Song: #41 by Dave Matthews Band. Doesn't belong to me.
Someone was pounding on my door. I opened my eyes and saw sunlight through the window. When I exhaled, I felt surreal memories escape from my chest, as the foggy, rain-spattered events of the night before came into focus. Birds sang outside my window, and the harsh knocking continued on my door.
"Manny!" someone yelled. It was Paige, and she was trying her hardest to sound patient. It wasn't working. "Wake up, hon, it's Saturday!"
Fuck.
Reality came back and hit me hard. But I guess that's what you get for waking up. Paige kept screaming and banging on the door, and at last I decided to lift my heavy head and get out of bed. As I stood up all the blood rushed to my head and the walls of my room vibrated around me. I was still dressed in yesterday's clothes, now wrinkled and disheveled. Still a little damp from the rain.
I opened the door and saw Paige standing there, shimmering and squeaky clean in her spirit squad uniform, with the most furious and impatient look I'd ever seen on her face. I noticed my mother looming behind her with an equally unhappy expression.
"Oh. Paige, hi," I said hoarsely, ushering her inside my room quickly. "I'll be right out, Mama," I added before my mother could get a word in, slamming the door in her face and locking it shut.
Left in the silence of my room, I felt Paige's angry stare bearing down on me. "I overslept," I said simply.
"Obviously, hon. And, FYI, you look like someone tied you to the back of a truck and dragged you through the streets. Get your stuff together. You'll have to get ready as soon as we get to the school; we compete at 10:30." She turned to my vanity mirror and straightened her hair, as if scolding me was such hard work that it had left her perfect golden locks disheveled. I watched her reflection for a moment before she saw me. She stopped and glared into the mirror at me. "Um, hon? Hello? Huge competition today, already running late?"
"Right," I said, slowly. I caught a glimpse of my own reflection, and realized just how badly not taking my pill had torn me up. My skin was pale and tallow, eyes watery-pink and sunken in. My fingers were covered in red-raw marks and scabs. My lips were sore and swollen from the chewing. I was a genuine fucking mess. And yet somehow, still there was still some kind of beauty there.
It was funny, in a way. The pills I was on had become so utterly integrated into my routine that I hardly noticed them, and yet their absence was enough to make my universe fall to pieces. It was crushing to realize that without my pills I was nothing. I was a blank mosaic, and it was only pretty colored pills, organized by the days of the week, that kept it all from coming undone. I wanted something to throw, to crush my mirror and get rid of that reflection. I wanted to be more than just pills and a pretty face.
I carelessly gathered various articles of importance, pom poms and cigarettes, lip gloss and ribbons, and shoved them into my black messenger bag. Paige and I were out the door before I could even register it. That happened often; me, being so lost in thoughts that I stopped paying attention to the world around me. I was seated in the passenger seat of her mom's minivan, and I saw my mom barrel after us.
"Manuella! Where are you going?" she yelled, her face melting anger and confusion together. "Where is your car?"
Paige glanced over at me questioningly from the driver's seat.
"Just go," I said to her. I had too much of a headache to stick around and go through the tedious ordeal of explaining things to my mother. Every time I turned around she would be there, hovering, screaming, crying. Always begging for explanations. She seemed to think I was hiding things from her, but she was wrong. There were no explanations. I wanted answers just as much as she did.
"Manuella! Come back here right now!" She began marching towards the car.
"Paige, start the car NOW." I popped my head out of the window and waved casually to my mother. "Bye, Mommy! Big spirit squad meet today, can't be late!" She was still storming towards me. Chasing me down like rain clouds. I blew her a kiss as Paige turned on the ignition and pulled away, leaving my mother screaming in the street.
"So what was THAT all about?" Paige asked with mild interest as we drove.
"I snuck out last night. I left my car at Craig's."
Paige wrinkled her nose and furled her brow, completely disrupting that perfect face of hers. That was the thing about Paige. She was a pretty girl, but an ugly person. "Ew, hon. Why do you still hang around with that loser?"
I wanted to laugh. In case you hadn't noticed, Paige, I'm not exactly on the top of the social ladder myself these days, I wanted to tell her. Instead I simply shrugged as I pulled a cigarette out of my bag. I held it between my lips as I lit it with my hot pink lighter. I took a slow drag and let the toxins fill my lungs, seep into my blood system. I turned my face towards the open window and exhaled heavily. Gradually, I began to stop feeling like my head was pounding and my heart racing a thousand beats a second. My nerves were calming, I was waking up, and I was drifting into the dull, numb state of mind I was used to. Nothing like the madness of the night before.
Paige's face progressively continued to sour as she snuck extremely obvious and intentional glances in my direction. "Do you really have to do that in my mom's car?" she snapped at last, when she realized I was ignoring her cold stares the same way I ignored everyone else who looked at me. "I mean, it's bad enough that you're totally setting yourself up for like, every kind of cancer, not to mention the perpetual stink and yellow teeth. Is it really necessary to cause me and my car the same suffering?"
I ran my fingers through my hair before resting my hand on the edge of the window. We slowed to a stop at a red light. I flicked my cigarette and watched as the ashes danced to the ground and landed in a dirty puddle in the road. The weather was miserable. It was muggy, cold, and wet; filthy from a night of endless rain. "Paige..." My voice was weak and raspy. A night's worth of nonsensical screaming and crying had taken it's toll. I didn't even want to think about the effect it would have on my cheering ability. "Just back off. It's early, and I really don't think you want to deal with me when I haven't had my first smoke. Especially not after the night I had."
She rolled her eyes and made an angry scoffing noise in her throat. "Ugh. It's just gross. And totally unhealthy, hon. You're going to wind up looking forty by the time you're twenty. You've got to quit sooner or later."
"It balances me out," I tried to explain, unable to mask the slight whine in my voice. It was impossible to make Paige Michalchuk understand anything. She organized the world according to her own rules and opinions, and anything that didn't follow her logic simply did not exist to her. "All the drugs they've got me on just make my system get all out of wack. I have to smoke to stay chill." I paused, took a heavy drag, flicked away more ashes. I looked down at my lap. "I'm trying to wean myself off the Paxil. Once I'm off that, then I'll quit smoking."
Paige looked at me skeptically. "Really now. And um, how's that going for you?"
I looked at my reflection in the side mirror and thought about my visit with Craig. I thought about my soaked clothes, my bleeding fingers, the broken glass, how I felt like I was dying. I would never quit smoking. Because I would never be stable without the constant stream of meds in my system. Apparently I couldn't even make through a single day without the Paxil. Instead of getting stronger, I needed pills more than ever. "It's going all right."
I savored the last puff before tossing the butt out the window. I laid my head down on my arm on the window's edge and let the gloomy post-rain air run through my hair as the streets flew by.
The front of Degrassi Community School was blocked by rows of big yellow buses from all the schools we were competing against. As Paige and I hurried to the front door, I noticed the wet pavement was littered with discarded candy wrappers and colored flyers; things that we, as the hosting squad, were supposed to pass out to the other teams as they arrived. I imagined Paige was pretty angry she'd had to miss her meet-and-greet to come and fetch the slacker.
"All right, Manny, pick up the pace. We've got fifteen minutes to get you looking un-horrible before we go on." She snapped her fingers to indicate the speed she wanted from me.
The school was swarming with people when we went inside. Degrassi students were running around, just here for an excuse to hang out with each other. Parents of the visiting squads were wandering around, trying to find their way in this unfamiliar school. Girls in every color uniform skipped back and forth hurriedly, crying out to one another for last minute hair checks and trying to locate music and pom poms. Student council members were busy in the middle of it all, selling snacks and handing out maps and directing the flow of traffic. I tried to walk in perfect stride behind Paige so that when we passed Emma Nelson's refreshment table, she didn't see me.
I was well aware of the many curious eyes upon me as we shoved through the crowd and at last arrived at Ms. Roche's classroom, which had been assigned as our dressing room. The stares from of the rest of the spirit squad were no different. I was a total train wreck, stumbling in just in time, whereas the rest of them had been there all morning getting ready. Not all of their expressions were the same. Some were shocked, others amused, and many just resentful. But naturally, not a single face was sympathetic.
I was too used to the stares to give a shit. I barely even knew they were there.
"Well?" Paige barked at the team. "Stop staring and keep stretching! We've been working way too hard to go out there unprepared." Gradually, the eyes drifted away from me and the girls went back to getting ready. Paige was stressed, and no one really wanted to mess with Paige when she was stressed. She turned to me and snapped her fingers again. "All right, hon, let's hustle."
I dumped the contents of my bag onto one of the desks that had been pushed against the wall. I carelessly peeled off yesterday's clothes and wriggled into my spirit squad uniform. I propped up my mirror in the chalk tray and hunched over to apply my make-up while Paige worked my brush furiously through my hair. In no time at all, the tiredness had been wiped clean from my face. The imperfections were masked, and only the beautiful could be seen. I tied the clean white laces of my tennis shoes and rubbed lavender blossom lotion on my legs. I was yet again the Manny the world was used to seeing; gorgeous and unreachable.
Ms. Hatzilakos appeared in our doorway with a blue clipboard in hand. "Come on, ladies, you're supposed to be on deck," she said. There was a flurry of blue and yellow movement as everyone gathered up their poms and shuffled out of the room.
We were told to wait in the hall in front of the locker room. We couldn't see the gym floor, but we could hear Bardell's cheer squad finishing up their performance. A few minutes later we were joined by Oscar and J.T., our only male members. J.T. very strategically avoided meeting my eye. I was used to it. He and I could never be friends again, but we did just fine as team mates, so long as we never looked right at each other. The squad continued to wait in silence for the big moment. Paige was biting her nails impatiently. Hazel was pacing. Tiffany and Janell were silently going through the motions of the routine. J.T., Oscar, and a few of the girls had formed a small circle and were saying a quiet prayer for good luck.
I folded my arms and looked at my feet. I wasn't nervous. Spirit squad was the one thing that didn't make me nervous. I knew the routine backwards and forwards, I could whip it out for you at the drop of a hat and I would do it better than anyone else. I didn't need luck or God. I didn't believe in those things any more. I only needed me. People could say all kinds of nasty things about me, and most of them might even be true. But I still knew my shit, and I was good at it, and that was something no one could take away.
Liberty stepped inside, holding a clipboard that looked just like Ms. H's. "Degrassi Community School, you may now take the floor," she said in her most business-like voice.
"All right guys, this is it," Paige said to us as we filed out. She gave us her last words of wisdom just before we ran out onto the floor. "Don't screw it up."
I fell into position for the routine, front row center, of course. The music blasted through the cheap gym speakers and my head popped up, revealing a smile so bright and wide it could never have been real. It was a performance, and it took over me. I smiled and clapped and bounced and hit every move. I was very good. For a moment I forgot that I was Manny the whore, Manny the psycho, Manny the pill-popper. I was just a spirit squad member, a single piece of the team, putting on a good show. For a few minutes people could look at me and for once not have a single bad thing to say about me.
It was very brief. All those weeks of practice just for three lousy minutes in front of the judges. So much build up for nothing at all. The song was over before I knew it and we were soon back in our dressing room. Everyone else was still high on the adrenaline of the moment, chatting excitedly to one another about how it had gone. But I just sat there quietly, away from everything. The moment was over, I was the resident psychoslut again. I needed a cigarette.
"Great job, guys," Paige said, looking at all of us with pride. "The award ceremony is at two-thirty, so you're all free to roam around and watch the other teams. Just make sure you're back no later than two-fifteen."
The talking picked up where it left off. I turned my back on the excitement and started picking up all the things I had carelessly poured out of my bag in my rush to get ready. I wanted to tune everything out, as I had gotten so good at doing. But when I heard her voice, it stood out above all the noise. I couldn't help myself. I had to turn around.
"Hey!" Ashley Kerwin called from the doorway. She looked in and smiled at J.T., who had just pulled off the head of his mascot costume. He waved and smiled back.
"Come on in," he said to her. She made her way towards him and placed a sugary kiss on his cheek. It was ridiculous, really, since she was so much taller than him. She had to bend down to meet his face, like he was a little kid. But no one else seemed to find it as funny as I did. They just watched with gooey eyes, like it was the cutest thing ever.
"You did awesome," she said. She grinned with a sort of sarcastic mischievousness. "Liberty's going to kill me for leaving my post at the drink station, but I'm glad I got to see it. You were great."
J.T. raised an eyebrow and laughed. "And since when are you afraid of Liberty? Aren't YOU the president?"
"By title, sure. But as far as Liberty's concerned, she's the commander in chief of... well, the entire universe, really."
The two of them continued to laugh and smile at each other, throwing in subtle touches every few seconds. I could not fight the wave of bitterness that hit me. J.T. and Ashley were the absolute "it" couple. Everyone thought it was just so fabulous that they got together. How adorable it was that they'd ended up dating. They'd been dating for four months then, and the initial irony still hadn't lost its shock value to me. They were a walking reminder of all my mistakes, of everything I used to have but had lost track of along the way. Sometimes when I watched them, so in love, I wondered if I would ever get any of it back again. It was laughable to even try to look back and understand the person I once was. I had been falling for so long, I had gone through so much, that I couldn't see anything further than the hole I was in. Innocence was a country on the other side of the ocean. In all honesty, I had long lost the desire to go back. There was only forward. The only way to keep from sinking was to keep moving.
Still, no matter how much I didn't care, it hurt to see them together.
I finished packing up my things. I put on my headphones and cranked up the volume as I left the room, left the spirit squad, left the happy couple. I kept walking all the way out of the school and went behind the building, where Radiohead and I could smoke in peace.
When I was a wide-eyed fresh arrival to the seventh grade, Ashley Kerwin was the goddess of Degrassi. She was pretty and popular and her boyfriend was pretty and popular and all her friends were pretty and popular. She was the best at everything. She had everything in the world. And yet she always seem to act as thought such a life was nothing remarkable. Like it was never really enough. Like she was just so used to being Perfect Ashley Kerwin that it was easy for her to take it all for granted. I was struggling just to keep my head above water in the sea of junior high, but Ashley waltzed a foot above the waves. My sole, naive ambition was to someday be as great as Ashley Kerwin. That was all I really wanted out of life. To be pretty and popular, just like Ashley.
The day everything changed was the day Ashley fell from grace. It was my first real party. I wore my favorite jeans, the ones with the little sparkles around the pockets. I was actually going to a party at Ashley Kerwin's house. I thought it would be the night that brought me "in." The night that would make me one of them, so that when I came back for eighth grade I would be somebody. But when I got there it was nothing like I'd thought it would be. She stumbled out of her doorway giggling, eyes bright and wide. She didn't even recognize us. She grabbed hold of Liberty and babbled nonsensically. I didn't understand what was wrong, I only knew that Perfect Ashley Kerwin was not her usual self, and it scared me. As the night went on I found out she was on drugs; ecstasy. I didn't even know what that was then. I watched as everything crumbled around her. She didn't look so pretty when she came downstairs after cheating on her popular boyfriend. Then she broke his heart, and her perfect boyfriend walked out the door and her perfect friends walked out the door and her perfect reputation was ripped to shreds and suddenly I realized Ashley Kerwin wasn't perfect at all. She was stupid and careless and lost everything with one mistake.
At first I was shocked, even hurt. I didn't know what to think. Ashley Kerwin wasn't perfect anymore. The universe shook with the vibrations of the collapse. But over time I came to accept this truth in a positive light. Why try to be like Ashley Kerwin? It became obvious to me that Manny Santos had much more to offer the world. I could be the pretty one, I could be the perfect one.
But even as an outcast loser goth, Ashley was better than me. I was the same simple Manny, but Perfect Ashley Kerwin had reinvented herself as Imperfect Ashley Kerwin, and somehow people loved her even more. Craig, especially, loved her more. He pushed me away and they grew closer, and suddenly I wanted things to be the way they were on that night, when Ashley was scum of the universe.
I guess that's why, in grade nine, it was so easy to take her boyfriend from her. I never wanted anyone to get hurt, but at the same time, it wasn't hard at all to watch Ashley's world slip through her fingers yet again. A part of me enjoyed watching something so beautiful break. Even though I damaged so much of myself in the process.
And so after all of it, Ashley ended up with J.T. What is life with out a painful dose of irony, after all? Whenever Ashley made a mistake, she returned ten times stronger. When ever I made a mistake... well, that was the big difference between me and Ashley Kerwin.
I never meant to hurt J.T. That was never my intention, at any point, regardless of what the rumors claimed. We grew up together. We chased the ice cream man together and sang in the third grade choir together. J.T. knew me better than anyone else, save Emma. But the Manny he knew was the little girl he grew up with. The Manny he started dating at the end of grade nine had long been broken. I had been hurt, and instead of mending the wounds, I just covered them up. I let them rot. It was all I knew how to do. I was dying inside, and I was completely alone. It was funny because in a sick way, it was everything I'd wanted. I was pretty and even popular, in a sense, because there wasn't a soul in the school who hadn't heard of Manny Santos. There wasn't a single day I didn't dread going to school. Sometimes I felt like the whispers and giggles were so loud they might have swallowed me up as I walked down the hall.
J.T. wanted to be good for me. All he wanted was to be the good boyfriend he knew he could be, and have a happy, simple relationship. He wanted us to work out so badly. I can't blame him for that. But what he didn't understand was that I was damaged goods. I wasn't the same as I was before. I wasn't yet capable of going back to happy and simple. I still had so much healing to do. I tried pushing him away, like everyone else, but he was so persistent. He was the only one who didn't seem to hate me and finally I realized I had to grab onto him while I could. He was all I had left.
As it turned out, dating J.T. was all I had to do to climb out of the social abyss I was stuck in. Emma and Liberty started talking to me again. Toby and Kendra stopped looking at me like I was the plague. The hallway whispers hushed to nothingness, and even Ashley had moved from verbal abuse to simply ignoring me. The scarlet "S" for slut was still emblazoned on my chest, but people no longer openly pointed and laughed about it. It was almost too good to be true, and it felt somewhat bittersweet. I resented Emma for treating me like shit after the abortion, when I needed her most, and then running back to me like everything was sunshine and rainbows again without even a murmur of an apology.
I never really believed that pseudo-happiness would last for very long. I just wasn't that lucky. I was constantly afraid that everyone would go back to hating me, that everyone would abandon me again.
J.T. and I had been dating for two and a half months, and I had almost completely let go of my fears of rejection. A brand new school year was about to start and I felt like finally, I could start afresh. Things were slowly getting better. Then my older brother Phillip climbed onto the roof one night and shot himself.
You never know real sadness until you lose someone. You could almost say that loss is the only real sadness, because it's the only pain that time can't heal. Phillip was gone forever, he was never coming back, there was no more Phillip in my life. Words can't describe the emptiness of it. The entire experience was unreal. The days after Phillip's suicide felt like an eternity. I moved so swiftly from anger to sorrow to despair and back again that all of it felt like a dream. I held on for so long. For so long I told myself it was a dream. I begged God to make it untrue, to give me another chance to love my brother. It was mind-blowing to realize that this was something I couldn't fix. He was gone. Days turned to weeks, and he was still gone. I couldn't keep feeling so uncontrollably miserable. If I kept living like that I would have ended up killing myself, too. So instead I just numbed myself to it.
I just kind of, gave up. My whole family did. My dad was ruined. He stopped interrogating me about my whereabouts all the time, he stopped caring if I went out one night and didn't come back until the next morning. I think he never really had much hope for me to begin with. Phillip was his boy. When he lost that, nothing else seemed to matter much, especially me. My mother tried to hold it all together. She dragged us to family counseling, tried to bring us closer together. It was a worthless effort. I just wanted to go to bed and sleep forever. The waking world had nothing left to offer me.
J.T., of course, was completely supportive. I didn't want him to be. I tried getting rid of him, telling him we were finished, but he just stayed. He wouldn't give up. He was always so sure he could make it work. And so I clung to him, for even longer, because there was nothing else I could do. But I deep down I was always aware that he could never make it work out the way he wanted. He could never understand. He could never even fathom. He always thought that I was getting better, but in truth I was just sinking deeper. The more people reached out to me, the further away I drifted.
It was around October, when I'd gotten very good at pretending like I was just fine, that the nightmares started coming. I started dying in my dreams each night. I dreamed of children eating me alive. I saw myself kill my brother. I was the murderer. I was the victim. Death was everywhere, consuming my every thought, driving me insane. I tried to hide it but it started eating through me, bleeding out of every orifice of my body. Finally, in November, I snapped...
I shuddered where I stood behind the school building. It was all too much to think about. I took Radiohead out of my CD player and replaced it with Dave Matthews Band, which was considerably less depressing music. I whipped out another cigarette and tried to calm myself.
Don't think about November, I told myself. It still pained me to recall my first breakdown. It made me sick inside. It was funny, though, that even after the unmentionable events of November, J.T. still stuck around. Still thought he could make it work. Even with a girlfriend diagnosed with clinical depression and post abortion syndrome, he still wanted that perfect relationship. He still believed I was the happy little girl he shared his childhood with.
Looking back on it, that should have been the end of us. But no, the end wouldn't come until New Years. More irony and cliche for me to spiral into.
My throat suddenly got dry. I wanted some of the pink lemonade they were selling inside. But going inside meant extinguishing my cigarette and actually interacting with people, and I just wasn't up for that. I brought the cigarette to my lips again. I wished I had the strength to run to J.T. right then and tell him all the things I'd never told him. I'm sorry, I would have said, and I would have really meant it for once. Sorry for everything, from the very beginning. Sorry I chose Sully over you. Sorry I ruined so many lives. Sorry I stayed with you for so long and made you think I needed you. Sorry I told you I loved you when I didn't even know how to love. Sorry I kept so many secrets from you. Sorry I got drunk that night. Sorry about Sean. Sorry I broke your heart. Sorry I didn't even care.
But my words would have no meaning to him. Everyone knew my apologies were worthless. Words couldn't change the past. Forward. I had to keep moving forward. To move backwards would just be to relive all that pain again.
I heard a noise. By reflex I quickly tossed my cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. Emma appeared from around the corner hauling a bag of trash. She froze for a moment, slightly surprised to see me. Her face quickly soured.
"Smoking on school grounds is a misdemeanor, you know," she said dully as she carried the trash bag to the dumpster. "There's a minimum $100 fine."
"At least it's not I felony," I replied, though it wasn't catty or callous. Animosity did not really exist any more between me and Emma. There was nothing but defeat. Some lingering bitterness, perhaps, but mostly just the recognition of a stone wall that separated us. You can only hurt a person so many times before it just ceases to matter. She no longer wanted to hate me. She just wanted to stay as far away from me as possible. Who could blame her, really?
She rolled her eyes as she attempted to heave the heavy bag up and over into the dumpster. She failed. It fell and spilled some of its contents to the ground. She let out a ferocious and impatient groan, more embarrassed than she was upset. It was interesting me that Emma could still get embarrassed in front of me. As if my opinion of her had any real value any more. I walked over and bent down to help her put everything back in the bag. She opened her mouth to say something, but then just shook her head with a sigh and worked with me. When we were finished I took the bag from her hands, tied it, and tossed it into the dumpster. I tried looking her in the eye, but she kept looking anywhere but my face. She didn't want to meet my gaze. All the hurt I'd ever caused her was shining bright in my eyes.
I wished I had some way to tell her that I wouldn't ever hurt her again. That I was... sorry. Of course that was absurd. I probably would hurt her again. That's what I did, even though I didn't mean to. It was stupid to even think those things. She had hurt me, too. But when I ran into her like that, it was hard to remember that. All I could think of was my own wrong-doings. I almost liked it better when we were fighting. When it was nothing but our combined misery, I was overwhelmed with the hopelessness of it all. I could never make it better.
"You're going to miss the trophy presentation if you don't hurry up," she said as she walked away.
I exhaled. I looked over at my half-smoked cigarette, crumpled on the ground, and thought what a waste that was. The high-pitched beeping noise of my cell phone alarm went off; time for my first round of meds. I dug through my clutter of possessions until I found the plastic pill organizer. I dumped two pearly pink pills into my palm and tossed them into my dry mouth. I swallowed hard, and I desperately needed that lemonade more than ever. But I still couldn't bring myself to go inside. I sat down on the ground, back to the brick wall, well-aware that my ass was getting soaked from the wetness. I pumped Dave Matthews up louder and lit my last cigarette. No one really wanted me back inside anyway.