My Tiki Girl (25 page)

I watch as my father, clean-cut in new jeans, running shoes, and a college sweatshirt, walks her to the door, shakes her hand, thanks her for coming by.

Then he tells me to take a seat in the kitchen because we have a lot to talk about.

Here goes.

I sit across from him and watch as he fiddles with his empty coffee cup. Taking his cue, I pick up Leah’s, which is half full of cold coffee, the rim stained with orange lipstick.

At last, my father clears his throat and begins.

“Mrs. Wainwright told me all about your . . . your
relationship
with Dahlia.”

“What?” I can’t believe what he just said, his dry lips all pursed up when he said the word
relationship
, turning it to poison in his mouth.

“She showed up here first thing this morning after being awake all night. The poor woman is a wreck. She’s very concerned for her daughter. She doesn’t want you two seeing each other anymore, and I have to agree that’s the best course of action at this point.”

Abomination.

“Course of action? What are you saying?”

Pervert.

“I’m saying you can’t see Dahlia anymore. Your friendship just isn’t healthy.”

“Healthy?”

I feel like I’m underwater, and his words are only bubbles popping in my ears as I sink down.

Last night I was a rock ’n’ roll star. Today I’m a deviant.

Sick, sick little girl.

“Maggie, I know you’re upset about your mother. I know you’re still grieving . . .”

“This has nothing to do with Mom!”

God, how could he think that? How dare he even bring her up like this?

“Your behavior since school started has been so erratic. I know you’ve been drinking. You smell like a brewery right now.”

“Last night, Sukie spilled her beer on me. I wasn’t drinking at all!”

My father holds up his hand to silence me. “I’m not an idiot, Maggie. I know about the drinking. And I suspect you’ve been using drugs, too. I got a call from your science teacher, Mr. Knapp, on Friday. He’s very concerned about your slipping grades and the change he’s seen in your attitude. He thinks you’ve even shown up for his class high on marijuana.”

“I can’t believe this!”

My father gets all puffed up like one of those weird tropical fish. His eyes are red and runny, and when he opens his mouth to speak, all the air comes out at once, leaving him thin and drained again.

“And I can’t believe you’d lie to me, Maggie. Do you know how disappointing that is?”

Not nearly as disappointing as being betrayed by Leah, Mother Mary, the one adult who actually had a clue—my secret gypsy wagon mother. How could she?

How could it be that everyone in the world is a complete disappointment in the end? That no one is who they seem to be? No one but Dahlia, and now I’m being told I can’t see her.

“To have you tell me things are going well at school, that you’ve been taking your medicine when I know you haven’t. I found a nearly full bottle in your dresser drawer, Maggie. We had that filled a month ago.”

“Jesus! You went through my drawers?”

“I didn’t have a choice. I was worried about you.”

“You were worried, so you searched my room? Whatever happened to talking to me? Isn’t that what our stupid pizza nights are all about?”

His chin starts to quiver and his eyes actually fill with tears. I haven’t seen him cry since the funeral.

“I just can’t help but feel like we’ve both let her down,” he says.

At first, I think he means Leah.

“Who?” I ask.

“Your mother,” he says, his voice cracking. “We’ve let your mother down.”

Just say it, Dad. Say I killed her. I killed her and now I’m breaking her heart up in heaven by turning into a freak of nature lesbian. Say it.

My father’s crying full throttle now, and I can’t look at him anymore. I stand up from the table, run down the hall and up the stairs to my room, where I slam the door, lock it, and dial Dahlia’s number.

“My mom is on a total rampage,” Dahlia tells me.

“I know, she was here,” I say. “She talked to my dad.”

“No way!”

“What are we gonna do, Dahlia? They say we can’t see each other anymore.”

I listen to her take a drag of her cigarette, then blow the smoke back out.

“I don’t know, LaSamba. But they can’t keep us apart. Meet me on the soccer field tomorrow at lunch. We’ll figure it out. Hell, we’ll run away if we have to. Leave this rat hole town behind and go find the Memory Motel for real.”

25

I got to
school today fully expecting to be greeted like a star. A lot of people would be too shy to come right up to me, of course, but I’d be able to tell from the way they looked at me, the way they whispered to each other. Definitely my old popular friends would gather round in excited bunches, gushing. Guys from the football team would shout, “Rock on, Keller!” from down the hall. Peace signs from the hippies. I was ready, ready to play the humble yet proud part of the discovered genius.

What an idiot.

People whispered all right. And snickered. I had almost gotten to my locker before I actually made out what they were saying.

Lesbian

Dyke

Homo

My face burned.

Had Leah told the entire school what happened in the confession booth, come to school early and made an announcement over the PA system: my daughter was seduced by that sicko pervert Maggie Keller?

I found out the truth from the brainy girl with the oversize glasses in second-period Geometry. She was the only one who would be caught dead talking to me. Sukie Schwartz had told everyone that
I
made a pass at
her
at Troy’s party after telling her all about my lesbian love affair with Dahlia. Not only that, but she’s telling the story like she feels sorry for sick little me—Sukie’s father is a shrink, after all, which pretty much makes her an expert on sexual deviants. And the fact that she and I used to be best friends now makes Sukie an expert on my character and what went wrong. She’s telling people it’s because of the accident. My bad leg made me too self-conscious to think I could be attractive to guys. My limp drove me to lesbianism. This is what the girl with big glasses says.

The first thing I did after Geometry was go looking for Sukie, who was doing a good job at keeping herself surrounded with kids, passing on tidbits about my lesbian life and how that’s what really ended our friendship last year. I tried to talk to her outside the gym, but it was no use.

“Sukie,” I said. “We need to talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“We need to talk about the lies you’ve been spreading.”

“She says she doesn’t want to talk, lesbo,” Heather said, and she was backed up by about five other girls who formed a line between me and Sukie, acting all tough like they expected little limping me to start attacking Sukie with lesbian karate or something. I just shook my head and walked away.

Poof. You’re not in Kansas anymore. You’re in homo exile land.

When I meet Dahlia on the soccer field she can hardly look at me. It’s so cold my breath comes out in frozen clouds. I start scrambling to explain, to tell her what happened at Troy’s party, the words moist puffs that freeze in the air between us. Dahlia holds her hand up like a traffic cop.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she says. “Not now. Meet me at Troy’s after school. We’ll talk then.”

Then she walks away, back toward the school, but just before going, she gives me this look of pity, like I have no arms and legs and am just a stump girl, smaller than ever.

This is the last thing I need now. Dahlia’s all I’ve got.

I watch her go, then start to chase after her, running as fast as I can, the pain in my leg searing and bright as lightning in a dark horror-movie sky. I get to the building and see Dahlia through the double-glass doors, moving down the corridor.

I can’t go any further. My whole body is pulsing with pain, and when I see my reflection in the glass doors, it looks all wavery and bright.

My stomach heaves and I turn just in time to throw up on the gravel next to the bike racks. I’m doubled over, gagging and spitting and wondering if I’m gonna live or die, when I hear this voice behind me.

Wouldn’t you know it, it’s old No-Neck Knapp with his filmy lips asking if he can walk me to the nurse’s office. I say
no way
, that I’m fine, just peachy keen. I’m crying now, even though I’m trying not to with all my might, and he takes my arm and leads me to his empty classroom instead.

“Do you want to talk?” he asks.

“No.”

I bet even No-Neck has heard the rumors by now. If he’s hoping for the inside scoop, he better think again.

“Okay then. You can rest here until you feel better, Maggie. I’ll write you a hall pass and a note to your next teacher saying you were helping me in the lab.”

“Thanks,” I say.

I can’t believe it. An adult being so cool, so nice to me.

He just sits at the front of the room grading papers while I lay my head on my desk, counting my breaths, trying to make myself calm down.

When I finally get it together and stand to leave, he writes the pass and the note, then says, “Come back anytime you need to, Maggie.” And I bite my lip and look away, because I know I’m going to start crying again just from him being so nice, which doesn’t make any sense at all, but there it is.

When I get to Troy’s, I find Dahlia, Troy, and Albert in the basement. Troy looks at me with an amused grin on his face. Albert just looks perplexed, like he’s trying to figure out if it’s really me or a clone. Albert believes that some people really are clones. Or androids. Or aliens. He’s got all kinds of ideas that I used to find sort of charming, but now I just find them kind of geeky and annoying.

Dahlia’s avoiding all eye contact with me, and I’m having serious doubts that any conversation we have right now is going to go well.

“We got a movie for you two,” says Troy.

“What movie?” asks Dahlia.

I’m still standing, too edgy to sit.

Troy goes over to the corner, reaching for a video. He’s got one of those huge entertainment centers where the stereo, big-screen television, and VCR and DVD player are all in an oak cabinet with lots of shelves and drawers. There are rows of CDs, stacks of videos and DVDs.

Troy comes over, video in hand, and shows us the cover.

There’s a picture of two half-naked, Barbie-looking blonds making out.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Dahlia says. “What the hell is this?”

“I thought you’d like it,” explains Troy. His voice is all sincere, his brown eyes moist as a dog’s. “It seemed like your kind of movie.”

Dahlia sits up a little straighter. “We’re not dykes, you know. What Sukie said in school—it’s all bullshit.”

“Is that right?” Troy asks. “That’s not the way Sukie tells it. I already knew, anyway. Sukie told me she saw you two making out behind the school. At first, I thought it was just one of her crazy stunts to try to get me back, but then, after watching you guys a while, I started to believe her. Then at the party, she comes crying to me, saying how her old buddy ‘Mags’ just tried to kiss her. How sick is that?”