Mandy--short story

Mandy

Another second ticks by; my hands continue their beat on the tops of the wooden desk.  Some goodie-two-shoes glances over at me, an eyebrow raised. I shrug at her and she turns away, her hair falling perfectly into place over her shoulder. I narrow my eyes at her and run my hands through my own hair, my fingers get caught. Lucky bitch.

I suppose I should be doing my work, it’d give me something to do, but the teacher is droning on about some formula I’ll never use. Glancing at the clock, I wonder why I even bother to pretend.

That girl looks over at me again, this time there’s a deep wrinkle between her furrowed brows. The corner of my mouth lifts up in amused mirth, and I smirk condescendingly at her. My tapping becomes louder. She holds my steady gaze a bit longer and looks down to my dancing fingers, before turning away again, her shoulders tense and curved in.

I blow out a huge sigh and receive a look from the teacher this time, a dumpy and naïve woman. There are small sweat stains underneath her arm pits, two round, wet patches that automatically ensure awkwardness when you catch her eye. My tapping stills as laughter bubbles up my throat, threatening to spill forth like salmon moving up creek. The teacher must have noticed my face turning red, because she turns away and moves across the room, pretending to overlook the other students work.

Eventually my eyes wander down to my paper. I make an effort to focus on the numbers but they blur together, becoming a mass maze of jumbled numbers, words, and symbols.  I reach for my pencil, but instead my hands wander to my head and my nails dig into my scalp, scratching away dandruff with two quick flicks of my wrist.

My eyes leave the paper and scan the classroom; I purposely avoid the left side, knowing that he is sitting over there. Clearing my throat, my thoughts begin to wander, and try as I might, they are on him again. Guilt, thicker than syrup, coagulates in my gut and I attempt to throw another unimpressed glance at the clock just to clear away my unwanted thoughts and instead I meet his eye while my heart ricochets off my rib cage in a few successive movements. I whip my head to the other side, conscious of the twenty or so students surrounding us.

Neon blue catches my eye from across the room, a sweatshirt so bright I squint to look at it. It belongs to a skinny, deprived looking kid, someone I vaguely recognize as blitzing pass me on a skateboard in the mornings. My eyes travel from his sweatshirt to his faded jeans, holes ripped artfully at the knees. The look is completed with a pair of black Chuck Taylor’s, a sharpie smiley face on the toe of each shoe. His feet smile at him when he walks. The kid raises his shaggy brown head and his eyes meet mine. Hostility immediately appears, thick in his eyes, and his lips begin to form that dreaded word: “Fa…”

My throat tightens and I squeeze my hands into tight little fists before letting my fingers fall back onto the desk. The speed of my tapping increases, fluttery and anxious.

My leg joins my fingers this time, the tapping echoes around the classroom.  Miss Perfect lifts her head in my direction, glares, and for one single second  I’m shaking with fear, scared that she will whisper my secret to the girl sitting next to her, that everyone in the classroom heard that word fall from skater boy’s cracked lips. My entire body tenses, ready to spring from my chair and bolt out the door the minute that everyone breaks out into buzzing whispers, chirping to each other like parrots in a zoo.

 Instead she stares pointedly at my legs and fingers and then raises a hand, her perfectly manicured nails glinting in the dull light above her. The teacher notices and begins to maneuver her body, bumping awkwardly past a table of students hard at work. The tapping immediately stops and the girl lowers her raised hand, throwing one last satisfied look in my direction. I sigh, a noise of both relief and annoyance.

A lung-full of air, tired of being trapped unknowingly inside my body, escapes through my mouth. I shake my hands out, whipping them in the air back and forth for a second, and look down to my paper. It’s a desperate attempt really, and instead of beginning the monotonous worksheet my eyes catch a carving at the corner of the old desk.

‘Mandy’.

It’s kind of crooked, the lines of the letters turning in sharp corners, rising above one another so that they float in their own space. I lift my left hand to trace the words, noticing how the pad of my fingers get caught on the trenches the letters have made in the wood. The name has been traced over several times with pencil and pen, the holes of each letter filled with a swirl of blue, black, and red ink.

His voice rings out and my head snaps up as heat immediately floods my cheeks. The rest of the students are attentive, their eyes focused on the left side of the room and their pencils poised, ready to jot down any little bit of information that will help them along. My pencil remains on the desk.

 The teacher has asked some sort of question and he is reciting the answer perfectly, each syllable of every word he speaks sending shivers down my spine.

The teacher beams at him, her dimples twinkling in her rosy cheeks. I get the sudden urge to fling my pencil at her, but before I can complete the action I notice a girl from across the room, her eyes glued to my form, eyebrows raised. It’s too late before I realize that every emotion must have been painstakingly painted across my face.

I lower my eyes to the carving again and trace it once more with my fingers, ignoring the burning feeling of scorching eyes in my back. The teacher waddles past me, and leans down to my desk, her backside sticking awkwardly out behind her.

 “You know you need this grade,” she says. I pretend like I didn’t hear her and grab my pencil from its forgotten spot on my desk, I position the tip over the crisp, white paper. I jot down a random number, the lead rich and dark, contrasting with the perfect clarity of the paper. Frowning, I swipe my thumb across the number, watching as it smears across the worksheet. That’s better.

The teacher sighs, shakes her head, and continues her stumbling journey around the room. She’s right of course, but I would never let her know that. I look towards the clock again, willing it to move past the little black 2.

I briefly wonder what my parents would think, if they knew what I was doing right now. I can hear my father’s raspy, deep voice, his face bright red, spittle flying in giant leaps from his mouth as my mother stands stoically by. Their disappointment ringing clear throughout the room, my head lowered, staring at my dirty, worn tennis shoes. I’d wish they’d have smiley faces then.

“No child of mine…”

His voice fades from my mind and wincing, I write down another random number.

It’s not like I want to be like this, I’ve tried concentrating several times. I’ve tried everything; it just never makes sense to me. I’ve made several efforts to be normal, just a high school kid that can focus on math, or reading, or history.

I’m not the type of person to seek help, either. I like to do things on my own, be independent, yada yada. I’ve seen those kids buried in the corner of the computer lab at lunch, their eyes rolling side to side and their hands shielding the screens anytime anyone gets near. I don’t need that.

Some girl drops her pencil. I watch as it rolls down the slanted tile floors and comes to a stop at his desk. He moves to pick it up, his lithe body bending at the perfect angles. He hands the girl her pencil and she looks away quickly. Her friend stuffs her fat fist into her mouth to try and stop the oink-like giggles from erupting.  The girl shushes her and turns away from him. She doesn’t even say thanks.  I can’t breathe.

I grit my teeth. So he’s not the perfect guy, so what? It irritates me, when people can’t see past their judgments. What does that girl know? I’d make a bet that all she has had to worry about is what top she’ll be wearing the next day. I look over at her; watch as she giggles with her friend and flips her hand out in a commonly known gesture. ‘Whatever.’

I roll my eyes and snort, receiving another look from the teacher. I add another number to the paper, not even bothering to look at the movements my hand makes. My eyes swivel towards his table again. He’s bent over in concentration, his hand whipping back and forth, pencil bobbing. He takes a break to punch in numbers on a small calculator to his right, brow crinkling, and his hand returns to the paper.

I look back down to my own paper, three random numbers written in spaces they don’t belong. My heart feels heavy; I look over to my teacher. Her stress wrinkles are showing, little lines drawn onto her forehead, one right after the other. My stomach sinks, I feel guilty. I don’t understand and am almost considering raising my hand. Then I think of all the eyes that will be focused on me, all the judgments rising from my peers, labeling me. That kid who can’t get anything straight, do anything right.

I avoid looking at him for the next ten minutes; instead I focus on the clock. I watch the hands tick slowly by, note that one of them is bent slightly inwards, about three fourths up. How does that happen? No one has taken off that clock face, how is the hand bent? I stare at it, its journey around the numbers awkward and tilting. It’s supposed to be straight, it doesn’t look right crooked. It’s almost a disappointment; that bent clock hand. Shaking my head, I look away.

‘Mandy’ draws my attention once again. The jagged letters are strangely fascinating. Mandy, Mandy, who was Mandy? My eyes follow the girl with perfect hair, and then to the giggling girl who dropped her pencil. Mandy, I run my fingers across the uneven surface one more time.

No, I’d bet Mandy was a kid like me. Confused, maybe a bit lost, she had to etch her name into the wood just to prove that she was there. She was struggling, but bored probably. I pick up the protractor

I begin right under ‘Mandy’ scratching diligently away at the desk. My hand swoops down, curving and digging until I’ve formed a ‘T’. I lift my hand and stare at the marks for awhile, notice that it’s just as uneven as Mandy’s ‘M’. I lean down and puff up my cheeks, before exhaling a bit of air, blowing the little pieces of my desk onto the floor.

Out of the corner of my eye I see him raise his head, looking at me. I stop all movement, my hand frozen above the shaky ‘T’ I’ve carved into the desk. I count backwards in my head and convince myself not to look. He turns away again. I hang my head, trying to ignore the chaos in my stomach.

I see him rise from his chair; swivel in my direction, my heart is at my feet right now. He’s staring right at me as he grabs his things.

I can’t help but watch as he walks towards me, throws his things into the chair next to mine, plops down across from me. His eyes are boring into mine; I look at that damned clock again. The hand is still bent.

“Mr. Burk is there a problem?” The teacher asks him. He raises his eyes towards her, shakes his head, and sweeps his hand out towards me.

“Just thought I’d help,” he says, all calm and collected. She looks over in my direction, and then between the two of us, like she is trying to solve some sort of problem. She takes her lip between her teeth and chews on it. I want to tell her that it’s not attractive.

“Okaaaaay,” she finally concludes, letting the ‘a’ draw out, as if I’m forcefully pulling it from her. She stares at us for a few more seconds before offering a curt nod and moving to the next table.

“That ‘T’ looks awfully lonely,” he says to me. I gulp and finally meet his eyes, willing my cheeks to not turn violent red.

“What?” I say my voice hoarse and thick. He gestures towards my crooked ‘T’ and all of the sudden I feel embarrassed for even drawing it, like a child caught doing something they shouldn’t be. I stare at the ‘T’ for a few minutes and then back at him.

“Are you going to finish?” he asks. My stomach does a terrific leap and I nod my head. Slowly my hand extends out and down, reaching for my forgotten pencil. I squeeze it as tight as I can until it becomes slick in my grasp.

Carefully, I lean forward and place the sharp tip next to my ‘T’. I jerk my body forward and begin to scratch again. He’s watching the strokes of my pencil and I concentrate hard on making the lines and curves even.

My breath is coming out in little puffs of air and I can smell the woodsy scent of his cologne. My hand begins to shake slightly as I move on to the next letter and the pencil slips from my grasp.

“Sorry,” I mumble, my eyes lowered to the letter I just made as I pick the pencil back up and begin again.

“It’s no problem,” He answers softly. I nod and begin to draw once more.

I’m sketching away now, no problem, watching as my hands continue to fly across the desk. He is staring at my face, and I’m trying to ignore it, focusing on the task at hand.

For a moment my mind wanders, and I imagine a different world. One where I would raise my head confidently and look him straight in the eyes, maybe even reach across the old desk and take his hand into my own. But for now, I continue drawing.

I scratch out the last letter of my name and let the pencil fall from my grasp. I look up at him as he glances down to my creation.

“Looks good,” he says. His hand reaches out and brushes against the wood, knocking off the shavings.

“Yeah,” I agree, staring at my name. My name, carved under Mandy’s. I imagine that she had the same experience.

He looks up at me and smiles, one corner of his mouth lifting up. It’s almost too much, but I manage to smile back.

“Mr. Burk, Mr. Steinberg, what is the problem here?” the teacher’s voice screeches out, interrupting the moment. I shake my head to clear my thoughts and glance at the clock one last time, with its bent hands ticking slowly by.

Everything.