Pamela wore long sleeves for the next month. She did her best to maintain Josh as her target at least until he bought and wrapped a present for Lindsey. At least, Pamela's plan included Josh purchasing a physical gift for Lindsey instead of giving her a gift card or money with a note attached saying, Buy yourself something nice. But Pamela didn't bet her money on the latter. That's not the sort of thing a devoted boyfriend would do for his girlfriend after being with her for over two years. Plus with what he did for her birthday last year, and his tendency to outdo himself for everything, Pamela all but knew for certain that Josh would give Lindsey a physical item and in front of a crowd, no less. This plan had better work, Pamela told herself. She spent her entire evening the day of her plan's birth fertilizing it, perfecting it, and had no time to laze about and relax after a long and “hard” day at school.
Pamela still remembered Lindsey's birthday from last year. Lindsey sat at one corner of the art room, Pamela at the opposite. Pamela could hear Lindsey conversing among her friends, one of whom gave Lindsey a gift bag at the beginning of class. After opening it, Lindsey set it on the floor beside her backpack. Pamela didn't see Lindsey without some sort of gift in her arms that day. Whenever she seemed to dump one into her locker, another friend showed up to replace the gift.
Lindsey and her friends fell silent when Josh entered the room singing Happy Birthday. Trailing behind him was James and another of his friends, Gregory Hunter. James carried in his hands a birthday cake while Greg wore a striped party hat and carried a party horn in his mouth. Josh held in his hands a wrapped present. Pamela didn't know any of the three boys' schedules, but she was impressed if any of them were in the same class and slipped out at the same time to celebrate Lindsey's birthday.
Most of the class joined in with the singing. The quieter folks, Pamela included, watched as James lay the cake before Lindsey. When the song ended, Greg blew his horn, the tube uncoiling and squealing. The class clapped, but Pamela watched in bitterness as Lindsey smiled the whole duration of Josh's visit. Before Pamela's hatred for Josh came to fruition, Pamela possessed a strong disdain for Lindsey. It bloomed faster than her disdain for Josh, likely because Lindsey didn't have charisma as redeeming as Josh's, so when Pamela's opinion of Lindsey turned south, it stayed that way.
The instant Pamela first saw shades of Lindsey's true colors happened when Pamela was a sophomore, Lindsey a freshman. It was the last Spanish class before Christmas break, and an odd if kind sophomore named Derrick Myers was handing out Christmas-themed pencils as presents to the students in class. Pamela had heard that Derrick came from a poor family and worked a part-time job to help with the bills. She figured that pencils was the best Derrick could do, but she thanked him for hers. She was in need of a new pencil, anyway: her good pencils had a habit of going MIA, and the ones that stuck around barely had any usable length to them.
Most of the other students in class seemed to have the same attitude, immediately stuffing their new pencils into their backpacks. A few made comments on what a terrible gift a pencil was, but Pamela expected nothing less from those individuals, and it was one small group, anyway.
When it came time to give Lindsey her pencil, Pamela noticed the Santa Claus eraser dancing atop the matching pencil. It was the only pencil like that, and, though it wasn't sufficient evidence, Pamela thought it proved the existence of the crush Pamela suspected Derrick had on Lindsey. She didn't think the guy—somewhat chubby, had hobbies only he was into, and sat against the wall at lunch by himself—had a chance with Lindsey, but she thought his gesture was sweet in its own right.
Derrick presented his gift to Lindsey, his head and eyes turned to the side.
Pamela expected from Lindsey, who was usually so bright and cheery and seemed to glow, to accept the pencil with a smile and maybe comment on how cute the eraser was. Her expectations were shredded as she watched Lindsey stare at the pencil as if Derrick were giving her a home-cooked meal indigenous to some isolated Pacific island; like a captured rat boiled and stuffed with herbs or something of the sort. Lindsey treated the pencil no differently as she grabbed it; like the rat might come alive and bite her. “Thanks,” Lindsey said, as if forced because society demands politeness lest she be ostracized.
A shy smile lit up Derrick's face, and he walked to his seat with a hop in his step, like he was one step closer to wooing Lindsey. Pamela's heart heaved in her chest, for it knew something Derrick deserved to know. She was tempted to get up from her seat, march over to Lindsey, and ask her what the hell her problem was. But as Pamela played the scene out, it ended in conflict, likely with her throwing the first strike. She considered instead telling Derrick the truth, but Derrick had no right to believe her; the two of them hadn't shared so much as a simple exchange of pleasantries while passing in the halls. It might take a while, but Pamela knew that the news would reach Derrick somehow, someway.
That news came faster than Pamela could have guessed, because Derrick watched as Lindsey set the pencil on one end of a table while she sat at the other. The defeat on Derrick's face was instant, and his face drowned in sorrow as Lindsey ignored the pencil the entire class. When the bell rang, Lindsey got up and left the pencil where it was. Derrick slumped in his seat as if a boulder were weighing his head and shoulders down. Pamela stayed in her seat, waiting for Derrick to come around. When the early birds for the next class entered the room and Derrick hadn't budged, Pamela got up from her seat and walked over to him.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Derrick rolled his head slowly, his eyes not visible to Pamela. “Yeah,” he said as he pushed his seat backwards. “I'm fine,” he said and threw the single strap of his sling backpack over his shoulder.
Pamela stepped to the side to let Derrick exit the room first. She followed behind him, thinking his emotions might start pouring out, draining the strength in his legs or tipping his balance. Then she would have to catch him.
Derrick made a detour to the pencil, picked it up, and thew it in the trashcan on his way out the door. Pamela peered into the trashcan as she walked through the doorway. She had thought she was looking at Derrick's hopes and dreams of a romance in that trashcan.
Pamela's sympathy for Derrick subsided later in the day as she relived the moment when Lindsey accepted the pencil with a look of disgust. The face Derrick didn't see, because he was too shy to look Lindsey directly in the eyes. The face that constricted Pamela's heart with rage. The face Pamela wanted to ruin with four curled fingers. But it was also the only time Pamela saw that face; it was a monster Lindsey kept locked in a cage and escaped once for a brief but tragic moment. Pamela thought of confronting Lindsey about what had happened that day, but no matter how Pamela spun her words, Lindsey would win. Not because she was a better debater but because she was a better actor. Lindsey could deny how she reacted that day in class, and because she had more allies than Pamela, people would side with her, or at least tell the both of them to cease the argument.
From that day on, Pamela detected the monster in subtle ways, ways Pamela hadn't noticed before, because she wasn't on the lookout for them. But she saw them in Lindsey's behavior: how Lindsey surrounded herself in a circle consisting only of the most popular kids in school; how Lindsey paid little or no attention to the kids without membership to that circle; how Lindsey stuck the harder tasks or manual labor on other people in group projects while purloining the easier, more lax ones for herself. And so, before Josh, Lindsey became the first person Pamela truly hated in high school.
During Pamela's year as a junior, luck had pinned her, Lindsey, and a Derrick in the same Spanish class. Come Christmas time, Derrick upgraded his gifts from pencils to cards; he saved up enough from work or got a raise, Pamela suspected. Regardless of which was the case, everybody got a card with a personally written message. Usually Merry Christmas with some attached sentence wishing that someone's sibling has a good Christmas or they get that video game they've been droning on about since its announcement.
Pamela's card wished her plenty of sleep over the break, which amused her but was also more evidence that her guise worked properly. Sometimes when using her Looking Glass in school, Pamela would prop her head up with her fist and close both sets of eyelids, giving off the appearance that she was sleeping. She was teased frequently about it as a result, but Pamela preferred those comments compared to ones about the genetic mutation that gave her a second set of eyelids.
Pamela watched with uneasy anticipation as Derrick approached Lindsey's table to hand out cards. One by one, each of Lindsey's friends received a card, and Derrick received a thank you in return. Lindsey was the last in line to receive a card, and Derrick still had a small stack in his hands. Lindsey diverted her eyes away from Derrick and tried to continue her conversation with her friends. She didn't look up at Derrick until he had already walked away from the table without shuffling through the pile for a card for her.
Pamela hid her lips that crept into a smile as she watched Lindsey glare at Derrick with a What the hell? look. She threw her hands into the air and shook her head at the boy who was too busy handing cards out to people who weren't named Lindsey Jordan.
“Where's my card?” she asked her friends.
They each gave different I don't know gestures: a shaking head, a pouting lip, and shrugging shoulders. “Maybe he hasn't found yours yet?” one suggested.
Lindsey kept a keen eye on Derrick as he handed out the cards, waiting for him to stumble upon hers. But when Derrick handed his last card to the teacher, Lindsey gaped, and she looked each of her friends in the eyes with an astonished expression.
Pamela pressed her palm against her mouth, trying her damndest to hide her sadistic grin and muffle her chuckling.
“Are you kidding me?” Lindsey leaned forward so that her friends could hear. Pamela knew it was supposed to be a whisper, but Lindsey apparently held no such ability when irritated.
Her friends repeated their earlier gestures. “Maybe he forgot yours at home or something,” one said. “Why don't you ask him?”
Lindsey sat back in her seat, crossed her arms, and shook her head. She mouthed something. Pamela guessed it to be, “Unbelievable.”
Quite believable, Pamela thought. And quite hilarious, too. With a sterner tone, she followed with, If you could see the world beyond your little circle of friends, you'd understand. Pamela thought if Lindsey had a second set of eyelids that blessed her with the same power as the Looking Glass, she could have witnessed the moment she tore a hole into Derrick's chest and left it to scar.
To see how bitter Lindsey was about this, Pamela made her a target and eavesdropped on her conversation with her friends during lunch. Lindsey brought it up once, but Pamela experienced déjà vu since the responses were the same: I don't know gestures from her friends and sour remarks from Lindsey, as though she had a rich grandfather who died but gave his inheritance to every family member who wasn't her.
Pamela, despite being away from her body, detected herself chuckling and jumped back to hide her mouth before anybody asked her questions. She sat at a table with the other social outcasts in the school during lunch, but they each kept to themselves. If one of them noticed Pamela's laughter, they said nothing.
What a bitch, Pamela thought. Her attitude towards not receiving a card, something she almost certainly didn't want and probably would have trashed the first chance she got, tickled Pamela's funny bone too much, but it also soured Pamela's mood when she became immune to the tickling. Thinking about Lindsey's sense of entitlement wrapped her veins with invisible wires, and thinking about it more along with the other qualities that fed Pamela's hatred made her feel as if her heart would explode from heightened blood pressure.
Pamela considered taking a page from Derrick's book and handing out gifts to everyone but Lindsey, but Pamela didn't have a job, and her parents didn't have too much extra spending money. So Pamela opted not to spend what little bit her parents had to ruin one student's day. Besides, it was a gag that probably wouldn't be as funny the second time around, but the second time around might spark some fight in Lindsey. She'd wonder why the school was conspiring against her and then lash out at Pamela, the latest attacker.
Pamela tried to think of ways to expose Lindsey's disdain for being left out; it was a weakness too easy to expose, yet Pamela couldn't conceive of any plans she liked to lure the monster out of Lindsey for everyone to see. School events weren't commonplace, and Lindsey wasn't part of the student council whose members led and spoke for them. Pamela wished she had a more vivid imagination, but she felt content with the plan she watered now. Josh was the original target, but Lindsey would make for great collateral: killing two birds with one stone. Pamela's skin rose into a fine pattern of goosebumps as she waited impatiently for that day to come after adding the final polish to her plan. Oh, how that month crawled by so slow.
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