Safe with Me: A Novel

On my second day of school, there is a piece of paper stuck to my locker. I grip the strap of my backpack tighter and slow my pace, wondering if someone crafted an image of what they thought a “Franken-babe” might look like and pasted it in the hallway for everyone’s amusement. People mill around me, chatting and laughing, totally oblivious to the tears stinging the backs of my eyes. I knew a stupid haircut wouldn’t make a difference. I got up an hour early this morning just so I’d have time to style it the way Hannah had shown me; I picked out what I thought was a pretty decent outfit of jeans and loose-fitting blue blouse—I even put on some of my mom’s mascara and lip gloss, but none of it matters.

I keep my head down as I take the final few steps to stand in front of my locker. “Excuse me,” I murmur to the couple of kids in my way, and finally, as they step aside, I put my shaking fingers on the combination lock and force myself to look up. It’s a standard piece of white paper, eight and a half by eleven inches, and on it is a detailed cartoon sketch of a guy who appears to be Noah, kicking himself in the butt. In the corner, written in tiny, chicken-scratch letters is this: I’ll kick my own ass so you don’t have to. Sorry for being a jerk. Peace, Noah. Careful not to tear the paper, I take it off my locker, fold the small bits of tape over the edges, and read the words again.

“You like it?” Noah asks, and I whip my head to the right, realizing that he was hiding around the corner, watching me. Today he wears black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt with the words THINK OUTSIDE OF THE QUADRILATERAL PARALLELOGRAM beneath the picture of a cube.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “You’re a good artist.”

“Thanks.” He swishes his bangs out of his eyes and squints at me. “You changed your hair.”

I nod again, and he smiles, showing his silver braces. “Nice.” He pauses and I’m quiet, too, unsure of what to say. He glances down at the piece of paper in my hands, then looks back to me. “I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, you know. I’ve just never met someone like you.”

“Someone like me, how?” I feel my face start to flush, bracing myself for another insult.

“Like, you defied death. Which is totally awesome.”

I shift my backpack on my shoulder and smile. “I guess I’m just not really used to thinking about it that way.” I pause. “Or talking about it with people I don’t know. So what you said . . . what you called me . . . it kind of took me by surprise.”

“Well, now you know me. And you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just didn’t want you walking around thinking I’m a jerk.”

“I don’t,” I say, a little surprised to realize that I mean this. A real jerk wouldn’t admit he had been one—he would have pasted an actual picture of Frankenstein’s monster on my locker instead of an apology.

“Cool.” The muscles in his face visibly relax. “So, I’ll see you in computer science?”

“Oh. Okay.” I hadn’t noticed him there yesterday, but that probably had to do with me avoiding eye contact with anyone in the room other than the teacher. I glance at the clock on the wall above my row of lockers. “I should probably get to class.”

“Yeah, me, too.” He stiffens his posture and raises a single hand in a mock salute. “Later,” he says, then takes off down the hall. People make mistakes, I think, and decide to try and let it go. There have been plenty of times I’ve said things to my mom that I didn’t mean—words pop out of my mouth that I don’t even know I’m thinking. I wonder if my dad has ever apologized to Mom for all the times he’s said she is stupid or fat; I also wonder if at this point, if he did, would she even be able to forgive him?

After I hung up with Dirk last night, I heard my parents continue to fight in their room. My dad’s low, rumbling voice reverberated through the walls. “You coddle her too much,” he said. I couldn’t hear my mother’s response, but I did hear her sharp, strangled cry a moment later. My stomach clenched, certain that he had hit her again.

I don’t understand why she lets him treat her this way—why she lies to herself, to me, about what he does to her. Knowing he hits her is like carrying a sharp black stone around in my chest. I’m afraid that someday, I’ll take too deep a breath and it will slice my already damaged insides to shreds. I’m often torn between wishing my father were dead and being terrified that if I speak up to anyone—if I tell a counselor or call the police—his anger might turn toward me. And then I feel guilty for keeping my mouth shut, like I’m not the kind of person who deserves anything good. I wonder what the parents of the girl who gave me her liver would do if they knew how selfish I am—what lengths I go to in order to protect myself instead of my mother.

Last night, instead of going to help her, I lay on my back in bed with my bottom lip trembling, pulling the covers up to my chin and trying to pretend I didn’t hear my mother crying. I stared at the ceiling, remembering when I was eleven and went through a phase of being fascinated with the solar system—entranced by a night sky I was so rarely healthy enough to step outside and see. Mom came home one afternoon with ten packages of those glow-in-the-dark sticky planets and stars. “For your very own universe,” she said, then spent the afternoon climbing up and down a ladder, carefully adhering each and every sticker to the ceiling. A woman like her deserves better than my dad.

As I sit through my morning classes, I try not to think too much about my parents. I try to listen to my teachers, but much of what they talk about I already learned from Mrs. Beck last year—I wonder if I can talk to the school counselor about graduating a year early.

I don’t see Hailey until I’m in the lunchroom, after I’ve already stopped by the office and taken my meds. I’m waiting in line for the salad bar when I feel her standing next to me—or rather, I smell her—the sickeningly sweet scent of watermelon gum. She’s flanked by two other girls, both as pretty as she is, one with wavy brown hair and the other, stick-straight blond.

“Hi, Maddie,” Hailey says, popping a bubble inside her mouth with a loud snap. “This is Kyla”—she gestures to the blonde first—“and this is Jade.” Both the girls nod at me, and I give a brief bob of my head, too. It seems safer than talking.

Hailey peers at me. “Your hair looks way better.”

“Thanks,” I say, gripping my tray tightly so it doesn’t shake. I hate that smug look on her face, like she’s well aware that the only reason I changed my hair was what she said to me about it yesterday. She is wearing a short black skirt and tight white sweater. Her legs look like pale stilts.

“I saw you talking to Noah Bedford this morning.” She pauses to blow a pink bubble, sucking it back into her mouth before it pops. “You know him?”

“Not really,” I say. “I just met him yesterday.”

“He’s such a geek,” Hailey says and then looks at me expectantly. I know I’m supposed to agree with her, but my phone buzzes in my pocket, saving me. I’d turned it to vibrate after I left the office a few minutes ago, in case my mom sent me a text during lunch. There hadn’t been any marks on her face this morning, but she moved a little more slowly than usual and I wondered if she had injuries I couldn’t see.

“Sorry,” I say. “I should check this.” Quickly setting my tray on the table next to me, I pull out my cell and see Dirk’s name and picture on the screen. “Thinking about you today,” his text says. “Hope everything is okay. I’ll call you tonight.”

Hailey peeks over my shoulder. “Is that your boyfriend? He’s totally hot.”

“Yeah,” I say, the lie slipping out before I can stop it. “He’s super-smart, too.” This part isn’t a lie—Dirk didn’t go to college; instead, he taught himself everything he knows about computers by hanging out in online, geeked-out chat rooms. He was twenty when he landed his first job at Google, and over the last four years, he moved up from an entry-level position to being one of the top programmers in his department.

“What school does he go to?” Kyla asks, pulling a wisp of hair out of her overly mascaraed eyelashes.

I straighten and pick up my tray again. “He doesn’t. He works at Google.” I say this proudly, as though I had something to do with it.

“He does not,” Jade says, rolling her blue eyes. “How old is he?”

“Twenty,” I say, thinking this is more plausible than the twenty-four Dirk actually is. “We met online.”

Hailey looks skeptical, too. “You’re a junior, right? And he’s cool with that?”

I shrug again. “It’s only four years’ difference. If he was twenty-four and I was twenty, no one would care. So it doesn’t really matter to us. We just like each other.” I’m a little terrified how easily this blatantly false explanation comes to me. Maybe pretending to be Sierra Stone has turned me into a professional liar. Maybe I should become an actress instead of a graphic artist.

“Do your parents know?” Kyla asks.

I shake my head. “No way. So you can’t tell anyone, all right? It’s a secret.”

All three girls look at each other, as though gauging if they are willing to agree to my request, and then, as soon as Hailey nods, Jade and Kyla do, too, and I know that I may have managed to win them over. Even if I’m not one of them—if my hair isn’t perfect and my body is far from lean—they think I have a hot, older boyfriend, and for now, that’s all the power I need.