I paused at the taps this morning, outside the gym, and a voice warned me, “You don’t want to drink that.”
I looked up with my lips all wet and pursed over the bubbler. It was Caleb Brack. Cute. Popular. Self-centred.
Just another overrated, narcissistic jerk, I thought knowingly.
The school is full of them.
Heck, the world is full of them.
Caleb is seldom alone. Generally, girls stick to him like maggots to a buried corpse.
I looked past him, expecting to see the whole clan gathered there, prepared for conflict. But Caleb had come solo.
“Why?” I asked him, without emotion.
“It tastes like something that came out of the boghouse. It’ll probably kill you.”
“Great,” I said, and drank thirstily.
“Have you got a death wish or something?” he joked.
I straightened up, wiped my mouth. Then I turned and walked away, unable to stomach a conversation with him.
“Do I smell or something?” he called.
“Do I not smell?” I retorted, thinking of all the times he had snubbed or ridiculed me.
He jogged to my side, grinning imperviously. “You must have a death wish, you know. I’ve seen you light up.”
“I’m late for class.”
I didn’t like being so close to him. His presence revived a plethora of bad memories that I had difficulty shaking off.
“So am I,” he said. “Don’t you want to know where?”
“Where what?”
“Where I’ve seen you light up.”
“Doesn’t faze me,” I said, but of course it did.
“At the lake,” he said to me. “At night.”
I gave him only a cursory glance, knowing full well he deserved less than that. He deserved less than a scrap of my attention.
He was watching me. Watching me with those deep-set, coal-black eyes, a trait that—along with his too-big smile and unruly dark hair—makes every girl he meets go weak at the knees.
But I am insusceptible to him. He is about as irresistible as a slice of baked manure pie.
Once upon a time, if given the opportunity to, I could easily have shot him. Shot him and people just like him. People like Kitty and Rhoda, for instance, who are never nice to people like me unless they’re after something. He had some nerve striking up a conversation with me, acting all civil and pleasant. I was rude and resentful. Detached.
“You should be more careful, you know,” he went on, like he cared. “You don’t know who could be out there with you.”
I stopped walking and answered flatly, “You could.”
Caleb shrugged. His eyes are like two bottomless wells. I felt I was staring through tiny portholes into space—I probably was. His skin is pale, unmarred by puberty. The feeble sunlight revealed a tincture of freckles on his nose, some dappling his cheeks.
I don’t know why I bothered checking out the rest of him, but the guy is, and certainly looks, rich.
The majority of Little Creek High’s student population comes from broken homes—either the families are broken, or the buildings that house them—but Caleb’s family and his house remain very much intact. He lives in a well-to-do area replete with pompous snobs. The house is a three-storey labyrinth. The fence that surrounds it is like the great Berlin Wall, dividing one realm from another.
“In that case,” he said, “you were lucky.”
I responded with an icy stare. “Was I?”
I resumed walking. Caleb followed.
He said, “You’ve changed a lot. Everybody’s noticed.”
“I bet they have.”
What was I supposed to say? Thanks, Caleb. I’m really flattered.
I have always been noticed in one way or another. Although, usually in one way and not the other.
“I overhear some of them talking about you,” he said, like he is the outsider. But I knew better than that. He’d been talking about me as much as, if not more than, the others.
“Really,” I said disinterestedly.
“Yeah.”
“And you’re the pathetic go-between, hoping to suck information from me,” I returned in a manner that was tantamount to rudeness. “I don’t know what it is that you want me to tell you, except that my life is none of your business—yours or theirs.”
“Don’t be like that. I’m just trying to be friendly.”
“Friendly?” I riposted. “Do you even know the meaning of the word ‘friendly’? For that matter, do you know the meaning of the words ‘genuinely’ and ‘phoney’? Because that’s what you are. You’re not trying to be genuinely phoney. You are genuinely phoney. Get lost!”
Caleb was visibly shocked.
Good, I thought, feeling satisfied.
I turned and darted up the stairs, desperate to get away from him. He made me feel things that both disgusted and empowered me—rage, it was almost intoxicating. It seemed to rejuvenate me, like a breath of clean country air.
But I was uncomfortably aware of the hand I dragged along the railing; it was trembling.
I was only filled with a small sense of accomplishment. It will always feel good to snub one of them, but it will never be enough.
Breathless, I entered the biology lab. Mr Grills was already positioned behind his desk, stapling sheets of paper together. He looked up as I entered. I expected him to look back down again, to be more interested in his stapling, but his chin remained in the ‘up’ position.
I felt his eyes on me as I crossed the room and took my seat.
A new student? Hang on. Is that Justice? It can’t be. Can it?
After several fluctuating heartbeats, I looked up and met his concentrated gaze, composing my features so that I appeared almost indifferent to him. But inside, I still hadn’t got over my confrontation with Caleb Brack. I was experiencing the after-effects. I was shaking like a leaf about to dissociate itself from its branch, and all too soon I felt my anger subsiding. I was left feeling vulnerable again.
Stomach churning like a meat grinder, I quickly looked away from him. I once heard Kitty call Mr Grills a sleaze. According to her he sits at an elevated desk because, from that particular height, he has a more favourable view of our cleavage. Which is preposterous, considering that none of us displays any cleavage. Our uniform doesn’t permit it. I think she’s just trying to start a juvenile rumour as a way of getting back at him for not flirting with her like every other guy does.
I like him. He’s six-feet-tall, broad-shouldered and thewy. His dark wavy hair is shoulder-length, not thick and luxuriant, but thin, shiny and soft-looking. If you stand close enough to him, like most girls try to do, you tend to smell his shampoo before his aftershave, although more often than not he likes to keep his hair tied back in a ponytail. Whenever he’s lecturing, some of it can’t help but fall across his forehead, over his startling blue eyes. His age is a question mark. He could be thirty, maybe less.
Unlike some people I know, Mr Grills has a brain and he uses it. He makes science interesting.
Class began, as always, with Mr Grills requesting the answer to a question on the revision sheet. Prior to conducting the lectures, he likes us to take the opportunity to pore over the prescribed text, to dip into the subject on our own initiative so we have a rough idea what he’s on about.
“Will somebody please tell me what current electricity is?”
I raised my hand.
He smiled. “Yes…Justice.”
“It’s the movement of charged particles through a material.”
“And what are these charged particles called?”
“Electrons,” I answered.
“Thank you, Justice. And the materials that electrons pass through? What are these called? Somebody else, please.
Jacob?”
“What?”
“What?” mocked Mr Grills. “Niveen?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Gary?”
“Beats me.”
Mr Grills arched an eyebrow. “I get the impression that many things beat you, Mr Gibbons.”
A number of students laughed. Someone even applauded him.
Unaffectedly, Mr Grills moved up the aisle and paused at my desk. “Justice,” he said, acknowledging me without actually looking.
“Conductors,” I answered confidently.
He ardently tapped my desk with his index finger. “Right again.”
Mr Grills made us pair up to complete a practical investigation on electrical conductivity in water and methanol. Not surprisingly, I was the odd one out, the leftover, the reject. He threw me together with Law and a petite girl with rust-coloured hair named Jessi Jumelet. Combined, they still don’t have half the IQ I do and they know it. So it wasn’t uncanny that they didn’t object to my being partnered with them.
A majority of the time I went off and did the work on my own while the two of them mucked about with friends. I can’t say I minded. As always, I completed the task before anybody else did. I did the experiment, listed my findings and cleaned up after myself, and had maybe twenty minutes to spare. Twenty minutes to sit alone, reflecting on my aloneness.
Halfway through, Law was thoughtful enough to ask me how I was doing. “Do you need some help, Justice?”
He called me Justice. He’s never called me that, I thought.
“No,” I replied stiltedly. “I’m fine.”
Mr Grills came over, as I was busy jotting down my conclusion. He smiled down at me. His limpid blue eyes fastened on my bleary ones until I felt compelled to smile back. Then he moved on without saying anything. Without either mentioning or questioning the fact that I was doing the work on my own.
He respects me, I thought. He knows I’m capable.
Just then, giggling erupted from the front of the room.
I gazed across the room and saw Kitty and Rhoda sitting with their legs propped up on a table, displaying themselves like objects. They kept looking back and forth between Mr Grills and me and whispering to each other. And yes, they were definitely laughing.
What’s that all about? I wondered.
Forget it; I don’t want to know.
But I found out, anyway. Kitty made sure of it.
After class she cornered me out in the corridor. Her murky green eyes were very wide, yet they slanted discerningly like the eyes of a tiger observing its prey. I had my back to a row of man-sized lockers. I wanted to yank one open and jump right in, but I fought the urge to do so.
“The old pervert looked at Justice and got a stiffy,” Kitty remarked derisively.
“What?”
“You do know what a stiffy is, don’t you?” asked Rhoda.
“I bet she doesn’t,” said Kitty. “I bet she’s as pure as smack when it comes to guys.”
They tossed their heads back and laughed at me some more. I forced my way through them. I ran into a startled Mr Grills but kept on going. Everything around me started to spin. People’s faces merged and grew big and sinister-looking.
I ran outside. I ran to my hiding place behind the textiles room. I parted a large bush and threw up what little food I had in me, splattering leaves and even a small chrysalis. My stomach seems to want to reject everything. No wonder I’m feeling faint all of the time. The clothes I bought last Friday and Monday are already loose on me.
I choked down a couple of gluten-free apricot cookies and sipped unchilled water, but I didn’t feel any better. My hands shook as I lit a cigarette. And as I puffed discontentedly on it, I found myself wondering about Caleb Brack. Wondering also about Mr Grills, and if it was true that he got an erection—because of me. I kind of hoped it was true.
Human Development was next. The class gathered in the library’s discussion room to watch a doco on body image. It was just what I needed, to hear about social stereotypes, and to be reminded that we are pressured to look and behave a certain way in order to ‘fit in’. Tell me something I don’t know. I especially enjoyed the segment titled, ‘Social Prejudice’.
Caleb Brack picked the seat next to mine, and all throughout the movie he kept throwing sideways glances at me. He made me feel cramped. Claustrophobic. I kept shifting uncomfortably, gripping the chair in a way that would stop me from bolting out of the room.
When it was over and the lights came back on, Ms Glossy asked us what we thought about it. I surprised myself—and the others—by saying, “It just goes to show how malleable we are. Almost everything we do, we do for others, to please others. We want their approval.”
“What does ‘malleable’ mean?” someone asked.
“Easily influenced,” said Ms Glossy, rolling her eyes. “You’re right, Justice. And it’s sad, really, because we exist in a society that demands perfection. Few of us— very few—can actually deliver.” The bell went, interrupting her. Everyone stood. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Before you all leave—homework.” Everyone groaned. “I want you all to recall a situation you were in that consequently lowered or boosted your self-esteem.”
Easy, I thought. There are about a zillion of the former that I can recount, very few of the latter.
“You don’t have to write it down,” she added. “Just think about it and report back.”
The class filed outside into the foyer. I walked out with Caleb in tow. I claimed my bag and was about to leave when he intercepted me.
“Ever consider speaking in English?” he asked me.
“Ever consider learning it?” I quipped.
Undeterred, he said, “What you said is true.”
After hearing an inconsiderable ten words from him I was already bored. “Oh?”
“The stuff we do in life, we do them to please others. Always.”
“Not always.”
“Yeah? Who haven’t you wanted to please?”
“Just about everybody. And I’ve done a superb job of it.”
“What about your folks? You want to please them, don’t you?”
“It’s inherent. Like bad genes.” I jostled my bag, impatient to leave. “Would you mind stepping out of my way?”
“Wouldn’t mind a cigarette,” he commented. “Don’t have one on me, though.”
“That’s fascinating.”
“They say they’re addictive.”
“They say that a stalker’s habits are addictive,” I remarked impudently.
Caleb’s grin was bent out of shape, as if hacked by a blunt saw. “Yeah? I wouldn’t know.”
“I’m in a hurry,” I told him.
“Maybe I could meet you at the park tonight,” he said.
“What for?”
“We could share a smoke.”
Not trying to be funny, I said, “I have germs.”
“So do I.”
“I don’t like to share.”
“That’s okay. I’ll bring my own.”
“I’m busy.”
“On a school night?”
“Ever heard of a compulsory thing called homework?”
“Compulsory? Really? And all this time I was doing it because I could think of nothing better.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I just bet.”
“How long will it take for you to do a bit of homework? I’ll meet you there at ten o’clock.”
“No, Caleb.”
He started to move backwards down the steps. “By the little pier.”
“Are you deaf or just completely obtuse?”
“You might want to consider wearing a ski suit,” he said. “Brrr.”
“I won’t—”
“Ten!” he shouted.
And then he was gone.