I kept my eyes glued to the ceiling. No way was I chancing a direct look. “So,” I said, taking another long breath, “that’s why I went storming after Dikker. To...”
I paused again, trying to figure out the best way to put it. I mean, it just wasn’t the kind of thing I had to explain every day.
“To...
well
...look at him peeing, I guess,” I said in a rush, my eyes still on the ceiling. “But I stopped myself before I reached
the end of the side wall. And he was around the back. So I didn’t see him, I didn’t see
it
, I didn’t see anything. Nothing happened, okay? I just went crazy for a bit, and then I got over it.”
Silence leaned down ominously onto the room, so close I could almost hear it breathing. Finally Joc said carefully, “You’re telling me you went back there to look at Dikker’s dick?”
“
Well
,” I said, keeping my eyes on the ceiling, “not
really
. It was more to prove I wasn’t a queen, I think. But like I said, I got a grip and stopped halfway down the side of the store. So I didn’t see anything, anything at all.”
She took a few hesitant steps into the room. “That’s what he said,” she said slowly. “But I wasn’t sure...”
“Well, now you can be sure,” I said. Chancing a quick glance at her, I felt relief hit me flat out. Joc looked confused, a little on the astonished side, but nuclear detonation definitely wasn’t in the picture.
“I mean, really, Joc,” I added dryly, “can you see Dikker and me, in a
million
years...?”
A grin flashed across her face and she giggled. “No,” she said. “Not in a million billion
centuries
.”
Darting across the room, she jumped onto the bed and began bouncing gleefully. “And he’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine!” she crowed, knocking my head against the headboard with each bounce.
“Great,” I said slowly. Problem solved, she was no longer pissed-off. Swallowing the very lumpy lump in my throat, I got to my feet and said, “We’d better get moving or we’ll be late.”
“Yeah, all right,” said Joc. Quickly she stood and followed me to the door. But instead of walking directly into the hall, she stopped and said, “Hey, Dyl?”
Hearing the wobble in her voice, I turned to find her watching me, an uncertain expression on her face. She blinked, her
eyes flitting nervously, then said, “You’re sure...nothing happened?”
“Nothing!” I said, my astonishment so obvious that she relaxed.
“Okay,” she breathed, hugging herself. “What was I thinking? You’re my best friend, right? Besides, you’ve got Cam. C’mon, let’s get going.”
A dazzling grin took over her face, she leaned into me and started force-walking me backward toward the front door.
Two days later we were sprawled on the floor at the rear of the Dief’s auditorium, Joc curled into a semi-coma while I sat with my back to the wall and a book propped on my knees. Around us kids were scattered in various groups, their eyes focused on the stage. Classes had let out for the day, and we had all gathered to watch the first rehearsal for this year’s fall drama production,
Hamlet
. The curious crowd contained some distinctly non-drama types, here to support a distinctly non-drama-type member of the cast. Because to the absolute astonishment of everyone at the Dief, including Joc, Dikker Preddy had landed a part. It was just Marcellus, a soldier of the king’s guard, and a very minor part who did nothing more than walk on and off stage a few times, but still it was serious theater, real Shakespeare—Dikker in tights, quoting jokes that people had stopped laughing at several hundred years ago.
Joc hadn’t made up her mind whether to be proud or pissed-off at Dikker’s success. After all, he hadn’t told her that he was auditioning for a part. She’d been abruptly introduced to the fact yesterday afternoon, when someone had called her over in the hall and pointed out his name on the cast list posted beside the drama room. An hour later, Dikker had been wearing cat scratches on his left arm, but the tiff had since been resolved and
here we were, his loyal fans, sprawled at the back of the auditorium behind a scattering of Shakespeare groupies, several future recruits for the Hell’s Angels, and various cast members who were waiting to be called up for their scenes.
“Hey, Joc,” said Gary Wainbee, another minor part sitting directly in front of us. Vicious acne had pockmarked the poor guy for life. He coped by hiding out behind long droopy bangs and shooting everyone shy sideways glances. “Wakey wakey,” he whispered, his gaze tiptoeing delicately around Joc’s dozed-out face. “They’re doing Dikker’s first scene.”
“Wha—?” mumbled Joc, half-opening one eye.
“Dikker,” I said, poking her with my foot. “The Shakespearean nutcase in your life.”
Instantly she was on her knees, babbling, “Is he on, is he on?” Leaning heavily on Gary’s eager shoulder, she peered toward the stage just as Dikker swaggered out from the wings. Immediate ear-splitting whistles rose from the future Hell’s Angels, then subsided under the annoyed glance of Mr. Tyrrell, the drama teacher. Rolling my eyes, I glanced at Joc, who was still kneeling with her back to me and giggling with Gary. In the auditorium’s dim backlighting, her hair was a long dark river that ended an inch above a line of smooth skin that could be seen between the bottom of her T-shirt and the top of her jeans. For a second, then, in the room’s back shadows, while everyone else’s gaze was focused on the stage, I let it happen in me the way I never did—just let the feelings rise up through my body in a long liquid ache.
Abruptly a girl sitting close by shifted, as if about to turn around, and I slammed the feelings back down. Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the wall, ground my teeth and fought back everything that was begging to be released. When I opened my eyes again, Joc had scooted back to her position beside me on
the floor, once again in a semi-coma. Dikker’s brief moment of fame was obviously over.
“Call me the next time he’s up, Gary,” she mumbled, and he nodded enthusiastically, ducking another shy glance at her from under his droopy bangs.
“Sure thing, queen of Dikker’s dreams,” he mumbled back.
“You’ve got that right,” said Joc, a pleased smile curving her lips.
Queen
. The word hit me just as she opened one eye and fixed it on me. For a fleeting second, I could have sworn she was gloating.
“Why are you reading, Dyl?” she asked. “Can’t you tell we’re in the presence of great art?”
“Yeah yeah, go back to sleep,” I replied, faking an enormous yawn.
But she didn’t. Instead she kicked me lightly and asked, “What are you reading?”
“
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
,” I replied, flashing her the cover of the book I was holding. “It’s for my history class.”
“Cheery,” she mumbled, then closed her eye and started to slip back into her coma.
“Yeah,” I said. “Especially ‘The Negative Confessions’.”
“The negative what?” she asked without opening her eyes.
“‘The Negative Confessions,’” I enunciated precisely. “It’s a list of things the ancient Egyptians were supposed to say before they died—a list of the sins they didn’t do while they were alive.”
“Oh,” said Joc. “Short list.”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “Very long.”
“Short life then,” said Joc.
“Boring life,” I said, “if this list is true. Let’s see, the first confession is about sin in general, as in ‘I have not committed
sin.’ Then it gets more specific—robbery with violence, stealing, murder. Then stealing again, only this time it’s grain.”
“I’ve never stolen grain,” Joc said lazily. “Does that mean I get to go to heaven?”
“If you can recite it properly,” I said. “You have to include the god’s name, and each sin goes with a different god. Repeat after me, Jocelyn Hersch: ‘Hail, Neha-her, who comest forth from Rasta, I have not stolen grain.’”
“Forget it,” Joc grunted sleepily.
“No heaven for you then,” I said. “Let’s see, the next sin listed is purloining offerings.”
“Does that have something to do with loins?” asked Joc, waking up slightly.
“Uh-uh,” I said. “It’s stealing. They’re really big on stealing in this list.”
“Oh,” mumbled Joc. For a moment she lay quietly, her eyes still closed, then said, “So far I have three negative confessions I can make—no murder, no stealing grain, and no purloining loins. Oops, I mean offerings.” She smiled contentedly.
“Ah, but you have to say it correctly,” I said. “‘Hail, Ruruti, who comest forth from—’”
“Shut up,” Joc said.
I did shut up, just to bug her, and pretended to read silently. After a bit her toe nudged my foot and she asked, “What’s the next sin?”
“More stealing,” I said. “This time it’s the property of God.”
“Haven’t done that either,” she murmured.
“Ah,” I said, “but you’re screwed on the next few.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked, opening one eye. “What are they?”
“Lying,” I said, “carrying away food and cursing.”
“Cursing’s not a sin,” said Joc. “It’s a natural instinct. Lying’s just a different way of looking at something. That can be very
good for your mind. And everyone’s carried food. How else do you get something out of the fridge?”
“Okey-dokey,” I said. “Next sin: adultery.”
“Nope, no adultery,” said Joc.
“Ah, but it goes on,” I said. “It says here: ‘I have not lain with men.’”
“Oops,” said Joc. “No heaven for me. No
Egyptian
heaven.” She sniggered.
“Except,” I said, my mouth leaping ahead of my mind, “I think this list is for a man, so if this sin was written for a woman, it would say, ‘I have not lain with women.’”
As I said this, Joc’s one open eye widened, and an excruciating jolt of electricity leapt between us. Then her eye closed and she lay motionless, without speaking. In the sudden silence I felt raw, charred to the bone, as if someone had zapped me with a flamethrower.
“The next sin,” I stammered, dragging words,
any
words, into the jagged air, “is ‘I have made none to weep.’ And the next—”
Stunned, I halted, reading and rereading the phrase.
“What?” asked Joc, her eyes still closed, her lips barely moving.
“‘Hail Basti,’” I said softly, “‘who comest forth from Bast, I have not eaten the heart.’”
Joc lay absolutely still, as if absorbing the words through her skin. “I have not eaten my heart?” she repeated.
“Pretty much,” I whispered.
Her eye came open and she nailed me with it. “No heaven for you then, eh Dyllie?” she said quietly, and closed it again.
Chapter Six
So that was the way it was between us—known but indirectly, a kind of hidden story always going on beneath the surface. For the most part, I did my best to ignore it. But the problem was that it wouldn’t stay ignored. I mean, I’m talking about a basic body function here. No matter how much you try to ignore something like that, no matter how much you tell yourself that your body is just a subplot in your life, it isn’t. It’s the main plot. Which is kind of weird, considering that the average teenager is surrounded by people telling her it’s her mind that’s most important, her school grades, and her future. I’m not saying these aren’t important—they are. But the body is the main plot. That’s where you live the story of your life, that’s where you
are
.
And if you try to ignore all of this—I mean your body and what it’s trying to tell you, well, things get twisted. Because the main plot never likes to be shoved down under a bunch of sub-plots. So while you’re up in your head, pretending your body has everything wrong, it’s looking for a way to prove to you that it’s got it all right. And believe me, the body is devious. It’ll take any opportunity that comes along,
anything
—even something as mundane as a class discussion about an assigned reading—to make its point.
The mundane class discussion that I’m referring to took place two days after Dikker’s first drama rehearsal. For the past week, my English class had been reading the novel
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang
by Joyce Carol Oates. In a nutshell, the book is about five high school girls in the 1950s who formed a gang called Foxfire. Though Foxfire was exclusively made up of girls, it was tough, taking on the guy gangs in the area, even stealing a car at one point. But most of their activities were more along the lines of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to help the poor. Even so, their leader, Legs Sadovsky, landed in jail for a while, but when she got out, the gang rented a house in the country and continued their Robin Hood activities, hanging around hotel lobbies and bus stations, pretending to be sweet and naive, then taking the married men who hit on them for everything they were worth. A twisted sense of justice maybe, and in the end they went too far, kidnapping a guy and holding him for ransom. Then a new girl, who had just joined Foxfire, shot the hostage, and the gang had to split up to escape the police.
In an attempt to kick-start a discussion about the novel, our teacher, Mr. Cronk, asked the class whether we thought justice was a universal or personal principle, and what the difference between the two was. As on most days when he tried to get us talking, the majority of kids continued to sit sprawled in their desks, eyes dull and heavy-lidded as they worked on their non-response skills. Like the others I was in shut-down mode, slouched in my usual position in the back row beside Joc, who was slouched in the next desk. Just looking at me, no one would have guessed I was actually listening as the front-row keeners gave the expected responses: one—justice by definition is universal, and two—everything is subjective, even God, so how can justice be universal?
We were supposed to have read to part four of the novel, but
the lack of response made it obvious most of the class hadn’t cracked the cover. Still Mr. Cronk kept at us, his eyes skipping the front row and focusing in on us back-row slackers. And damn it all if it didn’t feel as if he had his eyes specifically peeled for me, as if he’d somehow tuned to the fact that for once Dylan Kowolski, back-row dreamer extraordinaire, had managed to complete an assignment ahead of schedule. Because it just so happened that I’d finished
Foxfire
last night, had actually read the entire novel in one sitting, tearing through it with my heart in my mouth and feeling each scene as if it was happening inside my body—the gang’s initiation of bloody tattoos and bared breasts, the attack as they’d come crashing through the office window onto Uncle Wimpy, their crazed flight in Acey Holman’s Buick DeLuxe, and Legs Sadovsky trapped in the Red Bank State Correctional Facility for Girls, watching eleven sparrow hawks through the small high window in The Room. Even now as I sat slouched at the back of English 11, watching the rest of the class slouched in their desks ahead of me, I could feel Legs standing in the schoolyard, knife in hand as she faced down a gang of boys and shouted,
Fuck off!