Speak

by Laurie Halse Anderson

It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.

The school board has decided that “Merryweather High—Home of the Trojans” didn’t send a strong abstinence message, so they have transformed us into the Blue Devils. Better the Devil you know than the Trojan you don’t, I guess.

I am Outcast.

My English teacher has no face.

She wants us to write in our class journals every day, but promises not to read them. I write about how weird she is.

I know enough not to bring lunch on the first day of high school. There is no way of telling what the acceptable fashion will be.

It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.

Art follows lunch, like dream follows nightmare.

“Welcome to the only class that will teach you how to survive,” he says. “Welcome to Art.”

Mom loves doing the things that other people are afraid of. She could have been a snake handler.

My room belongs to an alien.

I won’t take a real nap. I have this halfway place, a rest stop on the road to sleep, where I can stay for hours. I don’t even need to close my eyes, just stay safe under the covers and breathe.

Gym should be illegal. It is humiliating.

I don’t want to be cool. I want to grab her by the neck and shake her and scream at her to stop treating me like dirt.

Next thing you know, she’ll be drinking black coffee and reading books without pictures.

Rachelle and Greta–Ingrid glide out of the bathroom. Neither one of them has toilet paper stuck to her boots. Where is the justice?

My goal is to go home and take a nap.

This closet is abandoned—it has no purpose, no name. It is the perfect place for me.

I can’t tell them what really happened. I can’t even look at that part myself.

I put my head in my hands and scream to let out the animal noise and some of that night. No one hears. They are all quite spirited.

The same boys who got detention in elementary school for beating the crap out of people are now rewarded for it. They call it football.

I bet none of them ever stutter or screw up or feel like their brains are dissolving into marshmallow fluff. They all have beautiful lips, carefully outlined in red and polished to a shine.

If I ever form my own clan, we’ll be the Anti-Cheerleaders. We will not sit in the bleachers. We will wander underneath them and commit mild acts of mayhem.

I am getting better at smiling when people expect it.

My stomach is killing me. Her room isn’t big enough for this much emotion. I leave without saying goodbye.

Look at me when I talk to you.”

Mom: “Look at me now.”

This is the Death Voice, the Voice that means business. When I was a kid, this Voice made me pee in my pants. It takes more now.

I would be lucky to get an invitation to my own funeral, with my reputation.

The salt in my tears feels good when it stings my lips.

I see IT in the hallway.

Good thing my lips are stitched together or I’d throw up.

I figure Maya would like it if I read in here, so I bring a few books from home. Mostly I watch the scary movies playing on the inside of my eyelids.

I know my head isn’t screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me.

How could she know this? I don’t know what I’m doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I’ll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I’ll think about a career path.

Rebellion is in the air. We only have a week left before Winter Break. Students are getting away with murder and the staff is too worn out to care.

I bet they’d be divorced by now if I hadn’t been born. I’m sure I was a huge disappointment. I’m not pretty or smart or athletic. I’m just like them—an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can’t believe we have to keep playacting until I graduate. It’s a shame we can’t just admit that we have failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.

I almost tell them right then and there. Tears flood my eyes. They noticed I’ve been trying to draw. They noticed. I try to swallow the snowball in my throat. This isn’t going to be easy.

The other team fouls you, you get to pay them back. Boom. But that’s not the way it works, in basketball or in life.

I shrug my shoulders and they grin. I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t say anything. I just won’t show up.

Maybe I’ll be an artist if I grow up.

The Back Row pays attention. Cutting dead frogs is cool.

I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won’t. I’ll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head.

I don’t buy the gold eyeshadow, but I do pick up a bottle of Black Death nail polish. It’s gloomy, with squiggly lines of red in it. My nails are bitten to the bleeding point, so it will look natural. I need to get a shirt that matches. Something in a tubercular gray.

They keep asking questions like “What is wrong with you?” and “Do you think this is cute?” How can I answer? I don’t have to. They don’t want to hear anything I have to say.

I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep? I draw little windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting. It looks like I arm-wrestled a rosebush.

Mom sees the wrist at breakfast. Mom: “I don’t have time for this, Melinda.”

They are talking about IT. Andy. Andy Evans.

The Wombat is dead.

We are the Hornets and that is final.