But I don’t turn around. I keep walking. And in the corner of my eye, the very corner of my eye, I spot something dark. Like a person, but just a shadow of a person. And it’s weird because the sun isn’t even out. I stop and turn towards the shadowy person who isn’t even there. All I see are the trees blowing, still blowing, and all I hear are leaves rustling in the wind. And I like it. Not the shadow that I think I saw, which I don’t because it creeps me out, but the sound of the trees. The way the needles on the pines move differently from the leaves on the oaks. And how I never noticed that before.
And then Ally shouts, “Roxie, I’m leaving.” I hear her on the other side of the forest, on the Chatham Lane side.
And then I remember. I slip my hand in my back jean pocket and pull out the orange pumpkin I made with orange construction paper, with cut out eyes, a nose and a mouth with yellow paper pasted behind the cutouts. Her’s is the first invitation I want to give out. On our walk.
I run and yell, “I’m coming!”
And as I run to Ally, I kick my heels a little higher in the air when I feel the eyes of the forest on me. The eyes of something I can’t see. And it creeps me out so bad. Allyson says, “You should run track with me this spring. Besides, if you run track then we can do something together in high school. Only if you promise me that you’ll stop talking about Heart Girl.”
“Here,” I say, shoving the invitation in front of Ally.
“What’s this?” Ally says, holding my homemade jack-o-lantern in front of her. “A party? You’re giving a party? Cool!”
“Yeah. I’m passing out the invites today at school but I wanted you to be the first one I invited because, well, just because.”
Ally smiles and holds the card up to the gray sky. “Thanks. You’re going to be ThirTEEN!”
“On Halloween.”
“What time were you born?” she asks.
“3 AM.”
Ally unzips her backpack and puts the invitation in the front pocket where she puts all her super-special-important stuff. Which feels like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud. I’m warmer than I was a second ago.
“Roxie?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s pretty cool.”
“What?”
“Your invitation. Your first party.” And it’s all about what she doesn’t say. Because I know what she wants to say––I can’t believe your parents, the strictest parents on the planet, are letting you have a party.
“Thanks,” I say, knowing everything is about to change. In a week I’m going to be a teenager. In a week I’m going to have my first party. In a week I’ll be all the things I’ve always wanted to be. Just seven more days, and I’ll be a peacock.
Chapter 2
“So who all’s coming?” Allyson asks every morning on our walk to school.
And every morning I stare at the zero I keep tracing over on my left palm with my blue pen. It gets thicker and thicker every day the peacocks forget to RSVP. I hold out my palm in front of Ally.
She squints a little and says, “What’s that, a doughnut?”
I shake my head and say, “Nobody’s coming. It’ll just be you and me.”
But then the day before the party, one single day before the party a miracle happens. Only once it happens I’m a little nervous about what I’ll have to do to become a peacock. Not that I know what to do, because if I did, I’d already be one. Thinking about what peacocks have to do makes me all wiggly inside.
So I’m drawing all over my paper during Mrs. Ortega’s art class. Making my logo whatchya-ma-call-it. Trying not to draw hearts, but when you try not to draw hearts that’s all you draw, when a wad of paper hits me in the head. Great.
Peacocks don’t get hit in the head with wads of paper. I follow the sound of it hitting the brown-and-white specked linoleum floor and stretch, uncurling my legs out from under me because all my blood is stuck in my toes. And, I see it. The wad. It’s too big for a spit-ball. It’s the size of a note.
It’s right under my seat, or I should say stool. What is it about art? People always sit on stools in art classes. I just really don’t get that at all. They are really uncomfortable and make my thighs look so fat when I let my legs dangle. So I have to keep them crossed all class which pretty much shuts off my blood flow to one leg and makes me have to switch and then there’s no blood flow to the other. I switch-cross my legs through all of Mrs. Ortega’s art classes, except the ones we have outside, when the weather is nice and we get to sit under a tree and sketch what we see. And since I can’t really draw at all it’s agony but at least my blood flows consistently all over my body and art is then, and only then, less excruciating.
I push the wad of paper closer to me with my outstretched leg, the one that has blood flowing through it, so I don’t have to reach too far down to pick it up. So the teacher won’t see me. So I won’t get in trouble. And I wonder if peacocks think about things like that or if it’s just dodos and condors that do, survival dominating the soon-to-be-extinct mind.
I un-wad, or is it de-wad, the piece of paper. And in the crinkles in the faintest pencil, in microscopic printing is the word YES, but no name. I look around the room and Hayden, the boy I’ve had a crush on all year, is all ear-to-ear happy. My dodo brain wonders what the most popular boy in class could want to say YES to. Why he threw a wad of paper at me with that word on it. And then I remember. And I get all warm inside because someone besides Ally is coming to my birthday party. And then I tense up because now I have to figure out a way I can actually have it.
And just when I get that feeling you get right before you hurl, a bunch of wads of paper hit me in the head and shoulders and fall to the floor while the teacher has her back turned. She’s drawing her own logo on the board, no hearts mind you, grownups never just randomly draw hearts, like someone I know.
I bend down trying to stay in my seat while I scoop the notes off the floor, but I tip over and fall to the ground with the worst steely slam an art bench could possibly make on linoleum. It even rings like it wants me to get caught, like it knows I have to grab all the pieces of paper before the teacher turns around. I hate those art stools.
But I grab them all even before Mrs. Ortega turns around to glare at me. The whole class laughs because it’s hilarious. I mean I freaking face-plant and how often do you see somebody face-plant in art? Never. I laugh at myself too, until I see Hayden laughing and then I want to cry. And I almost do. My nose all Rudolf and I feel all wobbly.
I need peacock lessons. I’ll probably never be able to be like them because I’ve got this weird, uncool-gene that keeps making me do the things only dodos do, or should I say did. But I still don’t let that stop me. I close my eyes and turn myself into a puma in my mind. I imagine being just like the puma in the poster above my bed. Determined. Able to slaughter at will. And I want to be like some animal that can’t hardly hear too, because the laughter is tying my stomach in knots. And when everybody finally quiets down it feels like that moment in a forest when birds stop chirping and frogs stop croaking. When they know danger is near. When they know their survival is at stake.
Once Mrs. Ortega is convinced she doesn’t need to call an ambulance and she tells everyone to keep their eyes on their work I un-wad or de-wad each note. They all say yes. Except, none of them sign their name. I check and double-check, so I have to do the math. How many did I invite? How many notes do I have?
But, the bell rings. And the whole class gets off their insanely high stools and shoots out of class and in the craziness that is everyone filing out, as indifferent as lemmings about to end it all, I count the peacocks as they walk out the door. I keep counting until I sit alone in the room with Mrs. Ortega, and there’s a pattern. Peacocks never travel alone. In fact, they always pair up. I am so blown away by the pattern that I want to make that the hypothesis of my science fair exhibit this year––The Peculiar Pairing of Middle School Peacocks.
I count the wads of paper in my hand, eleven. Twelve
with Hayden’s. I smile big until I un-wad the last paper and see that one person signed her name. Yep. You guessed it. She can’t help herself, all hearty, loopy, make-me-sicky Adrianne. No mistaking it. She will be there. She will be at my house tomorrow. I have twelve yeses. Twelve. I can’t believe it.
On our walk down the hallowed halls of Oakdale on our way to our lockers after school, I say, “Ally, I need your help.” I chicken out though when I’m about to tell Ally that my parents don’t know about my birthday party. That they’d never let me have a girl-boy birthday party because they’d never let me have an all-girl birthday party. And because I’m pretty sure, all-girl birthday parties are warm-ups for boy-girl ones, I didn’t even bother asking. When a girl hears NO so many times, she eventually stops. That’s just a fact. And I don’t want to hear NO again. Ever.
And I do want to have a party. Everyone else has them. I’d only gone to Ally’s birthday parties though. Every year. No one else’s. If you don’t have parties then people don’t invite you to them. And I wasn’t going to head into high school as the girl who never had a party. Because I fully intend to go to parties in high school. This is crucial. My party is dire and epic.
“Sure, you need help decorating?” Ally says.
“Ah, no. I mean, yes. I mean I need more help than that.”
“What are you talking about?” Allyson looks at me in that up-and-down way people do when they think you are out of your mind.
“I need your sister to get my brothers out of the house.”
“What for?”
“I need your sister to get my brothers out of the house on my birthday. The night of my party.”
“But my sister hates your brothers.”
“I know, but if she doesn’t get them out of the house, my party isn’t happening.”
“What’s the deal Roxie?”
“Um, I just need you to work on your sister.” I weasel. The less Ally knows about the stats on my parents the better and, right then as I open my mouth to say what it is that I am going to say, and I know this sounds ridiculous, so totally dodo, but it’s like I’m committing bloody murder or something by throwing the party with my parents not knowing, and if Ally knows too she’ll be on death row with me. My brothers love to tattle. They freaking live for it since it’s so rewarded by my parents. It’s like they are raising a bunch of spies. It’s that bad.
Ally’s mom is so cool and her dad is even cooler, I don’t care if cooler isn’t a word, that’s what he is. But my parents are so not. I can’t even say they are the opposite of cool, because that’s hot. And they are so not hot. I know Ally knows that.
So it’s Halloween, the day of my birthday, the day of my party, and everything looks good. After school Ally and I ride over to Fuller’s, the grocery store in town, and I load up on a bunch of candy and pizzas and we get all the Diet Cokes and Red Bull we can fit in the baskets of our bikes. I’ve never tried Red Bull but I hear its freaking Peacock Nectar.
“What about booze?” Ally says standing there, outside of Fullers, next to her bike, chewing on a Red Vine which makes her pink headband that says sweetheart that much sweeter. It’s probably the last year Ally can pull off that look.
“Um, what?” I laugh. I mean we aren’t even allowed to take a sip of our parent’s wine on holidays.
“Your brothers. Right? They could buy, couldn’t they?”
“Are you kidding? I mean yes, if they were the kind of older brothers who looked 21 and were the kind of older brothers who got fake IDs or knew friends that could.”
“Right,” she pulls a big piece of red licorice off of the vine and has trouble chewing it all.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Two hours to party time,” she says. All the church bells in town ring. Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. Mom and Dad are safely in Chicago by now and won’t be home for hours, another award banquet for Dad. He’s a freaking genius like Mom and my brothers. I kind of like all the plaques hanging on Dad’s wall. We have a lot of plaques hanging on walls. It’s the most peacocky thing about us. My walls only have posters of wild animals. Since my puma poster is my favorite it hangs right above my bed. Of course my brothers tease me endlessly about them. The favorite torture of the older brother. I can’t think of one animal in nature who teases. Older brothers are freaks.
And so Ally and I slog our way up Windsor Drive and we pick up her costume on the way and pedal to my house with all the party stuff.
“Sorry,” Allyson says.
“Why are you sorry?”
“My sister flat out said she’d rather be dead than do anything with your brothers,” Ally says panting like the uphills are killing her.
“Oh, gotchya.” I dread, absolutely dread riding up my driveway and walking into the kitchen to the teasing my brothers will unleash when they see all the candy and Red Bull and pizza. I have no idea how I’m going to get rid of my dodo brothers. None.
“I can’t believe I spent all my birthday money on candy and pizza and Red Bull.”
“It’ll be worth it,” Ally says in the way all best friends do when they know you need to hear the right words, the perfect arrangement of words that will keep you from giving up. It will be worth it. That’s what I say over and over in my head as we pedal to my house. And when I don’t see my brother’s car in the driveway I race home.
“Hey, wait up,” Ally says.
“Can you believe it?” I yell. Some of the little kids are already making the rounds with their parents. I type our secret code into the keypad beside the garage door that opens it. It’s one of my favorite things to do. “Hurry,” I tell Ally like we’re in some race. And we are, only she doesn’t know it. A race against time. A race against my brothers.
“What are you doing?” Ally says.
“They’re not home!” I say all Skipper about it. I unlock the garage door that leads to the kitchen and slam my grocery bags down on the kitchen counter. I take out a Red Bull and down it in one gulp. It’s awful. It never stops being awful. My first taste of Peacock Nectar will be my last.
“Where is everybody?”
“Like I care? Let’s hide all this stuff then decorate,” I say.
Ally lays her cute Katy Perry dress over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Katy Perry is perfect for Ally because Ally has that just-out-of-the-shower look without even trying and really great skin, like Snow White. She’s Ally Perry.
“What are you dressing up as?” Ally says.
Now, this is the part that freaking kills me. I don’t know. In two hours all the peacocks of Oakdale Middle School are coming to my house and I have no idea what I’m dressing up as and my face must have showed it because Ally says, “Really? Really?” And I feel like the biggest dodo evah.
“You’re giving a Halloween party and you forgot about your costume?” Ally says.
“I’m an idiot.” Yeah.
“No problem, Ally grabs me by the hand and takes me into my mom and dad’s room.”
“She turns on the closet light and says...WaLa. Pick one.”
My mother’s dresses hang perfectly, arranged according to hem-length. It’s like a freaking Dress Museum in there. Ick. Really? I am such an idiot. I search my brain for something I can be. Something cool. Something a peacock would be. “Let’s go to the attic. I know there’s stuff up there.”
“K,” is all Ally says. The kind of K that sounds a lot like a NO. And I’m worse than a dodo or a condor because this is about survival and I blew-off my basic instinct for the party. My basic reason for the party. To eagle. To chameleon. To become a peacock. Peacocks don’t just become peacocks, there’s planning involved.
The attic is one place I never want to be and yet I want to be there all the time. It’s like that because no matter what the temperature is outside, it’s either a million times warmer or a million times colder in the attic. Come December, the attic freezes your buns off in minutes. Come July, you can’t stay in there for two seconds without pouring sweat. Bu
t October is a pretty good time to find yourself in the attic.
There are two sides to the attic. The part that’s over the garage and the part that’s over me and my brother’s bedrooms. There’s a part in the middle that’s finished. My parents keep saying they want to convert it into the boy’s den. And I am like, really? Where’s my den? But that’s another story.
So Ally and I pour over all Mom’s old clothes, beautiful sparkly clothes, on the garage side of the attic. She never wears sparkly clothes anymore. And it smells in the attic too and you have to be careful where you walk. The pink fluffy stuff, insul-something, is really dangerous and if you step in it, well, I’m not sure what would happen but my dad makes it sound like it could make your leg fall off or something.
13 on Halloween (Shadow Series #1) Page 2