Downcast (7 page)

Zack glanced at me, and then his gaze swung to the others. His lips tightened a fraction before grinning, edging the expression toward a grimace. Part of me recoiled seeing this, worried he was going to join in and torment me as well.

"That's nice," he said evenly. "Now, if you don't mind, I need to get to my locker."

The others might not have an honors-level class among them, but they weren't dumb. They heard the meaning in his voice and skedaddled. Befuddled, I watched them go, barely aware that I was now gasping for air.

Massive arms came around me and crushed me in a giant hug. It was like being hugged by a block of cement with battering rams for arms. Zack rubbed my back for a moment and kissed the top of my head. He then held me at arm's length and looked into my eyes.

"You okay?" he asked.

I nodded, my vocal cords apparently still locked in a death spiral with the urge to cry.

He frowned slightly and leaned in. His hands on my shoulders flexed, in what I think he meant to be a comforting squeeze, but was more like a bone-crushing grip.

"I'm glad I got here first," he said with a sigh.

"Why?" I croaked.

"Haley wouldn't have..." Zack's voice trailed off. "He might have..." He made a choking sound and looked annoyed, then tried again. "Haley is a lot calmer than me, usually. He's the one who has common sense, but he also has a really strict sense of right and wrong. He would... not have liked seeing you attacked like that."

"They didn't attack me," I replied. “They weren’t being violent.”

"Violence comes in a lot of flavors," Zack said drily. "But, trust me, no one wants to see Haley's particular flavor."

I froze, and I think my heart did, too.

"Is he dangerous?" I whispered.

"To you? Never. Never in a million years. Literally mmph." Zack choked on his words again and grimaced.

The bell rang. Zack poked me on the tip of my nose and grinned.

"Better get to class," he said. "I'll catch you later."

I was left standing at my locker with one thought. What the hell?

***

Haley was glaring at me like he was pissed at me. I hunkered down in my seat and tried to imagine a huge concrete wall between us. Why did he take the desk next to me again if he was just going to glower at me?

The bell rang for first period, and Ms. Collins came in. She explained that we were going to be doing a group exercise today. She began pairing us off for the exercise, and you didn’t need telepathy to hear the various prayers that sprung up:

Please God, let me be paired with Haley.
(Jordan and every other girl in the class except for me.)

Please God, don’t let me be paired with the nasty losers in the back row.
(From pretty much all of us.)

Please God, don’t pair me up with Jordan.
(That was mine.)

I didn’t dare speculate about Haley’s prayer. As expected, God failed us all. Most of the girls ended up with the nasty losers in the back, except for Darla Feinberg who got matched with Haley. I had the joy of partnering up with Jordan.

It was painfully obvious that Ms. Collins was pleased with herself, as if this ridiculous exercise was her way to taking a small step toward integrating the different cliques and eliminating the social hierarchies among students. I hated when teachers did that. They thought that just because they were teachers, they could get all after-school-special on us and make us realize the error of our separatist ways and come together in love, friendship, and equality.

Um, no. Wasn’t going to happen. Ever. Had they forgotten about their own high school experiences as bottom-of-the-barrel? Or had they been the popular kids and had the luxury of blissfully mis-remembering that everyone had been friends with them?

Whichever it was, I wished they would just leave well enough alone and let us muddle through as best we could until graduation set us free.

Jordan made it clear she wasn’t going to move from her desk, so naturally, I had to be the submissive one and go over to her, gritting my teeth the whole way. The entire scenario was playing out in my head already.

Cue: fake smile.

“Hey, Stephanie,” Jordan said, smiling sweetly enough to give me cavities.

“Hey,” I replied softly.

Cue: pretending to misunderstand the assignment from the beginning so as not to come off as having been uncool enough to pay attention.

“So, um, like, I’m not really sure what we’re supposed to do,” Jordan said in a confidential whisper.

Cue: reassurance that the geek was prepared.

“That’s okay,” I said flatly. “I got it.”

“Awesome!”

“So, we are basically supposed to come up with five things that Charlemagne did that changed the course of European history.”

“Oh, uh…”

“Based on the reading in the textbook.”

“Oh.”

“It’s okay. We can use our books.”

“Okay, so, like, why don’t you look up the reasons, and I’ll write them down?”

Cue: double standard of expecting the geek to do the work, then secretly and righteously despising the geek for being smart enough for having done the work, and for wanting to do the work to get a good grade.

“Sure,” I said. “That works.”

Jordan smiled sweetly.

Not only did she smile, but she expected me to smile back—the equivalent of curtsying and saying thank you for allowing me the privilege of doing all the work for her while receiving her disdain. Whether she was intelligent enough to consciously know it or not, she knew this game cold and played it with ease and finesse.

I smiled as genuinely as I could. The last thing I needed was for her to get the idea that I was angry with her. The wrong kind of smile, the slightest hint of rebellion, and I’d be plucked from obscurity—temporarily—and labeled a bitch who was mean to the nicest girl who was friends with everyone in the school. I suspected she was already looking for a way to crush me because of Haley.

Keeping my smile carefully in place, I bent my head over my book, but a quick glance revealed that Haley was watching us…or rather, me. I saw his eyes narrow at me, and my heart skipped a beat.

I bit my lip and kept my eyes on my work after that.

Depressed and exhausted, I made my way to Poetry. I slumped down at my desk, arms folded across my chest and chin tucked down as I stared unseeingly at the doodles of penises that had been scratched into the laminate surface of the desk. A shadow fell over me, and I jerked, making an awful, humiliating noise as my breath mingled with my saliva and went down the wrong way.

Once I could breathe again, I risked opening my eyes, only to see Haley standing before me, arms crossed.

“So,” he drawled. “When were you going to tell me?”

I stared at him, totally lost. “Tell you what?”

“About the little attack this morning?”

“Wait, what? Why would I tell you about that?” It was an honest question. I could not think of a single reason why Haley would care or want to know what happened at the lockers with Kara, Chad, and the others.

He seemed genuinely taken aback by my response.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” he asked, utter disbelief coloring his voice.

“Um, because I barely know you. And there’s nothing you could do about it?”

“I can stop them from doing that to you ever again.”

“No, don’t!” The words tumbled out of me in a rush, my heart squeezing in sudden fear at the consequences of Haley intervening on my behalf.

“Why not?” he demanded, placing his hands on my desk and the back of the seat, and leaning over me.

Great. Here we were again. Another situation where I couldn’t be honest with him because the truth was both stupid and awful. How could I tell him that if he tried to defend me to the Gaggle and the Jocks, it would give them just the ammunition they needed to torment me some more. I also couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t engaging in his own special brand of mockery of me.

“It’s nothing, really,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s not a big deal.”

He bent over me further until his nose almost brushed mine. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, Stephanie.”

The words were sweet, but there was sharp, black edge to his words, and I remembered Zack’s warning about Haley’s “particular flavor of violence.” A hot wash of fear stung the surface of my skin. I shuddered involuntarily.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered. “It’s not you that should be afraid. Never you.”

“How did you know about what happened?”

“My brother informed me.”

“Oh.”

“What I want to know is why you didn’t?”

“I don’t know why you would care,” I murmured, risking a glance up at him, only to see a flash of anger darken his face.

But, before he could say anything, Jordan bounced in and sat down, and the second bell rang.

Mr. Brown came in and wrote on the board, "Death and Romance."

"We are going to start examining one of the major themes of 19th century poetry," he said. "There were several prevalent themes that seemed to dominate 19th century poetry, one of which is nature and naturalism, which we will examine later. But the ideas of romance and death became entwined in a way that they had never really been before."

"From Greek mythology, to the horrors of Edgar Allan Poe, poets addressed death from all angles. They not only brought the ideas of love and death together, but they romanticized death itself."

I heard Haley stir beside me.

"Please open up your anthologies to page 48," Mr. Brown continued. "Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Raven.'"

Mr. Brown paused, his eyes landing on Haley.

"Mr. Smith, will you please read it for us?"

I HEARD HALEY
quietly take a deep breath. He began to speak, reading the words of the poem.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“`Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door -

Only this, and nothing more."

I was floored. I'd never heard anything like this before. He read with feeling, with expression, with a meaning that seemed to speak directly to the center of my soul. None of the ‘I'm-too-cool-to-actually-put-emotion-into-my-reading-like-a-geek’ monotone that any other student would have used. No, Haley read with...passion.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore—

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,

“'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

This it is, and nothing more."

The way he said '”rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore” was like a caress, and I was positive I was not the only girl in the classroom whose heart skipped a beat. His voice was low and gravelly and raspy, by turns harsh and soft.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore—

'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore:

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore."

The word ”nevermore” rang like a great bell in my head, making me dizzy and sending my thoughts chasing ghosts of meanings I could sense but not fully understand. Nevermore…it was the same as ”evermore.“ Both meant eternity, only one was an eternity spent in suffering, longing for something that could never be. Haley read the poem, but it was as if he was saying something else underneath the words on the page. I strained to hear what he was trying to say, only realizing I had lost track of the poem itself when his voice thundered the word “prophet.”

"Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore:

Is there—is there balm in Gilead? Tell me—tell me, I implore!”