Megan Abbott - The Fever

Her voice speeding up, like her mother’s did when she got excited. Trying to help him see something.

“Like she was mad at me,” she went on. “Even though I knew she wasn’t. But it was like she was. She looked so mad.”

“Why would she be mad at you, Deenie?” he said, stopping the car too long at the blinking red, someone honking. “She wasn’t. You had nothing to do with this.”

She looked at him, her eyes dark and stricken, like she’d been hit.

It just wasn’t a day for going to class.

It was nearly sixth period and, so far, Eli had made it only to French II—he never missed it, spent all forty-two minutes with his eyes anchored to the soft swell of Ms. Loll’s chest. The way she pushed her hair up off her neck when she got frustrated, her dark nails on that swirling tattoo.

He never missed French.

But the idea of going to history, of sitting in class with everyone gripped in the talk of Lise Daniels and her rabid-dog routine and his sister seeing it—it all knotted inside him.

He didn’t like to imagine what Deenie must have been feeling to ditch school, which wasn’t something she ever did. She was the kind of girl who burst into tears when her fourth-grade teacher called her Life Sciences folder “unkempt.”

So he found himself back behind the school, where the equipment manager kept the rusting bins of rubber balls, hockey pucks, and helmets.

The air heavy with Sani Sport and ammonia and old sweat, it reminded him of the smell when he’d put his skates on the radiator after a game, scorching them to dryness. As cold as it was, he could still smell it, and it soothed him.

He was sitting on the railing of the loading ramp when he heard a skitter, then the shush of a heavy skirt.

“You want some?” a crackly voice said.

He turned and saw that Skye girl again, leaning against the brick wall, a beret tugged over her masses of blond hair.

She was holding a brown cigarette in her hand, a sweet scent wafting from her, mixed with girl smells like hairspray and powder.

“What?” he said, stalling for time, watching her walk closer to him, her vinyl boots glossy and damp.

She waved the cigarette at him.

He wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t smell like pot. He wouldn’t have wanted it if it was. It affected his play. A few times, though, he’d smoked at night, at a party, then picked up his skates, headed to the community rink. Coach had given him a key and he could go after closing, the ice strewn with shavings from the night’s free-skate, the hard cuts from a pickup game. He could be as slow as he wanted.

He’d spin circuits, the gliding settling him, the feeling in his chest and the black sky through the tall windows.

Sometimes he felt like it was the only time he truly breathed. It reminded him of being six and his mom first taking him out on the ice, kneeling down to hold his quaking ankles with her purple mittens, stiff with snow.

“It’s all-natural,” Skye said, returning the cigarette to her mouth. Her lavender lips. “I don’t believe in putting bad things inside me. It’s musk root. It helps you achieve balance.”

“My balance is good,” he said, the smell of her cigarette drifting toward him again. Spicy, cloying. He kind of liked it but didn’t want to. “But thanks.”

“I heard Deenie went to the hospital,” she said. “And that Lise’s mom’s freaking out and that Lise almost died.”

Everyone knew things so fast, phones like constant pulses under the skin.

“I don’t really know,” he said. “You’d have to ask her.”

She nodded, then seemed to shudder a little, her narrow shoulders bending in like a bird’s.

“It’s funny how you never think about your heart,” she said.

“What?”

“About your real heart,” she said. “Not when you’re young like us. I heard her heart stopped for a minute. I never thought about my heart before. Did you?”

Eli didn’t say anything but slid off the ramp. Looking at her hands, he saw they were shaking, and he wondered for a second if she was going to be sick.

“It’s funny,” she said, “because it’s almost like I felt it before it happened. I’ve known Lise a while. We used to share bunks at sleepaway camp. She has a very strong energy, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said, heading toward the door, the blast of heat from inside.

“This morning I was waiting for Lise at her locker. I had my hand on the locker door and it was so freaky. I felt this energy shoot up my body.”

She lifted her free hand and fluttered it from her waist to her neck.

He watched her.

“Like a little jolt. Right to the center of me.”

She let her hand, blue from the cold, drift down to her stomach and rest, the dark-red tassels of her scarf hanging there.

“But that’s how I am,” she said. “My aunt says I was born with dark circles on my feet, like a tortoiseshell. Which means I feel things very deeply.”

There was only one period left and suddenly Deenie couldn’t remember where she was supposed to be.

She’d thought school would be easier, busier. She was trying to get the picture of Lise out of her head. The angry crack down her face. Lise was never angry at anyone. Even when she should be.

But now Deenie wished she were at home instead, sitting on the sunken L-shaped sofa watching movies with her dad, her fingers greased with puff pastry.

And so she walked aimlessly, the sound of her squeaking sneakers loud in her ears. A haunted feeling to go with the hauntedness of the day.

It wasn’t until Mrs. Zwada, silvered hair like a corona, called out to her from the biology lab that she realized that was where she was supposed to be.

For a moment, Deenie just stood in the doorway, the room filled with gaping faces. The penetrating gaze of Brooke Campos, her useless lab partner who never did the write-ups and refused to touch the fetal pig.

“Honey, I think you should sit down,” Mrs. Zwada said, her brightly lacquered face softer than Deenie had ever seen it. “You can just sit and listen.”

“No,” Deenie said, backing up a little.

Everyone in the class seemed to be looking at her, all their faces like one big face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to find Gabby.”

She began to edge into the hall, but Mrs. Zwada’s expression swiftly hardened into its usual rictus.

“There’s going to be some order to this day,” she said, grabbing Deenie by the shoulder and ushering her inside.

So Deenie sat and listened to all the talk of mitosis, watched the squirming cells on the PowerPoint. The hard forks of splitting DNA, or something.

A few minutes before class ended, Brooke Campos poked her in the neck from behind.

Leaning forward, breath sugared with kettle corn, she whispered in Deenie’s ear.

“I heard something about you. And a guy.”

The bell rang, the class clattered to life, and Brooke rose to her feet.

Looking down at Deenie, she grinned. “But I don’t believe it.”

“What?” Deenie said, looking up at her, her face hot. “What?”

Her winter hat yanked over her long hair, hair nearly to her waist, Gabby was standing at her locker. Again, with Skye.

Until last fall, Deenie never really knew Skye, even though she’d been in classes with her since seventh grade. Skye was never in school choir, yearbook, French club, plays. She never helped decorate the homecoming float.

But she became Gabby’s friend in that way that can happen, because the girl with the cool boots always finds the girl with the occasional slash of pink in her hair. The two of them like a pair of exotic birds dipping over the school’s water fountains—you knew they would find each other. And, about a year ago, they had.