Lost on the Moors

Before doing anything else in the morning, Farrah read. Always the same book, Jane Eyre. She read the same pages, over and over. Since starting high school, her former inclination to sleep as late as possible on a school morning had been replaced by her need to anchor herself in the strands of story, like a girl gently treading water and loosely winding seaweed around her limbs to keep from drifting farther and farther out to sea.

Farrah would read from the moment Jane frightened Rochester’s horse, on through until their tempered courtship, the ruined wedding, and Jane’s desperate flight across the moors. Farrah would leave her at the front door of the Rivers’ house, would thumb past St. John’s brutal courtship, past Jane’s acquisition of financial independence, to the last two pages. Jane’s return to Thornfield Hall, to Rochester, now lonely and blind and valiantly widowed. Once finished, she would turn the pages back to the moors; Jane’s walk, Rochester’s frightened horse.

On school days, the story girded her for the day. She would stop reading, grimly, when her mother called her for the sixth or seventh time; that was the routine. Today she signed as she stuck her bookmark right into the middle of the party at Thornfield that Rochester made Jane attend. This was one of Farrah’s favorite parts of the story, Jane’s pain like a catharsis that eluded Farrah in her lived life.

Farrah dressed in the dark. She grabbed one of her college logo sweatshirts out of her drawer and pulled it over her head. The sweatshirt was miles too big for her and ended mid-thigh, over her tights. It wasn’t until she got out of her room, into the light that she could read her it. Stanford.

Her mother’s harried face greeted her, glancing up while hurriedly sponging off the kitchen table. Her father looked up from his paper, “Farrah!” He called it out, as though in surprise at the sight of her. It was his standard greeting, and it called forth her childhood-self. A smile broke out on her face, as impossible to suppress as sunrise. Her younger sister Kate slipped into the kitchen behind her. “Mom, do you realize your shoes don’t match?” Kate asked. Their mother looked at her feet, then lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Lord,” she growled. She left the kitchen, barking orders. “Get into the car right now, girls, we’re leaving once I find matching shoes.” The two girls smiled at their father, and he winked at them.

Both girls slid into cold back seat of their mother’s car and buckled themselves into place. Because they fought over the radio, their mother had banished them both to the back seat and kept the radio off on their ride to school.

“Farrah, did you shower?” her mother asked her, glancing at the rearview mirror. “Yes,” Farrah lied. She realized she’d forgotten to put on deodorant that morning as well. She prepared to lie about that, but her mother only fired a warning shot with her eyes in the rearview mirror, then moved them to face front. “Belts on?” She started the car. “Kate, did you finish all your homework last night? Did your dad check it?”

“I finished it. He didn’t need to check it, I finished it.”

“Well, I told you that one of us needs to check it to make sure you’ve done it correctly. You operate according to your own rules and you can’t do that in math. You are practically failing that class.”

“I told you, I have someone check my math with me every day during study hall. You and dad don’t need to do it.”

“Kate, we told you we must do it. Just because your dad doesn’t want to do it and doesn’t offer to do it when I have the nerve to go to bed early doesn’t mean you should take advantage of the situation and not remind him. What is it, do I have to stay up late every night, even though I’m exhausted, just to make sure someone checks your work and makes you do it right? Is that it?” She was driving now, her gaze moving between the rearview mirror and the road.

“God,” Kate signed. At 13, she was in her last year at the middle school. Despite being two years younger than Farrah, she was taller. They were both thin girls, but Kate had developed some gentle curves. She was athletic and friendly and vivacious. An indifferent student, she still managed to impress her teachers with her creativity and imagination.

“Farrah, you could drown in that sweatshirt,” Kate observed. Farrah recoiled from the remark as though it were a blow, knowing that her mother would start in on her next. Sure enough: “Farrah, it’s not even that cold out. How long is sweatshirt season going to last this year? From mid-September to mid-July? Sweatshirts should not be worn as a dress. You would look so cute if you wore clothes that fit you and tried to do something with your hair.”

Farrah gave Kate a look of pure murder. “You would look so cute if…” was her least favorite phrase.

The ride to school was mercifully short. Propelled by pure frustration, Farrah burst out of the car as soon as it stopped in front of the school. She liked the quiet mornings in the dark, empty school.

Farrah loved the half-light of the darkened hallways, morning light filtered in through windows above the lockers. By the time the daylight reached the innermost hallway, it was pure, devoid of any hint of the weather. Teachers’ voices bobbed in the dark air, nonsensical, warm, and comforting, as though heard from inside a womb. Farrah walked through the quiet hallway, soothed into a sense of peace. Robed in fantasies that shielded her body like an aura at all times, she opened her locker and pushed aside the school jacket her mother had insisted she purchase, and began to exchange books between her bag and her locker. When finished, she sat against her locker, pulled her knees to her chest, balanced her crossed arms on top of them, and laid her head down on her arms.

She heard a noise to her right. It was the side door, slamming closed. She peeked out from under her crossed arms to see a familiar silhouette moving toward her. Missy. Even in the dark, Farrah knew Missy’s face lit up. They were not close friends, but Missy was friends with everyone.

Not aware that Farrah liked the quiet, Missy made as much noise as she at her locker, hoping to wake Farrah up if she was sleeping. In a desperate bid to hold onto the peace a little longer, Farrah kept her head lowered, her eyes closed.

It was no use; she felt Missy’s warmth and heard her loud breathing, which caused her to recoil. Missy noticed the motion of disgust, catalogued it as she did all the slights she received on a daily basis, and ignored it. “Farrah, what are you doing here so early?” she asked, too loud.

Farrah did not respond for a long time. The pause was awkward. Missy pointedly ignored it.

“Are you always here this early?” Missy prompted.

“My….mom....brings me to...school.” Farrah stammered out the truth despite her desire to protect her mornings. She lowered her legs and crossed them, giving up.

“I’ll start to come early so we can hang out,” Missy’s voice rushed like a torrent from her mouth, pleading and excited. Farrah felt her heart submerged beneath this attention she did not want. Her frown deepened. Missy, ruled by her loneliness and longing, dismissed the frown. “Did someone you know go to Stanford?” Missy asked her. She pointed to Farrah’s shirt. “Oh...no. My dad got it for me on one of his trips to...Boston.”

“Oh? Stanford is in California.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Are you sure he didn’t get it in California?”

Farrah was surprised. “No, I don’t think Stanford is in California.” She had this notion that all ivy league schools were in the northeast.

“It is. My uncle went to Stanford. He still lives in California.”

“Are you sure?”

“I visit him most summers, I’m absolutely sure. Next time I go, you’re welcome to come with me and you could see it in person. It’s a neat campus. I have pictures I can bring to show you.”

Neither girl noticed another classmate slip into the hallway. He moved quietly through the hallway, then stopped as soon as he made out the two girls at the base of the lockers. His body changed, charged by the sight of Missy. Both Missy and Farrah caught sight of him.

Jerry played on the boys basketball team. The boys on the basketball team were worshiped like the gods of Mount Olympus. Their lives engrossed the imaginations of all the other students, their girlfriends and their exploits constant fodder for minds ready to emulate and judge and condemn and exalt. In this minor pantheon, Jerry was one of the lesser deities, though he was one of the more talented players. His exploits on the court won him admiration; unlike his more attractive teammates, his talents did not yet afford him much more status than any other hanger-on.

Jerry was unaware of the dread he inspired in the two girls pressed to the lockers. He felt his presence was a gift bestowed. Plain girls were Jerry’s bread and butter. He loved to tease them as most of them were awed enough by his status to blush. Missy was his favorite. She froze and turned bright red when he spoke to her, her smile held hostage on her face. He teased her about “hooking her up” with his friend, Mark, on the football team. The joke was especially funny because it made Mark angry.

Jerry’s spotlight personality flooded the air around Missy and Jerry. They felt the intense heat of his attention as soon as they heard his voice. “Missy, what are you doing here this early?” his voice bounced off the quiet lockers like a ball bouncing in an empty room.

“I come this early sometimes,” Missy replied, deflated by the loss of privacy, her budding conversation with Farrah pinched.

“When are you going to give Mark a chance?” he teased, feigning concern and interest. “He keeps asking me about you.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Missy spat out. Mark’s crush on her was a cudgel Jerry fashioned specifically to torture her with. This quiet morning, Missy’s sudden anger consumed her fear. Usually paralyzed by a desire to please everyone, she was animated this morning by the desire to please only Farrah.

Jerry was not accustomed to this response from Missy. He took in the water boiling in Missy’s eyes and her open scowl and felt alarm. Missy was one of his weakest targets. For her to fight back seemed to bode poorly for him.

“What are you talking about? He told me just yesterday he wanted to go to the dance with you...what is that dance...the prom! He wanted to go to prom with you. You’d be like the only sophomore there.” Jerry’s lies punctured the air, desperate footholds forced into the cliffside Jerry scaled every day. His voice cracked; teasing Missy was usually no more than a comforting touchstone for the stability of his status, a scratching post to confirm the sharpness of his claws.

Not today. Missy’s face scowled openly at him. Farrah cowered in Missy’s shadow, grateful to Missy for protecting her from Jerry’s attention, not realizing that Missy was the reason Jerry alighted on them in the first place.

The hallway began to fill with more students. The first buses had arrived. Jerry was relieved when his teammate, Doane, walked behind him and grabbed his shoulder, squeezing it briefly on his forward path. Jerry looked after him with gratefulness, as though Doane had reached in and saved him from drowning. “Doane, why’d you miss practice?” he sang out, pulled into the wake of people that flanked Doane’s course through the hallway.

The burgeoning traffic forced the two girls to their feet. Farrah was a bit shaken by all the interaction this morning. She was a quiet cipher in the school, ensconced in her daydreams, nearly invisible. Missy, large and florid beside her, didn’t have the luxury of invisibility.

Missy, as though tethered to Farrah, followed her to their first class. Together they crossed the lobby, beneath the eyes of the large cartoon bee (that everyone but the students tried to claim was a hornet) which presided over the front lobby. They took their seats in the classroom.

Farrah heard someone sit down behind her.

“What are you doing in my seat?” April’s voice pierced Farrah’s fog.

“There’s no assigned seats.” Jerry.

Farrah turned her body halfway around. Jerry’s eyes locked onto hers. She glanced quickly at the front of the class, where Jerry usually sat with two of his teammates. The two players, Daniel and Doane, look right back at her, laughing. April gave up and walked to the back of the classroom. Farrah’s blurred edges sharpened, her fear eradicating the fog she lived in like acid dissolving paper.

Bereft of invisibility, Farrah felt keenly her lack of defenses against Jerry. Sitting up straight in her chair, as though at attention, she gazed over at Missy. Missy’s eyes gazed back, perplexed.

Suddenly, she felt a painful jolt as Jerry grabbed one of her curls and yanked it, hard. The two boys at the front of the class burst into barely contained laughter.

Jerry placed her face right next to her ear. Hot, moist breath tickled her ear and rustled her hair. She cocked her ear to her shoulder, grossed out by his breath on her and alarmed at his closeness. “You know, I’ve never noticed what a minx you are. Tiny little minx.” Farrah kept her head lowered to her shoulder. She leaned forward, away from his breath.

At the end of the class, she rushed out of the classroom. Face burning, she ducked down a back staircase, then discretely slipped into a side hall. She made her way to one of the back doors and firmly closed it behind her, hearing it click. The cool morning air wrapped around her and she immediately relaxed. But then the door opened behind her and she felt her heart surge. It was only Missy.

Without a word, Farrah sank to the ground, her back against the brick wall. Missy followed suit, and they sat beneath the wrought iron stairs that spiraled above them, like a plant grown just to shade them. Missy scanned the parking lot for teachers, her somewhat strict upbringing tugging on her conscience like a small, yappy dog. But there was no one out there, so she turned her attention to Farrah, whose tears spilled, unchecked down her face.

Farrah roused suddenly. “We need to move. I’ve been caught skipping here before,” she said. Missy’s self-concern was shocked out of her the moment Farrah admitted she’d skipped class before. “The dugout,” she said. The girls simultaneously peered out across the parking lot to the back wall of the dugout. As if they choreographed it, they both grabbed their bookbags and began to jog through the maze of cars.

Farrah reached the chain link fence around the ball field first. She heaved her book bag over the fence, then gripped the top of the fence, swinging her leg over, puncturing her clothes and skin on the exposed wires twisted together at the top of the fence. She slid slowly over the top of the fence, and landed full length on her back. She lay there as Missy, scion of a long line of farmers, gripped the metal bar at the top and leapt over the fence, landing with a heavy thud on her sneakered feet. Farrah peeled herself and her bookbag off the ground. They both barrelled towards the dugout. Missy left Farrah behind a bit, her long legs covering ground easily. When she reached the opening into the dugout, she suddenly froze. Farrah ran full speed into Missy’s back. “Hey!” she cried at the same time Missy said, “What are you doing here?”

Farrah was taken aback by the anger she heard in Missy’s voice. She peeked her head around Missy’s shoulder to see Doane and Jerry. Jerry and Doane. Farrah’s heart sank. She wanted to sink through the ground and disappear.

The power dynamics seemed to shift in Missy’s mind. Jerry and Doane looked scared; she felt they’d encroached on her dugout. It was as if she’d flung back a curtain to reveal a weak man made menacing by means of smoke and mirrors. Slowly, a pungent, painful odor punctured both girls’ consciousness. Skunk. Both girls cast their eyes like nets into the dark corners at the back of the dugout, eyes primed for the tell-tale lumbering of black and white fur. Farrah’s eyes moved from Jerry to Doane, and she suddenly noticed a piece of paper, pinched between Doane’s index finger and thumb, held at his hip.

“What are you doing here?” Missy’s voice was infused with authority; her natural confidence surfaced whenever she saw something she knew wasn’t right.

Jerry’s voice spilled into the dark, quiet air. “I’m not doing anything, I just came out here with Doane, I didn’t know what he wanted to do out here.” Doane’s head turned slowly, incredulous, toward his friend’s voice. Outrage, building like a fed fire in his eyes, suffused his face.

Farrah watched Doane’s face, his eyes hard and glittering like ice. She looked at Jerry. His eyes darted between Doane and the girls. Farrah was not capable of naming what she saw in other people’s faces; in her fog, she didn’t really see anything. But today, she’d been pulled from the fog, and now she was part of a confrontation. There was no hiding. She felt sorry for Jerry, his eyes seeking escape like a cornered animal in his head. Her face expressed her pity. When Jerry saw her expression, his own face thundered in anger, as though she’d overstepped a boundary. “What are you looking at, you mousy freak!” he spat.

Farrah lowered her face, anxious to hide her embarrassment. She felt as though she had inadvertently shown too much in her face, and Jerry had rightly called her out.

Doane threw the joint on the ground and crushed it with the heel of his shoe. “You losers enjoy that joint,” he spat, pushing past Jerry. Farrah and Missy watched Doane leave, then looked in unison at Jerry’s face. Expressions shifted across Jerry’s face, one almost on top of the other, like a rubix cube furiously turning the planes of colored squares to reach some semblance of coherence. Finally, with a look of hatred at them, he followed Doane’s path out of the dugout.

“What was that?” Missy asked. Her face was euphoric.

Farrah silently fled the dugout, like she couldn’t get away fast enough.

Missy followed her. They both walked on the curb at the edge of the parking lot, Missy balanced behind Farrah.

The flag was whipped by the wind. They heard the lonely clang of the rings holding the flag in place as they slapped the flag pole. Dried leaves scuttled along the parking lot pavement, looking every bit as alive as scurrying mice.

Missy felt that the two girls had seen the same thing. She felt she and Farrah had shared an experience, an unmasking that convinced her of what she already felt; that the bullshit social stuff they put up with now was nothing more than a shared delusion. She noticed, almost every day, rifts in the social fabric. However, she was very nearly alone in her observations, and anyone she tried to talk to about her observations pulled away from her as though she’d loudly admitted to having a contagious rash.

Farrah’s eyes were not ready for what Missy’s eyes had seen. She could not process Jerry’s face clambering like a trapped rat. It did not jive with anything that she believed, so it was out of a desire to get away from Missy, with her penchant for iconoclasm, that she fled the dugout, and now quickly moved to put more distance between them.

It began to dawn on Missy that Farrah was moving faster whenever she heard Missy right behind her. She was being deliberately abandoned. Another disappointment in her efforts to cultivate friendships with girls who seemed to be embarrassed to be seen with her. Missy slowed down, her face reddening. She felt like everyone could see her, could see what was happening to her. She veered off the curb and followed along the line of cars, deciding to enter the school by another entrance. Farrah marched on to the side door. Missy heard it slam.

After geometry, Farrah had lunch, the first lunch of the day. As usual, she sat indifferently at her regular table, on the edges of two different friend groups. She could participate or appear to participate in either group, without appearing to eat alone. Today she was surprised when Jerry grabbed the seat right next to hers. “You mind if I sit here?” he asked. She opened her mouth to tell him that he was actually taking someone else’s seat, then crushed that impulse back down her throat. “No.” she replied.

Involuntarily, Farrah’s eyes moved to the back corner of the room, where Jerry usually sat with his friends. Farrah felt the spotlight of attention on her. Any change in the normal order, any deviation from established hierarchy, fed the gossip-ready minds of the school. Like quilters working on a joint tapestry, they began to embellish and embroider. Unexpected shifts in alliance were bread and butter to the quilters.

Farrah sat very still, pinned to her seat by all the eyes in the room that she both wanted to see her and wanted to hide from. She lowered her eyes to the table, then peeked into Jerry’s face. She saw the sinks of heat in his cheeks, his eyes hard and raw, like in the dugout. He was embattled, she realized. She could assuage that.

“You’re the best player on the team,” she told him. It was true.

She glanced back at Jerry’s usual table. Mallory, Doane’s girlfriend, said something to a friend of hers, then scowled at Jerry and Farrah, making eye contact with them both.

“I didn’t know you even liked basketball,” Jerry pressed her. “Do you go to any of the games?”

“I do,” she responded, not honestly. When she did go to a game, it was with her sister and they spent most of their time out in the hallway, near concessions. But today, she needed to pretend she knew about basketball, and to offer him a gift that she wasn’t truly qualified to give. She hoped her knowledge would not be tested.

After lunch, Farrah felt bruised. When the bell rang, Jerry shot out of his seat. He was long gone by the time she made it to the counter to turn in her tray. Her feet felt heavier than normal. She slowed to a near crawl and felt like a rock in a stream, a current of people flowing around her.

In the hallway, she passed Missy. She didn’t understand what she was feeling, but her eyes sought out Missy’s eyes. In her brain, she felt she could easily explain away her abandoning Missy in the parking lot this morning, suspected that Missy had already explained it away in her own mind. But Missy gave Farrah a sharp look, and Farrah, mortified, automatically looked away and tried to pretend that her eyes reaching for Missy was not intentional.

Despite deserving Missy’s wrath, Farrah felt singularly unlucky to have incurred it. Missy was usually blind to all insults and desperate for friendship. Of all the kids Missy attempted repeatedly to befriend, Farrah felt that she was the least openly rude to Missy. She felt that she, the most innocent of all who offended Missy, shouldn’t be made to bear Missy’s anger. She felt like just happened to be the person on the weakening bridge when it fell, but she certainly wasn’t primarily responsible for it being weak.

She also felt fear. She was perhaps the least powerful of all of Missy’s attempted conquests. She would be the easiest one to hate. She suddenly realized that if she’d wanted to, she could have made a good friend. She remembered the way Missy leapt over the fence around the baseball field, like it was nothing, when they were heading to the dugout. She wondered why Missy knew how to do that. She wished those boys had not been in the dugout.

In the hallway, she passed behind Jerry, standing like a supplicate in front of Doane and Mallory. Doane leaned his back against his locker looking steadily at Jerry in a way that would have unnerved Farrah. Jerry, eyes still glittering, cheeks still red, talked, his hands weighted by his sides, looking every bit like he expected to be struck. One of Doane’s arms was around Mallory’s shoulders, looking every bit like a snake draped. She was taller than Doane, and had to scrunch down due to Doane leaning against the locker. Mallory looked out at Jerry over Doane’s forearm. Jerry’s gaze slid sideways. He caught sight of Farrah, just a few lockers down, then his eyes moved off of her without acknowledgement. Farrah pretended to be busy in her locker. In the darkness of her locker, she gripped the school jacket her mother had insisted she buy. Hesitating, she lifted it off the hook, and wrapped it around her.

After lunch, she had French. She sat in her seat next to the large bank of windows that looked out over the back parking lot, and farther out the baseball field. Missy was in this class. She usually sat next to Farrah, but today, she was seated in the first seat in the room, front row, desk by the door, as far from Farrah as she could get. Farrah’s gaze moved from Missy’s back to the bank of windows. She imagined that she could become what she saw, could become the gray sky. She shuttered her eyes like street-level store fronts, and disappeared into the moors, wandering and bereft. Behind her, Jerry and Doane and Mallory sat in their usual spots, and she heard them snickering.