They Called Me Beautiful

Five: Exchange

Lane.

I forced my mouth to say the name, but in my mind she was always Maddie. Lane was that stranger I didn’t know, had never known; I wasn’t ready to accept the fact that maybe Maddie wasn’t coming back. It was too unfair of an exchange to be real, Lane for Maddie.

It was getting nearly impossible for me to be happy in her presence anymore. If I wasn’t jealous of her, I was afraid for her. If I wasn’t afraid for her, I was mad at her. If I wasn’t mad at her, I was jealous of her. It really was a vicious cycle, and my joining the youth did nothing to help.

At first, I was too scared to go to any youth things anyway. My self-esteem was crippled by the influence of an abusive father and an overprotective mother, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to speak without blushing. My side of any conversation was always held in whispers. Sometimes I wouldn’t talk at all; I’d just nod or try to smile or act like I didn’t hear.

Leah always promised to look out for me at youth things, but I didn’t want to be looked out for. I wanted to be like Maddie, and there was no way I could be, so I didn’t want to go out in public at all. I was too ashamed of myself.

Later on, when my mom made me go, I spent all my time observing Maddie, alternating between loving and hating her. In a way, I was obsessed with her, but I didn’t know how to stop.

That spring, Bridget graduated from high school, and Leah came home for the summer. My brother Stefan got a summer job out of state, so it was just us girls at home with our parents. Bridget and I spent a lot of time down in the woods, just to escape our father’s unpredictable temper.

“I’m worried about Lane,” Bridget told me one day as we searched for peppermint wood. “You have to watch out for her at school next year, Kate.”

I didn’t know what I could do, but I promised her I would. In a way, it made me feel good that Bridget trusted me enough to assign such an important task to me, but I realized later that there was no one else she could have asked.

And her concern was not without cause. School resumed in September of 2007. Maddie was almost sixteen. I could tell from the very start it wasn’t going to be a good year. The teacher we’d begun to hate the previous year was teaching again, and Maddie and Janae pushed every line they could.

Sometimes I’d see Maddie bent low over her desk, scribbling furiously, but it wasn’t always notes to Janae that she penned. The teacher had wised up to that. Instead, she vented in the only way she could: through poetry. I read one of her poems once, not when she wrote it of course, but after. Even then, it chilled me to the core.

“Twilight” by Lane Proctor

Drops of blood

Dripping, dropping down to the snow-soaked ground

Splattering in the nakedness of their indignity

Illuminating the cold, sullen faces

Of the dead, frozen below the ice

Once white and still

Now shining a brilliant ruby glow

But for the glassy black eyes

Eyes that have seen, that know all

Have known all, have suffered all

And now are plotting their revenge

Revenge against the innocents

Pelting, freezing bullets of death