Speak

by Laurie Halse Anderson

Maybe he won’t notice me if I stand still. That’s how rabbits survive; they freeze in the presence of predators.

I should probably tell someone, just tell someone. Get it over with. Let it out, blurt it out.

I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy—old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length.

I want to scream. I think I’ll need to take a day off every once in a while.

I wonder if Hester tried to say no. She’s kind of quiet. We would get along. I can see us, living in the woods, her wearing that A, me with an S maybe, S for silent, for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame.

Some teachers rumorwhisper he’s having a breakdown. I think he’s the sanest person I know.

“You don’t like anything. You are the most depressed person I’ve ever met, and excuse me for saying this, but you are no fun to be around and I think you need professional help.”

They swallow her whole and she never looks back at me. Not once.

A half-forgotten holiday has unveiled every knife that sticks inside me, every cut. No Rachel, no Heather, not even a silly, geeky boy who would like the inside girl I think I am.

Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing. I wonder how long it takes to ride a bus to Arizona.

Mother is the rock, I am the ocean.

When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.”

“Melinda,” Mr. Freeman says. Snow filters into the car and melts on the dashboard. “You’re a good kid. I think you have a lot to say. I’d like to hear it.”

I just need to hang on long enough for my new skin to graft. Mr. Freeman thinks I need to find my feelings.

Plants make way more seeds than they need, because they know that life is not perfect and all the seeds won’t make it. Kind of smart, when you think about

My cafeteria strategy has changed since I have no friends in the known universe.

Maybe I should start talking to Them, maybe a little bit. But what if I say the wrong thing?

I imagine what Heather might look like in ten years, after two children and seventy pounds. It helps a little.

I think it’s some kind of psychiatric disorder when you have more than one personality in your head. That’s what it feels like when I walk home.

A fat white seed sleeps in the sky.

Who was that girl? I had never seen her before.

Outside, the moon smiled goodbye and slipped away.

It isn’t August. The moon is asleep and I’m sitting on my porch roof like a frozen gargoyle, wondering if the sun is going to blow off the world today and sleep

That turkey-bone thing you did was creepy, too. Creepy in a good way, good creepy. It’s been months and I’m still thinking about it.”

Have to find out where he gets that cologne. I think it’s called Fear. This is turning into one of those repeating nightmares where you keep falling but never hit the floor. Only I feel like I just smacked into the ground at a hundred miles an hour.

If my life were a TV show, what would it be? If it were an After-School Special, I would speak in front of an auditorium of my peers on How Not to Lose Your Virginity. Or, Why Seniors Should Be Locked Up. Or, My Summer Vacation: A Drunken Party, Lies, and Rape.

I want you to listen to me, listen to me, listen to me. It was not your fault.

My head is killing me, my throat is killing me, my stomach bubbles with toxic waste. I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind.

I rake the leaves out of my throat.

Maybe she won’t get in the trouble I did, maybe he’ll listen to her. Maybe I had better stop thinking about it before I go nuts.

I feel like any minute a guy in a lavender suit will burst into the room with a microphone and bellow, “Another alternate-reality moment brought to you by Adolescence!”

The time has come to arm-wrestle some demons. Too much sun after a Syracuse winter does strange things to your head, makes you feel strong, even if you aren’t.

Some part of me has planned this, a devious internal compass pointed to the past.

I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way?

A small, clean part of me waits to warm and burst through the surface. Some quiet Melindagirl I haven’t seen in months. That is the seed I will care for.

I ride like I have wings. I am not tired. I don’t think I’ll ever have to sleep again.

I don’t feel like hiding anymore. A breeze from the open window blows my hair back and tickles my shoulders. This is the first day warm enough for a sleeveless shirt. Feels like summer.

The words fall like nails on the floor, hard, pointed.

Metal hands, hot knife hands.

My hand quivers. I want to insert the glass all the way through his throat, I want to hear him scream.

My tree is definitely breathing; little shallow breaths like it just shot up through the ground this morning.

The new growth is the best part.

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It wasn’t my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not going to let it kill me. I can grow.

I look at my homely sketch. It doesn’t need anything. Even through the river in my eyes I can see that. It isn’t perfect and that makes it just right.

The tears dissolve the last block of ice in my throat. I feel the frozen stillness melt down through the inside of me, dripping shards of ice that vanish in a puddle of sunlight on the stained floor. Words float up.

In her book The Heart of a Woman, Maya Angelou wrote, “If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”