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

I haven’t. Easier to look away, compose my stony face.
    Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t you dare!
    Ryan doesn’t have a clue about me. She hadn’t better try to pry either.

    Watching the bikers outside in the parking lot, I’ve lost interest in my lunch. When I eat in the cafeteria, it’s always the same lunch: fruit–cottage cheese salad. A roll comes with it, plus a pat of butter, which I pass on to Ryan. If the fruit is canned and syrupy, like the repulsive peach slices are today, I scrape it off my plate for Ryan, who seems never to have enough food on her own plate.
    I wish I could eat just white food. There’s a purity in white.
    Plus Diet Coke. I couldn’t live without Diet Coke to fill me up, wash down my pills.
    If it’s one of those depressing days, I will swallow a Tylenol or two, or some Advil, to deaden the ache in my head that seems always to be there, waiting like a dial tone when you lift the receiver. Aspirin washed down with Diet Coke makes my heart kick and jump in a way that’s kind of consoling. And there’s the one remaining OxyContin tablet, like a gold coin neatly wrapped in aluminum foil, in my backpack.
    (Uncle Dwight has never noticed his old painkillers missing. If he does and accuses me, I have rehearsed what I will say to him: If he thinks that I would steal from him, maybe I shouldn’t be living in his house.)
    Thinking about the painkiller hidden in my backpack.
    Wondering how long I can keep from taking it, knowing its effect will last only a few hours, not the rest of my life.
    “Ohhh. Look.”

    Ryan’s voice dips with fierce disgust. A biker has just driven into the parking lot, and Trina Holland and the other girls rush to greet him: hugs, kisses. Serious kisses.
    Has to be Crow. In his black leather jacket, even wearing gloves.
    The way my heart is kicking, it’s Crow.
    I’ve told myself how silly I am being. Crow is such a ridiculous name; Gabriel Saint-Croix is even worse. He’s what Ryan would call poor white/trailer trash. I know this.
    Since the second day of classes—weeks ago now—I haven’t seen Crow except at a distance. Seniors’ lockers and classes are in another wing of Yarrow High. Though I see Crow’s friends frequently, I’m not always sure if Crow is with them because I look quickly away before he can see me. It’s the reflex of someone who has recklessly stared into a blinding light and doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice.
    Sometimes when I think I see Crow, he’s alone. Sometimes he’s with his friends. It hurts only when I see him with a single girl, leaning close together, laughing and talking like lovers. There is Trina Holland but also Kiki Weaver with her purple-streaked hair. There is a senior named Dolores who’s drop-dead gorgeous like Jennifer Lopez. And other girls whose names I don’t know, with pierced ears, noses, eyebrows.

    I’m remembering the last time I saw Crow, when I knew it had to be Crow, it was a few days ago, my free study period, which I was spending in the library. I happened to be staring out a second-floor window in one of my zombie moods, not knowing or especially caring where I was, since one place is pretty much like another place, one time is pretty much like another time, and suddenly there was Crow leaving school, running across the grass to the parking lot to his stripped-down Harley-Davidson, not taking time to buckle on his crash helmet before he roared away. As if someone were calling him and it was an emergency.
    And I thought, Wait! Your helmet! You almost killed yourself once.
    Ryan, on her feet to see more clearly what’s happening outside, is muttering, incensed, “Oh! Will you just look at that!” After a flurry of excitement it’s the ash-blond girl, Trina Holland, chosen by Crow to climb onto the back of his motorcycle, slide her arms around his waist, and hang on tight as Crow drives out of the lot and out of sight.

    I grab my tray and walk away without a word. Ryan looks