They burst into tears.
Dad and Jennica were outside in a flash. When she found out what had happened (thanks to Rosie, who couldn’t tell a lie save her life), Jennica wanted Dad to call 911. Seriously. He made her see reason, sort of, and the two of them drove the twins to the nearest hospital instead. Don’t ask me what she thought an ER doctor could do. Maybe give the twins some high-powered mouthwash.
Rosie and I were left alone in the house for over two hours. We went into the family room and turned on the flat-screen TV.
I knew I was in big trouble. I knew Mom would hear about it. And I knew I should feel bad about what I’d done.
But I didn’t. I felt empty – like if you looked inside me at that moment, there’d be nothing there. Just a great big blank.
About fifteen minutes into a rerun of
Arthur,
Rosie
said, “You never made
me
eat poo.” Her eyes didn’t leave the TV.
“No, Rosie,” I said, gently pulling her thumb out of her mouth and taking her hand in mine. “And I never would.”
Jennica wouldn’t even look at me when they got home. That night I heard Dad on the phone to my mom, telling her about my “ongoing troubling behavior.” The next morning, I announced that I’d like to go back to Vancouver. Nobody argued. Rosie didn’t want to leave, but she was too young to travel by herself, so she had to come with me. I packed up all our clothes and all our new gifts, except for the skirt, which I stuffed under the bed.
We were back in Vancouver in time for dinner. Fake Christmas had lasted just over twenty-four hours.
“W
ash much?”
I sighed. Thing One (otherwise known as Ashley Anderson) stood by my desk, smirking down at me, flanked by Thing Two (otherwise known as Lauren Janicki).
“Shut your mouth much?” Phoebe snapped at her from the seat in front of me, like the awesome best friend she was.
“Honestly, some people could care less what they look like,” Ashley said to Lauren.
“Couldn’t,” I said.
“What?”
“
Couldn’t
care less. If you
could
care less, it means you could. Care less.” Yeah. I really said that. Honestly, there are times when I wish I could tear out my own vocal cords.
Ashley’s big eyes got a little bigger. “Oh. My. God. You are
such
a geek!” Still smirking, she strutted away, followed obediently by her posse of one.
Ashley was at the top of the food chain at Emily Carr Elementary. It didn’t mean she was the most popular. It just meant she acted like she owned the place, and for some reason, we all went along with it. She radiated confidence, with her long chestnut brown hair, blue eyes, actual boobs, and unique sense of style. Like today, she was wearing hot pink tights, a long white T-shirt cinched at the waist with a big belt, black boots, big hoop earrings, and blue glitter eye shadow. On someone else, for example,
me,
it would’ve looked ridiculous. On Ashley, it looked cutting edge. Lauren was a copycat version of Ashley, only shorter and a bit odd-looking, like all her features were squished a little too close together.
Phoebe and I were a lot farther down the seventh-grade food chain. We weren’t at the very bottom; we weren’t like plankton, thank you very much. We were more like gazelles, or maybe field mice, which meant Thing One and Thing Two could eat us for breakfast whenever they felt like it.
I glanced down at my T-shirt. Sure enough, there was a food stain, most likely spaghetti sauce. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it this morning. Truth is, I’d been dressing Rosie and me in our least dirty dirty clothes since we got back from L.A. because the washing
machine was still broken and Mom and I hadn’t had a chance to get to the Laundromat yet.
I subtly dipped my head close to one pit, then the other, to do a B.O. check. Thank God all I could smell was deodorant.
“Do a couple of loads at my house later tonight,” Phoebe whispered to me. “Cathy and Günter won’t mind.” Cathy and Günter are Phoebe’s parents. Cathy is Chinese-Canadian and Günter is Swiss-Canadian. They’re both psychologists, and neither of them like being called Mom and Dad because it sounds “too hierarchical.”
“I think I’ll take you up on that,” I said to her. I held out my fist, and we did the Obama bump.
Phoebe had been my best friend since kindergarten, when the teacher made us bathroom buddies. Once I didn’t make it in time and I peed my pants. Phoebe helped me flush my soaking underwear down the toilet and never breathed a word to anyone – even after the toilet backed up and flooded the basement and the school tried to find out who’d clogged the drain with a pair of Elmo briefs.
Now that’s loyalty.
Phoebe also understood me better than anyone else, even my mom. Predictably, Mom flipped out over the Turd Incident. I’d been grounded for the rest of the
Christmas holidays, including New Year’s Eve, which truly sucked since I had to turn down a whole bunch of party invitations – not. My mom never clued in that grounding me was pretty much a pointless punishment, since aside from hanging out with Phoebe – which I was still allowed to do, even when I was grounded – I had no social life.
But when I told Phoebe what had happened, this was what she said: “Wow.” Then, “
How
big were they?” Then, “I can’t believe they actually …” Then, “I get that you were tempted. But I can’t believe you actually
did
it.” And, finally, “You took out your anger on the wrong people.”
Then we’d dropped the subject and exchanged Christmas gifts. I gave Phoebe a notebook with a stick figure of a boy on the cover that said
Boys Stink. Throw Rocks at Them
. She gave me a Magic 8 Ball. It was as big as a baseball, and it could supposedly predict the future. You could ask a question, give the ball a shake, and an answer would appear, floating on a little triangle, in a small round window at the base of the ball. We asked it a lot of questions, including my favorite: “Will Ashley’s hair fall out in clumps this year?” The Magic 8 Ball responded,
It is certain.
It was an awesome gift.
——
“Violet, look,” Phoebe whispered. “It’s your boyfriend.”
Jean-Paul Bouchard had just entered the room. He’d arrived at our school in late October, from Winnipeg. He was seriously cute, but he was just as seriously
not
my boyfriend. One, because a guy like him would never even look at a girl like me, and two, because I had made a vow to myself post-Jonathan that I would never have a boyfriend because love is more trouble than it’s worth.
We watched as Ashley subtly followed Jean-Paul’s movements through the classroom, like a hunter tracking its prey. She was talking to Lauren and Claudia and doing a good job of acting like she was giving them her full attention. But the moment Jean-Paul sat down, Ashley broke away from her friends and slipped into the seat in front of him. She turned around, flashed him a pearly white smile, and started chatting.
“I hate her,” I murmured.
“I want to be her,” Phoebe replied.
And the two of us knew that it was perfectly natural to have both those feelings all at once.
Phoebe had a Mandarin lesson after school, so I picked up Rosie from her after-school care program in the basement on my own. When I came in, she was sitting in a corner, sucking her thumb.
“What’s wrong, Rosie?”
“Isabelle tore my fairy wings.” She took her thumb out of her mouth and held out the wings from the costume Dad had given her. One of them had a small tear. “She did it on purpose.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“So why are you sitting in the corner?”
“Because I bit her.”
“Oh.”
Alison, one of the daycare workers, joined us. “It’s the third time she’s bitten Isabelle this year,” she said to me, like Rosie wasn’t there.
“The girl tore her wings. They were a present from our dad.”
“That’s still no excuse for biting. Will you tell your mother what happened, or should I write a note?”
I held out my hands and pulled Rosie to her feet, refusing to make eye contact with Alison. “I’ll tell her,” I lied. Then to Rosie, “I might be able to fix your wings.”
I held Rosie’s hand as we walked the two blocks to Main Street, my backpack slung over one shoulder, her backpack slung over the other. The hoods of our jackets were pulled up to protect us from the cold January rain.
When we reached Main Street, we stopped so Rosie could press her nose against the window of the Liberty
Bakery and gaze at the mouthwatering baked goods on display in the glass cases. A few blocks later, we crossed King Edward and stopped to inhale the aroma of bacon wafting from Helen’s Diner. Another block up, we arrived outside the William Berto School of Hair Design. I opened the door, and we clomped up the stairs.
The school took up the entire second floor of the building. By the windows facing the street, a row of stations were set up for the students, with swivel chairs and giant mirrors. On the far wall was a row of sinks. A few students were at their stations, cutting and coloring customers’ hair. Because they always needed heads to practice on, the school advertised five-dollar haircuts, and they got a steady stream of walk-ins.
“Girls, hi!” my mom said, waving us over. She was giving her friend Amanda a trim. She stopped what she was doing to give us each a hug.
Even though she was in her late thirties, my mom was still super-pretty. She had thick brown hair that fell just past her shoulders, green eyes, and lips that my dad used to call irresistibly kissable. She’d even managed to keep her figure, for the most part.
It was her clothes I couldn’t stand. She’d started dressing differently after the divorce papers were signed. Her jeans were too tight, and her shirt was cropped to let her stomach show, a stomach that had had to stretch not once but twice to hold babies. A soft
layer of flab drooped over the waist of her pants. To top it off, her belly button was pierced – a belated birthday gift from her friend Karen after they’d had a few too many margaritas one night.
I sat down in the chair next to Amanda’s. “Good to see you guys,” Amanda said, giving us each a high five. Amanda was younger than my mom and wore really cool clothes, a combination of secondhand stuff and amazing sweaters she’d knit herself. But even though she probably could have pulled it off, she didn’t expose a lot of flesh. If only Mom had taken her fashion cues from Amanda and not her other best friend.
“Thanks for the hats; we wear them all the time,” I said to Amanda as I took off my toque. She’d knit one for me and one for Rosie for Christmas. Mine was a dog hat, complete with eyes and whiskers, and the flaps on the sides were knit to look like beagle ears. Rosie’s was a kitten hat, with little cat ears sewn onto the top.
“Can you cut my hair when you’re done?” I asked my mom.
“I thought you were letting it grow out.”
“I changed my mind.”
“I wanna play in a chair,” Rosie said. She loved to spin around and around in one of the chairs until she was so dizzy, she couldn’t stand up.
“Sure thing, sweetie. Take the one in the far corner.” Rosie skipped away.
Once she was gone, Amanda grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Violet, you know I love you. But cat turds?”
I turned to Mom. “Did you have to tell everyone?”
“Amanda isn’t everyone,” Mom replied. “She’s one of my best friends.”
“As long as you didn’t tell your
other
best friend,” I said, just as I heard a cackle behind me.
I didn’t need to turn around because I could see her in the mirror: Karen, approaching at high speed. You know those old cartoons where the character has an angel version of himself sitting on one shoulder and a devil version on the other? Well, Amanda was like my mom’s angel version because she brought out the best in her. Karen was like my mom’s devil version because she brought out the worst.
“Cat turds!” She laughed, an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Violet, that’s a new low.”
“Hey, Karen. Nice shirt,” I said, nodding at her two-sizes-too-small sheer black top that announced, in big gold letters,
COUGAR.
I could clearly see her pink bra underneath. She wore a thick layer of makeup, and her hair was dyed platinum blonde.
Mom and Karen had what my mom referred to as “history.” They used to work as a team in the film and TV business – Mom as the key hairstylist, Karen as her
assistant. Karen was even there when my mom met my dad. Shortly after Rosie was born, Mom left the business to stay home with us, but when Dad took off, she needed to find a job fast. A job with regular hours and a steady paycheck. That’s how she wound up teaching at the William Berto School of Hair Design. It was in the neighborhood, the pay was okay, and they loved my mom’s work. Within a year, she was promoted to assistant manager. Six months later, Mom hired Karen, after she was fired from two productions in a row for showing up late all the time.
Yup. That was my mom in a nutshell: always wanting to see the best in people, even when it was clear to everyone else that they were nothing but losers.
“Maybe you need to see that therapist again,” Karen said to me as she reapplied her lipstick in the mirror. “That’s pretty twisted behavior.”
My cheeks burned. Oh, how I hated her sometimes.
“Karen,” my mom said in her warning voice, “I’ve dealt with it. And Violet’s going to properly apologize, aren’t you, Violet?”
“We really need to get the washing machine fixed,” I said.
“I know. And we will, in a couple more weeks. I’m still paying off Christmas.”
“If you could’ve seen Dad’s new house –”
“Violet –”
“What about his new house?” asked Amanda.
“It’s huge. They just bought it. Dad’s obviously loaded. He has way more money than when you guys first split up.”
“Violet, enough. We’ve been through this. I don’t want to take more of his money.”
“But
why
?”
“Because she doesn’t want to get handouts from that cheating son of a bitch, right, Ingrid?” Karen said.
“Karen, do
not
trash-talk the girls’ father in front of them,” Mom said.