Violet and the Pie of Life

by D. L. Green

  She quickly reeled back and McKenzie’s mother came out, waving her arms and putting her face right next to Mom’s. I didn’t hear what she said, but it couldn’t have been nice.

  McKenzie had walked outside with a couple of old blankets and a pillow and a garbage bag of stuff that turned out to be clothes.

  Mom ran after McKenzie, grabbed her stuff, and threw it in the car. “Get in!” Mom urged, and drove away, as fast as Grandpa Falls-Apart could go.

  I didn’t ask what happened. I still had no clue. It all seemed so awkward.

  The camping trip wasn’t even that fun, because Mom gave everyone a long lecture about kindness after McKenzie said some curse words to the girls who teased her about bringing old blankets instead of a sleeping bag. Mom seemed a lot madder about the teasing than the curse words.

  Also, the whole cabin smelled like pee because Lena Markov had wet her sleeping bag the first night. Plus, I got stung by a wasp.

  Thinking about those things in the car after rehearsal reminded me that McKenzie would be mad/sad if she found out Ally and I had traded phone numbers.

  Then Mom asked, “Is she in seventh grade like you? She looks like she is.”

  I didn’t say anything. It was strange hearing Mom happy about something two days after Dad had moved out.

  “Is she in seventh grade?” Mom demanded.

  I sighed. “Yes, Mom. Don’t forget we’re picking up McKenzie.”

  Mom sighed too, a totally exaggerated one. Then she said, “Yes, Violet,” in an even wearier tone than I’d used.

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  Mom told me a long time ago that I couldn’t go over to McKenzie’s house. It wasn’t a big deal, because McKenzie never invited me over anyway. And I knew Mom liked bringing McKenzie to our house. For one thing, it probably made her feel like a better mother than McKenzie’s mom. I told Mom once that McKenzie’s mom let her ride her bike to the movies because she was part of the Free-Range Kids Movement, and Mom had answered, “Or the Lazy-Range Moms Movement.” I’d responded that it was better than being in the Overbearing-Range Moms Movement. Then Mom had sighed for real.

  For another thing, Mom could pump info from McKenzie that I wouldn’t tell her. McKenzie wouldn’t give away anything big, but she’d answer questions about little stuff, like what books we were supposed to read in English class.

  McKenzie was waiting, as usual, on the sidewalk in front of her house. As she got in Grandpa Falls-Apart and buckled her seat belt, she said, “I’m sorry to hear about your marital separation.”

  “Thank you,” Mom said, not sounding thankful.

  “Where did Violet’s dad go?” McKenzie asked. “Is he renting an apartment around here?”

  Mom gazed in the rearview mirror at us. She was frowning.

  I gazed right back at her and jutted my chin. It was about time Mom had to answer questions instead of asking them.

  But she didn’t say anything.

  McKenzie said, “Mrs. Summers?”

  I turned toward McKenzie. She was such a good friend. She probably didn’t care where my dad was, but she knew that I cared and that I had a right to know. And she knew I was a wimp. So she stood up for me.

  Finally, Mom cleared her throat and said, “I think Violet’s father should be answering those questions.”

  Text to McKenzie: Thx for trying

  McKenzie: YW

  Mom stopped at a red light and turned back to us with a big, bright smile, like one of those peppy restaurant servers who you know, as soon as she leaves your table, starts complaining to the cook about the stupid customer who spent forever deciding between french fries or onion rings. “I’m making lasagna tonight!” Mom exclaimed as if she were making diamonds.

  “You mean you’re heating up frozen Costco lasagna,” I grumbled. “Grandma makes homemade lasagna. And she and Aunt Amber are always baking homemade pies.”

  “Your grandma and Aunt Amber don’t have preteen girls to drive around,” Mom grumbled back.

  Dad didn’t bake pies, but he bought them every year for my birthday. Dad started the “Vi Day Is Pie Day” tradition when I turned ten. That morning, two pies sat on the kitchen table. In front of them was a note I ended up saving.

  Dad bought me pies on my eleventh and twelfth birthdays, too. I wondered what would happen when I turned thirteen. Mom would probably buy only one pie and let me have only one slice all day.

  EIGHT

  I loved Costco lasagna. But I didn’t tell Mom that at dinner, since I’d just complained about it on the car ride home. She might have known though. She raised an eyebrow at me when I took a third helping, with ketchup. I wondered whether raising one eyebrow for a long time gave you a headache on only one side of your head.

  After dinner, McKenzie and I watched music videos on my laptop in my room. They all seemed the same—beautiful people kissing or crying or making beautiful sad faces. We sang along, making up the lyrics we didn’t already know.

  Then we made popcorn with butter and honey and sat through an unromantic, unfunny romantic comedy starring a sweet, gorgeous actress and a cranky old guy. The best thing about the movie was joking around with McKenzie while we half watched it—pretending to puke when the couple kissed, calling the guy Creepy the Crank, and yelling at the actress, “You’re too good for him!”

  Once it ended, we changed into our pajamas. McKenzie wore her gray cotton nightgown that she called her sleepover uniform. The fabric had gotten thin, almost see-through, and there was a big stain near the bottom. I didn’t know how McKenzie had stained it or why she kept wearing it. We never talked about that.

  McKenzie got in the trundle bed, I turned out the light and lay in my bed, and we talked. We decided on the cutest guy at school, which ended up being a three-way tie, depending on whether you preferred big muscles (Gavin King), wavy black hair (Jorge Hernandez), or a cleft chin (Henry Tomaselli). I didn’t mention Diego Ortiz. He didn’t have big muscles or wavy hair or a cleft chin, but he had shiny eyes. Plus, he was tall and had a fantastic smile and beautiful teeth.

  Then McKenzie said, “Okay, most stuck-up. I’m going with Ally.”

  I changed the subject. “How about best kind of pet?”

  “Dog. Duh,” McKenzie said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “Favorite dessert?” McKenzie asked. “Hot fudge sundae for me. Pie for you. But what kind of pie?”

  “Every kind.” In the dark I pictured my grandmother slicing up five different homemade pies last Thanksgiving, saying, “All righty. Who wants what?” We’d called out, “I want it all!” and “Me first!” and “Pile it on!” Dad’s relatives were as loud and almost as funny as him. Dad and I always took a sliver of each type of pie and a huge slice of Aunt Amber’s caramel-apple pie. Had Dad moved in with Grandma and Grandpa in Fresno?

  “Are you awake?” McKenzie asked.

  “Just trying to figure out my favorite type of pie. I like every kind except mincemeat and sweet potato pie. It should be illegal to call those things pie!”

  McKenzie laughed. “Okay. How about things we wouldn’t do even for a million dollars?”

  “We answered that one before,” I said. “Kill someone nice, eat poop, and…”

  “Give someone more than a million dollars,” McKenzie said. “Now I remember.”

  While I was trying to think of other interesting questions and fighting off sleep, McKenzie said, “It’s a mystery.”

  “What’s a mystery?” I asked.

  “Why I thought I wanted to be in The Wizard of Oz. It’s a play for little kids. What twelve-year-old wants to sing about witches and wizards and wear silly costumes?”

  McKenzie did, that’s who. She’d wanted to sing about a rainbow and wear a cute dress and sparkly red shoes. I didn’t say that, or anything else.

  “We’re at school all
day. Why would we stay there any later than we have to?” she said.

  Why? The reason came to me as I lay still in bed. Because after-school rehearsals beat McKenzie staying at home with her mother, who had yelled into my mom’s face, or me staying at home with my fake-cheery mom, with no father for either one of us.

  “We should quit,” McKenzie said.

  I kept quiet, grateful for the dark.

  “We should do it now so Goldstein has time to recast our parts. If I had any idea we’d get such bad ones, I never would have tried out in the first place.”

  But we didn’t get bad parts. She got a bad part. I stared at the nothingness above me. There was more to the play than avoiding home. I wanted to be in the auditorium with the other people who stayed after school. Diego made me laugh. Mr. Goldstein saw something in me that no one else ever had. Ally saw something in me too, something different from what Mr. Goldstein saw, something good enough to write me a nice note and track down my locker to deliver it. For some reason, she liked me. I wasn’t supposed to like her, but I did.

  This Girl Scout song went: Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold. I had McKenzie, but why couldn’t I have Ally too? According to the song, old gold friend McKenzie > new silver friend Ally. But who was better if the old friend said you sang like a kitten and the new friend said you were really talented?

  “We need to quit,” McKenzie said.

  That’s what she’d said about Girl Scouts, and I’d gone right along. But sometimes I wished I hadn’t. Mom had planned for the troop to try to earn robotics badges, which meant learning how to code. Plus, she’d been arranging a boat trip to Catalina Island.

  Maybe even worse, Mom had taken the news hard. When I’d told her I was quitting Scouts, her face got all stiff like the Botoxed ladies in the rich areas of Orange County. After about a quadrillion years, Mom had said in a voice as stiff as her face, “It’s your decision, Violet.”

  Mom didn’t have anything to do with the play, so she wouldn’t care as much about that. But I would. A lot.

  I told McKenzie, “I never thought about quitting.”

  “Think about it now, Violet,” McKenzie said. “You’ll have to wear a dorky, furry costume. And we’ll have to watch Goldstein fawn over Ally at every rehearsal, which will make her even more conceited.”

  Actually, Mr. Goldstein hadn’t fawned over Ally since her first audition. He’d told her she needed to play Dorothy with more vim—whatever that was—and find her hard edge. Diego had joked that she should find the hard edge fast, before anyone hurt themselves on it.

  “I’ll email Goldstein right now and tell him we’re quitting,” McKenzie went on. “I’ll tell him we can’t, like, connect with our characters. He loves that artsy psychology talk. Ugh. That’s another reason for quitting: not having to hear Goldstein go on about everything’s secret inner meaning.”

  But sometimes I liked thinking about secret inner meanings.

  “So, turn your laptop on, Violet. I’ll email him and sign it from both of us.”

  I sat up in my bed but stayed there.

  McKenzie got out of the trundle bed, turned on the flashlight on her phone, and pointed it at me. “Well?” She stared at me hard.

  I turned away from her and said to my wall, just loud enough for McKenzie to hear, “I’m not quitting the play.”

  “What?” McKenzie said.

  I knew she’d heard me, so I didn’t answer.

  “Fine!” she fumed. “I’ll quit and you can stay in the stupid play. But don’t complain about it and expect any sympathy from me.”

  “Okay,” I said. Though things weren’t okay, and we both knew it.

  NINE

  Hi Dad,

  I hope you’re all right, because you didn’t answer my email from over a week ago. I’m not trying to be a nag. I know you don’t like nags. I just worry about you.

  Will you come to my play, please? It’s The Wizard of Oz, and I play the Lion, which is a big part.

  Remember Bonzo’s? That barbecue place we used to go to? It serves those giant slabs of fatty ribs and extra creamy coleslaw and rolls that practically drip butter. I have a huge craving for it. I know Mom won’t take me. Remember she always said she preferred quality over quantity and there was too much grease in the food, but you always said she should live a little? Next time you’re in town, maybe we can go there together? Or somewhere else. Maybe somewhere Mom likes too. We like Italian food, all three of us. We could go to Roma’s together, just like old times when we shared the Family Special. Let’s live a little.

  Love,

  Vi

  Dear Mr. Pagano,

  I have been working very hard on our school play, because I would like to make everyone at our school proud, especially you. After rehearsals, I work on memorizing my lines. So I haven’t had time for other important things, like reading, which explains my grade on the test about The Scarlet Pimpernel. Can you please skip that test for me in the grading chart?

  Sincerely,

  Violet Summers

  Dear Violet,

  No.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Pagano

  Text to McKenzie: I should have read Scarlet Pimple Nail—Autocorrect haha—or at least the SparkNotes. Bombed the test. I told my mom everyone bombed it, so plz back me up if she asks

  Dear Ms. Merriweather,

  I have been working very hard on our school play, because I would like to make everyone at our school proud, especially you. After rehearsals, I work on memorizing my lines. So I haven’t had time for other important things, like math homework, which explains why I haven’t turned it in this week. Can you please skip the homework this week in the grading chart?

  Sincerely,

  Violet Summers

  Dear Violet Summers,

  Please come to my room at lunchtime.

  Ms. Merriweather

  When the lunch bell rang, I made my way so slowly to Ms. Merriweather’s class. It was more like shuffling than walking.

  Then I stood near Ms. Merriweather’s door, which was open at about a fifteen-degree angle. My arms were crossed, and my brain was knotted up in thoughts. I’d told my teachers the truth about spending my time rehearsing The Wizard of Oz instead of doing homework. They obviously didn’t appreciate my honesty. They also obviously didn’t support the arts.

  I didn’t care much about my grades, considering everything going on these days. But my mom cared—and I cared about her not taking my phone away. My dad didn’t care about grades like Mom did. Maybe he didn’t care at all anymore.

  “Come on in, Violet,” Ms. Merriweather said. She didn’t sound mad, but that might have just been wishful thinking.

  I walked in.

  Ms. Merriweather motioned me closer and told me to sit down. So I sat on a chair a few inches from her, which was the first time in middle school I’d ever sat so close to a teacher. I hoped it would be the last.

  “Violet, you’re still not paying attention in class. And you didn’t do your homework.”

  I bit my lip.

  “Yet you only missed one question on the math test yesterday. You obviously know your stuff.” Ms. Merriweather smiled at me. “You’re an interesting girl. You never speak up, but I have a feeling you’re on top of everything I’m teaching you. Am I right?”

  I stopped biting my lip and let a smile escape.

  “You need more of a challenge,” Ms. Merriweather said. “From now on, you only have to do every other math problem for the homework.”

  You’d think a math teacher would be able to calculate that doing only half the homework was not more of a challenge. I didn’t correct her though, because her mistake meant less homework for me. So instead I said, “Thank you, Ms. Merriweather.”

  She nodded quickly. “If I’m explaining something to the class and
you already know it, you may ignore me.”

  I get to ignore the teacher! I shouted in my head.

  “I’ll give you supplemental assignments to work on.”

  I stopped smiling. Being singled out in math class would probably earn me a horrible nickname like Weird Violet or The Calculator. Math talent was the worst thing to be recognized for. It was even dorkier than science talent, because that could be used to make stink bombs.

  “You won’t be the only one,” Ms. Merriweather said as if reading my mind. “One of your classmates is also doing supplemental work.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  She shuffled through some papers on her desk. “I can’t say. The other student is self-conscious about her—his or her, I mean—exceptional math talent. But I believe math skills are something to be proud of. Don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “You might as well keep my identity a secret too.”

  Ms. Merriweather pursed her magenta lips.

  “Please, Ms. Merriweather.”

  She sighed and said, “All right.” Then she gave me a handout.

  I stared at it. It looked thick and difficult.

  “There’s a homework assignment every few pages. Let me know if you have questions, if it’s too challenging, or not challenging enough. Please come in and talk to me as often as you’d like. I’m here most days at lunch and after school.”

  I started leafing through the handout. Math history facts. Math trivia. A puzzle that seemed impossible, but probably wasn’t.

  “Once you turn in these assignments, I’ll give you more, all right?”

  The next page showed a timeline graph! Then a pictograph! Then some charts I’d never seen before. A pyramid chart? What in the world was that?

  “All right, Violet?”

  Something called a sunburst chart! Whoa!

  “All right, Violet?” Ms. Merriweather said loudly.