Thank you, The Wistful Bloom!
IN YOUR EYE
Andy isn't waiting for her in front of the school Wednesday morning. He doesn't meet her at her locker before homeroom. She doesn't see him until lunch time, and then only across the caf, where he is sitting with the jocks for the first time since detention.
She can't eat. She doesn't even bother constructing her cereal sandwich, just glumly stares at the paper bag. Claire and Brian are in the library, going over Molière before Claire's European history exam. Only Bender is at the usually crowded table. He looks up from his burger.
"You and Andy fighting?"
"I don't know, Bender. He won't even talk to me."
Bender swallows his last bite of burger and looks at the wilting salad the cafeteria provided.
"I'm done here. Let's go burn one behind the gym."
Allison doesn't know what else she can do about Andy, so she tosses her lunch bag into her purse and nods to Bender. Maybe he can enlighten her on the workings of angry males. Bender buses his tray and they make their way to the back doors leading to the playing fields. Just by the door, Allison slips in a puddle of milkshake. Bender grabs her before she falls and they push through the double doors together.
Sitting on the steps to the rear entrance of the gym, Bender gets out a baggie of weed and rolls a joint. He lights it and offers it to Allison, but she shakes her head.
"Spill it, Al. What's up?"
"You know how you told me about the good girl thing?" Allison begins. "Well, yesterday..."
Allison goes on to tell Bender every detail of her encounter with Andy the day before.
"It's not fair, Bender. Guys can want what they want, but girls have to pretend. I'm so mad with Andy. I didn't know he was a sexist pig."
"You did sort of hit him over the head with a big idea all at once. Let him think about it. He might come around."
"Do you think so?" Allison asks.
"Well, it's worth a try."
"But he won't talk to me!" She despairs again.
"He's been avoiding you, yeah, but have you tried going up to him and asking him to talk?"
"No..." She has to admit she gave up pretty quickly.
The wind, already pretty strong, blows right into their secluded corner, stirring up bits of leaves and grit.
"Ow!" Allison puts her hand up to her eyes.
"What's wrong?"
"I got something in my eye." She rolls her eyes around, carefully wipes at the offending speck of dirt. "Damn, I can't get it."
Bender leans forward and says, "Look up." Alison widens her eyes so Bender can see better. He puts one hand on her cheek and says, "Turn this way, into the light."
She does as instructed and he says, "Aha! I see it." Gingerly he brushes at the fleck of dirt with the corner of his bandana. "OK, it's gone."
Allison pulls back, blinking rapidly, feeling no pain. Her eyes water and she wipes at the tears.
"Thank you, Bender."
"No problem." Bender tucks the handy bandanna back into the inner pocket of his jean jacket.
"So you think I should try to catch Andy and talk to him?"
"It's the only way to work it out. Go now, before lunch is over."
Allison puts her head down to avoid more grit in her eyes and rushes back to the cafeteria. When she scans the jock table, Andy isn't there. The bell rings and she doesn't have time to check his locker, but she will definitely try to catch him after the last class.
Classes pass slowly but finally the last bell rings and Allison runs straight to Andy's locker. She is in luck. He is just fastening his padlock when she hurries up to him. But when he turns and looks at her, she doesn't know what to say. She opens her mouth, then shuts it.
"What do you want?" Andy's voice is cold with anger.
"Andy, please..." She doesn't know what she wants. "Please talk to me. Don't just ignore me."
"I think you have better things to do with your time than talk to me."
"What do you mean? I wanted to talk to you all day. You were avoiding me!"
"I saw you two." This is an accusation, but of what she doesn't know. She looks at his face, closed and hard.
"You saw...?"
"I saw you and Bender kissing. Behind the gym. Go ahead, deny it!"
"Kissing Bender? What-"
Andy interrupts her. "He was all over you in the cafeteria and I saw you kissing him."
Now she realizes what happened. Her eye, getting that dirt out of her eye had looked like something else.
"No, Andy, I had something in my eye, he was helping me..." Her voice trails off as she sees he isn't even listening.
"I thought you were special, Allison, but first you try to seduce me and now you're kissing some other guy. You're right, you're not a good girl. They got it wrong, calling Claire a slut." He turns and starts walking away.
He has just called her a slut.
"Fuck you, Andrew Clark, you pig!" She starts crying and kicks the row of lockers so hard it hurts her foot. Andy stiffly continues down the hallway without looking back.
Allison is cleaning her room. The junk she's allowed to accumulate over the course of months is randomly piled up. She's cleaning because she can't settle down to anything more focused. Not that she is even focusing enough to clean. This is the third time she's flipped through an old sketch book and she still doesn't know where to put it.
The phone rings.
Snatching it up she breathlessly says, "Andy?"
"No, it's me, Bender."
"Oh." All interest drops from her voice.
"I'm happy to talk to you too." Bender's sarcasm has an unusual bite to it.
"What's wrong Bender?" Is Bender mad at her too?
"Apparently, we've been kissing behind the gym. That's what Claire tells me. What's going on?"
"Oh no! Oh, Bender, I'm so sorry. It's Andy."
"Great, you told Andy we were kissing so... what.. you could make him jealous or something?"
"No! Andy saw you taking that dirt from my eye. He thought he saw us kissing."
"Oh." She can practically hear the gears turning in his brain. "Well, that wasn't your fault."
"Of course it wasn't my fault. Why is everything suddenly my fault?" She's too mad to cry.
"Andy won't believe you?"
"Bender, he called me a slut. He wouldn't listen to me and then he called me a slut."
"Oh boy." She hears a gust of breath from his end of the line. "No, it's not your fault, it's mine. I never should have told you about that good girl thing."
"But it's the way he thinks. You're right. You were just telling me the truth."
"Look, I'll talk to Claire, you talk to Andy, we'll sort this out."
Allison is too upset to sleep. She thrashes about, going from one position to another, finding no rest, only Andy saying over and over, "They got it wrong, calling Claire a slut." The word slut echoes through her mind even when she finally falls asleep at two.
The alarm wakes her feeling unbearably tired. Her eyes are like a desert, dry, gritty and hot. It takes terrible effort to drag herself from bed, force her limbs into garments.
She leaves for school early, to arrive before Andy, to wait by his locker.
He finds her sitting with her back against his locker. She slides into a standing position, blocking his way.
"I don't want to hear it. Move." His voice is just as hard and unbending as yesterday.
"You're going to listen to me, Andrew Clark. You never gave me a chance to say anything yesterday."
He looks mutinous, but she knows he won't physically move her.
"As I said yesterday, I got something in my eye. Bender leaned close to me to get it out with his bandana. That's all. Period. No kissing."
"Yeah, yeah, tell that to someone who doesn't know better. You both lie. You admitted it, you're a compulsive liar. And Bender is no better."
"You are the only person who has ever kissed me. Ever." Her eyes water but she looks away, blinking back the tears. She refuses to cry in front of him. When she looks back, he is staring at a spot just above her left shoulder, refusing to make eye contact.
"Move. Before I call security."
"I am not a slut." She says this with great dignity, then turns and slowly walks away, spine straight, unbent by his nasty accusations and words.
The caf is too much for her to cope with, so during lunch she retreats to a little known vestibule in the rear of the auditorium, a favorite pre-detention haunt. She can go back to being invisible. She won't be here anymore, she'll go back to her fantasy world.
But she can't remember what she fantasized about and she can't ignore the jeering of the cheerleaders, finally released from the restraint imposed by the wrestling team. The guys from the team look at her with loathing too. She's glad at least she doesn't have classes with anyone from the breakfast club. Except... Wait... Where was Bender this morning in French? Maybe he hates her too.
School ends after an eternity of misery. She wishes she had her parka hood to pull about her face, to hide, to block her view of what she doesn't want to see. But it's warm, almost the end of the school year. Almost the end of school... She'll be glad to escape this hell. Maybe by next year, she will be forgotten.