Backwards Read online

Their mom grabbed her purse. “Teagan, you ready? Get in the car. We’re leaving.”

  On the way to school, I kept thinking about how cruel Dan had been to Teagan. You really are a prick, I said to him, but if he heard me, he didn’t show it. He just ground his teeth and drove, barely looking at the buildings we passed or the leaves swirling along the sidewalk in the fall breeze.

  After a few minutes, he pulled into the parking lot of a building that looked like a prison — brick walls the color of bread, slit-thin windows too narrow to crawl out of, and a complete lack of landscaping. Welcome to Jefferson High.

  Dan turned off his car and stared at the front entrance, where his mom had probably dropped Teagan off just minutes before. In fact, Teagan was still there, standing near the flagpole to the left of the main doors, talking to a large girl in a billowy black skirt and black T-shirt. Dan didn’t pay much attention to his sister, though. Instead, he focused on a cluster of students gathered around a bell hanging from a bright orange archway.

  Most of the guys huddled by the bell wore varsity jackets and baseball caps. They laughed and punched each other’s shoulders while a few girls lingered nearby. As I watched, it became clear that they all orbited around one guy in the center. He had straight hair swept casually across his brow and a lazy smile. Whenever he talked, everyone seemed to lean in and listen. I wondered what he said to captivate people’s attention like that. Then the first bell sounded and students funneled inside.

  The guy with the lazy smile caught Teagan’s eye as she turned to enter. He said something to her and she smiled back, looking happier than I’d seen her all morning. Dan dug his fingers into his thighs, seeming upset by this, but I had the opposite reaction. Good, I thought. At least someone’s nice to her.

  School wasn’t much fun. No one greeted Dan when he arrived, and a few people even snickered or whispered as he passed. The zombie shuffled on, ignoring them. Once he got to his first class, he tossed his backpack to the floor and slumped in the back row.

  The second bell sounded and announcements were made. Then the teacher began class. After a few minutes, Dan nodded off. Asleep, he didn’t do much to distract me, so I had time to question some of the things I’d seen that morning, starting with Why isn’t Dan dead?

  For that matter, what am I doing here? I wondered. And who am I? And why can’t I remember anything before waking up in the tub?

  More questions poured out, quick as water flowing through a crack in a dam, each one making the breach a little larger.

  Am I supposed to be here? How long will this last?

  The questions kept coming — a clamoring flood of unknowns. I had no answers to silence them. Nothing solid to cling to. It felt like my whole being might unravel and drown in uncertainty.

  Am I crazy?

  Dan snapped awake, perhaps sensing my panic.

  He looked around, but no one seemed to be watching him. Then he rubbed the drool from the corners of his mouth and tapped his pen against his thumb. I focused on the sting of the plastic on his knuckle. The sharp, definitive sensation calmed me. It seemed to calm Dan as well. After a few minutes, he stopped tapping and dozed off again.

  This time I narrowed my focus to one question. Why am I here? That seemed like a good place to start, because if I could figure out why I was here, then the answers to my other questions might fall into place.

  I sorted through everything I remembered. The drops of blood turning the bathwater pink. Dan’s body going limp. His sister and mom watching, distraught, while the paramedics wheeled him out. And then this morning he looked fine, like his death had never happened. Everything was back to normal. Only it wasn’t normal, was it? Things felt off. Out of place. So maybe I was supposed to fix something. That could be the reason I was here.

  Class ended and Dan shuffled to a different room. He didn’t talk with anyone in the hall. For most of the morning, he just zoned out in various classrooms, giving me time to think. Who knows — maybe he was thinking, too.

  Dan didn’t perk up until lunch. His chest tightened and his palms grew sweaty as he approached the avocado-green cafeteria. Apparently, food made him nervous. Students crowding the long white tables chattered noisily, and the air smelled of grilled cheese and chicken soup. The zombie stared at a table near the front where several guys I recognized from outside the school sat.

  Were these his friends? Outwardly, he looked similar to some of them with their muscular arms, tight polo shirts, and athletic builds. He even had a varsity jacket like them, although he’d left it in his locker. Then the guy with the lazy smile who’d been nice to Teagan noticed Dan and waved.

  I wanted to sit with him, but Dan’s gaze slid to another table across the room where Teagan sat. After a few seconds, I realized he wasn’t looking at his sister but at a girl with dark purple hair sitting across from her. His stomach fluttered and his heart began to race. I grew anxious as well, only it was a good anxious.

  Even from a distance, several things about the girl stood out. There was her hair, of course, colored a vivid dark eggplant shade, and her clothes — forest-green shirt, purple skirt that matched her hair, and striped leggings. And there were her eyes, intense yet wistful. Other people at the table kept looking at her, but she avoided meeting anyone’s gaze. Instead, she looked at her hands and the door and the wall, appearing slightly removed from the rest of the students, as if she were the only person rendered in color in a black-and-white world and she was slightly embarrassed by this fact. For a moment, I thought the zombie might actually sit with her. Then she stood, set her tray on the stack by the trash, and headed for the side doors.

  I wanted to follow her. Luckily, Dan seemed intrigued by her as well. He hurried out the back doors of the cafeteria, arriving just in time to catch her turning down a hall.

  Dan looked over his shoulder warily before heading after her. The hall she’d taken was lined with student drawings. WHO WE ARE: SELF-PORTRAIT ASSIGNMENT read a banner hanging across the entrance. The girl paused near the end. She reached up for one of the drawings, only it was hung too high. She could barely touch the bottom inch or so.

  “Cat,” Dan said.

  The girl startled. Her eyes flicked to his and narrowed.

  “What are you doing?” Dan asked.

  “Taking this down,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want people to see it anymore.”

  Dan looked at the drawing. Most of the portraits decorating the hall were distorted charcoal sketches. A few took more rigid approaches, capturing an accurate self-image. But the one Cat reached for blew them all away.

  Instead of a close-up of her face, Cat had drawn several versions of herself sitting around a table, having a tea party. She was a girl in a fluffy dress, sipping her tea at the head of the table, and she was the figure next to her in a jaunty top hat, looking slightly deranged as she poured cream into an overflowing cup. A small mouse version of herself peeked out of a teapot in the middle of the table, appearing wet and sad, one mouse ear flopping over her eye. Last of all, she was in the foreground, depicted as a girl with bunny ears looking away from the viewer, the jaw-length cut of her hair clearly matching Cat’s own. Hovering above the scene, like a horizontal crescent moon, floated a bright disembodied grin.

  While everyone else had drawn shallow surface images, Cat had portrayed something far deeper. Fragments of herself, hidden in herself. A sudden, inexplicable sense of connection came over me.

  Dan checked the hall before he spoke. “Did the cops catch you last night?” he asked.

  “No.” Cat stopped peeling her portrait off the wall and looked down.

  He studied her. A few freckles dotted her nose, and a diagonal scar ran like a small lightning bolt through the crease above her mouth. The thin, jagged scar made her top lip the tiniest bit crooked. I found this one imperfection to be unexpectedly beautiful. She was beautiful, although she didn’t appear to know it. Instead, she seemed self-conscious. Perhaps she though
t Dan was staring at her scar in a negative way, yet that wasn’t how I saw it at all.

  For me, the scar was one more sign of how different she was. And how brave. I wondered if every smile for her required a small act of defiance — a refusal to succumb to the scar that she thought marred her face. And I wanted to kiss her then. To kiss that perfect scar above her lip.

  “Sorry about the house,” Dan said, jarring me out of my thoughts. He sounded nervous. Maybe he’d been distracted by thoughts of kissing her, too. After all, he had been staring at her lips. “If the cops question you, you can blame everything on me. I don’t care. I’ll tell them it was an accident.”

  “Like it was an accident that you were there?” replied Cat.

  “I was trying to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help. You think you know me, Dan, but you don’t.”

  That’s not true, I whispered. I wanted to tell her that I knew her the way a bird knows the wind. The way a fish knows the river. The way a leaf turns to the sun no matter where it is in the sky. But only Dan got to speak.

  “That’s not true,” he muttered.

  Cat shook her head. “I can’t talk to you anymore.”

  “Because of what happened at the house?”

  “Because of everything.”

  “Cat, it’s not what you think —”

  “How do you know what I think?” she interrupted. “I remember more now. About what happened. What you did. Am I just a game to you? A broken trophy to add to your shelf?”

  “What?” Dan hesitated. “No,” he said, but his whispers increased, taking on guilty tones. Had she been a game to him?

  Anger gripped me. Somehow he’d hurt her, and now he was making it worse. Hurting her more.

  Cat must have caught Dan’s hesitation as well. “Tell me this,” she challenged. “Why now? Why did you suddenly become interested in me now?”

  “I’ve always been interested in you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s true,” he said. “Do you remember in sixth grade, after my dad left and your mom left, those sessions we had to go to? You were the only one who really got it. The only one who understood what I was going through. I’ve never been able to talk with anyone like that.”

  “Then why did you stop talking to me? For years, you barely said a word to me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just —”

  “I know why,” she said. “You don’t have to lie about it. It must have been hard being so popular.” She bit her lip. It occurred to me that none of the versions of herself she’d drawn had her scar. In her portrait, she’d erased that part of herself.

  “I can’t believe how naive I was,” she continued. “When you asked me to the party, I thought you might actually like me.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “You sure have a funny way of showing it.”

  “Look, about what happened . . . I know it’s my fault.”

  “That’s a stupid thing to say.”

  “But it’s true,” Dan said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” A hurt laugh escaped Cat. “Is that supposed to make it better? I should smile now and forget it?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because I can’t forget it. I won’t.” She drew a shaky breath. “Don’t you get it, Dan? I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  “Cat —” The zombie reached for her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said. “I mean it. Don’t be nice to me. Don’t give me things. Don’t even look at me. If you care about me at all, you’ll leave me the fuck alone.”

  She glared at Dan, her intense gaze burning into him. Then her eyes softened slightly around the edges. My hopes surged. Irrational as it might seem, I felt she could see me, trapped within him. Why else would she stare at him like that after telling him to leave her alone? The zombie’s pulse sped up. It was dizzying. Then Cat seemed to remember herself, and her anger at Dan.

  She turned and yanked down her portrait. The corners ripped but she didn’t stop. She crumpled up the drawing and retreated down the hall.

  I wanted to call to her and tell her I understood — not simply the things she said, but the things she couldn’t say. I would have given anything to be able to talk, but she kept going, disappearing around the corner. And the zombie didn’t move.

  For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Cat. Whenever Dan changed classes, I clung to the hope that I’d see her again. I think he was looking for her, too. When his last class ended, he checked the hallways where the lockers were and circled the school a couple times, but there was no sign of her. He finally shuffled across the empty parking lot and drove home.

  He didn’t do much after that — just watched some TV until Teagan returned. Then he hid in his bedroom and searched the Internet, but I didn’t pay attention to him. I kept imagining what I’d say to Cat if I could talk to her. How I’d chisel through the walls that kept us apart.

  Eventually, the zombie flopped on his bed and stared at the wall. Just as he’d done that morning, he stretched his hand toward the calendar, only this time, he lifted the bottom pages. Two words had been etched into the drywall. No wonder he’d hung the calendar there. If his mom saw what he’d done, she’d freak. He dragged his fingers across the words, feeling the rough grooves and cuts that formed them. It wasn’t until he pulled his hand back that I was able to read what they said:

  A shiver coursed through me. Or maybe it went through Dan and I was sensing his reaction. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the message was meant for me.

  The garage door pulled Dan out of his daze. He pressed the calendar back so it covered the words and listened to the sounds of his mom hanging up her coat. Her footsteps grew louder, stopping outside his door.

  “Dan, where are the groceries?” she asked.

  “I didn’t have time to get them,” Dan shouted back.

  “I asked you to do one thing.”

  “It’s no big deal. I’ll go now.”

  His mom groaned. “It’s too late . . .” Her voice receded, muttering to no one about how she was tired of having to handle everything on her own.

  I felt bad for her. She didn’t seem mean, just overwhelmed. The words beneath the calendar came back to me. SAVE HER. Except who did the “her” refer to? His mom? Teagan? Cat? And how was he supposed to save them? He couldn’t even get the groceries.

  Dan paced his room and glanced at the calendar again. Then he pulled out his cell phone, scrolled through the names to DAD, and hit CALL.

  “Danny?” answered a man’s voice.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Listen, I can’t talk right now. We’re sitting down for dinner.”

  “Okay,” said Dan.

  There was an awkward pause.

  “So is everything all right?” the voice on the other end asked.

  “Yeah. I just . . . wanted to see how the weather is there,” said Dan. “See what I should pack.”

  “It’s pretty much always the same here.”

  “Sunny and seventy?”

  “Blue skies every day,” replied his dad.

  “Nice,” said Dan. “I can’t wait to go outside and have some guy time.”

  Dan’s dad didn’t respond right away. In the background, I heard two young children calling for attention. I pictured him fending off chipper, well-adjusted kids. “Well,” he started, returning to the phone, “it won’t just be us guys. Marcy and the girls will be here, too.”

  “I know. But maybe we can go out alone sometime. Get away from things.”

  “On Thanksgiving?” replied his dad.

  “Maybe another day?”

  “We’ll see.” His dad sounded tired. “Keep in mind I have to work, okay? I don’t get all those days off like you do. Speaking of which, I heard you got suspended.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Your mom mentioned it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that why you’re not at foot
ball right now?” asked his dad. “They keeping you benched for a week?”

  “No. I quit football.”

  “What do you mean you quit?” The phone crackled and the kids’ voices faded. I pictured Dan’s dad retreating to another room. “You’re starting receiver,” he continued in a terse, staccato voice. “You can’t quit.”

  “It’s just a game,” said Dan.

  “No, it’s not. Colleges really look at this stuff.”

  “I wasn’t good enough for college ball.”

  “That’s not the point,” said his dad. “It’s about being well-rounded. Showing character. Your team depends on you, Dan.”

  Dan didn’t say anything for several seconds.

  His dad groaned. “Here’s what you need to do. Call your coach. Tell him you changed your mind. Beg him to let you back.”

  “I can’t,” said Dan.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to be on the team anymore.”

  “Dammit, Dan. If you blow this, you won’t get a second chance. It will haunt you for the rest of your life. Understand?”

  Dan slumped on his bed. “Yeah.”

  “You’re smart enough to know better. Stuff like this goes on your transcript. It stays with you. Financial aid is very competitive. Even little things can mean the difference between being accepted into a good college and being rejected.”

  “I know.”

  “You can’t afford to mess up.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re better than this.”

  Silence.

  “So will you call your coach?”

  “I guess.”

  “Good,” said his dad. A kid’s high-pitched squeal in the background turned to crying. “I should get going.”

  “Okay.” Another long pause. “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yeah?” The hollow reply sounded just like Dan’s own. No mystery where the zombie had gotten his gift for communication from. The kid’s cries grew louder.

  “Nothing,” said Dan. “I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  “Bye, Danny.”

  Dan ended the call and stared at his computer. I could hear his mom leaving for the grocery store. A few minutes later, Dan snuck into the garage. He pulled a dusty toolbox off the shelf and rifled through a mess of screwdrivers, scissors, and other tools until he found a yellow package of single-edge razor blades — like the ones I’d seen in the bathroom after he slit his wrists.