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1985
Wicasa Bluffs High School
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SOPHOMORE KATIE ANDERN rounded the corner on a mission to retrieve books for the librarian. Shadows of autumn leaves flickered along the quiet hallway.
“Crap,” she said under her breath.
Lucy Van Buren stood in front of an open locker further down the passageway, decked out in tight black pants with an over-abundance of straps and a big torn blouse with Japanese lettering swashed across it. Staring into a mirror glued onto her locker door, Lucy shaped her hair into a Flock of Seagulls affair by combing her bangs down and the sides up like wings.
Katie weighed slowing versus speeding up. She glanced down at herself to see if her own clothes were in order and brushed the hair from her eyes.
Everyone knew Lucy Veebee. Strikingly pretty, with dark hair and dark eyes, the senior girl stalked the halls whenever she liked, pulling pranks on the cheerleaders, performing dubious magic tricks for the middle-schoolers, teaching the senior boys how to moonwalk. She often sported various colored kilts and talked in different accents. And if the popular girls made fun of this oddity spooking about, chances were a football jock would rise up to defend her. The rumor was that her brother had died in a shipwreck and her father had become a drunken tyrant. Up until that year, when Principal Hamm retired, Lucy was quite possibly WBHS’s first poster child for tolerance.
Katie opted to slow her pace, gulping, and kept her head down. Her shoes betrayed her with a squeak.
Lucy turned, her heavily-kohled eyes flashing with recognition. Katie knew what that look was; she’d seen it from boys lately. It made the hairs of her arms stand up and heat rise in her cheeks.
“Ooh, it’s wee Katie Andirons,” Lucy said in a dodgy Scottish brogue and cocked her head.
“Andern,” Katie mumbled.
“Hold on. You gotta hall pass?”
Katie halted in her tracks with a sigh.
After nearly a decade of mostly going unnoticed by anyone other than her classmates, Katie had begun earning attention from boys like fellow farm nerd Gary Lindstrom, and for some strange reason this odd girl. During P.E., Lucy would remove her softball glove and set it on Katie’s head, leaving it there until she had to play outfield. After a few weeks of this, Katie felt an odd sensation in her chest, a perceptible thrill at being the victim of such a unique form of hazing. You just couldn’t be sure about upperclassmen. It was never good to be too defensive, nor was it a good idea to kiss ass. But the fact that all this newfound attention coincided with Katie’s parents letting her switch from eyeglasses to contact lenses, and from training bras to B cups? Annoyingly predictable.
Newly emboldened, Katie asked, “Why do you always call me that?”
“I dunno.” Lucy peered back into the mirror and cocked her head left, then right. “Suits you I guess.”
“Aren’t they just those stupid poles that hold wood in the fireplace?”
“I wouldn’t call them stupid. But yeah, they keep the fire in.” Lucy’s reflection wiggled eyebrows and she turned back around. “Alright, cough it up, Andirons.” She twiddled fingers.
Katie presented the small square sheet the librarian had written on. Could Lucy see it fluttering in her hands?
“Lemme take a look.”
Katie let go, immediately regretting it.
Lucy chuckled. “Thanks, I’ll just switch the name here.”
“Hey. Give it.”
Lucy turned, placing her body between the slip of paper and its owner. She cackled dramatically wicked, her spiky mullet flicking strands left and right.
Katie’s heart galloped. The librarian was not to be trifled with, but that didn’t stop the laugh from slipping out. She grabbed Lucy’s shoulder, felt the warmth underneath, and they stood there, eyes locked, for an infinite second. “Seriously, please.”
“Eeeeee!” A screech from down the hall interrupted her pathetic attempt at outrage.
One of the seventh graders tore out of the girls’ restroom, lips peeled back to reveal a mouthful of braces.
“Oh my god, somebody tortured a mouse in there,” the girl said. She clutched at Lucy and pleaded, “I think it’s still alive. The tail is moooving.”
What kind of heinous cretin would torture a mouse, Katie wondered. Although she knew very well that there were girls in WBHS that would rip the ears off a bunny rabbit—smokers, loose girls, tanning bed girls.
Lucy raised an eyebrow at Katie, a Sherlock Holmesian scowl that instantly made Katie feel like Lucy’s sidekick in front of this middle-schooler. Surely, this school-wide emergency would provide a proper excuse for the librarian.
Whatever has happened to this mouse, we shall attend to it.
To the bathroom they went, the seventh-grader hiding behind Lucy and Katie.
The girl pointed at one of the toilet stalls. Lucy slowly pushed the door open with a creak. She looked down at the toilet and motioned over her shoulder at Katie. Katie eased forward, imagining enough blood and guts to fill a large marsupial. She peered wincing into the stall, past the black horseshoe toilet seat and into the bowl, the sickeningly sweet air freshener stinging her eyes. Lodged in the basin was a spent tampon, the water’s ambient current waving its string like a tail.
Lucy slowly turned to Katie then, with searching eyes—eyes that said, whatever you do, do not laugh.
Katie’s mouth twitched, but she blinked calmly back.
“Poor little guy,” the seventh-grader said from over their shoulders. “Shouldn’t we tell someone?”
Lucy seemed to consider this.
What the kid needed was a real heart-to-heart. A couple of older girls who would take her out to the baseball diamond, sit her down and give it to her like an After School Special. That’s what Katie would have liked when she was twelve. Back then, a lot of parents left it to the school to do the work and health class was far too clinical.
Lucy raised her buckled boot, stamped the handle and the toilet flushed with a thunderous whoosh. It kept on flushing well after the fact, the tampon halfway to Iowa by the time it finished. Then she threw an arm around the kid and walked her out the door.
“He’s in mouse heaven now,” Lucy said with a low, official voice.
“But—”
“We’ll report it. You should get back to class.”
The girl nodded and sniffled and they watched her go.
Then they burst out in snickers.
“Mouse heaven?”
Lucy shrugged, leaned against the tiled wall. “You going to homecoming?”
Was a fake-out coming? Katie weighed her choices. “I don’t—”
“Yeah, lame.”
“I mean, I might.”
“Yeah, me too. Maybe we could hang out.”
“Okaaay?” Was this a joke? Was an insult coming? “Oh man,” Katie yelped, realizing she had wasted nine minutes of a ten-minute task and took off in a panic.
“Don’t forget your pass.”
“Thanks.” She sprinted back, snatched it from Lucy, and ran down the hall.
“No problem, Andirons. No problem.”
“Andern,” Katie said unable to hide her grin.