OH, BOY

(Age Fifteen)

It was a regular school day in tenth grade, fall, with dried leaves on the wind, the start of iced breath in the air. Juno and I burst through the front hall doors, arm in arm, flushed from our lunchtime walk, laughing and talking.

And then I saw him across the foyer—a golden-brown-haired boy standing outside Rhea’s office. He was in profile, studying what looked like a class schedule, and something about him caused me to stop in my tracks.

It wasn’t that he was cute.

It wasn’t that he was obviously new.

It was that, as he turned, and as my eyes registered the facts and details of this well-groomed, well-dressed boy, my mind superimposed another vision, that of a gangly, blemished, geeky-looking boy with bad hair and ill-fitting clothes. The glasses were gone, the skin was clear, everything was different almost to the point of unrecognizability . . . but I knew him.

Isaac.

My insides lurched and tumbled.

I was so incredibly happy to see him, and see him looking so well. I had wondered, all this time, what had happened to him. Worried about him. And here he was, looking just fine. Better than fine.

I was astonished to find him standing there in the foyer of my school all of a sudden, and floored by his transformation. And at the same time that I was trying to process his presence, the physical fact of him brought everything back, and there I was, drowning in a flood of unwelcome memory, feeling again the isolation, the misery of being locked in that closet every single lunch hour, the embarrassment of being forced to kiss in front of a jeering crowd, and the horror of seeing Isaac go down, blood on his face.

And so maybe that’s what Isaac saw, when his eyes met mine—not the happiness I felt at seeing him, but my sudden and sharp reaction to those memories.

Because he’d started to smile, the same smile I’d felt coming when I realized who he was, big and warm and delighted, and then he stopped. His expression changed, darkened. I’d recovered by then and was walking toward him, smiling back, arms open for a hug, even, but he turned abruptly away, headed up the stairs, and disappeared.

I stood there, reeling, feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach.

After that, I didn’t know what to do. Every time I came anywhere near Isaac, he turned away, pretended I didn’t exist. When we were introduced by his “official buddy,” who happened to be Toff, he wouldn’t meet my eyes. It shouldn’t have mattered so much, shouldn’t have hurt me, but it did.

The awkwardness became mutual, and I decided to try his method and just forget about him, pretend he didn’t exist. He obviously didn’t want to be my friend, or even talk to me. Fine. But I obsessed. I got it that he’d seen a funny expression on my face, maybe. But his reaction seemed over-the-top, and I couldn’t even get near him to explain, and anyway I would need to be near him and alone with him, which seemed doubly impossible.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. One day I heard him say he was staying late to meet with the algebra teacher. I told Juno to leave without me, parked myself in front of his locker, and sat with a book, pretending to read. Half an hour later the school was quiet enough that I heard his footsteps before he came around the corner, heard his sharp intake of breath when he saw me.

I waited until he was right in front of me to look up.

“Ingrid. What are you doing?”

“Sitting in front of your locker, looking at a book, Isaac.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice careful. “That’s evident.”

“Evident. Nice word. Wanna sit?” I patted the creaky wood-planked floor beside me.

“No, thanks, I’m good.”

“C’mon, Isaac,” I said, getting to my feet. “Are you just never going to talk to me?”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“Nice word,” he said, and then did a shoulder check. “I don’t want to talk here, Ingrid.”

“Okay, then where?”

“I don’t really want to talk at all.”

“Look, either you talk with me, or I’m going to keep showing up at your locker.”

“That’s going to give people the wrong idea, don’t you think?”

“I don’t care.”

“Oh, sure you don’t,” he snapped.

“What?”

“Can I get in there, please?”

I moved aside, watched him with narrowed eyes as he shoved stuff into his messenger bag and grabbed his coat, put it on, closed and locked the locker.

He started down the hallway and I followed.

“What was that supposed to mean,” I said, “that I would care if people got ‘the wrong idea,’ whatever that is?”

“You care,” he said, not looking at me.

I kept pace with him down the main stairs and into the lobby,where a few students were still loitering. I could tell he wanted to ditch me but there were a few people still around and he couldn’t do it without making a scene. He headed to the front doors and I leapt ahead, pushing them open for him.

“We can talk there,” I said, pointing across the street to a large field surrounded by a running track.

Isaac glanced at me, then frowned. “You don’t have a coat.”

“Sweet of you to consider my comfort,” I said with an edge of sarcasm.

“It’s just a logical fact. No coat equals you will be cold.”

“I’m fine. I’ll go back for it later.”

We crossed at the light and headed through the gap in the fence.

“All right,” Isaac said, starting to walk counterclockwise on the track. “You wanted to talk, talk.”

“I just want to know what . . . I mean first, honestly I want to know how you are and what happened to you, because we went through something and it feels weird not to talk about it. Not to mention that you refuse to talk to me at all, or even acknowledge my existence.”

I stopped, turned to face him, but he looked down at his feet, over my shoulder, anywhere but at my face.

“See? You won’t even look at me. You seem to have this problem with me and it doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s you who has the problem.” His angry eyes suddenly, finally, locked on mine. “You’ve become one of them.”

“One of . . . ? What? I have not.”

“You have. You’re one of them—”

“Oh, is that so?” I cut in. “You see me calling people names, then, and locking them in closets and humiliating them and beating them up? Really?”

“No, but you’ve become a popular person,” he said, with a sneer that didn’t suit him.

“I do have friends, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yeah, and you can’t be hanging around with a guy like me.”

“That makes no sense. That’s absurd.”

“Okay, a guy like the old me. Who is still me, in fact.”

“So . . . you think if you still were . . . what—looking like how you did when you were twelve, I would arbitrarily decide not to be your friend? That’s a ridiculous conclusion, Isaac, based on zero evidence.”

“I have all the evidence I need!” He was almost shouting. “I saw the evidence, Ingrid, and you can say what you want and you can lie your ass off now, but I saw it in your eyes my very first day here. I saw you standing there with your giggling friend and I saw the look in your eyes when you realized who I was.”

“Isaac, I was happy to see you.”

“You weren’t!”

“I was. But I—”

“I saw it! In your eyes—like I was a ghost, or some unwelcome relative who showed up to take a dump in the middle of your new life.” He turned away, started walking so fast around the track, I had to jog to keep up with him. “After all the time I spent remembering you as this brave, ass-kicking girl, and meanwhile all you did was hide; all you did was assimilate.”

I grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop again, and got in front of him.

“Listen,” I said, right up in his face, “having friends is not a crime. Having a chance to be a normal teenager is not a crime. And the friends I have now are nothing like the people who did that to us, and you’ve been at Godark long enough by now to know it.”

“But you haven’t told them—”

“Told them what?”

“That you were . . . that you were like me.”

“You know nothing about what I’ve told them or not told them, Isaac. And you know nothing about what you saw in my eyes, either.”

“So you have told them?”

“It’s not like it’s a disease, Isaac. Or something to be ashamed of. They were assholes. Bullies. They’re the ones you should be mad at, not me.”

He gaped at me, and I continued.

“You expected me to be some kind of banner-waving advocate, is that it? I don’t see you telling everyone all of those sad details either. You don’t want to bring that along with you any more than I did. You want a chance for people to look at you as something other than a victim. You want to be able to look at yourself as something other too. You say I’m hiding? You’ve had a full body makeover, and don’t think I don’t know you’re enjoying every second of being the cute new boy at Godark. I don’t see you refusing to ‘assimilate’ as you call it, or refusing to make friends, so what the hell is your problem with me?”

“I—”

“You want to know what I was thinking, what I felt when I saw you? Yeah, you saw something there. Because just in case you’ve forgotten, we had an awful time, and seeing you brought it back all at once. So excuse me if it took me a millisecond to start jumping for joy, Isaac.”

“Okay, okay.”

“No, not okay. You want me to tell everyone? I can tell them. I happen to believe they’re real friends and nobody would turn on me, or you. Personally, I don’t feel the need to dwell on or share every terrible thing that’s ever happened to me, but if you want me to, I will.”

He kept his eyes trained on some point in the distance.

“C’mon, just say the word.”

Isaac’s eyes met mine then, and held for a long moment. “You mean it,” he said, finally.

“Duh.”

“It’s . . . okay. I mean, you don’t have to.”

“You mean you don’t want me to.”

“No, go ahead.”

“All right, I will,” I said, and started to walk away.

“Okay, I don’t want you to,” he said, and I stopped, turned back to look at him.

“Well, maybe now I want to.”

“I . . . whatever. Do what you want. Just . . . warn me first, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine.”

“Great. Fine,” he said.

My fury started to fade, and suddenly I noticed the wind, felt the cold on my arms, and crossed them over my chest. He looked shell-shocked. He was more fragile than I’d realized, more damaged, maybe, from his experience than I had been from mine. He’d had it worse, and for longer, certainly. I should have been gentler, but I was angry about how he’d treated me, frustrated at how he’d jumped to the worst conclusions about me, and confused by the ache I felt as he held my gaze.

“Next time, Isaac? Before you make assumptions about me based on something you think you see in my eyes?”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you save us the drama and just ask me?”

And with that, I turned and walked away.