by Mary Hogan
TWO
My locker wouldn’t open. It was one of those days. Fernando High is one of those high schools. Nothing works, not even the kids who go there. Nadine saw me banging the ancient metal door with the heel of my hand. “Kicking works best on mine,” she said. Before I could stop her, she gave my locker a Jackie Chan right in the gut.
“Na dine.” I stamped my foot. “We’re going to get in trouble.”
“Yeah, like it’s our fault their lockers don’t work.” Nadine kicked it again. The metal bang echoed like a gunshot.
“Let me try that.” Out of nowhere this guy named Curtis appeared and practically jammed his entire foot through my locker door. Bang! The noise attracted an instant crowd and a line of students eager to kickbox. Bang! Curtis kicked it again. I sort of knew Curtis from junior high. He’d made a name for himself by refusing to join the basketball team even though he was over six feet tall. The school jocks treated him like he was a traitor. I overheard him say that team sports took too much time away from his band. I think he played guitar, because the fingernails on his right hand were really long.
Shrivelling into the huddle of students, I helplessly watched the dents appear in my locker, praying my locker mate didn’t appear. Nadine giggled all girly ’cause everyone was gawking, and Curtis, all macho for the same reason, rammed his huge basketball-sized foot against the metal door a third time. Paint chips sprinkled to the cement floor like dandruff. Still, the locker didn’t open.
“I don’t really need my notebook,” I said, my voice about as small and weak as a baby toe.
But Nadine and Curtis had gone too far to stop now. Egged on by the crowd (“Bash it in with the fire extinguisher!”) they were both about to fling their whole bodies at my locker when a baritone voice boomed, “That’s enough.”
Instantly, kids scattered. I froze, frantically composing a plausible explanation for my parents as to why I was expelled in the first month of high school.
Nadine and Curtis tried to run with everyone else, but the principal, Mr Horner, whom everyone called “Mr Horny,” clamped one paw on each of their shoulders and said, “Come with me.” To me he asked, “Where’s your class?”
I almost confessed to not having any class, to being an idiot who let her friend vandalise school property, to often feeling so . so . compacted or something I could explode or, other times, hearing my heart echo in my chest because I’m so empty inside. I nearly admitted to living with a constant vibrating dread humming through my body, which feels as though, at any moment, when I least expect it – like now – something awful will swoop down and ruin my already precarious life. I’ll wake up fat or my parents will divorce or my hair will fall out or I’ll finally kiss the boy who melts my skin when he kisses me back and he’ll wait till prom night to announce to the whole school it was one big joke. Or my best friend will be carted off to the principal’s office because of my stupid locker. I almost blurted out how awful it is to feel so uncertain, so out of control – like running on ice or having a rotten hard-boiled egg fermenting in my gut – no solid footing, a constant pre-hurl. I nearly dropped to my knees and begged Mr Horny for forgiveness when he repeated, “Where is your classroom, young lady?”
Oh.
“Building C,” I stammered.
“Get on over there, then, before the late bell rings.”
“But it was my locker,” I said. “It was stuck.”
“Did you kick it?”
“I hit it with my hand,” I said. Nadine and Curtis both looked at me. “My fist, I mean. I banged it with my fist. Hard.”
“Get to class.” Mr Horny turned and led Nadine and Curtis away. I could tell Nadine was mad because her nostrils were stuck in the way open position. Curtis seemed to let it slide. On the way to the principal’s office, he low-fived a straggler who, like me, wasn’t going to make it to class before the bell.
“See you at lunch, Nadine?” I called after her, but she either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to.
It was hard enough trying to follow the hieroglyphics of Geometry on the chalkboard, but without a textbook, it was nearly impossible. I mean, we were learning about quadrilaterals in the first month? What was that about? “Share with Ostensia,” Mr Puente said after he found out my book was still stuck in my locker.
“Uh . ” Before I could protest, Ostensia was practically sitting on top of me, her desk glued to mine, her garlic breath all over my face. I liked her, had known her since sixth grade, but, man, those home-made concoctions she unwrapped all day at school were aromatic enough to scare vampires away.
“Right here,” she pointed, “page twelve. Halfway down, right hand si—”
“Got it,” I whispered, then resumed holding my breath.
Truth be told, dividing a quad into triangles didn’t interest me in the slightest. And determining the diagonals of a rhombus thrilled me even less, especially when my best friend was in trouble because of me, my locker looked like a car wreck, and the only reason I’d taken Geometry in my freshman year was because Carrie Taylor’s boyfriend, Zack Nash, took Geometry with Mr Puente, and he was the boy I’d decided to kiss. Well, not decided, actually, unless you consider a pounding heart a decision.
Zack Nash is the boy that I love. There, I’ve said it. Whew! It has been said. No one knows. Not Nadine or my mom or even the diary I started over the summer that didn’t make it past June. I’ve loved Zack Nash since I first saw him last year. He was walking across the lawn of Mission Junior High with Carrie Taylor, her little finger clasped in his fist. I’m quite sure Zack Nash doesn’t even know my name. Still, I’ve dreamed of his hand reaching for my little finger and his lips calling me home with one velvet kiss.
“Want one?” Ostensia peeled open a foil-wrapped plate of congealed nachos under the desk. The smell rose up like a rotting mushroom cloud. I shook my head and turned away. My stomach let me know I couldn’t look at it again. “Later, then,” Ostensia whispered. “I have lots.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Zack Nash wave his hand back and forth in front of his pinched face. He turned around to look at me, his cocoa-coloured eyes staring into my love struck baby blues. I felt a zap of electricity shoot down my arms. I grinned, tried to look petite. Then, he curled his lip and said, loud enough for the whole class to hear, “Who cut the cheese?”
Of course, everybody exploded in laughter. “Settle down,” Mr Puente said, but even he smiled. Ostensia looked all innocent, and I blushed purple. My curse – to look guilty even when I’m not.
“Let’s move on,” Mr Puente said.
I held my breath, hoping the blood would drain from my face faster.
“Libby? Would you like to come up to the board and draw a parallelogram?”
“Mr Puente, would you like to kiss my . ”
That’s what I wanted to say. But of course I didn’t. In fact, I even understood it was Mr Puente’s way of saving me from being mortified in front of Zack Nash and God and everybody. But come on! How would standing in front of the whole class save me from embarrassment? Hadn’t Mr Puente learned anything about teenage humiliation in his years of humiliating us? Not to mention the fact that Geometry had really messed with my head. I’d been a pretty good student before. It always took me about fifteen minutes to figure out what teachers expected of me, then another fifteen to produce it. I was great at that – becoming whatever anybody wanted me to be. But Geometry was my undoing. When I wasn’t staring at the smooth creamy skin on Zack Nash’s neck, I was gaping at the chalkboard without a clue. Geometry, for me, was how I imagined people who couldn’t read saw the world: shapes and squiggles that made no sense whatsoever.
“Libby?”
I forced myself to breathe again.
“No, thank you, Mr Puente,” I stammered. Hey, I gave it a shot.
“Come on up here and we’ll work it out together.” Mr Puente held a stubby piece of chalk in my direction.
Ostensia exhaled and said, “You can do it.”
Refusing was useless. Mr Puente could stand there for hours holding that piece of chalk. I’d seen it before. He never gave up. So I stood up. My chair scraped the linoleum floor. The class got really quiet. Tucking my hair behind my ear, I slyly glanced at him. Yeah, he was looking. Zack’s head was tilted up and his lips were parted and his beautiful neck swivelled at the same speed I walked. My heart thumped overtime, my cheeks were still aflame, and a dewy coating of sweat veiled my forehead. I could hear my sneakers squeak across the floor. But that’s all I heard of the external world. The rest of the noise was deep within my head: buzzing in my ears, blood squeezing through my clenched veins, quick, shallow breaths burning my chest.
“A parallelogram,” Mr Puente repeated, handing me the chalk. But I heard it as a deep echo: “Paraaaaaa-llllllelllooooo-graaaam.”
Standing with my back to the class, arm raised to the board, chalk perched between my thumb and forefinger, I went numb with panic. I could feel tumbleweeds rolling through my empty skull, hear the dry prairie wind. Once, on late-night cable, I’d seen a psychic hold a pen in her hand over a blank sheet of paper and summon the spirit of James Joyce. I tried it.
“Einstein,” I whispered under my breath. “Are you there?”
“What?”
I turned to face Mr Puente. His eyebrows were raised. He asked again, “What did you say, Libby?”
What could I say? I was busted. Big-time. He might as well have asked me to draw a road map of Uzbekistan – I didn’t have a clue. Sighing, I tossed the chalk on to the ledge beneath the chalkboard.
“I said I could stand here for the rest of my life and not only not know how to draw a parallelogram but eventually lose the ability to draw a straight line, too.”
The class laughed. A good, we’re-with-you kind of laugh. Mr Puente chuckled, too. I straightened my shoulders.
“An alien apparently abducted my brain over the summer and sucked out my capacity to understand two-dimensional shapes,” I quipped. My face returned to its natural colour.
They laughed again. Harder. I felt their love wash over me, felt empowered, giddy, reckless. Facing the students, my people, I raised my arms in the air, closed my eyes and cried out, “If there’s anybody out there who can help me understand the first thing about Geometry, I’ll help them with any other subject on earth!”
The class roared. I beamed. Peering through my eyelids, I saw Ostensia raise her nacho-smeared hand. I clamped my eyes shut.
“Anybody! Anybody at all!”
“I’ll help you.”
It wasn’t Ostensia. It was male. A boy’s voice. His voice.
“Maths is easy,” said Zack Nash. “I need help with English. Essays.”
English? Essays? I love English! I almost made it into Honours English. I speak English! Essays are my life! I could not believe that Zack Nash would offer to tutor me in front of the entire class. But there he was, his luscious eyes looking at me without a trace of sarcasm, his blond hair deliciously dishevelled.
“You have two takers, Libby,” Mr Puente said. “Pick one, then take your seat so we can get on with class.”
Looking out over the bright, full-moon faces of my classmates, I saw Ostensia and Zack Nash, both staring at me, smiling hopefully.
I said, “Zack Nash, I guess. Why not?”
Ostensia’s face fell. The walk back to our double desk was long and awkward. She wouldn’t look at me. I felt awful. Hideous. Like one of those girls who dumps her friends in the dirt the moment a guy comes along.
It was the happiest day of my life.
THREE
“Dirk, wash your hands for dinner.” Mom reached her own hand into the KFC bucket, tore off a piece of Extra Crispy skin, and sucked it into her mouth. Junk food again. My mother’d actually believed Ronald Reagan when he said ketchup was a vegetable.
“I did wash my hands,” Dirk said.
“Wash them with soap. Rif, grab the ketchup in the fridgeroo.”
“It’s on the table, Mom.”
Yip.
“Juan, get out from under my feet! Who fed the dog?”
“I did,” I said. “Can’t we ever have salad for dinner? Or something you don’t order through an intercom?”
“Rif, feed the dog.”
“I fed him, Mom!”
“Where’s Dad?” Dirk, unwashed, was already seated at his place.
“He’s on his way,” said Mom. Then she sighed. My brothers and I looked at each other. We heard that sigh a lot.
Dinner was yet another psychotic break with reality. Nobody listened to anybody else. Mom threw together a fast-food fat fest before dad got home; Dad’s homecoming made us all nervous wrecks. Would he be Jekyll or Hyde? Could we talk to him or would dinner be one tense swallow after another? Eating has never been a pleasurable experience in my house. Unless, of course, I sneak a bag of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies into my room and eat them alone in bed. Then, it’s heavenly, though I have to speed-walk nearly an hour just to burn off three of them.
Mom nervously bit into a bread roll. Mouth full, she mumbled, “Bethy, please pour the milk.”
“It’s Libby, Mom. Libby!”
“Oy.” She sighed again. “Who can keep track?”
Mom had a point. I was into frequent name changes. Hey, was it my fault my parents gave me a name with so many variations? What – they expected me to lug “Elizabeth” around for life? Or worse, “Bethy”? I can’t tell you how many times people said, “Betsy?” each time I said my name. “No, it’s Bethy,” I’d respond. “As in Elizabeth, Beth, Bethy.” “ Ah,” they’d say back, then pretty much refuse to say my name at all after that. Who wants to th ound like they have a li th p? “Libby” was way more grown-up, anyway. Nadine had suggested it back when she wasn’t mad, back when she was my lifelong best friend.
Often, I wished I could trade families with Nadine. Nadine’s parents are nothing like my parents. Her family is a pasta sauce commercial. Everybody is always laughing, crammed into the kitchen, encircling a large steaming pot on the stove. Her mom dips a wooden spoon into the vat of spaghetti sauce for a taste, good-naturedly swats her husband away. He hugs her, nuzzles her neck. Her little brother tosses a football with his buddy on the backyard lawn, a golden retriever sweeps the floor with his tail as he eagerly waits for a morsel to drop to the floor. Nadine’s older sister carries a giant salad bowl to the large real-wood table, shouts, “Supper in five minutes!” And they call dinner “supper,” which is so cool.
My parents, on the other hand, are more like the embarrassing relatives. Get this: My dad’s name is Lance, but the other salesmen at his work dubbed him “Sir Lancelot” as a joke. You know, the buffed-out knight of the Round Table (yeah right), the hunky guy who had a thing for Guinevere? But after they saw him snarf down a foot-long salami sub all by himself in less than five minutes and slobber beer down the front of his tie, they shortened it to “Lot.” Which suits my dad perfectly because he’s majorly into excess.
My mom’s name is Dorothy, but she’s always been known as Dot. So my parents are Lot and Dot. Couldn’t you just throw up? People hear their names and assume they’re this happy, chirpy couple. Mom wants to keep it that way.
“Nobody needs to know our business,” she says all the time. Which really means nobody needs to know the truth. If our family had a motto – and of course we don’t – it wouldn’t be “One for all, all for one” or “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It would be “Don’t tell anyone.” We don’t really live in our house on Bonita Drive as much as we hide there. Which probably explains why Momaroo has her own language. Shhh! Don’t tell.
The last time I was invited to Nadine’s house for “supper,” I sat there and stared at everybody like they were animals in some exotic Family Love zoo. Their ease with one another takes my breath away. Whenever I’m there I try to memorise the way Nadine acts so I can act normal, too.
The front door opened just as I finished filling everyone’s milk glass. Dad’s rubber-so
led shoes squeaked across the linoleum floor. Everybody got real quiet. No one knew if it was going to be a good night or a bad night. We held our collective breath. Except Juan Dog. Yip. Yip.
“Perfect timing,” Mom said anxiously. “Dinner’s on the table.”
Yip. Yip. Yip.
“What are we having?” Dad asked from the front door.
“The Colonel.”
“Chicken?”
“They had a special. I had a coupon.” Mom tore off another chunk of Extra Crispy skin and devoured it.
“Haven’t you heard about hormones?” Dad’s voice was too loud, too slow.
I swallowed air, felt that rotten egg wobble around in my stomach for the second time that day.
“It’s KFC,” Mom said, swallowing. “Your favourite.”
Yippety. Yip.
As soon as my father tottered into the kitchen, I saw that his glasses were hanging off the end of his nose. His mudcoloured hair was sticking up on one side; his belly strained the buttons on his short sleeved white shirt. My father’s nose was several shades of red. As he got closer to the table, I smelled smoky aftershave and mouthwash-covered beer. That’s when I knew for sure he’d stopped at a bar on his way home.
“Farmers feed chickens hormones so they have bigger breasts.” He scowled. “You tryin’ to turn us into girls?”
Mom didn’t say anything. Dad asked testily, “Well, are you?”
“Of course not. It’s KFC. They don’t do that.”
“Anything’s possible,” he muttered. When he was in one of his moods, he found fault with Halle Berry’s navel. I mean, nothing was good enough.
“Honey, why don’t you wash your hands and sit down at the table?” Mom said.
“I sell swimming pools, for God’s sake. How dirty could I be?”
“Okay, then just sit down.” She pulled out his chair. Dad landed heavily. Dirk’s leg wiggled beneath the table. Rif sat stone-faced, and I crossed my arms and stared at the bubbles dancing on top of my non-fat milk.