enough. Tanis and Dex stop it right now or you’ll be in detention for the rest of your lives.” She looks down, disgusted. “You aren’t puppies, you know,” she adds, sighing.

“Woof,” says Tanis. She gets up in one movement. There is something about Tanis that is ridiculously bendy. She makes me think of a noodle. She runs down the hall.

I try to smile because that is what a normal kid would do when his hot girlfriend jumps him in the hallway, right? I try to look sheepish maybe, or proud, and then I give up on trying to look anything and get to my feet. I slide into my seat in time for the bell to ring and for T-dot to smack me in the head and pull me away into a conversation about the team and the coach and a new guy named Phil Stars who is six foot six or ten or something. And when I look around, I’m in the crowd in the big fat pulsing blue vein of the hallway, and it’s like Olivia doesn’t even exist.

“Right?” says T-dot.

“Yeah,” I go. “Totally.”

He nods, like I’ve said something smart. Punches a locker. He’s only five foot nine, but he’s wide and tough, more like a football guy than a basketball guy, but he’s better than you’d expect.

“Can’t wait,” he says. He is made entirely out of muscle, which somehow makes him rubbery. He’s always bouncing up and down. He can’t hold still.

I can’t honestly remember why we call him T-dot. I think his real name is Todd or Tad or some fucking thing, but I can’t really remember that either. I want to ask him, but he ’d probably be totally insulted that I— his best friend—can’t remember his actual name, so I bite my tongue.

T-dot is a swimmer, which means that his hair is always wet and he always smells like the community pool. No one here thinks of swimming as a “real” sport. They think it’s lame. But T-dot doesn’t really care what other people think. He’s also on every single team in the school because he’s good at every single sport. You can’t really call the quarterback lame just because he’s also a swimmer.

He whoops for no reason.

“What?” I say.

“I’m PUMPED!” he says. “Man, I’ve missed this shit-hole. Basketball, here we COME!”

“Settle down,” I say.

“Can’t,” he says. “You’re excited, admit it.”

“Yeah, sure,” I tell him.

“Arooooo!” he howls like a wolf. Everything about T-dot is normal and not normal. He’s more himself than anyone I know. I am jealous of that. But not of him. Jackson Barry leaps by and grabs T into a headlock, and for a few seconds they bang off the lockers before collapsing, out of breath.

“Dude,” says T-dot.

“Dude,” says Jackson.

I want to say “Dude” too, but if I said it, it would sound forced, so I don’t say anything. Instead I scan the crowd for Olivia, but she is not there. Not anywhere.

My brain jolts again, the electricity of it trickling down my spine. Tanis leans on my arm, back from the bathroom, I guess. She is frantically texting and holding her breath while she types. She can type with one hand faster than anyone I know.

“There,” she says. Like a text to Kate is an accomplishment. She’s chewing gum and it’s making a crackling sound and I want to run, but I don’t, because I have Math! next and going to class is all part of this normal-guy fakery that I’m working on.

“How’s Kate?” I say.

“She’s good,” says Tanis. “Do you care?”

“Yeah,” I say. “No. Whatever.”

Kate has never liked me, which makes Kate smarter than most people. She thinks I hate her because she’s fat but she’s wrong. I hate her because I think she can see through me to my rotten core. Kate loves Tanis. There’s nothing wrong with that. Someone should. I get this creepy feeling that Kate can see exactly how much I love Tanis and has judged it to be not enough. Which it isn’t, because I think love is a mindfuck and I’m not going to play, because it’s the kind of game that ends up with you naked on the top of a grain elevator and your dog barking at the bottom. Kate hates me and she should.

Tanis works her hand into my pocket. Her hand is tiny. Her nails are perfect, each one painted with a pattern that I happen to know is hieroglyphics because Tanis is obsessed with that shit.

What girl has hieroglyphics on her nails?

There is a lot to love about Tanis.

For example, she’s a genius. You wouldn’t know it to look at her. You’d think she was kind of slutty, kind of weird, kind of tough. She’s got the look of someone who would scratch your eyes out given half the chance.

But she wouldn’t.

She may be glaring at you, but probably she’s not even seeing you, she’s seeing something else. Numbers, most likely.

Ratios.

Patterns.

Proportions.

I can’t really explain what it is because I have no idea. Math and I are mortal enemies, but Tanis is like this mathematician-artist freak. She does stuff with math. She makes it into art. I’m not explaining it well, mostly because I don’t understand it. I’m pretty fucking stupid in a lot of ways.

She wants to be a model, right? But she’s borderline too-short, and there’s the thing of her face being half normal and half frozen, some family trait with a name I’ve forgotten. But she’s a girl who does what she wants and then figures everything out, so she’s studied all these models— her bedroom walls are papered with magazine pictures of gorgeous models, and on each one she has listed their proportions. Leg length to torso. Head size to hips. Like somewhere in there is a magical formula, which actually she says there is and if she can grow two more inches of legs, she ’ll have it all in the right proportions, which I believe because she really does have a fucking incredible body.

You wouldn’t guess to look at her that she ’d ever analyze anything that closely. That she ’d know how to do statistical analysis of breast size. Or that she ’d want to.

Or that she’s wrong, because in Tanis’s case, her perfect proportions don’t mean jack because of her face.

Anyway, her dad is mentally challenged and her mom is gone and her life is as shitty as mine when you look at it up close, which I try not to do because I have enough problems, right? But then she measures something and calculates something and draws it, and bam, it’s in its place. She has control. The numbers and patterns and all that crap, it makes her feel okay, so whatever.

Good for her.

Tanis is a perfect girlfriend. She never asks too much. She never wants to “just talk.” She’s just weird enough to be interesting. And she thinks she’s in love with me.

She thinks she knows who I am.

As if.

Right now her curly hair is hanging forward over her face and she really is killer sexy, even her crookedness is hot, so why do I hate her right now? Her hand is in my pocket, rubbing in a circle, and I push it away.

“Hey,” she says.

“Gotta have a slash,” I mumble and dart into the boys. I sit down on a toilet and try to feel sane, which fails. On the wall in the washroom it says, FOR A HOT HAND JOB, CALL TANIS B. I try to rub it out with toilet paper, but it’s permanent ink. I scratch at it with a ballpoint and then give up. The number is wrong anyway.

Mr. V is a pedophile, the wall says.

And FUCK YO MOMMA.

The walls are this really pale shade of mucous yellow, and even though it’s the first day of school, the bathroom stinks of sewage. I press my cheek against the cold metal just for a minute and close my eyes and remind myself that this is easy.

School is the easiest place to be.

So why am I so freaked out?

Olivia couldn’t possibly exist in a place like this.

She doesn’t, right?

I mean, how can she?