Authors: Emma McLaughlin
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Coming of Age, #Contemporary Women
“Okay.”
Out of material, Laura shrugs at me in desperation. Reminding her to play cool, I toss my hand in exaggerated nonchalance.
“So, uh, what are you up to?” She drops into a slouch.
“Wait, who is this?”
“Laura. Laura Heller.”
“Your mom didn’t call me.”
“Oh!” She turns nuclear red. “Oh, okay, then…uh, bye.”
“Bye.”
Laura carefully puts the phone down before slumping to the floor. “Crap. Crapcrapcrapcrap.”
I hang up and run the length of the banister to her, kneeling to pat her head. “Maybe he won’t tell anyone.”
She looks up at me through her hair, her face beating. “Anyone, like who? Like Jason and the other jocks? Who’ll tell Kristi so she and her clique can act it out at the next assembly?” She rubs her cheeks with her hands and groans. I am momentarily speechless at this very real possibility.
“Just deny it,” I decide.
“What?”
“Deny it. If anyone asks you about calling Rick and saying your mom has malaria just say you don’t know what they’re talking about. Like, they’re the crazy one for asking you.”
“I can’t say
Rick Swartz
made it up.” She exhales. “Okay, your turn.”
“What, are you nuts?”
“Katie, I did it, you have to do it.”
“Yeah, and that went so well.”
“Shut up. Get the phone book in the pantry and let’s look up Jake Sharpe.”
“No.” I’ll just keep carrying the fact that I’m supposed to like him because I said so in gym class around along with my library card, my Red Cross babysitting certification, and my house key.
“We made a vow!” Laura sits up on her knees. “A birthday vow!”
“You
made a wish when you blew out
your
candles! It’s not the same thing. Laura, let’s just finish Science. My dad’s going to be picking me up soon.” I stand.
“Uch.”
“What! Volcanoes are cool. Come on.” I reach a hand down to seesaw her to her feet. “I’ll help you. You’ll learn to love the volcano from the inside out.”
“Fine, but next time you’re calling Jake Sharpe. First.”
I put my sandwich back down on its Baggie and tap Laura’s untouched yogurt, my voice lifting over the din of the packed cafeteria. “No good?”
She points to the silver wires on her teeth. “This no good.” She slumps forward, pushing her old folks’ home lunch away. “I can’t believe I had to get these the same week as…as—”
“Move it, Malaria.” Benjy Conchlin bumps Laura’s chair as he slides through to his table, his red curls poking out above the size tab of his Sox cap.
“As that.”
Just then JenniferThree plunks her tray down, the ohmygod look on her face silencing the entire table.
“Something the matter?” Laura asks, refusing to play into her dramatics.
Jennifer pauses another beat, until she’s sure she has our undivided attention. “Jeanine. Got a big red stain. On her white pants. In shop.”
We collectively gasp.
“That
has
to blow you calling Rick Swartz out of the water.”
We all nod in agreement, and, gloom lifted, Laura returns to tackling the Yoplait. I offer her a slice of apple. “Suck on it.”
“Squish it against the roof of your mouth with your tongue,” Michelle, the longest brace wearer at the table, instructs.
“There she is.” Jennifer gestures to the double doors of the cafeteria and we all turn to see if she is still alive—if getting a period stain in a room full of boys, does not, in fact, kill you.
Jeanine is wearing her gym shorts—ah, good move. But still, most every head turns. Despite her being a colossal bitch, I feel genuinely awful for her. Our eyes meet and I offer a sympathetic smile. She nods. Good for her, she’ll just walk through the maze of round tables and sit with the weirdo clique that took her in when Kristi’s group was done with her, and—she isn’t walking. She flips her newly blackened hair over her shoulder and looks around.
“What’s she doing?” Laura whispers.
We all shrug in response, riveted.
She walks directly to the nearest table and leans down, displaying a stain-free butt to all, as she talks to—the whole lunchroom watches—to Jake Sharpe. He scans the tables and then she points. Points right at me.
And then…they all turn, the whole cafeteria turns. The whole room looks at me and then back to Jake Sharpe, who stands to get a better look. At me.
“Ohmygod.”
“Ohmygod,” Laura echoes.
“She’s telling the boy you like that you like him,” JenniferThree Howard Cosells the moment as we all stare at each other, agog. Then the bell rings, signaling the end of lunch and my life. Motion resumes. But Jake and his friends stay put. To wait. Because they’re right by the exit. People continue to blatantly stare as they shuffle toward the racks of dirty trays.
“We’ll go together.” Laura stands, tossing her bag into the nearby trash.
“No,” I hear myself say, “I have to just—I’m just going to…” And then I’m moving, speed walking, pimply faces a blur. I grip my lunch bag and books to my chest and focus on the glowing exit sign over the doors, moving along the waves of stares and whispers. But then I hear, “Hey, Hollis!” and automatically turn in the direction of Randy Bryson’s voice and, in the slowest of slow motion, Jake’s angular face locks on mine, hair falling in his green eyes as he cocks his head, like Laura’s Lab when he’s watching a deer out the back window. And then it’s loud and fast again as I step into the crowded hallway, continuing on to…where? I look at the doors to the parking lot. Pouring April rain splatters the cement. I could just walk and keep walking. Instead I find myself carried by the tide up the stairs to Social Studies.
“That’s her.”
“She likes Jake Sharpe.”
“Katie likes Jake Sharpe, wants to marry him and have his babies.”
I find myself at my seat and slide my shaking legs under the attached desk. Mrs. Sandman comes in and the overheads flicker on.
“Katie wants to lick Jake Sharpe’s wiener,”
someone whispers in the row behind me. I see the rest of my life at this school playing out as if I’m Rocky Dennis while Jeanine gets to stroll in here every day with maxi pads stuck to her face and no one even notices—“Lick it, lick it—”
“Mrs. Sandman?”
“Yes, Katie?” She places her coffee mug down and peers through her glasses at her lesson plan.
“I’d like to make an announcement.” I would? A picture of Krystle Carrington appearing in my head, I feel myself step onto the seat of my orange plastic chair and then onto the desk as if about to correct a rumor campaign whirling around the grand ball. Then I’m tossing my hair back over my imaginary beaded shoulder pads. “Yes, so, um, I believe you have all heard that I like Jake Sharpe. I just wanted to put an end to the rumors. Yes, I, Katie Hollis, like Jake Sharpe. So, there you go. Now we can all get back to our lives.” Okay. I step down, one Bass loafer at a time.
Ms. Sandman blinks at me. The class blinks at me. I pull at my rugby shirt and retake my seat, noting I have not dropped dead, and not yet sure if this is a good thing.
“No. Way,” Laura’s voice lowers.
“What?” I ask, pulling the Gruyère off my sandwich and rolling it tightly before biting off an end, enjoying that people have finally stopped staring at me like at any moment I might hop on the furniture and announce I like
them.
“Your Jake Sharpe is sitting with Jason and those other jocks.” Laura darts her head at the cafeteria table of top guns a few feet away.
I fold the rest of my cheese roll into my mouth. “Not mine. We’ve never even said hi.”
“He was yours enough to stand on a desk and claim him.”
“That’s
not
how it was supposed to go in my head. And that was days ago and I’d appreciate if we could all drop it. Besides, don’t forget whose scandal of the week I knocked off the charts, Ms. Malaria.”
She shrugs, working her way through an apple with slightly more expertise. “I just thought you’d be interested to know that since your big announcement he’s been supremely promoted. Your dramatics were apparently an escalator to popular.”
“So that’s why it feels like I’m being stood on.”
We munch as the lunchtime screams and giggles around us bounce off the mint-green walls,
ascending,
our new vocab word, to a deafening level. Having avoided looking even in his general direction for the past four days, I let my eyes wander casually back to the rowdiest table. Sure enough, spastic, whistles-to-himself-in-the-halls Jake Sharpe sips out of a silver Capri Sun between Benjy Conchlin and Todd Rawley.
Laura squints while carefully sucking apple skin from her braces. “Doesn’t it look like he got a haircut?”
I glance over one more time, using my paper bag as cover. “I guess, yes, he seems, more…more something.” More in color. Like if River Phoenix had a younger brother. “I don’t know! It’s not like I study him or anything. I’ve just been trying to live him down.”
Jeanine stops in front of our table, pushing open her milk container, her spiked hair looking extra porcupiny today. The girls around us fall silent, looking from her to me. I take a breath and try Mom’s suggestion. “Hey, Jeanine, why don’t you join us?” I smile with as much real kindness as I possibly can, watching with satisfaction as her face clouds in confusion. “Jen, why don’t you and Michelle move over a seat so Jeanine can sit down?”
“I don’t…need a seat,” she says weakly, and it is awesome to see her so uncertain of herself. “Hey, Katie, don’t you like Jake Sharpe anymore?” She pointedly flicks crumbs off her Anthrax sweatshirt, and I fight a smirk at how flat her preplanned one-liner falls after my Gandhi setup. “Or are you holding out for Laura?”
“Uch, screw off, Jeanine,” Laura says in a tone so indifferent it actually makes Jeanine just shrink away with a two-fingered salute and an “Okay, whatever. Later.”
I look around the table at everyone waiting anyway for an answer to Jeanine’s question. “Of course I still like Jake Sharpe, okay?”
Laura clamps her hand on my shoulder, lightly pressing down. “In case you get the urge to reassure the entire cafeteria.”
Breaking a smile, I lift my bread slices and slap her cheeks.
“Gross!” She pulls back giggling. “Oh, so gross, now I’m coated in mayonnaise!”
“
Seventeen
says it’s supposed to be the best moisturizer,” JenniferTwo informs as she stands back up with her brown plastic tray.
I hand Laura a napkin. “God, what’s the big deal? Everyone likes someone, right?”
Laura thoughtfully wipes Hellmann’s off her cheeks. “But no one ever stood on a desk.”
December 22, 2005
Turning the porcelain knob, feeling the resistance as the white door drives against the faded pink pile carpeting, I’m immediately struck by the chilly, vaguely stale air and the smell of mildewing paper and hidden dust. I push it all the way open to see in the stark moonlight that, other than a few concessions to accommodating overnight guests, my old room continues surreally as I left it in high school.
I step in and drop my bags on the bed beside the towels Mom always leaves waiting atop the comforter under brochures for the local pumpkin picking farms and maple sugar refineries, an unironic commentary on my refusal to leave this house once safely ensconced. I move the brochures aside, revealing the monogram,
E
H
K
, and remember the fight we had over those towels—“They’re hanging in
your
bathroom, Kathryn,
whose
towels would they be?” But Michelle Walker’s had her initials on them and I was determined to have a set. Twelve mowed lawns later and they were mine.
Smiling at my tenacity, I reach out to turn on the bedside lamp, illuminating the Katie Museum in all its cluttered glory. Stunned as always by the sheer volume of visual information, I drop onto the quilt to take in the layers and layers
and layers
of memorabilia I meticulously assembled, added to, and detracted from all through high school, as if Johnny Depp might suddenly arrive at any moment and need to get the complete picture of my marriageability solely from these four walls. I marvel that I slept soundly amidst this dense collage of objects proclaiming my allegiance to shows now long off the air, a presidential nominee retired, legislation that will not be enacted in my lifetime, and a rockstar who died of AIDS; as well as pigs, James Dean postcards, angel figurines, and an impressive assortment of bobble head dolls. Bobble head dolls. Sweet Jesus. And now I will finally dump all of it into as many lawn bags as it takes to strip the place bare.
I cross to the bookcase, running my fingers over the dusty volumes—J. D. Salinger and
Tender Is the Night
pushed out in front of the Jackie Collins I didn’t want found. On a lower shelf sit all the CDs I didn’t take to college—Morrissey and the
Pretty Woman
soundtrack bookending my yellow boom box. I press
PLAY
and a disc starts to whirl. Music pounds from the speakers and I fumble to lower the volume, smiling as soon as the driving, electronic melody registers.
“Ready to duck. Ready to dive,”
I hum along with Bono, remembering Laura’s own words of encouragement as we packed The Bag and formed The Plan.
The Plan.
Wondering if Laura, in all her infinite wisdom, could have foreseen my lost luggage, I drop to my knees and lift the dust ruffle. And there it still sits, waiting for me, the black DKNY duffel we stuffed nine years ago with everything I would ever need to Make Him Regret His Entire Existence. I heave it up onto the bed and pull down the zipper, reaching in to pull out…a spaghetti-strapped silk minidress, and then another…and another…each patterned with…butterflies. And then one…two…three…
four
fistfuls of Victoria’s Secret. I reach to the bottom of the bag and take out first one and then two pairs of strappy patent leather sandals. With RuPaul platforms.
Platforms.
I lift the bag up and tip it to the side as I reach in for the last item, praying for perfectly cut jeans, low-V cashmere, and a fitted shearling coat; but instead find one very overstuffed makeup kit, which I unzip to discover concealer that has gone—whew!
Off.
Annnnnnnnd—this should come in handy—several palettes of MAC silvers and aquas. And glitter.
I look down at my options, and then out the darkened ice-latticed window, my lips pressed taut, church-giggle tears springing to my eyes. Hitting
STOP
on the CD, I go back to the top of the stairs and crouch down. “Mom?” I call tentatively.
From the kitchen I can hear the sink running over the Queen of the Night’s aria. “Mom?” I call again, reluctant, but desperate.
“You rang?” She appears at the bottom step, an apron protecting her gray cowl-neck sweater, carrot in hand.
Chagrined, I stick the tip of my tongue into the corner of my mouth. “I’m sorry I was an asshole.”
“What did the asshole say?” Dad calls from the kitchen.
“I’m sorry!” I shout.
“Tell her she can stay for dinner,” he says as the sink shuts off.
She just looks up at me, waiting, and I drop my head against the spindly banister rails. “Okay, so my suitcase is MIA. I’ve just un-hooked the rip cord, and all that’s flying out are strappy sandals. Actually strappy everything.” Because that bag was packed back when the objective was to be a naked disco-ball.
“Uh-huh…” She bites her carrot, unappeased by my humor.
“So…” I lift my eyebrows hopefully.
“So this might take more than twenty minutes,” she confirms.
“So,” annoyance cracks back through. “I might need to borrow the car and see if Laura’ll meet me at the mall.”
“You? Leave the house?” she says in exaggerated disbelief. “You’re not just going to hide behind drawn drapes, make Laura come to you?”
“Okay, I have a very logical, informed strategy for navigating this town—”
“Your Belle of Amherst routine?” She waves the carrot in a circle.
“I can go to the mall.”
Her brow furrows. “Two days before Christmas. It’ll be mobbed.”
“So?”
“So, on further thought, I think this may be an appropriate time to continue your logical, informed strategy.”
“Mom?”
“Yes?” she replies evenly.
“I am asking to borrow the car and drive to the mall.”
“And I’m saying in the twenty-four months since you last graced us at the holiday season, driving to the mall has grown into a much bigger endeavor than you think it is.”
I take a breath, trying a new tack aimed at the core of her concern. “Okay, Mom, I’ll be superfast and back in time to have dinner with you guys. And we’re spending the whole week together in Sarasota. You’ll be sick of me by New Year’s.”
“No, that’s fine.” Her mouth tenses, despite my effort.
I knock my head against the banister rails. Thank you, Jake Sharpe, I am now actually crouched on my parents’ stairs negotiating,
negotiating,
to borrow the car. “I wasn’t even supposed to be here,” I moan, rocking back on my heels.
“Well, it’s a
pleasure
to be your obligation,” she says with sarcastic cheeriness.
“Mom,”
I sigh, but unable to deny it. “Mom,” I say again, grasping for some sentiment I can offer to mollify, to connect. But, as always, I’m stymied in a way I never am in Sarasota or Charleston, only here, where the specter of Jake thins the air between us. And now the prospect of this fresh revisitation is sucking us to a new altitude altogether. I rest my head against my outstretched arm. “Mom”—I reach for her—“can you drive me to the mall?”
“Say that again.” She cocks the carrot by her ear, her eyes drifting closed.
I peer down, smushing my face between the rails. “Can you drive me to the mall?
Please?
”
She smiles, her expression soft as she opens her eyes. “Aah. For a moment…I was forty-six.”