A Step Toward Falling Page 12

  BELINDA

  FROM MY SPECIAL DESK in the corner of the nurse’s office, it’s easy for me to look out into the main office and see that Anthony and Douglas are not doing a good job with mail delivery. Anthony can’t read very well. He knows letters and usually guesses the word by the letter it starts with. In cooking class, any time he sees T in a recipe, he thinks it means tablespoon, even though it might be teaspoon and there’s a big difference. He also thinks a half cup in a recipe means anything between one and two cups depending on your mood. We have made some terrible muffins because Anthony was in the mood to use two cups of butter instead of a half cup. That shouldn’t have made me cry, I know, but it did the day it happened.

  I cry too easily, I know. Especially at school which is where I should be working my hardest not to cry. Holding it together means doing yoga breathing and trying not cry even if you feel like it.

  Another thing about Anthony is he likes to hug too much. He hugs people so much the teachers at school have to make rules about hugging and put them up on the wall near Anthony’s seat. They’re supposed to be for everyone but mostly they’re for Anthony:

  RULES FOR HUGGING

  —No hugs during lesson times.

  —Always ask the other person first if you can hug them.

  —No full-body hugs

  —Only three-second hugs (count one, two, three)

  There’s a few of us who don’t like hugs. I’m one of them. I used to like hugs until Emily Maxwell told me no, people don’t like them, and they’re not allowed. Now I don’t like them because they mess up my clothes. Plus not to be mean but a lot of the time Anthony has food on his shirt and I don’t want his breakfast touching my shirt.

  I said, “No, thank you,” to Anthony’s hugs for so long that they put up another list next to the RULES FOR HUGGING list. This one was for me I think.

  WAYS TO BE FRIENDLY WITHOUT HUGGING

  —Give a high five!

  —Bump fists

  —Smile and say, “I’m happy to see you, but no hugs, please.”

  —Say, “Would you like to play a game with me instead?”

  This year I got nicer. Before our fight, I didn’t always say no when Anthony asked for hugs. Sometimes I said, “If you finish all your work, Anthony, then yes, I’ll give you one hug.” The teachers liked this because it gave Anthony a motivator to work for. We all have motivators. I earn computer time where I’m allowed to visit Colin Firth websites and read about his life which I can’t do at home because we don’t have internet. From these sites I have learned that in real life Mr. Firth has three children and is married to a woman who designs green dresses for a living. I don’t understand this or why she doesn’t pick other colors, too. Anthony’s motivators are almost always hugs. He doesn’t care about anything else, including food, which is a surprise because that’s what all the other boys work for. For Anthony—just hugs.

  So this year I didn’t mind hugging him too much.

  Maybe that started the bigger problem, though. The problem where he started saying he loved me and wanted to marry me. At first I pretended I didn’t hear him. Then I told him, “No, Anthony, don’t be stupid. You don’t love me.”

  That got me in trouble for saying stupid. So I tried again. “I’m older than you, Anthony. Boys aren’t allowed to love a girl who is older. It’s against the law.”

  It turns out that’s not true. Cara, one of our teachers, said no, there’s no law about that.

  “There should be,” I said.

  “I don’t know, Belinda. I don’t think I agree with you.”

  “The girl should never be older than the boy! Never!”

  She smiled. “Well, sometimes they are. My mom is five years older than my dad and they’re very happily married.”

  I don’t like hearing teachers say things like “my mom” and “my dad” because it makes them sound like children, not like teachers, and that’s not right. I hate that. It makes me feel flustered. I have to walk away and yoga breathe.

  Another reason Anthony shouldn’t love me is that Anthony is shorter than me and the boy should never be shorter than the girl. I told him that once and he grew out his curly, puffy hair on top. Now his hair is as tall as I am but I don’t know if that counts. I don’t know who to ask about that.

  Anthony doesn’t look handsome like anyone in movies or on TV but he has nice brown eyes that are a little droopy like a basset hound. He also wears braces. I think he’ll talk better when he gets his braces off. When he first came to our classroom I could hardly understand anything he said. Now I understand most of what he says, unless he’s talking with food in his mouth which he’s not supposed to do anyway.

  From my desk in the nurse’s office, I watch Anthony sort the mail and it seems like he’s doing everything wrong. It looks like he’s reading the first letter of the last name and putting the mail in the first box he sees with the same letter. In our school there are four teachers whose last name starts with R; six start with S. It’s hard for me to think about how many mistakes he’s making. Probably ten mistakes. At least.

  Douglas can read okay but he is very stubborn and very lazy. Today he’s so lazy he sits down in a chair with a bunch of envelopes in his hand. He flips through them, reading the outside like they’re all addressed to him and he’s deciding which one to open first. One thing I know for sure—they are NOT addressed to Douglas and he should NOT open them. “Douglas, stand up!” I whisper from the nurse’s office, but he doesn’t hear me. I tell myself if I see him open one of those envelopes that isn’t addressed to him, I’ll break the rules and walk out of the nurse’s office to stop him.

  So far I haven’t seen him do that.

  The only thing I’ve seen is both of them doing a terrible job. After they’re done mixing up everyone’s mail, they push the recycling cart like it’s a game to see how many people and desks they can hit with it. “Sorry!” Anthony says every time but I see him smile, like he’s earning points for every dent he leaves on a piece of furniture.

  “BE CAREFUL!” I scream from my desk in the nurse’s office. It’s hard for me to watch, but I can’t look away.

  I guess Anthony didn’t know I was here because he looks up and smiles like he’s really surprised to see me. “BEMINDA!” he says. “You’re back!”

  It’s like he’s forgotten all about the fight we got in before the football game. I can’t forget it, but I guess he can. He smiles his big dopey smile at me, then he comes over to stand in the doorway of the nurse’s office. “I’m so glad you’re back,” he says. “You look beautiful.”

  If Anthony’s not careful, Douglas will wander away and fall asleep on a sofa. “Yeah, hi, Anthony,” I say. “You should probably get back to work.”

  Typical Anthony, he doesn’t listen. “Why were you gone so long?”

  “Just never mind that, Anthony. You should do your work.”

  “But we missed you. Cara said Beminda’s sick.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sick anymore.”

  He looks confused. “Why are you in the nurse’s office?”

  “I’m here because I can’t go back—” I almost say go back to the classroom with you and Douglas, but then I remember people have feelings, even Anthony and Douglas. I might hate them for doing my job but I don’t want to hurt their feelings. “I’m trying something new,” I say softly, so no one hears. “I’m working here now.”

  Anthony’s eyes get big. “In the nurse office?” He pronounces nurse like “yerse.”

  I don’t tell him that I don’t really have a job, just a table in the corner where someone has put paper and a box of colored markers like I’m in preschool. “Yes,” I say. “I’m a nurse’s assistant.” Right away I know this is a mistake. Lying makes me blush. I feel my face go hot.

  “What do you do?”

  “Never mind that. You should go back and finish your job. If you don’t keep after him, Douglas will wander away and fall asleep.”

  Just thinking about this
makes me mad, but Anthony laughs like I’ve made a good joke. “You’re right! He will!”

  “That Douglas doesn’t deserve a job.” I sound mean, like Nan talking about one of the neighbors she hates.

  “I wish you could do this job with me,” Anthony says. “That would be great!”

  “Why would I do it with you when I used to do it all by myself?” I don’t want to sound mean, so I say, “Nothing against you, Anthony. I’d be happy to do it if they asked me to.”

  He smiles and claps his hands the way he does, bouncing up and down a little. “Let’s ask! They might say yes if we ask!”

  This is one of Anthony’s big problems. He is nice to everyone and he thinks everyone will be nice back to him. He used to think that if he asked, we could make cupcakes every morning and eat them for lunch every afternoon. Every single morning he clapped his hands and bounced up and down and suggested making cupcakes. Every morning the teachers would say, “Not today, Anthony.”

  “You go ahead and ask, Anthony. For now I should probably get back to my job here in the nurse’s office.” I point to my table and hope he doesn’t look at what’s on there.

  “Okay, Beminda! I’m happy you’re back! I see you soon!”

  “Yeah, okay, Anthony.”

  He bounces closer to me and asks if he can have a hug. I nod okay because what else can I say? A few minutes ago, I was watching Anthony and Douglas mess up the mail job and I hated them. Now Anthony’s hugging me and I’m patting him on the back so he doesn’t start to cry or something like that.

  EMILY

  “IS EVERYTHING OKAY?” I ask Lucas.

  I’m driving Lucas to class again and he’s been quiet for most of the ride. When I picked him up he was standing on the sidewalk in front of his house with his father. He got in the car quickly, even though his father was still talking. After he was in, he rolled down the window. “I don’t really have a choice, do I, Dad? I have to go.”

  He rolled the window back up. “Just go. It’s fine. I’ll talk to him when I get back.”

  For most of the drive, he’s said nothing, though surprisingly it hasn’t been too awkward. He turned up a song on one of my mix CDs, which made me feel good. It was one of my favorites, “Long Ride Home” by Patty Griffin, not something I would have expected him to know. I almost asked, Do you like Patty Griffin? and then I thought, Stop acting surprised every time he doesn’t act like a football player.

  “Is everything okay, Lucas?” I ask again.

  “Yeah, sure. My dad thinks I shouldn’t have to keep coming to this class, because of my leg. I’m supposed to be on restricted movement.”

  “If you have a doctor’s note, you probably could skip a class or two.”

  “But why would I do that? It’s not like we move around a lot in class. I’m walking around school okay. I’d just be using it as an excuse. It would feel shitty.”

  Earlier today, Chad texted me that he was going to miss class tonight. I wasn’t sure why he was telling me since we haven’t talked once since our lunch date, until he added, Will you tell Mary, making it clear: He didn’t want to tell her himself.

  “He’s letting me go to a party this weekend so why shouldn’t I do this?”

  In these drives together, I’ve noticed that Lucas hardly ever talks about his friends. If he mentions anyone at school, it’s usually his girlfriend, Debbie, and then he says something like, “My girlfriend hates these pants.” Or what he says now: “I don’t even want to go to the party—my girlfriend says I have to.”

  He sounds so unenthusiastic about the prospect that I laugh. “She makes you go to parties? I thought everyone loves parties.”

  “Not really.” He snorts a laugh. “I’m not a big drinker, I guess.”

  “Well, technically, if you drink anything, you are a big drinker because, look at you, Lucas. You’re huge.”

  He laughs again. I’m starting to think Lucas might have the same sense of humor as Richard and me. “I know why I hate parties.”

  He peeks at me. “Why?”

  “Because the only party I’ve ever been to I got nervous and drank so much I threw up on myself. After I got cleaned up, my friend Richard had to walk around the party telling everyone to be careful about the sink in the bathroom, it sprays water all over people.” Halfway through this story, I’m not sure why I’m telling it to him. “I was so embarrassed to go to school the next week, and then I realized no one even remembered us being there.”

  “Yeah, they’re pretty much all like that. People only notice if you’re not there.”

  I don’t know if I should correct him: People notice if you’re not there, Lucas. Me, not so much. I doubt the line, “Wait, where’s Emily Maxwell?” has ever been uttered in a party setting. I don’t say this, though. Instead, I ask something I’ve always been curious about: “What do people even talk about at those parties?” Maybe I’m thinking about Chad and our terrible non-conversation. It hasn’t ever felt like that with Lucas. I’m curious if his friends are different. “Does anyone ever admit they’re gay or worried about the environment or something like that?”

  “Not really. Mostly we watch TV and if someone gets up from the couch, someone else says, ‘Bring me a beer from the kitchen, would you?’”

  I think about how my friends and I talk about weightier issues. Usually it’s through music and song lyrics that we analyze to death. Richard and Barry will argue about the meaning of some obscure chorus on a Green Day song. “The guy is depressed!” “The guy is psychotic!” “Depression is not psychosis! You’re conflating the two!”

  Richard has been pretty open about suffering from depression in the past. For him, the worst of it happened before I knew him, when he was in middle school and spent all his time online searching for programs that would make him not gay anymore. He actually used to type in no more gay thoughts on the search bar. When he finally told his parents what he was doing, the depression was more of an issue than the homosexuality. He spent a year seeing a psychologist and getting medications adjusted. Even though it gives him dry mouth and hand shakes, he still takes a low dose now because he’s so scared of going back to those days.

  I wonder if knowing less about your friends makes it easier in a way. Maybe my fears about what will happen with Hugh come from knowing Richard’s vulnerabilities. Maybe it’s even made me a worse friend.

  “What if someone has a real problem—like, I don’t know, their mom has cancer—”

  He looks at me funny with his eyebrows up again. “What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know—it’s just a hypothetical. Do your friends rally around and stop by with casseroles and things like that?”

  For a long time, he doesn’t say anything. Obviously they don’t and he doesn’t talk about it. We pull into the parking lot. I get out of the car and come around to his side so I can hold Lucas’s crutches for him as he gets out of the car. When I turn around, Sheila is standing behind me, holding a Slinky. “Do you guys even know how these things work?” she says. “It’s supposed to do something but it doesn’t.”

  In class, Sheila is the queen of non sequiturs. She’ll raise her hand to answer a question about ordering food in a restaurant and then, as if her mouth has a mind of its own, she’ll start telling some story about an actress on the cover of US magazine. How weird she is, and skinny, too. With Sheila present, class discussion can veer wildly off topic in under a minute. Because she wants to talk all the time, Mary has instituted a special plan to help her “reach her goal of being a better conversationalist.” Now Sheila gets three tickets to use every class period. Whenever she speaks off topic, she has to give the teacher a ticket. When she’s used all three, she’s “done for the day,” and can only talk on the same subject as everyone else. It’s probably a good idea; without some system in place, Sheila is a little exhausting to be around. “Not right now, Sheila,” I say. “We’re trying to help Lucas get inside. You remember how his leg is hurt, right?”

  “Ye
ah, I don’t even get why he needs those crutches. It’s not like he’s got a cast or anything’s broken.”

  “It’s his knee and he has to be careful. He’s not even supposed to be moving around.”

  Lucas stands up and laughs a little sheepishly. “I’m all right, Sheila. Here, let me see that Slinky. They’re not so hard.” Instead of taking it, he puts a flat hand beside hers and nudges the Slinky so it snakes off her hand onto his perfectly.

  “OH MY GOD!” she screams. “HOW DID YOU DO THAT?”

  “Magic,” he grins. “No, not really. That’s what Slinkies do. Wait till you see one on a set of stairs. If you do it right, that really is magic.”

  “Will you show me?”

  “Sure. We can use the stairs down to the basement. I’m pretty sure we’ve got time.”

  This is the most normal conversation I’ve ever heard Sheila have. Where she’s asked a question and actually listened to the answer. Now they’re headed inside and she does something equally surprising—she holds the door open for Lucas.

  “Many thanks, Sheila,” he says as he crutches by her.

  Of course she doesn’t bother holding it for me. She probably doesn’t remember that I’m even here, she’s so focused now on Lucas and the prospect of watching her Slinky walk down some stairs. Still, it makes me think about what Mary said—Lucas has good instincts with these students. Different than mine, but good ones.

  “This week’s exercise is related to what we did last week,” Mary says to start class. “This time, I want you to start a new list where you write down one or two things that you are proud of. You might say, I’m very organized and neat. Or, I’m a good listener and friend.”

  I’ve noticed Mary uses this trick quite a bit—in presenting an exercise, she gives examples to choose from. Once we get started, most of the class will pick one of these answers.

  This time Simon surprises me. “How do you spell badminton player?”

  Mary laughs and starts writing a long list of choices on the whiteboard in front. To the ones she already mentioned, she adds: Hard worker. Good at music, dancing, acting, and/or singing. Nice dresser. Good at drawing/painting/writing stories. At the end of the list, she spells out Good badminton player and puts a smiley face next to it.