Dedication (19 page)

“Great!” Jake proclaims, “Done.” He starts ladling the sauce onto the noodles and I ferry them to the table.

Mom swipes a finger into her bowl as she sits. “Mmm. Jake, your mother taught you well.”

“Actually, my mom’s not big into that stuff.” He shrugs, untying her apron to sit. “But our cleaning lady—Jackie—this is one of her standards.” He slides into his seat and we tuck in, reaching for salad and bread and cheese. Dad’s hands remain slack in his lap as he stares into the middle distance, prompting me to draw out my AP Bio test into a five-minute anecdote, acting out every stumping question, and Jake, following my example, reenacts Sam blowing a fuse trying to set up for last week’s Sweet Sixteen at the country club.

“What did you do today, Simon?” Mom breaks in.

“I laid some more glue traps in the attic,” he says, gaze still unfocused, wiping his clean mouth with his napkin. “And then after lunch it occurred to me it’d been years since I’d seen
The Man Who Would Be King,
so I rented it.”

“Oh, I’d love to watch that again.” Mom gives a thin smile, taking a sip of her wine. “Katie, if you finish your homework, you and Jake should watch it with us. It’s a classic.”

“Sure, if we get our homework done.”

“I watched it this afternoon.”

“Oh,” Mom says, sucking in her cheeks.

“So,” I rush. “The regional debate championships are right after Christmas break and I have the permission slip—”

“Did you hear back from anyone today?” she asks over me, re-gripping the delicate rim of her wineglass with her fingertips.

Scraping his chair, he stands and shuffles away from the table.

“Simon?”

“No.” Rifling the cupboard, he extracts the canister of oat crackers.

“What about the man who told you to call him this week?”

“It’s only Wednesday.” Slouching back into his seat, he pulls out a round biscuit, methodically breaking it in halves and then quarters. “He said
middle
of the week. I don’t want to seem desperate.”

“I heard today there’s an opening at the library with Disalvo’s departure,” Mom keeps on, trying, but failing, for breeziness, “Wouldn’t that be a good fit for you?”

He crumbles one of the quarters back into oats. “I am an educational researcher.
Maybe
I could go back to teaching. I am
not
a librarian.”

“So,” I jump in. “The debate competition runs for two days over a weekend and the best people in the northeast will be there. I’m really nervous.” I scan my brain for an amusing, yet long-winded, debate practice story that will buy us some time to finish eating and get away from this table. “I told you how Denise and I were practicing with, oh, this is funny, you guys are gonna laugh, we were—”

“How much is it?” Mom asks, her eyes still on Dad.

“What? I don’t know. For the room and gas and the entrance fee and meals, I think, altogether, a hundred?”

“I’ll have to let you know after break.” Miserable, Mom stabs at her salad. “We’ll have to see if we can afford it.”

“But,” I stammer, “if we make it to nationals I won’t be eligible. It’s my last year.”

“I can give you the money,” Jake says quietly, as if somehow meaning for only me to hear.

“See, Simon?” Mom’s face curdles further. “See what happens?”

“Jake’s just joking,” I scramble. “Oh my God, Jake, it’s okay. Guys, it’s fine. I don’t have to go. Let’s just talk about it later, okay?” I plead.

We sit in awkward silence as Dad presses his fingers to the oat flakes wedged into the weave of his placemat, transferring them to his napkin one by one. Jake glances at the clock. “Hey, Mr. Hollis, the Bruins game starts in five minutes. Wanna watch?”

“I’d like that,” he says, unexpectedly perking up.

“Great, I’ll bring you dessert,” I encourage as Jake half rises and Dad takes the tartan tin to the den. “Enjoy the game!
Thank you,”
I mouth as Jake follows with his glass of milk.

When I look back two thin streams of tears are slipping down her face.

“Mom?”

“He’s got to get it together.” She takes a deep breath, drying her cheeks with her napkin. “With your tuition next year…I just don’t know, Katie, I don’t know
how.”
She rests her forehead on her fisted napkin. I scoot my chair over and touch her shoulder. She leans into my hand, her soft hair slipping across my wrist.

“I’ll go back to Ms. Hotchkiss and tell her scholarships are the first priority.”

She blows her nose. “I want you to be able to go wherever you want to go.”

I find a smile. “I want to be a blonde—we can’t all have what we want, right?”

She laughs for a moment before her own smile evaporates. Two whoops of joy shoot out of the den as the puck goes into play.

So groggy I could easily slip into a coma if I could only put my head down on the particleboard desk, I stumble out of sucky AP History. The tedium of that man droning on about the Corn Laws is so intense I don’t see how I’d get any less out of it if they just put headphones on my prone body. As I twist my locker combination I calculate—a forty-minute study hall gives me thirty to do a week’s worth of journal entries, three to finish Spanish, and a full seven minutes to crank out the lab report. Fantastic!

“Fine. Don’t say hi to me.”

I spin to see Laura’s departing backpack.

“Hey!” I jog to catch up, but she makes no effort to wait. “I’m dying of exhaustion.”

“I’ll throw a pity party for you.” She speeds up, her half-cowboy boots scuffing the linoleum.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I grab her shoulder.

“Nothing.” She jerks it away, her backpack slinging forward.

“Nothing?”

“Hate to bore you.”

“I’m standing here asking you.” We’re pushed together by kids squeezing by on both sides.

She pulls a hair off her sweater, avoiding my eyes. “I’m gonna be late for gym.”

“Since when do you care about being late for gym?”

“Like you’d have noticed.”

“What’s wrong?”

She pushes out her lips. “Nothing. Not that you’d care, but I just had my meeting with Ms. Hotchkiss.”

“And…”

“Oh, it was great! Yeah, she thinks I should be
realistic
about my expectations.” Water spills over the rim of her navy lashes and she blinks. The bell rings and a football thug lurches between us to dive into class. “Shit.” She throws her hands up. We’re alone in the hall.

“Come on.” I take her arm. She breaks into fluid sobs.
“Come.”
I tug and she follows; we race through the empty halls, our backpacks’ contents shaking heavily from side to side. We dart through the corridor linking the two buildings to the first secluded spot on school property: the stairs to the balcony of the middle school pool. At the landing I drop to the cement and push backward into the alcove, pulling her down next to me. We sit and catch our breath for a few moments before she breaks out into fresh tears, dropping her head onto my shoulder.

I squeeze her hand. “It’s okay.”

“No, Katie, it’s not. You’re, like, practically married to Jake and you two are all like fucking soul mates now and will probably go to some perfect Ivy League somewhere and all Sam can talk about is how that stupid band tape they’ve been sending out to everyone is going to get them discovered or some shit. Meanwhile I need to be
realistic
because my boards were, quote,
mediocre
and my activity list is, quote,
frankly
mediocre. Hi!” She attempts cheerful through her tears, “Laura Heller, your frankly mediocre candidate!” She swipes her free hand under her streaming nose.

“Laura, you’re not mediocre! You’re going to get in everywhere! You interview so well! And your grades are really solid—”

“Translation: mediocre.”

“Compared to who? Dana Dunkman? Come on, don’t let Hotchkiss get to you like this. She makes everyone feel like shit. That’s her title, Shit Adviser. She and my mother are on some shared mission to ship me down to Duke or UVA, some stupid southern—”

“You met with her already?” She withdraws her hand from mine.

“Tuesday. Tuned the entire thing out. I just remember the South part ’cause it was the height of her crazy.”

She stares past me at the semicircle of dust-caked ficuses. “Why don’t I know you did that?”

“What do you mean? It’s no big secret.”

“I bet Jake knows. I bet he knew right after the meeting.”

I have to think about it. “I guess…”

“What’s happening to us?”

“Nothing.”

“Fuck you.” She reaches for her bag, and so tired by all of it, I’m suddenly sputtering in the chlorine-soaked air.

“Laura!
I have a million fucking things to do, that’s what’s happening! In addition to the full-time job of keeping my parents from being total assholes to each other, I’m doing a zillion hours of homework, and debate, and these interviews, and getting these applications and trying to keep up with all of it, but really just going through the motions because I finally got Jake, but all of a sudden everything’s telling me I’m just supposed to go off to college and have this great life and forget all about it—”

“But this is it, Katie,” she interrupts me, her voice heavy.

“I know.”

“I mean, this time next year we’ll all be—”

“I know that,” I cut her off.

“You and me, too.”

“It’s different.”

She twists the claddagh ring Sam gave her for her birthday. “It’s not.”

“We’re best friends! It’s not like we’re going to date other people, marry other people. Nothing’s going to change the fact that you’ve been my best friend since that ass-freezing Indian hop.” Her lips break into a small smile. “Hell, I’ll strip down right now and do a commemorative lap if you need proof.”

“Please, no.”

“Then stop, okay?” She nods against my shoulder. “Wherever it all ends up, you and me are a team deal.” I reach in my bag and hand her a napkin.

Laura laughs and blows her nose. “I guess I am losing it if I’m thinking Jake Sharpe’s getting into an Ivy. Like he wouldn’t be a pig in shit playing in the back of a bar for the rest of his life.”

“So would Sam.” I’m surprised by the defensiveness that flares.

“We should become pool sharks,” she says, her humor returning.

“That would definitely keep the family together.”

“The kids could bartend.” She snorts.

“I’m in.” I fumble around my bag and find another napkin. She dries her face while I rest my head back against the tiles, wishing I could just know already.

“Dad,” I whisper from where I crouch by their bedside.
“Dad!”

“Yeah.” He grunts awake. “Katie. What now?”

“When did you become a citizen? What year?” I try to keep the flashlight steady with my chin so I can write as neatly as possible on the application.

“Jesus.” His breathing starts to deepen.

“Dad! Come on. When did you become not-British?”

“Sixty-eight.” Mom’s voice cuts into the darkness from the far side of the bed. “How is it that you are officially doing this at the zero hour?”

“Great, you’re up—you’ve got a what in ed?”

“I
have
an M.S.” she corrects my grammar.

Pen poised. “What?”

“M.S.! M.S. in ed, Kathryn! When does this have to be postmarked?”

“Uh,” I write
M.S.
“Tonight. But this is it. I was just heading to the copy store and saw this bunch of questions on the back page of the Swarthmore application. Right, so Dad speaks how many languages?”

Silence. I take the flashlight from under my chin and direct the beam into Mom’s glaring face, her arms crossed tightly over the jacquard bedspread, each of their rigid bodies at polarized edges of the mattress.

“Mom? Dad?!” I nudge him with my knee. “Dad!”

“Huh? What?”

“How many languages do you speak?”

“Three, for God’s sake.”

“Great. Thank you. Great. Great!” I flip through the paper-clipped pages. “…And we’re not agnostic.” I check the box. “…And Mom never fought in the army.” Check again.

“I’m going to if you miss this deadline.”

I flip the pages over and slide the application in my backpack, dropping the flashlight on top because there’s no time to put it down. “Cool! Great! Thanks. So, sweet dreams. Back as soon as I get these in the mail.” I race out.

“And copied!”

“Mom, I know!”

“I’m not impressed!” she yells as I jog down the stairs.

“Good thing you’re not Swarthmore!” I call back as I slam the front door behind me.

Screeching into the parking lot I drive full speed up to the clump of cars in front of the Mail Boxes Etc. 10:57. Totally doable. Three copies of everything and done. I turn off the ignition, grab my backpack, and slam the door with my butt, all while taking in what looks to be the majority of the senior class camped in sweaty-faced clusters around the two copiers. Fuck.