THIRD STANZA:
PHILOSOPHIES OF SUFFERING
17.
Liv could not get the water of her daily showers hot enough to cleanse her, and once in class, she so closely studied her fingernails for skinner flesh that she missed being called upon. She continued to move alongside Monica, Krista, and the gang in the halls, and sat with them at lunch, but interactions felt blurry and muffled, as if performed through a fiberglass pane. If only they spoke fewer words, like those three she couldn’t get out of her head, the three the skinner continued to croak every time she saw it: Car. Bow. Hole.
Her interactions with teachers followed the same model, and when Coach Carney called Liv into the crowded office she shared with other coaches, Liv expected role-model boilerplate: Is there something troubling you? There are counselors trained to help you. Liv declined the seat Carney offered and adopted a pose she’d be able to hold long enough to cycle through a short series of lies. Instead, Carney ambushed her.
“You’re off the team, Liv. I’m sorry.”
Runners were dutiful by nature, and Carney wasn’t practiced at tasks like this. She crept a hand over her mouth as if prepared to cry if Liv cried; the coach was a noted weeper, liable to shatter into sobs when a runner scored a personal best. Liv, though, felt no mirrored emotion. The fiberglass was still there, slotted between her and a world that seemed increasingly unintelligible. At least Carney’s pointed words cracked the pane. Liv narrowed her eyes and tried to peer through it.
“It’s just too many missed practices,” Carney said. “It’s not fair to the other girls.”
“The other girls.” Liv echoed it only to get her mouth moving, but once uttered, the words hung there like soot. “What did they say?”
“They didn’t have to say anything,” Carney said.
But that was an artful dodge. Girls had said something, and Liv believed she knew which girls. Monica, for sure. Or Darla, Laurie, and Amber if Monica convinced them to do the dirty work. That was it, then: Her legs were cut off from under her, severing the last link she had to her friends. How quickly it happened, Liv mused, thinking back to the first day of school, just a few weeks back, all those cheers and hugs. A different time, and she a different person. Liv examined herself for grief, and it was only the carefulness of this search that alerted her that her hands were balled into fists.
She looked down at them. They were the same fists that had twice assaulted the skinner; that’s what fists were for. Liv snapped her head up and looked for something to hit. Letter-jacket emblems, paper inboxes, a coatrack—nothing with the sort of bulk that would be satisfying.
So instead she kicked. Her foot punted the metal folding chair Carney had offered, and it flew backward, clanging shut against the floor. Carney leaped to her feet.
“Liv!”
“I don’t want to be on any team,” Liv snarled. “None of you understand anyway. No one understands anything.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
But Liv was out of there, slamming the door to cut off whatever bullshit Carney, who was probably weeping already, hoped to shovel at her, and just so the crying coach would have something to stop her from giving chase, Liv ripped a bulletin board off the wall. It hit the floor with a giant whap while individual papers took flight, each promoting more bullshit. It was like Doug had said, all of it just running around in stupid circles.
Liv careened in the direction of the parking lot. Get out of here, get back to the shed, where actual events of consequence were going down. She fled downstairs and heard voices banging about the auditorium. Baldwin herself—all Liv needed right now. Actually, it was. It was exactly what she needed.
The auditorium was dark except for the middlemost seats, dusted pollen yellow by sun shaving through the lobby entrance. The stage itself was bright, as if carved from the dark by a knife, and hosted several kids moving like robots while reading from scripts. So here they were, the cast of Oliver! Liv figured that they, too, whispered about her every time they passed her in the hall.
Liv hurried along the front row, not seeing Baldwin until she sashayed in from the wing, her billowy skirt moving like a jellyfish, to take the girl by the elbow and restage her. Liv stopped, throttling the railing over the orchestra pit. It was Baldwin up there, but it could have easily been Carney, or Gamble, or anyone who’d done her wrong.
“I hope all of you are happy!” she cried.
They were illuminated; she was not. The actors squinted, trying to recognize her by shape and sound. Off to the left, or stage right, or whatever the hell thespians called it, stood an actor instantly recognizable by his exemplary posture. Bruno Mayorga—and it was the final indignity, this boy she’d come to like, even trust a little, incorporated into this sham of a show.
“You’re all shitting on my dad’s memory by doing this,” she raged.
Baldwin was the only one who looked to have identified Liv right off. She heaved a sigh big enough to be appreciated in the balcony.
“I offered to discuss this with you,” Baldwin said.
“Everyone thinks they know what happened to him!” Liv shouted. If only these assholes could lay their eyes on the skinner, Liv thought. If only Doug would agree to show the skinner to all these ignorant nonbelievers. “You have no idea, none of you. He was not crazy, not even a little. You just didn’t listen to him. No one did. And they shut down his play, which could have been really important to everyone, just so we could have this, this … shit?”
Her splintered voice scared her.
“This is not the time, Liv,” Baldwin snapped. “If you want to talk about it, we can talk about it. But tomorrow. Not now. You have to be an adult about this.”
“Why would I talk to you? You’re the one to blame for all this!”
“That’s right. I am. So I’d appreciate it if you spoke to me privately and left everyone else alone.”
Liv spread her arms to appeal to her fellow students.
“If any of you had any guts, you’d quit!”
“Oh lord,” Baldwin muttered. “Enough with the mutiny routine.”
“Well, don’t be surprised if your sets end up busted.”
“That would be destruction of school property.” Baldwin was starting to sound bored. “At least then we’d be done with you.”
“You’ll never be done with me.”
“Our own Phantom of the Opera, I’m honored. Now will you leave?”
Liv’s lips moved, but she was emptied of comebacks. Had Baldwin won this round? The idea infuriated her, even more so for Bruno standing witness, but her muscles were tightening as they did in the Armory, a dangerous feeling, so she headed for the red exit sign. She ducked down some stairs, shoved open a door, and was blinded by a blast of sunlight from which she didn’t recover until her hip collided with the station wagon. Then she was in the front seat, vision blurred with sweat, but the engine didn’t turn, and then she was outside the car again, kicking the door as hard as she’d kicked Carney’s chair, as hard as she’d wanted to kick Baldwin.
She stomped from the parking lot toward town. Summer had fought back, and it was gallingly hot, and she kept her eyes on the sidewalk until she sensed a car crawling beside her. Car: The word had a dark magic now, straining for bow, reaching for hole. She ducked and looked at the driver. It was Bruno. And for the first time since she’d met him, he didn’t greet her with a smile.