Regret List Page 3

  “Good. This gives me an opportunity to talk to you all.”

  Oh no, no, no, I thought to myself. She’s not going to talk about him, is she?

  “There will be another student in our class, Asher, who has a hearing disability and wears a hearing aid.”

  What are you doing? I screamed in my head. Half these kids know him already and you’re alienating him from the other half.

  “This means you need to speak loudly and clearly in his direction to make it easier for him to understand you.” She glanced back down at her notes, probably reading from his disability sheet. “If you face him while speaking, he will be able to lip-read. I expect everyone to be courteous and respectful of his condition-“

  Oh my God, you did not just call it a condition.

  “-and if I hear of any problems regarding him, you will be reported to the vice principal’s office.”

  By this point, there were a few scattered whispers and titters in the classroom and I desperately wished we were back in second grade, where I could simply kick and shove them into submission. Is this what it was like for him every year? The teachers making a big deal out of him, making sure everyone knew he was different?

  The classroom door opened and Asher entered, looking harried. Everyone turned to see who it was and he seemed to instantly feel the tension in the room. I watched as his shoulders hunched over slightly and he shifted his backpack straps nervously. “Sorry, early doctor’s appointment,” he mumbled.

  “Sorry, what?” our teacher looked confused when she didn’t understand him and glanced back down at her notes. What did she expect, a translation guide? In response, Asher held out a tardy excuse and she gratefully accepted it. “Great, great, okay, just set your stuff down over here, sweetie.” She led him, yes physically led him over to his seat. The whispers had gotten louder and I heard one boy give a snort of laughter. I gave that particular boy a hard look, trying to catch his gaze, but he was already whispering to the others next to him.

  That boy, yes that awful laughing one, was Jason. The Jason of my regret list, the one I regret going out with. But we’re still a ways off from that. At that moment in the classroom, I hated him and wanted to bring him down a peg or two. “Did anyone hear a pig snort?” I asked loudly and the entire classroom dissolved into laughter. Yeah, it probably wasn’t the wittiest comeback ever, but it got the job done. I watched in triumph as his face went red and the guy sitting next to him elbowed his side.

  One point for the Asher and Paige team.

  The rest of the class passed by uneventfully and I was almost beginning to think that we could do this, pull this off without causing too big a ripple in the school popularity scheme, but then we got to lunch. I sat with my friends as usual, our backs against our lockers and our lunch spread out in front of us. We were chatting about our classes so far and Sammy was gushing about some new boy from Australia with “just the cuuutest accent,” when a shadow blocked out the glare of the fluorescent lights above. I glanced up and grinned.

  “Hey Asher.” I felt the confused glances of my friends, but chose to ignore them. “Sit.” I patted the floor beside me and he sat down silently, sliding his backpack off his shoulders.

  “Here.” He slid a notebook out of his backpack and handed it to me. “I started a little already. Tell me what you think.” He started to stand and I cocked my head.

  “You can sit with us, you know,” I said.

  He gave me a glance that I knew all too well. The one that said, Seriously, Paige? and was thick with sarcasm. “I have my own friends to sit with,” he said. But then he gave me a little grin that let me know that while he wasn’t pleased with the day so far, I was still on his good side.

  “Right, okay,” I said. Of course he had his own friends to sit with. Did I really think that since I left him in second grade that no one would be able to befriend him like I had? Then again, no one else had befriended me like he had, yet I still felt obligated to sit with them.

  His friends were already on the other side of the hall, laughing good-naturedly at him. “Don’t you choose a bunch of girls over us!” one of them shouted over.

  Asher rolled his eyes. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “She’s got cooties.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him as he walked away, then turned back to my own friends, giggling. All three of them stared at me with wide eyes. “You’re friends with him, Paige?” Kandice squeaked.

  “Uh, yes?” I stopped laughing.

  Sammy sighed. “You’re not like, going out with him or anything, are you?”

  “No, of course not!” I replied quickly. “We’re just friends.”

  “Good.” She nodded in approval. “Because I’ve got big plans for our group this year.”

  Unfortunately, her plans led to Regret #2: Agreeing to go out with Jason. If I could go back in time, I would have walked away right then, never even listened to her “big plans.” But, well, I didn’t. And since I promised to tell you everything, this is how it happened.

  Chapter 3

  As it turned out, Sammy’s big plan for the group was to match us up with one of the male groups of four. We had all talked about this back in middle school, of course. According to Sammy’s older sister, it was the thing to do in high school. Then you could go on group dates with your friends, no one was left out of the dating scene, etc. Of course, what she didn’t tell us was that someone had to settle. You couldn’t all have the cutest guy of the group, after all. Really, it sounded more like an arranged marriage than a real relationship, but what did I know? I had never even kissed a boy before, much less dated one.

  As they began to discuss possible groups to match up with, my mind wandered and I stopped paying attention. Instead, I opened Asher’s notebook. He had filled out the first page with plot ideas and possible characters, even including quick sketches of them. I was immersed in the outline of a story about a girl whose sister goes missing in a mysterious world controlled by the Night Mare, an evil queen who controls everyone through their dreams, when I realized Grace was trying to talk to me. “Mm?” I tore myself away from the page.

  “Are you seriously doing homework already?” she asked incredulously. “You don’t always have to be the brains of the class, you know. Take a break.” I wondered for a second if that’s how they all thought of me: the nerdy one, just like I had given all of them titles and roles to play.

  “It’s not homework,” I said, trying not to act defensive. Then, realizing how nerdy it would sound if I tried to explain, I slid the notebook into my own book bag. “It’s nothing. Just some notes.”

  “Whatever. Well, what do you think of Jason Stromsen?” Sammy asked.

  “Who?” I was still only half-paying attention and trying to remember what class I had after lunch.

  “He’s part of the group Sammy’s thinking about hooking us up with,” Kandice yawned, texting on her phone.

  “You’re not texting that guy you got in trouble over, are you?” Grace asked.

  Kandice glared at her. “None of your business. Hey, are you gonna eat that?” It looked like Grace had barely touched her lunch and she wordlessly handed it over to Kandice.

  “Jason’s pretty cute,” Sammy continued. “He’s in our grade, dark hair, glasses. I have English with him and he seemed pretty nerdy, like you.” I winced, but what could I say? Maybe he was a good match for me. Not once did I think that this mysterious Jason could be the same boy from biology. “Oh, and Robert told me one of his parents died too.” Oh, God. What did I tell you? She says all the worst things.

  A rush of emotions soared through me, starting in my stomach. I didn’t know whether I was going to burst into tears or slap her. In the end, I did neither. I laughed it off like it was no big deal. Only someone with two healthy, living parents can think it’s perfectly rational to match two people up based on their dead-parent status. But I don’t know, maybe it was rational. Maybe I’m the strange one.

  I had only ever to
ld one person how I felt about my dad: Asher. We were climbing around on a fallen log that was nearly as tall as me and had been lying there for as long as I could remember. I hauled myself up on the branches and knelt down, yanking off chunks of the bark. Asher sat nearby, doing the same. I saw lightning out of the corner of my eye and sat back against one of the branches, watching the sky for a few minutes. I saw it flash again, forking down in the distance. It was too far off to hear the thunder and the rain hadn’t yet reached us, so I continued ripping off the bark.

  “My dad’s going to transfer to a job in Portland, four hours away,” Asher growled, crunching the bark up in his hands and letting it fall to the ground in pieces.

  “You’re moving away?” I asked. I could feel his dark mood however and knew it was more complicated than that. He had been uncharacteristically angry all day, but it wasn’t until the afternoon started to fade away that he finally explained.

  He shook his head and held up a wood louse. “Found one.” He handed it to me and I let the little bug crawl across my palm. We liked tearing up the poor bugs’ home to see what we could find. Occasionally it meant finding a tick or two attached to our arms and legs, but that was interesting in and of itself.

  “Why not?” I asked, watching the bug as it crawled up my arm.

  “Not invited,” he replied.

  I looked up at him in surprise. “What do you mean, you’re not invited? He’s your dad!”

  He glowered at me. “Don’t you think I know that? He’s moving in with some skank. He doesn’t want us kids around.”

  “Wait, he’s leaving your mom?” I couldn’t believe it. His mom was still the precursor to cookie dough in my mind. Why would anyone abandon that?

  He nodded, his fists clenched in rage.

  “Do you, like, know this for sure? How’d you find out?” I was still in shock, certain that Asher had misunderstood somehow. It wasn’t like him to jump to conclusions, but his family acted so happy all the time, whenever I saw them all together. Well, everyone except Asher, who seemed to spend half his life in a bad mood.

  “My mom made him tell us,” he mumbled, making it harder for me to understand him. “He hooked up with some girl at the Portland branch during a business trip and now he’s going to transfer there, to get away from us.”

  I blinked. “So, are they getting a divorce then?”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He could die for all I care.” I stiffened and his eyes widened a little. Sorry, he signed, a circle on his chest. That’s how I knew he really meant it, wasn’t just saying sorry because it was the proper social convention. Signs were what brought us together and the language we never lied in.

  I flicked the wood louse from my arm and turned away. “You don’t have to be sorry,” I said, sliding off the log and feeling the bark scrape my bare legs.

  I heard him slide off next to me and we stood silently for a moment, watching the lightning still flickering in the distance. “Why don’t you talk about him?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing to say,” I replied truthfully. What could I say about a man I didn’t even remember? I had never explained to Asher exactly what had happened – that he had killed some lady and then run from all his problems in the only way he knew how. All he knew was that my dad had a pill problem and ended up committing suicide over them.

  “Do you miss him?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I miss the idea of a dad,” I explained finally. “I don’t know if I can miss a man who couldn’t even bother to get help for the sake of his family.”

  Angry, he signed and I giggled a little. Even if I didn’t remember the exact sign, I could understand it from his expression.

  “Yeah. Angry. Is that bad?”

  He shrugged. “It’s okay. We can be angry together.” And so we were. His was a hot rage that boiled over unexpectedly and mine was a dark, throbbing anger that refused to forgive. But we understood each other and it was one more tie that bound us together. His dad really did move out, ended up getting cheated on by the Portland floozy, and lost his job when she accused him of sexual harassment after he wouldn’t stop pestering her to get back together with him. He eventually got his own apartment and invited Asher and his brothers over a few times, but none of them ended up visiting. Betrayal is an ugly thing to get over.

  Back then, I thought I would never do anything to make Asher that angry at me, make him feel that betrayed. I wish I had been right.

  But, we’re still at the beginning of ninth grade, before everything fell apart. That evening after the first day of high school, I got a text from Asher on my phone. Come up to the butte, he wrote and so I grabbed the notebook and headed out, leaving a note for my mom on the counter. She had been going out a lot back then – dates, I assumed, although she never said so. We didn’t have a bad relationship exactly, just an absent-minded one. She was gone most of the time and I didn’t ask her about her absence. In return, she ignored most of my life.

  It was only mid-September, but the temperature was already dropping outside and by the time I got to the top of the butte, I was sorry I hadn’t brought a jacket. Asher was already up there, lying on top of one of the boulders, soaking up the last rays of sunlight. I clambered up next to him, pulling open the notebook as I went. “I like the wizard’s bodyguard,” I said, lying down next to him and pointing at the girl lurking in the shadows that he had drawn, “but she shouldn’t start out as good.”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “Go on.”

  “Like, I get the fact that a hero is supposed to fight for good and all, but she looks too angry to be on the right side. It’s not that she’s evil, exactly, just too angry to see straight. I want her to be fighting for the wrong side.”

  He screwed up his face in thought. “I see what you’re saying,” he said slowly. “But villains aren’t very likeable.”

  “I think she could be, if we explained why she did the things that she did.”

  He sat up. “Let me think on it.” I started to get up, to go back home where it was warm, but he caught my arm. “Hey, are you going to homecoming?”

  I sighed, remembering the conversation at lunch. “I’m not sure. My friends are trying to fix us up with some group of guys. It’s weird. Why, are you going?”

  He laughed. “No way. My friends and I will be hanging out and playing video games all night.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was being invited or not, but felt a surge of confusion when he talked about his other friends. It was stupid, but I had hoped he was like me and his school friends stayed at school and that we were something different. Best friends, I guess. I wondered if he had always hung out with them outside of school and how I never heard about them before. I had only been a high school student for one day, but already my life felt completely upside down.

  He snatched up the notebook and dashed off before I had a chance to sort out anything to say and I was left shivering alone in the quickly fading sunlight. Over the next week, we traded the notebook back and forth. We exchanged locker combinations so I would sometimes open my locker and find the notebook perched on top of my textbooks. On the nights I took it home, it consumed my evening as I sketched out plot ideas and new characters. When she was around, my mom kept insisting that she couldn’t believe how much work the teachers were already loading on top of us. I didn’t bother to correct her. It was weird, but I had long ago stopped telling my mom anything about what Asher and I did.

  It was back when we first started hanging out together unattended. We must have been eleven or twelve and it was before his parents split up. They would let us wander around the desert when I came to visit. Sometimes we would tag along with his older brothers and sometimes we would just go off on our own. It was a delicious taste of freedom for me – my mom had switched from totally distracted to unreasonably present. She never left me alone back then when I was home. She was always checking in on me, making sure I didn’t die on her, I guess. Like if she watched over me cl
osely enough, I wouldn’t be able to destroy my life.

  We never did anything bad, really. Okay, one time we snuck into an old, abandoned house and threw bricks through the windows and booked it when some adults heard the glass breaking and came to see what was happening, but nothing really bad. Mostly we just built forts out of brush and dug holes in the dirt. But then one night, we made a mistake. It was evening and the coyotes were beginning to howl, so we decided to try to find them. There wasn’t much danger in that, really. We were big enough that the coyotes wouldn’t attack us and they still have a healthy fear of humans out here.

  The problem was, we were wandering through the woods and didn’t realize how quickly it would get dark. Asher was relying on me to hear where the coyote howls were coming from and I guess he expected me to notice where I was going. I didn’t. We wandered around for ages out there in the woods as the sun dropped behind the hills and stars came out. I remember I was crying because Asher was mad at me for getting us lost and I was scared we were going to die out there.

  That seemed to soften him up, because he finally turned to me and shook his head, reaching out to wipe off my tear-streaked cheeks. No more crying, I knew he meant.

  “I don’t want to die out here,” I sobbed.

  He rolled his eyes and finger-spelled something: trickster. I instantly understood what he meant. A few months back, we had been reading a bunch of Native American stories. Coyote was the one the other animals hated. He was a know-it-all, bragging prankster, always making the others look like fools or tricking them into giving him something he wanted. But, he was never mean on purpose. He just had a better sense of humor than the other animals. He also couldn’t stand by and watch another animal in misery. The story that first came to mind was when he stole fire to give to the humans because we didn’t have any fur and were freezing.