The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter (18 page)

But before I could do that, my mom knocked on my bedroom door.

“What?” I said. “I’m busy.” I wasn’t trying to sound rude, but it was important that my mother understood that I wasn’t always available to talk to her when she knocked.

“Your backpack is in the living room,” my mom said. “Didn’t you say you had homework?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I need that.”

When my mom opened my door and brought me my backpack, she looked worried. “Why are you just sitting in here on the floor with your phone?”

She sat down next to me and put her arm around me. “I want you to know that you can tell me anything.”

“Okay,” I said.

My mother rubbed my back. “It’s about Nadia, isn’t it? Sometimes older and insecure kids don’t treat people the way they should,” my mom said. “They take out their frustrations on other people.”

“That’s true,” I said. But I had no idea where my mom was going with this.

“I need you to tell me the truth, Bessica.” She sighed very heavily and rubbed my back more. “Is Nadia bullying you? Because if she is, I need to report her.”

I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”

“The way you described her makes her sound very intimidating. I imagine you might be afraid to speak up about her. But Bessica, if you’re in danger, you should speak up now.”

I couldn’t believe that my mother was insane. I’d thought it was just Sylvie’s mother who had mental problems. “I’m not in danger. I don’t even know Nadia.”

My mother stopped rubbing my back and started picking up my dirty socks. There were a lot of them. “So you just happened to run into her at the vending machine and she kicked the tar out of the machine for no reason?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “That’s what happened.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, Bessica,” my mom said.

“She wears a dog collar, Mom. And her boots have tape all over them. She’s not a very logical person.”

My mom stood up and I watched her deposit a wad of my socks in the hamper. “If this turns into something more, I want you to come to me,” she said. “I want you to know that you have a safe place.”

I did not know what to say in response to that. I felt like I was trapped inside a soap opera. My mother had never been this dramatic before.

“That’s cool,” I said.

She walked to my door. “I’m going to pack your lunch tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “Will it have cookies in it?”

“It will have grapes,” my mother said. “They have a lot of antioxidants.”

And as soon as she shut the door, I felt very relieved. But then I realized it was almost time for me to go to bed, and I hadn’t talked to Sylvie yet or practiced any cheerleader moves beyond almost-splits, and I felt anxious again. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to take my
cell phone and sneak outside and call Sylvie so that when I yelled, my parents didn’t hear me. Then I needed to yell at Sylvie and dump out all my anger. And after I was finished doing that, I needed to come back inside my house, do some homework, attempt to kick myself out of a back bend, and sleep.

I cracked open my bedroom door. My parents were watching the news. And it wasn’t even the local news. It was one of those stations that broadcasts the news twenty-four hours a day. All the time. Earthquakes. Puppies flushed down toilets. Hostage situations. That station was such a bummer.

I opened the door as quietly as I could and sneaked outside. At first I thought I would call Sylvie from my garage. But then I worried about the echo. So I went into my backyard. But then things felt spooky. It was totally dark and a little windy and I could hear an owl. Plus, it was cold. I walked around my backyard to try to warm up. Then I was hit by a good idea. Sometimes Noll left his Mustang unlocked. I could go sit in there and call Sylvie. I hurried to the car.

When I got to the Mustang it was looking very shiny, even in the pitch-black darkness. I climbed inside and sat there for a minute to make sure that I wasn’t going to get caught right away. Apparently, I was in the clear. So I called Sylvie. As her phone rang I became very nervous.
I didn’t want her mom to answer. I wanted Sylvie to answer. But the thought of talking to Sylvie made me nervous too, which was weird. Because before her mother put us on a friendship break, I used to talk to Sylvie several times a day.

“Hello?” a voice said.

I couldn’t believe it. It was Sylvie. But instead of wanting to yell at her, I wanted to talk to her.

“Sylvie!” I said. “It’s me! Bessica!”

“Bessica! How are you? What are you doing?”

“I’m sitting in Noll Beck’s car,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s cool,” I said. “I just got spooked by the darkness and the wind and an owl. All that hooting. So I needed to sit inside something.”

“Why didn’t you call me from your house?” she asked.

And I thought about telling her that I needed to be someplace where I could yell, but I worried that might sound rude. So I changed the topic.

“Sylvie, how are things going at South? What do you think about PE and your dress code?” I wondered if she had to wear green pants. I wondered if her PE class was pukier than mine.

“I’m not taking PE,” Sylvie said.

And I got a little bit excited. Because I wanted to hear
her excuse. Maybe I could use it and get out of my class. “Cool! What’s your excuse?”

“I don’t have one. I’m taking dance. It counts for PE.”

This seemed totally unfair. “Dance?” I asked. My school didn’t even offer that. “Do you jog in there?”

Sylvie laughed. “No. We dance.”

“Like, the cha-cha, or the rumba, or what?” I asked.

Sylvie and I had watched a dance show on TV before. It was thrilling for ten minutes. Then it appeared to be the same thing happening over and over. But Sylvie had really liked it. That’s how we ended up in our tap-dance clinic.

“I have to identify and execute axial and locomotor steps,” Sylvie said.

“Bummer,” I said. Hearing this made me feel a little bit better. Because, while it might not have been as bad as jogging, that sounded like a rotten way to spend fifty-four minutes.

“I love it,” Sylvie said. “In a couple of weeks we’re going to practice using different kinds of energetic movement, like swing, collapse, suspend, and explode.”

That did sound like fun. Especially the suspend and explode part. “I’m jogging all the time.”

“I bet you’re in great shape!” Sylvie said.

But I didn’t really care about my shape. Because then Sylvie started talking about her other classes. And it
sounded like she really liked them. I had expected to hear that things were going terrible and that she missed me and was considering going on a hunger strike. But that was not the direction this conversation took.

“I love every single thing about South,” she said. “How’s North?”

“Wait,” I said. “I think we have a bad connection. Because I thought I just heard you say that you loved every single thing about South.” That was so rude. Because
I
wasn’t at South. Did she love that part too?

“Uh-huh,” Sylvie said. “I love
everything
. So what’s North like? Who are you hanging out with?”

I could not believe that Sylvie was enjoying middle school. That wasn’t fair. She should have been suffering as much as I was. Maybe more.

“I hang out with my friends,” I lied. I did not mention loner town.

“You’ll never guess who I’m spending a lot of time with,” Sylvie said. “Malory Mahoney.”

“Malory Mahoney the Big Plastic Phony?” I asked. Because Sylvie and I couldn’t stand her. She was superfake and was a huge blabbermouth!

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “She’s actually really nice.”

“What about the fact that she told on Dee Washington for hiding the chalk that day? Or Maven Hollis for freeing the class gerbil into the wild? She’s awful!”

“Don’t say that,” Sylvie said. “Malory’s my friend. We all make mistakes.”

“Are you being serious?” I asked. I hoped she was making a really lame joke.

“I thought you said that the cool thing about middle school was being able to start brand new. Shouldn’t that be true for Malory too?” Sylvie asked.

When Sylvie asked me this, I started to gag.

“Are you okay?” Sylvie asked.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m not. I need to talk to you about something very, very important.”

“Okay,” Sylvie said. “But get to it, because if my mom finds me talking to you I’ll be in big trouble. She’s still enforcing the friendship break.”

I rolled my eyes. Wasn’t I important to Sylvie at all?

“It’s about the diary,” I said. “I need to know exactly what those ten pages have written on them besides your ocean pictures. And I also need to know the names of everybody you’ve shown those pages to. And I also need to know the names of everybody who you lent our collaborative diary to before you ripped out those pages and threw our collaborative diary away. Also, I need to know if you let these people make photocopies.”

There was a pause. “Besides my mom, nobody has seen the ten pages,” Sylvie said. “And I never lent the diary to anybody.”

When I heard this, I started to feel myself getting a little mad.

“You need to be honest with me,” I said. “My whole reputation is on the line.” Because while she might have been dancing around South and being pals with Malory Mahoney, my existence at North was a whole lot tougher.

“I am being honest with you,” Sylvie said. “I never let anybody see it. Ever. My mom accidentally found those pages.”

Then I started getting very worried that Malory Mahoney the Big Plastic Phony had turned my friend into a big phony too. Because there was no way this could be the truth. I took a deep breath.

“Sylvie, if you tell me the names of all the people right now, I promise I won’t yell at you. And I might even forgive you.” But I didn’t know if that was true. Because I really, really wanted to yell at Sylvie and be mad at her forever.

“I told you,” Sylvie said. “I didn’t show it to anybody!”

I was breathing so hard that I was fogging up the windows in Noll’s Mustang.

“Sylvie,” I said. “I don’t like calling you a liar.”

“Then don’t.”

“I bumped into a girl today who told me that she’d read the diary from cover to cover. She said that you’d lent it to her. So did you lend her the ten pages or the whole
thing?” I never should have let Sylvie keep those stupid ten pages.

“What?” Sylvie asked. “She’s lying.”

“No,” I said. “I think she’s seen everything! Because she knows about everything! Our toe prints. Your fart-bubble drawings. Even Kettle Harris!” I was stretching the truth. But it was almost all the way true. And I really wanted to pressure Sylvie into coming clean.

“That’s impossible. She’s lying!” Sylvie said. “What’s this girl’s name?”

That was when I realized that I didn’t even know her name.

“Let’s just call her fluffy-ponytail girl. And let’s just say that I trust her.”

“Well, you shouldn’t! Because I’m telling you the truth! Maybe she went inside the hole and got it.”

“Sylvie, that hole has farm equipment parked on it now. And she said that you lent it to her.”

I didn’t enjoy lying. But it was necessary.

But Sylvie wouldn’t budge. “It. Is. Impossible.”

And this was when I got very mad. Because I knew it wasn’t impossible at all. I knew it was very possible. Because it was true. And Malory Mahoney had turned Sylvie into a plastic phony.

“Why did you show people our diary?” I asked. “That was personal stuff.”

“I didn’t!”

“You did!” I said.

“You’re wrong!”

By this point I was yelling very loudly.

“I am not wrong! Fluffy-ponytail girl read the whole thing! And she mocked me in the principal’s office.”

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Sylvie said in a sad, pleading way. “And why were you in the principal’s office?”

That was when I realized that somebody was standing outside the car. And instead of getting frightened that a stranger could be standing there, I became frightened that Noll Beck was standing there. And I was right.

“Holy crud!” I said.

“What?” Sylvie asked.

“Noll Beck is standing right here!”

“Oh no!” Sylvie said. “You’re going to look like an idiot. Get out of there.”

“Bessica Lefter, is that you?” Noll asked as he tapped on the window.

“He’s tapping on the window!” I said. “And he knows it’s me.”

“That’s terrible,” Sylvie said. “Uh-oh. My mom is coming!”

Then I heard the phone click and Sylvie was gone, and I wasn’t too surprised because Sylvie had abandoned me
before. It was her new favorite way to react when I needed her. I opened the door and the cold air whooshed inside the car.

“What are you doing?” Noll asked. “Are you taking my quarters?”

I looked down at his ashtray. It was stuffed with them.

“No,” I said. “I’m having a private conversation.” I held up my cell phone as evidence.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be in my car,” Noll said. “If you knocked it into gear, you could roll out into the road.”

“I would never knock your car into gear,” I said.

A girl stepped out of the darkness. She was standing next to Noll. She was tall. And blond. And gorgeous. “Do you live nearby?” she asked.

I wanted to die. I knew that Noll dated. But I never thought I’d meet his girlfriends this way.

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you sneak out here to talk to your boyfriend?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied. Because that made me look so much cooler than my real explanation.

“She is so cute,” the girl said. “I love your hair.”

I reached up and touched it. “It’s a pixie cut.”

“You look like a doll!” she said.

And I didn’t know how to respond to that. Because I
wasn’t a fan of dolls. Especially ones with ceramic heads. When it came to toys, which I rarely played with anymore, I liked kites.

“Bessica,” Noll said. “Please stay out of my car.”

And the way he said it hurt my feelings. Because it was clear that he had no desire for me to ever be inside his car. I climbed out of it and brushed past him. I wanted to tell him and his girlfriend to have a good night. But I didn’t. It was just too awkward.