ONE
I was in the Rubber Room for my own protection. Meili got there by breaking Laura Fenton’s middle finger.
The story got retold and exaggerated, but I think it went like this: Laura’s boyfriend was seen talking to Meili. Laura confronted Meili outside our high school and grabbed her arm.
Meili famously said, “You ought to remove that hand.” Her British-y accent made it “thaht hahnd.” It became a saying around school, silly but threatening.
Laura started to say, “Well, you—” and she was on the ground, wailing, her middle finger flopping like a deflated balloon.
Meili—it’s May-LEE—was marched into the Rubber Room the next morning by the counselor. Except she wasn’t Meili Wen, she was Melissa Young.
“Melissa, you will sit at this table, and you will not converse or otherwise interact with Mr. Wilder. Is that understood?” Ms. Davies addressed Meili but looked at me.
I nodded.
“Perfectly,” Meili said, head tilted, condescending as always.
Ms. Davies gave the aide on duty some papers and hustled out. Meili dumped a stack of books on her table and opened one.
I tried to go back to reading but couldn’t. Maybe I never went back to reading.
Instead, I watched Meili.
Deep in her book, she played with the top button of her yellow sweater, twisting it and releasing. Twisting and releasing. The sweater had a faint background pattern, a swirl you didn’t notice at first; you had to stare. I stared. Like all her clothes, that sweater made it seem like everyone else in Unionville, everyone I’d ever met, shopped at the same boring store.
Kids who broke the rules got sent to the Rubber Room. Mike Kosnicki was banned from Spanish because he had said something obscene and possibly threatening to Señor Treadway at a school dance. His defense was that he said it in Spanish. Kids who got in fights or sent out of class for using their phones spent time in the Rubber Room. I was the only all-day resident until Meili.
We didn’t speak the first day, not a word.
Or the second day.
Officially, it was In-School Suspension, but kids called it the Rubber Room. It wasn’t covered in rubber, but it was delinquent-proof. It was a science lab before they built the addition on the school, so it had long tables with empty racks for lab gear. The windows were Plexiglas instead of glass, permanently scratched up and foggy. There was a list of things that were not allowed: mirrors (could be broken and used as a weapon or to slit your wrists), scissors (same), phones, and key chains, though keys were permitted. There was a box of stubby mini-golf pencils; you used one till it was dull, then threw it out and got another. Real pens and pencils were too dangerous. The Rubber Room was set up to prevent tragedies like school shootings, or at least to make it look like you could prevent them. It was actually an ordinary classroom, echoing with boredom. Excruciating, as Meili would say.
Rubber Room monitor was not a coveted job. Ms. Davies or an off-duty aide sat at the front to “supervise,” eating or staring at their phones. Occasionally no one was there, and we were reminded there was a camera above the door. When no adult was present, you could talk as long as you kept a book open and looked down at it. This was a major flaw in the tragedy-prevention system. A couple times a day, a Rubber Room maniac could slip into the hallway—can’t lock the door, fire hazard—and do whatever he wanted. Or whatever she wanted, since Meili was and always will be the dangerous one.
At the end of Meili’s third day in the Rubber Room, Ms. Davies excused herself. “Jason, I’m going to the office to make a call, but I will be watching,” she said, pointing at the camera.
I nodded.
“Melissa?” she said. No response. “No talking and no getting up.” Ms. Davies stopped halfway out the door. “Melissa?” Nothing. “Melissa, did you hear me?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, finally looking up.
Ms. Davies left the door open. The window in the door was papered over to keep curious students from gawking at us. But now, two kids, small and sneaky, probably freshmen, slowed down and peered in, eager for a glimpse they could recount to their friends. Sometimes I snarled at the tourists to give them something juicy to report. But I wasn’t sure what Meili would make of that—turns out, of course, she would have loved it—so I stared them down.
Silence.
Meili chewed her lip.
Silence.
“That’s not your name,” I said. I looked at the page of my biology textbook I’d been pretending to read for twenty minutes.
Big silence.
“Are you talking to me?” she said, not looking up.
“Yup.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said that’s not your name.”
Silence.
“What’s not my name?”
“Melissa. You don’t answer when people say ‘Melissa.’”
“Perhaps because I’m reading and not scratching my testicles all day.” The word sounded like “testicools.”
“People respond when their name gets said. You don’t respond to Melissa.”
She turned fully toward me, a move that could bring Ms. Davies back. “Shouldn’t you be burning something down?” She smiled.
She went for the lowest possible blow and connected.
“Fuck you.” I put my fantasy novel right on the table and tried to read.
She stared.
“So you dish it out, but you can’t take it. Very attractive quality,” she said, and went back to her book.
* * *
First thing the next day, she dropped an envelope on my table.
I ignored it.
At ten, the aide left to go to the bathroom.
I still ignored it.
I read a novel hidden inside my history textbook. When I started in the Rubber Room in January, I had homework and check-ins. That quietly went away, like all the promises of getting you back in class so you graduate in June. Fine with me. Now it was May, my senior year, and I was killing time.
Meili, without looking up, said, “Really?” Pause. “Really?” Pause. “You’re not going to read it?”
I wanted to open it the moment she put it down. But I was terrified it would be some cruel thing, mocking me. I pictured the newspaper article about the fire.
But the way she asked, I had a feeling it wasn’t cruel. I opened it and took out a girly little card, a kitten blowing out candles on a cake. Inside, she had crossed out Happy Seventh Birthday to One Cool Cat and written:
Dear Firebug,
Still angry?
Your cellmate,Esmerelda (aka Melissa)
I put the card back in the envelope and saw the money: ten dollars folded into a tight rectangle.
“Well?” she said.
“Well, what?”
“Are you still angry?”
“Why did you call me firefly?”
“I didn’t call you firefly, I called you firebug.”
“Same thing.”
“No, a firebug is someone who starts a lot of fires. What d’you call that here?”
I took a deep breath. “Pyromaniac.” That was a word I heard a lot.
“Ooh, much scarier. I prefer firebug. A bit sweeter, isn’t it?” She smiled. “So, still angry?”
Confusing. She mentioned the fire but didn’t judge me for it. “I guess not. Firebug forgives Esmerelda.”
“Cheers. But I didn’t ask to be forgiven, OK? Let’s be clear about that. And now that you aren’t mad, mind doing me a favor?”
I would have done pretty much anything for her, as evidenced by what happened later.
“Depends.”
“You have a motorbike?”
“Yeah.” She had noticed.
Copyright © 2018 by Andrew Simonet.
