Diane Cook - Man V. Nature - Stories

I want to be fondled. I want someone to press me somewhere too hard. I’m hot with shame. The good kind.

I turn to Clara. She never talks because her parents are professors. She still wears girls’ undershirts, and she can’t quit horses. She looks about as far away from the dance as a dead star.

“What do you think Mr. Ryan tastes like?”

Clara turns red. I do too.

My math teacher is breaking up a couple by getting in between them, his groin brushing a junior in a glitter skirt. He has a chestnut beard and glassy eyes. Sharp shoulders. I’m imagining inspecting the pale skin under those fine dark hairs of his forearm as he leans over my desk to tell me what x is. He must taste like just-dug rocks. My mouth waters. His calculus fingers wiggle toward me. He says I’m a ripe pear. He is very close. My ears ring. Pears are rotten.

I smack my head to stop my dirty movie.

That’s when I spot Marni tossing her hair around the way women do on daytime talk shows. She’s screaming at her boyfriend, Mack. She’s louder than the music, and it sounds like one long wee . Marni is attractive and fat, with an unnaturally narrow waist and unnaturally big boobs and ass. Her cheeks and lips are plump, but somehow her jaw is sharp, and she looks like a sexy Victorian porcelain doll. She wears her hair big and together it all works to make her seem normal-sized with a lot to grab. But I’ve seen her getting into her pajamas and I’ve seen her gullet a whole pizza at a birthday party, and there is nothing normal-sized about her. She is a magnificent cow. She was my best friend. I wrote her twenty-six letters this summer, and she wrote me none. We haven’t talked since middle school.

Mack grabs some of that big hair. He pulls her to him, mouth wide, rooting for hers. Marni raises her hand. Maybe she’ll stick fingers in there, swirl them around. I want her to. But she scratches at his face and hauls herself across the crowded floor. Couples part for her because somehow she is revered; rumor is she’ll be at least nominated for homecoming, though she won’t beat anyone on cheerleading. In the corner of the gym Theresa and Hill, Marni’s new bests, detangle from their dates. They’re getting felt up, but they somehow know Marni is on the move and they follow. I guess that’s what it means to be bests now. I only know what’s happening because I’m spying from bleacher land.

“I wonder what that was all about,” I say to Clara. My voice is conspiratorial. I’m trying to make gossip. But the dead star barely shrugs.

My knee quivers like a compass needle.

I know Marni’s favorite spot.

Dancing couples step all over me like I’m a cat underfoot. It takes me two whole songs to get across the gym. I throw my shoulder against the rusty door. It squawks.

The hallway is quiet but full of couples pressing against lockers. Skirts inch up thighs; pants creep low. I can’t tell if it’s just style or if they’re all about to do it . Where are the teachers? What’s that smell? I want to grab all their hair as I run, and give a terrific yank. I want to sweep their legs and watch them go down.

The girls’ bathroom is a floor above, at the end of the hall. I hear thudding and I sprint up the stairs. The ruckus gets louder down the corridor. I hear a thump and then an ooph, another thump and an ooph. From behind the door Marni shrills, “Harder!” and it’s like she’s in my ear.

I crack the door and see Marni lying on the floor, coat spread under her, her hair splayed out. She looks romantic and princesslike, and then Theresa lands a socked foot hard onto Marni’s protruding fat gut.

“Ooph.” Marni’s cherub face bunches. Hill stomps her size nines down. They both say, “Ooph,” then Hill wheezes like it’s hot.

“Come on,” Marni growls. She reaches for Theresa’s leg just as Theresa lets it drop. Marni’s head snaps back on the floor. A sick crunch.

I gasp. The three heads jolt. They see it’s just me.

“What do you want, Fart?” Marni sneers.

She’s lying there: beaten, regal. Cracks in the windows make shimmering webs. The heater is clanging. The stomping girls are huffing. Everyone is waiting. I want to join, is what I want. I want to land some full-force kicks. I want to miss and get her shoulder, her head. I want to jam a toothbrush down her throat, make her thin.

“You’re going to get in trouble,” I say. I try to sound loud and sarcastic, but I don’t.

The girls exchange looks and laugh too loudly; one big fake ha each. It’s effortlessly coordinated.

Theresa plants a foot on Marni’s belly, claiming her like an explorer. “She’s in trouble all right,” she says, arching her back, sticking her gut out, rubbing it. She strains her face and moans.

Marni on Mack. Mack in Marni. A little Mack and Marni. My head rushes. I want to watch, hear the sounds.

Marni, a scowl storming, pushes Theresa, who topples down to the tile and stays down, plays dead.

“Get out,” Marni roars at everyone, but I’m the one who runs.

Outside the gym, I find a gaggle of teachers gossiping. A flask is tucked when I skid up to them, breathless. I tell them Marni Duke is getting beat up in the second-floor girls’. I can’t even tell them why. We’re just fourteen.

I’m hot with shame. The stomach kind. The kind that hurts. I run home, punching low tree limbs as I go.

In homeroom on Monday, everyone whispers about a fight in the girls’ bathroom. The rumor is Marni. The rumor is one girl held her down while another kicked her. People gasp. Marni from Homecoming? Coos of sympathy all around.

I’m summoned to the office.

Marni, Theresa, and Hill slouch in the lobby, and the principal calls me in. The girls glare as I close the door.

He asks, “Gabby, what did you see?”

They glare through glass, and I can’t speak until the principal lowers the blinds. As they fall, Hill raises a fist. I catch Marni’s eye, and it’s an eye so familiar I’m momentarily grateful to have its attention. Then the blinds are down. It’s just me.

The principal wants my version.

“I don’t have a version,” I say.

He sighs. “Just tell me what you saw.”

I tell him what I saw — Marni on the ground, Hill and Theresa stomping.

“Where?” he asks.

I touch my stomach, watch him jot on a notepad. “But I ran,” I say. “I don’t know anything else.”

“Did they say anything to you?”

I shake my head no. I can’t say.

He stares, pen poised.

I clear my throat, speak sideways. “Marni had a fight with her boyfriend right before. You could talk to him?”

The principal is confused. “Was he there?”

The swirl pattern of the carpet is moving; it wants to crawl up my leg. I shake my head again. “No.”

“And how do you know about this fight?”

I shrug and look at my hands, the skinny fingers and fat tips. They’re like frog hands; sticky, creepy. They’d ruin a lily pad. I smooth my strained jeans. Something smells. I’m sure it’s me.

“I watched them,” I answer.

The principal nods, leafs through a file of papers — the paper version of me.

I’m dismissed.

I brace myself for the lobby, for the baseball bat I’m sure will meet my skull when I enter it, but Marni and the girls are gone.

I walk to the nurse’s office and puke on her desk. She sends me home. I go the backyard route so no one will see me.

In homeroom Tuesday, everyone whispers about how there was no fight between Marni and Hill and Theresa. People nod. They’re bests, you know. Who lied? The rumor is me. “Gabby,” girls whisper conspiratorially, ready to hate. “Who?” Uncertain glances from desk to desk. “Gabrielle?” Heads shake. No recognition. I’m sitting right there.