Authors: Rachel Vail
THEY PRINTED MY BYLINE.
Not only that, but all seven people who read my article seemed to like it. I took that as a huge success and was feeling good about myself until everything fell apart at lunch.
People Who Commented Favorably:
1. Mom (“It’s great. Really well written.”)
2. Tess (“Sounds like you were actually conscious during that meeting.”)
3. Jennifer (“Strong work.”)
4. Darlene (“Wow. I didn’t know you were smart, too!”)
5. Penelope (“Better. But nobody reads the City News, anyway.”)
6. Mr. McKinley (“That’s a solid bit of reporting, Charles.”)
7. George (“What if the anarchists organize a protest?”)
People Who Didn’t Comment at All:
1. Kevin
2. Everybody else
Despite that small disappointment, I was feeling pretty darned happy all day. My name was in print, my article was a solid bit of reporting, I had actually accomplished something. Maybe newspaper was not so bad. Maybe there is more to it than just stalking my best friend’s boyfriend.
Life was good.
Until, as I mentioned, lunch.
It was drizzling out—not enough to imprison us all in the cafeteria for the entire forty-two minutes but enough so that Tess and I were kind of unenthusiastic about sitting on the steps to watch Jennifer and the boys shoot hoops. The Pop-Tarts were inside, whispering; the band people were practicing because it was a Thursday; the smokers (including, I noticed, Darlene) were off smoking on the Bridge; the brains were wherever they go at lunch, the library maybe; and we in-betweeners were in between, hovering under the overhang outside the cafeteria.
Kevin tapped me and Tess on the shoulders. We turned toward each other, to look at him. He had come up from behind us.
“Hi,” we all said at the same time.
Then nobody said anything for a long minute so I said, too loud, “Ain’t lunch fun?”
They both looked at me like I had startled them. Tess smiled and turned to Kevin. “How was band?” she asked in a quiet voice, leaning toward him. There was clearly nothing wrong with her flirting technique.
“Okay,” he said, leaning toward her in return.
I thought I should get out of there. Nothing fun about being number three when one and two are flirting. I said, “So . . .” in preparation to wander inside and look for the brains, thinking maybe I could be a brain. I’m not exceptionally smart but maybe if I dedicate myself to schoolwork I could achieve. I could end up a professor like my mother. Oh, joy. “Think I’ll . . .”
“Is that a new ski jacket?” Tess asked Kevin.
“Got it last night.”
“Nice,” Tess told him. “Don’t you think, Charlie?”
“As rarely as possible.” It was a nice jacket. His shoulders looked even broader than usual.
“The key to her success,” Tess explained to Kevin, then turned to me. “Kevin’s going skiing over Christmas vacation.”
“She knows,” Kevin said.
“She does?” Tess asked him. “You know?” she asked me.
I shrugged.
“Don’t you wish you could go skiing?” Tess smiled at me, then at Kevin. “I have to go to my grandmother’s in Baltimore, which is bad enough, but Charlie’s spending Christmas break at her father’s on the Cape. Some people think the Cape is romantic at Christmas but really it’s just cold and damp, right, Charlie?”
“Right,” I muttered.
Kevin was squinting at me, like he was trying to figure out something. “She doesn’t know?” he asked me.
“Know what?” Tess asked.
I didn’t say anything.
“I just . . . she doesn’t know?” he repeated.
“Is somebody going to tell me what I don’t know, please?” Tess asked.
“I’m not going to my dad’s over Christmas vacation,” I told Tess. Or rather I told Tess’s shoes.
“No, no, no, no. Did something happen?” Tess grabbed me by my shoulders. “Charlie, what happened? Did something happen to your father?”
“No,” I said. “My mother.”
I looked up at Tess. Her face had gone ashy white. “What? Something’s wrong with your mom? Oh, Charlie . . .”
“No,” I said.
Tess whipped around to Kevin. “What is going on? Tell me.”
“Her mother,” Kevin said, and glanced over at me. Tess’s hands were still on my shoulders. “My dad and her mother are in . . .” He stopped. He shrugged at me. Tess looked back at me.
“In something,” I said, trying to smile, trying to make it fun, funny, a quirky funny thing we could all join together to laugh about at my mother’s expense. “In-volved. In cahoots. In . . .”
“Love,” Kevin said.
Well, there’s a word to put a damper on a rollicking good time.
“They’re in love?” Tess asked me.
“That’s what my dad said, anyway.” Kevin kicked the toe of his work boot into the concrete. “So we’re all going away together over Christmas vacation. Skiing. In Vermont.”
Tess’s hands slid off my shoulders, down my arms, to her sides. “Obviously you knew this. Both of you.”
Kevin shrugged. “I figured you knew, too.”
“Yes,” Tess said. “I’m sure you did. Why wouldn’t I know that? You’re my, well, whatever, supposedly, and Charlie is my best friend. Supposedly.”
She turned around and stomped into the building, leaving me out in the rain with Kevin.
MY FATHER STARTED driving me nuts as soon as I got to his house the day before Thanksgiving, and by Saturday afternoon was showing no sign of letting up at all. Any time I flopped down to rest briefly between chores, he peppered me with questions: How’s your mother? What’s she up to these days? Has she fixed the flooding in the basement of that house yet? (Always “that house.”) So who’s this new friend your mother has?
It took all the way until Friday afternoon to get to that one, the money question. Mom’s new “friend.”
I shrugged.
“I have a new friend,” ABC said.
“Lucky you,” I said. I actually do like my half brother, and if he weren’t four years old I would swear he knew he was helping me out, deflecting attention. “Tell me about your friend, ABC.”
“O-tay.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Actually, I have nineteen friends. Because there are nineteen children in my tlass and I am friends with all nineteen, including, of tourse, myself.”
I love that all his Cs sound like Ts. “That’s awesome, ABC. Good for you.”
He snuggled next to me on the couch. He was warm. This, right here, I decided, this is as much cuteness and love—as much boy—as I could possibly need in this life. He was solid and soft and wearing overalls and a white turtleneck. I was completely fulfilled. So what if Tess still hadn’t called me back?
“You’re not me,” ABC told me.
“No,” I said, thinking,
unfortunately
. If I were you I would be sweet and innocent and good and loved. I’d have nineteen friends instead of zero.
“And I’m not you,” he said, looking up at me with eyes bigger than his head. “So you don’t know what I’m thinking right now.”
I gave him a little tickle on his ribs. “You’re thinking how much you love me, I bet.”
“No,” he said, wiggling away slightly. “I’m not.”
Dad chuckled.
I sighed. “So what are you thinking, you little stinker?” Could he tell I loved him so much? I guess not really. He’s not me, either.
“I don’t have to tell you.”
“No.” I put my face down in his hair and smelled him, sweet and sweaty. “You don’t.”
He leaned against me again. “But I’ll tell you anyway. I was thinking about when my teacher called me Alexander on the first day. Isn’t that funny?”
“Well,” I said. “That is your name.”
Frown. “No. My name is ABC.”
“Those are your initials,” I told him, sweetly. “ABC stands for the great and fabulous Alexander Brian Collins.”
He kicked me.
“Ouch!”
“No!”
“Ow!”
More kicks, and some punches. “ABC is my really name!”
“I was just . . .”
He head butted me in the stomach. “You doody-dum-dum!”
“Suzie,” Dad yelled. “Can’t you control him?”
Suzie glared at Dad and scooped up ABC, who really started screaming. “Can’t you . . .” Suzie started, but stopped herself, sucking in on her lips. ABC reared his head up and slammed it into her chin. She winced and started making an F sound.
This was something new.
But before she could get any further into the word than that initial sound, she spun around and charged out of the living room, struggling to contain ABC who was in full tantrum mode—red in the face and pounding Suzie with all his little limbs at once. He screamed back to me, “I am very sad and angry at you, doody-dum-dum!”
Which left me alone with Dad and his half-finished leftover turkey sandwich.
“Sorry,” I said.
Dad groaned.
“We’ve been down this road a few times. Should’ve named the kid Gus.”
“Yeah.”
He rolled his eyes and I smiled at him. It was the first time I felt like he and I were on the same side, ever.
“So, Charlotte . . .”
“Mm-hmm?” I was hoping we could continue on that track. It would be so cool if he’d say something like
doesn’t everybody suck?
“How’s soccer going?”
“I’m not—Dad, I told you, I’m not doing soccer.” Not this again.
“Fourteen is a little young to specialize, Char.” He winked. “Waiting for basketball, huh?”
“No,” I said. I hated this conversation. “I’m not doing basketball either.”
“Come on, are you lazy? Or a baby? You afraid you won’t make the team? Is that what you’re afraid of? Come on, put on your sneakers and let’s go practice. By the time you go back they’ll make you a starter.” He stood up. “Who’s the coach? Is it still Jim Duffy?”
“I don’t know, Dad.”
“You just gonna waste your whole high school time moping around the house reading poetry? Do you know what college costs? Do you even care about trying to get an athletic scholarship?”
“I will never get an athletic scholarship, Dad!”
“Not moping around like a geek, you won’t!”
“I am not a jock,” I yelled. “Maybe you’ll have more success with Gus, if you stick around long enough!”
“Who’s Gus?” Suzie asked, standing in the doorway.
Dad and I looked at her and both cracked up a little. “Old friend of mine,” he said, back on my side.
“Mommy!” ABC yelled from upstairs. “How many more minutes?”
“Seven,” Suzie bellowed, and went back up the stairs.
Dad sat back down and took a huge bite of his sandwich. I could hear the mantel clock ticking.
“The house looks nice,” I offered. “As always.”
He brushed crumbs off his lap and placed them in his dish. “Suzie is very neat.”
So what? Is that so great, to have “neat” as your leading attribute? Well, neat and pretty. With her shiny blond hair and bright blue eyes and pink lips, Suzie could be a commercial for soap. Mom is more interesting-looking. What’s wrong with interesting? Does somebody have to be pretty to be desirable? Is that what Dad and Kevin think? The only good thing is to be pretty and neat?
“Mom is neat, too.”
Dad smiled. “Smart, funny, ambitious, beautiful, yes. Neat, no.”
“Funny?”
“Yeah.” Dad looked like he was having a memory.
“What?”
“Nothing. Listen, Charlotte. I just want you to try. You know? Not be a lazy bum. You should hold yourself to a high standard, live a good life.”
“Give me a break, please?”
“No,” Dad said. “That is exactly the problem with . . . You let yourself off the hook of responsibility so darn easily. You are so glib, so impressed with yourself, but where is your moral fiber? Your core? Why are you so quick to excuse yourself from any responsibility? Why are you always looking for a break?”
Dad was right about me—I am lazy and glib, all that. But he’s my father. He’s supposed to think better of me than I do myself, isn’t he? “It’s just an expression,” I mumbled.
“Even now. ‘It’s just, it’s just.’ It’s an attitude. A lazy attitude.”
My cell phone rang. I jumped, it startled me so much. I checked the caller ID:
TESS
. “I gotta take this.” I stood up.
As I got to the door, Suzie appeared and asked sweetly, “Should I make some cocoa? ABC is taking a little more time to get a hold of himself.”
I shrugged and pressed talk, passing her. “Hello?” I said, thinking, that’s what I need, maybe—to take a little time to get a hold of myself.
“Hi,” said Tess.
“Hi,” I said. I tried to swallow past the ball in my throat.
“Well,” she said.
“Well,” I echoed. I didn’t even know what to say to her, my best friend. If she still was. “How, um, was your Thanksgiving?”
“Fine.” She sounded a little, maybe, snide. Snide would be so much better than hateful.
“Did you get my messages?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“Are you done being mad at me?”
“No,” she said.
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what I could do about that, so I said, “I miss you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your mother and Kevin’s dad, you conniving witch?”
“I don’t know,” I said, relieved she was at least talking to me in sentence form. “I thought maybe it would go away.”
“Like a zit?”
“No, like a, well, sort of, yes. If you don’t touch it . . . yeah.”
“Okay,” she said. “I guess I get that.”
“Thanks.”
“Wow, huh?”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry, Tess, really.”
“I know.”
“You forgive me?”
“You promise never to not tell me something again?”
“Yes,” I said. “I promise.”
“To tell me everything.”
“Yes.”
“Even if it’s bad, or hard, or a zit.”
“I’m getting a zit colony on my forehead,” I told her.
“Who isn’t?” she said, although she never has any.
“Otay,” I said.
“Otay? Oh, otay. Oh, cutie. He still says that? I miss him. How is ABC?”
“Cute as ever,” I said, all relieved and ready to tell her stories about how sweet the little guy was, all the adorable things he’d said that I’d been too tense to fully enjoy before this phone call. “This morning he was running naked through the . . .”
“I was thinking,” Tess interrupted.
“Uh-oh.”
“If they get married, Kevin will be your brother.”
“Well, not . . .”
“And then if I marry Kevin, you and I will be sisters-in-law. Wouldn’t that be so fun?”
Fun?
“Charlie?”
“That’s a few jumps ahead,” I managed to point out. “They’re just . . . they’re not . . .”
“Even so,” Tess conceded. “How wild, if he’s your brother and I come for a sleepover . . .”
“I don’t think . . .”
Don’t get in an argument with her,
I urged myself. I had just spent the whole week calling her, leaving notes in her locker, getting Jennifer to be a go-between—all to make her talk to me again. And now all I could think of saying to her was SHUT UP! “That would be pretty crazy,” I made myself say instead.
“Do you think he would sneak into your room after midnight and . . .”
“Tess,” I jumped in. “I, yes, that’s, wow, we could really come up with a funny story out of that, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. That’s a totally remote possibility. My mother and, and Mr. Lazarus—they are adults, adults with children to think about, and mortgages, and everything. They don’t rush in to, it’s not like, ‘will you go out with me?’ and then break up three days later . . .”
“It’s a rental.”
“What is?”
“Kevin’s house,” Tess said. “They rent it. So he doesn’t have a mortgage.”
Breathe,
I told myself. She is talking to you again. “That wasn’t my complete point, Tess.”
“Whatever. Kevin thinks . . .” She stopped herself.
“Kevin thinks what?”
“He found a ring in his father’s drawer.”
No.
“You there?” she asked. “Charlie?”
“A what?”
“An engagement ring. He thinks his dad is going to ask your mom, soon.”
“You’re . . .” I tried to sit down on the edge of my bed, but I slid on the new flannel bathrobe Suzie had bought and laid out for me and fell on my butt on the floor. “Ow. No way. No way. Are you sure?”
“That’s what Kevin said. We were at Brad’s party.”
“Party?”
“It was a last-minute thing Wednesday night, you were already at your dad’s. It’s not just that everybody was mad at you. You would’ve been invited, if you were here.”
“Okay.”
“It was lame, don’t worry.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, we went for a walk, me and Kevin, and we started kissing out up against the, you know, that shed in Brad’s yard?”
“Tess.”
“The—it’s green, I think? Anyway, we were kissing and you know, whatever, and he touched my hair, and . . .”
“He touched your hair?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing. Which part, when he touched, what do you mean, he touched your hair?”
“Is that weird, you think? Maybe that is weird. He kind of twirled a piece of my hair around his finger. It was really kind of, intimate, sort of—he stopped kissing me and he was just, like, looking at my hair and twirling it.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s weird of him,” she said. “I actually was starting to get all paranoid about if he was scouting for split ends, at the time, which is why I was like, what? And then he said, I found something in my father’s drawer . . .”
“He told you that? While . . . while he was touching your hair?”
“Yes, he told me that, and he told me not to tell you, but, listen up, you piece of lint—you are my best friend, Charlie! I tell you everything. You get it? How about a little reciprocity, huh?”
“He . . . he . . . he thinks, he said . . .”