Laces

by: alicecullengirl

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one

I have more goals than I have friends, family, and classmates. They’re usually laid out in fifties. There are lots of easy ones, like to read fifty books each year or introduce myself by fifty different names by graduation. I’ve already read twenty-six books and given thirty-nine different names to the greeter at Wal-Mart and I’m only a junior. Check and check. But there are difficult, almost impossible ones, too. I haven’t left anywhere near the magic number of messages on Tyler Besscott’s machine yet, since she’s been back from vacation two weeks and not yet spoken to me once. And I have only been able to maintain two steady friendships since freshman year. My goal isn’t even fifty. It’s five.

I live in a suburb. A suburb is a sad little group of communities resting in the shadow of a real city full of real people with real lives. Suburban folk strive to be metropolitan, but lack the depth and are satisfied with living false lives in a boring city with only one library but four Starbucks. Now that you know, I’m sure you understand why I spend nine of twenty-four hours a day in my bedroom watching television.

But not today.

Today I’m in my bedroom reading book twenty-seven of fifty. It’s about a girl who can’t sleep at night and spends three hundred pages whining about it. What’s sad is that I’d rather be finishing my summer reading for English class. The story is just that lame.

I put the book down. It’s ridiculous. It’s a waste of brain cells and you couldn’t pay me to finish it. Of course, this is the best part about having secret personal goals: you can cheat and cheat and cheat and no one will ever know.

I feel a spark through my right leg and dig into my pocket to pull out my cell phone. It doesn’t vibrate. Not since I dropped it in the street and cracked the face over Christmas break. Bits of metal are exposed where the plastic chipped off, so instead of vibrating, it now shocks me. Like when someone runs across a carpet and pokes you. Or shoots you with a stun gun.

I check the name and wonder if the pulse of electricity killed any more of my brain cells. Because I kind of need those.

“Matt,” I mumble. Telephone etiquette went out with Enron.

“I’m sitting at Starbucks and you aren’t. Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?” Matt has been trying to woo me since June. At least, I think he has. I think he’s been lonely ever since his older brother moved out in August. I’ve made a game of ignoring him, and yet he is the only person I’ve spoken to all summer. Apart from my mother.

“I’m sick,” I say. It’s half true. I torture myself by reading crappy chick-lit. I must be at least a little sick.

“I’m not bringing you coffee.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“I’m not returning your camera tomorrow.”

I scowl. “You took my camera?”

The line is silent. Dropped on the other end. I lean over to my desk drawer and pull it out all the way. No Nikon. Bastard took my camera. I rarely ever use it, don’t need it, and it was honestly a waste of two hundred bucks, but the empty space in my drawer irks me. It’s bare. It screams What goes here? Where is it?!

The insomnia book fits the empty space perfectly. Crisis averted.

--

My mother and I communicate well. She’s hot and cold, and I’m consistently lukewarm. However, I have begun to feel that our connection is wearing thin. The first week of summer, my laptop crashed. All the way. Nothing left but a shell of zeros and ones. Being a mature non-brat, I waited quietly and politely for my mother to buy me a new one and therefore spent all ten weeks of summer without a computer, without the internet, and without the energy to get one myself. The new laptop on my desk is three days old. I stare at it for a bit while it mocks me with its untimeliness. Where were you two months ago? I wonder. It doesn’t respond, because it’s a computer.

I open the lid and boot up. I connect to the internet and check all the sites I frequented before the crash. My inbox is crammed with updates, but I haven’t gotten a personal message from anyone in weeks. I don’t even bother to log onto my page on the school’s website. I already know what I’ll see. A giant photograph of a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl followed by two dates, You Will Always Be Missed, and a name.

Lace Hahn.

The girl who got hit by that car in June. The most popular girl in school. I may not have been online all summer, but I definitely heard about that. I decide against logging in to Facebook, too. I don’t want to see all the Lace Hahn groups and well-wishes and depressing statuses. It feels weird when everyone else is sad and I’m not. But I didn’t even know Lace Hahn, so why should I be?

--

I spend the last Monday evening of summer in front of the TV. Watching Channel 35. At eight is a show about an FBI agent who has chosen to retire and work as a traffic cop. It’s supposed to be funny, but it isn’t. Of course, I can’t complain because I’m too lazy to stand up and change the channel. At nine is the most popular reality show in the country. I like it. Of course I do. Everyone likes a Starmaker show. The kind that takes regular people and makes them famous. It’s Rags to Riches. Averages Joes to Bitches and Hoes. It’s the American dream.

I watch this mindless drivel in an attempt to melt my brain. But secretly I’m thinking. I’m waiting for my phone to shock me and for Tyler to check up on me. I’m waiting for my laptop to beep with a civilization update from Matt. I’m waiting for my mother to come in with a cup of some health nut mixture and ask me to try it.

Of course, only the last of those things happens tonight.

--

“Lace?” she asks, playing with her hair.

“What do you want?” I snap.

A beautiful girl is standing in a crosswalk. So am I.

“Look both ways, dummy. You’re going to get hit,” she laughs.

Wheels screech nearby, but I ignore them.

“How do you know that?” I have to know.

“Because,” she giggles as I am blinded by headlights. “You’re me.”

--

I open my eyes. Light filters in through the blinds on my window. The dream is still on my mind. It annoys me. So much. It was like this last year, anytime I heard my name in school. I would look up or turn around and realize they weren’t talking about me. This year it will be so much worse.

I don’t check the time. If I’m late, I’m late. Not much I can do about it. I’ve been avoiding bright colors this month, my own way of mourning the end of summer, but I think it’s time to move on. I put on something pink that falls to my knees. I kneel inelegantly by my bed and reach an arm under, fishing out the pair of sandals I wore to Matt’s sister’s twenty-first birthday. I stand up, slip them on, and a shock runs through the fingers of my left hand. Three times. My phone’s alarm. It’s set for thirty minutes before school, so I should already be gone. I heave my book bag onto one shoulder, trip down the stairs, and walk out into the day. Mom’s car isn’t in the driveway. I check the time on my phone and pick up the pace.

As I said before, I live in a suburb. Therefore this city has an area of two square miles and only one high school. Conyers. The city isn’t called Conyers. This isn’t Conyers County. And I have no idea who Conyers was. But that is the name of my school. Home to eight hundred students between the hours of eight and three. Four hundred and fifty of them are my friends on Facebook. Two of them are my friends in real life. I smile at everyone I see on my way through the front entrance and everyone gives a little smile back. We may not all be friends here, but we are all polite.

Well. We are all, most of us, polite.

Tyler is sitting on a desk when I walk into a sparsely populated classroom. There are red and gold decals on the wall, and class projects drying on the windowsills. They are all adorned with black ink characters. This is Tyler’s first period class, Chinese.

Tyler beams at me, jiggling her cell phone in her fingers. Her eyes narrow as I approach, like there’s something on my head. I copy the face she’s making to show her how dumb it looks.

“Your hair,” she says. “It isn’t blonde anymore.”

I washed out the dye last night before bed. Tyler and I got our hair done on her birthday in June. She begged me to dye mine, so I went blonde for the summer. I liked it blonde, but I washed it out anyway. I’m brunette again. I really don’t want to explain my inner demons to the only girlfriend I have left. I want her to think it’s because blonde is an infamous color, not because I don’t want to look any more like Lace Hahn than I have to. She wore blonde better anyway. Not that I noticed.

So I shrug. “I was afraid it’d seep into my brain if I kept it up too long. You know what they say about blondes.” You can hear the subject drop.

“Well, you’ll never guess…” Tyler goes on and on about a text she got from a celebrity gossip service. Her favorite non-gay boy band crush broke up with his girlfriend. She’s ecstatic. Sometimes I wonder if we live on the same planet.

I smile. I nod. I go Uh-huh when it seems appropriate. She hands me her phone and eggs me on with her eyes. She wants me to look at his photo. I do. His head is completely bald. It’s disgusting.

She keeps talking about compatibility and zodiac signs and fate and my fingers work too quickly for me to stop them. I’m checking her inbox. I am a sick child, violating my last remaining girlfriend’s privacy like I’m in a race to alienate all of the people I love the fastest. And I’m winning against Hitler and Bin Laden. I scroll through the subject lines: OMG new Haircut?!, RK: PROOF!, stalking my Mom??, Haha, Haircut number 2.

Did You Hear About LACE??

R.I.P. LACE HAHN :'(

we Love you laceeeey

I fold her phone closed and sigh. “He’s gorgeous,” I lie.

“Isn’t he, though?”

The school bell rings four times. The warning bell. Ten minutes until class.

Tyler takes back her phone and pockets it. I smile mischievously like we share a secret crush. Because she does, and that’s what her eyes want me to do.

Some freshmen walk in, laughing and repeating the words “corn nuts” sporadically. Some beach trip in-joke from last week. I’d forgotten Tyler was taking Chinese I. I’m in French. With kids my own age.

I plan what to say next. How’s life? Glad to be back at school?

“Heard about Streeter yet?” she asks.

I blink. Who?

She doesn’t even wait for me to respond. “He just got here last week. I wanted to tell you, but you weren’t online. He’s gorgeous.” I wonder if “gorgeous” is her word of the week.

I smile, but my heart’s not in it. “Nice,” I say with forced appreciation for what she’s saying.

“He went from two hundred to six hundred Facebook friends in two days.” Tyler’s face glows. Like clicking Accept four hundred times is some kind of accomplishment.

Tyler’s Chinese teacher strolls in through the door. She’s a petite woman who wears a lot of red and black and sometimes brings in bagels. She’s punching dates into her BlackBerry, and I have to step out of her way when she doesn’t look up. I take this as my cue to leave.

Tyler and I blow each other air kisses. Her idea, not mine, but I do it anyway.

I count it a small victory that I only hear the name Lace Hahn four times on the way to my first class.

--

Ok, so while I'm making slow progress on How's Life, Amy here is the other story I've been working on it. I actually started a few months ago, but I didn't post anything because I wasn't sure if I wanted to put it out there yet. Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think so far (I know the first chapter isn't very telling - stuff doesn't start happening til later), but I'd love to hear it anyway.

-ACG