Blue Rabbit
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Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Haley bent over her tray, preoccupied with building a small tower out of toothpicks, the ends of the bottom ones impaled side-by-side on the Styrofoam of her plate. She could feel someone watching her, but she ignored the stare and continued to assemble battlements.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” asked Erika.
“Aren’t you?” asked Haley, glancing over at her friend’s tray. Erika had eaten most of her food, but that was hardly remarkable as she’d only put a few spoonfuls on her plate.
“You could both use the extra weight,” said Nathan, his mouth full.
“I could not.” Erika shook out her long black hair and sighed. “I barely fit into my grey jeans anymore.”
Sandra scowled. “You’re just saying that to make us say ‘Oh no, Erika, you don’t need to lose any weight,’ aren’t you? As if you needed any more self-esteem.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Nathan. “You both look perfect.”
“You look disgusting,” said Erika. “Swallow before you speak.”
“What are you, his mother?”
“I don’t know how you can eat at all,” said Haley. “This is stupid. It’s not going to work. We’re going to end up like....” She felt a flutter in her stomach, and the cafeteria began to blur a little around her. She concentrated on the white walls and grey tables, the straight-backed metal chairs and the colorful array of happily chattering students sitting on them.
Then she started to notice the stares. A girl she took English with gazed at her over a book. A couple of boys she’d had chem with last year sat next to Drew Henderson, the three of them muttering together and casting her occasional glances, their expressions guarded and suspicious. She even caught Laurie, a cheerleader she’d gotten along well with last year, casting her a mistrusting look as she went by.
At Haley’s table, her brother Dorian ate steadily without lifting his eyes, the spitting image of their father, although scrawnier and much less intimidating. Sandra played with her mashed potatoes. Erika twirled a lock of black hair, which must have taken hours to straighten out of its natural tight curls, around her finger. Nathan ate like a starving stray dog. And she, Haley, assembled her toothpick tower.
“We’re going to be fine,” said Nathan. “And after tonight, the nightmare’s over.”
“We need you. We need everyone,” said Erika. “No going back.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m not.” Haley tried to add another toothpick to her tower, but her hands shook so badly that she decided not to risk the structural integrity of the section she’d already built.
The lunch period ended. They got up and went to dump their trays. What little Haley had eaten sat ill in her stomach, and the emptiness sat even more ill.
Nathan intercepted her on the way out of the cafeteria. The other students swerved around them, casting them the usual suspicious looks. Haley shivered.
“You okay, Haley?” he asked.
The way he said her name gave her stomach a different sort of flutter. His voice wrapped around it somehow, warm and comforting. She shrugged.
“Should I be?”
He shook his head. “No. Probably not.” He brushed his overgrown hair out of his eyes, looking around as though checking whether anyone could hear them. “We have to do it, though.”
“I’m not chickening out. I’m just... I’ll be fine. See you after school.” She took Dorian’s arm and they left the cafeteria, negotiating their way between the other students.
They reached their history classroom and slipped in unnoticed, taking two adjacent seats at the back. They had managed to work out a way to attend all the same classes, with special permission from the school principal. Dorian had already been held back two years, and he did much better when he could work with Haley. Sandra also took this class, but she was running late today, as usual. Haley hadn’t seen where she’d gotten off to.
The teacher, Mr. Redwood, began to drone on about some war or other. Sandra always talked about how handsome he was. He was okay-looking, Haley supposed, but too old. Thirty at least. She tapped her pencil on her desk, glancing over at Dorian, who was doodling on a corner of notebook paper. He had trouble concentrating even on normal days. One of them had to know what the hell was going on, though. She couldn’t have them both failing history.
Haley heaved herself with difficulty into the here-and-now, pushing back her anxieties and focusing her eyes on Mr. Redwood. Step one accomplished. Now to make sense of the words....
A crumpled-up paper landed on her desk. Compulsively, Haley caught it and slipped it out of sight. She and the others in the gang habitually passed notes, but she only shared this class with Dorian, who hadn’t looked up from doodling on his notebook, and Sandra, who’d yet to make an appearance.
Carefully Haley spread out the note on top of her open history book so that it looked like she was reading about the Civil War. Not that she knew whether they were still on that topic or not.
We know what you did to Mike Miyake.
Haley gasped and jerked, dropping the note as if it had burned her. Everyone in the class turned to stare at her. She started to shake; a deep, pulsing shiver that echoed from toes to fingertips. Her vision grew blurry again.
“Something you’d like to share with the class?” asked Mr. Redwood.
“I need to go to the nurse’s office,” Haley choked out. Dorian’s expression had frozen in shock; he wouldn’t be any help. She had to get out of here. She felt like the walls were closing in on her. One of the girls in front of her whispered something to her neighbor without taking her eyes off of Haley.
“Go ahead,” said Mr. Redwood, although he clearly didn’t believe she needed a nurse.
Haley barely made it out of the classroom. She could see the hallway that would take her to the nurse’s office, off to her right, but it narrowed as she watched, and the floor tilted alarmingly.
Someone found her a little while later and went to call someone else. Her surroundings confused and overwhelmed her, but she thought that a big crowd had gathered to gawk at her.
Sometime later, she found herself carried to the nurse’s office. She couldn’t stand, couldn’t sit, couldn’t concentrate on anything the nurse said, and when a strong pair of hands tried to push her back onto the examination table, she forgot where she was and started screaming.
“Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me!”
A voice said something, but Haley didn’t understand.
“Where are my friends?”
“They’re right outside.”
That made Haley pull up short, breathe, and start to refocus on her location and the voice speaking to her. If her friends were right outside, she was safe. They didn’t make her feel happy, not anymore―but they made her feel safe, at least.
“Haley Turner?” asked the nurse, her face coming into focus. Haley centered her attention on a mole near the corner of the woman’s mouth. For some reason, it helped her ground herself. She nodded. She didn’t miss the nurse’s pursed lips. “You had an anxiety attack. You should go see your family doctor about this.”
“Can I leave now?”
“Stay until you feel certain you can walk,” said the nurse, although Haley could tell she didn’t want her there. No one wanted her or her friends near. Not since two weeks ago. Not since Mike.
She reached her friends in the corridor outside a while later, like the nurse had promised. They all reached out to her as if they could sense that she needed to feel them close. Dorian looked as though he’d been pulling at his hair, and Nathan had strained lines near his eyes that she’d never noticed before.
“Dorian found the note,” said Erika. It surprised Haley that Dorian had noticed there was a note.
“Assholes,” said Nathan. “They don’t know anything. They were just trying to mess with you.”
Haley closed her eyes briefly, taking in the smell of lingering perfume and spaghetti, the quiet muffled sounds of laughter and conversation from the students leaving school for the day. A big, warm hand rested on her shoulder. Haley opened her eyes and smiled gratefully at Nathan. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Nathan. “It’s not your fault.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Sandra.
Erika drove them to Sandra’s farm, a plot of land that had become caught between regular city blocks when Knoxville had expanded and swallowed up the neighboring farms. Sandra had an old tree-house about a quarter mile from her house, which her dad had built for her when she was little. Since Sandra’s younger brother Aiden had decided he was too old for tree-houses, it had fallen into disuse until the gang had appropriated it. They’d all helped repair it and Nathan had installed a lock for extra security. They’d even hauled up a couple of old couches with the springs spilling out; covered in mismatched cushions and throw pillows they’d collected from various houses, it was quite comfortable. The others helped Haley climb up, even though she insisted she could do it herself. Halfway up, she felt grateful for their steadying hands.
They sat without speaking for awhile. Sandra plugged in her mp3 player to the portable speakers and they filled in the silence with some ballad by Metallica. Haley could feel all of her friends around her. Sandra’s knee pressed against her leg; Dorian’s shoulder brushed hers; Nathan, sprawled out across the backrest of the couch, had his hand on her shoulder; Erika sat on a cushion on the floor with her back against Haley’s legs. It felt comforting.
“Maybe you should go see a therapist,” said Nathan.
“You only say that because your parents are psychologists,” said Sandra.
“I can’t talk to a therapist,” said Haley. “They wouldn’t believe me. And we agreed not to tell anyone, anyway.”
“You don’t have to tell them everything,” said Nathan. “Just tell them how you feel.”
“Tell them your feeeelings, Haley,” said Sandra in a mushy voice. “Be sensitive like Nathan.”
Nathan punched her. “We can’t just ignore how this shit’s affecting us. We’re not the same people we were a couple of weeks ago. We’re all a mess.”
“That’s why we have to solve this as soon as possible,” said Erika. “We’re still doing this. Tonight....”
“I can’t, okay? It’ll have to wait.” Haley could feel her breathing getting ragged again. “I can’t do it tonight.”
“She can’t deal with it,” said Nathan, resting a hand on her knee. “We’ll just postpone it, okay? It’ll work just as well in two weeks, with the new moon.”
Erika sighed and shook her head. “Okay. We’ll wait.”
Video_0254 - June (six months ago)
Haley, Nathan, Sandra, and Erika run across Nathan’s lawn, shrieking every time they cross through the sprinklers. The camera shakes a little at first as the cameraman climbs onto the porch to avoid the water and obtain a better angle. Haley slips on the wet grass on her second crossing and receives a face-full of water. The others laugh at her and she gets to her feet, sputtering.
“Ow! That hurt!”
The others laugh harder. “Lord, you should see your face,” said Erika, holding her stomach.
Haley stomps off toward the camera, pretending to be angry, but the others can’t see her face and her mischievous smile.
“Aw, come on, Hay, don’t get upset,” says Nathan.
“She’s just pretending,” says Erika.
Haley crouches in the mud at the base of the porch, winking at the camera. Sandra’s the first one to realize what she’s going to do.
“Run!” she says. “She’s going to―”
But swiftly, Haley flips around, lobbing a good-sized mud pie onto Erika. It stains her new white bikini and splatters her chin.
“Shit!” says Erika. Now Nathan’s laughing at her, too, until another mud pie slams him in the back.
“Don’t call me Hay!” says Haley.
“Hay is for horses,” says Nathan.
Haley throws another mud pie at his face. He ducks and runs after her. Haley screams and escapes.
Sandra, who’s remained adjacent to the conflict, seems a little disappointed that she chose to go out of range of the mud pies and be ignored. She goes back toward the sprinkler, visibly uncomfortable.
Over by the fence in the back of the yard, Nathan catches up to Haley and seizes her around the waist, swinging her up easily under his arm. She struggles, but he returns to the sprinkler and holds her there, screeching, until the spray of water comes around and hits her in the face. Before the spray comes around a second time, Haley manages to free herself and escape behind Sandra. Erika’s combing her hair with her fingers, apparently bored with the childish game. Nathan approaches the camera.
“The spare trunks are over there, man,” he says, pointing to someplace off-screen.
“I know,” says Dorian from behind the camera.
“Afraid to show off your sexy torso?” Nathan grins. “Come on, Dorian. It’s too hot.”
“No, thanks. I need to film.”
“Just leave the camera there. Come and have a little fun. See, there are scantily-clad girls over there, and they let you pick them up and throw mud pies at you.”
“That’s not fun to me.”
Nathan shrugs. “Okay. If you change your mind....” He heads back toward the girls. Erika has stretched out in a dry patch of grass. Nathan dashes at Sandra, who seems intensely relieved to be included as she fights him off, squealing. Haley comes to her aid. Together, they tackle Nathan to the ground and hold him there as the sprinklers swish over him.
The video zooms in on each of their faces, lingering there for a moment. Nathan laughs even as the water spurts into his mouth. Sandra smiles tremulously, her expression torn between tenderness and discomfort with this foreign activity. Haley gleefully resists Nathan’s halfhearted attempts to break free, her eyes glinting as she tries not to slide them down Nathan’s lean brown chest. Erika’s hand, shading her eyes from the glare of the sun, blocks the camera’s view of her face. Then the video zooms out and looks up at the sky, where a flock of ducks flies by. It follows their progress until they vanish from sight, while Nathan and Sandra and Haley continue to yell. It sounds as though someone has splashed water onto Erika. Then the black specks that were ducks in the distance fade into blue and the video ends.
