Take My Advice

by Tristi Pinkston

  When the bell rang, I gathered up my books and shoved them into my backpack, and then headed for the door. Amanda and I always meet at my locker after English—it’s the best place for me to dish about my thoughts and feelings and every little word and exchanged glance, even if we do only have a couple of minutes before our next class. And yes, I realize how pathetic I sound, carrying on a whole imaginary love affair with a guy who only sees me as a cog in the newspaper machine. But at least I’m not a dumb cog—I’m right in the middle, making up a vital part of the structure. According to the latest student poll, and we all know how unerringly accurate those are, my column is the most read out of all the regular features.

  “That class was awesome.” Dylan fell into step beside me as I walked to my locker. “The teacher wasn’t deadly dull, like I thought he’d be. My last English teacher made me want to poke my eyes out with a fork. Good thing they don’t allow utensils in the classroom, huh?”

  I threw him a smile. I understood that it was awkward, being the new kid and all, and he wanted to make some friends and start to create a place for himself here. But he was trying just a bit too hard, and while I was all for being compassionate and showing him the ropes, when it interfered with my Colby-watching time, I tended to get a little irate. There are some things you don’t interrupt, and my Colby-watching time is one of them. If Dylan was going to make a habit out of following me around, like it seemed he was going to, I’d have to educate him on the finer points of being my friend. For now, though, subtlety would be my best approach.

  “Tell me what you like doing,” I said. “Maybe you should sign up for some fun classes or clubs.” That would give him another outlet besides me. I could see him doing really well in the chess club, for instance.

  Dylan glanced around. “To be honest, I’m into drama.” Funny, because it was kind of dramatic the way he said it. Like he didn’t want to be overheard or something.

  “You are?” He didn’t look the type. At all. Okay, he had the whole confidence thing down—he didn’t seem to care what other people thought about him (except for that whole not-wanting-to-be-overheard thing), and that was good. You should always be yourself—I’d certainly given that advice often enough in my column, and I never gave advice I didn’t know to be correct. But he didn’t strut around and pose in the middle of the hallway and quote Shakespeare, like the prima donnas. I didn’t know what to think of him.

  “You should talk to Mr. Bell. He’s the head of that department.”

  “Yeah, they gave me his name in the office. Are you in drama?”

  “No. It’s never really been my thing.” Translate that to mean, I would rather die of some terrible disease in the middle of a mosquito-infested rainforest than perform in front of the entire student body.

  Dylan shrugged. “No big deal. I mean, if everyone was in the plays, who would come see them?”

  Again with the trying-too-hard. I saw Amanda waiting for me at my locker—how had she gotten through the crowd so fast? I didn’t see her pass me in the hall. Dylan had probably distracted me.

  “Hey, I’ll catch up with you later,” I said to him. “I think Amanda needs to talk to me for a minute.”

  “Sounds great. See ya.” Dylan gave a floppy-armed wave and loped down the hall, presumably toward his own locker. I’d have to find out exactly where it was so I could avoid it when I was feeling irritable again.

  “Wasn’t Colby great in class today?” I asked as soon as Amanda could hear me. “His interpretation of that poem was perfect.”

  “And what was the name of the poem? What was it about?”

  I paused. “I actually have no idea. But didn’t he read it well?”

  Amanda sighed. “I’m starting to worry about you, Jill. Your obsession with this guy is getting out of hand, don’t you think?”

  “Isn’t obsession where the seeds of true love are sown?” That was good. I’d have to use that in a column.

  “And isn’t becoming a stalker sort of illegal?”

  Thanks, Amanda. Way to slam me back down to earth with logic. “Okay, so I guess I could spend a little less time thinking about Colby. There are other things in the world, after all. Saving the whales, going green, the continuing conflict in the Middle East . . .”

  Amanda crossed her arms. “Listening to your best friend when she talks to you . . .”

  “Right! Exactly. So, what were we talking about?”

  “Never mind.” She sighed again, and we resumed our journey down the hall to our last classes for the day. “You’re pretty hopeless sometimes, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I know. But you still love me.”

  Ah, journalism and publications. As much as I loved English class, I loved J & P more.

  I paused in the doorway of the school’s newspaper office and just breathed in the atmosphere. The few minutes I’d been there that morning hadn’t filled me up quite enough.

  Now, when I say “newspaper office,” don’t be thinking anything huge and grand, like a real newspaper. We use a big classroom with the desks arranged to accommodate the printer, which is like a large Xerox machine and not at all like an actual newspaper press. It’s awesome to have our own equipment, though—it saves us a lot of time in having to lug everything back from an outside print source. Colby’s dad donated the machine when Colby was made editor-in-chief. And before you start thinking there was some kind of bribery involved in Colby getting that position and that he doesn’t really deserve the title, let me really quickly explain that the printer was donated after Colby was assigned, and that no mention of it was made beforehand. I know that because I was asked to investigate. It’s all part of my job, being a journalist.

  “Hey, Jill!” Scotty, the paper’s photographer, waved at me from the corner of the room. He was a pretty nice guy—good-looking, friendly, smart—and he had a major crush on me. That was flattering, but I just wasn’t interested. It was hard to see anyone else when Colby was all I could think about.

  “Hey,” I replied.

  Everyone gathered around Colby’s desk in the corner. He had one of those huge monitors that let you see everything at once, and he’d brought up that week’s layout. This was how we spent this class period every week—seeing how all the articles fit on the template. If they didn’t, sometimes we’d rearrange them, or take out a sentence, or move a picture. There were times when we’d realize we had to cut a regular feature in order to make room for breaking news or an announcement from the principal or something, and that always made our readers grumpy. But we only had so much room—we couldn’t use more paper than we were allowed per issue. Budgets and all that. No fun.

  I walked over and stood behind the desk as well. Just as I figured, my column fit perfectly in its assigned spot. I was very diligent in making sure that I filled up enough space without going over. Everything else looked pretty good too, except that a few of the pictures were . . . well, I’m not a photographer, so I really shouldn’t be too critical, but two of them were downright boring, and one was fuzzy.

  I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Colby turned to Scotty. “Can you take some new shots? We don’t have a lot of time, but these just aren’t working.”

  Scotty glanced at the clock. “If I go right now, I probably can.”

  Colby looked over at Ms. Young, our advisor. She left most of the decisions up to us, but we did have to run everything past her for approval. This wasn’t a bad thing, though—she hardly ever said no, and went to bat for us as needed. “Can he be excused, Ms. Young?”

  “Of course. Scotty, do you think you can be back before the end of the class period?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I know where to find these people, and hey, I’m sorry the first pictures didn’t work out.”

  “It’s okay,” Colby told him. “You might try using a different light setting on your camera. Sometimes that makes a difference in how the pictures come out in the newspaper as compared to on regular photo paper.”

  “I’ll give that
a try. Thanks.” Scotty grabbed his camera from a nearby desk and took off.

  See what I mean? Colby didn’t get mad or impatient—he just made it possible for the work to be redone, and gave advice on how to do it. He was so much better than last year’s chief—that girl made everything about her, and the drama never ended.

  “Okay, once Scotty’s back with the new pictures and they’re uploaded, we can proofread,” Colby said. “Thank you, everyone, for your hard work this week. As usual, I’ll email you the edition so you can read it over tonight and send me your notes.”

  While we waited for Scotty to come back, we discussed the next week’s edition. Ideas flew back and forth, and I basked in the combined brain power. Sitting in this room was like creativity times ten. I loved it.

  Strange. My dad’s car was in the driveway when I got home. He usually rolled in around six, just in time to grab some dinner before heading down to his dungeon—or, as he liked to call it, his “office”—to get some more work done before bed. I should be fair and say that yes, it was an office, but it was dark and gloomy, and why anyone would purposely lock themselves in there for hours at a time was beyond me. He could at least take a trip on the wild side and spring for some lamps.

  As I walked up to our front door, I waved at Dean and Shauna Wheelwright, our next-door neighbors. They were raking leaves in their side yard. Shauna was a fixture in my life—she had been my babysitter until I turned eleven and insisted I could be home by myself. I still ran over there from time to time, though. It was comfortable.

  My parents were sitting in the living room when I came in, their hands folded on their laps, and they looked up at me with grim expressions on their faces. I set my backpack on the bottom stair so I wouldn’t forget to take it to my room. My mom had issues with tripping over it every time she turned around, so she’d lectured me into feeling an overwhelming sense of shame whenever I didn’t take care of it. Then I sat down across from my dad. We never used the living room, only when we had stuck-up company or something, and I had no idea what was going on.

  “Did something really bad happen? Because you’ve got that ‘something really bad happened’ look on your faces.”

  “You could say that. You could also say it’s been happening for a long time.” My mom leaned forward a little, resting her elbows on her knees. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before speaking again. “Jill, you know things haven’t been right between your father and me. Not for years.”

  Where was she going with this? “Yeah, I know, but you’ve been getting counseling. And counseling is awesome. In fact, I think every couple should get it. Relationships don’t come with manuals, and if every couple received some guidance—”

  My dad held up his hand. “Jill, please step away from your advice-column persona for just a second. We’re talking about real life here, and this is a serious matter.”

  What did he mean by that? My column was serious, and I didn’t see anything wrong with relying on the wisdom I’d gained through over a year of writing it—after all, what good was experience if I couldn’t pull it out when things got challenging? But I shut up. Not everyone was ready to hear the solutions to their problems laid out in such a clear way. It took time to get to that point.

  My dad cleared his throat. “We’ve been talking about it for a long time, so we don’t want you to think this is a spur-of-the-moment decision. Jill, we’re getting a divorce.”

  “You and I will be staying in the house, and your dad is taking an apartment across town,” Mom added.

  I blinked. That couldn’t be right—people like my parents didn’t get divorced. They had little tiffs, and they sometimes ignored each other and they might occasionally take business trips and be gone longer than they planned, but they didn’t get divorced. This was obviously a misunderstanding, something that could be cleared up with a little perspective.

  “Coming from a purely economic standpoint, I’m not sure that’s the best decision,” I said. “I think it would be much cheaper if Dad just stayed here.” I turned to face him. “Think of the money you’d save.”

  “This isn’t about saving money, sweetheart. It’s about doing what’s best for the family.”

  “But how is getting a divorce best for the family? I read some interesting statistics the other day that show that the majority of inmates on death row come from fatherless families. There’s a burden on society to be considered, Dad.”

  “And are you planning to end up on death row?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Does anyone plan to end up on death row?”

  “I don’t think she’s hearing us, Bob,” my mom said quietly, and he nodded.

  “Jill, why don’t you grab a snack and get your homework done? We can talk about this later.”

  “I’m not sure what there is to talk about. Once you and Mom have thought it through, you’ll realize that this just isn’t the right choice on several levels. I’ll be in my room—you two discuss it some more, okay? I mean, think of the utility bills alone. Most apartments are poorly insulated.” I grabbed my backpack and headed to my room, deciding to take a little extra time with my homework. They’d need that time to compile and fully analyze all the data. You couldn’t draw a proper pie chart in a hurry, for instance, and bar graphs? Don’t even get me started on how time-consuming those can be.

  I heard their voices from the living room as I reached the top of the stairs, saying something about me being in denial. Good—they were talking about a common interest. That was an excellent first step toward reconciliation. Soon, they’d laugh this off, and we’d be back to normal.

  Chapter Three

  When I got to my bedroom, I took a moment to center myself. My parents had seemed pretty serious. I mean, they were sitting in the formal living room and everything, and plus, I don’t think divorce was something they’d joke about. But I just couldn’t go there right now. What I needed was to get to work—I had assignments coming up, articles to write, Colby to daydream about, an edition to proofread, and if I didn’t get started, I’d fall way behind.

  I’ve learned through a whole lot of trial and error (which is more like, searching frantically for things in the middle of the school hallway while dumping stuff all over the floor and basically making a fool out of myself) that the key to success is backpack organization. That’s why as soon as I get to my room every day, I dump it out on my bed and arrange everything into neat piles. There’s the “books I need for tonight’s homework” pile, the “books I won’t need until later, so why am I even bothering with them now” pile, and my “things I have to carry with me because if I don’t, I’ll need them” pile. This includes nail clippers, lip gloss, gum—the necessities of life. And then there’s the garbage pile—notes, wrappers, that kind of thing.

  I was about to scoop up all the paper scraps and throw them away when I noticed one I hadn’t seen before. It had been folded into a triangle. Curious. When I unfolded it, I saw that it still had a jagged edge from being ripped out of a spiral notebook—a serious pet peeve of mine. But as I read, I stopped worrying about the edge and almost forgot to breathe.

  Dear Jill,

  I wasn’t going to write you, but I don’t really know what else to do, so here goes. Nobody can know this, but my dad’s a drunk and he’s been hitting my mom. Last night, I tried to stop him, and he punched me in the gut. My ribs are pretty sore, but he didn’t bruise me or anything. I have little brothers and sisters, and I don’t want them to get hurt.

  Anyway, I don’t know what to do. I know you have to print all your letters in the newspaper, but maybe you could make up a question that sounds good to go along with your answer to this one, if that makes sense.

  That was all. No signature—nothing. The writing looked like a guy’s—they never seem to care what their handwriting looks like, but that’s not what was bothering me. This problem was way over my head.

  My advice column is just for fun. I handle things like choosing a nail polish color for prom and
dealing with crushes. I don’t do “real,” and this was very, very real.

  Except what if it wasn’t? Maybe it was a prank, a little extra something to go along with the Dr. Jill posters. I had taken more than my fair share of teasing about my column—wouldn’t this just fit in with everything else? But even as I thought about throwing the note away and pretending it didn’t exist, I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t ignore a cry for help.

  I grabbed my phone and called Ms. Young.

  As our advisor, Ms. Young receives all the letters meant for me and forwards them along, hiding the email addresses so there’s total privacy, and filtering out the ones that aren’t appropriate for our paper. Obviously, this letter hadn’t come through her, and I needed her input.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Ms. Young. This is Jill.”

  “Hey, Jill. What’s up?” I’d only call her after school if something was wrong, so her tone was friendly and yet guarded.

  I didn’t want to get into too much detail on the phone, so I said, “Someone slipped me a note today and I need some help with it. Can I meet you a little early tomorrow, like right before first period?”

  “Sure, I’ll be in the newspaper office. Do you need anything else? Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks, Ms. Young.”

  After I hung up, I paused to think. Just how had this note ended up in my backpack? I carried my bag with me just about everywhere, and I would have noticed if someone had gotten into it. I’d have to ask Amanda if she saw anything—but if she did, she would have told me already. Weird.

  I couldn’t do anything more about it just then except worry, and like I always tell my readers, you can’t solve a problem by worrying about it. So I put the note in the front pocket of my backpack, where I’d know where it was, and got started on my homework.