Chapter 8: 05 | opia

EVERYONE TOOK NINTH grade hard. You were fifteen and no amount of YA books or Teen Fic movies you consumed could prepare you for the real deal. Yes, there were castes, the popular, not so popular, and unpopular―but life was not so black and white.

Pop culture never prepared you for what to do if the head of the varsity cheerleading squad graduated valedictorian, with a full ride scholarship to one of Stanford’s pre-med programs, or when the nerd got three F’s and did so poorly he had to repeat the grade. And it never told you what to do if you began high school right after the year’s long finalization of your parents’ divorce. So while most people took ninth grade hard, Wyatt started his drowning, which was how his tradition of going to sleep in the school’s infirmary began.

It first happened about two weeks into resumption. Wyatt had been on his way from the cafeteria after spending most of the previous night on a phone call with Viv when he distractedly collided with Will Hamilton, a tenth grader at the time who was notorious for bullying the freshmen. He’d begun to apologize, but Will refused to listen and pushed him into the lockers. Tobi hadn’t been there to fight him off, as he’d spent the entirety of that summer in Nigeria, starting high school late because of some problems with his parent’s visas.

It would’ve been a blood bath if Mrs. Lopez, the head school nurse, didn’t walk in at that same moment and put a stop to things, though even then Wyatt hadn’t escaped without a cut on his brow alongside a serving of emotional trauma.

She led him to the clinic after sending Will to the principal’s office, where while cleaning up his wound with Peroxide Wyatt started to cry.

Mrs. Lopez―Martha―then fifty sixty, had always exuded an aura of warmth, and he fell into it, wrapped himself even as he began to tell her everything. He spoke of his fear of waking up one day to find that even his father had left and that he would die alone. He spoke until she pulled him in a tight hug, not caring if tears or mucous stained her dress.

“Now the way I see it,” she began, “is that I have been alive for a very long time, and you might not believe it but I think things happen for a reason.”

“Bullshit,” Wyatt countered.

“Do you believe in God?”

Wyatt shrugged, slightly apprehensive. She didn’t look like any of the people he’d seen in Times Square during pride parades carrying signs like Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve, but people could surprise you.

“My grandparents on my mum’s side are Christian, and my mum identifies as Christian too―though nominally. My dad’s a secular humanist though, and I live with him, so yeah.”

“Well, do you believe in anything?”

He turned her words over in his head, not understanding what she was getting at.

“I don’t believe in magic if that’s what you’re getting at.”

She laughed, and wisps of white hair fluttered from the white chignon bun she’d styled her hair into. Wyatt took in the laugh lines around her mouth, and the wrinkles at the sides of her eyes, and understood what it meant when people said that there were some moments you wished you could live in forever.

“I think the first thing you need to do is find yourself,” Martha said, now an epitome of composure, “And after that, you find what you believe in, whether it’s God, or love, or music, or even you. You find that thing you believe in, take it in, and let it guide you.”

He opened his mouth to talk, but she stopped him with a finger.

“Don’t interrupt me,” she said, and Wyatt shut his mouth.

When she was sure he wouldn’t cut in she continued.

“Until then, you come here if you’re in any trouble. And about your parents, I’m sorry I shouldn’t be saying this, but forget them. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of a child to try and keep his family together. Some people just aren’t meant for the long run.”

And that was that. Each time he stayed up late and felt sleepy in class he would go to the infirmary, which wasn’t a problem provided that he showed her his grades for every class he skipped. Anything below a B-plus was unacceptable.

The inside of the clinic could fit ten to fifteen people at the same time, give or take. Its walls were painted a calming shade of baby blue and the familiar smell of antiseptic permeated the air.

Martha stood beside a bed, talking in soft tones to whoever happened to be behind the blue curtains. She turned when the door opened only to return her attention to her patient when she saw that it was him.

Already familiar with the routine, Wyatt walked to the last bed at the edge of the room, pulled off his shoes, and climbed into it, but not before pulling shut the privacy curtains. The pillow was as hard as stone and the mattress had a spring that poked at the base of his spine, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and at that moment he was too exhausted to care.

The abyss stared at Wyatt, and he stared right back at it but just as he was about to jump into it, he heard his curtains pull apart, and then somebody was tapping his legs.

“For an old person you are annoying,” he said, peeking through an eye. “Aren’t you supposed to be sweet and matronly?”

“I’ll be sweet and matronly when I’m dead, kid,” Martha said, sitting at the foot of the bed. “But until then, the show must go on. How was your break?”

Wyatt was silent, considering every possible excuse he could give that didn’t involve the truth, which was that he hadn’t checked up on her because he’d spent the whole time with a boy he was no longer with.

“Was it a boy?” she prodded.

“What? No, not at all. As if I would ever let a boy come between us. I’ve just been busy I guess.”

Martha saw right through him, and her lips quirked but she played along.

“Alright then, explaining to me why you didn’t get enough sleep last night should be easy.”

“Viv.”

Martha had a soft spot for his sister, who she always asked about. The feeling was mutual because whenever she was in New York, Viv made sure to drop by her place to visit with gifts if she could. They were even Facebook friends and chatted constantly, which to Wyatt was proof that his sister needed to get a life.

Who even used Facebook anymore?

“Oh, OK. Good, good.”

A comfortable silence fell between them until Wyatt cleared his throat.

“I should be going.”

“Mhm,” Wyatt murmured noncommittally. His eyelids struggled to stay open as he told her goodbye and within seconds he was out.

Someone was breathing down his face, and even though he didn’t know whether or not it was real Wyatt was sure of one thing: it was uncomfortable as hell.

He yawned, stretching till he felt bones crack, and then he opened his eyes to find a pair of dark ones staring intensely at him.

Wyatt blinked slowly, twice in fact to be sure that he was not still sleeping, and then he was flying off the bed; every one of his fight or flight instincts screaming at him to sprint out of the enclosed space and scream for help.

Logically a part of him understood that it wasn’t possible that anybody would put a target on his back, and that even if that did happen, his would-be assassin wouldn’t come snooping around trying to finish him off in broad daylight. He landed on the floor with a dull thud and his elbow took most of the impact, which sent shockwaves of pain through him, and he groaned.

The stranger, who Wyatt could now see was a student, was tall and had his hair tied up in a ponytail. For a moment as they seized each other up.

Martha was suddenly parting the curtain, eyes automatically moving to Wyatt who lay sprawled on the ground, and then she looked at the reason for his fall, walked up to him talking so fast in Spanish that Wyatt with his mediocre understanding of the language could never hope to grasp, and hit him on the back of his head.

He caught baboso, which he was sure meant idiot since his Abuela used to use it on him a lot every time he messed up when she still came around frequently, but that was all.

“Jesus, OK, OK” the stranger grumbled, his voice stopping Wyatt cold.

The rich timbre of it sent a different kind of shockwave through him and his heart began to race. Everything slowed down around him as he balled his hands into fists, feeling how sweaty they were becoming. All were symptoms pointing to one thing: the crush virus.

It was something that happened whenever he met someone and was attracted to them. He became sweaty, and his stomach would begin to throw backflips. Usually, it ended at this point, but once when he wasn’t a stranger to puking.

The stranger walked up to him, offering a hand which Wyatt stared at blankly, before sighing, bending down and whisking him up princess-style then depositing him on the bed.

“Ouch,” he cried when his elbow roughly made contact with the surface.

Martha had now switched back to English, her accent more pronounced than before. Wyatt had seen this happen with Tobi’s parents after they scolded him. Their American accents would wash off like paint and their accents would surface, especially after they spoke Yoruba: r’s not so emphasized, replacing words like gotta with have to, etc.

“I am so sorry, Wyatt, my nephew has bad manners. Canyon, apologize.”

The words fell around his ears like water on stone, even Canyon’s apology. In his head the crush virus raced through his bloodstream, wreaking havoc on his immune system. He could feel the battle in his stomach as it flipped on itself uncomfortably, which left him nauseous.

“Wyatt,” Martha said, “are you alright?”

He came to himself, looking up at Martha’s confused expression and Canyon’s unassuming one.

“Yes,” he answered, feeling his stomach lurch violently. “Absolutely.”

His eyes connected with Canyon’s, and then he was leaning over the edge of the bed, retching.