Free After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

she’s my age, a sophomore like me, and a loner like me. Ryan first befriended me in Mr. Farrell’s class, where, when our vinyl desks are dragged into circle “modules,” Ryan and I invariably wind up side by side since no one else is eager to sit with us.
    “They snort the stuff or inject it into a vein like heroin. Can you imagine? Ugh.”
    I tell Ryan no, I can’t imagine.
    In fact I can. But I don’t want to.
    Taking pills orally, that seems safe. The way people drink. But any kind of injecting with a needle is scary.

    “…It’s supposed to cause brain damage. Every time they use it, brain cells die. The way those bikers behave, Trina Holland especially, you can see it’s so.” Ryan laughs disdainfully but with an air of excitement, craning her neck to better see into the corner of the parking lot where the bikers are hanging out in their usual territory that’s off-limits to anybody else. You can’t blame Ryan for being jealous of Trina Holland, who’s the most eye-catching of the bikers’ girls, ash-blond hair trimmed short as a guy’s, a sexy size zero in really tight-fitting jeans, skinny little sweaters, leather boots to the knee, and a heart-shaped face to die for. “…her parents have, like, disowned her. First she hooks up with Gil Rathke, practically a known drug dealer, next it’s Rust Haber, who follows her around like a lovesick puppy though Rust is vicious as a pit bull with anybody else. Today it looks like T-Man has scored with her—see them fooling around out there? Dis-gusting! How d’you think it starts?”
    “What?”
    “Being like…you know. Trina.”

    Ryan has folded her arms protectively across her large soft breasts, frowning and shaking her head as if a wrong-size idea has come into it. She wears loose-fitting sweaters over shirts, size-fourteen slacks in careful drab colors like beige and gray. Her hair is faded brown-red, she has splotches of freckles like rust-colored raindrops on her face and arms.
    Ryan means Like Trina, not-a-virgin . I think this is what Ryan means, but I don’t help her, it isn’t a subject I want to discuss.
    “…and Kiki Weaver, she’s a sophomore, you see her making out with this senior guy Dubie by her locker? This morning. ”
    I feel my face blush. I’m self-conscious enough eating my lunch in the cafeteria. (It’s starting to make me nervous, eating around other people. Why’s it so important, such a “custom,” to have to eat with other people?)
    You’d think that Ryan Moeller and Jennifer Abbott are best friends, sitting together at a table in a far corner of the cafeteria. A table for people like Ryan and me where we can sit with our backs defiantly to the noisy crowd and ignore them. Guys who sit at this table aren’t the kind of guys we would wish to speak with, so we ignore them, too.

    Why Ryan seems to like me I’m not sure. She is a big, slow, brainy girl with poor motor coordination, which makes gym classes hell for her, rouses her contempt for athletes as well as for sexy girls like Trina Holland. Maybe she places me in a category like her own, whatever that is. Actually half the time I avoid Ryan by avoiding the cafeteria altogether. I avoid Ryan by slipping out of Farrell’s class, seeming not to hear her calling, “Jen? Jen—” (I haven’t told Ryan that “Jenna” is my true name.) Ryan has invited me to her house after school, but I shrug and tell her thanks, some other time.
    Why I’m like this I don’t know. Like wearing my grimy sailor cap every day, it just happens. Do I care what people think? These people? At Tarrytown I wasn’t like this. I liked my teachers, I had lots of friends. I had close friends even.
    Before the wreck . When having friends seemed worth the effort.
    Since that day at the start of the school term, Christa Shaw and her friends have kept their distance from me. I guess I’m a little ashamed at how rude I was to them, but lots of times I’ve had opportunities to apologize and