Wall Girl
By Erin Oliver
I got the idea on the last day of summer. We were laid out on my pool deck and you had just taught me to untie my bikini top so I wouldn’t get an unsightly tan line on my back, a kindness for which I owed you everything. “What if I could figure out a way to make us disappear?”
You looked up from an old Tiger Beat I pilfered from my sister’s room. You could only read these sorts of magazines at my house and you always skipped ahead to the parts about kissing. “What?”
“It’s theoretically possible for humans to phase through walls.” I had just gotten back from a long and odorous month at physics camp and it was the only worthwhile thing I learned about. “It’s called quantum tunneling.”
You flicked the magazine shut and turned to face me, suddenly serious. You weren’t the prettiest girl in school—that distinction belonged to Janey Simms, who I privately thought looked a little bug-eyed—but you sometimes spoke slowly, like a debutante, and it compelled the boys and girls alike to want for your approval. Plus it helped that your boobs grew in before anyone else’s.
“Mel,” you said. “I love you, but you have to accept reality.”
“Reality sucks,” I said. I was trying to be funny. You didn’t laugh.
“We’re not kids anymore.” You returned to your magazine and that was the end of the conversation.
We were in third period biology when I figured it out. I pushed my fingertip against the lab table and it slid clean through the other side. I thought the answer had to do with the angle at which I approached the barrier, or, mortifyingly, my mass. For weeks I sweated over my mom’s Jane Fonda workout tapes and insisted on plain boiled chicken in the hopes of shedding a few pounds. But in the end the answer was magical. I simply willed myself to be no denser than a single atom and then I was.
I waited until the rest of the class was distracted with a movie to nudge you. Your eyes slid down to my hand, then went wide in the flickering dark.
“How?” You whispered.
“I don’t know. I just did it.”
You turned back to the movie. Without looking at me you said, “Come to my house tonight,” in that beautiful, slow way.
We scarfed down TV dinner meatloaf at your place and endured your dad’s lame jokes. He had a laugh like a donkey’s bray and the expensive kind of lawn mower you sat on, which he was very proud of, and he made me dread getting old.
Eventually you asked to be excused and we headed up to your bedroom so we could practice. I demonstrated my new ability on small objects. I pressed my pinkie inside a snow globe you got in Salt Lake City, and when I pulled it out it was wet with glitter and some kind of translucent sludge. Then I put my whole hand through your Ripley’s: Believe It Or Not! book. You suggested I try it on Minnie, your mom’s old runny-eyed Pekingese, but we agreed that seemed unethical.
Quantum tunneling came naturally to me, but you struggled with it. “You have to imagine that you’re small,” I said.
“I’m trying.”
“Maybe you’re just not special,” I taunted. “Maybe only I can do it.” You looked up with a completely blank expression, and for a moment I worried I’d upset you. I had the sense that you were looking not at me but through me, out into the yard your dad mowed pristine lattices into every Saturday morning, and further still, into the bruising dusk, the thin clouds held together by trembling droplets of water, willing yourself to be just that insubstantial.
And then you whacked me with a pillow and I burst into laughter, surprised and relieved.
A month after that I phased through a wall for the first time. I can’t really explain it. I was walking to the bathroom and I thought about passing through the wall instead of using the door and then I did. Same as the lab table, the book, the snow globe, just with my whole body. For the first time I was aware of my every organ, the highway of veins pushing blood into them, and it was sparkling and powerful.
I remember it was a Wednesday because that was the day of the week we had P.E. I was nearsighted and you were just generally uncoordinated, so we preferred home economics even if it meant listening to frumpy Mrs. Higginbottom’s rants about women wearing power suits and putting their kids in daycare instead of just raising them themselves. We got to the gym early that morning because I was eager to show you what I could do.
“Look,” I said, and then I stepped through the wall and into a dark, unfinished part of the school that smelled like damp armpit and rotted wood.
“Holy shit.” Your voice was muffled through the wall. “Holy shit.”
We goofed around for a while, knocking back and forth to each other in made-up morse code, and I made ghostly moans that grew in volume and in ridiculousness until you, laughing that jagged, imperfect laugh you only did around me, begged me to stop.
“Okay,” you said breathlessly, “you should come back now. I think people are coming.”
“Oooh,” I said, wiggling my fingers even though you couldn’t see me.
“Stop it, Mel.” All the humor had drained from your voice. I was chastised.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped forward. My face slammed into the wall, my glasses clattering to the floor. I blinked my eyes open, brow furrowed, and tried again. Again I hit the wall.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, can’t?”
“Like, it’s not working.” I pressed my palms against the unfinished wood, gently warping it but not quite penetrating. Something small and many-legged skittered over my feet.
You gave a mean little yelp of laughter. “Are you serious?”
“It’s not funny. What if coach calls my parents?”
“I’ll tell him you went to the nurse.” I could hear the smirk in your voice. That was code for female problems.
“Don’t let Jimmy hear you say that,” I hissed. I had just done over-the-bra stuff with Jimmy Piebald, an achievement I expected to raise your estimation of me, but you had offhandedly said Jimmy Piebald is such a mouth breather, and I felt like dying.
Then I was alone in the dark. Class began with drills, which I was glad to be missing. I swept along the wall for a light switch and got a handful of splinters for my efforts, so I gave up and sat cross-legged on the floor, listening to the pipes drip and the thunder of two dozen feet running up and down the bleachers.
I nudged a wood plank with my toe and it refused any give, shoved my pointer finger into the floorboard and split my nail. It wasn’t until class was nearly over that I began to panic. In the walls there was no time. It was too dark even to see my own hand in front of my face. I’d spent so much time willing myself to be formless that it had actually worked, and I knew then that I would never find my way back into my own body. I was your dad, laughing. I was Jimmy Piebald, my lips on my own neck. I was you, looking at me like you were realizing for the first time that I was ordinary.
I began to cry. Quietly at first, and then big phlegmy sobs. Coach blew his whistle and said what the hell is that, and someone snickered because he said hell, and you didn’t tell him I was trapped in the wall. Not even after the fire department came. I cried and cried. They cut a big hole in the wall. How did you even get in there, kid? I was crying too hard to answer. A cluster of kids watched, chittering nervously, phones out. Your eyes were downcast. I knew then that we would never speak again. By the time I made it out my parents were standing in the principal’s office with hard expressions. I was stuck, I said, and my dad softened and slung his arm around my shoulders and said I know, that must have been scary, it’s alright, and I didn’t know how to tell him that he had it all wrong.
THE END
Author Bio: Erin Oliver is a writer living in New York City. She is working on her debut novel.