After Zero Page 3

  Fin grunts. “They’re still not convinced. I mean, they only caved because we kept threatening them.”

  I lift my eyebrows in spite of myself. Conn sits up. “Oh, she just means we threatened to run away. It was part of our protest. And it exploded into this nasty fight.”

  “A fight we should have had sooner.” Fin huffs. “Now it’s late in the year, probably too late to join a team. I really wanted to do softball.” She turns to me. “Do you think I missed the boat?”

  I shake my head. She’ll hear about the principal’s everybody-has-to-join-one-thing initiative on the intercom. No need for me to tell her too. I eye the door as the itch grows itchier. I’m in risky territory. The longer I stay here, the higher my chances are of being asked more questions, of adding too much to my tally, of saying something regrettable.

  “Gotta pee.” The lie escapes me. I turn and leave without waiting for a response.

  I slip out the door that cuts through the courtyard—if you can even call it a courtyard. It’s more like a square of cracked pavement in the center of the school, with a birch tree and a couple of benches. Whoever named Green Pasture Middle School didn’t name it after the courtyard. I don’t know what they named it after. I walk across the empty square toward the other door. Fin and Conn will probably tell Ms. Standish I ditched them, but that’s a price I’ll have to pay.

  Something whooshes by my neck. I duck and look up. The sky gapes, gray. I rub my neck and keep walking.

  As I approach the door, leaves on the birch tree rustle. My eyes swivel toward the tree, squinting. It takes me a minute to distinguish leaves from feathers. Then I see it: a bird posted on the highest branch, watching me. It’s entirely black, from its bowie knife of a beak down to its stick legs. I blink. More rustling. Then I see only leaves again.

  I rub the goose bumps on my arms and hurry inside.

  Chapter 4

  I head to science class early and take my place in the back row. Bernard Billows dozes in the front. I doodle in my notebook as other students trickle in. Someone takes out scissors and snips off a piece of Bernard Billows’s hair.

  Mr. Gankle strolls in and sets his briefcase on his desk. The scissors retreat. “I assume everyone read the chapter I assigned?”

  Nods ripple across the room.

  “Good.” Mr. Gankle leans back against his desk. “Well, instead of me lecturing and droning on about it, today we’re going to have a class discussion.”

  My body reacts on cue: heart starts to pound, pulse quickens, dread rises from the pit of my stomach. As inevitable as flinching at a whip or squinting in the sun. I run my pencil over a line in my notebook until the paper tears.

  “So what did we learn in this chapter? Who wants to start?”

  Silence. People shift in their seats.

  I relax. No one did the reading except for me. Sorry, Mr. Gankle, no discussion today. What a shame.

  “Do I need to give a pop quiz?” He crosses his arms.

  A throat clears. Everyone turns to look at Arty Pilger, who’s infamous for failing pop quizzes. He pushes his red-framed glasses up his nose. “The chapter’s about cells.”

  A girl in the back snickers.

  “Genius,” someone mutters.

  I draw squiggly shapes in my notebook. See, I know better than Arty Pilger. He’s a case in point: Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. Better to stay silent. Sakya Pandita was a genius, not Arty.

  Mr. Gankle sighs. “Okay… Can anyone be more specific?” He drums his fingers on his desk. “Remember, participation is worth forty percent of your grade.”

  Hands fly up.

  I listen as, one by one, students cross over to the other side. The side where people are safe. Free. Off the hook. My ears catch words like cytoplasm, organelle, nucleus. Mr. Gankle is nodding and jotting the words on the board with his dry-erase marker. Soon, almost everyone in the room has crossed over. Some have crossed over more than once.

  Only one person is left on my side. I glance over at Bernard Billows, who stares out the window, tapping his construction boots against the floor. As long as he stays on my side, I’m okay. Even if he is Bernard Billows and he smells funny and his hair is greasy, he still counts as a person in the room. Strength in numbers.

  I should probably say something, though. Participation is forty percent.

  Participation. What does that even mean? According to my pocket dictionary, participate means “to take part.” It doesn’t say “to talk.” But according to Mr. Gankle—according to most teachers—that’s what it means. Even Albert Einstein would fail this class if he didn’t “participate.”

  The minutes inch by. Five, then ten. I try to think of something to say, something that hasn’t already been said. It’s hard to think with everybody talking. I’ll just say something simple. It doesn’t need to be brilliant or interesting. It just needs to be something so I can cross to the other side and be done with it. It will feel good to be done with it.

  “Mr. Gankle?” The construction boots stop tapping.

  “Go ahead.”

  I hate you, Bernard Billows.

  “There was an interesting bit about the membrane. How it acts as this sort of filter, separating the inside of the cell from its outside environment…” He goes on in his slow, emphatic way, summarizing membrane facts as if he’s memorized them. I knew he would say something eventually. He always does. Everyone does. And I remain, the last one standing.

  “Who hasn’t contributed yet? Have we heard from everyone?”

  I fix my eyes on my notebook, but I can sense Mr. Gankle scanning the room as if he’s trying to sniff out a criminal. My body turns to stone—a reflex no one but me seems to have. But maybe it’s a good thing. If I act enough like a statue, Mr. Gankle’s eyes will skip over me.

  This logic always makes sense in the moment.

  “Elise, we haven’t heard from you yet. What can you tell us about cells?”

  Mr. Gankle is looking at me now, his dry-erase marker waiting in his hand. The other students stare at their laps or their desks like I’m a bad movie they can’t bring themselves to watch. I try to open my mouth, but it’s frozen shut. The seconds pass. Anyone would think my brain doesn’t work, that nothing’s happening in my head, but that’s not true because my mind is racing a thousand miles a minute. It never rests. It gives me headaches.

  I prepare to live out eternity at this desk, inside this bubble, this membrane.

  “Aaaa-choo!” Someone sneezes: Arty.

  “Bless you,” the class choruses, and attention shifts away. The bell rings. My classmates spring out of their seats.

  I sit still as the room empties.

  Eventually, my fingers move to my notebook, flipping past the quote with the swans and through pages and pages of tally marks. The notebook is nearly full. My tally’s as low as ever.

  So why am I still doing it? The plan had been to…

  I clamp my eyes shut, trying to remember. Yes, there had been a plan. Back in September. After I sat down in my first class, algebra. Ms. Dively asked us what the quadratic formula was. I smiled and recited it—I’d learned that one years ago. Ms. Dively narrowed her eyes at me and said something about the hand-raising rule. I didn’t know about hand-raising then. It was something I never had to do in home lessons, and Mel had failed to warn me about it. I resolved to be more careful in my next class.

  But Mr. Scroggins, it turned out, didn’t care about hand-raising; he called on people. He asked me to read a paragraph aloud from our textbook. I cleared my throat, thinking this was my chance to redeem myself. Forget Ms. Dively. After I read three sentences, someone laughed. Mr. Scroggins smiled at me and said, “It’s pronounced ‘mis-hap,’ not ‘mish-ap.’” It occurred to me there might be other words I didn’t know how to pronounce.

  Moments like these accumulated. They gathered like clo
uds throughout the morning, threatening a downpour.

  When the lunch bell rang, I exhaled. I would get to see Mel. She was saving me a seat. I was still mad that Green Pasture had made me take that placement test and put me a year ahead, but at least Mel and I could have lunch together, even if we weren’t in the same grade.

  I found her in the cafeteria at a crowded table. They were all looking at me—Sylvia and Nellie and Theresa, whose faces I didn’t know yet but whose names I knew from Mel’s stories. Mel introduced me, and even though my stomach was fluttering a little, I smiled as widely as I could. All summer, I’d heard Mel talk about her newest “school friends.” Now that my mother didn’t want to homeschool me anymore, I’d get to be one of them.

  I still remember the first thing Sylvia said.

  “There’s something in your teeth.”

  Mel nudged her.

  “There is?” I panicked, running my tongue along my incisors.

  “It was just a pepper flake or something.” Mel did a sort of giggle. “I think it’s gone now.” Then she frowned at Sylvia.

  “Oh.” I forced a laugh. Had it been there all morning for everyone to see?

  “How’d you like your first classes?” It was Nellie who changed the subject. “Are your teachers complete weirdos like mine?”

  I smiled again, and then clamped my lips shut. I had to be careful about showing my teeth in case I had more food stuck there. I decided I should say something funny back to start off on the right foot. Mel’s friends were my friends now. “Ms. Dively was all right,” I said. “Kind of a drag. But Mr. Scroggins…” I shuddered for effect. “His voice sounds like a vacuum machine. And have you seen his bow tie? Who told him that was a good idea?”

  I waited, but Nellie didn’t laugh. No one did. She and the others exchanged glances.

  At my right, Theresa shifted. “He’s my dad.”

  My face went hot.

  Theresa got up and walked across the cafeteria to the vending machine.

  Sylvia grinned. “Well, that was awkward.” Her grin surprised me. Did she really find amusement in her friend’s embarrassment? But if she was grinning, maybe what I’d done wasn’t that bad.

  I looked at my untouched sandwich. “I didn’t know.”

  Mel waved a hand. “She’ll get over it. Theresa can’t stay mad at anyone for long.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, yeah. She’ll forget by tomorrow.”

  But Theresa didn’t forget. At lunch the next day, she gave me the coldest of cold shoulders.

  Mel tried to ease the tension. “So, Elise,” she chirped. “I showed everyone that rhyme you wrote for my birthday last month. It was a hit.”

  “Oh, right, the one about a shooting star?” Sylvia said through a mouthful of fries. “It was cute. You should be a poet.”

  “Really? Thank you.” I’d been going for “moving” rather than “cute,” but it was still a nice thing to hear; I’d never thought of myself as good at anything, least of all poetry. And I was just grateful that not all of Mel’s friends hated me after my mishap—mis-hap—yesterday. I wanted to keep the goodwill going and say something nice back to Sylvia, something thoughtful and personal. “Sorry to hear your dad left, by the way,” I said. “That must have been tough. Are you doing okay?”

  “Elise,” Mel said between her teeth.

  “Wait, what?” Nellie’s head whipped toward Sylvia.

  “Your dad left, Sylv?” Theresa’s eyes widened. “When?”

  Sylvia’s cheeks burned scarlet. “A couple of weeks ago. It’s no big deal.” She glowered at Mel. “I was gonna tell the rest of you soon.”

  Mel wrung her napkin. “I didn’t think Elise would say anything.”

  “Whatever. It’s fine.” Sylvia stood.

  Mel stood too. “I didn’t tell anyone else, I swear.”

  “I have to pee.” Sylvia grabbed her bag and walked off.

  Mel shot me a glare—she’d never glared at me before—and then hurried after Sylvia, leaving me alone with Nellie and Theresa, who were already speculating and gossiping about Sylvia’s parents.

  My body went rigid, my tongue dry. What was going on? Every time I opened my mouth, things got worse instead of better. It had never been like this at home or at Mel’s house. But here at school, my voice was a ticking bomb, each tick sending me closer to ruin. If things went on this way, I’d make enemies of everyone.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of being Mel’s enemy.

  I said nothing for the remainder of lunch and sat in the back row for all of my classes. When teachers called my name for attendance, my heart started thumping and my muscles tensed, but I pushed out a “here.” When someone asked me for the time, I managed “one-thirty.” When someone asked if I had a pencil they could borrow, I muttered “sure.” I said only what was necessary. It was better that way. I was less likely to speak out of turn or mispronounce a word or insult someone’s father or spill the beans.

  That was the same day I started tallying.

  In the week that followed, the heart thumping and body stiffening got worse, but I found shortcuts. When teachers took attendance, I just raised my hand. When someone asked me for the time, I just showed them my watch. When someone asked if I had a pencil, I just shook my head. I decided to use these shortcuts for a few more days, another week at most—just until I learned how things worked at Green Pasture. Just until I got things under control. It was the perfect plan.

  I close my notebook now and glance at Mr. Gankle’s Science Rocks! calendar, with its monthly photo of geologists holding rocks. It’s April fifth—well into the second semester. I’ve learned how things work. I know public school inside and out. So it’s time to stop. Isn’t it?

  Why can’t I stop?

  Chapter 5

  I turn my bike off the main road and start up the hill past Mel’s house.

  I check her bedroom window, top right, but the blinds are closed.

  Just months ago, I might have found her waiting for me on the front steps. Just months ago, I would have felt welcome here—more welcome than in my own house. Now I feel welcome in neither. Funny.

  I push on up the hill, my calf muscles burning. I don’t know why we have to live all the way up at the edge of town. Even though the nearest house—Mel’s—is only a minute’s bike ride away, or two when I’m going uphill, my house still feels so much more apart. Maybe because it’s almost in the woods. If it weren’t for the fence holding back the trees, the woods would swallow the house right up. I keep pumping until I see the two oak trees shrouding the front of the house. The overgrown grass. The peeling paint. The woods encroaching from behind. Home sweet home.

  The station wagon is gone, and I remember it’s Thursday. My mother goes to the town library on Mondays and Thursdays to do work for the online class she’s teaching. I toss my bike against the fence and head inside. It feels like a vacation every time—not having to answer to her on my way past the kitchen.

  Halfway down the hall, I pause. My mother’s door is open a crack.

  I stare at the opening. Usually she’s so careful. She must have been in a rush.

  Light flickers through the gap: sunshine maybe, filtering through the windows that must be in there. Almost thirteen years living in this house with her, and I’ve never set foot in her bedroom. I’ve seen glimpses of it while passing down the hall as she was coming in or out: a dresser, a lamp, the same brown carpet that runs through the hall and every room upstairs. Nothing of interest. But I’ve never been inside before. The door is always closed, even when she’s out. Even when she’s down the hall or in the bathroom. I tried opening it twice while she was in the shower—first when I was five or six, and again a few years ago. Both times it was locked. I assumed, after that, that she always locked it. It’s something she would do.

  But the door is open now, and
she’s not home.

  I nudge the wood with my finger. It creaks forward. I step inside and brace myself—for what, I don’t know.

  A nightstand. A closet. A mirror. Ordinary. Boring. Curtains flutter at an open window, where towels hang out to dry. The bed is made up, with six tasseled pillows resting against the headboard in a geometric arrangement. The comforter is pulled tight, free of wrinkles. I gawk. Does she do this every day? Does she really put all this care into making a bed that no one but her ever sees? I never make my bed.

  I open the closet: a bunch of clothes, long out of fashion. I turn to the dresser and open the top drawer: underwear. I wrinkle my nose and move to the second drawer: T-shirts. Third drawer: stockings. Fourth: nightgowns. Predictable. Everything you’d expect to find.

  She does it to spite me then. Why else would she keep her door closed all the time? She has nothing to hide. Nothing embarrassing or criminal or even personal. She shuts me out for the sake of shutting me out.

  I shove the drawer into place and look back at the bed. I don’t know if it’s the pillow arrangement or the tautness of the comforter that gives me the urge to jump on it. To demolish that perfect handiwork.

  No. If I’m going to do any damage, it should be subtle. Just enough to disturb the peace without giving me away.

  I lift a corner of the comforter and tear the seam a little.

  A thrill ripples through me.

  I kneel and lift the bed skirt, finding a couple of shoeboxes. I pull one out and open it. A layer of electric bills and tax forms lies on top. I sift through; nothing but forms all the way to the bottom. I pull out the other box. More of the same. Water bills. Invoices. Envelopes addressed to my mother.

  Near the bottom, I notice one envelope with my name. A square one, blue. I pick it out. The postmark date is almost nine years ago. The zip code in the return address is only two numbers off from ours. The envelope has been torn open. I pull out the card inside, a greeting card with a lion cub and the number four on the front.

  I heard somebody’s turning four… I open the card. So I’m sending you a loving ROAR!