A Bit of Novel

I'm excited about this new bit I've just written, mostly because I changed a lot of things about Kyle Kane that I didn't like, made him into a character I could actually imagine Fiona being attracted to, instead of some stupid stereo-typical, flat character, y'know? I've been having a lot of novelistic breakthroughs this last semester. Maybe because Joe Meno is pushing me to not be a wuss? How great is it that one of my favorite writers is also my teacher right now, huh?

OK, killing the tangent. Here's part of Chapter 1 of my novel, tentatively called "We Shadows." I think I've put bits and pieces up before, but I can't remember...

Everyone Looks.

Everyone looks. When they know something bad happened over the summer, everyone looks. It’s like that stuff I thought only happened in bad movies; the camera gliding down the middle of the hallway and the extras playing students all starting and whispering. But those bad movies, they’re right, because the second I walked into the school, this weird tremor of quiet pulsed down the hall and everyone turned and just stared.

They stared at me because they know about you. The whole freaking school knows you slit your wrists and bled to death in the bathtub while your mom made a spaghetti dinner below you. The whole freaking school knows that your dad found you, kicked the door in and saw you there in your jeans, eyes unfocused and blank. The whole freaking school knows you’re dead.

Some of them leaned out from the ranks, touched my arm or my shoulder and said, “I’m so sorry,” or “Are you OK?” It was weird. I never liked being the center of attention. I just wanted to sneak through high school with you and Jackson and the guys and just not ever have anyone stare at me. This was worse than the time you dropped that thermometer on the tile floor in Science class and everyone called you “Mercury Rising” for the next month. This was worse than the time, freshmen year, where I got period on my jeans and Melissa Thompson told everyone about it. This was worse than the time Danny Brenner and Jackson got into a fistfight with Marcus Bradley in the hallway because he called them fags and I got elbowed in the face trying to break them up. This was so much worse than that.

But at least they didn’t ask questions about you.

Or, I should say, at least it took a week for any of them to ask about you.

It happened in Biology. Mr. Fagan always just puts on episodes of BBC’s “Planet Earth” if he doesn’t feel like teaching (which is most of the time, which is also why you and I signed up for his class at registration last year), so we were watching the “Deep Sea” episode with the shades down and the lights off and I was leaning on my lab table, my arms pressed flat on the cold marble top, trying really hard not to notice that the stool beside me, your stool, was empty. And Stephen Weleski leaned across the isle and tapped my shoulder.

“Yo, Fiona,” he whispered, tapping me until I slowly, so slowly turned my head and look at him.

“What?” I mumbled, blinking.

His face was looming pale like he didn’t get any sun at all this summer, like he worked under a rock for three months, and his eyes were wide under his buzzed hair when he asked, “Did you see it?”

“See what?”

“Did you see his body? Y’know, after he…?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

My throat closed up, tighter than a pinhole, and my mouth dried, all the saliva evaporating instantly. I just stared back at him.

From the lab table behind Stephen, Kyle Kane’s voice came quietly hissing, “Fuck you, Weleski. Why would you even ask her that? What fucking planet are you from, you shit?”

Stephen glanced back at Kyle, who was glaring at him through the black-rimmed rectangles of his glasses, then hunched his shoulders and slithered his torso back into his own space.

“Fucking apologize, asshole,” Kyle whispered, leaning over the front of his lab desk so Stephen could hear him loud and clear.

“Sorry Fiona,” Stephen mumbled without looking at me. He crossed his arms and slumped forward onto the surface of his desk.

“What’s going on back there?” Mr. Fagan asked over “Planet Earth.”

“I was just wondering,” Kyle Kane said, covering quickly and smoothly, “if I could move over to Fiona’s lab desk? We were lab partners last year…?”

Mr. Fagan nodded. “Sure, sure, sure. Just be quiet about it, yeah?”

Kyle grabbed his messenger bag and slipped across the isle and onto your empty stool beside me. “Hey partner,” he whispered, grinning at me. His blue eyes wrinkled behind his glasses and I noticed, probably for the first time without you taking up all my attention, that he is so damn cute. He’s got dimples, little parentheses around his smile. Who knew dimples were so cute?

“Thanks,” I said.

He shrugged and settled in beside me, leaning back against the lab desk behind us, tipping his stool a little. “Don’t sweat it,” he said.

You always said Kyle wears too much plaid, especially in the winter, but that day he was wearing a faded “The Damned” t-shirt, faded and worn thin with use, and a pair of black jeans. His ratty black Vans slip-ons were almost more hole than shoe—regular skateboarding wear and tear—and his ever-present black beanie was pulled down over his ears. I could see tips of his dark blonde hair poking out from underneath, though, and his cheeks and chin were scruffy, dusted with white-blonde shadow. He’s always been skinny, and not much taller than my 5’6” but right then, he was waxing Knight-In-Shining-Armor and even though I could still—can still—feel your touch everywhere on my skin when I sleep at night, I was definitely noticing his cute, cute, cuteness.

I kept glancing back over my left shoulder at him, kind of wanting to catch him looking at me, but every time he was just watching the projector screen play “Planet Earth,” elbows on the table behind us, legs swinging lazily around the rungs of his stool.

After “Planet Earth,” Mr. Fagan gave us some stupid homework assignment that, of course, required us to meet up with our lab partners outside of class. In the loud shuffle of papers, notebooks and textbooks slamming, Kyle asked, “Hey, can I get your number?”

He stood, phone at the ready, head cocked to the right a little, half grin hooked on his face, just one dimple that time.

I stared at him, frozen, trying to figure out how to tell him that I’m not really ready to start dating quite yet.

He seemed to pick up on my near-panic. “Y’know. For our homework assignment?” he clarified quickly. “So we can find some time to meet up?”

Relief and disappointment rushed, hot and red to my cheeks. “Oh, oh yeah. Sure. Maybe I should get yours, too.”

We traded numbers, a little awkwardly because I couldn’t stop blushing and people kept pushing past us, bumping into our shoulders, making us edge closer to each other to avoid the rushed battering of students desperately pouring out of the classroom.

“So…I’ll call you or something. Like, tonight?”

I nodded. “Yeah, sure.” Then I turned to my backpack, distracting myself by rearranging my books inside the bag. When I looked up, he was gone, a flash of gray and black at the doorframe and then nothing.

I kind of feel guilty. Guilty for liking his dimples and the fit of his jeans and the curve of his spine as he leaned back against the desk. Guilty because you are gone and I love you forever but I can’t help it if sometimes I get mad about how you treated me at the end or distracted by other cute skater boys who remind me of you the way a lingering scent brings someone to mind after they’ve left the room, or the way rumpled sheets mean someone has just been lying in them.