Slide

Mrs. Price pulls on some latex gloves and tells me to sit down and pull up my pant leg. She wipes my knee with an alcohol pad, dabs on some Neosporin, and then wraps it with a clean bandage. The whole time, I am intensely aware of the hot guy staring at my bare leg.

Mrs. Price strips off her gloves and tosses them into the trash. She stands and looks at the guy. “All your records seem to be in order, Zane. What class do you have now? Vee here can show you the way. Sylvia, this is Zane Huxley. This is his first day.”

The guy steps forward and shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you.” He pulls a crinkled paper from his pocket and squints at it. “I’ve got AP psych with Golden.”

“Oh, good.” Mrs. Price claps her hands. “That’s where you’re going. Right, Vee?”

“Um, yeah.”

As we walk to Mr. Golden’s room, I keep my eyes straight ahead, though I can feel Zane’s eyes on me.

“So, Sylvia. Got any advice for the newb in town? Cool places to hang out? Teachers to avoid?” He reaches out and trails his finger along a poster that says STAR in bubble letters. Safe, Tolerant, Accountable, Respectful—all the things teachers wish students were, but we can’t always be because we’re human beings and not robots.

“Not really. Get salad bar on Chef’s Choice days.”

He laughs. “Well, that’s a given.” He unfolds his schedule. “I’ve got Winger first period. Have you had her?”

I risk a glance at Zane. His face is open and friendly and interested. To him, I’m a perfectly normal girl. Well, a perfectly normal girl with Pepto-colored hair. But still.

“Yeah. Actually, I’ve got her first period, too. Just don’t bother her when she’s playing solitaire, and you should be fine. She gets cranky.”

“Solitaire, eh? What about this guy? Golden? He cool?”

“Yeah, he’s really cool,” I say. “He’s young, which means he hasn’t burned out yet. And he always tells these weird stories, like the time he helped a woman give birth at the Omaha zoo.”

“Ew,” Zane says, but he looks fascinated.

“Yeah. So where are you from?”

A girl in a flippy skirt skips down the hall toward us, her eyes lingering on Zane, but he doesn’t even look her way. His eyes are fixed on me.

“Actually, I used to live here when I was little. But then my dad died and we moved to Chicago to live with my grandma.”

Awkward. It’s always so awkward when someone mentions death, especially when you don’t know them very well. Strangers always say they’re soooooo sorry when they hear my mother is gone, but it’s wrong that death is a loss. It’s something you gain. Death is always there, whispering in your ear. It’s in the spaces between your fingers. In your memories. In everything you think and say and feel and wish. It’s always there.

I know there’s nothing you can say to make death okay. It is what it is.

“That sucks,” I say.

He nods silently.

We’re standing in front of the door to Mr. Golden’s classroom.

“Well, here we are,” I say feebly.

“Try to contain your excitement,” he says, smiling as he pushes open the door.

The room we walk into looks more like a lounge than a classroom. Mr. Golden likes to rescue and reupholster couches and bring them in for us to sit on during class discussions. He’s decorated the walls with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Mixed in with the posters of Freud and diagrams of the human brain are old concert posters for The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. He even has a black light he turns on for special occasions. A large green plant that looks like it could swallow me hulks in the corner.

“Looks like we have a newcomer,” Mr. Golden booms. “Take a seat wherever. I’m not into seating charts.”

Zane folds himself into a beanbag chair. He’s so tall, his knees almost hit his chin. The girls who aren’t sneaking looks at him are openly gaping. A little seed of pleasure bursts within me when he looks my way and grins.

Rollins sits on an orange sofa in the corner, doodling in the margin of his textbook. I plop down next to him and pull out my notebook. Mr. Golden may let us sit wherever we want, but he draws heavily from his lectures when writing his exams. I got a C on the last one, so I figure I’d better actually try to follow what Mr. Golden is saying about classical conditioning.

“Who’s that?” Rollins asks under his breath, nodding in Zane’s direction. Rollins doesn’t bother to take notes. He’s got some kind of photographic memory; he remembers not only what he sees, but also what he reads, hears, and even smells. Ask him what was for lunch last Tuesday, and he’ll remember just how nasty the burned meatloaf smelled in the hallways.

“Uh, Zane Huxley,” I whisper back when Mr. Golden pauses to blow his nose. “He’s new. I met him in the nurse’s office. Sliced my knee open pretty good.”

Rollins’s eyes dart down to my leg. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just kneeled on a beer bottle under the bleachers. No. Big. Deal. Anyway, where were you during lunch?”

Rollins pauses before answering. I can tell he knows there’s more to the story, but I don’t want to rehash the conversation I overheard under the bleachers. It’s just too depressing.

He tugs his lip ring. “I was printing off the latest installment of Fear and Loathing in High School. My finest work, if I do say so myself.” Pride creeps into his voice. Rollins makes his own zine, in which he reviews concerts and writes articles about the suckiness that is high school. It’s completely do-it-yourself, literally cut and pasted from Rollins’s journals and drawings.

“Ooooh, can I have one?”

“They’re in my locker. I’ll give you one later.”

Mr. Golden launches back into his lecture. By the end of the period, I’ve covered a whole page with my loopy handwriting.

When the bell rings, Mr. Golden raises his voice. “Remember to read the section on the different theories of motivation tonight. There might be a quiz Monday, just so you know.”

I’m stuffing my notebook back into my backpack when Mr. Golden turns to address me.

“Sylvia, can I speak with you for a moment?”

Rollins pokes me in the back. “See you later.”

When we’re alone, Mr. Golden perches on a sofa and crosses his arms over his chest. I hover in the middle of the room, wondering what he could possibly want with me. I’m pulling an overall B in his class, despite the C I received on the last exam. I would be an utterly unremarkable student if it weren’t for my so-called narcolepsy.

“Sylvia, is everything okay?” he asks, his voice full of concern.

“Yeah,” I say, racking my brain for any reason for him to think things are not okay. I must be sending out some really not okay vibes today. “Why?”

“It’s just that I noticed you got a C on the test last week. The work you turned in prior to that test was of much higher quality. I don’t mean to pry, but is there something wrong? Did you not study for the test?”

If I wanted to, I could probably play the narcolepsy card and say I wasn’t able to concentrate on my studies. I’ve been having such a rough time, I tried my best, really I did . . . but that would be a lie. And there’s something about Mr. Golden that makes me want to be honest with him.

“Sorry, Mr. Golden. Guess I just forgot to study. I’ll try harder.”

He leans forward and lowers his voice. “Listen, Sylvia, if you ever need some extra help, I’d be happy to oblige. Why don’t you come in after school some night?”

I look down and shuffle my feet, trying to think of a polite way to say I don’t really need his help—the problem was that I didn’t open my psychology book for like a month.

“Oh, um. Thanks, Mr. Golden. I’m usually pretty busy after school, though. I’m sure I’ll do better on the next test if I just study a little more.”

Mr. Golden straightens up. “Well, just keep it in mind. I’m here for you, after all.”

I smile and nod before turning to leave. He follows me to the door and closes it behind me with a firm click.

After school, Rollins stands waiting at my locker, holding a stack of xeroxed booklets. “So what did Goldy want?”

“Oh,” I say, waving my hand. “He just wanted to know why I’m such a slacker. I told him I’m naturally lazy. Can I have one?” I gesture to the zines.

He pulls out a copy wrapped in plastic. “I know what a germaphobe you are,” he says teasingly. That’s Rollins’s explanation for why I don’t like to touch things other people have handled—I’m totally OCD.

I unwrap the zine and examine it. On the cover, it says, Fear and Loathing in High School No. 7. There’s a hand-drawn picture of a grotesque dog making its way down a hall lined with lockers, bags of weed and capsules hanging from its drooling jaws—a reference to Jimmy Pine’s arrest, I’m guessing.

“Nice artwork,” I say, admiring the cover.

He does all the drawing and writing in Sharpie, then goes to Copyworld to make dozens of copies. Every couple of months he comes out with a new issue. He sells them for a dollar apiece at the record store where he works, Eternally Vinyl, but more often than not he hands them out for free. Sometimes he rides the bus and sneaks them into people’s bags or pockets.

Looking over the table of contents, I see there’s an article about how the administration had no right to search Jimmy Pine’s locker without a search warrant; a concert review for a local band, Who Killed My Sea Monkeys; and an article about the hypocrisy of the kids in Wise Choices, the student group against substance abuse.

I turn to page five and scan the article entitled “Dumb Choices: City High’s Goody-Goodies Exposed.” Rollins cut out Samantha Phillips’s yearbook picture from last year and drew a beer can in one hand and a joint in the other. Samantha, along with being head cheerleader, is also the president of Wise Choices. I’m sure it’s only for her college applications—or to throw her parents off her boozehound trail. She’s been drinking wine coolers since middle school.

“We on for tonight?” Rollins stuffs the remaining zines into his backpack and zips it up, looking at me expectantly.

“Damn straight,” I say, trying to hide the surprise in my voice. It’s been our tradition to watch horror movies and order pizza on Friday nights, but he hasn’t made it the last two weeks. “It’s Friday Night Fright, isn’t it?”

I’m trying to decide what I’m in the mood for—The Ring or The Exorcist—when I remember that Mattie’s invited Amber over tonight. Shit. I’m so not in the mood to babysit a couple of cheerleaders.

“Hey, Amber Prescott is spending the night at my place tonight. Can we go to your house instead?” I mentally cross my fingers, already knowing what his answer will be, but hoping I’m wrong.

Panic rolls over Rollins’s face, then disappears, so quickly I’m not even sure I saw it. “Uh, my mom’s . . . painting the living room. The place is a mess. Drop cloths everywhere. Sorry.”

Since I’ve known him, Rollins has never asked me over to his house. Every time I suggest a visit, he makes up some excuse about his mom redoing the bathroom or putting in new cabinets or something. By now, his house must be a freaking palace, with all the remodeling they’ve done. I’m pretty sure his mom is really an alkie or a hoarder or something.

I shrug. “That’s okay. We’ll just banish Mattie to her room.”

His lips curl into a grin. “I’ll see you tonight then.” He slings his backpack over one shoulder and walks away.

After transferring my textbooks to my backpack, I slam my locker door and spin the knob. A couple of girls I used to be friends with pass me, whispering and giggling. They’re not laughing at me, though. They don’t even look my way. It’s like I’m a ghost to them, like I don’t even exist. I watch them hurry away, probably to cheerleading practice. Sighing, I head in the opposite direction.

When I walk by Mr. Golden’s room, I see something strange. A girl is sitting on a couch, and Mr. Golden is leaning over her. I can’t see her face—only a bit of long, black hair. It sounds like she’s sobbing. He looks over his shoulder and catches me peeking. Embarrassed, I look at the floor and bolt away.

I rush toward the exit, staring at my shoes and wondering what a crying girl is doing in Mr. Golden’s room after school hours.

As I push open the door, I plow into someone entering the school. At first, all I see is green T-shirt. My cheeks become warm as I realize who I’ve almost knocked over on my mission to put distance between myself and Mr. Golden.

Zane beams down at me. “In a rush to start the weekend, eh?”

I return his smile. “Isn’t everyone?”

“God, yes. My friends from Chicago are coming to see my new house, and we’re going to a show. You doing anything fun this weekend?”

“Oh, you know, the usual—cow tipping,” I say.

“Nice. Have fun with that. And try not to run anyone else over.” He winks.

“Just try to stay out of my way,” I toss back, grinning, and step out into the fading afternoon sunlight. The air smells of burning leaves. Only a few cars are left in the student parking lot. I wonder which car is Zane’s as I pop my headphones into my ears and trudge toward the sidewalk.

As I walk home, my mind keeps returning to the scene in Mr. Golden’s room. I wonder who that girl on the couch was and what happened to her to make her cry so hard.

A curious piece of paper is taped to our front door, flapping in the wind. As I get closer, I realize it’s a little square from a desk calendar. I rip it off the door and carry it inside to examine more closely. The date is circled several times in red marker.

October 19—today’s date.

Weird.

I remember Sophie in the bathroom earlier, saying Mattie must have forgotten her birthday. Is this Sophie’s attempt to remind Mattie? It seems out of character, but the desperate way Sophie was talking makes me think she’s not in the best frame of mind.

I stuff the paper into my back pocket. Sophie doesn’t need to give Mattie and Amber any more ammunition. If she just leaves them alone for a little while, I know it’ll all blow over. They’ll find something else to fixate on. They’ll all be friends again in a week.

I just stand there for a while, feeling the emptiness of the house down to my bones. Shadows stretch long across the floor. I hear nothing but the steady tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the living room. I am totally alone.

Mattie’s at cheerleading practice. Dad’s at the hospital. Mom is . . . Well, Mom hasn’t been here for a long, long time.

Everything about our house is pretty much the same as it was five years ago, when my mom died of cancer. Same faded curtains with little red cherries on them. Same old yellow wallpaper. Same cherry hardwood floor covered by an ancient red-and-gold rug. Same ornate silver mirror opposite the front door.

I step closer to the mirror. The girl I see looks wild with her bright-pink hair—rebellious and free. I wish I felt that way inside. I dyed my hair because I needed a drastic change from pale blond—my natural hair color is exactly the same shade as my mother’s. I was tired of looking in the mirror every day and seeing her, missing her.

Dyeing my hair couldn’t disguise the other parts of her that lived on in me, though. The way my laughter borders on cackling when I find something hilarious, just like hers did. The way my skin refuses to tan, no matter how many hours I spend in the sun.

And I know she had narcolepsy, too. I’ve inherited that unfortunate gene from her. I remember her falling asleep sometimes while watching television or during dinner. When she woke up, she’d have the strangest little smile. I’d give anything to know what happened to her while she was asleep. If she was like me. If she slid.

I don’t remember the first time it happened, but it was after my mother’s death. My father told me about walking into my room when I was twelve years old and finding me on the floor, unconscious. I was barely breathing. He couldn’t wake me up. He rushed me to the emergency room, but no one could figure out what was wrong with me. Eventually, I just woke up and was fine, like nothing happened.

The doctors conducted test after test. Eventually, with a lack of any better explanation for my periodic bouts of unconsciousness, they diagnosed me with narcolepsy—apparently it can start around puberty. When I tried to tell my father what was really happening to me, he started sending me to a shrink—a woman with bright-red hair named Mrs. Moran. She said I was dealing with the pain of my mother’s death by making up stories. Crying out for attention. My father thought that made sense.

So that’s when I started lying.

As time went on, I just got used to it. And I started to learn the rules. Like one time during a field trip when I was thirteen. I’d worn Miss Ryan’s sweater because the air had suddenly turned cold and I hadn’t brought a jacket to school that day. She warned me to not spill anything on it because her grandmother had knitted it for her. One minute, I was walking through the museum, studying the paintings on the wall, and the next—I wasn’t anymore.

I was back on the school bus. Suddenly a man came up behind me and circled his arm around my waist. He said, “Nancy, Nancy.” Miss Ryan’s first name. He spun me around, and I realized it was the bus driver.

He and his mustache came closer. His face descended onto mine, and his tongue went into my mouth. That was my first kiss. It was the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me. It tasted like ashtrays and orange Tic Tacs. His hand slid under my blouse, and I prayed it would be over soon.

When I woke up, I was looking into a security guard’s face. I’d fallen down and hit my head. He let me go when he was sure I didn’t have a concussion or anything. I remember the moment when I handed Miss Ryan’s fuzzy sweater back to her. Something just clicked. I realized my sliding into her had something to do with her sweater. She had left something of herself—her essence—on it, and I picked it up somehow. I wouldn’t learn the word empathy until a couple of years later, but I understood the concept. It’s seeing life through someone else’s eyes. I had a gift.

Or a curse, depending on how you looked at it.

When I got onto the bus to go home, I couldn’t help but stare at the driver. He winked at me, and I hurried past him. For years after, I had nightmares about him biting my face off.

At first, it didn’t happen that often. Maybe every few months. But the uncertainty was enough to make me scared to touch anything. It was hard to tell which objects carried an emotional charge. There were the obvious things, the items people cherished and loved—like wedding rings or photos of grandparents—but there were unexpected things, too. A borrowed pencil. A library book. Anything someone was touching when they experienced an extreme emotion.

For a while, I wrapped my fingers with tape to keep myself from accidentally touching anything dangerous. But then I forgot and got sleepy and rested my cheek on a desk. I slid into an older boy stealing cigarettes from the grocery store. I felt his heart pounding beneath his big, black coat and the sweat under his arms. When my teacher woke me up, I stared into her face, terrified she’d know about the bad thing I’d just been doing.

But then I realized everyone was doing bad things. My teacher was sneaking drinks of liquid that made my throat burn. My sister was cheating during a math test. The mailman tucked packages into a special bag to take home. People were doing good things, too—writing thank-you notes, holding doors for old ladies, smiling at each other— but those people weren’t the majority. The fact is that most people keep secrets hidden behind their eyes.

Lately, I’ve been sliding more often. Once a month turned into once a week and then a couple times a week. Now, even if I can manage a few days without sliding, I end up exhausted and unfocused and even more susceptible to the slides than usual. It’s like the sliding is picking up momentum somehow. It’s like there’s a reason behind it. I just wish I knew what it was.

In my room, I throw my backpack onto my bed, but the stress doesn’t ease from my shoulders. Something is weighing me down. Maybe it’s the way those ugly words felt coming out of Amber’s mouth. Maybe it’s Sophie’s desperation. Maybe it’s how Zane’s smile made me buzz like there’s electricity coursing through my veins. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I need something to help me unwind.

I need music.

In my closet, behind my mountain of Converse shoes in all the colors of the rainbow, I keep a box of my mother’s CDs. I don’t know why I hide them; my dad doesn’t care that I have them, and my sister couldn’t be less interested in music from the 90s, but it’s like, if I keep them packed away, they’ll stay fresh—they’ll keep my mother with me just a little longer.

I push a Pearl Jam CD into my laptop and then crawl onto my bed. I retrieve the astronomy book and run my fingers over the cover. It’s black, sprinkled with peepholes of light. There’s nothing as gorgeous as the night sky. Nothing.

Flipping through the pages, I find the corner I carefully turned down to mark my place. Black holes. They’re so intense and sad. When massive stars die, their cores grow so dense with gravity that they pull other things in, suck them into infinity. Black holes seem impossible, like they defy the laws of physics, but there it all is, in black and white. I wish there were a textbook that would explain the phenomena of sliding to me.

The song “Alive” comes on, and my heart trips a little. I lean back against my pillow and listen to the words. It’s all about this kid finding out his father is dead. Even though the kid never knew his father, the death leaves a scar on him. An absence so all-encompassing, it’s there even in his happiest moments.

I close my eyes and wish I could tell my mother about my day. I’d tell her I’m worried about Sophie and how there’s a new boy who’s really kind of hot and how I think Mattie and Amber are up to no good. I’d tell her I miss her. I’d tell her I love her. I’d tell her everything.

A couple of hours later, Mattie and Amber spill into the kitchen, all ponytails and giggles and pom-poms. I roll my eyes over my glass of chocolate milk. Through the kitchen window, I see Samantha Phillips’s car pull away from the curb. The ridiculous thing is that, instead of just ditching me as a friend, Samantha hangs out with my little sister now, like she’s upgraded to a newer, shinier version of me. I suppose it was inevitable, since Mattie joined the cheerleading squad. And Mattie has way more in common with her than I ever did. I’ve heard Mattie spend hours on the phone with Samantha, debating the merits of thong underwear.

Mattie tosses her purse and pom-poms onto the kitchen table before raiding the fridge. “Hey!” She grimaces at me. “You finished the chocolate milk.”

She pulls out a bottle of Evian and twists the cap off before taking a long gulp.

Amber helps herself to a bottle of water and shakes it at my sister. “You don’t need chocolate milk, anyway, honey. Remember, we’re off sugar and flour.”

Mattie sticks out her tongue at Amber.

“So, what are the chances I can get you guys to lie low tonight?” I hoist myself onto the kitchen counter. “Rollins is coming over to watch movies.”

At the mention of Rollins’s name, Amber stands up straight. I can practically smell the pheromones coming off her.

“What will you give us to stay in my room?” Mattie, ever the negotiator, asks. Her gaze drifts up to the half-empty bottle of Captain Morgan on top of the refrigerator.

“There’s loads of sugar in rum,” I say, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.

“Booze doesn’t count,” Amber announces. “Your body burns booze calories superquick. Especially if we practice our new routine a few times.” She swivels her hips and tosses her ponytail in either an epileptic seizure or their new routine.