Brett McCarthy

by Maria Padian

  And at Mescataqua Junior High, really bad news, the juicy kind that ruins lives, travels at the speed of sound.

  I don’t know how she did it, but between four-thirty p.m., October 16th, and eight a.m. the following day, Jeanne Anne managed to torpedo my reputation. Granted, I had played a role in my own destruction. But the instant I saw her with Darcy the Ditz, I knew I was sunk. They had obviously walked to school together that morning, something Jeanne Anne would have arranged the night before. Which meant that before the sun had even set on October 16th, Jeanne Anne had told Darcy about the whole Levesque thing. And Darcy, no doubt, would have done a global message to everyone on her Way Popular Buddy List.

  Okay, maybe not. But even paranoids have enemies. And as I headed into the building that morning, things looked bad.

  For starters, no one was at The Junior. This was unprecedented.

  Unprecedented: new, having no example.

  We always waited by The Junior for each other, even if the bell had rung. For the first time, I walked into school alone.

  That’s when I saw it: the looks and nudges kids gave one another in the hall as I trudged in. I heard it in the whispers behind my back as I fumbled with my locker. And I felt it, like a kick to my gut, when I walked into first period and saw Diane seated near Jeanne Anne, their heads close together, talking.

  When Jeanne Anne saw me, she straightened up, signaling Diane to be quiet. Not good.

  “Hey, how’s it goin’?” I said, plunking into the seat alongside Diane. She smiled. She looked like her normal, gorgeous self. Not like someone who had stayed up all night staring at the ceiling. Jeanne Anne, seated in front of us, looked straight ahead at the blackboard.

  “Great,” Diane said.

  “I didn’t see you out front,” I continued.

  Diane raised her eyebrows. “Well, I hear you were out back.”

  “Gee, I wonder where you heard that.” I raised my voice just a bit. Jeanne Anne, back rigid, didn’t turn.

  “Some people are so boring, the only thing they can talk about is…other people,” I continued. Jeanne Anne still faced forward.

  “And some people are so desperate,” I went on, “they’ll even walk to school with losers, gossiping the whole time.” That did it. She spun around.

  “Look who’s talking!” she practically shouted. “The overweight human sweatshirt! Who has nothing better to do than hang out with her garbage-collecting grandmother and math-team weirdos!”

  The “overweight” alone didn’t justify what followed, especially since I know it’s not true. The fact is I’m big-boned, and fairly muscular for an eighth-grade girl. And the “math-team weirdo” bit? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Michael had taken heat for being Gifted and Talented. But “garbage-collecting?” My Nonna?

  “You ugly cow,” I said as my fist connected with her nose. Blood spurted.

  Unprecedented. In the annals of Brett McCarthy screwups, a collection that seemed to be rapidly growing, this was a first. And in the history of Mescataqua Junior High, a fistfight between two girls was also unprecedented. Although it wasn’t much of a fistfight. Jeanne Anne never hit back. She screamed for tissues while her nose bled all over Diane’s language arts binder and the rest of the class chanted, “Cat fight! Cat fight!” Language arts teacher, who suddenly materialized from nowhere, thrust a box of Kleenex into some girl’s hands, and ordered her to take Jeanne Anne to the nurse’s office.

  “You,” he said, pointing a stubby index finger in my face. “Gather up your things. Let’s go.”

  Our destination was the principal’s office, where, following a long lecture about the Mescataqua Junior High School Zero Tolerance Policy on Violence, I was formally suspended. Three days starting today, no school. Which also meant no soccer, and we had two big games that week. As I waited for Dad to pick me up, my soccer coach, Mrs. LaVoie, came in and sat down beside me. Like I said, bad news travels fast.

  “Brett, I want to say I’m surprised, but I’m not,” she said gently. “I’m shocked. Dumbfounded. This is completely uncharacteristic. Is there something going on that you want to talk about?”

  In addition to coaching soccer, Mrs. LaVoie teaches language arts at our school. She was my sixth-grade L.A. teacher, and she and I are each other’s biggest fans. Not only are we really into soccer, but she gets my word thing and speaks to me like I’m an intelligent human being. Mom and Dad love her because she called a special meeting with them to discuss my “talent with language.” She always asks me if I’ve been doing any writing, which makes me feel guilty, because I’m not. But it also makes me feel good that she believes in me.

  So there I was, sitting in the principal’s office, shattering her illusions that I was anything special. I’d like to say I was cool. I’d like to say I took my punishment bravely, unremorsefully, if there is such a word.

  Instead, I burst into tears. I blubbered. By the time Dad got there, I had stopped crying, but my raccoon-circled eyes were now puffy and red as well. Dad spent some time in the hall talking with Mrs. LaVoie before leading me out, arm across my shoulders.

  “It’ll be okay, Brett,” he said when we got in the car. “Remember: ‘It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.’ William Ernest Henley.” I saw him attempt a smile. “In other words, honey, we’ll work this out. Things can’t get any worse.”

  But they did.

  awk•ward

  Suspension, if you want my opinion, is ridiculous. First, you take the worst kids in the school system. They do something awful, like smoke dope. Call in a bomb scare. Hit Jeanne Anne. Then you kick them out for days, with zero supervision. Most of these kids have working parents who aren’t home during school hours. So these troublemakers have the run of the town, time on their hands, and nobody watching.

  Is it really true that school superintendents, who make up these rules, have PhDs?

  There was no sign of Mom and Nonna by the time we arrived. This put Dad in an awkward position, forcing him to choose between staying home with his violent daughter or hurrying off to teach his morning class.

  Awkward: showing lack of expertness; lacking social grace and assurance.

  More and more, Lecturing Brett ended up on Mom’s to-do list. It’s funny: Dad can lecture to an auditorium full of students, but spend fifteen minutes asking his teenage daughter how she managed to get herself thrown out of school? No way.

  Don’t get me wrong. Dad’s a great guy, in a flaky, professor-like way. But it seemed like ever since I’d started wearing a bra, he’d forgotten how to talk to me. Unless it was about a poem.

  So after assuring him that I really hadn’t become a juvenile delinquent, and that if it weren’t for Jeanne Anne I would still be an upstanding honors student with an unblemished record, he decided to go to work.

  “You won’t burn the house down while I’m gone, right?” he joked as he headed out the door. At least I think he was joking. He stuck a note on the fridge for Mom, saying he’d be home early and would she please call him before speaking to me.

  I figured I had two options: Sit there and wait for Mom and The Lecture of a Lifetime, or hide at the Gnome Home until dinner.

  I decided to delay the inevitable.

  Nonna’s house was unlocked and smelled like warm chocolate. I found a pan of just-baked brownies taking up space on her cluttered kitchen table, along with loose-leaf notebook pages covered with pencil drawings.

  I carved a hunk of brownie from the pan, poured a glass of milk, and sat. As I chewed (double fudge with raspberry chips), I leafed through the drawings. Someone had sketched a candle. Little squares arranged in a circle. Then I saw something familiar.

  “It’s Spruce Island light,” I said, so surprised that I announced it to the empty room. The old lighthouse—and I’m talking really old, like, built when Thomas Jefferson was president—on Nonna’s island.

  For as long as I can
remember, one of Nonna’s defining maverick qualities has been her desire to restore Spruce Island light. She’d tried to have it added to some registry of historic places. Tried to have the Coast Guard recommission it. Tried to convince the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine that rebuilding a decrepit lighthouse would be a wonderful project for future sailors. But the lighthouse remained as it always had: a shell of a stone tower with a rusty catwalk on top, surrounded by weeds, with hidden caches of old nails and broken glass.

  “If she ever pulls this off, it will be a Pyrrhic victory indeed,” Dad once said. I’d asked him what the heck that meant, and he explained that Pyrrhus was an ancient king of Epirus who defeated the Roman army only after a great many of his soldiers had died. So, Dad said, a “Pyrrhic victory” is won at excessive cost. In other words, it would cost Nonna a bundle to get the light fixed.

  Do other kids’ dads talk like this?

  As I sifted through the papers, I heard a car door slam. Through the kitchen window I saw Mom and Nonna emerging from the car. Uh-oh, I thought. Time to retreat. I ducked into the living room, crouching behind the sofa as they walked in. Not very dignified, but I could see them if I peeked around the corner.

  Mom carried grocery bags and began unloading them onto the counters. Nonna settled into a kitchen chair. That’s when I realized I’d left my half-finished glass of milk on the table. And the pan with one enormously missing brownie.

  “You know, Eileen,” Mom said, “maybe it is just allergies, or some sort of infection. But the MRI will rule out anything bad, and we won’t have to worry.”

  “He’s overreacting,” Nonna said. “This is why health care in this country is so expensive. All these ridiculous tests for nothing.” I saw Nonna pick up my milk glass and frown.

  “Well,” Mom said briskly, “better safe than sorry. I should go home and check the answering machine. The hospital may have called to let us know when we can come in.” Mom left. I watched Nonna place the milk glass back on the table.

  “Okay,” she said, in a voice clearly intended to carry into the next room. “I know only one person who cuts brownies from the middle of the pan. Come out and explain why you’re home from school.” Awkwardly, I crawled on all fours from behind the sofa.

  “Thanks for not giving me away,” I said.

  Nonna frowned. “How long have you been here?”

  “Five minutes. Dad brought me home because you and Mom were out. Where were you guys?”

  “Are you sick?” Nonna continued.

  “No. Suspended.”

  “Suspended!” she repeated. “What for?”

  “I hit someone,” I said. “Nonna, what were you and Mom talking about?”

  “Your mother doesn’t know, does she?” Nonna said, narrowing her eyes. “Brett. You know I don’t like you to keep secrets from your mother.”

  “It’s not a secret,” I sighed, flopping into the kitchen chair. “I just haven’t told her. Yet.” I picked up one of the loose-leaf sheets. “Speaking of secrets, what is this?”

  Nonna passed her hand over her eyes. She seemed tired. “Honey, stick to the topic.”

  Just then the car pulled into the driveway again. The Return of Mom.

  “Oh, no,” I exclaimed, jumping up and backing into the living room. “Nonna, I really don’t want to deal with Mom right now.” I looked pleadingly into Nonna’s eyes. She shook her head again but waved me toward the sofa.

  “Tonight,” she said as Mom’s footsteps crunched along the walkway gravel. “You tell her tonight.” The door opened.

  “Hey. They can see us right now.” Mom made this announcement as she leaned into the kitchen.

  “Okay,” said Nonna, pulling herself up from her chair. “Let’s do it.” From my hiding place I could see Mom glance toward the cluttered table, the brownie pan. She smiled.

  “I can see you haven’t lost your appetite,” she said cheerfully, holding the door open for Nonna.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Nonna said.

  in•fer•no

  So with Dad at work, Nonna and Mom off on some mysterious medical mission, and the rest of the world in school, I did what comes naturally when my stress meter hits code red. I polished off another brownie, then went home and crawled into bed. I don’t know how long I slept before the sound of a ringing doorbell dragged me from oblivion and back to the reality of my incredibly suckulous life.

  I stumbled downstairs to the front door wrapped in my comforter, hair standing stiff, troll-like. I tend to wake up badly.

  It was Michael.

  “Oh, hey,” I said. “Since when do you ring?” I headed to the kitchen, comforter and Michael trailing.

  “The door was locked. You’ve been sleeping?” he asked, surprised. We sat on opposite ends of the kitchen window seat. The sun was doing its late-day, mid-autumn slant thing, shining horizontally and into my eyes through the big windows. My soccer team was probably playing at that very moment. Mom and Nonna still hadn’t returned.

  “So. Tell me. How bad is it?” I asked him. “And I don’t mean my hair.”

  “Scale of one to ten?” he asked.

  “With one being ‘life as usual’ and ten being ‘transfer to another school,’” I replied. Michael looked thoughtful.

  “Depends,” he said.

  “On?”

  “Whether or not you think Jeanne Anne deserves a broken nose,” he said.

  “No!” I groaned. “Is it broken? Absolutely?”

  “Rumor has it,” he said.

  “Ten!” I wailed, burying my face in the comforter.

  “Nah,” Michael said. “Three. Okay, four, since we had to sit through a Zero Tolerance for Violence assembly. But you know, Brett, to some people you’re a hero.”

  “Yeah?” I said, sarcastically. “Who?” Not Bob Levesque, I thought. Not anyone from the back-lot water fountain gang.

  “Well,” Michael said, “Kit. Your entire soccer team. All the kids Jeanne Anne has been mean to, which is most of the eighth grade. Me.” The “me” came out sort of squeaky, like it was hard for him to say.

  “Well, thanks for your undying loyalty. But I’m still hosed,” I said. “Kit will be mad she didn’t punch Jeanne Anne herself. My soccer team will be mad because I’m missing two important games. And you…” I trailed off.

  “Too uncool to count?” Michael said.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, instantly regretful. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t know what I mean. I’m really messed up, okay? I’ve gone from Model Scholar Athlete to Juvenile Delinquent in forty-eight hours, and it’s a little disorienting.”

  Michael is probably the only kid I know who doesn’t flinch or blink vacantly when I use a word like “disorienting.”

  There was a long silence before either of us spoke again.

  “Why do you care so much what the popular kids think?” he finally said.

  “I don’t,” I said instantly.

  “Yeah, right,” he replied. “Why else are you prank-calling Bob Levesque’s mother? Why else would you get so mad at Jeanne Anne that you’d clock her? I mean, do you actually care what she thinks, or are you just pissed that she’s moving into the popular circle?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “First of all, the Levesque thing was not my idea. Second, Jeanne Anne is unpopular pond scum. No offense meant, but maybe from a high honors math team perspective, a loser like Jeanne Anne seems cool, but trust me, she’s not.”

  “You are in such denial,” he sighed. He heaved his backpack, stuffed tight with books, onto the window seat. No matter how much—or how little—homework we have, Michael hauls a library home each night. He pulled out a thin notebook, flipped through it, then slapped it open in my lap.

  “Let me show you something I developed during Fifth Period.”

  Fifth Period, commonly known as the Gifted and Talented Hour, is when about a dozen or so of the Über Students, like Michael, are siphoned off from the rest of the herd for “special work.” You can
practically hear their brains pulsating from behind closed doors as they read impossibly difficult books, fold origami, and design engines that run on vegetable oil from the cafeteria’s fryolator.

  “I’m really not in the mood to admire your homework,” I groaned. Michael continued, undeterred.

  “Dante Alighieri was a thirteenth-century Italian writer who wrote a poem about Hell,” said Michael. “He imagined that Hell is divided into descending rings, with criminals suffering increasingly worse tortures the lower you went. He called it The Inferno.”

  Inferno: a place that resembles Hell; intense heat.

  “Sounds lovely,” I remarked.

  “It was incredible,” Michael said enthusiastically. “He worked out this whole hierarchy of evil and punishment, and then, to make things interesting, he told us who you’d find there. I mean, he named names. Popes. Rich men. Famous people. They thought they were golden, but Dante assigned them to Hell.

  “Anyway, for one of my Fifth Period projects I thought it would be cool to compare the social hierarchy at Mescataqua to Dante’s Inferno.”

  “Meaning you think we’re all going to Hell?” I asked.

  “Meaning we’re in Hell,” Michael said. “At least those of us obsessed with popularity.”

  I stared at the open notebook. Michael had drawn two stacks of rings. On the left Dante’s Inferno, where he’d sketched little pearly gates and angels at the top and a nasty flame pit on the bottom. In between was Dante’s order of evil from one through nine: Limbo, the Lustful, the Gluttonous, the Avaricious, the Wrathful, the Heretics, the Violent, the Frauds, and the Traitors. On the right he’d drawn the Mescataqua version: Undecided, Flirts and Hos, People Who Eat/Take More Than Their Share, the Greedy, the Perpetually Pissed Off, the Wishy-Washy, the Violent, the Backstabbers/Gossipers/Social Climbers, and the Traitors.

  Dante’s Inferno was just labeled rings, but Mescataqua’s had people’s names.

  “Hey, you’re not in it!” I said, my eyes scanning the diagram. “No fair.”