Wake Page 0,7
English.
Nor does anyone else. Janie arrives home after the first day of school, relieved.
October 16, 2004, 7:42 p.m.
Carrie and Stu knock on Janie’s bedroom window. She opens it a crack. Stu’s dressed up, wearing a thin, black leather tie, and Carrie has on a slinky black dress with a shawl and a hideously large orchid pinned to it.
“I saw your light on in here,” explains Carrie, regarding the unusual visit. “Come to the homecoming dance, with us, Janers! We’re not staying long. Please?”
Janie sighs. “You know I don’t have anything to wear.”
Carrie holds up a silver spaghetti-strap dress so Janie can see it. “Here—I bet this’ll fit you. I got it from Melinda. She’ll die if she sees you in it instead of me. And I’ve got shoes that’ll go with it.” Carrie grins evilly.
“I haven’t washed my hair or anything.”
“You look fine, Janie,” Stu says. “Come on. Don’t make me sit there with a bunch of teenybopper airheads all night. Have pity on an old man.”
Janie smirks. Carrie slaps Stu on the arm.
She meets them at the front door, takes the dress, and heads over to Carrie’s ten minutes later.
9:12 p.m.
Janie drinks her third cup of punch while Stu and Carrie dance for the billionth time. She sits down at a table, alone.
9:18 p.m.
A sophomore boy, known only to Janie as “the brainiac,” asks Janie to dance.
She regards him for a moment. “Why the fuck not,” she says. She’s a head taller than him.
He rests his head on her chest and grabs her ass.
She pushes him off her, muttering under her breath, finds Carrie, and tells her she has a ride home and she’s leaving now.
Carrie waves blissfully from Stu’s arms.
Janie attacks the back door of the school gym and finds herself in a heavy cloud of smoke. She realizes she’s found the Goths’ hangout. Who knew?
“Oof,” someone says. She keeps walking, muttering “sorry” to whomever it was she hit with the flying door.
After a mile wearing Carrie’s heels, her feet are killing her. She takes off the shoes and walks in the grassy yards, watching the houses evolve from nice to nasty as she goes along. The grass is already wet with dew, and the yards are getting messier. Her feet are freezing.
Someone falls in step beside her, so quietly that she doesn’t notice him until he’s there. He’s carrying a skateboard. A second and third follow suit, then lay their boards down and push off, hanging slightly in front of Janie.
“Jeez!” she says, surrounded. “Scare a girl half to death, why don’t you.”
Cabel Strumheller shrugs. The other guys move ahead. “Long walk,” says Cabel. “You, uh”—he clears his throat—“okay?”
“Fine,” she says. “You?” She doesn’t remember ever hearing him speak before.
“Get on.” He sets his board down, taking Janie’s shoes from her hand. “You’ll rip your feet to shreds. There’s glass an’ shit.”
Janie looks at the board, and then up at him. He’s wearing a knit beanie with a hole in it. “I don’t know how.”
He flashes a half grin. Shoves a long black lock of hair under the beanie. “Just stand. Bend. Balance. I’ll push you.”
She blinks. Gets on the board.
Weird.
This is not happening.
They don’t talk.
The guys weave in and out the rest of the way, and take off at the corner by Janie’s house. Cabel pushes her to her front porch so she can hop off. He sets her shoes on the step, picks up the board, nods, and catches up with his friends.
“Thanks, Cabel,” Janie says, but he’s gone in the dark already. “That was sweet,” she adds, to no one.
They don’t acknowledge each other, or the event, for a very long time.
IN EARNEST
February 1, 2005
Janie is seventeen.
A boy named Jack Tomlinson falls asleep in English class. Janie watches his head nodding from across the room. She begins to sweat, even though the room is cold. It is 11:41 a.m. Seven minutes until the bell rings for lunch. Too much time.
She stands, gathers her books, and rushes for the door. “I feel sick,” she says to the teacher. The teacher nods understandingly. Melinda Jeffers snickers from the back row. Janie leaves the room and shuts the door. She leans against the cool tile wall, takes a deep breath, goes into the girls’ bathroom, and hides in a stall.
Nobody ever sleeps in the bathroom.
Flashback—January 9, 1998
It’s Janie’s tenth birthday. Tanya Weersma falls asleep in school, her head on her pencil box. She is floating, gliding. And then she is falling. Falling into a gorge. The face