A Map of the Known World by Lisa Ann Sandell

Author:Lisa Ann Sandell
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Chapter Nine

The viciousness of my exchange with Rachel at the dance plays itself over and over again in my mind. I am lying in bed, blanket pulled to my chin. I threw my beautiful green dress on the floor, where it remains, crumpled like a piece of garbage. Part of me aches to pick up the phone and call her, to make up and take back all the hurtful things I said. But as the cruelty of her part in the fight comes back to me, I get burned up with anger again.

Are people really calling me a freak? Do I look or act like a freak? The word itself sounds scary, sick. Freak. It is an ugly word. There’s so much malice in it, in people’s voices when they speak it.

Freak. The way the mouth puckers, like it’s filled with revulsion or loathing, to form the f, the disgust that gets spit out with the final hard k. I roll the shape of the word around in my mouth, and my eyes narrow with the long e.

And a baby. Because I don’t want to dress up and hang around with the Nasties and wear makeup and hook up? Does this also brand me a freak? If it does, so be it. I’m not ready. For any of it.

I shudder. I’ve become an object of disdain, of hatred, maybe. Does death mark those it touches this way? Are the real victims of Nate’s accident those of us who were left to survive him?

My thoughts turn to Damian, whose life was also turned upside down since Nate’s death. He and Nate worked so hard over the past three years to make sure no one knew about their artwork. Why? Why didn’t they want anyone to know what they did, what they cared about?

I can’t imagine life without my art. It would feel so empty. Barren and cold and terrible, like that Siberian tundra. I reach under my bed and slide out the bundle of Nate’s watercolor paintings. Leafing through them, I study the delicate splashes of line and color. I pause when I come to an image of a young woman staring out a window. It is a portrait of Julie. Her profile is rendered with such grace and care. There’s something about the edge of her nose, the hint of eyelashes, and a wistfulness in her bearing. Nate captured her humanity, her very humanness, with so much longing and desire and hope. Sometimes I feel I am filled with hope. Had Nate been hopeful? I can’t be sure. He was so angry all the time.

Maybe boys just don’t manage it as well, don’t handle all the pain and worry and need as well as girls do. It’s frightening facing the fact that things may or may not work out as you’d like them to. I figure all I can do is hope that life will turn out the way I want it to be, that I will turn out to be who I want to be, that I’ll accomplish all that I want to do.

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