Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus (22 page)

I liked Penny’s idea. I hated that I had to die.

“We should do the play the way we’re supposed to,” Nina said.

She looked right at me, like she wanted me to support her, but I didn’t. I liked Penny’s idea better.

“Maybe we could yowl a little,” I said.

Zoey Combs didn’t like this idea.

“Let’s not make a scene. My whole family is coming,” she gushed, “even my grandmother from North Dakota. I’m dedicating my performance to her. I’ve sewn her name into my outfit.” Zoey set her bucket down and lifted her long brown hair off her back with both hands. The name
THELMA
had been stitched onto her Lycra bodysuit. It sparkled across her upper back in little silver sequins.

I thought that was tacky. But maybe I would have felt differently if I had a living grandma.

“I don’t know if I’ll yowl,” Lilly said. “But I might meow a few times. I mean, we are cats.”

Penny smiled at me.

Standing in line, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother and my father. I figured they were both already inside the auditorium. They probably wouldn’t speak to each other, but it was still nice having them in the same room.

Mrs. Zirklezack opened the back door and waved her arm as if she were directing traffic. “You’re on,” she said, hitting us on our rears as we rushed past her into the gymnasium. Over a hundred people sat in the bleachers clapping for us. Nora and her bus of animals
were almost loaded. She was trying to corral the final pair of chimpanzees.

We stood on our buckets and burst into song, describing how much we wanted to get on the bus. But then, midway through, the song changed its message and we sang about how much fun we were going to have with everyone else gone. We twirled our tails, wiggled our hips, and clawed at the audience with our hands. Mrs. Zirklezack continued to coach us from the sidelines.

“You’re sassy cats,” she whispered loudly. “Sassy cats!”

I was trying so hard to be sassy that I was sweating like a hog. Which really worried me. Because sweat was slippery stuff.

As our song came to a close, I watched the large cardboard bus close its cardboard door. Nora and the animals inched across the gymnasium floor toward a picture of a sunny mountain. Lots of animals poked their heads out of the bus windows. Even Tony and Boone. I looked down our line at the other cats. This was a bad idea, because it made me wobble. But I was determined not to fall. When things got shaky, I lifted up one foot. I was surprised how easy it was to stand on my bucket on my right leg. Because I was right-armed, right-nostriled, and right-eyed, I figured I was right-legged, too.

I know I was the only cat standing on one leg because I watched the other cats. They did an excellent job clawing at the audience. Except for Gracie. Her legs looked stiff and her body kept swaying.

“I think we’ve got a knee-locker,” I whispered to Nina. “Gracie has locked her knees tight. She’s not keeping her pelvis loose like Elvis.”

Nina looked concerned. Since first grade we’d been warned by Mr. Fonseca, the choir leader, that when performing we should always keep our knees soft or else they’d lock.

“Bend your knees a little and keep your pelvis loose like Elvis,” he’d say, circling his hips wide like a hula dancer.

Mrs. Zirklezack had repeated this several times: “If you lock your knees, you’ll faint. And after that, you’ll vomit.”

I remember being surprised to learn this.

Nina was two cats away from Gracie. Nina was bold. She got down off her bucket and walked over to Gracie. Half of the cats stopped singing. Mrs. Zirklezack was yelling at us to keep going. Cameras flashed in the audience. I couldn’t see my mother or my father.

When Gracie went down, she toppled off her bucket like a cut tree. Nina and Penny helped break her fall, lowering her and her stringy hair onto the ground. Which was really nice, because if they hadn’t,
she could have suffered a contusion. The audience cheered. They thought it was part of the show. Gracie’s soft moans were drowned out by the applause. I was the last cat off its bucket, because I wanted everyone to be clear that I hadn’t fallen. But in all the excitement, I stepped off my bucket really hard and jammed my big toe. Lightning flickered behind me.

“Ouch!” I said. The pain made me forget where I was. I even forgot I was a cat.

Penny was next to me and she must have thought I had released a yowl, because she started making sounds like she was hurt too, like she was dying.

All of the cats joined in. Even Nina. We cried and shrieked and refused to throw in the towel. It sounded like we were being burned alive instead of slowly drowned. Mrs. Zirklezack had stooped down to our level and was on her hands and knees, slapping the floor from the sidelines and shouting, “No! No! No!”

The lights dimmed as the piano beat out a racket that sounded like thunder.

“I want to live,” Penny hollered. “I want to have a family.”

“Meow,” Nina shrieked.

Lilly, who usually died first in practice, dramatically twitched on the ground.

I looked at the audience. That’s when I realized that I didn’t want to die either. I would be sending the
wrong message to everyone, even my parents. Because life has ups and life has downs. Sometimes you struggle, but I don’t think you should ever give up. I think that’s true even for cats. So I did what felt right. I did what I thought I’d do if I actually lived in Nora’s rainy factory world.

I jumped to my feet and clutched my heart. “Nora,” I cried. “There must be room on that bus for one more.” I ran to the bus and pulled at the door.

“You’re supposed to die,” Jasmine Rey snapped at me.

From a small window, I could see Tony Maboney’s gray turtle face glaring at me. But I didn’t care. I pulled hard on the bus door until it swung open. Mrs. Zirklezack stormed onto the stage and grabbed me by my waist.

“I don’t know what this is about,” she said, jerking me off the stage. “You’re going to damage the props.”

The audience laughed. Mrs. Zirklezack pulled me so fast that I couldn’t keep up. At one point, she yanked my tail and it came right off. But it didn’t hurt. I spotted my mother and father seated in the same row, separated by several people. I blew them kisses.

Chapter 32
Aftermath

I
t’s hard to find the right words to explain exactly how I felt after being dragged off the stage and having my tail ripped off my butt. But I didn’t have much time to think about it. Because I heard my dad’s voice. He sounded mad. He sounded like he was blowing up.

My father ran out of the audience and zoomed across the gymnasium’s hardwood floor. His thick boot heels left several dark scuffs.

“I can’t believe this!” he said. “Stop it!”

He took my tail from me and wagged it at Mrs. Zirklezack. “Get ahold of yourself, lady!” he said.

“This is Mrs. Zirklezack,” I said.

“Your daughter is ruining the entire play!” she yelled back. “Look at her.”

But he didn’t. My father looked Mrs. Zirklezack up and down. “It’s life,” he said, nostrils flaring. “Fourth graders aren’t perfect. Crap happens.” His face was bright red.

“Don’t use that kind of language with me,” Mrs. Zirklezack said.

My father held my tail in his hands and gripped it firmly. When Mrs. Zirklezack had pulled it off, she’d split open an important seam. White stuffing bulged out of the tail’s middle.

“You broke her tail,” my father said. “Who’s going to pay to fix it?”

Then, the next thing I knew, my mother was racing toward us, her hair flying around her face, her high heels clicking across the floor. She sounded angry too. I guess she’d heard what my father had said about my tail, because she said, “We’re in public. Stop being such a tightwad!”

My mother grabbed my tail out of my father’s hands. “I can patch this,” she said.

Because my mother had called my father a tightwad, I thought he was going to say, “Stop trying to
manipulate me, Maxine!” But he didn’t. He just stood there.

“Do you want me to go get my bucket?” I asked Mrs. Zirklezack. During practice, we’d been told that it was our job to carry them off the stage.

“I don’t want you to set foot on that stage!” Mrs. Zirklezack said. “This is a disaster already.”

Lightning and thunder continued to flash and crack.

“This is your fault!” my mother said, pointing to my father.

“No, it’s
your
fault!” my father said.

Then my mother let loose a huge list of all the things my father had ever done wrong. He was an emotional firecracker. And a tightwad. And last year he bought her a vacuum cleaner for Mother’s Day. And once he dropped a jar of applesauce in the grocery store and walked away and didn’t tell anyone. “It’s just like you to leave things in a mess!”

And my father had a list of everything my mother had done wrong. She’d bounced more than twenty-three checks since they’d been married. She’d forgotten to bring her passport with her on their honeymoon and they missed their flight to Brazil. She’d driven on a flat tire all day and ruined it. And once she hadn’t properly cooked a chicken and they both got food poisoning.

Finally, Mrs. Zirklezack couldn’t take it anymore.

“This whole family suffers from an impulse-control disorder.” She threw her hands up in the air.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” my mother asked. “Camille was only improvising. It’s the mark of a true genius.”

“Yeah!” my father said.

I guess it was okay for Mrs. Zirklezack to insult them, but not me.

“I said no improvisation!” Mrs. Zirklezack roared. She grimaced at me and revealed her yellow, fanglike teeth. “None! You have betrayed the director and your fellow cast members. Such antics are an offense against the theater!”

I was feeling so light-headed. I felt wobbly and fuzzy and then I tipped over. At first, I thought my father had caught me, but then I felt the gymnasium floor squashing my face. I’m not usually a proud person, but I did feel a little ashamed about tipping over in public right after both of my parents had declared that I was a genius. I wondered if anybody else saw. It wasn’t as bad as what had happened with Gracie. She went down in front of everybody. And I was kind of off to the side.

I felt my father scoop me up from the floor. As he carried me out to his truck, I could hear Mrs. Zirklezack insisting that the show must go on.

“For the theater!” she pleaded. Her voice echoed in my ears as I wrapped my arms around my father’s neck.

“Did people see me fall down?” I asked.

“Probably not,” my father said. “It was dark.”

I hoped that was the truth.

“Are you putting her in your car?” my mother asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“But I wanted to take Camille out and celebrate,” she said.

“She just passed out!” he said.

“But I promised,” my mother said.

He released a big, unpleasant sigh.

“Hey, Mom and Dad,” I said. “I think I need a piece of cheese.”

They both looked down at me as I clicked the seat belt across my lap. Their eyes were filled with softness and worry.

“Where’s your cooler?” my father asked.

“Inside,” I said. “I couldn’t stand on a bucket and hold my cooler and make taunting body actions all at the same time.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” my mother said.

“Should we get it?” my father asked.

“No. It’s empty,” I said. “I made sure to eat everything before the play.”

“I don’t have any cheese with me, Camille,” my mother said. “We’ll have to go to the store.”

“One second,” my father said. “Your mother and I need to talk about something. Eat this. It has a lot of protein.”

My father opened up his glove box and pulled out a piece of beef jerky. He tore it out of its plastic wrapper and handed it to me.

“Mmm. It’s salty,” I said. “And very chewy.”

I watched my mom and dad walk a few feet away. I thought they were going to turn into wolverines again. I kept hoping that one of them would leave, but deep down I knew that a wolverine never retreats. I knew they fought till the end. So right there in the Rocky Mountain Elementary School parking lot, I waited for my parents to attack each other.

I’m not an overly dramatic person, but the next thing that happened was a complete miracle. Instead of hearing the sound of yelling, I heard the sound of a parakeet. And a hammer. Wait. No, I didn’t. I heard the song of the red-bellied woodpecker. Then I heard Aunt Stella’s voice. I looked out the window. My mother had answered her cell phone and put Aunt Stella on speaker phone. But things got even better! Mrs. Moses walked over and she began talking to my mother and my father and, I guess, Aunt Stella. They were nodding and talking. And nobody was yelling. At one point my
mother reached over and rubbed my father’s shoulder. Then my father stretched his arm out and hugged my mom. Finally, something fair was happening. They didn’t look like wolverines anymore. They looked like my parents! And then I realized something very important. Not only did my parents love me, but they also still loved each other.

I swung open the pickup door and ran to them. But I tripped on a stick and fell right on my face. Dry grass and small pieces of gravel stuck to my smooshed makeup. I must have looked like a very pathetic cat. My parents walked over and helped me up. Mrs. Moses came too.

“Are you okay?” they all asked.

But instead of answering them, I cried out, “It’s a miracle!” Then I tipped over again. I fell over another stupid stick.

Chapter 33
Mediation

A
fter everybody helped me up again, Mrs. Moses asked if she could have a word with me in private. I wasn’t thrilled about this, because I was afraid she’d bring up what had happened in the play I was worried that I might get suspended. I bet this was how the Bratberg kids felt all of the time.

“Camille, life can be challenging.” We stood beneath a tree. The breeze blew lightly through our hair. I could see my mother and father waiting for me in the parking lot.

“I agree,” I said. “I feel like I’m always being hit with challenges.”