He catches me peering in from the hallway. He smiles and I force a smile back. I should go in, say something nice or comforting, but I don’t. I hurry away like he’s contagious.
I hide in the girls’ bathroom, examining my face while imagining Amanda’s. Is she cuter than me? Her boobs are certainly bigger, but everyone’s boobs are bigger than mine, so I’m going to have to win this competition on other grounds. Amanda’s features are small and sharp, defined. I’m pretty sure defined cheekbones are supposed to be a good thing. My face is rounder, more babyish, and my cheeks are always rosy like I have blush on. My mom says I have skin that glows. Oh God, now I’m resorting to mom compliments to bolster my self-esteem? Someone slap me. No, wait, don’t. My cheeks can’t afford to get any redder.
I head back to rehearsal, making a mental list of other ways I could win out in the Richard tournament I’ve concocted. I want to have more mystique, but I have absolutely no idea how to do that. I’m almost back at the auditorium when out of the corner of my eye I sense someone at the other end of the hall. The surface of my skin prickles. Every cell in my body is telling me to look, but I’m too afraid because I know it’s Mason. It’s my dead friend down there at the other end of the hall. Something tells me he’s now moving toward me, but I still can’t look for fear of what I will discover. I can’t handle this right now. I try to tell myself it’s a trick of the light, but then why is every hair onmy neck standing on end? At the last second before I rejoin the cast, I give in to the urge to know and I turn my head.
There’s nothing. Nothing, that is, except reeling pain as I walk smack into the metal dividing frame between the open double doors of the auditorium. My skull clunks against the hollow pole with a loud reverberation, like the pole is a xylophone key and my head is the mallet. Business inside the auditorium stops. Tears spring to my eyes, and I feel the heat of a rising goose egg on my forehead. Amanda runs over to me, looking genuinely concerned.
“Hattie! Are you okay?”
I hate that question so much. That one little question has the power to take all your squishy insides and put them out on display. I back up, putting my right hand to my forehead and waving her off with my left.
She won’t be stopped. “Don’t worry, Mark! I’ve got her,” she says over her shoulder as she puts one arm around my waist and the other under my elbow. Calling Mr. Price “Mark” is quintessential Amanda.
“I’m fine. I just wasn’t looking where I was going. I just … need a minute.” Even though I’m dazed, I can’t help turning once more to peer down the hallway. But whoever was there, if there evenwasanyone, is gone.
Amanda shepherds me into the band room. In the back right corner, particleboard walls give the cubicle of the band director’s office semi-privacy, so she deposits me in the deep-cushioned armchair there. I only notice how shaky my legs are after I sitdown. Is it because I hit my skull or because this may have been the third time I’ve seen a ghost? Mr. Leary pops his head in, his face open, looking hopeful he might have something else to think about other than his dead son. I wonder briefly if he could have seen Mason in the hallway as well, but he looks too calm.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Leary,” Amanda says, seeming to enjoy her newest role as ER doctor. “Hattie just bumped her head. Do you have an ice pack, by chance?”
“Of course. BRB,” he says with a wink, clearly trying out something he thinks might be cutting edge.
Amanda turns back to me, about to do some more mothering. I look at her, thinking about the tally I was keeping in the bathroom. I’m going to have to add “nurturing” to her column and “hot mess” to mine, which does not help my case at all. Before she can put my feet up or some shit, I stop her.
“Okay, thanks, Amanda, I’m good,” I say. “I’m sure they’re all waiting for you. You better get back in there.”
She looks at me doubtfully. “You sure?” She is really milking this.
“Positive.”
She and Mr. Leary pass each other outside the door. He hands me the ice pack and clucks. “That’s a doozy.”
I put the ice pack on the bump, more to cover up the evidence of my embarrassment than to bring down the swelling.
“Thanks for the help, Mr. L.” I think about saying something real; I haven’t said anything to Mr. Leary since before thefuneral. But saying something about Mason seems inappropriate, and talking about anything else is absurd. “I’m going to pause here for a bit.”
“Take your time,” he says, smiling. He stands for one more beat, like he’s also considering whether to talk about something bigger. But instead he settles on, “Just relax.” Then he’s gone.
Mr. Leary’s voice is always so smooth, so even. I guess it’s because he’s a singer. I melt into the soft armchair, my head throbbing. Actually, maybe it has nothing to do with singing. Maybe Mr. Leary is calm because he’s had so much practice handling intense shit like Mason’s seizures. Because to me, if you can stay cool during one of those, you might as well get a job defusing bombs, deciding whether to clip the red wire or the blue wire.
The day that Mason’s epilepsy became more to me than just a word they wrote on all his permission slips is still burned in my brain. We were talking on the phone, and Mason was hassling me, as usual. This time it was about Dan Ludwick, the senior who sat in front of me in precalc. Before class that day, Dan had inexplicably raised his shirt to expose his nipple to me while asking, “Jealous?” Jealous that he had a nipple? The moment had completely mystified me, so I had made the mistake of telling Mason. He hated dicks like Dan, and was relishing examining his idiocy from every angle, but for some reason it was starting to makemefeel like the idiot.
“I think it was actually his way of proposing, Murph. Don’tdismiss it. You should consider building a life with someone with such superior nipples.”
“He wishes,” I said, trying to blow it off.
“I mean, he was literally baring his heart to you. Under the nipple, that is. Don’t be so cold.”
“If you say the wordnippleone more time—”
“Face it, Nipple Ludwick is a catch. I mean, Dan Nipple.”
There was no winning when he was like this. I tried to cut through it, to be straightforward. Sometimes that worked.
“I don’t like this conversation anymore, Mason. Be nice or I’m hanging up.”
“All right, all right, Hatts. Don’t make me suffer the deprivation of your company.”
That was better. “Just behave,” I said.
