The Implosion of Aggie Winchester (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

MONDAY, APRIL 13 / 9:01 A.M.

I had changed
for fencing and was talking with Sylvia when Ms. Rhone flicked the lights on and off once to get everyone’s attention. “Park your butts on the floor,” she said. “We have announcements before class.”

“Guess they have the court ballots counted,” I said.

Sylvia shrugged. “Guess so.”

“Pipe down,” Ms. Rhone barked. “Mrs. Wagner will be coming on the loudspeaker momentarily.”

I thought about how, once we all knew who was on the court, the campaigns would relaunch with more vigor. More flyers, signs, even buttons telling us who, out of the six, was most deserving to be the king and queen.

“All this work, just for a dance,” I said. “It’s so stupid.”

“Oh, shut it,” Sylvia replied, easing her body onto the ground. “I want to hear this.”

Because of Ryan
, I thought, but held my tongue.

While we all waited, Jess came over to me and Sylvia, cradling something with her claw hand.

“Here,” she said, thrusting a white envelope at me. “Take this.”

I glanced at Sylvia, whose eyebrows were raised. “What the hell is it?” I asked, getting to my feet so Jess wouldn’t stand over me.

“It’s a card, dumbass.”

I set my jaw. “Don’t call me a dumbass.”

Jess’s blue eyes were blazing. “Then just take the card.” She lowered her voice. “Feryurmomerwhatevr,” she mumbled. She dropped her eyes.

“What are you, speaking French? I can’t understand you.”

Sylvia laughed and Jess’s face flashed hurt. But it was gone in a nanosecond.

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were fucking hard of hearing!” Jess yelled. The whole class turned to stare at us. “The card is for your
mom
! Hope she feels better!”

She shoved the envelope at me, and I had no choice but to take it. The class tittered at us. I wanted to melt.

Jess leaned in, the nostrils of her perky nose flaring. “Sucks that your mom has cancer,” she whispered. “Mr. Feinstein let it slip last week in accounting. I wouldn’t have been a bitch if you weren’t.”

She stomped away and sat down. I stood there with the card, unsure what to do, until Sylvia pulled on the hem of my shorts. “Park it,” she said. “Now.”

I did as she told me, the envelope dampening in my wet palms. I could still feel the stares of the other kids in fencing class. Part of me wanted to stand up again and explain to them all that, really, the teachers shouldn’t be saying anything because my mom’s lumpectomy was no big deal. Outpatient and everything. But that was too many words, and I’d wind up rambling like Fitz. My mom had been selective about who she’d told about the surgery, but clearly it didn’t matter—word had leaked out anyway. It was St. Davis, after all.

By the time Mrs. Wagner’s voice filtered through the mesh on the loudspeaker, I’d murdered Jess Kline in my brain a thousand times. I tore the card into four neat little squares and shoved them into my shorts pocket.

The loudspeaker clicked on. “Good morning, St. Davis Pioneers!” Mrs. Wagner cried. “I hope you are all having a marvelous Monday. And I know it can only get better after I announce the members of this year’s prom court!”

A few of the bubblier, prettier girls in the class clapped their hands.

Mrs. Wagner took a deep breath. “I’m so pleased to announce our first nominee is . . . Marissa Mendez! Congratulations, Marissa.”

Each season, half the guys at school packed the pool’s bleachers during swim meets to watch Marissa breaststroke her way through the water. I’d never witnessed it firsthand, but I heard that there were audible groans when Marissa emerged from the pool with her wet swimsuit clinging to her body. I knew there were some girls who hated her for it, but not me. I’d heard once that she was screwing Tiffany Holland’s boyfriend behind her back, which pretty much endeared me to Marissa forever.

Mrs. Wagner cleared her throat. “Our second nominee is . . . Ryan Rollings! Congratulations, Ryan!”

I looked over at Sylvia, who was actually smiling. “I nominated him,” she whispered conspiratorially, as if it had been her ballot alone that had secured him a place on the court.

On and on, Mrs. Wagner read the names. Jefferson Talbot. Tiffany Holland. Ty Bernske. Then I heard Mrs. Wagner’s tone flip like a switch. “And now for our last nominee,” she said flatly. “Congratulations, Sylvia Ness.”

Sylvia looked at me. “Did she just—”

“Say your name—?” I stumbled.

“The election for king and queen will be in a week,” Mrs. Wagner finished. “Don’t forget to vote and to come to the dance on May second!”

Sylvia and I scrambled to our feet, staring at each other. “Holy shit,” Sylvia said. Her dark lips were stretched in a smile that looked like it might never leave her face. “Can you even believe this?”

“No,” I replied. “I can’t.” Part of me wondered if it was a mistake. I glanced around and saw some of the other girls in the class staring at us with their hands covering their mouths, like they were trying to hold back laughter. I thought of how I’d made up Yoleesha Squakshot and Greystone McBuffatude and how amused I’d been by it. I tapped my foot against the gym floor, suddenly worried that our classmates could have done the same thing—penciled in a name for a joke—but instead of nominating a fake person, they’d nominated Sylvia.

Sylvia reached out and grabbed my hands, interrupting my thoughts. “You know what this means,” she said pointedly. There was no mistaking her message.
Ryan is on the court, too.
It was as clear as if she’d spoken it out loud.

“That’s awesome,” I lied, smiling even though I knew this wasn’t going to change anything. Sylvia could be the president of the United States and Ryan would still ignore her—and her kid. I was sure of it.

“I have to find a dress,” Sylvia said. “One that will fit over my belly.”

“No problem—you have time,” I said.

“Okay, enough chatter!” Ms. Rhone called out. “Get your gear!” I left Sylvia and walked over to the fencing equipment, aware that all eyes in the gym were still on Sylvia. Save one pair. I didn’t have to turn and look to know that Jess was watching me.

Chapter Twelve

MONDAY, APRIL 13 / 12:22 P.M.

Sylvia stuffed
three fries into her mouth at once, then took a big drink of her milkshake. “God, I’m so freaking hungry all the time,” she said, her mouth full. “This baby’s like a parasite. Like, what was that movie? The one where the monster comes out of everyone’s stomachs?”

“
Alien
?” I offered.

“Totally. This baby is like
Alien
.”

I ate a bite of my chicken nugget and shifted in the hard plastic seat of the Playland table. Sylvia sat in the chair shaped like Grimace. Across from me, the new girl, Beth Daniels, picked at her plain burger (no onions, no pickles, no mustard). Her long equine face barely moved as she chewed, and she kept her sharp gray eyes trained mostly on Sylvia.

“Nice sweater,” was all she said when we’d been introduced before lunch. Sylvia had laughed like it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

“Come on, you guys,” Sylvia had said, getting into her car. “I’m starving.” Before I could move, Beth had hopped into the front seat. She didn’t even call it.

At McDonald’s, Beth studied Sylvia. “You keep eating like that, you’ll have to get a dress specially made for the prom,” she said. She swallowed a bite of burger so hard that the chunky black cross on her pale neck moved up and down. “Not even a size sixteen will fit you.”

“Um, hi, she’s
pregnant,
in case you hadn’t noticed,” I said. As far as I was concerned, Sylvia could eat whatever the hell she wanted.

Beth looked bored. “So? I was pregnant, and I still had to watch what I ate.”

The food in my mouth turned to sawdust.

“You were pregnant?” Sylvia asked, her eyes darting to Beth’s tiny waist and flat stomach.

“Yeah. Freshman year.”

Holy shit
, was all I could think.

“Did you keep it?” Sylvia asked.

Beth popped a fry into her mouth. “No,” she said, chewing and talking, “I gave it up for adoption. The dad didn’t want jack to do with me. And I would have had to raise it at my parents’, which none of us wanted. There’s just no way I could have gotten my own place in the city. Even a rat hole is, like, a thousand dollars a month.”

Beth looked at me, then at Sylvia. “What? Why are you guys staring at me? Do I have something on my face?”

“The girls around here tend to keep their legs together,” Sylvia explained. “The last time I knew of anyone at our school being pregnant was three years ago.”

“Well, it’s more like they fix the problem before it’s a problem,” I clarified, thinking how I knew lots of girls who were having sex, and I was positive not all of them were being safe. My mom had told me once that there was a high abortion rate among teens in some rural areas. Then she’d looked at me like I’d be dead meat if I lost my virginity before age fifty.

“God, small towns are so messed up,” Beth said.

“Hey, our town is okay,” I said. I never would have professed to love St. Davis, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Miss New York trash it. “You’ve been here, what? Five minutes?”

Beth rolled her eyes. “First chance I get to go back to New York, I’m taking it. My dad says he’s only working in St. Davis because has to. This was the only place he could find after he lost his position as president of a Wall Street firm.”

I almost choked on my Diet Coke. “You’re telling me your dad went from the president of a Wall Street firm to working in St. Davis, Minnesota?” I glanced at Sylvia. Beth was totally full of shit.

“You wouldn’t know anything about it, farm girl,” Beth said. She turned to Sylvia. “In New York, pregnant girls were on the prom court all the time. We even had a prom queen who was a prom king, if you get what I mean.”

Sylvia’s green eyes widened. “Yeah?”

“Totally. It’s too bad you’ll never be queen, Sylvia. It would have been cool, but it’ll never happen.”

My patience was running out. “So, what, now you can predict the future, too? You
know
how the election is going to turn out?”

“Oh, come on,” Beth said. “I heard that teacher’s voice when she announced Sylvia was on the court. You think anyone around here is going to
let
her be queen? Especially if what you told me is true about the pregnant girls? What kind of ‘message’ does that send?”

Sylvia’s pale face turned a shade whiter. “Except that’s not how it works. The
student body
put me on the court. The
student body
will decide who’s queen. It’s not up to Mrs. Wagner. She can suck it.”

Beth put her hands on the table. “You think the student body is going to vote for you for queen, then? You think your nomination was the real deal?”

My eyes locked onto Sylvia’s face, watching her. She crumpled up her hamburger wrapper, then sat back in her plastic chair. “Look, I’m not stupid, okay? I get that a bunch of people just found out about the pregnancy, so when they needed a name for the last line on the ballot, maybe I was on their minds. I can understand that the timing probably had something to do with me making it onto the ballot. I get it. Funny ha ha. Put the pregnant Goth girl on the ballot. Fine. But I’m on it, dammit. I’m
on
it. And that’s all that matters now. Because maybe I actually
could
be queen. You know? And I don’t think that would suck.”

Because then Ryan would be your king
, I thought.
At least for a little while.

Beth arched an eyebrow. “So your nomination was a joke, but somehow you’re going to convince everyone you should be queen?”

I had to hand it to Beth. She asked Sylvia questions I would have been afraid to.

Sylvia shrugged. “Maybe. I have a week to campaign, don’t I?”

“Campaign?” I asked. “You? I mean, no offense, but I am not tacking up a poster with your name in glitter. I’m just not.”

Sylvia smiled. “Maybe we can figure something else out, then. I just—I’m in this, and I want to stay in this. Okay?”

Beth nodded. “I’ll sure as hell vote for you.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Sylvia stood up. “Okay, enough about prom,” she said. “Let’s talk about this later.”

“I need a cigarette,” Beth said. “Let’s go to the drugstore so I can get a pack.”

I glanced at my cell phone. We barely had five minutes to make it back to school. “No time,” I said, “we have to go.”

Beth smirked at me. “Afraid Mommy will be mad at you if you’re tardy?”

“Knock it off,” Sylvia said. “Her mom’s having surgery today. She gets a free pass.” I wanted to hug Sylvia.

“So we drop her off,” Beth said. “You and I can go hang.”

“Cool,” said Sylvia. I suddenly felt like I knew what my dad meant when he used the expression “win the battle, lose the war.”

I didn’t move fast enough out of McDonald’s to snag the front seat in Sylvia’s car, and even before I was dropped back off at the school’s front doors, I felt like Sylvia and Beth had forgotten I was there.

I trudged into chemistry and tuned out a lecture on molar heat and hydrocarbons. At one point I nodded off and dreamed that Sylvia was made prom queen, but her crown turned into hissing snakes. I woke up to find Jacob Handler’s pen had exploded and ink had gotten into his eye, and the hissing sound was of the water in the eyewash station. I watched him rinse out his cornea for a second before putting my head down and going back to sleep.

Chapter Thirteen

MONDAY, APRIL 13 / 4:39 P.M.

When I got home
that afternoon, both cars were in the driveway. I went into the house through the garage and was ready to call out when my dad padded into the kitchen, a finger over his lips.

“Your mom’s sleeping,” he whispered. “Finally.” My dad’s hair was mussed and his shirt wrinkled. He looked exhausted.

“How did it go today?” I asked, setting down my bag.

“Good. Your mom was extremely calm, and the doctors were happy with how things went. They’re confident they got all the cancerous tissue.”

“She’s upstairs now?”

My dad nodded. “She woke up from the anesthesia, then slept for most of the car ride home. When we got home she was in some pain, but she didn’t want to take anything. She said the pain pills make her lose her focus. But after about four hours, I was able to get her to take one. It knocked her out almost immediately.”

My dad pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down. I half expected him to drift off to sleep right there and then himself.

“You want some coffee or something?” I asked.

My dad’s bloodshot eyes met my own. “Thanks, no. I’m okay.”

I thought about offering to make some dinner for him, but I figured it would be easier if I just ordered a pizza later.

“If you want to go peek in on your mom, you can,” he said. I got the feeling my dad could use a few minutes alone.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, and made my way upstairs.

My parents’ room was at the end of the hallway. To get to it, I had to walk past a wall of family photos. There were a lot of just me—ranging from childhood pictures where I’m smiling and pigtailed, to last summer’s forced road trip to South Dakota, where I’m scowling with my arms folded, the stone faces of Mount Rushmore looming in the background.

For whatever reason, I stopped to take a good look at every image. I studied the pictures of my mom and dad, from back in the 1980s, with their feathered hair and huge smiles.

I reached out and touched the glass of an old photo showing my parents and me at the pool of a family friend. My parents are reclining in lounge chairs, drinks in their hands. I’m leaning against the back of my mom’s chair, about ten years old and wearing a blue swimsuit with bright daisies all over it. My parents are grinning, and I’m pink with chlorine and sun, looking like I’m having the time of my life.

I didn’t remember this photo being taken. I couldn’t recall that day—who I’d played with or what I’d eaten—but I was glad it was there. It was proof that we hadn’t always pissed each other off.

When I pushed my parents’ door open, their room was dark, the curtains drawn. A small lamp cast a dim glow in the corner. My mom was still, her breathing deep.

I walked closer to the bed. My mom’s mouth was open in a half moon. Her hair was pushed back from her forehead. Her throat made little clicks as the air went in and out of her lungs.

She seemed so . . . dehydrated. I thought about waking her up to ask her to drink some water. But she probably needed rest more. I just wished she didn’t look so frail—like Grandma Lou Belle after her stroke.

If she were awake, I thought maybe I’d tell her about how Sylvia got nominated for the prom court today. And about how she was carrying Ryan Rollings’s baby, and how he treated her the way Neil had treated me. And how Beth Daniels had moved here from New York, and how I’d thought maybe Fitz Peterson liked me but then I’d found out he had a girlfriend.

Instead, I tiptoed away from her, pulling the door shut behind me with a gentle click.

Back in my room, I shot off a quick text to Sylvia asking what she and Beth had done during fifth hour. I wanted to ask if Beth had talked smack about me when I wasn’t there, but I didn’t want to come across as paranoid. I left it short and hit send.

I booted up my computer and cleaned up a few e-mails and documents. But I found my eyes flitting back to one icon in particular: the self-portrait Neil and I had taken homecoming night.

As if he knew I was thinking about him at that exact moment, an e-mail landed in my inbox from [email protected]. I stared at the message subject until I could no longer make out the letters:
need 2 talk.
Fingers trembling, I clicked it.

Did u get my text? I have been thinking abt you. We left things pretty screwed up a few weeks ago @Jefferson’s. I want to c u and work this out. Call me. Love, Neil

I put my head in my hands and groaned. There was no way I was ever going to get over Neil if he didn’t stop contacting me. At the same time, I wasn’t sure I
wanted
to get over him. If there was a chance he wanted to get back together—if he wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend again and not just get to me to get his rocks off—maybe I’d take it. I closed the message and turned off my computer. I’d reply to him later, once I had time to think.