by Vendela Vida
She and I leave the shed and start making our way back to Sea Cliff together. As we pass the park, I spot Keith from half a block away. He has a new skateboard. When he sees me, he looks down.
“He’s ignoring me,” I say.
“No, he’s not,” Maria Fabiola says. “That’s the look of someone who’s deeply ashamed.”
I watch him and think Maria Fabiola might be right.
When we approach my house we’re careful to go in through the alleyway to avoid the news vans. The back door is locked even though my parents are home, so I get the spare key from the hiding place.
“Wait,” Maria Fabiola says as we step into the kitchen. “We should do a big reveal.”
“Who’s there?” Svea calls out from another room.
“It’s just Maria Fabiola,” she says. “Go get your parents.”
A minute later, the door to the kitchen swings open and my mom and dad enter the room.
“Surprise!” Maria Fabiola yells.
There are hugs and sobs—Maria Fabiola does most of the dramatic sobbing. I hug Svea extra-tight. My parents want to know where I’ve been and I tell them the short version, that I hurt my head, that I was at Grandma’s house.
“Yes, we know that part,” my dad says. “Lazlo called us a few hours ago and said you were on your way home.”
I’m surprised and touched that Lazlo called them. I’m also grateful because it clearly saved my parents worry. They don’t seem as upset with me as I feared. Or more likely, I realize, they’re being kind now because they’re relieved I’m safe. But within twenty-four hours I’ll be grounded till college.
My mother checks my head. “It’s a surface wound,” she proudly pronounces.
Svea serves us tea. She places doilies under our cups.
My father asks me if anything strange happened. “No,” I tell him. My mother asks how my relatives are. “The same,” I tell her.
“What can we do for you?” my father asks. “What do you need?”
“I really want everything to go back to normal as quickly as possible,” I say. “I want normal again.”
“Of course you do. I totally understand,” Maria Fabiola says performatively and leans over to give me an awkward hug. In my ear she whispers, “Good job.”
The three of them stare at me and Maria Fabiola, like they can’t really believe we’re there.
“Are you hungry?” my dad says and gets up.
“We’re famished!” Maria Fabiola says. I’ve never heard her say this word before, and I’m not at all hungry, but decide that anything that restores routine is good, so I say I’m hungry, too. Maria Fabiola calls her mom and asks if she can stay with me tonight. “To help Eulabee reacclimate,” she says to her mother.
I look around the study. I’ve only been gone a day but everything looks new to me. I examine the dolls from around the world that I collected when I was younger. A doll in a red flamenco dress. A doll wearing a kimono. I used to think they were collector’s items but now they look tacky. Their dresses are made of poor material, their facial expressions a bizarre mixture of boredom and astonishment.
“I’m assuming you’re going to school tomorrow, Maria Fabiola?” my mom says. “Do you want me to wash your uniform tonight?”
“Absolutely I’m going,” Maria Fabiola says. “I think we should both go. I mean, Eulabee was saying she wanted everything to go back to normal quickly. And we should probably let everyone at school know she’s okay so they stop worrying. I heard rumors of a vigil being planned.”
My mother looks at me. “I want to go,” I say.
“Well, your father already called the detectives,” my mom says. “But I’ll call Mr. Makepeace tomorrow morning.”
Dinner is quiet but for Maria Fabiola’s frequent yawns, which are all demonstrably fake. She’s setting us up for a quick after-dinner departure.
“Well, we’re exhausted!” she says, and squeezes my knee under the table. “Do you mind if we don’t help clean up?”
“You don’t have to,” my mother says. I realize that Maria Fabiola holds a spell over my family just as she does over her friends. I suspect I’m not getting in as much trouble as I deserve because she’s here.
Ewa is spending a few days with another au pair, so Maria Fabiola will sleep in Ewa’s bed in the room next to mine. I get into bed and instantly my eyes are leaden. Maria Fabiola’s room is between mine and the hallway. She’s standing in the doorway, a prison guard in a Lanz nightgown.
“Sleep now,” she says, “and tomorrow we’ll polish our stories on the way to school. Then at lunch I’ll use the office phone to call ABC and tell them we can talk to them together. Eulabee?”
I’m already nodding off. “What?” I mumble.
“I’m so glad it was you who was kidnapped,” she says.
I don’t know what to say to that. Sleep is dissolving me.
“I was thinking of saying that to ABC,” she says, as she stands high above me. “‘I’m so glad it was you.’ What do you think?”
29
I wake up to Maria Fabiola’s stomach. She’s standing by my bed, shaking my shoulder. “Good, you’re finally awake. Your parents wanted to let you sleep in, but we have to leave for school. We’ve got fifteen minutes.”
I close my eyes.
“No, no, don’t go back to sleep,” she says. “Your mom talked to Mr. Makepeace. He’s going to welcome you back at assembly. Then he wants to talk to us at morning recess. Then the Chronicle wants to do a joint interview this afternoon. We have a full day, Sunshine.”
I can’t believe this person, the multitudes she contains.
“What are we going to say?” I ask.
“We’ll get our stories straight on the walk,” she says. “The Chronicle will be good practice for ABC. I’ll have to call the producer and let them know that because they took their sweet time, the Chronicle is now interested. That’ll get them motivated!” She lays my uniform on the bed.
“But just get dressed fast,” she says. As I sit up I see my mother has not only washed but pressed Maria Fabiola’s middy and blue skirt—I can smell the scent of an iron wafting from her uniform. We usually wear our socks to our ankles, but now Maria Fabiola’s wearing them pulled up almost to her knees, and with a pair of my loafers that I rarely wear.
She turns her back to me and rummages through the change drawer of my desk. “Don’t tell me you’re putting pennies in the loafers,” I say.
“Just get dressed,” she says. “We’re in a hurry.”
We’re about to walk out the door when my dad calls out to us. “No, no, no,” he says. “I’ll drive you girls.”
“That’s okay, Joe,” Maria Fabiola says. She calls my parents by their first names and they somehow go along with it.
“We can walk,” I say.
“Not a chance,” he says. “I’m driving you.”
In the car we have no time to coordinate our stories. My mom is in the passenger seat, and Svea is sitting in the back between us. Maria Fabiola tries to write me a note but her handwriting is a disaster, and besides, it’s only a two-minute drive. When we get to school we’re surrounded.
At the morning assembly my parents sit to my right in the front row and Maria Fabiola sits to my left, massaging my hand. Mr. Makepeace wears a red bow tie. When he makes an announcement welcoming me back, the applause is thunderous.
My parents depart after the assembly to talk with Mr. Makepeace and Ms. Catanese in the front office. Maria Fabiola and Julia flank me as we walk through campus, while Faith follows behind us like a lady in waiting. I’m thrilled by the sudden re-embracement of my former friends and all my classmates—the incessant hugs, the earnest welcome-back letters (a few mangled flowers) slipped through the slots of my locker.
Our first class after the assembly is English. Mr. London announces that we’re starting a new unit on Homer’s Odyssey. I know that this is another ruse to impress high schools and parents. No other kids our age are reading The Odyssey
but that is the point of Spragg.
Mr. London has purchased new chalk. “HOME,” he writes on the board in big, messy writing. We’re taught to write neatly and within the lines, but we’ve also been taught that all men with sloppy handwriting are brilliant.
“What does home mean to you?” he says, his hands behind his back.
He looks at the front row.
“Food?” says Tua, a famously anorexic girl.
“Okay,” Mr. London says, and writes “food” on the chalkboard, and then adds “nourishment” beneath it.
“What else?”
“Annoying sisters,” says K.T., who is alone in thinking she’s the class clown. She shrugs and looks around the class as though to say Am I right? Everyone stares mournfully at their erasers.
Mr. London dutifully records her response in messy writing. He blows on the chalk. “Maria Fabiola?” he says.
“Home is refuge after a long journey,” she says.
He nods at her, sympathetically. “Refuge,” he says, and writes it on the board. He underlines the word three times.
I know it won’t be long before he calls on me. He will say my name as though it’s an afterthought, when in fact I know his entire lesson is geared to me and Maria Fabiola, the girls who disappeared and came back.
“Eulabee?” he says.
“Doilies,” I say.
“Right,” he says. “Good.” But he doesn’t write doilies on the board.
* * *
WE HAVE OUR NEXT CLASS APART—we’re in different sections of math. Maria Fabiola and I have arranged to meet after class in the hallway so we can walk to Mr. Makepeace’s office together and make a plan. I wait for her until I’m about to be late, and wonder if there was a mix-up on my part. I rush to the office and say hello to Ms. Patel, the secretary, and take a seat. While I’m waiting, I pick up a pamphlet titled “Financial Aid at Spragg.” On the cover is a photo of a biracial girl from seventh grade. Everyone knows she’s from one of the wealthiest families in the school—her father is a well-known musician. They pay full tuition and are big donors to the annual school raffle.
As soon as Maria Fabiola walks in I see the reason for why she’s late: she’s somehow put her hair in two French braids that intertwine just above the nape of her neck. It makes her look at once more vulnerable and more formidable. She sits down next to me. “Zodiac Killer wannabe,” she says. “That’s the story.”
Mr. Makepeace and Ms. Catanese come out of his office with a slender woman in a pink cardigan and tight black pants. She has thin skin that reveals wrinkles sprouting from her mouth and her nose, but still she’s luminous, the kind of woman who might live on Nob Hill with Siamese cats and a lover.
“Girls,” Mr. Makepeace says, “we’re going to have to change the order of events here. I was hoping to meet with you before the Chronicle interview so I could hear more about the terrible, terrible experience you’ve endured, but it appears that our journalist had to come a little ahead of schedule—ahead of the detectives, even! I’d like to introduce you to my friend Shelley Shein—”
“Stine,” the journalist interrupts. “Shelley Stine.”
Mr. Makepeace blushes furiously. “Yes, my friend Shelley Stine. She’ll take good care of you . . .” His error with the journalist’s name has robbed him of linguistic certainty. “You young women,” he finally says.
We introduce ourselves and shake her hand, which is oddly calloused. Then we’re led to a small conference room, where Maria Fabiola and I are seated side by side in swivel chairs. Shelley Stine’s beauty seems to have a hypnotic effect on Mr. Makepeace and Ms. Catanese—the second Shelley Stine asks them to leave so she can speak to us privately, they retreat, scuttling backward like crabs.
“Oh it goes without saying you should feel free to ask them about their history here,” Mr. Makepeace adds from the doorway. “They’ve both attended Spragg since kindergarten and are exemplary students.”
“Wonderful,” Shelley Stine says and gives him a smile that’s meant to simultaneously win him over and hasten his exit.
She turns to us with a different smile, the smile of a confidante. “So I should be honest with you girls since I expect you to be honest with me. For years I’ve been covering gardening for the paper. And women’s issues. But no one else, well, was disposed to doing this piece right now. Plus it’s winter and flowers aren’t exactly blooming, so I stepped up for the job.”
“No one else was disposed because ABC might still do something, right?” Maria Fabiola says.
“Sure,” Shelley Stine says. “That’s one explanation.”
“Even though they don’t have an exclusive anymore, I’ll have to call ABC to let them know I talked to you. But our story will still be on the front page, right?” Maria Fabiola says. “Above the fold?”
“I really can’t promise you where it’ll be placed,” Shelley Stine says, “but let’s get started, shall we?” She peers at the first question in her notebook. “How do you girls like school?”
“We like it,” I say. “It’s a good school.”
Maria Fabiola stares at me.
“The school has quite a reputation,” Shelley Stine says. “Shakespeare in fifth grade, Goethe in seventh. And I understand now you’re reading Homer?”
Amazing, I think. Mr. London’s already gotten to her.
“So my question is,” she continues. “Do you ever feel the academic pressure is too intense?”
“Not really,” I say.
Shelley Stine doesn’t bother to write down anything I’ve said.
“And what about you, Maria Fabiola?” Shelley Stine asks. “What do you think about the academic load?”
“Well, I’ve been coming here since kindergarten. Even then, our valentines were critiqued.”
I look at Maria Fabiola—why is she bringing up valentines?
“Oh,” says Shelley Stine, waiting for more. We are silent. “So,” she continues, “the school has a reputation for being a pressure cooker. Do you ever get a break?”
“Sure,” Maria Fabiola says. “We have a week at the end of the school year when we get to study something else besides the usual curriculum.”
“What does that mean?” Shelley Stine asks.
“Well, sewing, for example,” Maria Fabiola says.
“Sewing,” Shelley Stine repeats. “Interesting.” She sits more upright. “What else?”
It’s my chance, I think. I know what catnip is for Shelley Stine and, not wanting to be outdone by Maria Fabiola, I offer it now. “There’s also a class about how to look good in a bathing suit.”
Shelley Stine not only swivels her chair in my direction, but scoots it toward me.
“Can you elaborate?” she says, her pen upright and bouncing on the pad of paper like a marathon runner waiting for the gun to go off.
“I can,” Maria Fabiola says, and Shelley Stine swivels her chair back toward her. “We have this class called Bathing Suits Your Body.”
“Excuse me,” Shelley Stine says. “Bathing Suits . . .”
“It’s a pun,” I add, “like bathing suits your body.”
She scribbles. “Puns. Good,” she says.
“Anyway,” Maria Fabiola says loudly, bringing the focus back to her. “In the class, we have to weigh in at the beginning of the week and then at the end of the week. The point is to look good in bathing suits.”
“Bikinis or one pieces?” Shelley Stine asks.
“Well, it wasn’t really specified,” Maria Fabiola says, and seems momentarily puzzled by this oversight. “But the point is to look better at the end of the week than you do at the start. We weighed ourselves at the start of the week and the numbers were written down on our instructor’s clipboard. Then we spent our days doing jumping jacks, running to the beach, and biking to a hostel in the Marin Headlands where we spent the night. At the hostel we were only allowed to eat salad while all the other kids around us had hamburgers and s’mores.”
“That’s all you were al
lowed?”
“Well, the instructors packed the food, right? And they just packed salad for us. They had steaks for themselves.”
“Weren’t you hungry?” Shelley Stine asks.
“So hungry!” Maria Fabiola roars. “But the whole bike ride to the hostel, they were telling us our bike seats were close to grazing our back tires! So that kind of made us feel bad about eating.”
“Who were the teachers?”
“They all happened to be male,” Maria Fabiola says. “Not Mr. Makepeace, but all the other male teachers. Every one.”
“I can’t believe it!” Shelley Stine says, seeming desperate to believe it. “Why weren’t there any female teachers?”
“They all stayed home with their families, I guess,” Maria Fabiola says.
This is not true. Ms. Livesey was on the trip with us.
“What happened at the end of the week?” Shelley Stine asks. Her pen can barely keep up with Maria Fabiola.
“Well, I mentioned that we had to get on the scale at the start of the week, right?”
Shelley Stine nods. “Yes, but I want to be clear—it was men who weighed you?”
“Yes,” Maria Fabiola says. “Then they weighed us at the end of the week. And the differences in our weight from the start to the end of the course were tabulated.”
“Like grades,” Shelley Stine says.
“Exactly,” Maria Fabiola says.
“You say it,” Shelley Stine suggests.
“Like grades,” Maria Fabiola says, and Shelley Stine writes this quote down.
I’m listening to everything Maria Fabiola is saying and I realize it’s almost accurate, and yet it sounds so different when she tells it than what we experienced. The truth was that Maria Fabiola and I ranked the Bathing Suits Your Body class as our first choice. We were the ones who wanted to lose a few pounds so that we could impress Madame Sonya. We were the ones who wanted to get in better shape for climbing the cliffs at China Beach. We wanted to spend time with Ms. Livesey because she painted at night and her son was cute. With profound clarity I realize now that Maria Fabiola has talents I will never have.