I close my eyes. Try to breathe, deep and slow.
“Paper bag.” Lipton is talking to himself now. “Paper bag.” He runs to the craft supplies and grabs something and is crinkling it and then he brings it to my face. “Breathe.”
And I breathe. I breathe again. And again. Slower, until the room stops spinning. Lipton’s eyes are wild as he leans over me, holding the bag to my mouth. It’s one of his sister’s puppets, with googly eyes and a pink pom-pom nose. I take a few more breaths, watch the pom-pom move up and down with each inhale and exhale until my breathing is back to normal.
“I’m okay now,” I say into the bag.
He takes it away.
We stare at each other for a minute, me curled on my side and he kneeling over me. The door is still closed.
“I’m sorry I’m such a freak,” I whisper.
“You’re not—”
“It’s okay.” I push myself up. “I know I am.”
He starts to object again, but I press my fingers to his lips. He closes his mouth.
I take my hand away. “Don’t try to convince me I’m someone different or better or stronger than I am. Okay? I’m doing the best I can, but sometimes it’s not very good. Sometimes I have to lie on the floor and breathe into a paper bag. That’s who I am.”
“I understand.” The expression on his face is, in fact, very understanding.
“Sometimes I am so scared of people, of being around people, that I have to hide. In the bathroom or, or . . . behind shrubbery or something.”
He nods. “I get it.”
“I say really stupid things all the time. I’ll probably pass out trying to give this presentation. Or vomit. That happens, too. I could vomit all over the place. I’ll never be able to show my face again. We should probably say our good-byes now.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m serious.”
He drops from his kneeling position to sit on the floor next to me. “I don’t care about any of that.”
“Just wait till I vomit on you,” I say.
He laughs. “Stop trying to scare me away. “
“I’m not.” I drop my gaze to my lap. Fiddle with the hem of my shirt. “It’s just, I lost the one friend I could be myself with, and I’m afraid—”
Lipton scoots even closer. His face is inches away. His eyes steady. “You can be yourself with me. I don’t want you to be anyone else. Okay?”
I return his gaze. I nod.
He leans in, and his lips are on mine, and I do not want to be anyone else. Not even a little bit.
31
WE MEET AT LIPTON’S LOCKER on Monday morning. He’s trying to be calm so I don’t freak out, but I can tell he’s nervous. Which actually helps me feel less nervous.
“I have something for you.” He digs around in his backpack, opening all the zippered compartments and becoming increasingly frazzled when he doesn’t find what he’s looking for. I’m thinking he’s going to give me another bag of M&M’s, and why is he doing that now? Then he pats his pocket. “Here it is.”
He produces a small rectangular box. It’s wrapped in glittery silver paper.
I take the box in his hand. “What’s this?”
“A present.”
“What for?”
“For you.”
“Why?”
He sighs. “Will you just open it?”
I look around to make sure nobody is watching, because it appears to be a jewelry box of some kind, a ring box maybe, and the part of my brain that isn’t thinking clearly is a little worried that Lipton did something completely insane like buy me a promise ring. Which I sincerely hope is not the case because promise rings are the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of and now is not the time to . . .
Calm down.
I force myself to stop the internal brain vomit, and I tear open the wrapping paper. The box is not from a jeweler. It’s from the store at the mall that sells spiked bracelets and skinny, acid-washed jeans.
My eyes blink nervously to Lipton’s.
“Will you just open it, please?” He is starting to look like he might vomit.
I pull the lid off the box. There’s a necklace inside, a silver chain with a silver sword hanging from it. Kind of like the tiny swords the Minecraft soldiers were clicking together in his Battle of Thermopylae video.
“It’s . . . a sword?” I stroke my finger over its surface, but don’t lift it from the cotton padding.
“A diamond sword,” he says.
My eyes bulge as I take a closer look.
“Not real diamonds. That’s just what it’s called in Minecraft.” He shifts his weight, hands shoved into his pockets. “The diamond sword can protect you from almost anything. It makes you stronger, especially if it has enchantments on it. And I put all the enchantments on this one.”
I take the tiny sword in my fingers. “How did you do that?”
“Well, in the game, you can buy enchantments with points you accumulate in battle. But this one, I just . . .” He shrugs. “I just pretended. It’s for luck. For the presentation. Ward off evil classmates and all that.” He shrugs again.
It makes me want to happy cry. I blink rapidly to keep that from happening. “Can you help me put it on?”
He takes it from the box and secures it around my neck after getting it tangled in my hair and then untangled. The sword rests right below the little hollow where my collarbones meet. My sweater covers it, but I can feel it there.
It helps me get through the door and into the classroom, but then I remember what I’m about to do and time starts to move really slowly. The roar comes back to my ears and takes on a slow-mo sound, the vacuum cleaners dropping to a lower pitch. My footsteps reverberate through the room with a thud . . . thud . . . thud. I can see every face, every smirk, every snicker as if captured on video and played back with a heavy hand on the pause button.
I’m pretty sure I’ve stopped breathing entirely.
Lipton breaks the horrible spell I’m under by whispering my name. “Vicky . . . Vicky.”
“Huh?”
“Mr. Braxley said we can start now.”
I grip the edges of my desk. I nod, but don’t move. I don’t even remember sitting down.
Lipton holds up the USB thumb drive. “I’ll just put this in and push play and off we go, okay?”
I look up at him as he stands, the roar in my ears a swarm of bees now.
He leans down to whisper through the buzzing. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. You’ve got the diamond sword, remember?”
I put my hand to the necklace, pinch the tiny sword between my fingers. Pretend or not, the enchantments seem to work. My shoulders relax, the roar quiets to a low hum. I manage to return Lipton’s smile. He walks to Mr. Braxley’s desk and puts the thumb drive in the computer. He turns out the lights and presses play.