Effigy

I wrote this to get rid of writer's block (It didn't work) on another story I was working on. Thinking about following it up with a second story. Tried, purposely, to keep the main char androgenous.

 

I go to the cemetery at night. I don’t go there to have sex, or do drugs or drink behind the headstones like some kids. I go to visit her. No one ever notices I’m even there most of the time, and when they do, they don’t care. I go every night, even if it’s raining or bitterly cold. It’s the only place I’ve ever felt I belonged.

            My name is Effigy (I’ve never been called anything else, except my last name) and at 15 years old, I am the disappointment of my whole family. I’m reminded of this every time there’s a family reunion, every time I wake up late for school, every single day. Every mistake I make is met by an insult. I guess after a whole lifetime of this, you learn to live with it, but being told you’re not good enough every day just makes any and all hopes of a Cinderella fairy-tale ending vanish.

            I get up at dawn to clean the dishes from my family’s dinner the night before. They’ve all been soaking in the sink, and I was supposed to do them last night, but I fell asleep too early. I crawl out from under the thin grey sheet on my bare mattress and open the window. It’s one of those types that pushes out at the bottom and has a wooden frame around it. I’ve never been able to get all the dirt off of it, and I’ve never really wanted to. My world is ugly, so I’d rather be shielded from it than have to see it first thing every morning. My nightshirt has yet another tear in the bottom of it. It’s a threadbare t-shirt from a radio station, the logo long faded away. It reaches just barely to my knees, and has holes and tears in the sleeves and hems. Luckily, it’s long-sleeved, but in a few more months, it won’t matter much. My bare legs are white as ever, still smudged with dirt from last night. I stand up and shakily wander across the bare hardwood floor to the broken mirror in the corner. My hair needs to be brushed.

            I open the closet and pull out a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, also from a radio station. I pull my only sweatshirt over my head and set to work with the bit of black eyeliner I found in mother’s bathroom trash. I draw an outline of my face on the mirror, following my reflection exactly, and then neatly print the words ‘I hate you’ underneath. I pull a brush through my tangled dirt brown tresses, badly in need of a cut, as father would say. Today is relatively warm, about 40 degrees, so I’ll go without socks. I can wear them tomorrow then, when it’s supposed to rain. My only usable shoes are a pair of old converse high tops that I was lucky enough to be given (quite by mistake, I am sure) as a Christmas present the year before. My last pair had long since been retired, hanging in the closet, only to be used for my midnight runs and nightly errands. After tugging on the shoes and tying the still-white laces, I walk outside my room, leaving the bare walls behind, and entering the well-decorated hallway that mother is so proud of. Family portraits line the wall, with the faces of two siblings smiling back, and in the far back, a small picture of all of us together as young children.

            I close and lock the door, pulling the chain with my house keys back around my neck after that’s done. The kitchen awaits me, another well-decorated room, walls painted a bright sunrise yellow, and curtains with roses on them, report cards and letters from Letty at college stuck with magnets on the fridge. I sigh and pull up the sleeves of my sweatshirt, hesitantly thrusting my arms into the ice cold water to find the sponge. I find it eventually, under the blade from the blender. I’d long ago learned how to safely search for these things without cutting myself, by blindly moving my cautious fingers through the murky water an inch at a time until I felt anything, and then slowly working my way around it. I pull out the sponge and do a rushed job on the dishes, using only a single squirt of soap, so I could use the second on my face if I still had time before anyone got up. I finally place the last dish in the rack and drain the sink. I mix the extra soap with water and spread the warm suds over my face, enjoying the way it softens my skin. I rinse with a wet dishrag and dry with the towel before setting to work on drying the plates and bowls.

            After the dishes are finished, I look in the fridge, thinking perhaps I’ll find a bit of something to eat. Celery. Great. Everything else is labeled or still sealed in its original package, so celery is the only thing I can get away with. Not long after I grab 2 sticks of it and sit at the table, I hear waking sounds, including alarm clocks and rushing to get ready. Father is a partner in a very prestigious law firm, Mother is involved in fashion design and Jake is busy getting ready for his first day at school with his eighth girlfriend of the year. It’s amazing how many girls will go out with a cute guy on the football team, even if he’s just a bench-warmer.

            I, on the other hand, have nothing at all special about me. I’m anything but good-looking, and my “emotional disorder” as Mother calls it, only helps in making me the family outcast. I finish the last of the vegetable in my hand and steal a slice of bread while I get ready for morning chores. I shove the bread in my sweatshirt, hoping to save it for lunch. With broom in hand, I start the stove for eggs and bacon, then finish sweeping the remainder of the kitchen floor (another chore I neglected last night).

Jake saunters into the kitchen, early as usual, with his letterman jacket on, backpack slung over his shoulder, gym bag held in his hand. He’s not perfect by a long shot, but he’s found a way to avoid being shunned by the family. Letty found a way too, but neither of them would ever tell me. I guess it wouldn’t matter even if they had. It’s so sad how we got along so well as little kids, until it happened, and we each splintered into our own corners of the world. Mine just happens to include exile.

I set a cup of instant coffee and a plate of eggs and bacon at his spot at the table, only to be informed that my eggs were overdone. I fixed two more plates wordlessly and left them on the counter with the rest of the coffee. I left, grabbing the grocery list on my way out the back door.

In the hour I’d spent in the kitchen, the temperature had dropped below freezing and a light layer of snow covered the ground like a thin sheet of white ashes. Wonderful. I pick up my backpack from the spot I’d left it in the shed behind the garage and set out for school. Any other kid whose brother owned a car would get a ride in this weather, but not me. I’m not any other kid. I slam the mesh gate behind me on my way into the alley.

The familiar backdoors and graffiti’d walls glare back, dogs chained to the fences barely lift their heads as I pass. The liquor store is just opening. I step out onto the main street and round the corner, hands in pockets, head down, avoiding contact with early morning people at any cost. Down the road the other direction is the cemetery, a secluded plot of land almost overgrown with trees and vines. Plots are still bought and used, but it’s mostly older burials than recent ones. Since it happened, I’ve acquired a strange obsession with the place; perhaps like some obsess over church or work. I don’t know.

I make it to the front steps of the school, the same tall, cinder block building this city has used for it’s educational purposes since it was founded. I sit on the front steps as always, waiting for the dreaded bell to ring, and the impossible classes to begin. At least it’s Friday, a day when most kids are planning at the last minute what to do and whom to meet over the weekend. This also happens to be the day of the week mother and father usually go out at night, and Jake has his girlfriend over. This gives me a chance to stay out as long as I want, because when our parents get home, they’re so drunk they can’t recall if I’m there or not-not that they ever would anyway. Of course, Jake wants to be alone in the house with his “flavor of the week” and nobody ever allows me anywhere near guests anyway, so my choices are to either sit in the room and listen to Jake’s love life, or go somewhere else.

I remember being locked up sometimes in a closet or a small space of some sort when the neighbors would come by. I’d sit and wait to be let out after they were gone, sometimes falling asleep in wait, only to be shaken back and screamed at for not finishing my chores before they came to visit, as if I was psychic, and could tell they’d be there. Sometimes I think if it hadn’t happened, I never would have ended up like this. But, it did, and I am the way I am. Nothing will change that.

A girl sits in front of me, tossing her hair over her shoulders, talking on a cell phone, obviously waiting for her friends to get to school. I stare at the step below my feet. I think about last night; I’d gone out as usual after school with the grocery list, come home, and the neighbors were there, so I snuck in the back and put the bags on the counter, ready to sneak down the hall when father came around and shoved me back out the door. He said Child Services was there, and that I shouldn’t be around. I ran as far as I could. If they found out I wasn’t how I was supposed to be, the whole family would be ripped apart, which, for some reason, wasn’t something I wanted. But I did as I was told and ran to the corner store, searched the slots in the gumball machines and payphones for quarters, as always, found enough change to buy a can of soup, went to the park and opened it with my pocket knife (an object I had fortunately come across a while back) and drank straight out of the can. Occasionally, I’d use one of those fires the hobos set up in the back alleys to heat up whatever I’d bought to eat that day, usually soup or a drink or sometimes even a pack of lunch meat (though I usually had to save up a few days for that). Of course, I didn’t always buy my own food with money I found on the streets. Sometimes I had to prepare dinner, and I’d just eat the leftovers, but when dinner was take-out or store-bought, which it usually was, I was on my own. I never even asked for food. And they never offered.

I ended up going back to the garage (the second half of my living quarters, just as dismal as the bedroom) after the Child Services people were gone for sure. I grabbed a can of spray-paint and aimed it at the wall, putting the final touches on the random mural type thing I’d been doing. I don’t know where the paints came from. Some I picked up off the street if one of the gang-bangers forgot them, but most of them had been there for a while, since I can remember. Mother used to spray-paint bookshelves and things to match the other things in the house, I remember, but she’d stopped since it happened, and told me I could have the garage and everything in it. ‘Everything in it’ consisted of some old boards, an army cot, and the paints. I slept out in the garage sometimes in the summer, but it’s just too cold now.

As I was rinsing the paint from under my fingernails, I heard her call to me. It wasn’t odd to hear her call from the house, but I’d found when I looked at my watch that it was later than usual. I walked hurriedly down the street, silent as always, to the cemetery, slipped between the creaky metal doors into the silent yard. She stopped calling and smiled, as always, her ghostly form rising to welcome me, the sound of her steps a whisper on the wind. “You’re upset.” She said, her voice resounding in my mind, although it hadn’t traveled through the air. I was the only one who could hear her, speak to her, and even see her. I’m sure others could if they believed she was real, but I was the only one that I knew of who, after it happened, could communicate with her. She stopped at the edge of her plot and backed away as I sat down before her.

“Yes.” It wasn’t words, it never had been. It was simply a thought, thought out so loudly I wished her to hear it. “The Language of Souls” she called it. I’d found it strange talking with a ghost at first, but it’s more comfortable than saying things out loud. “I was.”

“What’s wrong?” She said, folding her legs beneath her as she floated down to the ground.

            I shook my head. “You know they think I’m crazy. Even I think I’m crazy sometimes.” My lips stayed sealed tight.

The bell rings, and my memories are forgotten in an instant. On to first class. I’ve been late to first period since the second day of school, when I’d discovered that the seniors loved to torture underclassmen. I know at some schools it’s not like this, but it is here, and out of fear, I always hung back as the other underclassmen herded into the halls, seemingly eager to get beat up (either that or to get it over with early). I may end up in detention quite often because of it, but I think it’s better than getting shoved in a trash can or made to carry books, among other unspeakable horrors I’d seen survivors of. I hang back as usual today, and wait until the bell rings to head towards History. There was an assignment due today. I didn’t do it. I hardly ever do. Hello detention.

I sit at my assigned desks for the first 4 classes until lunch. Lunch is worse than After-School Detention (ASD). Being a loner in a lunch line is next to impossible, but since it’s free lunch, I always load up and stand the torture of being around people who treat me as if I don’t exist. The rations, however, are meager, and most of the time, unrecognizable. Today I can tell the difference between the meat and vegetables, because they’re not both the same grey-green color. The cafeteria must have gotten in a new shipment just yesterday. I quickly consume the glop and sit back against my corner to think about last night again.

“You’re not crazy, _. You have a gift.” She’d said, staring at me with translucent eyes.

I shook my head. “Prove it to me-better yet, prove it to them. I’m starting to believe you aren’t really…” I couldn’t bring myself to think the word hard enough for her to understand it. Hurting the only friend I had wasn’t worth it.

“Real?” She wrapped a see-through strand of hair around her non-opaque finger sadly.

I couldn’t meet her eerie gaze, and stared at the ground. “They’re right, aren’t they? You’re just something in my mind.” I looked up, half-wishing she’d disappear and I’d see the world like everyone else did.

“You can’t believe that.” She pleaded with me. “I’ll try to prove I’m real, but you have to try to believe.” She reached out and placed her hand on mine. I felt nothing. I saw it slip through my flesh as if it were air. She pulled back out and shook her head sadly. “You’re fading. I can reach clear through you.”

“I know.”

She suddenly opened her mouth in excitement, a gesture I could barely understand. Spirits are hard to understand when they’re not “speaking.” “I’ll be right back, try to believe as hard as you can.” She disappeared into the ground, almost as if she’d vaporized instantly.

I sat for maybe half an hour in wait. Spirit time and mortal time are not the same, except when spirits come into the mortal world, not to mention the journey between the two wasn’t easy. I drew my knees to my chest and rested my chin on them, waiting. I fell asleep that way, and from there, I’m not quite sure what happened. The dream was all a blur, but I remember waking up for a brief second and seeing her face above me, no longer translucent, but mortal-looking, except the colors. The colors were reversed, as if someone had hit an “invert colors” button, like in computer class. Pale skin became a glowing sort of black-gray. Eyes became white-pink, even her dress had changed.

Lunch is over. I wander to my next class, still trying to uncover the memory of last night, but finding nothing; just a dark uncertain haze. I pass through the rest of school like a bird through a light rain, feeling out of place and confused, but still able to keep on course, to get through without any more mistakes.

ASD welcomes me; the book-covered walls of the library swallow me up like a child drinking a glass of milk after eating a peanut butter sandwich. I grab a book of poetry, limericks. I enjoy limericks very much, they’re short and usually funny, lighthearted and innocent, like children’s poems. I don’t believe I’ve ever written one, but I don’t write or read very much of anything, because I’m not exactly bright. Maybe I just enjoy the dumb poems because they’re written so childishly that even a second grader could understand them.

I’m not alone in ASD today. There’s a Goth sitting in the corner, dressed in black from head to toe, eyeliner dripping down his pale cheeks. If he thinks he looks dead, he’s wrong. He only looks mortally dead, not like spirits at all, but of course, I don’t believe it would be easy for him to pull off being see-through. There’s a Cheerleader at the front table, crying her eyes out to the librarian, swearing it was all a mistake; that she would never cheat on a test. She pouts one last time and resigns herself to the spot nearest the door. I pull my feet up into the chair I’m sitting in and cross them carefully, as if folding origami. Origami actually sounds like a cool idea right now. Cheerleader has taken out a fuzzy pen and a compact. Goth has begun drawing on his arm with a sharpie. I taste the bitterness of the permanent pen from 2 tables over, along with the strong scent of recently-smoked cigarettes. There’s a hole in the hem of the shirt I’m wearing. Great.

Our fourth addition arrives late, her red lipstick smudged, fishnets ripped and plaid skirt hanging at an odd angle. Rebel. She nods at the librarian and heads towards the very corner I’m sitting in, stopping at the table before, and dumping her bag with a loud “thud” and a heavy-sigh-eye-roll-this-is-so-not-fair-I-do-not-deserve-this performance, sits down. Cheerleader sniffs and pulls another tissue from her purse. Goth has written a line of words, probably poetry or song lyrics, around his wrist. I turn the page in my book. Four more funny little poems stare back at me from the next page, a black and white illustration on the neighboring one. I smile, unaware that Rebel has turned around to study me, or maybe the wall, but either way, she sneers and lets out a low chuckle. I look up in time to see Cheerleader cringe. What?

“They’re right. You are strange.” Rebel whispers to me. I’m strange? People talk about me? Whatever. I stare back down at the page. Fifteen minutes left until I have to leave. She tries again. “Why are you so quiet?”

I look up again. That’s not a question I hear very often. Everybody knows why, so they never ask. This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that nobody ever talks to me anyway. “Just am.”

She nods. “That’s cool. What’d you do to get locked in here?”

“Skipped an assignment.” I answer. I wonder what her point is in talking to me. Detention is supposed to be quiet, but I guess she doesn’t care.

“That’s all?”

“Came in late too. Doesn’t matter.”

“Man, this school is so ‘by the book’ it’s stupid. I ran in the hall and they threw the slip at me.” She grins. “So you’re a freak and a slacker?”

I shrug. I prefer not to label myself, because I’d come up with a lot worse than “freak” and “slacker”. How about crazy? Or hallucinogenic? Maybe psychotic? Also, I have no use for a label, because my social life is limited to the graveyard. That in itself is enough reason. She must be new at this school, but she’ll find out about what happened soon enough, and never speak to me again. I won’t blame her. I wouldn’t speak to me either.

 She pulls off one of her choker necklaces, the spiked one and runs her fingers over the metal, then turns back towards the front of the room. Goth stares. Cheerleader cringes again. I go back to reading the juvenile poems. The instant before the detention bell sounds (a timer, set on the librarian’s desk), she turns back to me. “For the record, I don’t think you’re crazy.” The bell sounds, and she’s gone before I’ve re-shelved the book. Cheerleader finally stops crying as she emerges into the hall. Goth heads towards the student parking lot. The Harley with the flames is his, obviously.

I pull my backpack strap over my shoulder and begin the walk of three blocks to the grocery store. The manager of the store knows father, as everyone does, so all I have to do to pay for things is to flash my ID card, and they put it on a tab. The parents set up this system about 2 months after it happened, once they learned the surplus of the money they gave me was going towards my own food. This way, they can see everything I buy, and if something on that list should happen to disappear, I get punished. I haven’t bought anything I wasn’t supposed to since I thought of the change on the floor routine. The punishments were never worth an extra package of frozen vegetables or canned soup. It never mattered, because they made me vomit after the punishment was over, anyway.

            Milk, plain bagels, spaghetti noodles. Looks like I’m going to have to cook a big meal soon. Not tonight, I hope. I need time off. I finish off the list, not being able to find Mother’s favorite ice cream, as it’s not in stock (I’ll probably get punished for that too), and head to the manager’s office. He nods to me as he counts up everything and sends the order to register three. I go grab the receipt after showing my ID, the mandatory ID the school makes you get every year, along with your picture in the yearbook.

            Time to run the stuff home. I remember when I was little, Letty and Jake and I would all stop the ice cream truck at our corner and sit under the tree, eating the bowl of strawberries Mother had picked from the garden behind the house (It no longer exists, though). I remember playing in the sprinklers and shooting each other with squirt guns in the summer. Summer, the exact opposite of winter. I reach the house and crawl in the back door, as usual and get right to putting the groceries away. As soon as it’s done, it’s time to go out. Out where? I don’t know. Anywhere far away from here. I am not staying here.

            I go right back out the back door, cross the dead and now snow-covered yard, and head back down the alley. I’m in a mood for the park. The park is the one untouched spot in this city, except for the basketball and tennis courts in the far right corner of it. Trees stand tall, having been in the same spot since before they were seen by man. A swing set stands by the basketball court, looking out of place, with holes worn into the dirt underneath from little kids’ feet. I remember swinging there, running around the trees, playing hide-and-seek. I had a special place no one ever found me, a hollow tree trunk I discovered shortly before it happened. Sometimes when I wanted to be alone, I’d go sit in its hollowed-out crater on a beach towel, my legs spread out before me, my back to the steep side of the hole.

            I guess I never thought I’d always be alone later on in life. I went to the same spot now, crawled into the warm, dry space, which was now just barely the right size to hold me. There, for the first and only time today, I let my tears fall. I think of the terrible nights I’d spent on the streets, acting as the homeless do, searching for money and stealing shirts from stands of free stuff. I remember the first time Mother screamed because I reminded her of the girl in the graveyard, the first time Father smacked me for speaking, when I was exiled to the empty room, formerly used for storage, and robbed of everything else.

I remember the first time she spoke to me. Emily Jenson’s ghost, the twelve year old girl who had died in the same killing spree her brother had begun, been raped and stabbed by her own brother. His first kill. When she told me who her brother was. When she asked me to talk to him. I remember the first day I looked in the mirror and saw that my face was much like hers. It seems so long ago, that it happened, that everything changed, and the family looked at me different, claimed I was a liar and a lunatic, and the doctors in the white coats said there was nothing wrong with my mind.

I sit for about an hour before realizing I haven’t eaten since lunch. My stomach is a hollow space most of the time, but I’m tired of being able to count every rib and feel every disk in my spine move under my skin. I crawl out and head for the corner store. There’s a grand total of sixty-five cents on the ground, two quarters, a dime, and a nickel. Looks like canned soup again. I step up to the counter just as the door opens again and Rebel strides in, more a mess than before. She looks around, wiping a bit of eyeliner from under her eyes. Her gaze settles on me and she smiles. “Whatchya buying?”

“Dinner.” I say, shoving the paid-for fifteen ounce can of soup in my pocket to warm it.

“Me too.” She stares at the form of the can. “That’s all you’re eating?”

I nod. “Yeah.” She’s still talking to me. I’ll take this as a good sign.

“Is that all you can afford?”

I stand still, giving no sign to indicate either a yes or a no.

“It is, isn’t it?” She asks, a look of concern on her face.

I nod, slowly, ashamedly.

She pulls me down an aisle with a quick jerk. “Load up. I have my dad’s American Express.”

“You don’t have to-“

“Do it.” She insists. I won’t blow my chances, although I feel like I’m using her for a meal. I grab a six-pack of coke and one of those pre-made meals they usually only sell at the deli counter in supermarkets. She takes the same thing, pays, and pulls me down the street to the library. “They let me eat in here, come on.” I have no other choice it seems, because her grip is unbreakable. Before I can protest, she’s pulled me through the door and to one of the tables near the front desk. She finally releases her death-grip, but I’m sure her black-painted nails have left a permanent bruise on my arm. She pops a can tab.

This is one of those moments when I don’t know what to say, so for lack of better words, I manage to say “Thank you.”

“Oh, it’s no problem.” She smiles at me again. “It’s the least I can do for someone like me.”

“What do you mean?”

She shakes her head. “Someone who can speak the Language of Spirits. I know you can.”

I stare at her. “You mean, you…”

“Have spoken to Emily.” She finishes the sentence. Not exactly what I was going to say, but still a good ending for it. “Don’t tell anyone.” She adds, pleading me.

“I won’t.” I promise.

“There are others like us you know, all over the world. I’ve met some of them, they called me. Emily asked me to find you last night after you talked to her.” She pauses and drinks a bit of coke, then swallows. “She said you were being mistreated and you needed a way out.”

I stare at her. She’s amazing, talking to me, of all people, and saying she’s just like me. Saying she knows.

“I’m sorry, there’s no other way to tell you this. I know it’s sudden.”

“No, it’s… it’s ok.” I’m still in shock.

She closes her lips. “You don’t have to put up with this anymore. I’ll help you get out of it.” Her words resound in my head like Emily’s.

I speak back to her in the same language, “Thank you.”

We sit, speaking silently for the rest of the night, and suddenly it doesn’t matter that my parents hate me. It doesn’t matter that no one else speaks to me.

I believe now.