8
When it finally became clear that my father wasn’t coming back anytime soon, I did what unhappy girls do all over the earth, and especially in America.
I ate.
That first, joyless summer crept past in inches. A new school year started, and I was hungry all the time. Loneliness for my father was like a sinkhole, and I couldn’t find enough food to fill it, despite always taking seconds, always scraping my plate.
Then I started eating in secret, sneaking down to the kitchen at night when my mother was in bed to stuff a leftover meatball in my mouth, chewing the cold, tasteless wad, reaching for another before I even swallowed. I told my mother I could make my own lunches now and added extra slices of American cheese, folding one in quarters, pushing it into my mouth while I slathered the bread with mayonnaise.
At school, I started stealing dessert from the cafeteria, even though I was a cold-lunch kid. Pudding or Jell-O with fake whipped cream on it, the big hard cookies that spattered crumbs everywhere. I’d go through the lunch line, pretending I needed an extra napkin, and subtly grab a little bowl or cookie or Twinkie, then slip off to the gym, which was always empty at lunchtime, and swallow my treat in gulps, tasting only the first bite, shoving the rest in as fast as I could.
I didn’t have friends anymore. All those years of rushing home to see what Dad and Lily and I were going to do (because it was better than anything in the world) had left me outside the harsh world of junior high, where cliques were carved in stone, and cafeteria seating was more complex than the British peerage.
At home, I helped myself to seconds of my mother’s boring, unvarying dinners. Monday night: chicken, baked potatoes, carrots and peas. Tuesday night: meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans. Wednesday night: pork chops, rice, peas again. You get the idea. But I ate and ate and ate.
“You’re getting fat,” Lily accused. She remained elf thin. Soon, I knew, she’d start to become beautiful. “Stop eating, Nora. It’s gross.” She pushed back her own untouched dinner, superiority and disgust shining from her blueberry-colored eyes. One of our shared chores was after-supper cleanup. I always volunteered to do it solo. That way, I could eat her meal, too.
“Go do your homework, Lily,” our mother said, her eyes on me.
My father wasn’t the only one who’d left, it seemed. The day he packed up was the day my sister stopped loving me.
I ate and waited out the year, trying to be as invisible as possible in school that year, counting the weeks till summer, when I prayed Lily and I would recapture the magical times we’d had with Dad. When she would love me again. When I’d once again have a place in the world.
When summer finally arrived, I tried to re-create some of the things we’d done before—draw little maps in the dirt of the secret ancient Mexican cities Dad told us about or make birds’ nests that a real bird might want to live in, shinny up the saplings that lined the rocky shore, make forts.
It didn’t work.
Lily wanted nothing to do with it. One time, I brought up the subject of our father and put my arm around her to reassure her—I was the big sister, after all. She shrugged it off like my arm burned. “Get over it, Nora,” she said bitterly and went back inside.
In a lot of ways, Lily seemed older than I was. She had a sharpness about her, a complexity that I lacked. While I had hidden in sixth grade, Lily started the year off by talking to the prettiest, richest girls in our school without fear, without hesitation, as if she was one of them. And they accepted her.
Everyone knew about our father leaving. In Lily’s case, it made her edgy and badass. In my case, it made me a loser.
My solitude continued into the next school year. I worked hard, because homework could fill up hours, because if I was hunched over a math work sheet at our kitchen table, I didn’t have to see my younger sister, once so loved, glaring at me. I asked for extra-credit projects so I could spend more time at the library, sitting in the cool, dim stacks, reading, scribbling notes, so I didn’t have to go home to the home where my father no longer lived. The one bright spot in my life was straight As every semester.
I worried that our dad called Lily, that he was coming to get her, but he’d leave me with Mom. Every day when I got home, I checked the answering machine. Every day, a zero sat unblinking.
One time, I screwed up my courage when my mother was driving me to the dentist. Somehow, talking in the car was always easier. “Do you think Dad will ever come back?” I asked, looking out my window.
There was a pause, then, “I don’t know.”
Thus ended our conversation.
So I had homework, I had my secret food (which wasn’t that much of a secret really). And then came puberty. Overnight, it seemed, the plagues of Egypt visited my body. I went from a chubby adolescent to someone with breasts and a beer belly, thick thighs that chafed, a butt that was both wide and flat. The hair on my legs was as thick as on my head. I had to shave my armpits daily, or the stubble would prick my skin. I had a ’stache. I had bacne. I got warts on my knuckles.
There was no indignity too great. My first period—white pants. My second period left a puddle in my chair in math class. During that special time of the month, I would sweat like I’d just finished the Boston Marathon during a heat wave. I had inexplicable halitosis, despite flossing and brushing three times a day. A new clumsiness happened upon me when I grew boobs, throwing me off balance, causing me to trip and stumble more than anyone else in the world, it seemed.
I started researching witchcraft to see who had done this to me.
And as I had predicted, my sister grew beautiful.
For a while I just existed, watching my sister live without me, even if she did sleep four feet away. My mother went to and from work at the hotel, did the books for her freelance clients in the evenings, made our dinners, packed our lunches. She didn’t say anything about my weight gain. If she knew I was wretched, she didn’t say anything. Told me I did well on my report card, resting her hand on my shoulder for a second, which made me just about cry.
Every day, I prayed my father would call. Would come back. Would bring happiness back into our lives.
Then came ninth grade, and I fell in love.
It was ridiculous, really. There I was, a “husky” girl in a world of beautiful waifs, wearing my homemade jumpers (because jeans cut into the soft fat around my waist), my turtlenecks to cover up as much skin as possible, sturdy shoes and knee socks to mask the fact that the warts had spread to my feet. My hair was a horrible combination of frizzy, wiry, curly and straight, and because spitballs were good at hiding in there, I wore it in a ponytail most of the time. I looked like the definition of spinster, even at the age of fourteen.
Of course, Luke Fletcher wouldn’t notice me.
But love is stupid, isn’t it? My brain couldn’t stop the free fall of my heart. I knew even the idea was a joke, but my insides leaped and wriggled when he walked by. He’d always been cute—the better-looking, funnier, more athletic Fletcher twin. Sullivan wasn’t hideous or anything...just average.
Luke, on the other hand, was breathtaking. My lungs literally stopped working at the sight of him. He had tawny blond hair, green eyes, dimples. A flashing, easy smile, and a laugh that echoed in the chambers of my swollen, empty heart.
He was great at sports, already six feet tall, and had gone from lean to muscled over the summer. He was tan from working outside—his father owned Scupper Island Boatyard, and both boys worked there, and now Luke’s skin was golden and perfect, hypnotic. He was on the soccer team, a starter his freshman year.
My crush was horrible, absurd, embarrassing. I wished with all my heart that it would wither and die, but it didn’t. It grew. It was a virus.
If God hadn’t already blessed Luke enough, he was smart. As smart as I was, smarter even, because my grades came from studying and reading, and his came from simply being. He and I were the only two kids from our class to take Algebra II as freshmen. The only two kids who got put into the Honors English class. The only two who got an A-plus on our biology midterm.
He was nice, too.
When it suited him, he was nice.
I knew I’d never have a chance with a boy like that. Of course, I didn’t. But my stupid, ridiculous heart lived for any notice, any opportunity just the same. Once, I sat next to him in assembly by some miracle and sweat and blushed for the entire hour, drunk with the smell of him—shampoo and sweat. His arm brushed mine, and my whole body clenched with lust.
Twice a week, Mr. Abernathy, the English teacher, made us (like it was a sacrifice for me) stay after school to do college-level writing prompts. The math teacher wanted us to compete as a team in the Math Olympiad, and in the two glorious weeks leading up to it, we crammed together at the library, four nights in all. Sitting with him at the competition, scribbling notes, looking at each other with smiles when our answer was correct... It was magic. We took third in the state. When the principal broadcast our results in the morning announcements, I blushed so hard my face hurt.
“Way to go, Fletcher!” Joey Behring called. “Too bad it had to be with the Troll.”
Did I mention my nickname? Yeah. My physical appearance wasn’t unnoticed by my peers. Did I have some good features? Who cared at that age?
“She’s okay,” Luke said, and my face burned hotter from the gallant defense.
Sullivan Fletcher paused at my desk as homeroom let out. “Good job, Nora,” he said.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
And so went high school. Study, savor every second my academic achievement let me have with Luke. More than college, more than the urge to do well, his presence was my motivation.
The summer between freshman and sophomore years, I got a summer job at the Scupper Island Clam Shack, which meant I deep-fried a lot of seafood. Ate a lot of seafood, too. Working there was a relief; most of the customers were the summer nuisance, and I tried to be cheerful and sunny and pretend I wasn’t fat when I waited on them. I gave my mother my paychecks—money was always tight—and she told me I was a good kid.
Sullivan Fletcher worked at the Clam Shack as well as at his father’s boatyard. He was not as blessed athletically as his twin, not particularly brainy, though not dumb, either. He wasn’t mean, didn’t talk much, and I might’ve liked him, had he not dated Amy Beckman, one of the beautiful Cheetos, one of Lily’s pack. Amy went out of her way to mock me, and Lily pretended not to notice (or didn’t mind).
Lily...sharp-tongued, model thin, blue-eyed and graceful, carelessly sexual, an expert at conveying everything with a look. Her grades were in the toilet, but she didn’t care. When Mom suggested I tutor her, Lily made a face of such disgust that tears came to my eyes.
Worst of all, we still shared a room. Our little house only had two bedrooms. Every day, Lily would dress in front of me, totally unselfconscious about her body, her ribs striating through her skin, her vertebrae rippling as she pulled on pants. She was tiny and perfect, still so beautiful to me, as she had been when she was little. I tried not to look, but her body fascinated me. What would it be like to bend over and not have a stomach bulge? To not have to wear a bra? To have arms as long and slim as a ballerina’s, an ass that was both round and shapely but still fit into size 00 jeans?
At night, I’d cry sometimes, fully embracing my misery like any teenager worth her salty tears. I lacked my mother’s ironclad pragmatism, lacked Lily’s sense of self-preservation. Instead, I wrapped myself in melancholy, remembering when my sister and I were little, when we were close, when we were happy. I missed my father and hated him and loved him and hated him some more for ruining everything. Tears would slip into my ears as I listened to Lily breathe.
Or listened to her sneak out, slipping open the window, out onto the roof, down onto the lawn, as light and silent and beautiful as a dragonfly.
I missed her so much my bones hurt with it. The fact was, my sister had become a bitch, and it would’ve served me well to tell her that and show some gumption, as my mother would say...but that was the gift of hindsight. As it was, I yearned for her love, the friendship that I had never once questioned before our father left. “When will you be done in there?” was about the lengthiest conversation we had in years.
So Luke Fletcher was my heaven and hell. Any excitement in my life came from occasionally being paired with Luke in school. Every time was a mixed bag—we’d do a calculus problem on the board, extra credit going to the person who finished first; me acutely aware that my arms jiggled as I wrote, that the whole class was pulling for Luke.
But either way, if he won or I won, he’d smile at me, and it was everything.
Until senior year, that was.
Twenty years before I started high school, Scupper Island had produced a super genius named Pedro Perez, son of a fisherman, who was off-the-charts brilliant. He went to Tufts, then Harvard, then Oxford, then Stanford, and before he was thirty, he had three PhDs and had invented a computer algorithm that tracked consumer data and changed marketing forevermore. He had seventy-nine patents on all sorts of things, from agricultural tools to advanced rocket engines (and time-travel machines, if you listened to the rumors). Like any good billionaire hermit, he owned a ranch in Montana and moved his family out with him.
But once a year, Dr. Perez came back to Scupper to show his appreciation to his hometown by sending the kid with the highest GPA to Tufts. This Scupper Island slot at the university may or may not have had something to do with the fact that Dr. Perez had given the school tens of millions of dollars. It might simply have been a testament to our good public schools, funded by the tax dollars of our summer residents. But each year, a Scupper Island kid went off to Medford, Massachusetts and never looked back.
The scholarship covered everything. Tuition, room, board, books, a generous allowance that, rumor had it, covered everything from dorm-room furnishings to eating out. Dr. Perez’s only requirement was that the recipient finish college; dropouts would have to repay him.
No one ever dropped out.
Scupper Island was so grateful they renamed a street after him—Maple Street became Perez Avenue, and every year at the start of the second semester, Dr. Perez left Montana, returned to the island and announced the winner. He asked that grades not be posted after December midterms, so the winner could be kept a secret until the first week of January, when the entire school assembled to see who the lucky senior would be.
Most years, it was obvious who’d win, but occasionally, it would be suspenseful.
Going into our senior year, Luke and I were neck and neck. I had a 4.115 GPA, thanks to the weighted grades from my AP classes (an A in those meant a 5.0, not a 4.0).
Luke’s GPA was 4.142, because he got A-pluses in gym... And every year, for that miserable semester, as if changing in the locker room in front of my slender female classmates wasn’t punishment enough, I got an A-minus.
I tried, I was a good sport, cheering on my classmates even if they ignored me. I sweat and ran and played volleyball, diving for balls, trying my best, and I still got an A-minus. I wondered if that had been deliberate; the gym teacher was also the soccer coach. If Luke went to Tufts, he’d almost certainly play soccer, which would be a feather in Coach’s cap.
“An A-minus is a good grade,” Coach said when I meekly approached him freshman year and asked what I had to do to bump that grade up. His eyes scanned me. “For a girl with your physique, I’d say it’s a very generous grade. You work hard. You’re doing fine.” The implication was clear. Only the really fit kids got As.
Luke, of course, was a god.
In the spring of my junior year, my mother sat me down and told me if I wanted to go to college, I’d have to get there myself, a fact I already knew. She didn’t want me to get my hopes up that there was money “lying around for that.”
If I won the Perez Scholarship, I’d go for free. To Tufts! The name itself was beautiful, light and sunny, full of promise.
Only 0.027 of a grade point average stood between Luke and me.
And so, shit got serious...at least, for me. Luke and I took the same AP classes. If I could get even half a grade higher than Luke, I could erase my deficit.
He didn’t seem concerned. Luke was gifted at English and history; I had to sweat over those subjects to get my grades. But I had an edge in science, and it was a weighted class. AP bio was my chance.
I pictured going to Tufts. I sent away for information, and Luke’s mother, who ran the post office, snarled at me when I collected the fat catalog, knowing full well why I wanted it. She ignored me when I thanked her, but I barely cared, inhaling the sharp, rich scent of the catalog before going to the park bench to pore over the pictures and course descriptions.
Oh, the campus! The brick buildings and unnaturally green lawns! I could see myself in one of the dorm rooms, a puffy white comforter on my bed, throw pillows and...and whatever else people brought to college. I’d be in the beautiful city of Boston (well, Medford, but practically Boston). I could see my future self: slim and pretty with better hair, at ease, laughing with friends—friends!—treating them to pizza with Dr. Perez’s expense account.
I would get an A-plus in AP bio. I didn’t think Luke could.
But he pulled a rabbit out of a hat...or a human, more accurately. Xiaowen Liu was a Chinese girl whose family had just moved to Maine from Boston and lived in a big house on the cliff. On the first day of school, Luke asked her to be his lab partner.
“Hey, Nora,” he said with a grin. “Guess who got a perfect score on her biology SATs?” He gave Xiaowen a one-armed hug, making her blush. I didn’t blame her. I understood. She had an accent; the Cheetos had immediately pretended not to understand her and didn’t even try to pronounce her name—She-ao-wen, not terribly hard. But they insisted on calling her “Ex-Ee-Oh-whatever,” the feral, skinny bitches.
I said hi to Xiaowen on her first day, and she said hi back, but that was it for the “Outsiders Bonding” moment. I lacked the confidence to ask if she wanted to hang out sometime, and besides, her mother chauffeured her to and from school in a new Mercedes. The money thing, you see. I was an islander; she was a rich person from away. She had what I wanted to pull off and failed—quiet confidence.
All three of us got an A-plus on the first big bio test.
There went my edge in science.
Then came the English class speeches.
Luke knew he’d ace his. I was the Troll, after all; he was Apollo.
Public speaking was my greatest dread—standing in front of my peers, their judgment and disdain enveloping me like a poison gas. I’d have to suck in my stomach. I’d break out in hives on top of acne. I’d sweat. My scalp would ooze oil. Seriously, I was cursed.
But I needed every A-plus I could get. We were assigned topics; mine was the failure of the juvenile justice system in Maine. Luke’s was on genetic engineering, an unfairly interesting topic.
I worked on that speech for weeks. Researched and studied, outlined and organized. I went to the library to watch speeches by MLK and Gandhi and Maya Angelou for body language and rhythm. Practiced in front of a mirror. Filmed myself. Memorized. Tweaked. Memorized again.
Luke gave his speech, and it was an unsurprising success. He was relaxed and confident, friendly and informative. Was it one for the ages? Not really, but if I’d been his teacher, I’d have given him an A. Maybe an A-plus.
Mr. Abernathy congratulated him fondly and told the class that tomorrow, we’d be treated to mine. Sweat flooded my armpits and back at the mention of my name. There were groans and sighs from the Cheetos.
“Don’t worry, Nora,” Mr. Abernathy said absently as I left the class. “You’ll do fine.”
“That’s a tough act to follow,” I said.
“I’m sure you’ve worked hard, dear. Try not to worry.”
Ha.
I thought Mr. A liked me. Maybe he was even rooting for me. He was the classic English teacher—rumpled and kind, disorganized and eloquent. His classroom was cheerfully messy, books overflowing from the back bookcase, faded posters of great authors hanging on the walls, a few straggling plants on the windowsill. His desk was covered in papers and books, and the huge dusty blackboard (which was actually green) was crowded with homework assignments he never managed to erase, quotes from literature and abbreviations like GMC for goal, motivation, conflict, or KISS for keep it simple, stupid and doodles of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Though I was a science geek, he made me love reading.
“Don’t worry,” he repeated, sensing my insecurity. “I have every faith in you.”
At least someone did. I went home and practiced the speech again and again and again in the cellar, so Lily and Mom wouldn’t overhear me. I slept horribly, having nightmares about getting lost, missing my speech, then giving it, only to realize my legs were covered in fur. I couldn’t eat that morning (a rarity, let me tell you), and my heart thudded and twisted all morning.
I slid into English and slunk to my desk. “All right, then,” Mr. Abernathy said. “Nora, you’re up, dear.”
I went to the front of the class, and before the sweat could start oozing from every pore, I began.
The class was about to be stunned. So was I.
That saying about practice makes perfect? Being prepared? It worked.
Rather than give statistics (as Luke had), I had chosen a fellow student to use as an example.
“Sullivan Fletcher was convicted of underage drinking and illegal drug use after a devastating car accident in which he was the driver,” I began. “Tragically, his twin brother, Luke Fletcher, was also in the car at the time and suffered the complete severing of his penis.”
The class burst out in surprised laughter. Except for Luke.
The rest of the speech followed the fictional life of juvenile delinquent Sully Fletcher, his poor-quality education, the violence he would encounter in our woefully underfunded correctional facilities, his difficulties in getting a job, finding a wife, his high odds of divorce and becoming a deadbeat dad. I talked about his struggles with drug use and alcoholism.
I walked between the rows of desks, addressing the students by name. “Picture that, Lonnie. Seven out of ten. What if you were in the bunch? Caroline, you have a little sister. Imagine if she had to visit you in State.”
I ended by stopping by Sullivan’s desk. “I hope you’re never in an accident, big guy,” I said fondly, as if I could actually have a conversation with a Fletcher boy, let alone call him by a nickname. Then I turned to his twin. “And, Luke, I hope your parts stay intact.” Another big laugh. “But now you all know what to expect once you start down the dark road of a criminal.”
Then...shockingly...applause. I think Xiaowen started it.
“Very entertaining, Nora,” said Mr. Abernathy. “Well done.”
I went back to my seat, my face now burning, the sweat now drenching me, my face so slick with oil that I could write my name in it, but the speech was over. I had faked my way through that composed, relaxed, funny persona, and it worked. The minute class was over, I bolted for the bathroom before my bowels melted.
I had to miss my next class, thanks to nervous diarrhea.
The next week, when our speech papers came back, there was a big fat A-plus at the top of mine.
I covered my grade with my hand, but Luke saw mine...and I saw his. A-minus.
He gave me a cool, assessing look. In that moment, it seemed like Luke Fletcher realized that he might not get something he wanted. Something he felt was his due.
Later that day, he hip-checked me in the hall, sending me sprawling, my corduroy jumper riding up over my thick thighs, my books splaying all around me. “Watch where you’re going, Troll,” he said, his voice the same sneer the Cheetos used, slashing like a razor because it came from his perfect mouth.
He stepped on my notebook and pivoted, tearing the cover.
He had never called me Troll before.
It was November; the semester would be ending in December, just before Christmas. Per Dr. Perez’s request, our grades would not be posted from now until the announcement. We had midterms coming up, and based on what I knew, I ran the numbers.
Despite the A-minus on his presentation, Luke was more than likely going to pull an A, if not an A-plus, in English. Because of my stupid gym grade, even if I got a perfect score on every test (as I fully intended to do), Luke’s GPA would be 0.008 higher than mine. He’d get the scholarship. He’d go to Tufts.
I’d have to go somewhere else. I’d be saddled with debt, have to take on a couple of jobs, try for every merit scholarship there was. It was possible. I could do it.
I’d applied to the colleges like Harvard and Yale that had huge endowments for kids in my shoes, but I wasn’t likely to get in. All their applicants had fabulous grades, too, and grades were the only thing I had going for me. I lacked any extracurriculars aside from the Math Olympics, too busy studying. No sports to sweeten the pot, no hours of community service, no trips abroad to dig wells.
I wanted to be a doctor—I loved science, and I could see myself in surgery, saving lives, beloved by my peers, not having to worry about clothes because of scrubs. For that career to come true, I needed great grades from a great college to help me get into med school, which would cost at least another quarter of a million dollars.
It would be a long, long road without the Perez Scholarship.
The Fletcher boys had everything. Two parents who loved them and each other. Their father owned the boatyard, his mother was not only the postmistress of our town but also ran the general store (same building, very cute, a must-visit if you were a tourist). As year-rounders went, they were set. They weren’t wealthy but they were solid. I imagined that Luke would be accepted at many colleges, get plenty of merit and sports scholarships.
But I needed the Perez Scholarship. And it looked like I wasn’t going to get it.
One day in early December, as I sat in the cafeteria, not eating (chubby girls didn’t eat in public), reading The Scarlet Letter, Luke approached me, his sycophants trailing behind him.
“Hey, Troll, guess who called me yesterday?”
Even as he insulted me, I couldn’t help the blush of attraction that burned my chest and throat. “I don’t know.”
“The soccer coach from Tufts. Said he can’t wait to have me on the team. Guess the scholarship’s mine. Nice try. But you knew it would go to me, didn’t you? Deep down inside that fatty heart of yours?”
His fan club laughed. He rapped his knuckles on my table, making me jump, getting another laugh, then left.
Tears stung my eyes, and hatred—for Luke, for high school, for myself—churned in my stomach. There had to be something I could do. Something that Luke couldn’t. What that was, I had no idea.
Finals were approaching, and both Luke and I knew we had to ace every damn test. Uncharacteristically, he was studying, no doubt to make sure he wouldn’t hand me the win. Every day after school, I saw him in the library, once my refuge, and he’d mouth, “Sorry, Troll.”
I was doomed.
With two weeks left in the semester, with the January announcement of the Perez Scholarship recipient coming just after break, I was desperate. I pored over my report cards, doing the math again and again. Even if I got an A-plus on every exam, if Luke did the same, he’d win.
But there was that matter of the A-plus on my speech to his A-minus. The tiny ray of hope. It was possible that one A-minus could drop his term grade to an A, and if that happened...well, shit. Even if that happened, he’d still be the tiniest bit ahead.
On the last day of classes before exams, Mr. Abernathy wished us luck, told us to study hard. “Won’t make a difference,” Luke said as he passed my desk, bumping it with his hip.
I sat there, my face burning, pretending to take a few last notes, waiting for everyone to leave. It didn’t take long.
“Everything okay, Nora?” Mr. Abernathy asked, gathering up his own stuff from his cluttered desk.
“Oh, sure,” I lied.
“I have a meeting, I’m afraid. Do you mind turning out the lights?”
“Not at all, Mr. A.”
He smiled and left, and I sat there for another minute. Told myself I’d done all I could. That the University of Maine would give me a good package. Or maybe I’d go to community college for a couple of years and then transfer somewhere. I told myself that while the road to my adult life would be longer and harder without the scholarship, it was still a road I could travel.
But my heart, that stupid organ, ached. My stomach, that bottomless pit, growled. I’d go home, stuff my face, have a cry and a binge before Lily came back from whatever she did after school.
Tufts had been so close. A free ride. The beautiful dorm room. Expenses. The pizzas. The friends.
I got up to turn off the lights.
Then I saw it.
There, on the messy, dusty blackboard filled with quotes from Shakespeare and Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth and homework assignments from the last two months, was my chance.
It had been there all along, written in Mr. A’s messy scrawl on the very first week of school, on the far left-hand side of the board. Underneath a caricature of Edgar Allan Poe and above a quote from Heart of Darkness, was my future.
The words were faded and smudged, but still mostly legible.
ECP: 12 Great Works
ECP stood for extra-credit project.
Now I remembered. Mr. Abernathy, his eyes twinkling from beneath his bushy eyebrows, had told us on the first day of the school year, back when the board was still clean, that if anyone had extra time, he or she could do a twenty-five-page essay on any common theme running through twelve great works of literature. In the twenty-nine years Mr. Abernathy had been teaching at Scupper Island High School, no one had ever taken it on, he told us. Not even Dr. Perez. Nevertheless, Mr. A had passed out a list of a hundred suggested titles, all in addition to the ones we already had to read, from Homer’s Odyssey to We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. It was due at the end of the semester.
Ten days from now.
Even I hadn’t had the time to tackle that project. Not with all my other advanced classes and AP workload.
Twelve books, a twenty-five-page paper during finals. That was freakin’ impossible.
My heart began a sickly roll in my chest. Already, I knew I would do the project, and I’d get an A, goddamn it. And Luke would not do the project.
I wasn’t going to let him.
If he hadn’t called me Troll...if he hadn’t told me the scholarship was his...if he hadn’t made me fall that day...if I hadn’t once loved him with all the fervor that every fat, ugly, ignored girl has nurtured...
I poked my head out the door. School was over, and the halls were empty. From far away, I heard Mr. Paul, the nice janitor, start to whistle. The sharp smell of disinfectant was barely detectable. He was washing floors over by the gym, then. I was alone.
ECP: 12 Great Works
My heart felt huge and sick, heaving now.
Carefully, I pressed my arm against the already-fuzzy words. Just a little smear—didn’t want to be too obvious. I erased the round part of the P, subtly added a line to the C. I faded out the 1 of the 12... Just a little rub. Smeared the k, picked up a stub of chalk and added a squiggle, then topped the whole thing off by tapping the eraser so a shower of chalk dust antiqued my efforts.
Just in case.
I stepped back and took a look. I was pretty sure the extra-credit assignment had been there long enough to be virtually invisible—it had been to me—but if someone looked now, it looked more like EGI 2 Great Words.
Just in case.
Was I proud? No. But the hate burned white-hot in my chest, outweighing morality.
It was possible that Luke had already done this project, but I was almost positive he hadn’t. He was a braggart, and if he’d whipped off a twenty-five-page paper and read a dozen extra books on top of our already-heavy syllabus, he would’ve said something.
Also, I imagined Mr. Abernathy would’ve given me the heads-up that my competitor had done the assignment. A gentle, “Don’t forget that extra-credit project, Nora. Luke finished his.” He was like that, Mr. A.
But he would not be able to give Luke the heads-up, because I was going to hand mine in at the last possible second. It was due the last day of the semester—December 23, and December 23 was the day Mr. Abernathy was going to get it.
Because I was organized, I still had the list of books in my English folder. I went to the Scupper Island Library and did something I’d never done before—I stole six books, stuffing them into my backpack. If I checked them out, it might get back to Luke. His girlfriend’s mother worked at the library. Everyone wanted Luke to get the Perez Scholarship. No one was pulling for me.
I didn’t know if the project would make a difference, but I had to try.
For the next ten days, I worked like a fiend. I read and studied constantly, when I was fixing a snack, eating, sitting on the toilet. I only allowed myself two hours of consecutive sleep a night, sleeping on the couch, claiming I was sick and didn’t want to give my germs to Lily. If Lily was home in the afternoon, I slipped down to the cellar to read those damn books. Truth was, I was afraid she might rat me out.
I read, I scribbled notes, I studied for exams, I stole six more books from the library. I read some more. Wrote. Studied. Read. Wrote. Crammed.
“You okay?” my mother asked. “You look tired.”
“Exams,” I mumbled. “I’m fine.”
She knew something else was going on, but she didn’t press it. She never did. I didn’t have time to wish she were the type of mother to sit down and say, “What’s wrong, honey?” I was on a mission.
By the time my last exam rolled around, I was a wreck, literally shaking with fatigue. Five minutes before the end of the last day of the term, I handed my paper in to Mr. Abernathy.
He looked at me in surprise. “My heavens, Nora,” he said. “I can’t believe it. You’re the first student ever to complete this.”
“And, boy, am I tired,” I said. And I leaned against the blackboard and sighed dramatically, smearing what I had done in case Mr. A took a closer look. “Phew.”
It was sleeting out, the sky heavy and dark as I walked home. Tears slid out my eyes, and I didn’t bother wiping them away. I went straight upstairs, crawled into my bed and slept for seventeen hours straight.
Christmas came. Lily was civil for an hour as we exchanged gifts but didn’t stay for dinner. Mom and I ate alone, then watched TV. I slept most of break, watched TV, stayed in my pajamas.
I didn’t know how I did on my exams, because the teachers hadn’t posted the grades, per Dr. Perez’s request. I didn’t know how much extra credit I’d get from Mr. Abernathy, or if it would make a difference. All I knew was that I tried, and there was an ugly, hard part of me that hadn’t existed before.
Technically, I hadn’t cheated. Morally, I knew I had. I told myself I didn’t care, that it would be worth it, that Luke Fletcher didn’t deserve every single bright and shiny thing in the world.
On January 4, the first day of the new term. Dr. Pedro Perez came to school, and the entire student body and faculty gathered in the gym at nine o’clock sharp. I sat in the back, closest to the door, because if Luke won, I knew I would cry.
Xiaowen sat next to me, and I broke out in an icy sweat.
Xiaowen Liu. Holy crap on a cracker, what about Xiaowen? I didn’t even know what her GPA was! Forget my AP classes, forget Luke... What about Xiaowen? I hadn’t even thought about her. It had been Luke and me for three years, and now this transfer student would nab our town’s most distinguished honor.
“Hi, Nora,” she said.
“Hey,” I said, my voice choked.
“Good luck,” she said.
“You, too.”
Luke walked past with his posse, his arm around Dara, his hand in her back pocket. I looked at my feet, not wanting to see his triumphant, perfect face. I heard the words lard ass and a ripple of ugly laughter.
My heart was beating so hard I could barely hear as the principal kissed up to Dr. Perez, thanked him, praised him, all but leg-humped him as the billionaire genius sat in a folding chair next to the podium, looking at the floor, a faint smile on his face.
Finally, finally, he stood up. “Hello, kids,” he said. “It’s my honor to present the Perez Scholarship to the Scupper Island student with the highest GPA. This year’s winner, with a GPA of 4.153, is Nora Stuart.”
There was a collective gasp. For a second, I didn’t know why.
It was because Luke hadn’t won.
And neither had Xiaowen.
I had.
There was some applause. Not much, probably just the teachers.
“Nora, come on up here,” said the principal, a touch of impatience in her voice. Another Luke fan. She went to every soccer match.
“Congratulations,” Xiaowen said. I looked at her, my eyes feeling stretched open too wide. “Go,” she added.
On wobbling, watery legs, I went up to where Dr. Perez waited. “Well done,” he said, shaking my damp hand.
“Thank you,” I breathed. “Thank you, Dr. Perez. I...I... Thank you.” Tears streamed down my face, and Dr. Perez chuckled.
If only Daddy could see this.
It had been six and a half years since I had seen him or talked to him, yet that was my first thought.
My eyes found Lily in the crowd. She was staring at me, listening as Janelle Schilling whispered in her ear.
There might’ve been a trace of a smile on her face.
Suddenly, Luke stood up and strode out of the gym, fury in every step. Dara, his girlfriend, followed, then Tate Ellister, who also played soccer, then the rest of the team. They said nothing. Amy got up and left, too.
“Well, now,” the principal said. “Uh, congratulations, Nora. Hard work pays off. You juniors and underclassmen, you listen up, all right? Next year, this could be you.”
With that, our assembly was over. “If you need anything, let me know,” Dr. Perez said, handing me his card. “Good luck.”
A man of few words. “Dr. Perez,” I said as he turned away. “You...you’ve changed my life.” I paused. “And it needed changing.”
He looked at me for a long second. “Make the most of it.” Then he winked, let the principal glad-hand him again and left me trembling, elated...and alone.
My sister made her way up to me. “Congrats,” she said. She looked me up and down, but there was some amusement in her eyes. “You look like you’re about to pee yourself.”
“I feel like it, too,” I said. My voice was still weird, legs still shaking.
“So I guess you’ll be in Boston next year.”
“Yeah.” I would be. I’d be sitting on that perfect lawn. I’d have friends.
I wouldn’t be the Troll. Maybe. In fact, maybe...maybe I could be someone else entirely.
“Gotta run,” Lily said.
“Bye,” I said belatedly, but she was already halfway across the gym.
A few teachers congratulated me in the hall. In homeroom—Luke was conspicuously absent—our report cards were passed out.
I’d gotten perfect grades in everything except gym, which was the expected A-minus.
Perfect exam scores.
Mr. Abernathy, who was also our homeroom teacher, handed me my twenty-five-page paper. There were a few notes in the margins, but at the end, he’d written I’m proud of you, Nora. And the grade—an A.
“Nora Stuart, please, come to the office,” said the school secretary’s voice over the PA. “Nora Stuart, to the office, please.”
I had a phone call—the admissions officer from Tufts, congratulating me, telling me they looked forward to seeing me at Accepted Students Day and how well all of the Perez Scholars had done. They had no doubt I would do the same.
It was really happening.
At lunch, rather than risk the cafeteria, where supervision was thin, I power walked down to the hotel, where my mother worked. “Mom, I got it!” I said, bursting into her office, sweat trickling down my back, thighs stinging from chafing the whole way there.
“Got what, Nora?” She looked up expectantly from her desk.
My God. She didn’t know, because I hadn’t told her. This whole semester, and I had never told her I was ranked second in our class.
“The Perez Scholarship. I’m going to Tufts.” I started to cry. “They called me. Tufts. I got in, and Dr. Perez is paying for everything.”
Her mouth opened, then shut. “Is that right?”
“Yes. I have the highest GPA at my school.”
“Oh, Nora!” She got up and gave me an awkward hug. “Good girl. You’ve always been a hard worker. I’m proud of you.” She paused. “Well. You’d best get back to school, hadn’t you?”
So that was it for celebration. It didn’t matter. I was leaving this hellish little place, just like my father. And maybe, once off island, he’d find me. Okay, that was far-fetched, but anything was possible today.
I walked back to school, hoping this wasn’t a dream. I would make the most of it. I’d become a doctor. I’d reinvent myself, lose weight, have fun, maybe even have a boyfriend. I’d sit in the front of every class and raise my hand and not be shy about being smart. I’d introduce myself to my professors on the first day, and—
“Think you’re hot shit, huh?”
It was Luke, waiting for me with his gang in front of the school. The cold wind gusted, cutting through my puffy winter coat.
“Hi,” I said, my eyes darting around.
“Hi,” he mocked in a whiny voice. “Don’t say hi to me, fat ass. That scholarship was mine.”
“Apparently not.” Seemed my confidence had been given a boost.
“You cheated, didn’t you? I don’t know how, but you cheated.”
“I studied, Luke.” My cheeks started to burn.
“I studied, Luke,” echoed Joey Behring.
“You know what?” Luke said, a snarl twisting his face. “You might have won that scholarship, but you’re never gonna be anything other than a troll. You know that, don’t you, Nora?”
“Leave her alone,” someone said. It was Sullivan.
“Fuck you,” Luke said. He came closer to me and poked me in the chest, hard, even through the down. “You’re a troll. You’re fat, you’re ugly, and everyone hates you. Even your sister.”
I flinched. Alcohol made his breath sweet and sickly. I tried to go around him, but he wouldn’t let me pass.
“You scared? You should be.”
“Luke, knock it off.” Sully’s voice was harder now.
Luke failed to comply. “You better watch out, Nora. Something shitty might happen to you. You might get fucked-up. Bad things happen when guys get pissed off. I think you know what I’m saying, right?”
I did. Rape. Assault.
Worse.
“Luke, get out of here,” Sullivan said, coming up to his brother. “She won fair and square. Leave her alone.”
“Where the fuck is your loyalty?”
“What’s going on here?” Mr. Abernathy, thank God, was coming in from the parking lot. “Get inside, kids.”
“Fuck you,” Luke said.
“And you’re suspended,” Mr. A said. “Nora, you okay? Come on, dear.”
“Watch yourself, Nora,” Luke called. “You never know what could happen.”
Mr. Abernathy stopped dead. “I’m attributing this to your deep disappointment over not winning the scholarship, Luke. Threaten her again, and I’ll make sure you’re arrested.”
And then, horribly, Luke began to cry. “She cheated. I don’t know how, but she did. You did, Nora. You know it.”
Guilt twisted and flailed inside me, but it didn’t get past the hardness. I’d won. Luke could’ve done that assignment, and he chose not to. So fuck him. Let him cry. I’d cried plenty, and no one cared about that.
Sully went to his brother, put an arm around his shoulders. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s take the rest of the day off, go over to Portland, okay?” He looked back at us. “Mr. A, could you tell the office?”
“Sure thing, Sullivan.”
Sully’s eyes stopped on me for a second, and I thought he was going to say something.
He didn’t. Mr. Abernathy walked me inside, clucking about the passions of teenagers.
* * *
Sullivan and Luke Fletcher did go to Portland that afternoon. They stayed at a hotel and Luke used a fake ID to rent a car.
At three in the morning, driving home from an all-night diner, the boys were in a car accident. It was a weird echo of my English class oral presentation, but in this version, the real version, Luke was the driver. He’d also snorted coke and had an alcohol level twice the legal limit. The boys had been doing more than eighty when they went off the road, bounced along the ditch for fifty yards and then hit a tree.
Luke was fine.
Sullivan sustained a head injury. He was in a coma. We were asked to pray for him.
This was all told to us two days after the Perez Scholarship was announced, the second assembly of the week. Amy Beckman wasn’t in school. The Cheetos were sobbing. One fainted. The soccer team was crying, as were several teachers.
Sully was well liked.
I thought about how he’d stuck up for me. Took his brother out of town for me.
I stared at the floor, feeling the hot, sharp hatred of the student body slicing into me like arrows. This was my fault, they thought. Of course, they did. I stole the scholarship.
I sort of had.
Never had I felt so alone. As the assembly ended, someone spit into my hair. A boy kicked my chair. I got an elbow to the head.
Rather than going back to class, I went outside, not even bothering with my coat or backpack. Walked the four miles home in the raw, damp weather, the wind making my ears burn with pain, pushing tears back into my hair.
The second I walked through the door, I picked up the phone and called Tufts. I had enough credits to graduate; would it be okay with them if I started classes this semester?
It was. The Scupper High guidance counselor, who’d ignored me for three and a half years, said she thought it was a good idea when I called her, too. She contacted Dr. Perez, and that was that.
And so, without a lot of fanfare, I left Scupper Island three weeks later, taking the Boston ferry with a suitcase and two boxes of my belongings. My mother and I stopped at a department store and bought supplies—that white comforter, the throw pillows, the whole lot, putting it all on the credit card Perez scholars were given.
In the dorm room, my mom made my bed and said the right things as students came by to say hello. She watched as I hung up a poster of Casablanca, which I’d never seen, her arms folded.
“All set, then, Nora?” she asked.
“I guess so.” I looked at her, my sturdy mother, the streaks of gray in her hair. Now it would just be her and Lily. For a second, I felt a flash of sadness.
“Well. See you this summer,” she said. “Work hard.” She kissed me goodbye, a quick peck on the cheek, and I watched from my dorm-room window as she got into her battered car.
But she wouldn’t see me that summer, because I didn’t go home to Scupper Island again. I got a job at a hospital as an orderly and stayed in Boston. At Thanksgiving, a storm kept me from taking the ferry home (and I was grateful). When Christmas rolled around, I came back for thirty-six hours, claiming I had to finish a lab report, which was true.
The truth was, I was terrified to be back on the island, afraid someone would see me—especially Luke or Sullivan (who had “mostly recovered,” according to my mom). I felt like a thief, sneaking to my mother’s house and back to the ferry, and yes, I wore a hat and a coat and a scarf both ways so no one could see my face.
I didn’t go back again.
I couldn’t make it back for Lily’s graduation, because of finals, though she came to Boston the following September and stayed with me for an overnight before getting on a plane to Seattle. At some point over the summer, she’d gotten a colorful sleeve tattoo and had studs through her nose, lip and eyebrow, and she still was double take beautiful.
I made Mom come visit me, feigning my desire for her to see the city, which she hated, citing my heavy course load and my job as a research assistant as reasons not to go to the island. Once or twice a year, Mom would take the ferry and meet me. She always went home before dark.
Lily got pregnant my junior year and had Poe, and Mom and I flew out to see her. I went out again a year later, then two years after that, and called often, usually getting voice mail. I sent presents for the baby, who was beautiful and smiley in the few pictures Lily sent.
But when Poe was about five, Lily changed her phone number and failed to give it to me. She would occasionally answer an email. I’d ask to come visit, and Lily allowed it once or twice more, the last time when Poe was ten. Lily went out with her friends, leaving me with my niece, and didn’t come back till the next day.
I got the message. My sister didn’t want anything to do with me. Our magical childhood was a memory and no more.
The truth was, I had done what Dr. Perez told me to do—I made the most of my scholarship. In my first semester at school, I became that girl I’d pretended to be during my English class speech—outgoing, wry, friendly. Maybe it was age, maybe it was being off the island, but I shed thirty pounds in six months, joined the crew team (I’d always been strong) and started running along the Mystic River.
I made friends. I bought them pizza. I was kissed for the first time, dated and eventually lost my virginity to a nice guy. My professors loved me. I did well enough to get into med school right after graduation. Ironically, I did the first year of my residency in Portland, three nautical miles from Scupper Island, until Boston City Hospital poached me with a nice fellowship.
I called my mother every other Sunday, asked after Lily and Poe; my sister had stayed in better touch with our mother than with me. Mom was allowed to visit, and every year I gave her a plane ticket for Christmas. Poe and Lily were fine, from what she could tell.
As for me going back to Scupper Island, no. I managed to stay away for fifteen solid years.
Until now.