5 8
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
“Obviously. Did he say that he might kick me out of class?”
“He just mentioned it as being an option. Honestly, we only spoke for a few minutes.”
I squinted my eyes.
“But you were gone for, like, three hours.”
“Yes, Bridget, I was doing other things as well.”
My life doesn’t revolve around you
was her implication.
And—strangely, ridiculously—that hurt my feelings.
“
What
were you doing?” I wanted to know.
“Enough!” she shouted, with a burst of energy I had not seen coming.
It felt like a slap in the face. I stared at her, unable to speak.
She stood up. “Why are you like this, Bridget?”
“Why am I like
what?
” I took a step back, feeling suddenly like I couldn’t predict what Meredith might do. I wouldn’t have guessed she would ever shout at me.
My
real
mother wouldn’t have shouted at me. Surely.
“So rude all the time! It doesn’t matter if I try to help you, or if I try to do something nice, it’s never
enough!
I’ve been in your life for the last seven years, and you
still
treat me like the evil stepmother. Last I remember, the biggest request I made of you was to let
me
take you to a movie you wanted to see!
And yet you sit here with your friends, and put me on the spot…”
She stopped talking, her eyes scanning the ground, like she was looking for a way to express herself.
I defended myself against the indefensible. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about—”
“I tried to leave the house this morning by simply saying I was off to meet someone. I didn’t
want
to mention that I was 5 9
going to have a meeting with Mr. Ezhno, because I was trying not to embarrass you!”
“Why
should
I
be embarrassed? You two are the ones who keep meeting to—”
“Because, Bridget!” She ran her manicured fingers through the big curls in her blond hair. “You’re too old for this. I can’t believe your teachers are
still
calling parent-teacher meetings, just like they were when you were in sixth grade. Usually, at this age, you would have earned independence and trust from your family, by acting like an adult—or no, not even an adult. Just simply by acting your age, instead of trying to get attention by being the class clown and terrorizing your teachers and everyone else you go to school with.”
I gaped at her, my chest heaving, my face hot, not knowing what to say. I had never heard Meredith raise her voice. I’d never seen her angry. I’d certainly never expected her to be so angry with
me.
That wasn’t how
we
worked.
In our relationship,
she
tried to please
me,
and
I
made the decisions.
It had always been that way.
Why was she turning on me now? Why, when I was already so stressed out, was she suddenly playing evil stepmother?
“Well, maybe,” I said calmly, pulling out my metaphorical bazooka, “I was never taught manners. I mean, the only
real
mother I had died in a car accident before you came to live here.
She
was the only one who ever
really
loved us, but she’s gone and you’ve just taken over.”
Meredith was silent. She opened her mouth to say something but apparently changed her mind and closed it again.
The intimidation I’d felt brief ly was gone. I took a step toward her. “So obviously, if you’re going to be all parental, I’m not the right one to do it with. And let’s face it, it’s not your thing.”
6 0
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
Meredith winced, put a hand on her stomach, and sat back down on the love seat.
Now
that
was a bit dramatic.
Still…I could see that I had hurt her feelings. It wasn’t like I’d wanted to do that. Or at least I hadn’t wanted to do that without first feeling provoked. But there was nothing I could really do about it now. However upset she was, I was probably the last person she wanted consoling from, even if it had been me who had upset her.
And then, as I did every time I felt guilty (don’t ask me why), I pretended I didn’t care at all. I scoffed, and walked up the stairs as casually as possible, not looking behind me. I was glad the airport shuttle would be taking her away any minute now.
When I got into my room, I sat on the edge of my bed and wondered what to do next.
What
was
with
everyone?
I knew I wasn’t the one who had changed. It was like everyone else had gone crazy.
It was like an episode of
The Twilight Zone.
Even Michelle was acting weird. The only other time I’d ever seen her that mad was in sixth grade. And that time, at least, I’d understood why she was mad.
I’d had a different set of friends at the time. Bratty, loud, obnoxious, bullying girls. I started hanging around with them after my mom’s accident. I actually remember deciding that if I couldn’t have a mother, then at the very least I was going to have friends. I chose them because they had the power.
Honestly, a psychologist would have had a field day with me, I was so transparent.
At the time, I was not at all popular. And even
I
could see that the girls I hung around with were bad inf luences. They pulled pranks, teased the other girls, were nasty to teachers 6 1
and did anything else they could think of to have control over their peers. It wasn’t like I even liked them. Liam, a good friend to me even then, always told me I could do better.
But they were the ones everyone listened to, so that was who I acquainted myself with. I spent the entire “friendship” running behind them, telling them that I didn’t think whatever they were planning was a very good idea. That’s probably why they let me hang around with them for those four years—so that they could feel impressive and outrageous without necessarily getting caught.
But the one trick I did get blamed for entirely was the one they pulled on Michelle. As I said, it happened in sixth grade, during Outdoor Ed.
Outdoor Ed. To me, this seemed like the bad idea of some hippie who thought it wise to send a bunch of eleven- and twelve-year-olds to crawl around in the woods, barely supervised.
The Event with Michelle happened on the second night in the cabins.
I had just seen
The Parent Trap
at the time, and I was eager to come up with something similar to—but less messy than—
the honey and toilet paper scene from the movie. I was eager to come up with a good prank instead of always being the follower. They had decided that Michelle was the perfect target, as she was generally considered to be the prettiest girl in school.
Michelle had always been nice to me. Foolishly, rather than figuring that she might be a bad person to prank, I figured she might forgive me. So I agreed to do it to her.
My friends and I snuck off from the nightly campfire and tiptoed back to the cabin that we, Michelle and three other girls were staying in, stif ling giggles the whole way.
One of the girls I was friends with, Melissa, had come up 6 2
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
with the idea of squirting shampoo and some other substances into the sheets and under the blanket, so Michelle wouldn’t know until she crawled under the sheets. We all had to take showers across the property, and she wouldn’t get an opportunity to wash up until the next day.
The other two girls were all for it. I, being the moral (my word, not theirs) one of the group, thought that it wouldn’t be fair to make the bed impossible to sleep in, to incapacitate her in that way. That would be cruel.
When I said that, they just stared at me.
So I said that we would
probably
get caught if we were the ones with the shampoo that smelled the same. I also pointed out that if and when she was forced to tattle on us, we’d have to all stay awake and in trouble until they got new sheets for her and that the chaperones probably
would
walk her over to the showers.
Jenny, the leader of the group, shrugged and told me to come up with something better. I scrambled to come up with something tame, but still cool enough to satisfy them.
I was still thinking when Tammy, the girl whose name I longed for at the time, shrieked.
I gasped when I looked up to see her pulling something out of Michelle’s Cinderella bag, which everyone had made fun of her for bringing. We all said it was babyish. The truth was that I loved it, and hated her for having not only the bag, but also the confidence to bring it with her, despite the risk of being mocked.
Tammy pulled out a lump of tin foil and ran over to us to show us what she’d found inside.
Kotex. Sanitary pads.
I remember feeling shocked. Shocked that Tammy had dug through someone else’s things (although a moment later I remembered that it was Tammy we were talking about, and 6 3
that it was par for her course); shocked that a girl in our grade already had her period; and then shocked that
we
were the ones to find out. I shuddered to think what trick they were going to pull with this knowledge.
As soon as Melissa and Jenny saw the pads, they instantly jumped into action. Jenny told Melissa to go get the red nail polish she’d snuck into the cabins and asked Tammy if she had any more Butterfinger candy bars with her. Jenny herself started laying the pads out on the ground, for reasons I couldn’t have imagined.
I watched in private horror as they dripped nail polish and water onto the pads and smeared chocolate onto one side.
I couldn’t do anything to stop them. If I said anything, I knew they would just do something like this—or possibly far worse—to me as retribution.
Rumor had it that Jenny had actually punched people before.
They peeled the backs off the pads and started sticking them to the frame of the bunk bed Michelle was sleeping in.
When they finally finished, they stuffed away the evidence and stood back to look at their work.
“Nice, ladies,” Jenny said, her hands on her hips. Tammy and Melissa laughed.
“There’s only five minutes left ’til the end of campfire. We’d better go,” I said, suddenly feeling like there was no time at all. I had to get out of there, away from all of that mess and meanness and impending humiliation.
They agreed and headed out. I said I had to pee and would be right behind them.
None of them responded, and they continued walking.
As soon as they were gone, I started pulling down the pads. I was just pulling down the third one when I heard the 6 4
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
cabin door open. I stood there, frozen, with nowhere to go or hide.
Melissa, Jenny and Tammy were back and standing there, mouths agape. And then they started to laugh loudly and enthusiastically.
A second later, our other roommates came in. After what felt like another mere second, there were even more. And they were all laughing. I couldn’t tell if it was at me or at what they thought I was doing. Maybe it was at Michelle. I just couldn’t tell. The survival instinct in me just wanted them to direct it at someone else.
With a start, I saw what they saw.
I
looked like the perpetrator.
And then, finally, Michelle came into the room.
Before Michelle could react, the parent chaperone—Mr.
Lambert—walked in. Seeming to understand immediately what was happening, he shouted my name and told me to come with him. Still frozen, I stood still, watching more and more faces come into the room. It seemed like every girl in camp piled in to see what I had done, and even some of the boys stuck their heads in to have a good guffaw.
When I finally was able to move my eyes to Michelle, I saw that she was standing just as frozen as I was, staring at me.
Looking livid.
I gave her a pleading look.
What happened next passed by in such a f lurry that I hardly knew what happened. I was vaguely aware of Mr. Lambert taking me by my upper arm, talking on his official-looking walkie-talkie, Michelle shouting at me, and the faces of Melissa, Jenny and Tammy turning red from all the suppressed—
and unsuppressed—laughing.
The rest of the night passed in much the same way. I was in an office, I was being reprimanded, I had to call and tell 6 5
Meredith—then my new stepmother—what I’d done, and I had to go back to the shameful limelight of the cabin to pack my things. Escorted, and then supervised.
The next thing I knew, I was in Meredith’s Land Rover, on the way home.
We were silent during the ride, until I felt my throat tighten and my eyes start to sting. I started crying and couldn’t stop.
Meredith told me to calm down and that she wouldn’t tell my father, who was out of town for a game at the time.
When we got home, she made me a mug of warm vanilla milk—a tradition she told me was from her childhood (but that I was unfamiliar with). It soothed me enough that I finally fell asleep with my head in Meredith’s lap, with her stroking my hair.
When I woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of the phone ringing. I answered, groggily, and heard the voice of my father on the other end.
“Bridget Jane Duke! What is
wrong
with you? How could you
do
that to Michelle?”
He continued on like that, not stopping once to hear my explanation, completely typical for him. I said nothing, thinking only about the fact that Meredith had sworn she wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d think about that for the rest of the school year, which I spent grounded.
I
knew
I shouldn’t like her,
I thought to myself scathingly.
She’d seen my parents’ big house, my father’s limited fame and fortune and that my mother was out of the picture. And she’d glommed on.
From then on, I hated her.
C H A P T E R F O U R
“I guess we’ll do…fifteen large pizzas…make five regular cheese, five pepperoni and the rest of them…I don’t know, Hawaiian or something. Okay, is it cool if I pay now over the phone, and you deliver them at ten-thirty? Awesome, okay, so the credit card number is…” I scrambled around the kitchen looking for the “for emergencies only, please” note and credit card Meredith had left me, making “um” noises as I searched. When I finally found it, I read the number and expiration date to the pothead-sounding pizza guy on the other end of the phone.