A More Deserving Blackness Read online

  A More Deserving Blackness

  by Angela Wolbert

  Chapter 1

  “All right, Honey,” my sister says in that tone that means she wants to scoop me up and make me better with a Barbie Band-Aid on my scraped knee. She’s trying. I know she’s trying. But I feel like I’m suffocating.

  Trish sighs as she shifts into park, her short curly reddish hair swinging at her jaw. But her tone remains perpetually saccharine. “Here you go.”

  I feel sorry for her.

  Blankly, I nod. Yes, I’m here. I shift my gaze out the car window to the boxy, almost salmon-colored building surrounded in a moat of dark asphalt, parking spaces stretching out behind it like sunny yellow crosscut scars atop the expanse of black.

  She pats my knee and I try not to cringe, knowing it hurts her every time I pull away. My left wrist slides almost nonchalantly into my right hand, as if merely folding them over my waist with nerves. Trish gives me one last sympathetic pat and I know my time is up. I wrench a smile from somewhere deep in the stew of fetid, blackened grit inside me and then release my wrist, using my right hand to yank open the door.

  “Bree?” she calls to me, and I squint in the bright sunshine, my long braid slipping over my shoulder as I duck back to look into the car. I wait for her to speak.

  She appraises me, her familiar eyes touched with sadness, despite the waxy smile on her lips. “Try to have a good day, okay?” she finally settles on, and I nod, hoping for something that resembles optimism. I owe her that much.

  She grins proudly, albeit somewhat wobbly, and I know I must have hit it somewhere in the vicinity. I close the door and hike my all but empty backpack up onto my shoulder, still squinting in the sun. It’s still hot this early in September but I wouldn’t consider changing. I wear what’s comfortable now, everything else be damned. So it’s jeans and a black baby doll tee, slim grey canvas shoes on my feet.

  I make it inside the building without much problem, but it’s when the cool, air-conditioned air hits me that I realize I have no idea where to go. I don’t know the school, don’t know anyone that could help me.

  For a second I glance around, taking in the row of lighted wooden trophy cases along the wall in front of me. It’s an ostentatious display of eyeless golden figures frozen in triumphant poses, all decorated in the school’s stark colors of red and white. All in all, the effect is somewhat macabre.

  Students are all pushing past me, some of them even turning slightly in an effort to avoid jostling me, and I feel my eyes widen and a slight panic set in before I will my feet to move - somewhere, anywhere. Anywhere is better than standing in one place waiting for the sharks to smell blood. The last thing I need is to draw more attention to myself. The rumors would already rage into a firestorm at least by the end of the week; more realistically by the end of the day.

  I walk without direction, merely following the flow of traffic where it leads me across bland grey and green geometric patterned carpet, faded in the center from the scrape of too many leaden feet. Finally over the top of a spiked blonde ‘do bopping to the roar of righteously angry static from his metallic red ear buds, I see the sign for the girls’ restroom and duck inside.

  It smells funky. Not like smoke or body odor so much but just . . . gross. Underneath is an artificial, acerbic flower odor from one of those automatic air fresheners screwed into the wall, the smell of it like cough syrup on the back of my tongue.

  I don’t bother to register if anyone else is using the facilities, don’t glance in the mirror, I just swung open the door to a stall and fling myself inside, bolting it behind me and feeling my shoulders work as I suck in air. Closing my eyes, little pieces of my hair falling out of my braid to stick to the sweat on my face, I lay my forehead against the cool, sea foam green of the stall door. Letting the cold seep into the pulsing pain behind my forehead, I try not to think of the nastiness that is undoubtedly oozing into my pores alongside it. I focus on the cold metal, focus on my breathing, focus on feeling all those etched insults and declarations of love on the door beneath my palms to either side of my head, focus on anything and everything that isn’t the sound of the feral, wretched screams.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  I’m knocking my forehead against the door rhythmically, trying to drown out the bubbling screams inside my head. I can feel my left wrist fall across my body, feel it cradled in my opposite hand, my thumb jerking back and forth, back and forth – a nervous habit. The feel of that thumb on my wrist draws me into it, away from that pit and the screams that snake out of it like curling, sucking tentacles. I force my heart to slow, my breathing to calm. Finally I open my eyes and inhale deeply. Exhale. And then exit the stall.

  I’m blasted with the image of the girl in the mirrors in front of me, pale as shit, a little shaky, bits of reddish-brown hair hanging limply to the sides of her face. Her mouth is hanging open slightly in an unmistakably dim-witted expression so I snap it shut, ripping my wrist from my opposite hand and shoving them both into my pockets. The girl stares at me, unremarkable black shirt over an amply curved frame, unremarkable blue jeans that are always a little too long; my costume. What strikes me are the eyes. Brown, sure, flecked in a dark gold around the pupils, but utterly hopeless. She looks . . . broken.

  Angrily, I scowl and throw my backpack onto the counter which is still wet because of course somehow with automatic sinks and automatic soap and automatic dryers some vapid Barbie had managed to slop water all over the counter and leave it for everyone else to deal with. Great. Now the bottom of my bag would be damp as it bounced against my back all day. Awesome.

  I easily find the one sheet of loose-leaf paper in the bag and yank at the zipper with more force than necessary to close it, staring down at the paper and waiting for it to suddenly make sense and helpfully instruct me in a loud, explicit voice where to go for my first period. It doesn’t. I do, however, find a room number, which I suppose is as good as I’m going to get.

  Shoving the schedule into the back pocket of my jeans, I take a deep breath, spare one last glance at the desperate girl in the mirror, and force myself back into the flow of the hall.

  I turn right on a whim, scanning the numbers by the doorways of each classroom I pass, and by fate or wicked design I am, of course, headed in the dead wrong direction. By the time I decide to turn around I realize the crowd in the hall has significantly dwindled. With one last jolting bump against the bag over my shoulder as a dark-haired kid with that ridiculous popped-collar polo thing ducks through an open door, the bell rings with spine-seizing volume overhead. And I’m officially late to first hour. My first day of senior year. At my new school.

  Shit.

  Usually I try to keep my sister happy, try to please her in the little ways so she can feel like she’s making a difference and I can feel like I’m not totally ruining her life, but in this instance I just can’t see myself fulfilling her wishes. Having a good day is beyond even a glimmer of a hope. It has been now, for over two years.

  I don’t hurry to find my class, don’t even feel nervous about the whole bad eighties movie scene that is about to unfold; the silence of the students all staring at me at the front of the room like a beastly, dancing poodle; the impact of their collected gazes, curiosity tinged with the usual amounts of both boredom and criticism. And the teacher, stunned for just a second with confusion and then recognition and then pity, all of which they will cover up with a healthy smattering of enthusiasm and a feel-good inclusionary class welcome.

  The halls are eerily empty, quiet, with only a muted hum from inside the now – yes, the class doors which had all just been open a second ago now are shut tight, damn it. The teachers had taped various colors of construction
paper over the tiny slats of the safety-glass windows to avoid any tasteless distractions to the fountain of glittering knowledge they are vomiting upon their seas of answering blank stares. I want to curse and howl and run away and never come back, but of course I don’t. I don’t do any of those things.

  I turn the corner and stop. Just stop, right in the middle of a stride. A guy is standing by himself in the hallway in front of me, his hands shoved deep inside the pockets of his well-worn jeans, his booted feet braced apart as if to withstand a wrecking blow. His dark head is hanging from his broad shoulders so I can’t see his face, but somehow I feel wrong seeing him like this, like it’s a private moment inside this very public place, and I back around the corner I’d just passed, so the lockers block him from my view. I lean against them, letting my head fall back, closing my eyes. I’m fairly certain this is the way to my class, based on my listless observations of the room numbers and the rudimentary grasp of counting by ones I’d gathered back in kindergarten, so I’m not sure how to proceed. I’m already late, so I’m in no real hurry, but if I screw up my first day my sister would have to deal with it. The principal would call her, or a guidance counselor, and I’m determined to lesson the fallout of the nuclear explosion that is my unfortunate arrival into her otherwise normal, thirty-something single life.

  I peek around the corner and the guy is still there, like a statue, unmoving. I flop back, staring up at the ceiling and telling myself it’s no big deal, he’s just some high-school burn-out, it doesn’t matter. But I don’t believe it. No one stands like that, alone, unless they’d trudged through hell and come out the other side, scratched and bloodied and terrorized by demons only they could see.

  I would know.

  Or maybe I’m just the most damaged thing to ever drag myself though the doors of this place and he is simply a regular guy contemplating some regular problem. How to score enough booze for a party this weekend. How he was going to face his school-pride-sweatshirt-wearing mother when she found out he’d failed his French exam. Or maybe he just had an embarrassing hard-on he was waiting to dissipate before he could enter a roomful of his peers.

  I force myself up off the lockers and around the corner. Where I immediately jolt back, because he isn’t frozen down the hall like a monument to the depths of human grief but is standing right in front of me, directly in my path. He doesn’t jump back like I do, he just raises his brows at me over eyes that are startlingly almost black, unmoving, and something tells me he’d been aware of my presence the whole time. He seems to be waiting for something, but if it is an apology or an explanation he expects, he’s going to be waiting a long time.

  He clears his throat, like he isn’t used to using his voice all that much. “Excuse me,” he says in a voice that is somehow familiar to me, and then twists his broad shoulders encased in an unzipped black leather jacket and ambles past by me, clearly in no hurry to get to wherever he’s going, despite the fact that nearly three minutes must’ve passed since the bone-rattling explosion that was the school’s tardy bell.

  I stare after him, unable to shake the feeling that I’d heard his voice somewhere, when I know I’ve never met him before.

  I find my class soon after, and it goes pretty much how I’d known it would. Curiosity, condemnation, confusion, recognition, pity, and then I’m generally ignored for the rest of the period, which is exactly how I’d have it. The rest of the day follows suit. My teachers have already been prepped in regards to my . . . disability, and so they never force me in opposition of it. They make accommodations, ones that, admittedly, draw a few questioning glances from the other students, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

  It isn’t until I fumble my way to health class that I see him again, the guy from the hall. I’m sitting in a seat at the back, staring down at the textbook the teacher had placed on the scratched table in front of each blue plastic chair, so it’s his scuffed work boots I notice first. Black leather, broken laces that were frayed at the ends, the hem of his jeans threadbare and faded. He walks slowly past me, turning at the last moment to claim the seat across the aisle, one boot beneath the desk and the other spilling out into the aisle. I glance over at him and immediately recognize him; the dark hair, the darker eyes, the face completely devoid of expression. He doesn’t talk to anyone and if it isn’t my imagination, the other students seem to give him a wide radius as well. In fact, as I raise my head, I notice he’s getting more sidelong looks than me, which is practically impossible. Though that will almost certainly change as soon as –

  “Class, I want to introduce our new student, Bree McCaffrey,” my professor, Mr. Apligian, announces in a booming voice. He’s wearing the unfortunate combination of a cream sweater vest over a short-sleeved white dress shirt, the knitted fibers stretched over his portly belly. He has grayish-brown hair shorn close to his head and dark plastic framed eyeglasses that he adjusts on his nose as he scans the classroom, looking for me.

  I cringe as the room erupts in the squeals of chair legs, students pushing back in their seats, shifting their attention to me at the back of the room.

  “Bree’s going to be with us for the rest of the year,” he adds lamely, and then, mercifully, my introduction is over. The squeals signal a shift of attention back to the front of the room as Mr. Apligian rattles off a few more formalities while passing out the syllabus. I settle back into the uncomfortable plastic chair, dropping my hands to my lap, searching with my thumb against my opposite wrist. I find it easily, tender under the pad of my thumb. Only once I feel the slow, sour seep of relief do I realize he’s still looking at me. The guy from the hall.

  He stares at me unapologetically and I find myself staring back, wondering who he is. Wondering why he doesn’t seem to have any friends in a school this size. Wondering what had been so devastating that he’d stood there like that earlier, like the world was crumbling to ash all around him.

  The girl in the desk in front of him doesn’t hand him his copy of the syllabus as it travels to the back of the room, she drops it onto his desk like it’s burning her hand, and he finally breaks his gaze at the interruption. When he catches her eye she jerks back around like she’s spooked.

  He never looks at me again, and when the bell blasts overhead, he slides smoothly from his seat without a backward glance.

  He hadn’t spoken a single word to anyone.

  My last class is pre-calc and by the time I reach a seat at the back of the class I’m exhausted and raw. After so much time holed away from everything, this much constant noise and activity is draining.

  I stiffen and jerk away when a shoulder comes plowing into me out of nowhere, solid and heavy.

  He’s laughing when he turns around to face me, tanned face and sandy brown hair in that popular style that is way too long and meant to look wind-swept.

  “Sorry. That was -” he jabs a finger at a chuckling boy behind him – “dickhead’s fault back there. I’m Dylan, by the way.”

  His eyes are practically twinkling at me and I know he expects me to have some kind of girly reaction here but all I can feel is that throbbing in my arm where he’d run into me.

  “What’s your name?”

  I stare at him. Really?

  His smile goes crooked in a way that can only be calculated as his eyes turn theatrically mischievous. “Should I guess?”

  Yes, asshole. I’m The Little Mermaid, and if you’re just charming enough, pretty soon you’ll get to kiss me while a discordant seagull sings us a love ballad.

  “I really am sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  He thinks I’m mad at him or something, playing some game. I scan the classroom. Where is the effing teacher?

  The bell rings loud enough to make me jump, but Prince Oblivious doesn’t notice.

  “Come on Beautiful, just your name?”

  “Mr. Tanner,” an authoritative male voice calls out as he closes the door behind him, and I sigh. Finally.

  Dylan gives me a wink before making
his way to the front of the class. I watch curiously as my teacher – I hadn’t paid enough attention to my syllabus to care what his name was – whispers succinctly across his desk, his eyes flicking more than once back to me. I can imagine what he’s saying.

  New girl. Had a rough time. Doesn’t talk.

  When Dylan returns to the seat next to mine he actually looks a little sheepish. But that doesn’t stop him from grinning at me on his way out after class ends, slipping a pumpkin-orange canvas backpack over his shoulder with one overly muscled arm.

  “See you tomorrow, Beautiful.”

  Trish picks me up after school during what she calls her lunch break at two-thirty in the afternoon, and I force my face into all the right expressions. She fires a string of animated questions at me on the short drive back to her house, feeding me the answers she hopes for in her enthusiastic nodding. I barely even have to listen in order to respond in all the right ways. One of the perks of not talking is that people don’t really expect a whole lot of variety in your responses. Trish talks at me until the very moment I nod my goodbye at her and slip from the car.

  “I’ll see you for dinner!” she calls out the window to me as she backs down the drive, and with a wave she’s gone.

  I let myself into the house. It still smells of her morning coffee, which is a pleasant enough aroma. It’s neat and simple, everything in its place, but I don’t have the energy to find any better resting place for my still mostly empty backpack than the floor where I drop it just inside the door. I toe off my plain grey sneakers, leaving them where they lie as well, a tiny eye of disorder in the middle of this pristine space. Not that Trish is pretentious or uptight or anything, she just doesn’t have a lot of time for hobbies or trinkets or mess or teenage sisters dropped into her life like a sordid mistake from the darkest cloud in a stormy sky.

  Though, to be fair, I wasn’t dropped. I’d asked her, pleaded with her in any way I could, to come live here. It was just too hard back home. And she’d agreed without hesitation, even though we both knew the whole thing chipped just a little more off my parents’ already broken hearts.