Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything Read online

  But why was he talking about Taffy, anyway? He said she said something. But what?

  Something about me licking that drawing?

  Something about me and Shane?

  Something about what a freak I am? Or what an ordinary nothing I am?

  Oh crap. I remember:

  She knows I like him.

  She was listening to me and Katya in the locker room the other day.

  I bet she told him, and he wanted to find out if it was true.

  And I told him that whatever Taffy says about me is completely wrong.

  friday morning, Ma yells at me for fourteen minutes straight about the piles of stuff that are still all over my room, which I had promised to take care of before the end of the week. I make a few excuses, explaining how I tried to get rid of it, but I need it all, I really do—but then I give up trying to interrupt and simply time her rampage, sneaking glances at the clock on my desk. The only way to make it through.

  “Don't take your anger at Pop out on me,” I finally tell her, rolling my eyes at the ceiling. “It's obvious you're really upset about something else, not my stupid room.”

  “Don't give me psychobabble, young lady,” Ma snaps—and her face looks angrier than I've ever seen it. Honestly, it's scary. “If you want psychobabble,” she continues, “start analyzing your own bedroom.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. An anal-retentive inability to let anything go—does that ring a bell with you, Gretchen? Living in mess so bad you can't find anything you ever need—shall we say, what? Deliberately self-sabotaging? Or shall we discuss your collections, which any junior psychoanalyst would label borderline obsessive? Or your constant lateness? Or your bad marks in literature? Hey, we could have a whole conversation about learned helplessness, if you want to start psychoanalyzing each other.”

  I've obviously crossed some line. She's never yelled at me this way before. Usually, it's “Clean up your stuff, why don't you do what I tell you?”

  “Leave me alone,” I spit back. “I'm a teenager. I'm supposed to be messy.”

  “No one is supposed to live like this,” Ma says, climbing over piles of stuff to make her way out of my room. “I don't know what we did wrong with you, I really don't.”

  And she bursts into tears, leaning her forehead against the doorframe.

  I stay sitting on the bed for a bit, scared to go pat her on the back because she just said all these horrible things to me and they're starting to sink in,

  and they seem kinda true, hellish as that is,

  and I don't want her to start saying any more of them because I honestly don't think I can take it—

  but eventually I scrounge a packet of tissues out from under my bed and offer them to her. She takes a handful and blows her nose, loudly.

  “I'm sorry, Gretchen,” she sniffs. “I shouldn't say those things to you. They're not true, they're not what I think, I—with your father gone this time, everything seems different. It's not like the other times he's been away on business. More like he's left for good.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “And I'm so overwhelmed with organizing the move and I have to hand a chapter of my dissertation in to my advisor, and it's late, and I…I guess what you said hit a nerve. About me being mad at Pop.”

  “It's okay,” I say as I walk to the kitchen to get her a drink of water.

  But it's not okay. She can't unsay the stuff she said.

  Am I self-sabotaging?

  Or borderline obsessive?

  What did she mean, learned helplessness?

  I fill up my backpack, including the self-portrait I drew for art class today, and put some Vaseline on my lips. I kiss Ma goodbye and give her this pair of funky green sunglasses I bought on the street for nine dollars, a present for her Caribbean vacation. “I have to get on the train.”

  She gets all weepy again and snuffles into my neck as she hugs me, and says she's sorry four more times about the yelling, because she won't see me again until she gets back in ten days. She leaves money on the dining table, and shows me a long note she's written detailing which neighbors have extra keys, her flight information, Marianne's cell phone and where Pop is in Hong Kong.

  And I leave.

  on the subway, I'm trying to read my social studies homework when this really old man—I mean, he's like ninety-five—stumbles as he's heading toward the seat next to me. He sits full-out in my lap, like a baby, and I can smell his cigar and old-person smell as I catch his arm and help steady him. “Pardon, pardon,” he says.

  “That's okay.” I smile.

  When he's stable again, I help him into the seat next to me. We nod at each other, and I feel funny going back to my homework after what happened. He puts a tiny, wizened hand on my arm. “You never expect what you'll be at the end of your days,” he whispers.

  “What?”

  “When I was young I thought I'd be young forever.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say. He's so small and gnarled up, he seems like a gnome—or a fairy.

  “Now here I am,” he continues, “and my legs don't work good, and my eyes don't see good, I'm hunched over. You'd never believe I used to be an ice dancer.”

  He seems like he wants a response. “I believe it,” I say.

  “I took my wife ice dancing every weekend at Rockefeller Center.”

  Now he might be lying. “I bet you were good at it,” I offer.

  “I learned when I was a boy. We lived in Vermont. You know where Vermont is?”

  “Sure,” I answer, though I've never been there.

  “Lake froze over in the winter,” he continues. “Everybody knew how to skate. It was like walking. You learned when you were a baby.”

  “I've never done it,” I say, though I've watched the skaters spinning around at the rink in Central Park.

  “But you see the ice dancing on TV, right?” he asks. “When they have the Olympics?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “What are you, teenager?” he asks.

  “Sixteen.”

  “You think you'll be like this forever, but you'll change before you know it,” he tells me. “Change before you know it.”

  “I'd love to change,” I say. “Sixteen is horrible.”

  “No, no,” he says, the way old people do when they're thinking about being young. “Sixteen is a treasure. You treasure it.”

  What does he know about my life that he thinks I should treasure it?

  For all he knows, I might have abusive parents,

  or be pregnant by some rapist,

  or have some horrible wasting disease.

  I might be an orphan, or a crack addict, or—

  But the truth is I'm none of these things.

  I force myself to smile back at him. “This is my stop,” I say, standing up. “Have a nice day.”

  “Goodbye.” He pulls a folded-up newspaper out of his pocket.

  I dart out of the train and push through the crowds to the stairs. On the way up to the fresh air, I feel a squish underfoot and look down to see my flip-flop in a pile of white goo. It's all over my heel and the bottom of my shoe.

  Hell, what is that stuff?

  Could be gel-type shaving cream,

  or industrial radiation waste,

  or some nasty liquid insecticide,

  or beef aspic.

  It burns my foot.

  Maybe it's vomit from someone who's only been eating oysters;

  or a dead jellyfish,

  or the waste of some enormous subway cockroach.

  Ugh.

  I yank off my cotton sweater and use it to wipe everything clean, and run into the first bodega I see when I get out of the subway. If I buy something, they'll give me a plastic bag that I can put my slime-covered sweater in, so it doesn't touch any of the other stuff in my backpack.

  The bodega is tiny; it seems to deal mainly in lottery tickets, pervy magazines and gum. In the back, there's a cooler full of ice and bottled soft drinks—lots of which I do
n't recognize. They don't carry Coke or Snapple or any of the usual stuff. Just grape soda, celery soda, orange, coconut and fruit punch. I grab a celery one because I like its green color. I pay for it, and a packet of tissues, and ask for a plastic bag.

  Outside, I finish wiping off my foot with a tissue and shove the gook-covered sweater into the bag.

  What a day. Three dramas already and it's barely eight a.m. I open the soda and drink it as I head up the steps to Ma-Ha. It has a strange, overly sweet taste, and I toss the half-empty bottle in a trash can and slide into drawing as the bell rings.

  by eight-fifteen, everyone's self-portraits are up on the board. Kensington is yammering on about Taffy's picture, which shows her bare feet on a wooden floor, like in a dance studio. They're covered with blisters and Band-Aids. It's not that bad, actually. Better than I would have expected from her.

  A fly is buzzing around the room.

  Poor beastie. Trapped in here with no snacks and no fresh air. How did it get in?

  The windows are always closed and you have to get a teacher to unlock them if you want one open, because some idiot jumped out a second-floor window a few years ago and broke her leg.

  Titus's self-portrait looks like a skeleton. Like he sees himself as all face and no body.

  Katya's is pretty good. It's her with her three little sistermonsters, all clinging to her and pulling on her clothes. She got her own expression just right: like she loves those kids to death, but they're making her insane—her hair all bedraggled.

  Shane made himself look like a guy with secrets. Lots of black, it's really dark. I don't think of him that way at all. He seems like he doesn't think about stuff—he's all surface and no substance.

  Well, that's not fair. Maybe I'm just mad at him.

  I thought he had substance in October.

  Brat's portrait is funny. He did himself squashed up against a piece of Plexiglas, so his face is all splayed out in queer shapes.

  Adrian's is dull, which is surprising to people who don't have drawing with him because he seems like he's got so much personality; too much personality, even. You'd think his drawings would reflect that, but they don't.

  Malachy did a profile; it has a nice line. He was honest, too—you can see the texture of his skin in the picture. He's not bad-looking, but he drew every little mole, zit and pore.

  Cammie made herself look pretty.

  And me. Well, I did what Kensington wanted, and I won't have to listen to another harangue about my shallow, imitative comic-book vision. I went for soft fine lines and a loose style—exactly what Kensington likes the most. A total capitulation to the art teacher's demands.

  In books, the teacher is always right, and the heroine learns something. If this were a book about my life, I would have had some big realization doing this assignment. I'd have broken through my wall of resistance and suddenly experienced drawing in a new way—more honest, more fulfilling. My high-art selfportrait would reveal so much more about me than my cheapo comic book stuff ever could. It would be honest, true and emotional.

  But that isn't what happens.

  I have drawn the ordinary, ordinary girl I see every day in the mirror,

  so Kensington won't humiliate me again,

  so Shane won't laugh.

  And I look okay in the picture,

  and it looks pretty much like me,

  but there are no real clues to who I am, inside.

  Looking at the picture makes me feel ashamed.

  “Gretchen, we're seeing some effort from you,” says Kensington, finished eviscerating Brat for his gimmicky attempt at humor.

  “Uh-huh. I thought about what you've been saying.” Me. Talking crap.

  “Yes, you're getting more honesty in your work, and a more relaxed line,” she says.

  That poor fly is buzzing around Kensington now, and she's swatting at it.

  Ooh, she hit it,

  but it's still alive.

  I hate it when people are mean to animals. That's why I don't eat meat,

  or wear fur,

  but the truth is, what really gets me is seeing someone leave a dog in a hot car,

  or step on an ant for no reason,

  or blow cigarette smoke into a cat's face,

  or pull the legs off a ladybug

  or kill a fly just because it's there—

  all of which I have actually seen people do, like they don't even know it's cruel.

  Kensington swats at the fly again, absently, still talking about my use of three-quarter view in the portrait.

  “I'll get it,” I cry, lurching forward. I grab one of the plastic cups the painting classes use for rinsing watercolor brushes and a thick piece of drawing paper.

  “Gretchen, don't bother.” Kensington.

  “No, really, it'll only take a second.”

  “We're in the middle of your critique.”

  “I know, but let me catch it.” It's flying around for a second and then it's on the corkboard. Not even moving. Almost like it knows that me catching it is better than being cooped up in this stuffy classroom forever, with Kensington swatting at it.

  Cup over,

  paper under,

  there. Trapped.

  “Will you open the window?” I ask.

  “That was fast.” Kensington pulls a key off her belt, unlocks the grate and opens the window.

  Goodbye, fly.

  Have some good buzzing out there.

  “Are you finished now?” Kensington.

  “I guess.”

  “Well, I'm happy to see you're making progress with your work, Gretchen. Let's move on.”

  that afternoon, Friday after gym, I'm standing with Katya in the hall outside the locker rooms. Our hair is still wet from the showers. School is out for the day, except for team practices.

  “I have to take care of the monsters Saturday and Sunday,” says Katya. “My mom has to cover someone's shift at the nursing home and my dad has some conference.”

  I don't want to be home alone all weekend.

  “I could come down to Brighton Beach,” I say. “We could cart them over to the aquarium.”

  “Oh. Um. Not with all three. It's too crazy. I'm gonna keep them at home or maybe just the playground.” And she's right. With the three of them, we'd be outnumbered.

  “What about tomorrow night?” I sound plaintive. “We could go to the movies. Or you could come sleep over. My folks are out of town.”

  “I can't. My mom is leaving for work at seven on Sunday.”

  Is she mad at me? She doesn't seem mad at me. But she's blowing me off.

  I haven't even told her yet. There's never a good time to say to someone, “Hey, my parents are getting a divorce.” And Katya's so into her family. The Belovs are family, family all the time.

  The boys' locker room door swings open, and the Art Rats swarm into the hall. Titus, Shane, Adrian, Malachy and Brat. They're damp from the showers, geared up for the weekend. As they move past us, Shane bangs a locker hard, just to make noise, and I jump.

  Why do boys do stuff like that?

  “Friday, Friday, Friday!” Brat yells, his voice echoing down the hallway.

  Adrian slams Brat in the back with a basketball, to shut him up, and Brat doubles over, his hands on his knees.

  “I'm getting you for that!” cries Brat, turning red.

  “Get me, get me, get me.” Adrian spreads his arms wide.

  “Shut up, losers.” Titus.

  “Didn't you see him hit me?”

  “Just a tap, Tinker Bell,” says Adrian. “Not hard.”

  Brat mutters to himself, and Malachy stops next to us, looking up and down in an exaggerated appraisal. “Girls, girls, girls!” Like he's pretending to be a pimp. “Ready for the weekend?”

  “Ready as ever,” says Katya.

  Hell. Did someone just pinch my butt?

  Someone did.

  Shane. He's right behind me, laughing.

  Why would he pinch my butt?

&nb
sp; Why?

  He's got a girlfriend. He barely even talks to me.

  “Keep looking fine,” says Malachy—then drops his pimp attitude in a fit of giggles. And then they are off down the hall, making noise about pizza and some movie they're going to catch at four o'clock.

  “Hell,” I mutter to Katya, digging around to find my subway pass in the crazy mess that is my backpack. “I do not understand what they are up to.”

  “Don't waste your energy,” says Katya.

  “Aren't they like alien beings?”

  Katya puts on some lip gloss. “You think about them too much.”

  “What else is there to think about?”

  “Drawing. Art. Literature. Politics. What to buy at the grocery store.”

  “Shane pinched my booty just now, did you catch that?”

  Katya shakes her head. “What a schmuck.”

  “Do you think it meant something?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Maybe he was asserting his male dominance,” she concedes, “but it doesn't mean he has leftover feelings for you.”

  “What male dominance?”

  “He's marking territory, like a dog,” explains Katya. “Saying, see this butt? I can pinch it if I want. Gretchen won't do anything.”

  Now I feel like a half-wit, because I was actually flattered that Shane even noticed my booty enough to tempt his fingers in that direction. “Okay,” I say. “But I don't think Shane is usually the booty-pinching type. He never pinched it before. Did he ever pinch yours?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Come on, Katya. Wouldn't you remember if Shane pinched your booty?”

  “Okay, he never pinched it,” she admits. “But I still don't think it means anything. He was male dominating. Or maybe flirting.”

  “But why is he flirting with me?”

  “It's not the kind of flirting you want, anyway. Someone grabbing you from behind when he thinks he can cop a feel.”

  “Do you think he wants to be friends again?”

  “No.”

  “Then is he manipulating me?”

  “You think about it too much.”

  “How can there be flirting that doesn't mean anything?” I push.