Love Like That by Emma Duffy-Comparone

Author:Emma Duffy-Comparone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

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On February break Rosalind went to Machu Picchu and came back with a bandage taped to the back of her neck. Before class started she peeled it off to reveal red, greasy skin and a big tattoo. Everyone stood around her while she held her hair up. It was the chakana symbol, she said, the fundamental of the universe.

“What’s that mean?” Jeff Maudsley asked.

“Holds the stages of life,” she said. “South, for beginnings. West, the darkness of the soul; north, wisdom; east, the place of spirit. The center is a portal of light, to connect us with the pulse of the cosmos.”

She told us how she trekked up the mountains with a shaman, ate bark, slept under the stars, woke up suffocating in the middle of the night and was saved when a strange bird flew overhead. She spoke of fifty-ton granite blocks so close together not even a blade of grass could fit between them.

Then she told us about the UFOs.

“Aliens?” the class asked.

“Of course. They’ve been coming to Peru for centuries. All day, like a Delta terminal.”

“Why?”

“To teach us things! How do you think Machu Picchu got built in the first place?”

“Do they come to New Hampshire?” someone called out.

“Certainly,” Rosalind said. “But not in peace. They hate Americans.”

She handed out worry dolls, which were to be put under our pillows. “You tell them your worries and fears,” she said, “and they bear the burden for you. Sounds codependent, if you ask me, but some of you are lugging around some legitimate baggage. Might want to double down and toss two under there.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Mrs. Finger said. “Class, thank Ms. Jennings.”

The girls scrutinized their dolls, compared, traded, made little beds and pillows for them with Kleenex. “Dolls are for faggots,” Drew said, and ripped mine from my hand and stuck it up his nose.

“Drew!” Mrs. Finger said. “That’s two.”

Drew pinched his free nostril shut with his finger and shot my doll at Patrick McGinnis’s face.

“Young friend,” Rosalind said, coming up behind him. “Do you know what happens to boys who stick worry dolls in their orifices?”

He froze. “In their whats?”

“Holes,” Rosalind said.

Drew shook his head.

“Skin grows over them permanently. And if the worry dolls feel they aren’t taken seriously, they can cast spells of sexual dysfunction.”

Mrs. Finger stood up from her desk. “Ms. Jennings,” she said. “A word, please.” She told us to work silently in our journals. Then the two women went into the hall.

“I bet she’ll get fired,” Oeifa whispered.

“Why?” Raquel said.

“My mom says she’s inappropriate. I told her the stuff she said about my lunch, and she was incensed. She even arranged a meeting with the principal.”

“What’s incensed?” Raquel said.

“You don’t know?” Oeifa said, and rolled her eyes.

For the rest of the day, Rosalind stayed behind her Chinese screens. She didn’t come out when Mrs. Finger started The BFG, or at lunchtime, or even for the fire drill. We stood in the parking lot while the firemen lumbered through the

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