Leslie's Journal - Allan Stratton [44]
As always, Mr. Kogawa does his impersonation of a human being, droning away, solving problems on the board and wiping the chalk off with the sleeve of his jacket. But even though I’m dying to pass out, I’m so wired it’s like I’m on Red Bull. All I can think about is Jason. I need some privacy. I put up my hand, Mr. Kogawa waves me off, and in a couple of minutes I’m in the far cubicle of the girls’ second-floor washroom. I figure I’ll stay till school’s over.
After I’ve read the graffiti for the millionth time, I start to nod off—till out of nowhere, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s the weirdest thing. Like when I pick up the phone to call Katie and she’s already on the line. Or when I’m in a place for the first time but it’s like I’ve been there before. Or when I can feel that I’m being stared at.
Like now.
I lean over and check the floor on all sides outside the cubicle. No feet. Of course not. The can was empty when I got here, and no one’s come in since. I’m just freaking myself out. I sit back down, take a few deep breaths. Then this long, slow horror fills me. What if the stare is coming from above?
I look up, afraid of what I’ll see. Sure enough, there he is. Jason. He’s standing on the toilet lid in the cubicle next to me, staring down.
I want to run for it. But if I do, he could hop out and grab me. So I sit there, frozen, like a mouse in front of a snake.
“You’re late,” he whispers.
“What ...?” I struggle to breathe.
“You’re usually here by one-thirty.”
“You’ve been hiding there all along?”
He smirks. I feel sick.
“It’s your own fault,” he says. “How else am I supposed to talk to you? You hang up the phone. You don’t even say thanks for the cards.”
“I thought you wanted Ashley.”
“Got you jealous, didn’t I?”
I want to say, In your wet dreams, pencil dick, but I bite my tongue. “You better get out of here. Someone could catch you.”
“So what? If they do, you’ll be the one in trouble.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ll say you brought me in here for sex.”
My lip quivers.
“Come on, Leslie, don’t be like that. I only wanted to teach you a lesson. I miss you. I need you.” And now he talks like a Hallmark card, like he used to do after he’d hit me. How his life was nothing before he met me and I’m his “special someone” and he’s so sorry and blah blah blah. “I mean it, Leslie,” he pleads, “without you I’ll die.”
“Good!”
“Good?”
“Yeah. Go ahead and die.” Saying it feels great. So great I don’t even think about the consequences. I keep going, getting braver with every word. “What use are you, anyway? You just waste space. So go ahead. Jump off a building. Swallow a medicine cabinet. You think I care?”
Jason’s face contorts. For an instant, I think he’s going to cry. Then—wham wham wham—he smashes the wall of the cubicle with his fist. I squinch my eyes and raise my hands as if his fist could break right through.
He crashes out of his cubicle. He stands in front of my door. He gives it a boot. It shakes on its moorings. He boots it again. And again.
Just when I think it’s going to break off its hinges, he stops. “You’ll be sorry,” he whispers through the crack. Then he turns on his heel, like nothing’s happened, and walks out whistling.
Thirty-One
The e-mails and phone calls have stopped. But not the cards. Just three this past week, but that’s enough.
Katie says it’s a sign he’s getting bored; a few more weeks and he’ll leave me alone for good. I wish I believed her, but I don’t. These cards are different. Instead of being full of sucky love crap, they’re the kind you get after a death in the family—“In Memoriam,” “Deepest Sympathy,” “With the Angels.”
“Leslie, if you really think they’re death threats—tell!”
“Tell what? There’s no handwriting. Nothing to prove they’re from him. If I say anything he’ll deny it and I’ll get accused of being sick, of trying to get attention, of acting out.”
Then, last Monday, I opened my locker and there was a dead mouse on top of my books. I screamed. Some other girls screamed