Stalled

Brittany is not pretty. She is not thin. She is not flirtatious. She is not even talkative. Brittany's hair does not lie nicely. Her skin does not smell like Warm Vanilla Sugar. Her clothes are either too big or too small. None are remotely fashionable. A clear line does not distinguish lip from non-lip. A chapped redness obscures her mouth through all seasons. She bears no resemblance to the mental picture you have of a girlfriend, or a friend, or a neighbor. Her face is the kind you only encounter in the day-to-day world, a fleshy reminder of the decidedly below-average.

It is 12:31 PM, 11 minutes into the sophomore lunch period. The cafeteria is zoned for a maximum of 476 clamoring adolescents. Today, 35 of the 36 missing members of the Class of 2015 are absent, excused or otherwise. Brittany is present but unaccounted for by the monitors. She is in the 10th grade girls' restroom. Brittany's seat is one floor up from the cafeteria, in the third and final stall, the one that spans the width of the room. She did not and does not need to relieve herself. She's biding her time staring straight ahead. She's wishing it's later than it is.

The enclosure that contains her is equipped with handrails. Its dimensions are amenable to a 24" turning-radius. Brittany does not qualify as handicapped. She is in the stall that satisfies ADA regulations because three of its four walls are constructed out of cinder-block. The remaining two stalls are vulnerable to being surrounded by fellow restroom users. Once bolted in to the last stall, the occupant need only concern herself with the girl to the immediate right, should she ever arrive. 

The third stall tends to be vacant. Most high school students, with their decorum deficiency, will nonetheless abstain dropping trou in handicapped stalls when possible. Brittany recognizes her own habitual occupation of the third stall is disrespectful or sacrilegious. The shame of sacrilege is not too steep a price for admission. Shame can be assuaged internally. Brittany has the time. She can run down a long list of faults in 35 minutes. She pauses to lament over each item.

Her classmates are at least 200 feet away. They refuel between gaps of scandalous chatter. Brittany faintly hears the far off din. She sits on the black plastic toilet seat with her pants hoisted around her waist, awkwardly reclined. She shifts her weight. The lid creaks. She picks at a cuticle.

She made her decision to hide, as Brittany has made nearly all of her decisions, for the sake of appearance. Not for the sake of appearance as it relates to aesthetics. She knows that looking good is not an option. Rather, she chooses for the sake of disappearance. She goes to great lengths to conceal herself when in public. If people get a glimpse of her, notice her in a cursory glance, she is skewered.

Skewering is the name Brittany coined for how she feels when she's seen. The term was largely inspired by Hemingway's Old Man the the Sea, which Brittany read in Mr. Hendrick's freshman literature course. The novella struck a cord. For a final paper, Brittany made a convincing case for the marlin being the story's tragic protagonist. She claimed the point was often lost on readers because readers are people and people are shallow and the shallow are blinded by how cool the terse Old Man is and how cute Manolin is with his indulgent patience. The lack of sympathy for the great fish went to make the tragedy all the more pathetic. Had she properly indented, eased up on comma usage, and run spell-check, Brittany would have received an A.

Ever since Hendrick's class, Brittany conjures an image of herself as a docile marine animal gracefully swimming in a tropical sea. But when she is spotted by others, she's toast. She is harpooned. Rather than reel her in to carve her up and put her out of her misery or cut the line because she's a garbage fish, she's drug along at a distance. She drug bleeding through the water and getting gnawed on by an array of little carnivorous sucker fish. Before long, a few sleek sharks join in the devouring. To top it off, the little fisherman's children are encouraged to practice their marksmanship on what remains of her bloated and prone belly. The feeling is that awful.

Brittany's pain isn't unfounded. Words like 'gross', or 'weird', or 'loser' form in the Broca's areas of passers-by at first sight. Brittany believes her mere presence, her taking up of space, is a disturbance. All outcomes involving being detected are sub-optimal. So, she recedes.

She strives to mimic pieces of furniture. She takes after the hard plastic chairs, laminate desks, and three-drawer filing cabinets, the mundane objects that share our space, that are so ubiquitous and boring they barely register. She has studied their ways and crafted an approach to life from their behavior. Furniture doesn't talk, so she doesn't talk. Furniture doesn't look at you, so she doesn't look at you. Furniture doesn't move, so she moves as little as humanly possible. She won't even jot down notes or follow along with the teacher reading aloud because the very wagging of a pencil or rustling of a page is an announcement. It is a herald, however slight, for a classmate to behold that she is in here and hideous. 

Brittany did not think through the practical specifics like posture when she first alighted on the idea of restroom-as-refuge. She did not visualize the setting, what the dank environment would do to her already frizzy bangs, or how long girls could fuss with their make-up. She had no clue how chilling it would be or how the hum of a faulty ballast could be so enervating. On the first day she sought asylum, she was confronted by the nuts-and-bolts reality.

When a girl walks into the restroom and sees a shod silhouette from the shin down, the new girl has certain expectations. Chief among them, she expects the other girl is doing what humans do in restrooms. Why else would the other girl be in there? Who hangs out in restrooms? Horrified at the prospect of arousing suspicions, Brittany took precautions. She unbuttoned, unzipped, and slid her pants around her ankles. She sat deceitfully ready. If another girl or girls entered, Brittany reached for toilet paper. She tore pieces off aggressively so that the roll rattled in its container. She audibly wadded up the paper, made wiping noises on a palm, and dropped it into the bowl. The longer the newcomer(s) remained in the area, the longer the performance went. By the third swipe, she feigned blowing her nose. She flushed. 

The worst is when another girl goes number two. The new girl is bound to puzzle over the girl next door's deal. That girl was here first. Is she sick? Is she crampy? Is she faking? Is she like really fat, stuck, and in need of a plunger? What's with all the TP? What's she doing in there? Maybe the new girl should stand on the commode and peak for herself. "Just let her be," Brittany pleads telepathically. She can almost hear the retort. If that girl feels so ill, shouldn't she go to the nurse? Shouldn't she be lying down? Shouldn't she be at home, resting her nasty self?

Nobody has ever posed a question to her while encamped. Brittany worries all the same.

After a handful of anxiety sessions on the throne at lunch, it occurred to Brittany she could do better. She could vanish with a little effort. She now scootches way back, perches uncomfortably on the hinge, and draws up her feet. She assumes a roughly fetal position upright. She restrains her respiration to the point of inaudibility. She becomes totally undetectable. She doesn't have to put on a show anymore. Brittany doesn't have to fret about being singled out by her shoes. She doesn't have to worry about whether the owner of the neighboring trendy pair of shoes would oust her, would tell her cadre of friends, who would tell their cadres of friends, and on and on, how Brittany Ayers is holed up in the bathroom doing God know what all lunch period long. She doesn't have to craft objections, like how Amber Graves must do the same thing if she's privy to that sort of information. As in, if it's not more than a groundless rumor, how does Amber know about the duration of Brittany's stay if Amber is not herself taking care of business for so long? No one would listen to Brittany, of course. No one would ask for her side of the story. But none of that could happen since Brittany has sophisticated her scheme.

It is a fool-proof scheme, the hiding. No staff member would be alarmed by a sealed and vacant stall. Pranksters of both sexes frequently locked a door and climbed over or slid under for the purpose of relatively wholesome mischief. The administration understandably didn't waste resources pursuing petty infractors. If a teacher was alerted to the prank, he or she would call the secretary between lessons, who would page the custodian, who'd pick it open sooner or later.

With 12 minutes remaining, Brittany rubs her forehead. She hears individual voices rise over the drone and descend again. Someone pops an inflated paper bag. She considers her right knee, the skin of which is exposed partially by a tear. Though pulled taught, dermal lines remain. They create an organic elevation map. Blonde stubble catches the artificial light. She tugs at a clump of frayed threads, always white though the jean is blue. It's a good thing Brittany doesn't wear a watch.

Worrying is one of the few activities in which she can participate. Her cell phone is ancient. The buttons clack when depressed, so Snake and Brick are out of the question. A moratorium against noise limits more complex movements. The crackle of wrappers and crunch of chewing combine to forbid eating during the designated time for eating. She can't so much as consume fruit snacks discretely in class, the plastic wrapper sufficing to betray her most delicate manipulation.

She had reason to be preoccupied. Other girls aren't disposed to leave girls like Brittany in peace. If outwardly all they show is a quick scowl or a brief frown, there's a whole lot left unsaid. Unsaid, that is, until the midday meal. Unsaid, until a crowd of them can confer in a restroom they assume to be empty.

If there is to be a conference, Brittany has learned it will be within the first five minutes of lunch. A group will access the wall of mirrors prior to going on display. From her perch, Brittany listens to the pop of lip gloss lids and the friction of hair pulled through bristles. A farrago of clicks and snaps emitted by cosmetic products ricochets off the hard surfaces. Amid the corporate acts of beautification, the group builds monstrosities. They collaborate on multi-tiered insults. They fashion piles of invective. They stack bovine and porcine clichés to the ceiling. Brittany's nightmares are reconstructed out of this material. These scenes confirm Brittany's hypothesis about other people—boys, too. They are mean, pure and simple. They get meaner in groups. They're meanest towards her. Laughs, nearby and around-the-corner ones, are at her expense. She supposes herself to be the subject of all snicker-inducing notes and messages.

Nobody has ever referenced Brittany nominally in the bathroom tirades. Nevertheless, she feels no better. She feels worse, actually, for not being referenced. The peers who have expended energy making fun of Brittany inhabit a lower stratum than girls who primp. Brittany isn't worth the popular girls' collective time.

Would she want to be? If what she overhears are the sorts of statements girls think it's cool to say in the exclusive company of other like-minded-and-bodied girls, what do they say to themselves? What do they say to themselves when, on their way to prime locker real estate, they pass Brittany riffling through her never-adorned locker? How do they vivisect her when, scoping out the scene, they spy her marring the view down the hall? What's her taxonomy when compared to the curled, the blushing, the well-endowed, and the spaghetti-strapped? Brittany Ayers of the split ends. Brittany Ayers of the pasty complexion. Brittany Ayers of the abundant thighs. Brittany Ayers of the ratty T-shirts. No, she'd rather not count at all, except when roll is taken.

She doesn't skip school. She has perfect attendance. She remains alert in class. She is diligent about completing homework assignments. She responds to a question when a teacher calls on her because she never raises a hand on her own. She comports herself because disobeying is bad news. Disobeying leads to discipline.

Brittany has known since the sixth grade that if you don't answer a query, do as you're told, or acknowledge a statement, follow-up questions, instructions, or comments will ensue. Keeping tight-lipped gets you sent through a packed house of snickering children to the office. The office is the place where an intimidating secretary shoots you daggers while you wait cross-legged. The waiting is for Assistant Principal Chezik, who asks you to have a seat, offers you a hard candy, and interrogates you at length as to why exactly you refused to participate in a game of Geography Jeopardy. The why is inconsequential because his underlying objective is to deliver a speech about how insubordination is a slippery slope. To put the breaks on additional slippage, Assistant Principal Chezik concludes the interrogation with assurances he'll have his eyes on you during the next 60 days of what he likes to call "probation." By the time you're free to go, the "didgja hears" have reverberated through the echo chamber of high school. For a week or more, you're in the social crosshairs more than usual, which leads to more eye-averting on your part, which, despite being a meek response to attention, garners additional attention and consequent judgment because in this context it's a tacit admittance of guilt and kids get high on the slightest waft of inferiority.

To avoid reliving that train wreck, Brittany plays by the rules.

She's not out to win in a valedictorian sense of winning. Obedience has its limits. Being praised is just as bad as being scolded. The teacher is the only person who congratulates you on setting the curve. The other pupils gnash their teeth. Nobody likes a suck-up, so Brittany doesn't come close. She leaves an blank or two unfilled on tests. She'll use one letter twice on matching sections. She ignores spelling suggestions when typing essays. These ploys apply deflationary pressure on her grades. They prevent her from getting photographed for the Student of the Month display. The recipients' ink-jet prints are stapled onto a tack board by the water fountains. By month's end, they are thoroughly defaced. Brittany couldn't resist taking the mustache, stitches, and horns personally, although the practice is indiscriminate.

Her upper torso is arched around the chrome-plated flushing lever with eight minutes to go. Brittany is canted slightly toward the exterior wall as though attracted to its solidity. The central region of her butt droops down, unsupported by the seat's hole. The sensation is bizarre and embarrassing Brittany feels more isolated as a result. She whips herself into a fit of self-pity-and-loathing about how her voluntary exile is preferable to being out there with her classmates. Out there in the airline hanger of a cafeteria entails having binders slid in front of places you're eyeing. Out there entails being told that the seat's reserved for a friend in line even though a quick scan of the registers yields not a soul buying food, let alone waiting in line to do so. That the graffitied dividers and ammoniac smell of the facilities are more hospitable than the lunch room alternative would ruin Brittany's mascara were she wearing any. 

Brittany tries to bolster her confidence by emphasizing her proactivity, her initiative, and her ingenuity for finding a way to disappear in the middle of the school day, when exposure and persecution reaches its highest frenzied pitch and the maximum of 952 beady eyes are darting about, dividing up the humanity into in and out, friend and foe. Instead, here sits Brittany, shielded, secure, and in total compliance with the Student Handbook's bylaws. Here sits Brittany, if not dignified, then at least not humiliated in full view, not forlornly wandering the aisles for the chance half-empty table or abandoning hope altogether and surveying the horizon for the Special Ed kids and their tender caretakers whose tenderness and welcoming never fail to make her feel much, much worse because they treat their wards the same way they treat her, the ones who scream at specific colors, squawk like parrots, or roll around on the floor. Recalling this humiliation, her fiddling with the sandwich bag instead of consuming its contents, her obsessive staring at the digital clock that regulated the day's schedule, gave Brittany much needed perspective. She is not disabled. She is not alternatively-abled. She is unpopular. There are worse fates.

No. Here sits Brittany, kind of praying. 'Kind of' because she's not asking for anything or singing any praises. She's not petitioning for a favor like the power to cope or inspiration about how to persevere. She's not praying to God the Father, per se, but to Someone. In her mind, there's a pronounced skyward vector to her thoughts. She's sending the message up, which she realizes is silly and that whoever he is, if he's anywhere at all, as in like existing, he's everywhere. For that matter, Brittany thinks he isn't properly a 'he', as in being gendered, but he's definitely not non-gendered. Because referring to him as an 'it' is more off-base than just using the traditionally masculine pronouns with an implicit asterisk.

An lopsided relationship doesn't seem to bother either party. She sends up. He receives. Brittany has a lot to say. He's a good listener. She tells him how much it sucks to be her. He hasn't asked for a thing in return. How could he? When she thinks about it, he's all brain and no hands, feet, or mouth. It's vague, but doesn't that come with the territory? She's fine with uncertainty. She's not interested in reading a book. She doesn't want to be more confused. She's not going to attend a service or ceremony. Those are communal. She'd surely stick out as the initiate. She'd get coddled in the same way the Special Ed aids coddle her. Brittany would rather not put herself in that situation.

For Brittany, their time together is encompassing. Not encompassing as in what's provided by a companion with limbs, but as in submersion, a state of being completely engulfed, not by air which is like nothing at room temperature, but warm water. It's like a bath, if that makes sense, like how the warm water doesn't care about your cellulite or the number of your chins. The bathing metaphor demonstrates how resistant Brittany is to being led or pushed, since she's not imagining herself in an ocean with its eroding force or a lazy river with its current. No. Brittany just wants to lean back and be saved like how she was damned: against her will. She's content where she's at, wounded but in stable condition, secluded but heard by the Great Big Ear. If someone else knows her plight, that's reassuring.

This slanted conversation began a fortnight into Brittany's evasive maneuvering. It wasn't that Brittany said, "God help me," and a voice from on high answered. It wasn't that He called out unprovoked, "Behold Brittany. I am here with you." It was subtler and more fluky.

She had been doing what she does in the noon hour, privately commiserating her station between prods of a pimple. She recounted her inadequacies. She revisited the cruelties, however slight, that had lately been directed her way. Before she knew what she was doing, she crossed a boundary. While gazing into the grid-work of tile before her, she wished for an end. She did not assess suicidal methods. She did not picture anything involving violence or as much as a modicum of energy expenditure on her part. She only wished for an undefined end.

Reflexivity is built into the inner life, which is why Brittany can surprise herself. She apprehends the torrent of language in her mind immediately. Comprehension, though, suffers from a satellite feed’s delay. An extra second or two is required for uptake. The desire for blasé obliteration beamed from one side of her cortex to the other. When the transmission was complete, Brittany was stunned that she would momentarily dream of death. She identified herself as a survivor. She was adaptable. She was resilient. She had wanted to flee a scene thousands of times, but never into nothingness. The wish was a big step. Her apparent devolution alarmed her.

When searching a cause for her dismay, she found only her various selves. There was the Brittany who spoke to herself. There was the Brittany who heard herself. There was the Brittany who thought she’d be okay if everyone just ignored her. There was the Brittany who would go to such lengths to be accompanied she’d have conversations with herself. There was the Brittany who resents the horde of superficial young adults in which she was marooned. There was the Brittany who totally gets it and doesn’t blame them, who has 20/20 vision and an instinctual revulsion for what's reflected in the wall of mirrors, store front windows, or any polished surface. So, Brittany discovered at the end of this trail that the constituents of the helter-skelter throng inside her head were working at cross-purposes. They were making matters worse by dragging them out. She never let anything go because as soon as one of her did, there was another who picked it up and ran ahead. She had to start directing her thoughts to someone above the fray. She’d leave it with him and step away.

Thus she started her prayer-type thing.

The school days subjectively improved when she started considering the possibility that some nonpartisan person was omnipresent. Brittany began adding this layer to all her consciousness. He sees this, too. He hears this, too. He feels this, too. He did not need to stop it or fix it, just share the crappiness of it with her. So, Brittany started addressing him exclusively between 12:20 and 12:55 PM since doing otherwise got to feeling rude, ignoring this guy who's in the room and has as much right to be there as anyone else. Since he's everywhere you go and is always interested in you, with a non-threatening interest, an all-knowing, sympathetic but not spineless or patronizing interest, why not confide in him how much it pains you to have to hide because everyone hates you? Brittany admits these confidences sound increasingly paranoid when you hear yourself repeatedly elevating them, since if he is as attentive as it seems he is, he doesn't hate you for starters.

If God was real and wanted to intervene, he could send a messenger like the guidance counselor, Mrs. Madigan. In fact, she'll be meeting with with Brittany to discuss college plans this afternoon. Brittany will be furtive. She'll keep her face downcast. She'll reply tersely. Mrs. Madigan, whose been trained to pick up on warning signs, will gently shift the conversation onto a more personal track. Mrs. Madigan will accidentally hit a nerve. Finally, Brittany will dare the counselor to go seek out just one kid who didn't think she was repulsive. She'll demand Mrs. Madigan drag just one kid into this office to look at her squarely and swear she's not ugly. At that, the counselor will be temporarily stultified.

Brittany will not want to hear about how there's more to a woman than her body. She will not want to have a conversation about how it's what's on the inside that counts. She's seen the posters. She's watched the videos. She's sorry, but that's a lie. To everyone with an outside, the outside counts first. In her case, it counts most. The outside is a major obstacle, like 50 feet high. She can't fathom how anyone is going to get beyond that barrier because no one has yet. When the counselor asks her what about Brittany, has she progressed beyond the outside, has Brittany ever looked past her projection of other people into the possibilities of what's really happening in their minds and hearts, past her projections of judgment and condemnation, Brittany will be momentarily befuddled.

When the counselor seizes that short beat to delve deeper and asks whether Brittany has ever progressed beyond the outside of herself, as in moved past the façade to see how the inside had some glory in it that her peers couldn't perceive right away but also, and more importantly, couldn't steal or smother, Brittany will end the session. She will escape to her stall, bolt the door, and have a quick confab with the One Above about hazy things like inner value. No aural input will be added. Brittany will gush unabated. She'll raise some questions. They'll be solved by silence. She'll attempt to stop the cycle whirring around at great speed, the loop of fears. It's a chicken-and-the-egg scenario, the fear. Did Brittany hate herself first and then everybody else did because she makes it so easy for them, with her low self-esteem and general apathy toward being in any way appealing? Or was it rather that everybody else saw her atrociousness first and pointed it out to Brittany like something in her teeth or mismatched socks or toothpaste residue in the corner of her mouth? And then, like out of a bad dream, when she tries to discretely address the problem, she finds the lodged spec is some sort of dental implant, and those aren't socks, they're prescription support stockings she has to wear in order to walk, and that's not toothpaste, it's the lone case of an as-yet unclassified mutant pigmentation disorder. Which is to say that all this shit that's wrong with her is permanent, such being the  fatalistic perspective of the pubescent, not so much failing to conceive of a time before or after now as misconstruing age 16 as the age, as in a die-casting event that fixes all outcomes, as in ultimately blessed or cursed heretofore and henceforth from this now obtaining state of affairs. In the midst of these hysterics, Brittany will propose a revision to her self-conception. She will hear no opposition, her own antagonists included.

A poorly assembled, rambling plea will be disrupted by a rhythmic jangle. The jangle will be reminiscent of a tambourine. The beat will swell. In the middle of Brittany wracking her brain to determine the noise, Martina will announce "Custodian!" Brittany will flinch from the interruption. She won't respond because responding  would lead to, "You alright?" and Brittany won't lie. Brittany would say, "Yeah, I'm fine." Martina would ask, "Then why are you in there, locked, with no feet?" This string of questioning would terminate in a return trip to the counselor's office and a phone call home. A phone call home would lead to more unwelcome discussions during which Brittany would want to collapse inward till she's infinitesimal, to be reborn as a black hole, an entity that was so small it somehow became immense and impenetrable, as in able to absorb  even the light that would make it visible.

Martina will arrive at her destination. Since she hears no response to her announcement, she'll retrieve a tool from her back pocket. There will be a sound scraping metal as a screwdriver finds purchase in the mechanism's slit. Brittany will watch the knob turn a ghastly 90°. She will grab her shins and pull back hard in a subconscious venture to initiate the shrinking sequence. The door will swing freely on its hinge when pushed. Brittany will gape blinkless. She will watch a bronze hand with unpainted nails retract through the doorway. For an instant, Brittany will feel immense relief. She will feel secure at remaining a secret. Then, Martina will peak in for curiosity's sake.

She'll stumble on Brittany sitting fully clothed, her knees tucked under her chin. The two will recognize each other. Brittany knows Martina. Martina knows the seated girl without knowing her name. In the first two seconds, they will not react. All appearances will remain fixed. Neither will draw in breath for talking. Martina's face will soften first. Brittany's face will soften next. Martina will deferentially nod. She will grab the door from the top. She will pull it shut. She will return the knob to its locked position. She'll exit. She'll report a false alarm to the secretary. Brittany will be left alone to ponder if the episode with the custodian had been a coincidence or a sign. She will oscillate between the two positions, confident these deliberations rise, too. She'll replay Martina's visage and what it communicated. She'll think people can see with more than their eyes and love without words until the tone emits from the hallway speakers, announcing fifth period. She will put her feet back on the ground. She will stand and put another lunch period behind her.