In first-period English, the teacher asks me to close my umbrella and I comply. She says, “It’s nice to see you again, Sarah.” I smile. It feels like I have a disease.
By lunch, I’m ready to leave and take the bus to anywhere, but I decide to stay. I sit in the cafeteria at a table of the other sophomore art club geeks. Carmen is here and she’s talking about tornadoes. Henry is sketching his milk carton à la Warhol. Vivian eats Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets one after the other and washes them down with bottomless black coffee. None of them know that my name is now Umbrella. The senior and junior art club geeks sit at a different table now.
Three weeks ago, our art club suffered a fissure.
The art club seniors would say the fissure was my fault, but it wasn’t.
I should have bought two sandwiches for breakfast. I’m hungry, but the ceiling seems to have collapsed on the empty vending machines.
I skip gym class the next period and stand in the locker room shower stall. I imagine curtains where there should be curtains, but there are no curtains because my new school isn’t a school anymore. There is graffiti on the inside of the shower stall. The absence of violence is not love. I think about it for a minute but I don’t understand.
I close my eyes and listen.
“I hear [popular girl] is getting a nose job.”
“She should.”
“And I hear she’s thinking of getting a boob job while she’s at it.”
“What I wouldn’t give for rich parents.”
“I think I’m going to fail my English test.”
“I can help you study.”
“I’m so bad at tests.”
“Did you hear that Jen broke up with [popular boy]?”
“It means you can go after him now, you know.”
“Shit, we’re late.”
“Can I borrow a pair of socks?”
“Here.”
“Thanks.”
Here is proof that nothing ever really happens. The proof is everywhere. I just have to stand in one place and listen.
“Brrrrring!” I yell into a room full of empty toilet stalls. “Brrring!” My voice echoes down the row of spray-painted half-size lockers with random pried-off doors. In one of the torn-apart lockers is a diorama—a prison cell made of sturdy twigs with a papier-maché sphere inside of it. The sphere is painted red. The twigs are painted silver. On the floor of the diorama are the words WE WERE HERE in black Sharpie marker.
Next period is art. I imagine the art club sophomores walking toward the art room and I join them but nobody says hello or anything.
Halfway down the hall, someone hands Vivian a note. It’s from her wannabe boyfriend. She reads it to us: “I was disappointed to find your name in the boys’ locker room bathroom stall. It was on a list titled GIRLS WHO DO ANAL. I always thought you were better than that.”
I say, “How original.”
Carmen says, “Henry, go scratch that out.”
Henry says, “I don’t go to the locker room. They all call me a fag.”
Vivian asks, “How do you change for gym?”
Henry says, “I skip gym.”
Carmen says, “I’ll go with you. We’ll get a lav pass and do it next period.”
Vivian says, “It’s probably not even there. This guy is such an asshole.”
“So why do you want to go out with him?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. I decide she would say: “I’m attracted to assholes, I guess.”
I don’t expect to get nervous walking into the art room. I know I can do whatever I want. I can leave when I want. I can say what I want. But when I kick over the pyramid of Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys (not original) arranged in front of the art room door, I’m nervous. The seniors trickle in and take their places at the back table and pull out their new projects. I haven’t been in school for nearly two weeks, so I have no project. I just want to get my stuff and get out. This is very easy to do when everyone in the room is ignoring me because none of us is here. Or I’m here, but they aren’t. Or they’re there, and I’m not. I have so much to learn at my new school. I sit on a three-legged desk and close my eyes again.
Miss Smith, who should be taking attendance, is at the back of the room with the seniors and the rat shit chattering about art college and what her four years at Tyler were like. All I hear is “And the parties!” Miss Smith is an asshole. I wish one of Carmen’s tornadoes would suck her up. It would make things convenient for me, considering what I know about Miss Smith.
Vivian and Henry get their projects and supplies and go to work, and the seniors make an effort to say hello to them. One of them tells Vivian that she likes her T-shirt. Another one walks over to Henry and gives him a random hug.
Carmen is friends with everyone. It’s just her nature. She says, “What up?” and the seniors all wave. I’m standing right here. For the first time in weeks. Not one person says “Nice to see you back!” or “Hey, look! It’s Sarah!” or anything like that. Everyone gets to work sifting through the broken glass by the windows, looking for the perfect piece. The glass never seems to cut their skin even though they’re picking it up by the fistful. I turn and leave the room.
Not even Carmen says good-bye.
I stop a few feet from the door and stand in the hallway and listen.