A Bad Day

Mrs. Hasslebein rolled her eyes when the telephone on her desk began to ring. She snatched it up and wedged it between her round cheek and shoulder. She nodded once. Twice.

She muttered, “Okay, thank you.” then returned the phone back to its cradle and began to write on a pink pad. The class began to unfold with a murmur. She stood and swung her big body forward, paper folded between two perfectly manicured fingers. 

“Andre,” she hovered, waiting for her victim to look up from the theater textbook. 

Andre did, eventually, with a worried frown. She could be close to tears with a word but she swallowed them. 

“Principal Thomas wants to speak with you.” 

“But I didn’t do anything,” said Andre, tucking a strand of mouse brown hair behind her ear. 

She never did anything and yet, somehow, always found herself in the front office. It exhausted her and she never knew how she was supposed to act. Every time she kept her nose down and tried to stay quiet, she’d get in trouble for not listening. Every time she spoke up and answered questions, she’d get reprimanded for being disruptive. 

Andre stood and took the pink slip. Heat prickled around her neck. The eyes of the other students in the class watched her. Waiting. 

Like wolves. 

She trudged into Principal Thomas’s office and was told to

wait

and wait

and wait.

There was a stagnant air in the tiny, square office. Andre tried not to breathe it in but she was getting used to the old mildew scent, like a wet rag left forgotten under the sink. Principal Thomas looked over his reading glasses and then to a sheet of crisp white paper.

“I want you to know that I am your ally,” he said and a stone fell through Andre.

“What’s going on?” 

“I want you to know if you ever need any help, I am your support.”

Andre said nothing. She very much doubted him.

“I have a very serious allegation, Miss Winters. A student has accused you of sexual harassment.”

Andre's mouth swung down. This was some horrible joke. She waited but he didn’t crack. His frown hung heavy on his chin. Andre had to swallow and find her tongue before she could squeak, “I don’t understand.”

“Both Joshua Briggs and Eddie Sythe claim you touched them during theater,” he paused to read the paper again and quoted. “The way their girlfriends would.”

Andre jumped out of the stiff plastic chair. “I NEVER! Last week Josh asked if I could get a knot out in his shoulder and I did. I never touched Eddie! Never!”

Principal Thomas shook his head and wrote her up for two days of In School Suspension. "I suggest you don’t communicate with those boys for the rest of the semester… your mother is coming to collect you. If you could go back to the front office and wait.” 

Instead, Andre cried and vomited in the bathroom until a school officer found her and dragged her back. Her mother smiled demurely at the officer. Rosewater perfume clung around her, the way the 80s clung around the cut of her wispy blond hair and the high plucked arch of her eyebrows. Her dress suit was not Armani but she carried herself as though to buy 'off label' was an active decision and not because she had yet to snag a moneyed husband. 

“I’ve booked you an appointment with your therapist,” she said loud enough for the secretary and Principal Thomas, behind his closed door, would hear. She clutched Andre by the elbow and led her out of the school with a determined and fierce clacking of stiletto heels. 

The therapist was a twist Andre hadn’t expected. Her mother had stopped paying for visits the moment Andre realized that she hovered by the door, listening in on the sessions. To battle the lack of privacy, Andre turned her discussion toward dull work and rebelled against the man’s scholarly prompting until her mother declared Andre cured. 

“You talk too much, anyway, and therapy was supposed to rid you of that.” 

The therapist, who’s name Andre was so worried about forgetting that she actively never learned it, asked, “How are you managing? What are you thinking about?” He cleared his throat, “How’s school?”

Andre twisted a square of Kleenex between her fingers. Last week, during rehearsals for a one act play, Josh Briggs came over to Andre and her best, and truly only friend, Cassie Lautner. They were massaging each other’s feet because the costume shoes were tight and pinching in all the worst ways. 

He said, “Can you get this knot out of my shoulder? I fell weird in football.”

“Sure,” said Andre and he sat down next to her. One of the things Andre prided herself on was the fact that she always found a knot and could work it loose. She’d given her classmates and teachers all massages at some point or another. Sometimes it was a good press of the thumb and sometimes an elbow was needed. 

Andre wasn’t well liked. She wasn’t popular but whenever someone asked for an act of service, a way that Andre could help them, she felt empowered, wanted, and as though she finally had some sort of control. 

Josh Briggs, popular and cinnamon tan with perfect teeth, didn’t talk to Andre or Cassie outside of theater. Eddie Sythe and Blake Buchanan joined, flicked through their highlighted scripts, then tossed them aside. Cassie gawked at Eddie and Andre remembered she had a secret notebook wedged between her mattress and box spring at home filled with love poems and hearts with Eddie’s monogram. The occasional ‘Mrs. Eddie Sythe’ was detailed inside the pages, too.

While Andre, Cassie, and Josh stayed in their little monkey circle, the other boys ran through their lines and staging. Eddie’s character had to pin wet bras and stockings to a clothesline and he asked the group at large, “What do you think about underwear?”

“I like it when the girls don’t wear it,” said Josh. 

“Not wearing underwear is one thing, but bras are entirely another matter,” said Andre.

She glanced over at Cassie, who flushed and continued to stare with wide, wet eyes. They exchanged a wordless understanding about how lucky they were to be brought in on the secret conversation of boys. Take notes. Forget nothing. Do anything they say if it means a date to prom.

“Right?” said Cassie, flicking back her honey-red curls. “I can’t have them swinging all over the place! It’s too painful.”

“Yeah, but if you knew a guy wasn’t wearing underwear,” Eddie said, wiggling his eyebrows, “Hot or not?”

“Not!” Cassie and Andre said in unison and giggled. 

Andre was in fact, going commando that day because it had been her sister’s turn to do the laundry. Her sister stayed out all night and forgot. Andre had enough sense to not admit this to Josh. For one, she didn’t want him to think she was into him like that and was making up a desperate story to pique his interest. For another, Andre had to contend with daily bus rides where her classmates put tape in her hair because she was fat and stupid. She didn’t want the accusation of being a whore, too. 

Still... No underwear was a good thing? She’d tuck that information away and use it on someone she actually wanted to tell. 

Blake rolled his eyes and flicked his head to one side, doing a fluttery impression of Brooke Shields. “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” 

“Guys need underwear to protect their pants from themselves,” Josh said, sagely. “Girls not wearing underwear? Hot.” 

Cassie and Andre laughed again. Cassie said, “Why would we make it that easy for you to get to us? Besides, a little matching bra and panties is much cuter than nothing at all. Lace and ribbons and polka dots! All day, every day!”

“I don’t need anyone to make it easy for me,” said Josh. “I get sex anytime I want.”

“Sure,” said Blake, chewing on his thumb. For some reason, he winked at Andre. “I believe you.”

Eddie elbowed Blake in the ribs. “Didn’t you do it with Ottessa last night?” 

Blake nodded and Cassie’s hand flew from Andre’s exposed foot, to cover her own mouth. She breathed around her fingers. “You did not!”

“Did. We’ve been dating for six months. Why not?” 

“What was it like?” asked Andre. Her tone was steady but her heart was in her ears. He looked at her and dropped his sardonic smile. He shrugged again. 

“It hurt a little bit. Hurt for her but there wasn’t much blood and we were slow.”

Andre nodded. It was nice of him to speak so frankly to her. She knew he didn’t have to extend the courtesy. Josh’s laugh pierced through the conversation and he playfully pulled a strand of Andre’s hair. “You’re a virgin!”

“What’s wrong with that?” Andre stammered, heat creeping down from her cheeks to her neck. 

Josh couldn’t answer because Mrs. Hasslebein materialized in her swaths of black and maroon, yelling at them for not rehearsing their lines or getting any character work finished. 

Andre thought that it had been a good class. A good day. She felt like she and Cassie were becoming involved in that sort of friend group seen on television. It shouldn’t work but it did. Everyone got along. It was nice to feel included, that there was a space with the power to relieve the pressure that the school's hierarchy so often brought down on sophomores and juniors. 

Only today, Mrs. Hasslebein had shattered that delusional thought by handing Andre the pink slip. The shame of that filtered through her like a hot iron splintering and sliding through her veins. This was something she was supposed to talk about with a kind and understanding mother. It was not the subject for middle aged men and girls obligated to sit on their couches. 

“Anything in particular you want to share?” he prodded, clicking his pen again against the yellow legal pad propped on his knee. A flicker of light shifted and changed in the gap between the floor and the door of the therapist’s office. Andre sucked in on her cheek and shook her head. 

The therapist handed her a little orange MEAD spiral notebook. “I’d like you to try journaling. I find it very cathartic.”

Afterward, her mother said, “Well. Well. Well. I really hope you enjoyed taking advantage of my money today. I really hope you got what you think you deserve out of your session.”

Once they returned home, Andre crawled into bed and huddled under the covers until morning. 

She had to sprint to catch the bus and was forced to take the little isolated seat in the very back that fit right over a wheel. At least no one could mess with her hair. Plus, there was the occasional weightlessness that replaced gravity with each sharp turn, pothole, speed hump giving her a fleeting and thrilling sensation of what it would be like to take a clean exit out of life.

Wouldn’t it be nice if she could just step away to float in nothing? To breathe? 

The front of the school was packed with students and faculty streaming out of the long line of cars and buses. Backpacks and briefcases swung against each other. The prayer group around the flagpole seemed to expand into a multitude of whitewashed faces. Andre wiped at one eye. She didn’t want to be there.

A girl broke from the prayer group and darted toward Andre, who didn’t see her until they were both slammed against the concrete. Spittle. Blood. Hair. All of it flinging around in the thunderous screaming. “YOU KEEP YOUR WHORE HANDS OFF MY MAN!”

Principal Thomas and the school officer had to pry the girls apart. Andre had managed to yank out a track of the girl's white-blond hair. Her lip was cut. The other girl’s makeup smeared against Andre’s arm. 

Andre allowed herself to be muscled to home room with Mrs. Hasslebein. The officer waited for her to step into the class to be tallied before he escorted her to the In School Suspension hall. He held the door open. She spit on him instead. She waited for him to drag her back to the office. The officer took a Kleenex out of his pocket and handed it to her. 

“It’ll get better.”

“Fuck you.”

“I know.” he used the Kleenex to wipe the spit off his badge.  

She stepped inside the classroom. Twelve pairs of eyes stared back at her. Mrs. Hasslebein frowned, hands on her hips. “Finally you join us.”

Andre didn’t move. The roof of her mouth and her nose prickled. Mrs. Hasslebein glanced behind Andre, to the officer. “What’s happened?”

“I’m having a bad day,” Andre mumbled. 

The dam broke with a single tear that sprung off her lower lashes and splattered across her shirt. Mrs. Hasslebein reached out, catching Andre in her arms before her legs gave out entirely. The wail that forced its way out of her mouth and into Mrs. Hasslebein’s silk top was dirty and raw. 

No one spoke and it was only Andre’s voice that clattered around the room, until the walls were shaking and her throat had choked. Tears turned into the red, throbbing burn against her forehead. When Mrs. Hasslebein let go of her, none of Andre’s classmates looked at her and she slunk back out of the room. 

When the bell rang for lunch, Cassie was waiting at the end of the hall. She slipped her hand into Andre’s. “Go to the library. I’ll cover for you.”

“Okay…” said Andre. 

She hid in the nonfiction section, where she sometimes read about astrology and the other ungodly things her mother banned from the house. She sank onto the speckled carpet, tugging down a book at random to look at the pictures. Her head hurt too much to read. It wasn’t long before she was discovered by Blake Buchanan. 

He leaned over the short shelf opposite her. “I saw you spit on Officer Collins.”

“So?” Andre snapped and turned from him. “I don’t care!” 

Blake leaned back and studied her. “It wasn’t cool what those asshats did. Trying to cancel you…I find a great way to blow off steam is to hit a few balls. A good thwack. Especially when the batting cages are empty. Anyway. Hope you feel better.” 

Everyone knew that Josh and the other jocks parked their cars by the batting cages because there was a blind spot in the school cameras and they could smoke without getting caught. Everyone also knew that the librarian wasn’t a rat. Blake understood that Andre needed to hit something. It was like he was giving her permission. Or maybe he was setting her up.

It hardly mattered.

Andre left through the library’s side door. She marched across the parking lot to the detached gym, around the corner. A metal bat leaned against the right headlight of Josh’s outdated but beloved Honda NSX. Andre lifted the bat, held it like a sword. Her hands were dry and the headache throbbed, tunneling her vision. She brought it down on the hood until all the metal bent inward. Rage expanded the muscles in her arms and back. She felt overwhelmingly unloved but she was in control. 

Whack! 

Whack! 

Whack! 

Glass shards danced across the asphalt and the bat clattered from her scraped hands when she no longer had the strength to hold it.

At home, she stretched out on her unmade bed and wiggled the orange cardboard cover of the spiral notebook between two fingers. Then, she folded it back with tender care and began to write.

Dear Diary,

Today was a good day.