Beth's Testament

Sarah May held her thirteenth birthday party at the Knights of Columbus right next to school. The invitation was the fancy kind that was advertised in the back of the catalogs, personalized with the name of each member of our class. On the back of it, in loopy, glittery, cursive, it said “Friday, 5:00-8:00,” with a few words underneath that looked Italian, or maybe French. We had both Church and Sunday School on Sundays, and weren’t allowed to go out on school nights, so when my mother let out a barely-audible sigh while reading over my shoulder, I felt a pang of excitement in my stomach. That was code for “Fine, Beth.” She still insisted on following me all the way to the party, which meant crossing precisely five streets all the way down the hill, looking left, right, and left and right again at the third and fourth streets. 

After a disapproving head shake, a quiet “this is ridiculous,” and some stern warnings from my mother, I had managed to compromise walking to the Knights of Columbus on different sides of the street, so long as I changed from my new skinny jeans into corduroy pants. I don’t think it would be fair to say my mother was entirely overprotective of me, but she certainly wanted to keep me safe. No staying home alone, no riding in the front seat, no leaving the house without my house key, my list of emergency phone numbers, and spare change; no this, and no that. But especially, no boys.  

Except for Ethan. My mother met his mother at Church a couple years back, and they have been nearly inseparable since they learned we all lived on the same street. They go on daily afternoon walks, and Ethan and I usually eat lunch once or twice a week together. He’s friends with some of the boys in the class that play on the basketball team, whose parents are often the subject of my mother’s grumblings. I once heard her talking to Ethan’s mom, saying that “those fresh boys” in our class couldn’t make eye contact with a woman if their life depended on it. That they’re the kind that always whisper during church. The kind that snicker when they see people fall, instead of helping them up. Not Ethan, though. He is adored by all of our teachers, and a few girls here and there as well. He’s not like those other boys in my class, who sometimes make rude comments to me or give me weird looks. He’s nice. Plus, my mother likes Ethan and his family a lot, so I’m allowed to walk to school with him. On Friday evening I saw him walk past my house—alone—towards school about twenty minutes before my mother and I left for the party. My heart buzzed with a mix of nervousness and excitement for my first boy-girl party, but knowing Ethan would be there when I arrived calmed me down when it was time to leave. 

Visions of my mother standing on the other side of the street raced around my head. If it wasn’t the volume and near-vulgarity of music, it was the glittered sign that read “Sarah May’s Thrilling Thirteenth” that I was sure would have sent my mother bolting across the street. I imagined her face would be twisted in disgust, or maybe her mouth agape, about to call out to me. She would have called out my full name, running with her hands outstretched and ready to drag me all the way back home by the button of my corduroys, sparing just a second to look left, and wasting no time to look right. I was sure she would have spent the entire walk back lecturing me on the danger of hearing the devil’s words. She probably would have taken away my iPod for a few days to search through it again, too. I didn’t want to know what she was thinking. I didn’t even want to know what she looked like standing across the road, so I walked straight into the party with my back turned to my mother and my head looking straight down at my feet, careful not to miss a single step. 

I stopped in my tracks for a moment after I walked through the corridor of the building, and into the gym. The lights were on, there was a small foldable table holding dozens of untouched cupcakes sitting at center-court, and a pop radio station was blaring over the sound system. The gymnasium looked like a carcass of a middle school, like a movie set after the crew left. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Had I gotten the time wrong? The clock read 5:10. I surveyed the area to find just two of my classmates in the gymnasium, Mary-Anne and Michael. There were only sixteen kids in my grade at St. Peters, and they were definitely not at the top of the social ladder. Mary-Anne was just about as religious as my mother was, and Michael had the walk and talk of a classic computer nerd. I never thought they were objectively uncool or weird, but Sarah May and her trio of friends certainly did. Sarah May sometimes let out a curt snort when Mary-Anne referenced bible verses when talking about To Kill A Mockingbird in English class, and I would sometimes see her friends roll their eyes when Mary-Anne walked past them. I made sure never to associate myself too closely with Mary-Anne or Michael to avoid any collateral damage. 

“Hey Beth!” Mary-Anne said when she saw me. Michael chimed in too, 

“Beth! You made it!” 

I said hello to them and made some small talk, but the otherwise empty gym creeped me out. I knew I saw Ethan leave before me, and we talked about the party at school a few days ago. There was no reason why he would have left the party so soon. 

“The fruit punch is really delicious, would you like a cup?” I obliged to Mary-Anne’s offer, but couldn’t help but ask about the rest of our classmates.

“So… are we the first ones here?”

“I guess!” she shrugged, not really seeming to care about anything other than the cup of fruit punch in her hand. 

“It is kind of odd that Sarah May would be late to her own party,” Michael added, with a tentative chuckle on the end. He stood there awkwardly, looking at me but not really saying anything, before turning around to continue his conversation with Mary-Anne. 

As if on cue, I heard a whisper from behind me towards the corner of the room, which was a miracle considering the music blaring.

“Beth. Beth!” Simultaneously I spun my head to peer into the corridor in the corner and opened my mouth.

“… Ethan?” I whispered back. He was standing in a dark hallway in the corner of the gym with only his head peeking around the wall, motioning for me to walk over. I looked over my shoulder to see Michael and Mary-Anne too fascinated with the fruit punch to notice me talking to him. I made my way over to where he was hiding. 

“I’ve been checking like every five minutes for you. How long have you been here?” Ethan asked.  

“Long enough to be given this.” I held up my still-full cup of fruit punch. “But not long enough to feel like I had to drink it.” My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could see his face relax a little bit. 

“It’s actually not that bad.” He started to continue before I interrupted him 

“Wait Ethan—what’s going on?” I asked, looking past him only to find another empty space. He glanced behind him. There was no one to be found. “What are you doing?” He grinned sheepishly, like he knew something I didn’t, and let out a short giggle before he answered me.

“I know. I know. It’s kind of crazy.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“What is?” I asked, starting to think that spending the night with Michael and Mary-Anne and a cup of fruit punch didn’t sound so bad. He ignored my question. 

“C’mon,” he said, leading me farther down the hallway, the light getting darker and darker as we walked. He finally stopped, opening a door to our right that led to another short, dark hallway, and then a staircase. I was utterly confused. The party invitation specified the gym, so I didn’t know why Ethan would be leading me to another part of the building. 

“I didn’t even know there was a basement here. Are you sure this is allowed?” I asked. He shrugged, leading me down the staircase. 

“Probably not.” We were standing at a landing. “You might want to ditch the old frames though,” he said, nodding his head up at my glasses. 

“Why? Wait—Ethan!” Before I could form my thoughts, he opened another door right behind him, one that was hardly visible in the dark.

It led to a small, even darker room. Pitch black. It felt hot from all the body heat in such a tiny space, even though there only seemed to be nine or ten kids in there. The music coming from the gym was pretty muffled. I recognized one or two of the voices, but in the low murmur I couldn’t decipher what was being said. I looked around, my eyes jumping from dark corner to dark corner, still not seeing Sarah May, still confused about what was going on. I looked to my right to say something to Ethan, but he was gone. Before I had time to panic, I felt a hand touch mine to my left. 

“Beth! You’re with Adam. Go!” Kate, Sarah May’s best friend, said to me while nudging me towards a door. It all happened so fast, and I honestly thought I was being kicked out of the secret hang-out that I somehow found myself a part of, so I just walked out the door like she told me to. 

Only, in the whirlwind of events, I got mixed around. Instead of leaving in the door I came in, I ended up in what felt like a coat closet. I only had to take about four steps to get there, three of them just to stay on my feet after Kate suddenly pushed me in another direction, and on the fourth I found myself shrouded with walls. A door shut me inside before I could say Amen. 

 Just as I started to decipher what was going on, I felt a pair of soggy, mushy lips on mine. I jerked my head back, hitting it on the wall behind me. 

“Um,” I fumbled with my words, my thoughts all jumbled in my head. My hands started to shake as I frantically felt the walls around me, praying for my hand to land upon a doorknob. 

“Oh. I…” Adam’s voice mumbled from the dark. 

“I—I have to go,” I mustered, holding back tears. I busted my way back into the larger room where Kate and some other people were, feeling their eyes on me, hearing their conversations come to a halt. Sarah May sat on the floor in the middle of the cramped room, holding something that looked like a wine bottle. She was the first person in that room to look me in the eyes, and in that moment, I felt naked. Exposed. 

“Need a sip?” she asked, with a sorry excuse for concern plastered across her button-nosed face. A hundred voices laughed at me all at once. No, a thousand. They returned back to their own, now boisterous, conversations. I wanted to disappear, to go back in time, or to leave right that very moment. But before I pushed through a quartet of smelly boys, I glanced around the room to try to find Ethan, but to no avail. He abandoned me. 

I ran back up the staircase, back through the hallway, and back through the gym. Michael and Mary-Anne were still drinking fruit punch. I thought to myself that they looked lonely and weird and so uncool, and that they should never have come to this stupid party anyways.   

I ran back through the corridor of the Knights of Columbus, and back down the steps outside, skipping two at time. I started running back to my house, but I couldn’t keep up with myself. I couldn’t keep up at all. 

I crossed all five streets–the right way–until I was back on my own. It was dark now. I climbed up my front steps, each one seeming higher than the last. I didn’t want to spend any more time in the shadows, but I didn’t have it in me to survive my mother’s prodding questions inside the house. 

But there was darkness all around me, and in me now. I walked inside as quietly as possible, and raced up to my room. I stared at my reflection in my bedroom mirror, finally getting a chance to catch my breath. Even in the bright light of my room, I still couldn’t see myself. A young, round-faced girl stared back at me. Her turtleneck was untucked from the front of her corduroy pants, as was some of her hair from her ponytail. She didn’t pout. Instead, her eyes were fixed on my bedroom floor. 

The skinny jeans my mother made me change out of lay unzipped and inside out, sprawled across the hardwood and helpless. Using the side of my foot, I kicked them inside of my bedroom closet and shut the door.  

In the closet they would stay. For a long, long time.