Call Me Jane by Anthea Carson Page B

giggled wickedly, maniacally.
    Suddenly I felt an overwhelming urge to just push Ziggy off of me, and I did.
    “Get your fucking hands off of me,” I hissed.
    I stormed out of there. On my way out of the Burger King, I heard Ziggy say, “What the hell’s wrong with Janey Lou? Where is she going?”
    “She wants you to call her Jane, she doesn’t like that name,” Krishna told him.
    “Is that why she’s leaving?” Ziggy asked.
    As I looked in the glass on my way out the door, I saw Paul start to walk toward me, and Lucy pull him back by his arm.
    Gay chased me outside and said, “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t leave, please, I need a ride home. I’m sorry. I was just kidding around.”
    “Fine, just get in then.”
    “Ziggy is asking whether you’re mad at him in there. You should go tell him you’re not. You like him now, right? I thought you liked Paul.”
    “No. I can’t stand Ziggy. I do like Paul. Ziggy is driving me nuts. He won’t take his hands off me now every time we see him. He thinks he owns me,” I said, as I squealed out of the parking lot.
    “Oh,” said Gay, nodding, staring straight ahead down New York Avenue.
    When I arrived home I was exhausted. I usually wasn’t this tired on a Sunday night. All I wanted to do was sleep and sleep after I drove Gay home.
    “Ziggy called,” my mom said when I walked in the door, which meant she was up, that’s how early it was. I knew I had school tomorrow, and would be even more tired.
    I went into my room and collapsed on the bed. I had nearly fallen asleep when my mom opened the door.
    “Ziggy’s on the phone for you.”
    “I can’t talk to him right now, I’m asleep.”
    “Well, I’m not going to tell him that. You tell him yourself,” she said. and shut the door.
    Normally this would have really irritated me, but I was so tired I didn’t even bother growing mad. I just went back to sleep. If I had been less tired, I still wouldn’t have heard that emergency buzzing sound the phone makes after the person on the other end hangs up. I wondered vaguely, as I fell into a dream state, whether my mom would hang the phone up when she heard it. Maybe it would be my dad, coming in from working late at the office. Why did phones make that sound anyway? It sounded so much more alarming than any other sound, much more than even a siren. I think my dream was starting.
    Suddenly I heard a tapping on my picture window. At first it didn’t even wake me up, just melded together with the sirens and emergency phone sounds and dial tones. Then the tapping became a little louder. I sat up in my bed.
    I turned to look out the window. I didn’t have any curtains, so whoever was out there could watch me sleep, if they could see in.
    I listened, and looked out by my maple tree. Oh no, I bet it was Ziggy.
    “Jane,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
    “Paul?”
    “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Well, no.”
    “You want to go for a ride? I have some pot,” he said.
    “Sure,” I said, and climbed through the window.
    We drove to Menomonee Park, and then out to the carp ponds by the lighthouse. I arrived home again around 3:00 a.m. and crawled in again through the window.

EIGHTEEN
    I wandered aimless in the halls outside the cafeteria in front of the gym. The students ate cheeseburgers and fries. I could see Gay over there sitting with all her jock friends. Honest to God, you’d think she didn’t even know my name. Wouldn’t look over at me, wouldn’t even look away from her lively conversation. I was fuming silently about that when Lucy came running down the hall.
    “Ziggy came up to me,” she was out of breath, “he said, ‘Why isn’t Jane talking to me?’ Why aren’t you talking to him?”
    “Uh,” I said.
    I had been successfully avoiding this question for two whole weeks. Every night my mom told me three times that he called, which made me hate him almost as much as I hated her for telling me this. Every night on my