PARIAH

(Age Twelve)

Dear Isaac,

You thought I was weird about singing. The fact is, I thought I couldn’t.

I had all these lessons as a kid, and then they stopped. Long story. Anyway, they can’t accurately assess the quality of your voice when you’re really young. For a girl, they don’t know until you’re eleven or twelve if you’ve got something worth training. We were way past lessons, and our musical life, when I got to that age.

In fact, our house was a no-music zone. No one ever said it was a rule or anything; it just happened. Once in a while I’d listen to something, but only when Mom was out, which felt very wild and rebellious, not to mention dangerous.

One of those times, when I was twelve, I had some pop music not just on but blasting full volume in the kitchen, and I was singing along. The song was something embarrassing, I’m sure. I was dancing and going crazy the way you do when you think you’re completely alone. You know, pretend microphone, striking poses, acting like a rock star—blackmail material if anyone had got it on video. But I thought I sounded pretty good.

And then, holy shit, the music was gone and my mom was there, her hand on the power button, my lonely voice suddenly hanging awkwardly in the air.

I stopped.

Her face was ghostly white.

I stood there, gaping. Hot and cold and confused and somehow deeply ashamed. For a second she’d looked so pained, and I didn’t know if it was the music itself, or if it was because my voice sounded horrific, or if it was, instead, because my voice sounded good. All I knew was that it—the moment itself—was so very bad.

She recovered first, and reached out to pat me on the head.

“Well,” she said, clearing her throat, “at least we’ll be spared that.”

“Spared what?” I said.

“The possibility of your having a career as a vocalist,” she said, with a rueful smile.

“Oh,” I said, my humiliation doubling. “I don’t sound good? I mean, I know I don’t sound like you . . . used to . . . but . . .”

I could have sworn . . .

“Trust me, Ingrid,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but . . . that voice of yours . . . is not going to be your path to fame and fortune.”

I died a little then. My mom knew about voices, so if she didn’t think it was good, it wasn’t.

“But that’s just as well, isn’t it?” Mom continued brightly. “Because look at where all of that got me? Poverty, instability, gruelingly hard work, and then a broken heart. You deserve better. You’re smart, and you have a world of choices open to you. Don’t be sad, darling. If you want to sing in the kitchen, or the shower or whatever, you go right ahead.”

I couldn’t, though. Not after that.

And now I think she lied to me. Or, if it wasn’t exactly a lie, it was a deliberate misdirection, a deception. And look at me here on this trip, thinking I was going to camp, speaking of deception, if that’s what it was. For my own good, supposedly, both times. But I don’t know. . . . If you deceive someone for their own good, how can any real good come of it?

I hate the feeling of being angry. I don’t want to be angry with her. It hurts.

A lot of things hurt.

By the way, I’ve been thinking: I wish I had seen you naked.

And vice versa.

How’s that for random and shockingly honest?

Yeah, yeah, it’s my true voice. And it’s staying here, in this book.

Wistfully yours,
Ingrid

I first met Isaac in a closet, and not the metaphorical kind.

It was seventh grade and we were locked in a utility closet at lunchtime at our lovely school.

No lights.

With a bunch of eighth graders heckling us from the other side of the door, because, wow, shoving people into closets was fun.

Isaac was a geek of the quintessential variety, complete with horribly fitting clothes, straw-like hair that looked like his parents cut it with an actual bowl over his head, blotchy freckles, glasses, braces, and a fabulous brain combined with a socially suicidal eagerness to show his mental prowess in every conceivable academic subject.

I was new. Or I was considered new, not having been noticed in any way whatsoever the year before, when I’d actually been new, and apparently that was reason enough for people looking for someone to pick on.

This closet thing had been happening to me a lot, but I assumed it was a first for Isaac, who was gasping and shivering. I backed myself up against one wall, trying to give us both space.

“Sorry about this,” I said.

“Not your fault,” Isaac said.

We’d never spoken before. When you already have problems, it doesn’t help to align yourself with people who have the same problems. It would be nice to think you can team up and that would alleviate the situation, but based on my observations during my first year and a half of “real” school, this wasn’t the case.

“What do we do?” Isaac said.

I shrugged, then realized that of course he couldn’t see it. “Usually I just wait until lunch ends. And hope at some point it will all be over.”

“But they said they want proof that we—”

“Hey, Ingrid, are you on your knees?” came a shout from the other side of the door.

“They can’t make us do anything,” I said through suddenly gritted teeth.

“No, I just thought . . . maybe we could mess ourselves up? So we look—”

“Mess ourselves up? No. Eww.”

“Okay! I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

“I’m not offended. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just so sick of these Neanderthals.”

“Okay, but you sound mad.”

“Well, I’m locked in a closet against my will. Again. And I ran out of time to eat my lunch in advance, so I’m hungry. And the people at this school are awful and unoriginal. And this is our local school, so I can’t leave until ninth grade, and then apparently they’ll all be at the same high school too. And I had a better life than this, once. So actually yes, I am mad. But not at you.”

“Oh, okay,” Isaac said, clearing his throat and not sounding okay at all himself. “I guess it could be worse. They could be beating us up, instead.”

“Wow. That’s so comforting.”

“Of course they still might.”

“Oh my God.”

“Sorry. I’ll shut up.”

“Thank you.” I endured the silence for forty-two counted seconds before I gave in and asked, “Have they? Uh, beaten you up?”

Isaac made another gasping/choking sound.

“Never mind; you don’t have to tell me.”

After that we stood, breathing in the cleaning-product fumes and trying not to listen to the catcalls and abuse from outside the door. It was loud out there, but inside the closet was its own little sound capsule and this meant I could hear Isaac’s breath accelerating and a wheeze starting.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Other than the obvious?”

“Yeah.”

“I am showing manifestations of not liking . . . I don’t like . . . small closed spaces.”

“You’re claustrophobic?”

“Whatever. The point is, if I were going to choose a place to be forced to supposedly, uh, hook up with someone, this would not be it.”

“Not to mention we’re twelve.”

“That too.”

“So . . . are you going to freak out? Pass out? What?”

“I don’t know. I’m . . . trying to stay . . .” he said, his voice coming out half strangled. “But these assholes . . . these Neanderthals, although I think it’s actually an insult to the Neanderthals . . .”

“True.”

“They’re making my life difficult already and now this is . . . just . . . great.”

Standing there in the dark I realized a few things.

1. This might be some kind of test, and if I were smart (plus evil and ruthless), I would pass it by finding a way to throw Isaac under the bus—humiliate him, cut him down, thus giving myself a chance at a better social status and perhaps a reprieve from the closet lunches and the rest of it. After all, Isaac’s status was established and fixed, whereas mine wasn’t. At least I hoped it wasn’t.
2. On a cosmic, karmic, “being a decent person” level, this was a test of a different kind.
3. It was unlikely I could pass both of these tests.
4. That sucked.

Meanwhile, his distress was ramping up.

“Isaac, what can I do?”

He didn’t answer.

“How do you get yourself out of this? Okay, you probably need to . . . breathe. I mean, breathe slower. Meditate or something.”

“Sometimes”—he gasped—“I do math.”

“Of course you do. All right, do some math.”

“I can’t. I can’t get started.”

“One plus one is—”

Isaac half gasped, half chuckled. “It has to be harder than that . . . formulas . . . fractions . . .”

“Well, sorry, I’m crap at math,” I said, then reached across the small space. “Give me your hands. Or your arms.”

“Okay.”

I took him by the forearms, squeezed, then slid my hands to his and held them. They were ice-cold.

“I can’t lose it in front of those people,” he said.

“You’re not going to.” He was going to, at this rate. “Listen, what about music? Doesn’t music stimulate the math part of the brain?”

I dug into my memory banks, pulled up my favorite Bach cello suite, and started to hum, taking it slow because at regular tempo the notes were too fast for humming. I kept hold of his arms, stood close, and envisioned pitching my voice so it would go straight to his brain and his nervous system.

“Keep going,” he said when it was done.

He sounded a little calmer, so I moved on to the next thing that came to mind—a Verdi aria. At first I was humming, but soon I was singing the words.

It was working. He’d stopped gasping for air and his hands weren’t so cold anymore, so I just kept going. I sang a folk song, some Mozart, Puccini, more Bach, mostly from Margot-Sophia’s repertoire or my own music lessons. It was all still there inside me and it felt like finding water in the desert. Although I never forgot about the assholes on the other side of the door, the music helped me hook into something that caused me to just not care, that caused me to remember the very big world outside this hellish school. And anyway, it was too loud out there for them to even hear.

“Don’t stop,” Isaac said when I paused at the end of the lament from Dido and Aeneas.

And so I chose another.

And another.

And then one more . . .

Until all around us was just music and everywhere else a tight silence . . . a pause, a seeming break in space and time, like the moment between one breath and another . . .

And then, when I’d run out of everything I knew offhand, and Isaac was calm and breathing slowly, I stopped.

“Better?”

“Holy cow,” he said. “You . . . you sing.”

“No, I just know some songs.”

“If you say so. But it helped. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I didn’t think they’d hear me, but . . . it’s pretty quiet out there all of a sudden . . .”

“You still helped.” He squeezed my hands; I squeezed back. He hummed a couple of bars from the cello suite, and I smiled at him across the darkness.

And then the door flew open, bringing blazing fluorescent light, colder, fresher air, and faces.

“Oh, look, they’re holding hands,” Elizabeth, queen of the assholes, crowed. She was the big evil, and not the typical two-faced, maybe-dumb, pretty-girl evil—she was viciously smart, preppy, and sporty, with long curly brown hair, fair skin, freckles, and piercing blue eyes. She wasn’t pretty, and she wasn’t trying to be, but she had an amazing laugh and a magnetic personality. She was trying to rule the world, and she would probably succeed. She was the one who’d noticed me in early September and decided to make me her target.

“They had a romantic date,” she sneered now, “and he made her sing.”

Yep, they’d heard me. Uh-oh.

“What’d ya do to make her sing, big boy?” said Zac, Elizabeth’s nightmare boyfriend, yanking Isaac into the hallway and throwing a fake-friendly arm over his shoulders.

“You must have some hot moves to make a girl sing like that,” Elizabeth added. “And you . . . such a songbird.”

“That’s just how she begs for it,” Zac said, and all around them their minions cackled.

“That’s just how she gets her mouth ready,” said one of Zac’s nasty followers, earning screeches of approval.

My eyes met Isaac’s and I could see he was angry, ready to fight. I gave a subtle shake of my head.

Don’t.

If we kept our mouths shut and let them have their stupid jokes, maybe it would be over with nothing worse happening.

Maybe.

“She’s a songbird and they’re lovebirds . . .” continued Zac in the same asinine manner, and because he was Zac, everyone laughed.

But then Isaac broke in with: “Oh come on, that wasn’t even funny.”

Crap. I closed my eyes for a second, and by the time I opened them, Zac’s fist was connecting with Isaac’s gut, and Isaac was going down, kicks and punches landing on him all the way.

“Stop!” I shouted, but no one listened.

“Get up, lovebird,” Zac said, hauling Isaac up from behind and passing him off to two burly guys who’d come forward as if summoned by mind-speak. “Hold him.”

At the same time, someone grabbed me from behind and shoved me forward and up against Isaac.

“Show us, lovebirds,” Elizabeth said. “Show us your love.”

I only came up to just below Isaac’s chin, so I couldn’t see his face.

“How about a big, sloppy kiss? Make your loverboy feel better,” Zac said. “C’mon.”

I’d never kissed anyone, at least not in the romantic sense.

Not that this was—at all—in the romantic sense. It was the opposite of romantic.

I could have refused, or helped myself by saying something nasty to Isaac in that moment, but I was way past being able to do that and still live with myself. So I went up on my tiptoes and gave him a superfast peck, aiming for the lips and landing the kiss half on, half off.

“Tongue, tongue, tongue,” they chanted.

I felt my cheeks heating up and tears prickling at the backs of my eyes. I had no idea how to even do what they were asking and was generally grossed out by the concept and certainly never wanted to try it in front of a group of hostile kids whose sole purpose was to humiliate me.

But they’d already been beating Isaac up, and things might get worse.

“C’mon, songbird.” It was Elizabeth, standing behind me, talking right into my ear. “He’s soooo sexy.”

I tried to shove away from her, but that only brought me closer up against Isaac, who was looking panicked again. If he didn’t like closed spaces, he probably wasn’t dealing well with this chanting, crushing mob, either.

Our eyes met and he said, “Just do it.”

Grim-faced, he leaned down and I got onto my toes again.

The crowd was laughing, jeering, and people were still holding our arms, pushing us together from all sides.

We inched closer and I tried to pretend we were alone, back in the closet.

With music.

Then Zac was there, a hand on the back of each of our heads, and in one powerful move he smashed our faces together and held them there.

Our lips may have met in the process, but so did our teeth, noses, and foreheads.

I was still dazed, head ringing, when he let us go, but then I saw blood coming from Isaac’s left nostril, and the pain and humiliation landed hard.

That’s when I flipped.

It’s a bit of a blur, but I remember a surge of fury and the feeling of my elbows flying and my feet stomping and kicking and I think I may have been screaming. I’m not sure I hurt anyone, but I definitely surprised them . . . and hurt myself, because it turns out kicking and punching people actually hurts the person doing it.

I remember tasting blood in my mouth and then thinking that this was it, I was so dead.

And then the bell rang, and there were teachers coming out of the staff room down the hall, and like magic, everyone disappeared.

Except us. Isaac and I, bruised and dazed, stayed at the end of the hallway.

“Are you okay?” I asked him. “Of course not—you’re bleeding. I’m taking you to the nurse.”

“I need to get to geography.”

“Seriously, you’re worried about class?” I wrapped an arm around him and propelled him along the corridor.

“Well . . . yes,” he said, huffing along beside me “This stuff happens to me all the time. Not exactly this, I guess. Anyway, it’s not going to stop me from going to class.”

“It is today,” I said, as we arrived in front of the closed office door.

“Wait, Ingrid,” Isaac rasped. “You can’t tell him. How this happened, I mean.”

“Uh, yeah, my death wish only goes so far.”

Mr. Moore, the school nurse, cool-looking in red jeans and a coordinating red-and-burnt-orange button-down, took one look at Isaac and ushered him into the outer office.

“You need me, too?” Mr. Moore asked me, looking me over and then meeting my eyes with an assessing gaze.

“I’m fine.”

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“He ran into a door,” I said.

“Huh. All right.” He didn’t believe me, but I guess he could tell that was all I was going to say. “Get to class, then.”

I gave an encouraging smile to Isaac, waved, then spun away, moving as fast as I could without breaking into a run. I made it to my locker, put everything I could fit into my backpack, shoved my coat on, walked down the hallway, pushed my way out the doors, and let the November wind freeze my tears on the long walk home.

I wasn’t going to spend another second in that school, and it would be three years before I saw Isaac again.

I was lucky, when I told Mom in no uncertain terms that I would never go back to that school, to have Andreas around. We were at an impasse. Mom was unwilling to pull me out of school without another school lined up, and half determined that I should go back and gut it out regardless, and I was desperately trying to hold my ground despite having no viable alternative plan of my own.

Andreas, however, was an incorrigible fixer. It wasn’t just what he did in his coaching business; it was who he was. Because of this, he had a lot of connections. And it so happened that Andreas knew of a school—a very special school—and Mom agreed that we could at least check it out.

Godark Academy is housed in a former church that was later converted into a building with two theaters, and finally into a school. It is a crumbling gothic folly, drafty and creaky, with an old heating system that produces “boiling,” “freezing,” and nothing in between, and it holds a corner of the West End with ghostly charm.

It’s an alternative public school with a smallish student population all in grades six through twelve. Entrance was via lottery and then interview, but Andreas knew the principal and thought he might get me in via a “humanitarian” plea.

“What, like I’m a refugee?”

“Like you are a very special person to me,” he said.

My throat tightened. It was a big thing for him to say.

Upon entering the lobby I gazed up and up, eyes landing on stained-glass windows. I felt the gray stone walls rising up around me, the many-bulbed chandelier floating eerily in the space above. I breathed in and out, feeling the musty, old-book-scented air drop deep into my lungs, soothing me.

It felt like Hogwarts on a budget.

It felt like a downtrodden opera house.

It felt like home.

I stood, my feet on the stone-tiled floor, and wished to sprout roots so I could stay.

I glanced up at Mom, wondering if this was evoking the past for her, too, and if so, whether it would be in a good way, or not.

“I believe the rate of university acceptance upon graduation is quite high,” Andreas murmured, seeming to know already what would hold the most weight for Mom. Her attitude toward the arts—all of them—had taken a big hit since we moved to Canada, and in every conversation we’d had about education and career, she had stressed practicality and stability. I was to get fabulous marks and plan for a smart career. Andreas had obviously taken this in.

“Ninety-six percent university acceptance, actually,” replied a smooth new voice.

I turned to discover the voice came from a white-haired, swan-like personage of difficult-to-determine gender, whom Andreas introduced as Rhea. (Ray-uh. I soon realized she was a she.) “Rhea is Head of School—the principal, in other words.”

I watched Mom as she and Rhea shook hands and studied each other, each seeming to sense some kind of je ne sais quoi in the other.

There was to be a tour and a description of the curriculum and philosophy of the school, and then an interview. I didn’t need a tour. I would have taken any school besides the one I was in. But as we went through, popping in and out of various classrooms and so on, I got all good vibes. Students waved at us and smiled at me, and even visually, there was diversity here; a variety of races, plus people didn’t all dress the same, or do their hair the same, et cetera.

I was transferred within the week, and matched with a “buddy” on my first day.

“The buddy thing sounds cheesy, but it’s cheesy on purpose,” said my “buddy,” a girl named Juno, with carrot hair and giant green eyes. “Basically Rhea’s picked me to be your insta-friend. And she’s a good judge of character, so there’s an excellent chance we’ll get along.”

“That’s . . . okay; that’s good,” I said.

“Rhea has an instinct. She can do friendship voodoo, in a good way.”

“Great.” I liked Juno. I could tell she was smart, and she had a bluntness that I appreciated. I so badly wanted to make a good impression, which meant I had to figure out a way to be friendly, cool, and not desperate.

“I’m responsible for your having a smooth start. My job is to introduce you around, help you get oriented, and make sure nobody messes with you.”

“Messes with me?” I must have looked panicked, because Juno started shaking her head.

“No, no, like, someone might give you the wrong directions on purpose or whatever—stupid things, trying to be funny. But they won’t. And don’t worry; it’s not like you have to stay friends with me if you don’t want to.”

“No, I . . . I want to. I mean, if you want to.”

“Of course. But I mean, although so far I like you quite a lot, I won’t be heartbroken.”

“Does everyone get assigned someone like this? Or is it . . .” Just the freaks who’ve been pariahs at other schools . . . ? I knew Andreas had told Rhea everything he knew and I hoped she would keep it private and I could have a fresh start.

“Anyone new, and anyone who starts late,” Juno said.

“Oh, good. All right. And thank you.”

“By the way, you have to be ready, if we’re going to be friends, to help me deal with some boy drama,” she says.

“Boy drama? Like a boyfriend?”

“No.” Juno made a face. “A boy who’s a friend—my best friend, growing up, but he’s been weird since, I don’t know, last year? He’ll be acting normal one minute, and like he doesn’t even know me the next—you know, pretending he’s too cool for me. And I will not tolerate that garbage from a boy I used to play dress-up with. So I’ll be like, ‘Toff, I’ve seen you naked a hundred times and you once pooped in my bathwater!’ right in front of his friends, which embarrasses him almost to death, which causes him to act like even more of a jerk toward me.”

“Wow,” I said, not sure whether to laugh. “So what do you need from me? Talk to him when you’re talking to him, ignore him when you’re not?”

“Sure. And . . .”

“And . . . ?”

“If he ever says anything about me . . .”

“I doubt he’s going to talk to me, but of course I would report back to you if he ever did,” I said, hoping this was what she wanted.

And it must have been, because Juno smiled, then suddenly reached out and gave me a hug, and I hugged her back and tried not to cry from relief.