Brett McCarthy

by Maria Padian

Nonna looked so small. They had dressed her in a pink, flowery hospital gown, and her white hair was spread over the pillow like milkweed floss. A plastic tube was taped beneath her nose, blowing oxygen into her lungs, while an intravenous needle connected to another plastic tube was taped to the top of her right hand, feeding fluids directly into her veins. Of course, I didn’t know all this at the time. To me, at that moment, it looked like aliens had gotten hold of her. Later, as time and hospital visits went on, I’d come to understand what all the gizmos were for.

  Nonna was awake and smiled when she saw me.

  “Brett!” she said. Her voice was raspy, like dry leaves. I could tell right off that she barely had the strength to lift her head. I wanted to hug her so badly, but all the tubes put me off. Made me afraid to touch her. I could feel tears coming, and for the first time ever I didn’t know what to say to her.

  She reached out to me with her untaped hand. I took it. It felt cool and soft.

  “I hate for you to see me like this…wearing pink. With flowers,” she whispered. “You know how I hate florals.” Her eyes glinted up at me mischievously. “Promise me you’ll run home and get my Happy Bunny nightshirt. I won’t sleep a wink without it.”

  I saw her then. Through all the tubes and tape and pink flowers I could see my Nonna, smiling up at me, and I burst out laughing. And crying too. I bent over and gave her a hug.

  “Nonna,” I whispered in her ear, “you were right. Mr. Beady is a mensch.”

  pro•voked

  Jeanne Anne’s nose, as it turns out, was not broken. But it might as well have been. It looked like she had two black eyes. Two black-purple-and-green eyes, to be exact. The bruising across the bridge of her nose resembled a rainbow.

  We both returned to school on the same day, with orders to report to Mr. Hare, the principal, before first period. They wanted us to have a little “face time” before turning us loose on the school.

  Dad drove me in early. Too early for anyone to be waiting at The Junior. I hesitated before getting out of the car.

  “Today won’t be easy,” Dad said.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” I sighed. He reached over and squeezed my hand.

  “But we can get through this, Brett.” I pulled my hand away.

  “It’s important right now that we each do our part,” he continued. “For you, that means getting back on track here at school. It would mean a lot to your grandmother. It’s important that we don’t worry her unnecessarily.”

  “I don’t worry Nonna,” I snapped. “You’re the ones who worry her. You and Mom.”

  “Brett, please…”

  “Why do you have to be so negative?” I said loudly. “I mean, last night…it was like you were planning her funeral or something. Okay, she has cancer. It’s serious. But people beat cancer all the time. Nonna’s tough. She’ll beat this thing.”

  That was Mr. Beady’s line. He’d said it after we’d returned from the hospital. The Super-Sized Day of the Big Bad News. When my parents finally said the C word in front of me.

  Nonna had cancer. Cancer of the pancreas, to be precise. Her tan turned out to be jaundice; her brown-tail moth rash turned out to be an itchiness caused by the jaundice. Jaundice is this yellowy color that happens to your skin. It means something’s not working.

  No one was able to tell me exactly what a pancreas does, but one thing was clear: You can’t just cut it out, like an appendix. You need your pancreas.

  I heaved the door open, stumbled out of the car, and slammed it shut before Dad had a chance to reply. If I had to hear him say another word, I would explode. Little pieces, all over The Junior.

  Jeanne Anne and the principal were already seated when I arrived at his office. I have to admit, I wasn’t quite ready for the Rainbow Fish.

  “Whoa,” I said, staring.

  “Yes, thank you, Brett. Please sit down,” said Mr. Hare. Ironic name. The guy’s bald as a Ping-Pong ball. He launched right in.

  “Girls, before we can put this unfortunate incident behind us and move ahead as good citizens, we need to clear the air. Brett, I’d like you to apologize to Jeanne Anne.”

  I had guessed this was coming. I took a deep breath.

  “I’ll apologize for losing control as long as she apologizes for insulting my grandmother.”

  Jeanne Anne gasped.

  “See?” she demanded, looking at the principal. “She’s not one bit sorry!”

  “Brett, are you refusing to apologize?” No-Hare asked. He sounded incredulous.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Then…?” He looked at me, eyebrows raised like little upside-down V’s.

  My heart raced. Go on, I thought. Make my day.

  “Yes, I hit her,” I said, faking calm. “But I was provoked. She owes me an apology.”

  Provoked: aroused to a feeling or action; stirred up purposely. She started it.

  Unprecedented, yet again. In the life of Brett McCarthy, Formerly Law-Abiding Junior High Honors Student, this was a first. Flagrant disrespect for authority. Refusal to take responsibility for her actions. I didn’t recognize myself.

  The little V’s scrunched into a frown.

  “Miss McCarthy, are we going to have to extend your suspension?” I stood up, shouldering my book bag.

  “On what grounds?” I said. “I’m willing to apologize. She’s not. Suspend her.” I started walking out the door. Jeanne Anne sputtered.

  “I didn’t insult her! She insulted me! She…promoted…me!”

  I couldn’t resist that one.

  “Not only are you completely unreasonable,” I said, “but you’re also stupid. It’s ‘provoked.’ Not ‘promoted.’” I walked out.

  I had already decided that even if he called my name and demanded that I return, I’d ignore him. I wanted a scene. I wanted them to call the school resource officer and drag me—maybe even with plastic cuffs restraining my hands—down the crowded corridors. Into a waiting patrol car. Put me under hot lights. Deny me food and water until I apologized. Which I knew would never happen, because there was no way Jeanne Anne would ever apologize to me.

  I wound through the hallway, now filled with students, toward my locker and first class. Language arts, with Diane.

  She was wearing new clothes. One of those all-in-one sweater-shirt things, with the cuffs. A girl knows every item of clothing in her best friend’s closet, even if she herself is mall-phobic. Diane’s hair was pulled back with a clip I hadn’t seen before, and she wore a skirt.

  A skirt. Of course. All the football players wore ties and the cheerleaders wore skirts on home game days.

  I took my seat alongside her and stared straight ahead.

  “Hey!” She poked my arm. “Hey, girl! Where have you been?? I’ve sent you, like, fifty e-mails!” I turned to her.

  “Home game today?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible. To her credit, Diane blushed.

  “Listen, we need to talk. You have no idea what’s been going on….”

  “Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea,” I said.

  “No, really…,” she continued. “Listen, I know I should have told you about the cheerleading thing. I didn’t even know if I was going to make it, you know? But there’s so much more happening…we really need to talk.”

  I knew what she meant. Her world had come crashing down on her during the past week. Kit had told me.

  Apparently, the evening of October 17th, the day I slugged Jeanne Anne, got suspended, and first heard the word “pancreas,” the Pelletier kids got the Big Bad News. Merrill heard it up close and personal from Mr. Pelletier. They’d rented a movie and brought home dinner from McDonald’s. Somewhere in between the Chicken McNuggets and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he told Merrill that he would be living in a different house from now on, but that Merrill could visit him on the weekends. He assured Merrill that he’d like the new house: There was a dog, and another little boy almost his age. And the little boy’s mother, a lady named Pamela,
who was very nice.

  The Pelletier women dined out that night. Mrs. Pelletier’s version of the BBN was a bit different from Mr.’s. For example, she didn’t use the word “nice” to describe the lady, Pamela. And she said “under no circumstances whatsoever” would Diane spend weekends at the house with the dog.

  I should have heard all this myself. We should have been on the phone that night, best friends, sharing bad news the same way we shared Gifford’s Moose Tracks ice cream. Separate spoons, but both digging out of the same container.

  Instead, I turned the computer off that night…and every night of my suspension, cutting off Diane’s only means of communicating with me since The Ban on phone calls. I knew her life had just unraveled, that her whole world had been redefined. But I was too wrapped up in my own BBN to be anybody’s BFF.

  Before I could reply to Diane, the Rainbow Fish entered. There were little gasps across the room as people got a look at her face. She stopped at my seat.

  “Mr. Hare told me to give you this,” she said. She held a sheet of white paper aloft, then dropped it, letting it flutter slowly to my desk. It was typed on front-office stationery. It said I had lunch detention at the principal’s office every day, indefinitely.

  I folded the letter neatly in half, then ripped it along the crease. Then I ripped the two halves into quarters. Into eighths. Sixteenths. Jeanne Anne stared, her mouth dropping open. The class was dead silent, watching us, and the sound of tearing paper seemed unusually loud.

  “You are so getting into trouble for that!” Jeanne Anne exclaimed.

  “Getting into trouble for what?” Language arts teacher approached.

  “Brett ripped up a detention letter from the principal!” she declared. Language arts teacher frowned.

  “Jeanne Anne, take a seat, please. Brett, is that true?”

  Redefined Brett McCarthy put on her best clueless face.

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” I said innocently. Jeanne Anne, bless her, took the bait.

  “Liar!” she shrieked. “You know I just handed you a letter and you ripped it up!” Language arts teacher picked up a few scraps.

  “I can’t read this,” he said impatiently. “Brett, what is it?”

  “Old homework,” I said, looking straight into his eyes.

  “You lying witch!” Jeanne Anne yelled. That did it. Especially because the teacher thought she’d said something way worse.

  “Jeanne Anne!” Language arts teacher was pretty mad. “We do not use that sort of language in this classroom! Pack up your things, young lady. Follow me. The rest of you…sustained silent reading until I get back!”

  “What’d I do? She’s lying!” Jeanne Anne was pretty close to tears. “Call the principal. Call him right now. He’ll tell you….”

  The old me might have felt a little sorry for Jeanne Anne at that point. Bruised, multicolored face. Totally losing it. Hauled off by the teacher while the real criminal played innocent.

  But this was Brett McCarthy, Redefined, and I didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy in reserve. I ducked my head to hide the smile as Jeanne Anne and the teacher left the room, as I heard her finally burst out crying once they reached the hallway. I searched my backpack for a sustaining book. Diane stared at me. Shocked.

  “What’s going on with you?” she asked. As if I knew.

  “Shh!” I said, putting my finger to my lips. “This is supposed to be silent reading.” I buried my nose in my book and didn’t look up until language arts teacher returned.

  A long time would pass before Diane and I spoke to each other again.

  pen•sive

  Here’s the thing about detention letters: You can rip them up, but you can’t ignore them forever. Eventually they catch up with you. Kind of like former best friends.

  It turns out my fight with Jeanne Anne set off an earthquake in the eighth grade. Shifted the tectonic plates of our little world, so now there was this big rift, the Mescataqua Grand Canyon, with some kids on one bank and some on the other.

  In other words, people took sides.

  This was really obvious at lunch. Mom didn’t have time to pack my lunch today, so I was buying. As I came off the food line with my tray of chicken fries and chocolate milks, I realized I had nowhere to sit. Our table—the Kit, Diane, Brett, and (unfortunately) Jeanne Anne table—was now occupied by a group of Band Jocks. I hesitated, looking over the sea of heads for an empty chair next to someone who still liked me. Someone from the same circle of Hell.

  “Brett!” Kit was waving at me from the back of the room, the long table usually filled by girls from our soccer team. Gratefully, I steered myself toward her at a near run.

  That’s when I realized just how much had changed. As I wove through the maze of tables, almost every kid I passed greeted me; and not always in the—shall we say—most pleasant way. There were high fives, some Welcome back, Brett!s and even some guy who shouted out, “McCarthy rocks!” But there were hisses and catcalls too. I heard Loser! more than once, and from one table—I’m convinced it was Darcy’s crowd of starving somersaulters—someone pelted me with a doughy bread ball, which landed on my tray.

  I slid next to Kit, who promptly picked up the bread ball and hurled it, hard and with amazing accuracy, in Darcy’s direction. Kit plays baseball on the boys’ junior high team, so no one tossed it back.

  “That was different,” I said. “Thanks for saving me a seat.”

  “No problem,” she said. “D’you see where Diane is?”

  Instinctively, I turned toward Darcy’s crowd. Sure enough, at a small table near them I picked out the back of Diane’s new sweater, the sun glinting off her perfect licorice hair. She was near the windows, eating lunch with a guy. The guy. Bob Adonis Levesque. And their heads were bent close together in what seemed to be a very friendly conversation.

  “Whoa,” I said, unprepared for the second time that day. “When did that happen?”

  “During your suspension,” Kit replied. “What, she didn’t tell you? I figured you were going to fill me in.” I shrugged.

  “Oh, c’mon!” Kit prodded me with her elbow. “Give it up. Whaddya know?”

  “I’m banned, remember? Her mother won’t let her call me.”

  Kit stared. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You haven’t talked to Diane. All this stuff has come down, and you’ve let a phone ban get in your way? What gives?”

  First Michael, now Kit. Why was everyone so amazed that I didn’t have up-to-the-minute info about Diane Pelletier’s life? Did it ever occur to them that I might have other things to think about?

  “Do not tell me this is about cheerleading,” Kit said.

  “You think it’s cool that she’s gone over to the Dark Side?” I demanded. “You are the most anti-cheerleader person I know! You call them Bulimic Butt Wigglers!”

  Kit looked pensive.

  Pensive: musingly or dreamily thoughtful. Thinking about what I just said.

  “You know,” she finally sighed, “you’re right. I think cheerleading is stupid and I have called Darcy a Bulimic Butt Wiggler. Frankly, she is. But this is Diane. She’s awesome.”

  “People change,” I said. Where had I just heard that? Oh, right. Michael.

  “C’mon, Brett,” said Kit. “If it makes her happy, why should we care? Besides, it was only a matter of time. She’s gorgeous, and she can do handsprings without messing up her hair.”

  Before I could reply, the loudspeaker cut through the noise of the cafeteria.

  “Would Bettina McCarthy please report to Mr. Hare’s office? Bettina McCarthy.”

  Of course. My detention. I was supposed to be dining with the principal.

  There’s a reason why human beings invented nicknames. It’s to make sure that people whose birth certificates say something like…like Hilda or Percival or Bettina can make it through life without being emotionally scarred. For most of my life, “Brett” had saved me from the humiliation of “Bettina.” Now, thanks to the wome
n who worked in the front office, my cover was blown.

  At first no one had any clue who Bettina McCarthy was. But a few geniuses figured it out when they saw me pick up my tray and head for the exit. They started banging on the tables, chanting, “Tina! Tina!” and within seconds the whole room took up the beat. It was a little scary, actually. How I imagine a riot would look in a maximum-security prison. I could see teachers and lunchroom aides glancing around nervously.

  I made for the shortest route to the exit doors, which, unfortunately, led me right past the future homecoming princesses (Darcy’s posse), the romantic darlings of Mescataqua Junior High (Bob and Diane), and a long Guy Table filled with the Smoking Demigods of Cool (Bob’s friends).

  I fixed my eyes on the exit but couldn’t help hearing the hisses and insults from Darcy’s crew. Couldn’t help noticing that Bob and Diane were among the few people in the cafeteria not pounding or yelling, just silently watching me go. Couldn’t help overhearing one Demigod, whose clueless comment just about said it all:

  “Bettina?” I heard him ask. “I thought her name was Josephine.”

  mon•u•men•tal

  The free fall my redefined life had taken might have stopped at that point if I had headed straight to No-Hare’s office. But instead of trotting off to the principal, I made for the lockers, grabbed my backpack, and left the building. This, as it turns out, was a monumentally stupid choice.

  Monumental: massive; outstanding; very great. Incredibly huge.

  Taking off from school without permission is practically a federal crime. We’re talking Office of Homeland Security, Bomb-Sniffing Dogs, and Search and Rescue Helicopters. When a junior high kid disappears, adults go into panic over-drive. Apparently they combed the building, interrogated kids, called my parents, and finally put out an all-points bulletin with the police for a missing eighth-grade girl.

  I was, of course, at the Gnome Home, unaware of the havoc I had caused. Watching soaps and eating the leftover chocolate-raspberry-chip brownies Nonna and I had baked a few days earlier.

  Just as the closing music and credits rolled, signaling the end to that afternoon’s episode of The Young and the Restless, Dad arrived. He pushed the kitchen door open with such force that it banged against the wall and made me jump. If that hadn’t been enough to give me a heart attack, the look on his face sure was. A foreboding combination of rage and panic.