Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus ...

by Kristen Tracy

  My mother walked in front of the wall and knocked on it.

  “Do you hear that, Camille? I’m all boxed in.” She kept thumping on the wall with her fists. “This kitchen is too small. It’s like a cage.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said.

  “Yes, it is. And I’m a bird!” she yelled. “And I’m trapped.”

  My mother began to flap her arms, pretending they were wings. She flapped them very hard and ran into the living room.

  “But once the wall comes down, I’ll be free!” she yelled.

  “You’re a mammal, not a bird,” I said.

  But she didn’t hear me. She began to punch and kick the air. This made no sense. I’d never seen a bird that could kickbox.

  This was very, very bad. I looked at Jimmy. And his saw. I couldn’t let it happen. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was standing on top of the kitchen table and protesting.

  “I love that wall. And my father loves that wall.” I balled one hand up into a fist and pumped it over my head. “You’ll have to saw through me to knock it down.” I jumped into the air and yelled, “Save the wall!”

  “Camille McPhee, get off the table,” my mother said.

  But I didn’t get down, even though I felt very alone up there. I jumped and yelled again.

  This time when I went up, my head hit the kitchen chandelier. And this time when I came down, my foot landed on a roll of masking tape. I shuffled my feet to catch my balance, but somehow I wound up on the sheets of plastic.

  Both my mother’s and Jimmy’s mouths looked like perfect Os, full of surprise, as I toppled off the table and crashed to the floor. Ouch.

  My mother hooked her hands under my armpits to lift me up. As she brought me to my feet, her biceps grew round and hard, like stones.

  “Eventually, your father will forget the wall was ever there,” she said.

  This made no sense to me. Walls were big. And this one was an important part of our house. How could a person think another person would forget a wall?

  “No, he won’t,” I said.

  “Sure he will,” she said.

  “He will not!” I said. And a little bit of spit flew out of my mouth and hit Jimmy on the chin. It was rare that I got this foaming mad.

  “Oh, Camille,” Jimmy said, ignoring my spit mark, “sooner or later, we forget most things. It’s part of being human.”

  This scared me a little bit. Because in addition to being a mammal, I was also a human. So this meant they were talking about me, too. I looked at my mother. She folded her arms across her chest.

  “He’s right. It takes about a year,” she said. “A person can adjust to anything in a year.”

  “There have been studies,” Jimmy said.

  And rather than argue, I sort of believed them. Because I was always hearing about important studies on CNN. Plus, I started thinking about stuff from a year ago, and I couldn’t remember all sorts of things. Like what flavor toothpaste I liked best at the time. Or important facts about Jupiter that I’d been taught in science. Or how I felt about pineapple served with cottage cheese. I’d had some the week before and I really liked it, but how had I felt about that combination a year ago? I couldn’t remember.

  That’s when I was hit by a supersad thought. Sally was already starting to forget me, because she hadn’t written. Or sent me my kimono. She’d been gone six months—half a year. As unfair as this sounded, it meant that I was halfway forgotten. “A year?” I asked.

  Both Jimmy and my mother nodded. I looked at the doomed wall. It held all three of our shadows. I waved goodbye to it. And my shadow waved back.

  “My mind is made up,” my mother said. “The wall is history.”

  But something inside of me could not accept this. Because when I looked at that wall, I thought of something. We had taken a bunch of pictures in front of this wall. And we had saved them in my scrapbook. And even if my dad did forget about the wall, he’d remember it all over again when he saw those pictures. The only solution would be to burn my scrapbook. And I liked my scrapbook. So that meant I had to save the wall. “Save the wall!” I yelled again, jumping to my feet. My head felt very fuzzy, but that didn’t stop me. I grabbed Jimmy’s electric saw and darted outside. It was freezing, and I didn’t have on my coat, but sometimes being a rebel means that you have to suffer.

  If my father came back from Seattle and that wall was gone, he would freak out. All year long. It would be so awful that a blood vessel might pop in his brain. Or maybe he’d have a heart attack. And if something happened to him, even though I’m human, I didn’t think I’d be able to forget about him in a year.

  No. I could tell by how sad Polly looked standing in the bus line that she hadn’t forgotten her father. She looked like she wished he was still around. But that’s not how life works. After somebody dies, that person doesn’t get to be around anymore. Ever.

  Chapter 5

  Purpled

  After I ran outside, I wasn’t sure what to do. So I threw the saw into a snowbank. Then I covered it with a bunch more snow. And the broken bough of a pine tree. And even more snow. I hadn’t realized this about myself, but I was pretty good at hiding power tools. I ran back inside and slammed the door so fast that my movie-star hair slapped me right in the face. A clump of it swung into my mouth and got stuck there and I spit it out. Then I presented my two empty hands. I thought taking the saw would slow my mother down. But I should have known better.

  “Camille, it doesn’t matter if you hide Jimmy’s saw. The world is big. There’ll always be another saw.”

  My mother walked outside. When she came back, she was holding the saw and shaking the slush off it. I guess I wasn’t as good at hiding power tools as I thought. She set the saw down and frowned at me. That’s when Jimmy pulled out a tool called a stud finder. He placed it flat against the wall and dragged it across the surface. Then he grunted.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” my mother said.

  “Maxine, I’m having second thoughts about this wall,” he said.

  I rubbed my hands together. I hoped Jimmy’s second thoughts about the wall were a lot like my first thoughts.

  “My vision is changing,” he said.

  My mother gasped.

  “Well, if you’re losing your vision, maybe you should see an eye doctor,” I said. “And stay away from our wall,” I added.

  “The cost,” he said. “The damage. Why don’t you paint it your favorite color and turn it into a meditation wall?”

  My mother didn’t look too thrilled. But I did. I was starting to like Jimmy a lot more than I had five minutes earlier.

  A meditation wall didn’t sound bad at all. I smiled. I felt that with Jimmy’s help, I’d saved what I needed to save.

  Because my mother didn’t want to leave me home alone, Jimmy went to the store and brought back her number-one paint choice. I didn’t ask what color it was. I wanted to wake up in the morning and be surprised. After a dinner of chicken noodle soup and wheat crackers, I went to bed. In my dreams, I could hear the swish of a paint roller.

  That night, I dreamed about Sally. She rode a purple bicycle all over Japan without me. She steered dangerously close to the ocean, but she never fell in. I kept yelling her name, but she couldn’t hear me, because I was living in Idaho. Then she stopped her bike and yelled at a low-flying bird, “Why don’t you call me, Camille? Seriously. I know you’ve been banned from making long-distance calls, but why don’t you buy an international calling card or something!”

  When I woke up, I was surprised that a fourth grader could have such a meaningful dream. Or that Sally knew I’d been banned from making long-distance calls. Or that she would yell at a bird like that. But she did. Suddenly, I knew what I needed to do to make Sally stop forgetting me. I needed to call her. Also, I could remind her to send me that kimono. Because maybe she’d forgotten what size I was.

  Figuring this out made starting my day feel very good. Because I had a plan. I would dig through our s
ofa cushions and look for loose change. And after that, I would babysit the Bratbergs. And maybe I’d even ask to be paid in quarters, so I could jingle and feel rich all the way home. I left my room that morning anxious to see what color my mom had painted the meditation wall.

  Uh-oh. I walked through the house with my mouth wide open. I couldn’t believe it. For some reason, in addition to the meditation wall, my mom had decided to paint every inch of our house purple. Even the baseboards and the light switches. Wow. This wasn’t good. I knew my father would explode. But there wasn’t much I could do about that now. So I ate a banana and decided to get to work.

  A sofa can be very deep. I reached in all the way up to my shoulder. I looked underneath it with a flashlight, too. But I only found ninety cents. And a dirty sock. And a receipt from Taco Bell. But I also found something that made me sad: a toy mouse. I wasn’t sure which cat it had belonged to, but since Muffin and Fluff were buried in my backyard, I decided to believe it was Checkers’s toy mouse. I also decided to go outside and try to find Checkers again. Because when it came to finding her, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with being hopeful.

  My mother didn’t even notice me leaving. I went outside in my coat and walked around to the backyard. I didn’t call out to Checkers, because even when I owned her, she’d never come to me when I did that. I tried to sneak up on places where I thought she might hide. Like bushes. And snowdrifts. And Mr. Lively’s woodpile. I figured that after living on her own for this long, she had probably become a very wild cat. Because Checkers had to make it on her own out here. And this was a wild place. There was a lot of dangerous stuff like cars. And raccoons. And spiders. And blizzards. And rusty nails. Also, there was no cat food.

  “What are you looking for, Camille?”

  I couldn’t believe it. It was Polly. And she was wearing really cute jeans and a puffy green coat and pretty pink boots and standing right on my property.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Because what I was doing was none of her business. And if I’d told her the truth, that I was looking for my cat, she might have thought that I was too poor to afford a new cat. And that was not the problem. The problem was that sometimes I was an unlucky mammal who happened to own other unlucky mammals as pets.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Polly asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “That’s good. It was very slippery out yesterday,” Polly said.

  I didn’t say anything. I thought it was pretty rude to bring that up. Because I hadn’t been thinking about falling underneath my school bus in front of all those laughers. I’d been thinking about something important. My poor cat Checkers.

  “Do you want to build a snow fort?” Polly asked.

  I did not say anything. I walked away. Because I was not in the mood to deal with Polly Clausen. If I was really going to be a dingo, I needed to learn how to walk away from a lot of people. And, if I came across them, other dingoes. I marched right over to a back corner of my yard and sat down and began admiring myself. Polly watched me for a little bit, but then she turned around and walked across Mr. Lively’s yard back to her own property. Which was the right thing to do. Because coming over to my house wearing her cute jeans and puffy green coat and pretty pink boots and asking me to build a snow fort with her was the sort of thing that would wreck my dingo strategy.

  Because dingoes didn’t care about people or fashion. Dingoes went around naked. And dingoes didn’t build snow forts, either. It was like Polly didn’t even know what a dingo was or something. So I sat there in the corner until my butt got cold. Then I went inside to pack my cooler so I could help out Mrs. Bratberg.

  Flat on her back in the living room, my mother stared up at the purple ceiling.

  “Isn’t it fabulous?” she asked.

  “It is very noticeable,” I said.

  “Yeah. It really pops,” she said.

  And I thought that was a good word to use, because I knew that my dad’s head was going to pop right off when he got back from Seattle and saw our purple house.

  “I’m going to be a mother’s helper for the Bratbergs,” I said.

  “Good luck,” my mother said. “And let’s not tell your father.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Do you have your cooler?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And don’t let them put their turtle in the refrigerator this time. That’s cruel,” my mother said.

  “I know. I won’t.”

  Last time, they’d stuck that fellow in the crisper drawer to play a trick on me. I went in there looking for carrots. It was not a pleasant surprise.

  “Camille,” she said. Her voice sounded goofy. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I bought something,” she said.

  “Is it a goat?” I asked.

  Because I’d always secretly hoped to be a goat owner.

  “Better,” she said.

  But I couldn’t think of anything better than a goat. So I didn’t guess again.

  “Carpet!” She rolled over onto her stomach and slapped the floor. “For your room, too. They’re laying it first thing Monday. Finally, the whole house will match.”

  I was both happy and sad. I was happy because my mother was excited. But I was sad because I knew that my father was going to see all this new stuff and be so worried about going back in the hole that he’d blow up. It would have been a different story if she’d won the new carpet. But she hadn’t.

  While blowing up, my dad loved to yell, “Don’t try to manipulate me, Maxine.”

  And my mother’s favorite line to yell back was “If you wanted a tightwad, you should’ve married a tightwad.”

  Before Sally moved, I spent the night at her house a few times and her parents never yelled at each other. They played chess. We didn’t have that game. We had Monopoly and Sorry and Twister and Battleship. And I have found that those games encourage yelling. (And cheating.)

  As I walked over to the Bratbergs’, it was nice to get away from all those paint fumes. While helping Mrs. Bratberg, I always stayed very alert, and I never acted like a dingo. That would’ve been a mistake. I took a deep breath and rang their doorbell. Mrs. Bratberg opened the door and then smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand.

  “Camille, I forgot to call you. We don’t need you today. My mother’s here. She’s going to help me.” “Okay,” I said.

  “Here’s a quarter for coming over,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  I took her quarter. She shut the door. Then I picked up a little rock so I could put it in my pocket and make my quarter jingle. It was not my favorite way to jingle, but it worked. Walking home, I heard a ton of screaming coming from the Bratbergs’ house.

  “Do not put your underwear in the microwave!” “You cannot use glue in that manner!” “Get your grandma out of that plastic bag!” I guess I was happy that I wasn’t at the Bratbergs’. I felt tired. I probably didn’t have the energy needed to properly look after those three. Walking home, jingling my rock and quarter, I thought about where I might find more loose change. Maybe inside the clothes hamper. Or in my parents’ pants pockets.

  Shake. Shake. Shake. On the outside, my house looked very normal. But I knew that wasn’t the truth. I knew that last night my mother had purpled our house. As I pulled open the back door and saw those walls again, I hoped that maybe secretly my dad loved the color purple. Maybe the reason he never wore purple or mentioned purple or bought anything purple wasn’t related to the fact that he probably hated purple. Maybe he’d step inside our house and yell, “I love this, Maxine! Who cares about whether or not we’re back in the hole. Let’s buy a pizza and celebrate!”

  Chapter 6

  Homework Blues

  Sunday, after lunch, my mother set my schoolbooks and a stack of papers down in front of me. I blinked at them several times.

  “It should only take an hour,” she said, patting me on the head.<
br />
  “If I can do all my homework in an hour at the kitchen table, why do I have to spend all day at school?” I asked.

  And for a second, I thought maybe I could convince my mother to let me miss school for a few months and sit and learn at the kitchen table instead.

  “Camille, you’re not going to drop out of the fourth grade,” my mother said. “Life has ups. And life has downs.” She traced her pointer finger through the air like it was climbing a series of mountains. Then I watched her finger drop to her side.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Do you want a piece of cheese?” she asked.

  My mother thought cheese was good for me because it had protein in it. And protein was supposed to be good for keeping blood sugar levels stable.

  I nodded. Then I opened up my social studies book. I didn’t read the chapter first. I skipped to the end of it and read the questions to see what I was expected to learn. My mother handed me a mozzarella stick.

  “What’s your chapter about?” she asked.

  “Laws,” I said.

  My mother wrinkled her forehead.

  “For social studies? Last we talked you were making a map of the Oregon Trail,” she said.

  “That was October,” I said. “I don’t even have that map anymore. It got recycled.”

  “Wow,” my mom said, wrinkling her forehead even more. “I’ve been so buried in learning my aerobics routines that I haven’t kept up with your curriculum.”

  I had never heard my mother use the word curriculum before, but I agreed that she’d been buried in aerobics.

  “What are you learning about laws?” she asked.

  “I’m supposed to explain their benefits,” I said.

  “Really?” my mother asked. “In fourth grade? That sounds advanced.”

  And for one second, I got very excited, because I thought maybe I could convince my mother to let me learn at the kitchen table after all.

  “Yes,” I said. “Mr. Hawk is very advanced. He used to teach sixth grade. It’s all he knows. This is his first year teaching fourth grade. Last month, for social studies, we studied the Vikings, and I had to know about their activities and personalities. Plus, I also had to learn about the Viking warriors, and that meant reading about their armor, weapons, and battle strategies.”