My Tiki Girl (8 page)

I’m making a letter holder for my dad. It hangs on the wall and has five slots to sort your mail. Mine looks nothing like the carefully drawn plan Mr. G handed me. It’s lopsided and the slots don’t line up. A carpenter I am not.

Heather Tomasi is in Shop with me. She’s making the same letter holder as me, only hers is perfect. It’s not perfect because she’s a great woodworker, but because she knows how to bat her eyelashes and wiggle her butt. She might have been Granny Gopher back in junior high, but now she’s got the look and the moves down. Last year, when she started hanging around with Sukie, I thought she was just this total ditz who couldn’t think for herself. Now I see she’s way smarter than that and she knows just what she’s doing. She’s got the guys in Shop doing the work for her, and Mr. G doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he’s helped her himself several times. The other girls contribute by
oohing
and
aahing
about what an awesome job she’s doing—and where
did
she get that cute purse?

Seems that everyone in the class is falling all over themselves to help Heather and her metal mouth. Everyone but me and the kid in the corner, that is.

The kid in the corner is already at work every morning as we file in when the bell rings. When it rings again and we all put away our goggles and earplugs, he just keeps working. Mr. G never talks to him—in fact, he doesn’t even pass by that corner of the room when he makes his rounds. I’ve been watching this kid for weeks. He looks older, probably a senior. He’s taller than Mr. G, but not as chunky. He’s got muscles, though. I can see them under the too-tight shoulders of his faded flannel shirts.

The kids in the class don’t pay much attention to him. I’ve heard them call him a retard a couple times, but the boy doesn’t look up from his work.

His clothes are rumpled, and he wears the same heavy work boots with worn red laces every day along with a wool watch cap that he never takes off. But the most striking thing about this kid is the scar. He has a thick, raised red scar that seems to divide his face in two. It starts someplace under his cap, crosses his forehead, goes down over the bridge of his nose and over his left cheek, then to his chin, which is covered by this thin, wispy wannabe beard.

He just sits there quietly tapping away with a mallet and chisels. He’s dragged a three-foot-long piece of hollow log in and is carving designs in it. Only they’re not just designs. They’re animals. Dogs and roosters and snakes, all with these crazed happy faces, and they’re all dancing, or flying. I can’t describe it, really. It’s like they’re leaping out of the wood, happy as hell because this boy found them trapped in there and is setting them free.

I know about the animals because today I looked. I actually walked over and bent down to see.

“It’s beautiful,” I told the boy. He didn’t look up. He smelled like wood smoke and autumn leaves.

A couple of guys over at the belt sander snickered.

“Hey, check it out, Joey’s got a girlfriend,” they said. Then Heather looked over and giggled.

Mr. G said, “Get back to your project, dear,” which is what he calls all the girls. I don’t think he knows our names. The boys are all
son
.

So now here I am, back putting clamps on my crooked letter holder, thinking about those happy animals, and before I know it I’m not only smiling but whistling this quiet little tune while I work. I stop when I realize that it’s “Over the Rainbow,” and I must not actually have been all that quiet because it seems like half the class is looking at me. So I do what any mentally unbalanced person taking pharmaceuticals would: I stick out my tongue and blow them all a big, wet raspberry.

Dahlia and I are out on the soccer field when we see Troy Farnham coming toward us. Great. One of my all-time least favorite people. Just what I need.

Dahlia’s got her tiny pair of scissors out and is engaged in one of her favorite pastimes: making paper dolls.

She has Day-Glo orange paper folded accordion-style and is snipping away, a clove cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Hey, Dahlia!” he shouts.

“You’re kidding,” says Dahlia, barely looking up. “Here we go again.”

Troy keeps pestering Dahlia to go out with him and she keeps brushing him off. The guy just won’t take no for an answer. His interest in Dahlia is one of the reasons Sukie hates her so much. Troy dumped Sukie last year, and she’s been trying to get back with him ever since. She’s been showering him with gifts, including this sort of dangerous-looking necklace with real shark’s teeth on it. The sleazy thing is that Troy accepted the necklace and actually wears it. I feel bad for Sukie when I see the way she looks at him in the necklace, all proud and hopeful, like she’s sure they’re on the road to getting back together. Meanwhile, Troy is bird-dogging the new girl. It makes me kind of homicidal, if you want to know the truth.

I never approved of Sukie going out with Troy, but it was the one thing there was no talking her out of. It’s just too ironic that I’m the one who brought them together back when she and I were still in eighth grade.

I’d heard about a keg party from Simon, who played the Cowardly Lion. Sukie and I weren’t really the types to go running off to a keg party, but Simon pointed out that a lot of kids from Cedar Brook would be there, as well as kids from Sutterville High, so it would give us a taste of what we were up for next fall.

“Besides,” Simon pointed out, “no one has to know we’re eighth graders. That’s the cool thing about huge parties where you don’t know anyone. You can be anyone you want for a night.”

This was how I talked Sukie into it.

“Think Cinderella,” I said.

And so Sukie agreed, put on a tight black dress, and
poof!
—she met the guy of her dreams.

They flirted from across the room half the night, until finally he came sauntering over in his blue and white football jacket, drunk and superconfident in that way only Troy Farnham can be, and said to her, “Where have you been all my life?”

I laughed out loud, but Sukie batted her eyelashes, giggled. He was smitten. She neglected to mention that she was only an eighth grader, and by the time I saw fit to bring it up in a desperate attempt to head him off at the pass, it was too late. They were already making plans for dinner and a movie the following night.

“Earth to Sukie,” I said. “We are going to the auditorium to work on sets with my mom tomorrow night.”

“You guys will do fine without me,” she said as she came up for air after a marathon make-out session. “Besides, you know I’m no Matisse.”

By Monday, everyone in junior high knew Sukie was dating a hunky high school sophomore. And just like that, he became her whole world, leaving me in the dust. It was
Troy this
and
Troy that
whenever we talked, and she couldn’t even put on a pair of shoes without wondering what Troy would think.

The whole reason I started going out with Albert was because he was Troy’s best friend and I was tired of being left at home while Sukie ran around with her new beau every waking moment.

Troy Farnham is now the most eligible bachelor at Sutterville High. He’s not only gorgeous in that sculpted Greek god kind of way, but he’s also on the football team, the Rams, and to hear the other kids talk, he’s the star—which is no surprise, really, because Troy is one of those sickening kids who is the best at whatever he does.

He’s trotting over to us, holding a piece of paper in his hand, smiling real big.

“If you’re here to ask me out again, don’t waste your breath, Farnham,” Dahlia says. She’s still snipping away at the orange dolls-to-be, barely acknowledging his presence.

I can’t help but smile. Then I look at the paper in his hand and my jaw goes rigid. It’s one of Dahlia’s flyers.

“It just so happens I’m a kick-ass guitarist,” Troy says. He pushes his long, curly hair back away from his forehead.

I forgot he played the guitar. That was one of the many things Sukie found supersexy. She had this eight-by-ten picture of him and his shiny red guitar on the wall of her room, and I’ve got to admit that in the picture, he looked like someone famous. Like Sukie’s boyfriend was someone you’d seen on MTV or the cover of
Rolling Stone
.

“Bull,” Dahlia says. “You’re just looking for a new way to get in my pants.”

“No, no, really. I’m good. I’ve been playing since I was like ten or something. Ask Maggie. She’s heard me play. I’m good, right?”

I shrug. “I guess,” I say. I remember the way he closed his eyes when he played, how the shiny guitar hanging from the strap around his neck made him look like a rock star. When you’re Troy Farnham, everything is just an accessory to show how perfect you are. Now, for some reason, he wants Dahlia to be his newest flashy trinket.

“Well, no way,” Dahlia says. “The band is going to take up a lot of time, and last I knew, you were at football practice almost every afternoon.”

“I’ll quit,” he says.

“What?” She seems genuinely shocked and looks up, the scissors still in her hand.

I’m a little shocked, too. If he’s willing to stop playing football, then he’s got it worse for her than I imagined. The stupid team is all he ever talks about.

“Truly. I’ll quit the team if I have to. I’ve been thinking about what you said. How football is for fascist animals. Anyway, I’ve been thinking you might be right.”

Right. Like Troy even knows what fascist means. And when did they have this big discussion anyway?

“I don’t believe you,” Dahlia says.

“Truly. And you’ve gotta hear me play. I’ll blow your mind.”

“I doubt that, Farnham.”

Troy Farnham is all muscles, and he reminds me of a weird curly-haired bulldog, looking all pouty with his lower lip pushed out, his voice muffled and wet.

“I’m a poetry lover,” he tells her.

“Yeah, right,” Dahlia says.

Then he clears his throat and recites a few lines.

Dahlia snorts. “That’s pretty good. ‘Poppies in July.’ One of my favorites. But you knew that, didn’t you? You did your homework, Farnham, I’ll give you that. Since you’re such a fan, name five other Sylvia Plath poems.”

Troy’s olive-skinned face reddens a little.

“I thought so,” Dahlia says. “Now get lost.”

Troy shoves his hands into the pockets of his blue and white jacket and walks away, defeated.

“Pathetic,” says Dahlia as she watches him, but she’s smiling a little, like maybe his desperate attempt got to her somehow.

I find myself wanting to wad up his stupid football jacket and shove it down his throat.

Okay, I admit it: I’m jealous and I don’t do jealousy well.

Dahlia puts the tiny scissors away and unfolds the orange paper, revealing four skinny girls playing clarinets. “For you, LaSamba,” she says, handing me the paper.

“They’re me!” I say, delighted. “Oh, Tiki, they’re perfect!” I feel the jealousy slipping away, and I’m as warm and bright as my Day-Glo dolls.

As we walk back into the school, we meet up with Sukie and Heather.

“How’s your new boyfriend?” Heather asks.

Dahlia looks at me, raises her eyebrows. I say nothing.

“You and Joey are quite a pair. You know, they say there’s someone for everyone, and I’m thinking maybe that’s true after all.” She gives this sad attempt at a Sukie snicker.

“Seriously, though,” Sukie says, reaching out to touch my arm in this over-the-top concerned-friend kind of way that she picked up from watching Lifetime movies, “he’s a mess, Mags.”

I cringe a little to hear her call me this. Especially in front of Dahlia, who has no idea who I used to be.

“I heard he used to be totally normal,” Heather pipes up. “When he was like eight, he was in this car wreck. His mom died. His sister ended up in a wheelchair. And Joey went through the windshield and
totally
screwed up his brain.” She giggles a bit, glances at Sukie for approval, but Sukie is looking at her like,
Would you shut up already?
Heather realizes her faux pas, but too late—she giggles some more, really nervous now. “Uh, anyway, he’s kind of wacko. I’d, um, stay away from him if I were you.”