Wednesday (part 2)

I felt a lot better after lunch. Shannon and Steve had done their job well in terms of cheering me up, and it was good to hear them support what I'd said in English. Evidently, making Brandon Chambers go naked in school hadn't been an entirely futile effort. And then there was that photo thing with Claire Redecker, that I almost forgot to go to, by the way... But remembered just in the nick of time, and rushed over to the art building to find her waiting.

She'd heard about my little speech too. "I just wanted you to know that I support what you said. That's what the flip side of The Program is. We don't think about it much or hear about it much because obviously everyone focuses on the main part—'Naked girls in school, omigod!'—but not only do they have to get used to having no clothes on, so do we. And with that in mind I'm sure you'll be glad to know that the poses I'm planning to put you in are not pornographic in any way."

I laughed. "Good." I had said yes before the thought occurred to me; now I was simply glad. If she thinks she can get something seductive or stimulating out of me, good for her. I don't think I could do it with a straight face.

Having said that, though, it was a bit of a disappointment. She set me up in various locations around the school, asking me to just sit here or stand there, and then ran around snapping pictures, comparing the angles of the light here, the makeup of the shadows there. I felt a little bit like a mannequin. But hey, whatever works—when the bell rang, she assured me that she had exactly what she wanted.

As I walked to my next class, it struck me that she might be 'pulling a bitchinger, ' which has since become our label for someone doing something nice to set you up for a fall. I didn't know the first thing about photography; who knew what she might have done? But even as I realized it, I realized that likewise, there was nothing I could do about it. Forewarned is forearmed, they say, but in this case it simply meant I knew what lion's den I'd be walking into. If it happened, it happened. I doubted it would. Claire Redecker was popular, not because she gave everyone what they wanted to hear, the way certain other parties who shall not be named might do, but because she was herself. True, she was less popular, but that hardly bothered anybody, least of all her.

Forewarned is forearmed.

("Not that we didn't already have forearms," as Zach would put it. "Ow, Sajel, what was that for?")

I didn't see Arie again until seventh period Chemistry, and she looked distracted and shell-shocked; the world seemed to be just passing around her like rain. It was a distinct improvement over the limp dearth of energy she'd displayed earlier, but I didn't like that wide-eyed rabbit stare. "Arie? Are you okay?"

She looked at me like she'd never seen me before.

"Okay," she repeated.

"Yeah, okay," I said. "As in, ten-four, everything's good, nothing broken, happy to be here, all that stuff. Okay. Is something wrong?"

"Wrong," she repeated, as if she'd never heard the word before. Then something locked into place in her synapses and she nodded. "Yes. Something's wrong."

"What?"

She looked at me for a moment in infinite confusion, and then said, "I can't tell you."

"Why not? Arie, if you're... I'm your friend, I'm not going to judge you. I'd... I'd like to help, if I can."

Again there was that half-second pause, like relays clicking in her brain. Whatever it was, it had really given her a shaking.

She smiled. It was a tired, sad smile, but still a smile nonetheless, and it made her beautiful. "No, Brandon... Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm glad to have you as a friend. But... I think I have to figure this out on my own."

The instant I turned away, Tim was at my elbow with hissed questions of his own. "Is she okay?"

"What?" I said, half taken aback by his intensity. Tim's very laid-back normally. What was going on here to make him so urgent?

"Is she okay," Tim said again, and his eyes flickered from me to Arie, flickered to Arie as if it was painful to look at anything else for long.

Oh, I thought to myself. Oh-h...

"Ask her yourself," I told him.

"What," he said, scandalized. "I can't. She'd—"

"Mr. Kwan," said the teacher, and we made appropriate apologies. Tim's voice is very deep; it has the subtlety of a bull elephant. Which is cool at times, but makes it hard to hold whispered conversations.

"She'd never answer," he said, "she'd tell me to go away." "Why?" "I'm a stranger here. She doesn't know me."

"So what," I said. "Look at her. She needs friends, she needs support. If someone she sort of knows, but not really, suddenly steps forward to be nice to her, do you really think she'll turn him away?"

But Tim didn't believe me. At the time, I couldn't understand why. Now I know: because I had, even if temporarily, forgotten the power of doubt. (And what a miracle that was!) Unfortunately for Tim, though, it was I who was proved right in the long run.

And that was the end of his chances that day. Had he been me, ironically, he'd have had plenty of chances to try to get close to Arie. Since we of the musical persuasions would get out at 5:00 PM and have to return at 7:30 for the Open House, Mr. Gunderson and Ms. Bickson had offered to take us all out for dinner, and Arie and I were among the third or quarter or so of the students who decided to go for it. Unfortunately, since this was technically a school-sponsored event (Mr. Gunderson told me with a despicable smile), I'd have to go clothe-less—and we were heading to Buon Alimento, a pretty classy Italian restaurant only a few blocks' walk from here. It would be an interesting endeavor, to say the least. But I'd have the protection of two teachers and fifteen or twenty other high schoolers; and Arie still planned to go. So I shrugged and said sure. (Later I found out that Arie had lost the choiec by forfeiting her ride home from her mother, but she was still interested regardless.)

"Think of it as training," Mr. Gunderson told me, still grinning. "After all, it's only eating naked. Tonight you'll be singing naked. In front of your parents."

"It could be worse," Meredith said, pitching in with a saucy look. "The lighting's kind of dim in the restaurant. We could've gone to a fast-food place instead. All that glaring neon. No hiding in the shadows there."

I gave them a theatrical sigh. "This is supposed to encourage me?" But we all grinned, and I had a hunch that, if push came to shove, I'd have Mr. Gunderson on my side. And Meredith Levine, too.

The rehearsal hall is cold. Gets your nipples perky pretty quickly if you're not wearing anything (and I already had a couple of ripostes in mind, depending on how Derek Strong might try to tease me). But the rest of the package goes up in the treehouse, so I didn't exactly have any problems.

Until we started singing and I looked across the arc at Meredith, who was standing right at the edge of the risers, deep in soprano country. At which point I started having problems looking anywhere else. But eventually the orchestra wandered across my field of vision, filing onstage for their turn behind the baton, and Arie waved at me, trying to get my attention.

"That's Trina," she said to me, leaning over as she passed.

"Huh?" I said.

"That's Trina," Arie said, pointing again. "My sister." The girl in question was a couple inches taller than Arie, and more slender, with long flowing hair and an animated smile. She chattered and giggled with one of the nearby flute-players. She was cute in that pixie way, where Arie had more of a solid, earthy charm to her. (And where Meredith Levine, some other part of my mind whispered, looks like an angel. Ow, Sajel, what was that for?)

"What about her," I asked.

Arie gave me an unreadable look and then said, "Never mind."

"Uh," I said. "Okay."

Rehearsal was pretty straightforward; we had our stuff down pat. Mr. Gunderson and Mrs. Bickson were very pleased with our progress, but I think it also speaks to their wisdom, and their ability to choose pieces we could handle. We had easier stuff in the form of the Mozart we'd sing against the orchestra; we had more challenging things like the Stravinsky and the Palestrina. It was all sacred music (as opposed to secular pieces, which have no religious content) and I know some parents had complained about that; they'd grown up in the days when religion was kept out of public schooling. But the liberal attitude pervading the government nowadays was, ironically, allowing a relaxation of religious stricture. It was okay for students of any faith to pray in school now, or to sing Christian-flavored music, on the premise that any student who believed differently could simply shut his or her ears. And despite a variety of represented faiths, not one of the choir's members had left over the religious content of the songs. We all knew why we were there—because we love making music. (And to be fair, we're working on a Hanukah-flavored song for our December concert.)

After that, we put our music away, and Arie and I made a mad scramble for the south entrance, to see if we could get our clothing back. We couldn't use it now, but we wanted to have it when we went home; it was getting chilly out. What if they'd put the boxes away? Amusingly enough, Meredith made the run with us, giggling and egging us on. I'm not sure why, and I was still kind of uncomfortable around her, but she was fun company. As it turned out, the boxes were still there, bolted to the ground, and our clothes within them; I was a little surprised that someone hadn't made off with the clothing as a practical joke. A little more composed, the three of us headed back to the music building.

Meredith and Derek had both opted to take the dinner offer, so the four of us headed off with the rest of the flock, two of us naked, two of us not, passing between the harsh orange streetlights, lit from afar by the red fire of sunset. It was cold, and I wished I had a coat. Arie, next to me, was in much the same state. The teachers eyed us critically and then offered their coats, which we gratefully accepted. Nonetheless, I was shivering by the time we got to the restaurant.

The staff were a little startled to see twenty-five of us, most of us teenagers, half of us in the black shirts that were the orchestra's official garb, the other half in the choir's red shirts, and two of us without any shirts at all—despite the repeal of indecency laws, nude people aren't a very common sight; and neither of had fastened our coats closed, so they weren't really hiding anything. But they were accommodating and gracious; they pushed a bunch of tables together to create a single long one, with, interestingly enough, a four- or five-person booth at one end. Somehow, Meredith and Arie and Derek and I ended up there. A few people made disparaging comments about hiding ourselves behind the booth, but I gave them a theatrical eye-roll. "Oh come on. We're not on school grounds, Rule Three isn't in play. Besides, I doubt you could Rule Three us, in a place like this. They'd kick us out."

The weird thing was Meredith. Once she noticed how much I was shivering (she probably twigged on by noticing how much my teeth were chattering), she sat closer to me and pressed her body sinuously against me. And all at once I was treated to the interesting sensation of being warm, very warm, in one quite particular place, while the rest of me still shivered and jittered. The other students whooped and catcalled, but Meredith batted her eyelashes at them demurely and said, "He's cold. Look at him, his teeth are chattering."

If she'd done that on Monday, or yesterday, I probably would've slid away from her, or at least been suspicious. After our conversation on Tuesday, though, I wasn't at all sure what to think about her. I was at that state of expecting everything and nothing she did. So I shrugged and let her have her way. She wasn't making any overt moves on me, nothing like Monday. Maybe she was just one of those very-physically-affectionate people. Which is fine with me. I'd be one of them, if I wasn't constantly scared of getting kneed in the cojones. And it was very nice to have a pretty girl pressed up to me like that. Certainly not something I'd expect to see from Jane.

The rest of the table was already sorting out into its own conversations; the people on chairs nearest to us had turned away from us, leaving we four in the booth to form our own little clique. Arie, for her part, was just staring at her plate. She was still shell-shocked and distracted, almost catatonic, and she had to be jostled when the waitress came around to take our orders. That, especially, was what made Derek and Meredith catch on. "Arie," I said, speaking for all of us. "I know you don't want to answer, so I won't ask again after this. But I'm really getting worried. Are you okay?"

This time the lapse in response was long enough to be detectable to all of us; Derek blinked at Arie in perplexity and Meredith and I exchanged glances.

Then Arie roused. "Where's Trina?"

"Your sister?" Derek said, and we glanced around. Meredith located her at the far end of the table, chattering energetically with similarly young-looking companions. That girl was just a bundle of energy.

Arie gave her sister a long, haunted glance, and it seemed as though some deep, elemental shift took place in her; it was like she was saying goodbye. Then she turned to us.

The first thing we really had to do was brief Derek on Arie's situation. I'm honestly a little surprised that she let him in on the conversation at all; she couldn't exactly have told him to go away, but she could've deferred until later, when we could avoid him. Nonetheless, she spilled the beans in his presence, and it became quickly obvious that he didn't quite get what this whole self-harm thing was about. The stories had made the rounds, of course, but I expect gossip to be accurate in the same way I expect Jane to say the word "penis" without blushing. Derek looked suitably impressed, but with the three of us—myself, Arie, Meredith—to explain, he got the picture. Mostly.

"Okay..." he said. "I get that it's not, like, a suicide attempt or anything, but... My God. Arie. Why do you do it?"

And that was the question, wasn't it. About fifty thousand people had asked her over the past three days, and she'd given about fifty thousand non-answers. We're so interested in the what, the how, the why, that sometimes we feel like we just have to give some sort of causal explanation. Here are the dominoes, this is how they fall. This is a non-answer.

But this time, Arie didn't non-answer. She didn't try to explain. She was silent for a moment. And then she gave an answer that she'd never given before, and would never give again.

"I... I don't know," she said. "I guess... There just isn't any good reason. It makes sense to me, because I'm fucked-up, but, really... There isn't a good reason."

Understanding grew in Derek's eyes, like arms opening in welcome, and he put his hand gently on her forearm, on the scars on her arm.

"So," Arie said. "I was... This is a complete secret, okay, you can't talk to this about anybody."

Derek smiled. "Good thing there's lots of us, then, we can talk to each other about it."

Arie drew ragged breath. "At lunch I was checking my e-mail, and also the website I'm part of that cutters visit. It's a place where we understand each other." We nodded. "And... I found out that my sister's one of the people who posts there."

Dead silence from the three of us, punctured only by the chatter of the rest of the table.

"We talk about our problems," Arie said, "and so I know that the person who uses that screen name is cutting, pretty frequently; I know that she's purging—"

"What," Derek and Meredith asked. Evidently they hadn't heard that term.

"Throwing up after meals," I said. "Bulimia."

Meredith shuddered. We weren't pressed up to each other anymore, but under the table our hands had found each other somehow, and I gave hers a squeeze.

Arie drew breath and kept talking. "I know that Flicker—that's the screen name—is worse than I am. And that she has it worse than I do, in the way her parents treat her and the way she takes it."

"Wow," Meredith said. "That's got to be hard news to take over lunchtime." And she disconnected from my hand long enough to reach across me and squeeze Arie's shoulder. For my part, I kind of wanted to hug Arie—I thought someone should; the poor girl looked like she'd just been riven of her best friend—but I was concerned Meredith might take it the wrong way. And besides (and here I was being incredibly selfish) I'd rather have Meredith's hand in mine than an armful of Arie.

"Hold on, though," Derek asked. "You said, 'The person using that screen name.' Is Flunker—"

"Flicker," Meredith corrected.

Derek made a disgruntled noise. "Is Flicker your sister or not?"

"I... I don't know," Arie said. "She must have been in one of the other computer labs at the same time I was online. I posted a rebuttal in a thread she'd started, and she came back with... God, what was it, something like... 'God, Arie, don't be so self-righteous, this is all your fault. Signed, Trina.'"

I shrugged. "You don't need to know it by heart. We can go look it up again."

"No, that's the thing, we can't," she said. "I hit Reload to make sure I wasn't just seeing things—and then the page came back saying, Sorry, user Flicker has deleted this post."

"Owch," I said. "Not good."

"Yeah," Arie said. "I'm not..." She sighed. "Remember what I said yesterday about how intangible my depression seems? Nothing seems to cause it, maybe I'm just imagining things. So what if I was imagining the message?"

"I know where you're coming from," I said. "In my case, it was nothing causing it—specifically, the nothing-gap where my parents should've been. But sometimes it's hard to pinpoint that, and you wonder... 'Fuck, where is this coming from?'"

This time it was Meredith who gave my hand a squeeze, and Arie shot me a grateful look.

Derek said, "Maybe we could reference the page in cache..."

Meredith said, in the tone of the uninitiated, "In what?"

Derek gave her a blank look. "Cache? Computer term?"

"Don't look at me," Meredith said, "I just learned what an Internet is."

"Oh, well. Cache is— Arie, you were on a school computer, so you were using Internet Explorer, right? Well, IE—hell, all browsers—keep copies of every page they load. This folder is called the cache. Using it, we may be able to find the version of the page that has your sister's message."

"That'd be great," I said, understanding what it would mean to Arie. "I mean, you know how it is to have the proof right in front of you."

"I don't think I need it," Arie said.

We all looked at her.

"I know some things about Flicker from that thread," she said, "from other threads she's posted on. They all line up. Flute, response to parents, the way her parents act, the way she treats her older sister—me..."

"That doesn't mean it's Trina," Derek said.

"Yeah, but it's still definitely not not-Trina," Arie said.

"What?" Meredith asked. "Plain English, please."

"Whoever Flicker is," I said, "she's very similar to Trina. She can't be someone who isn't... Trina-esque." Meredith nodded. "Which, in its way, is just as incriminating."

"And besides," Arie said. "I just... I look at Trina, and I know. Or... Maybe I see how she looks at me."

Trina expedited things immensely by proving the point right then and there. She was clearly focused on her friends, not on us, but she glanced unconsciously at Arie as she talked, and her eyes smoldered with hate. Whatever else might be true or untrue of them, Trina and Flicker clearly shared an intense dislike of their older sisters.

It took us all a few moments to find our voices after that little display. Meredith was the first to recover. "So what are you going to do," she asked.

Arie sighed, and her voice was close to tears. "I don't know! She's such a bitch sometimes, but... Oh, God. She's my sister. She cuts, she purges. I can't... I can't just leave her there."

The waitress plunked down our dishes at that moment, and conversation was stalled for some minutes as we all ate. Meredith had ordered some chicken dish with mushrooms involved. I liked that. I despair whenever I see girls deliberately starving themselves with salads or something... Much as, I noted with dismay, Arie was doing. Oh well, cut the poor girl some slack. Maybe she isn't hungry. Would you be, Brandon Chambers, if you'd just learned what she had?

"Maybe," I told her, "you should say something to your parents."

She threw her fork at the table. "Gah! Everybody says that!"

"Maybe it's good advice," Meredith said.

"Maybe I've heard it too many times," Arie snarled, and Meredith and I traded startled glances and decided to leave it alone.

The rest of the meal developed in relative peace. Derek took the opportunity to shift the conversation to other things, less intense things, and we chattered and laughed about movies and television shows and video games and even managed to make Arie smile a couple of times. All of us were keeping an eye on Trina, though, and we saw what, I think, her friends completely missed—the periods of brooding silence, the bitterly resentful glances at Arie, the occasional moments of ill temper. Or maybe, if this had been going on for a while, her friends had just accepted it as the norm. Who knew.

I had other problems. Mr. Gunderson's coat was made of some substance not unlike felt, and it really wasn't meant to be worn against the skin; it itched abominably, and it made me miserable. I squirmed and shuffled my shoulders and couldn't do anything to stop it. "Something wrong," Meredith asked, and I answered, "It's this coat. It's itchy."

"So, take it off," Meredith said reasonably. Which was actually the perfect answer. So I did.

The coat passed from hand to hand down the table, generating a string of catcalls and wolf-whistles, until it got back to Mr. Gunderson, who gave me a smile. I waved back. Meredith, for her part, beamed and waved like the First Lady, evidently pleased at the attentoon. I rolled my eyes and let her. She was just playing around, she was just a friend. (She wasn't Zach Crane, either.) She didn't mean anything by it. I could bear it.

Arie, as it turned out, had similar problems with her borrowed coat, but when she sent it back to Ms. Bickson, Derek gave her his. Meredith and I exchanged glances. We knew that that meant.

The other thing that happened was that, as you might expect, we got noticed for being naked. And it wasn't the usual, either. Normal Program attention, where I'm concerned, is OMG ur so small hahahaha!!111' im so funny uve got a punny dick LOL OMG hahaha, and for Arie it's startled looks at her arms and then a careful shuffling away. But these were complete strangers, and our stigmas were gone. The first was actually our waitress, a woman in her later twenties who'd never heard of The Program before. She didn't seem to grasp how it worked, though, until Derek mentioned Rule Three. Then she looked very interested. Derek, with the sort of twinkle in his eye that should've gotten him locked up, added, "Oh, and then there's Rule Four, which is Relief."

"You don't say," the waitress breathed.

"Yeah," Derek said. "If you're too... You know, pent-up... You can go up in front of the class in the first five minutes and, ah, take care of your problem. Or ask someone to help you, if you so desire."

"Really," said the waitress.

"Mm-hmm," said Derek, nodding solemnly.

"Wow," said the waitress, "I wish we'd had The Program when I was in high school."

When she'd gone, Derek observed, "You know, I think she's going to go find herself some Rule Four right now."

Meredith and I burst into laughter.

"What," Derek said innocently, "you could tell! She was totally turned on!"

"Y-Yeah," I managed to gasp out, "and you did that on purpose!"

"Who, me, Derek asked, the picture of innocence. Which he immediately ruined by putting a finger to his mouth and saying, "Hmm, she must have quite an exhibitionistic streak. I wonder if we'll see her come to work naked one day."

I just shook my head and laughed. Derek was quite a guy.

The other visitors were George Baker and Penny Stefanopulos, freshmen at Whitehill University, ten minutes' drive away, and alumni of Westport High. They'd been through The Program its first year, riding the wave of initial excitement, and they were eager to compare notes—especially when they found out that Arie and I were the first wave. They were cheerful and confident and outgoing, and their unconscious vigor drew us out as well. We talked about the way The Program had evolved at Westport—and, by implication, the way it might evolve at Mount Hill—and we came away with a lot of suggestions and ideas.

"I've got to warn you, though," I told them, "we're not exactly your average Program participants."

"I can tell," George said, "look at your pal over there."

"Yeah, well, she's just had a major shock to her system."

"Just had some certain floodgates unlocked," Penny asked with a knowing smile.

Arie spoke without looking up from her salad. "I just found out that I'm not the only one in my family who thinks about committing suicide."

George and Penny's eyes widened as one person's eyes widen, and the distance between them narrowed, even though they didn't move. I'm not sure how else to explain it. They weren't like leaning towards each other, but they were thinking towards each other. "Okay," said George. "I see what you mean about 'not your average participants.' "

"Well, The Program's always been about drawing people out of their shells," I said, intending a peace offering. Was it true? I felt like I had to say something, and that was what came from my lips. "We just have much deeper shells than most people."

Evidently it was true, because no one disputed it. Instead, George muttered, "Ambitious principal."

I grinned. "What, is your guys' principal practically in charge of The Program too?"

"Bob Tilling? You betcha." Penny laughed. "I think he hand-picks the candidates himself. You should've seen how many couples he managed to put together last year. It was hilarious."

"Did that include you two," Meredith asked.

George and Penny glanced at each other, and I saw the way their smiles brightened. "No," George said. "We went through it before they implemented the Buddy system. Different weeks. But I noticed her when she went naked."

"And then two weeks later, I noticed him," Penny said, grinning.

"I asked her out on my Wednesday," George said.

"And now look where it's gone," Penny said, offering her hand. On her finger was a slim band of gold with a single inset diamond.

After we had been vocally appreciative and they had beamed proudly at us (and they were really cute together), George said, "So what about you two? The Buddy system working its magic once again?"

"Don't be ridiculous, George," Penny said, "look at them." She gestured at me and Meredith.

Meredith grew still and cold. Derek and Arie and I looked at her. Oh my God, I thought.

"Uh," said Penny. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No," Meredith said through ashen lips. "Nothing wrong."

"Uh, maybe we should go," George said.

"No," said Meredith, "stay."

But that was really the end of it, and they left. And though Derek did his best to salvage the conversation, that was really the end of it for us too. And as we stood up to leave the restaurant, Trina threw one more furious glance in our direction, fitting punctuation to our evening that, for a while, had taken us out of our problems, only to be forced back in on the swordpoint of Trina's glare.

W .6

The walk back to the music building was somewhat subdued for the four of us. Arie seemed still absorbed in her problems, and Meredith had withdrawn. (Jeez, and just when I'd gotten used to thinking of her as a friend too.) Derek was watching the world around him, but he seemed content to let silence reign. It seemed to be up to me.

"I never had a chance to ask you," I said to Arie. "Do you feel better about last night?"

"Yeah, speaking of that," Derek said. "What was up with you two after choir yesterday?"