Bent Heavens Page 3

  “Make it quick,” Liv teased.

  “Your dad—nothing?”

  Liv shook her head. Still smiling. Keep up the smile. None of this hurts, none of it.

  “And your mom—she’s…?”

  Keep smiling. “She’s fine. Same. I mean, she’s fine.”

  Krista tilted her head skeptically, an angle sharp enough to dig under Liv’s ribs and hit something soft. Liv grabbed Krista by both shoulders and pretended to shake sense into her like men did to hysterical women in old movies. The pain of that little cut, however, did not go away.

  “She’s okay!” Liv play shouted. “I’m okay! Everything’s okay!”

  Krista pretended to zip her lips. “All right! I’ll shut up about it, forever and anon.”

  “Too much British lit for you. Get a life.”

  Krista nodded guiltily and slunk off for her locker. Liv heard the squeak of a sneaker stopping suddenly and turned to see Krista, who had leaned back to speak more quietly.

  “I meant to tell you. I came in the back way, by the band room. And Doug Monk was there with a bunch of idiots. I know you and Doug…”

  Krista trailed off—of course she did—because no one in Monica’s group knew how to finish that sentence. Liv and Doug what? Liv herself wasn’t certain. To the others, Liv supposed, Doug was a bewildering holdover from an older version of Liv Fleming, a Liv none of them were particularly interested to know. And it was for reasons just like this: first day of school, everything going great, and suddenly there’s some situation near the band room.

  Liv nodded an embarrassed thanks and took off for the stairs. The bottom floor at this hour was nothing but lonely halls. Away from watchful eyes, she sped up, past the shuttered home-ec kitchen and vo-ag wing, until she’d homed in on the southeastern bottom-floor stairwell, at the weird intersection of the chorus room and wrestling room. It was the hour of neither singing nor wrestling, and yet there huddled a group of four boys, just like Krista had said, their schoolbags slung across mom-ironed shirts so as to better record video on their phones. Each screen gave Liv a mini but unobstructed view of a scene that was as preposterous as it was predictable.

  Doug was lying on his back on the floor, his hair spread out beneath his head like black tentacles. The parachute pockets of his shorts sagged to the floor with payloads of gorp. From all indications, Doug had been persuaded to bench-press Jackson Stegmaier, a kid who had what teachers called a “developmental delay.” He was skinny with narrow shoulders, both of which, Liv hated to admit, did give him a barbell shape. The stunt was absurd, hence the laughter, hence the twist in Liv’s gut.

  The videos would be uploaded by day’s end. By tomorrow, they’d be flickering from every gadget in sight. Jackson Stegmaier wasn’t Liv’s problem; he’d deal with it. Doug, though—Doug never made anything easy. Sweat rolled down his scarlet face as he pumped the kid up and down while a jerk named Billy shouted out reps. What Doug didn’t get, what he never got until too late, was that the boys cheered only to mock him.

  Liv sighed. It wasn’t an indulging-Krista sigh. It was an extended, weary exhale, the sound of envisioning two more semesters of situations like this, every one of which forced her to keep a foot in a world she’d rather step beyond. Doug cutting power to the biology-class refrigerator to hide how bad he’d messed up his fetal pig, never thinking of the floor-wide stench that would result. Doug taking a dare to ride the bumper of a school bus, leading to stricter bus rules that pissed off everyone. And on and on.

  Billy had taken a seat atop Jackson Stegmaier, pretending to ride a mechanical bull. Three cameras pressed inward. Some of these degenerates were whizzes at editing, and if they pooled their footage, the video could be split screen or multiple point of view, alternating between Doug’s face and Jackson’s face before cutting to the crowd-pleasing wide shot. It would be a smash hit, setting the bar for the whole semester, unless Liv did something.

  She grabbed the closest boy’s shoulder.

  “Hi, Liv!”

  That’s what the boy said. It made her feel lousy about her risen social status over the past couple of years that anyone would think she had come here to enjoy the fun. She shoved the boy. He was too big to forcibly move, but the contact surprised him enough to withdraw. She swiped at the second boy’s phone, intending to knock it free, but although she struck it perfectly, the boy managed to keep hold of it. The third boy, witness to Liv’s onslaught, wisely evaded, tucking his phone into his pocket.

  Three seconds had passed, and Liv now turned to deal with Billy, still astride Jackson. Infuriatingly, Billy laughed, seeming to enjoy making Liv use her full body weight to pull him off. Jackson, as seemed his lot in life, took the brunt of it, hitting the floor with one of his fragile shoulders and shrieking, then staggering away while clutching the shoulder. Billy fell straight onto Doug’s stomach, still laughing. When Liv snatched for his phone, he easily dodged.

  “C’mon, Liv.” He fake pouted. “Don’t be a bitch about it.”

  She kicked him in the shin. He chuckled through his pain, which drove her crazy. The other boys were retreating with their videos safely archived, less ashamed than they were aware that classes were about to begin. This event meant nothing to them; they’d already half forgotten it, as evidenced by their amiable farewells.

  “Nice kick,” said the first of them.

  “You’re on your period—we get it,” said the second.

  “See you at lunch, Liv!” said the third.

  Billy got up and danced away from Liv’s closing kicks, still laughing, and then it was just her and Doug, alone again at the scene of a crime. Billy’s fall had knocked the wind out of Doug, and he was gasping for air, but calmly. He’d been squashed plenty of times before. This wasn’t Liv’s first time, either; she crossed her arms and glared at him.

  “What,” he panted, “is your”—gasp—“problem?”

  “My problem?”

  “We were just having fun.”

  “No, they were having fun.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Did it look like Jackson was having fun?”

  “Until you showed up.”

  Doug winced and sat up. Sunflower seeds and pine nuts were everywhere.

  “Oh no,” he said. “My gorp.”

  He began sweeping food into his hand and funneling it back into the violated bag. He flushed a bit, perhaps realizing that if eating off the floor wasn’t humiliating, what was?

  “Floor’s clean” was his excuse. “First day of school, everything’s clean.”

  “It is the first day of school. That’s right. And already look at you.”

  “I don’t need your advice. Go find your stupid friends.”

  “You do need my advice. And my advice is to stop letting people do this to you! You do it willingly!”

  “Oh, now you want to help. Yesterday, though, you barely wanted to check the traps. Probably thought it might mess up your nails.”

  That one burned. Because the thought had, in fact, crossed her mind. In the past, the branches above Hangman’s Noose had scratched up her face, the gears of Neckbreaker had ripped out a lock of her hair, and, yes, the door of Hard Passage had broken one of her fingernails. Was it so horrible that she wanted to go to school not looking like a savage? She looked down. The knuckles of her right hand were scuffed, bleeding a little. The excited newness she’d felt upon entering the school had burned down to exhausted anguish.

  “I know you think I ignore you here,” she said.

  “You do.”

  “It’s just…” She shrugged miserably. “I’m trying to make everyone happy, all right? Including myself. Including myself.”

  He said nothing, keeping his eyes on his gorp, pouring from hand to bag.

  She turned on a heel. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Hey,” Doug said.

  She stopped. Sighed. Didn’t turn back. But she did lower the defensive set of her shoulders.

  “I’ll track down Jackson at lunch,” Doug said. “Tell him sorry.”

  Liv listened and waited.

  “Little weirdo only did it because we asked,” he added.

  Liv nodded at the stairs in front of her. “Let’s just try to get through this year with minimum catastrophes. It’s our last year, you know?”

  “I wish it weren’t,” Doug said softly.

  “Come on,” she said. “You hate school.”

  “I know you want everything to change, Liv, but what comes after this? For me? I just wish … things could stay the same.”

  Liv closed her eyes for a second, absorbing another small slash of pain. She’d been able to prod Doug on Sunday morning precisely because she’d been looking at his back, not his face, and the same thing held true here. With her back turned, a speck of truth could be set free.

  “Things can’t.”

  Silence from Doug. The rustle of gorp had stopped. She couldn’t even hear him breathe.

  “Better get to class,” he said, and his lack of acknowledgment that no one would care if Doug Monk made it to class on time was the last jab of pain Liv could bear. She nodded, grateful for being granted release, and rushed up the stairs while wondering what would happen if she turned around. What would it look like to stare truth in the face after two years of avoiding it? Maybe it would feel like freedom, like destroying old traps instead of setting them, over and over, despite knowing there was nothing new to catch.

  5.

  Liv skidded into homeroom at the clang of the bell, earning applause from the teacher and hoots from her friends, quite the opposite reaction Doug would receive. She took the open seat, right in front, and was glad that the hour was taken up with first-day preliminaries: going over schedules, the year calendar, the sorts of things devoid of emotion.
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  She didn’t realize how much she’d been dreading second period until she sat down at a desk, this time way in back, to the confusion of Phil and Darla, and felt her muscles tighten against the chair. It was English, the class that should have been taught by her father, in the same room she’d visited so many times as a kid. The teacher who’d replaced Mr. Fleming, both as English teacher and drama coach, Ms. Baldwin, had made the room her own, but Liv couldn’t stop seeing the shelf behind Baldwin’s desk that had once held thirty-five copies of James Galvin’s Resurrection Update—the book that had meant so much to Lee Fleming, right up until the end.

  The shelf didn’t even hold books anymore. It held idiotic troll dolls with multicolored hair. It shouldn’t have aggravated Liv, but it did. She had avoided exchanging a single word with Ms. Baldwin in the two years they’d shared the same building, even though the woman had done nothing worse than show an affinity for ugly dolls. Liv knew it wasn’t fair to Baldwin. It was only English.

  Then Baldwin said the five words that earned any teacher ire: Get to know your neighbor. Next to the imbecilic Name Game, it was the most tedious of first-day time wasters, in which students were forced to pair off, interview a classmate, and then introduce that classmate aloud. Ridiculous, considering the size of the school and how long most of them had known one another. The shtick was likely for Baldwin’s benefit, another reason for Liv to resent it.

  Mired in disgruntlement, Liv moved too slowly. Darla chose Phil, of course, and every teammate Liv could see quickly paired off. She was recalculating when a fist knock-knocked her desk. She looked to her right and found the wide, dazzling grin of a boy she’d never seen before. He was tall and long-limbed. What stuck out most was his obvious sense of style, a rare quality in high school boys. His clothing was probably secondhand but actually fit, and was tucked and rolled where most guys would have ends flapping and flopping.

  “I’m Bruno!” he cried, as if they were long-lost companions.

  The grin kept going. He had great teeth, their bright white set off against skin further darkened by actual stubble. Hair, indeed, looked to be his biggest struggle: It puffed from beneath his shirt cuffs, and a gallon of gel must have been used to sculpt that swoop on top of his head. Liv looked all right today—she’d gotten up early to tie her hair in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Bruno’s unguarded gaze, though, made her doubt.

  “I’m Liv,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know. Let’s buddy up.”

  Buddy up? Liv threw out a desperate look for someone who might be less challenging than this guy, and, finding none, shrugged. Bruno scooted his desk; it bumper-carred against hers. Everyone else was doing the same, and the noise helped Liv relax. She took out a fresh notebook and inked on the first page BRUNO.

  “Let’s see: I’m Bruno Mayorga, I’m seventeen, I was born in Nuevo León—that’s a Mexican state—but was still a baby when I came to Iowa. I only moved to Bloughton this summer, but I plan to work on the school paper, and do lots of drama, and also chorus, and hopefully a couple small groups. I’ll probably join the tennis team, even though I’m not very good, but I hear the team is terrible, so maybe I’ll actually get to play. I have three sisters named Mia, Elena, and Bianca, and three dogs. I’m into music, but that’s super boring. Why did I even mention that? Who’s not into music? Oh, my dad is still in Mexico. I basically don’t know him. I know you don’t really have a dad, too. I don’t mean to be awkward about that. Sorry if that’s awkward.”

  Liv finished writing before exhaling.

  “You’re an easy interview,” she said.

  “Yeah, but that’s because I want to talk about something else.”

  Liv felt her shoulders close up as they did any time her past was questioned. Don’t do that, she instructed herself. Be the tallest you can.

  “And what’s that?” she asked.

  He clicked his own pen, gestured at his blank page.

  “Let’s get this done first. You’re Olivia Fleming. I’m guessing you’re also seventeen? You don’t have any siblings, if I remember what I heard, and you’re in like twenty-eight sports.”

  “Where’d you learn all that?”

  “Oh, just from people this summer. I always do some groundwork before starting at a new school.”

  “Why do you keep starting at new schools?”

  Another big grin, though this one looked strained. “Hey, we’re done with me. Did I get all your details right? No pets?”

  “Yeah, a dog.”

  “Oh! Tell me about the dog. Dogs go over great in these things. If you’ve got a picture on your phone we might not have to talk at all.”

  “Well, his name is John, and he’s a blue-heeler mix—”

  “His name is John?”

  “My dad named him. After a poet.”

  “Which poet?”

  “I can’t remember. John somebody.”

  Bruno laughed. It fit with his grin—comforting, welcoming. He took a note.

  “‘Dog named after John the poet.’ That’s good stuff. Anything else?”

  Liv sighed. “What’s the point? All these people know me. We’ve been going to school together forever.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Yeah, but you get the basic idea about someone, just by being awake. You can tell who’s nice or whatever.”

  “Am I nice? Or am I whatever?”

  “You’re nice.”

  “Then why do you look so scared of me?”

  “I’m not scared. I just—you’re talkative. And I’m tired.”

  “Haven’t had your coffee yet. You’re definitely a coffee drinker.”

  “I guess you can add that to your notes. ‘Drinks coffee.’ God, that’s why these things suck. You either sound boring or like you’re desperate for attention.”

  “And it’s probably hardest for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. Your dad. Like, that’s interesting. I’ve only heard a little bit of it, and even I can tell it’s super interesting. But because it’s unhappy, we all have to pretend like it doesn’t exist. ‘I drink coffee, and my dog is named John’ sort of pales in comparison.”

  Liv gave Bruno a careful look. Was the offhand way in which he mentioned her dad disturbing or disarming? Nothing duplicitous could hide behind such a smile.

  “You said you wanted to talk about something,” she said.

  Bruno leaned closer and raised a conspiratorial eyebrow.

  “I saw you bust up those guys this morning, and it was amazing.”

  Liv slapped down her pen and covered her eyes.

  “Oh Jesus. Is the video out already?”

  “No! I mean, I don’t know. I saw it in person.”

  “There were people watching?”

  “It isn’t like there was a whole crowd. It was just me. You didn’t see me because you were busy kicking all sorts of ass. Like I said, I want to join the chorus. I went down there to introduce myself to Mrs. Meachum.”

  “I’m going to end up in the video, I just know it, and then it’s just going to be more…”

  “More what?”

  “More I have to deal with. Like why I’m still sticking up for Doug Monk.”

  “What’s wrong with sticking up for Doug Monk?”

  “In all your summer spying, you never heard anything about Doug Monk?”

  “Not spying. Research. And no, he never came up.”

  “What am I supposed to say? I guess he’s an old friend.”

  “And your new friends don’t like him. That’s how it goes.”

  “They just don’t understand … I mean, unless you know Doug, he can seem … he’s tough to talk to. His family life is weird. He’s basically on his own. It’s hard.”

  “Well, I think what you did was heroic. It was about the most heroic thing I’ve ever seen. You’re a hero.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m serious here. It was really, truly amazing. You see that stuff in movies, but in real life? You tore those assholes new assholes.”