25. Girls

I don’t get girls. I really don’t.

Maybe Solitary isn’t the place to get girls. Either getting the girl at the end, arm in arm and heading into the sunset, or getting the girl, understanding and figuring her out. Maybe this place just isn’t designed with either of those things in mind.

Then again, maybe boys aren’t designed to figure girls out. And that’s why the girls always win in the end. Because we can’t say or do or think enough to keep up.

I’m heading to my locker, trying to figure out the conversation that just took place between Poe and me. Goth girl, one of the misfits or “outcasts” as she once called them, the only remaining link I have to Jocelyn. I examine the interchange to see where it all went terribly wrong.

“Poe, hey, can we talk?”

Maybe this was a bad way to start, going up to her with a question, offering her a way out.

“No.”

“Look, I just want a few minutes. I mean, are you going to keep this up all semester?”

I guess no doesn’t mean no with me, because I keep talking. And those blue eyes rip me a new one as they dig into me with a ferocity that scares me.

“Keep what up?”

I guess Poe doesn’t know what I mean because she hasn’t been thinking about me at all.

Wasn’t she the one who came up and talked to me on that first day? Where’d it go bad? Why’d it go so bad?

“Can we just—can you just stop for a minute—please?”

“What do you want?” she asks.

One might glance at this girl in front of me and put her in a box. Dark girl, creepy, thinks about witches and listens to Evanescence, avoids the sun but doesn’t avoid the eyeliner. But when I look at Poe, I see a girl who’s probably just as confused and scared and bewildered as I am.

“You have to let me talk to you.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing by blocking my way?”

“No. I mean, really talk.” I say it in a hushed tone. “In private.”

“No.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because. I’m done with you.”

“It’s about Jocelyn.”

“Oh, really?”

I nod.

“That’s great, because I just got an email from her, and she’s loving life there. Happy?”

“No.”

“Yes,” Poe says in a way that feels like someone punching me in the gut. “She said you keep sending emails and texts and that you can’t get the point.”

I look around us and wonder if this is real, if what she’s saying is real, if the ground I’m standing on is real.

“Poe.”

“Yes, Chris?”

She says my name the way she might say fungus.

For the first time I notice how pretty Poe is, those blue eyes standing out in the white and black picture that is her. I don’t understand why she wants to hide it. The dark dress with long sleeves and the thing around her neck—I don’t even know what that is. The strange high-heeled shoes. The spiky, multi-colored short hair.

I don’t understand why she has to act so ugly when I just want to help.

“Look, all I want to do—”

But as I go to finish my sentence—each word collapsing like chunks of a concrete bridge during an earthquake—Poe nods and mocks me with a just finish it already glance.

I stop midsentence. Probably looking red-faced, humbled, and pretty stupid.

“Don’t,” Poe says.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t anything.”

Then she walks away.

The Poe-and-me-versus-the-world story line isn’t going to happen the way I might have imagined.

I reach my locker and wonder how I can fit my entire body into it. I open it up and see a photo slip out.

What now?

I pick up the picture, annoyed that someone or maybe everyone has the combination to my locker.

It could’ve been slipped in through the holes, Chris.

I look at the picture of a smiling guy.

He has messy hair that seems lit up and lighter because of the sun. He’s laughing, with one hand rubbing the back of his head in a nervous sort of way.

I study the picture because it shocks me.

Not because the guy looks so carefree and happy.

But because the guy is me.

“Hi,” says the mouse on my right.

It’s not really a mouse, but the way the blond talks, sometimes it seems like she’s auditioning to play the part. Everybody in the art room goes to the same place to paint their masterpiece. Somehow Kelsey has managed to be right next to me, always standing on my right. She always says hi first, usually about five or ten minutes into the class, as if she has to build up the courage first.

“Hey,” I say, not really interested in talking.

She’s a girl, and she might look harmless now, but I know. Those glasses and that round little face and the braces may make her look sweet and innocent, but I know. She’s a girl, and I’m watching myself around her.

“I saw you talking with that girl.”

“What?”

“I don’t know her name. But I know you’re friends with her.”

“Poe.”

“That’s her name?”

I nod. “Not sure if she’d call me a friend.”

“Why?”

“Maybe you can ask her that. Haven’t quite figured that out.”

She keeps working. Her painting is symmetrical and logical and very bright. Mine is like an ugly face plastered in mud and smeared over the high school hall.

“What’s that supposed to be?” I ask her, changing the subject, wanting to change the mood.

This usually happens, where she’ll break ice that doesn’t really need breaking and then we’ll go on to chat and I’ll do 75 percent of the talking. I’ll leave the class wondering what all I was talking about and why I was talking so much. I guess art class makes me realize just how badly I need to talk to someone. Even Minnie Mouse here.

Kelsey describes the porch on the back of her grandparents’ house, and I see her painting with new appreciation.

“What about yours?”

“This is what I first thought and felt when I walked the hallways of Harrington.”

She laughs in this cute way that makes me want to keep joking around. So I do. Saying nothing really; she’s just being polite, and she’s easy to make laugh. But laughter never gets old to listen to. Ever. And someone smiling at you never gets old either.

It’s a nice break. It’s nice not to be glared at. It’s nice not to be ignored.

It’s nice to just have something …

Normal.

“Do you live in Solitary?”

“Lowden, technically,” she says.

Maybe not having a technical address is a good thing.

“Do you think you’re going to be here next year?” Kelsey asks.

“I really hope so. I mean, I don’t know what I’d do at a school where people actually like me.”

“It’s not all that bad.”

I give her a really?? expression, and she laughs. Maybe she’s not laughing with me but more at me and my expressions.

“It’s not bad all the time,” she says.

“Yeah, right.”

“People can’t help where they’re from.”

She says this in a slightly defensive manner, and when I glance at her she’s looking at her painting.

“I know that,” I say. “Really. It’s just this place, that’s all.”

Kelsey nods, but I think I pushed it a little too far.

The joking stops and my attempts at conversation stall, and I leave the class feeling like the dork I felt like when I walked in.

Like I said, girls.

I mean, come on.

What is their deal?