Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters (15 page)

I can only enjoy them on one side of my mouth. But still.

The next morning, I feel like someone poured cement over my entire head and let it dry overnight. My mouth tastes like an old sock—a chocolate sock, but still not good.

I crawl to the bathroom after spending about a week locating my glasses, which were miraculously unbroken and underneath the pajamas that I should have put on but apparently just threw on the floor before passing out. I look in the mirror, hoping that maybe my tooth won’t be quite as bad as I thought, like if it magically regenerated somehow.

It is, in fact, still a disaster. I can’t stop running my tongue over it, the way I did when I first got my braces off last year. It feels all scratchy and jagged.

God, my head hurts.

I shower in an attempt to revive myself, which doesn’t really work, but at least I smell better. JoJo, who seems to be totally immune to the after-effects of alcohol, skips around the kitchen while I try to choke down a few saltines. She will not stop calling me a victim of the beatdown (where does she get this stuff?), so I decide I’d better slink on home.

“I’m out of here, crazy lady,” I grumble. “And PS, when something like this happens to you, I hope you won’t be looking to me for any sympathy. Because I’ll—I’ll be—”

But she isn’t listening. She’s laughing too hard. Hmph.

I take the subway home, lurch into my house, and find my mother in the kitchen doing her crossword (surprise). I try to sneak past her up to my room, but she is too fast for me in my injured state.

“You look horrible!” she exclaims. “Did you get any sleep at
all
last night?”

“Gee, thanks, Mom. I dunno—I think maybe I’m coming down with something. I’m just going to go to bed and—”

“We’re supposed to be going shopping for something to wear to Cousin Lainie’s bat mitzvah, Kels. You have nothing to wear that doesn’t make you look like the ragpicker’s child.”

“Mooooooom! I can’t go out in public with half a tooth! And anyway, that bat mitzvah isn’t till May!”

“Oh, right, your tooth. I guess I’ll have to call Dr. York’s office.”

“So … do you think he can see me on Monday? I’m totally down with missing school.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you’re down with that. Not happening. Don’t you have a history test?”

Argh. My mother is unstoppable in her madness. “Mom, I can
not
go to school like this. Do you really expect me to be able to focus on a test when my face has been dis
figured
?”

She looks up at me, smirking. “Lemme see.”

I show her. She barely stifles a laugh. “An old-fashioned root beer bottle, huh?” she says in this sly, annoying way. “You don’t say. I’ll have to ask JoJo’s mom where she got those.” Then she goes back to her puzzle. Without looking up, she adds, “Don’t you have some studying to do?”

Note to self: Mother may not actually be fooled by brilliant white lie. Looks like I’ll be going to school with half a tooth. If I have learned nothing else from living in this cesspool of insanity, it’s when not to press my luck.

23

As it turns out, no one even notices my tooth on Monday, partly because I keep my lips tightly clamped shut all morning, but mostly because someone was even drunker and more careless than I was over the weekend. The whole school is talking about this junior, Lenny Pitcher, who got a
face tattoo
in New Jersey using a fake ID. It’s a giant lightning bolt down one cheek, and is seriously the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen. Bad for Lenny, but definitely good for me.

After second period we all have to go to the auditorium for the biannual sports awards assembly. When I heard about it at the beginning of the year, I had fantasized that maybe I’d win something for my prowess as JV soccer’s star left wing, but now it’s just another boring assembly to get through. At least I get to miss econ.

The gym teachers clamber up to the stage and start talking about team mentality and self-confidence and other things that are not the actual reasons people play sports in high school. Then they start giving out the awards—MVP, Most Improved, Looks Best in a Helmet, etc. There are guys’ and girls’ teams to get through, and though some people (the winners) are very excited, I am bored senseless.

I lean over to whisper in Em’s ear. She had planned to come to JoJo’s, too, but Em’s mom was being grouchy and made her stay home at the last minute. “I’m holding you responsible for what happened on Friday night, you know. If you had been there, I never would’ve ended up looking like a jack-o’-lantern on crack!”

“Pleeeaaassseeee,” she hisses back. “No one told you to guzzle down a whole bottle of vodka! Besides, it’s not
that
bad. No one has even noticed.”

“You are supposed to be the sensible friend! You can’t leave me alone with the crazy one—I’m not strong enough to withstand her powers of anarchy!”

Em giggles, and a teacher on the aisle gives us a death-ray glare. I sit back in my seat and whisper out of the corner of my mouth.

“See? Your positive influence on me is fading! Soon I’m going to—”

“Oh, Megan won!” Em squeals, standing up with a bunch of people in our section and clapping. Our friend Megan goes up to the stage to accept the prize for something to do with field hockey. I clap for her and simultaneously check my watch. Less than two hours till my appointment with Dr. York. As long as I keep breathing through my nose and don’t talk to anyone besides Em and JoJo, no one will ever know about my run-in with the end of a bottle. Excellent.

“I’m really psyched for her,” Em is whispering to me. “She worked so hard at field hockey camp this summer; she was telling me about it during—”

“… captain of the girls’ junior varsity soccer team, Julie Nelson,” Coach Cantwell is saying on stage. Julie bounces up to the podium. More applause. She presents the MVP Award for girls’ JV soccer to a sophomore who’s unbelievable at defense. I turn around and give Lexi a sympathetic look, but she makes a “no big deal” face.

Julie goes on for a few minutes, and I cheer loudly for my teammates. I whisper to Ana, who’s on my other side, “I’m amazed Julie didn’t give the awards to herself!”

“Oh, she doesn’t choose, the coaches do. Otherwise, yeah, I’m sure she would!”

“So really all she does as captain is yell at us and organize someone to bring orange slices to games? That’s—”

“… extra category this season, the Unsung Hero Award. It’s for someone who maybe wasn’t the best athlete or scored the most, but achieved in other ways, like persevering in a difficult game situation.” Julie’s voice has gone totally flat, like she’s reading off a script. She looks pissed. What’s her deal?

“So, yeah, the winner is Kelsey Finkelstein.” She zips through the sentence so fast, it takes me a moment to register that she just called my name.

“Oh my God!” Em shrieks. “Get up there, you won!” Ana pushes me out of my chair and I head to the little stairs that lead up to the stage.

I won a prize? I can’t believe it! I can hear JoJo yelling for me from somewhere in the back of the room, and all my friends on the team are cheering like crazy. This is so cool—I’ve never won
anything
before! Well, except an Etch-A-Sketch at my cousin’s birthday party when I was six. Which hardly counts, especially since I forgot it on the table when we left. I’m still pissed about that, actually.

I float up to the podium, where Julie’s face looks like an angry thundercloud of doom. I grin at her; I can’t help it. She hands me a piece of paper that looks like a diploma with a big gold sticker on it, then gives me the least genuine hug I’ve ever received, which makes me smile even bigger.
This must be killing her!

“Just so you know, this award is total BS,” she sneers into my ear. “And nice tooth, by the way.”

Crap! I forgot all about the tooth!

She pulls away, giving me a super-fake smile. I keep my lips glued together as I head back to my seat. No one could’ve seen the tooth from all the way up on stage, I’m sure.

My mother picks me up at lunch to take me to the dentist. I can’t believe I made it without a single person (Julie doesn’t count, because she is inhuman) finding out about my tooth. My lips hurt from all the clamping, but it’s worth it.

The second I get in the car, it starts: the same conversation we’ve been having every moment since I came home from JoJo’s. “You know, I just loved old-fashioned root beer as a kid. We lived right near a factory that made the bottles—probably the same kind you guys had the other night—and they used to get all kinds of tourists who’d visit to see how the bottles were made—.”

“Mom, I thought you grew up in Queens.”

“And your grandma Gertie
loved
root beer … maybe we should pick up a case on the way back from the dentist. Did you know root beer was originally made from sassafras?”

At the dentist, Dr. York sort of glops some stuff on my tooth and then shines a UV light on it while I sit there in a lead bib and crazy mouth holder-opener. When it’s sufficiently UVed, he starts filing away at it, which is the worst noise ever and totally freaks me out. I think,
What if I grind my teeth at night or something? Is the whole thing going to fall off again?
I’m about to ask Dr. York, but he dashes off to see another patient and my mom is tapping her watch at me in the doorway to the exam room.

I’m afraid that my days of fearlessly enjoying Laffy Taffy are over. But at least I look normal.

On the ride back to school, my mom starts in about the damned root beer again, so I cut her off by telling her about my surprise win at the sports assembly. But that only distracts her from the history of root beer for a few minutes, so in a last-ditch effort I bring up auditioning for
Fiddler on the Roof.

BINGO. That jump-starts a
thrilling
discussion of my mother’s college drama experience, which consisted of being in some play with a guy who later was on some sitcom I never heard of. Apparently, this makes
her
practically famous.

“Are you doing a monologue for your audition, Kels?” she asks. “A classical monologue? Or a modern piece—something by Edward Albee, maybe? It’s so exciting that you’re interested in the arts. I’m glad you’re finally taking after me!”

Then she starts performing a scene from her college tour de force in an insane Southern accent. I’m just about to strangle myself with my seat belt when we pull up in front of school. I haven’t been this excited to be here since the first day.

“Thanks, Mom! Great talk. Nice acting. See ya.” I start getting my stuff together to make a fast break for it, but she seizes the strap of my bag.

“Hold it, Kelsey,” she says. “Now you listen up—
no more stupidity
. I know you think it’s okay to act out and be Typically Adolescent, drinking till you’re sick and who-knows-what-all, but know this: I won’t bail you out if you get arrested. Do you understand me? You’ll just have to spend the night in jail. You get one pass on this kind of behavior, and you used it up on Friday. Are we clear?”

So it seems she was onto me all along. Couldn’t she have just
said
that instead of torturing me with root beer trivia? I’m all, “Gee, Mom, I’ll try really hard not to join a gang and murder anyone so you don’t have to deal with it. Yeah, so, that’s the bell—gotta go.” I grab my bag and run for my life.

Mothers. Le sigh, l’exhaustion.

I’m halfway to my history class, digging through my bag for a LUNA bar, which I’m planning to try to eat with the left side of my mouth only, when I almost run smack into the snarky guy from the newspaper office.

Okay. He’s exactly as cute as I remember, and probably just as aggravating.
Please, God, don’t let my new tooth fall off while I’m talking to this guy.

“Hey, it’s
The Reflector
’s angriest subscriber,” he says, grinning in his maddening way. “Kelsey, right?”

I scowl at him. “I’m not a subscriber, I’m a victim of circumstance. And I’m not angry, I’m—”

“Ecstatic to be part of the periodical landscape?”

“Oh, yeah, well,” I reply.
Oh, good, Kelsey, that’s a terrific comeback. Well, less talking is better—don’t want to disturb the tooth.
“I’d rather just view the, uh, landscape from, uh—what are you talking about?”

He laughs, his dark eyes squinting almost closed. “I’m just playing with you, chill. Hey, how’s your friend? She get an assignment yet?”

“You mean Lexi?”
He remembered
my
name but not hers?
“Yeah, I think she’s working on an article or something.”

“Good. And, hey, congrats on the award this morning. Nice job.”

“Oh. Well, thanks. It was a big surprise, let me tell you.”

“You looked pretty psyched about it.”

He stares at me. I stare at him. I should say something now. Um. “So, did you tell your editor about the picture thing?”

Oh, perfect. Get back to being the angry girl.

“Yeah, don’t worry; I mentioned it to Kate. She felt bad about it, so it’s a good thing you stopped in. I was glad you did, anyway.”

You were?
“Oh, were you?”

“Yeah, it can get pretty boring working during lunch hour. Not every day an outraged young lady barges in and threatens the life of a staff member, you know?”

“Oh. Well, right. So … thanks? I mean, you’re welcome? I mean, uh—”

“Hey, dude, you coming or what?” A voice shouts from down the hall. I see a trio of older guys I don’t know heading toward us.

“Nice, man—taking time out for the laaaaadies.” A second guy smirks, giving me a lame once-over. “Speaking of which, Val’s looking for you. As usual.” The other two laugh, at what I don’t know, and then all four erupt in some standard arm-punching and pseudo-wrestling. I decide to get out of the way before I lose another tooth.

I sneak a peek behind me as I walk away. Newspaper Guy is looking right at me. Dammit! Now I feel even more like a tool. He lifts his eyebrows at me mischievously, then smoothly turns and heads off with his friends.