Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus ...

by Kristen Tracy

  “What about math?”

  “We’re dividing stuff,” I said.

  “Do you still play slaughterball in PE?” she asked.

  I nodded. “And the janitor recently reinflated all the balls, so now they’re extra bouncy and hard.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Yeah. Me too,” I said.

  And even though my mother kissed me goodnight and told me to sleep well, I didn’t sleep well that whole night. I flipped and flopped. And every time my mattress didn’t squeak, it made me think of the hole. So I tried to stay very still, as stiff as a bone, so I could fall asleep. But even when I did that, my mind kept moving around.

  Why would my mother say that she wanted my father to leave? Did she really want that? That’s not what I wanted. I wanted my whole family to continue to live in my house with me. And how could my father pack his suitcase and drive away like that? Driving away means giving up. Was that what he wanted to do? Why would my father want to do that?

  Chapter 15

  Symbolism

  In the den, my mother punched the air and released angry grunts. I’d never seen her jab anything with that much force before. She saw me watching her and winked.

  “I packed an extra piece of cheese in your cooler,” she said.

  An extra piece of cheese? Did she think that would fix how I felt? Had she forgotten about the terrible thing that had happened last night? Because I sure hadn’t. In fact, it felt like it was still happening.

  I got ready for school as fast as I could. Because I was trying to free up five spare minutes. I wanted to make an important phone call. I needed to talk to Aunt Stella immediately. Aunt Stella was the only person I could think of on the planet (who didn’t live in Japan) who could make me feel better. When my mom began practicing her “ball work,” I decided that would be the perfect time. But it wasn’t. Because I got Aunt Stella’s voice mail and I had to leave my message at the sound of the beep.

  “Aunt Stella. It’s Camille. Things are very terrible here. Have you ever heard of a pot rack? Mom bought one. And Dad blew up. And now they’re separated. And Dad packed a suitcase with eight pairs of underwear in it. And sometimes he washes those in the sink in his hotel. So he could be gone a lot longer than eight days. He said he’s going away for four weeks. And Mom seems fine about the whole thing. But I’m not. I’m sad. And now I’ve got to go to school.”

  Even with my extra piece of cheese, I was so sad when I went out to catch the bus, I almost forgot I was a dingo. Polly was wearing a pair of checkered green pants that were really cute, and I almost told her that I liked them. But I didn’t.

  “Don’t fall!” Danny yelled as I crossed the road to board the bus.

  “Roadkill McPhee,” Manny hollered.

  I kept my head down. Dingo. Dingo. Dingo.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Polly said. “I like your shirt,” she added.

  I noticed that Polly was wearing a shirt that said I LOVE MY CAT. I thought it was so tacky that it made her pants look less cute. But I didn’t say anything. Polly sat next to me and smiled several times. I focused on looking at my own hands.

  “Hey, is that your mom?” Polly asked, pointing out the window.

  “I think so,” I said.

  I watched my mother’s blue Chevy pass the bus. The bus was higher than the other traffic, so I could see inside her car. She was wearing a long coat over her pink aerobics clothes.

  “She’s in a hurry,” Polly said.

  I shrugged.

  It made me sad to see my mother zoom by me. She was so close to my school that I thought she should have offered to drive me there and drop me off. It was the “Mom thing” to do. Then I got very nervous. Maybe now that my dad had left, my mom was going to stop doing “Mom things.”

  When we got to school, I did my best to get away from Polly and sit down at my desk. But I couldn’t. Because the door to our classroom was shut.

  “Somebody’s mom is in there,” Tony Maboney said.

  I nodded and stood in line behind Lilly.

  “It looks like your mom,” Polly said.

  I stood on my tiptoes and looked through the door’s window. It was my mother in there. She was talking to Mr. Hawk and flapping her arms around. What was she doing? I didn’t know. I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  “She looks wet,” Penny said. “Wait, I think she’s sweating.”

  My eyes got very huge. I didn’t like the idea of my mom sweating next to my teacher in my classroom. She should sweat in the den at home. Or the aerobics room at the gym. And that was it.

  Penny crammed her face right up into the window. “She’s wearing a bandana. And wristbands.”

  Lilly peeked too. “Is your mom an aerobics instructor?” she asked me.

  I nodded. But I felt so terrible that I wished I could have melted into my shoes and become invisible. Just before the bell rang, my mother walked out of my classroom. Her coat fluttered open and I could see her pink top and pink shorts. I closed my eyes. Then I felt her warmth as she leaned toward me and kissed the top of my head.

  “It’s taken care of,” she said.

  When I opened my eyes she was gone. Everybody walked into the classroom. I thought people would tease me and make fun of my mom and her pink clothes. But they didn’t.

  “I think your mom teaches my mom’s favorite class,” Lilly said. “My mom loves it!”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Does you mom teach kickboxing?” Penny asked. “I think my mom takes her class too.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She also does a lot of ball work.”

  And then everybody started taking about how cool kickboxing was. Because it was exercise, but it was also a way to defend yourself if you got mugged. And I acted like I thought it was cool too. Even though I thought sweating was pretty uncool. Then the bell rang, and Mr. Hawk said he had some news for us.

  “When you look up, I’m sure you can see one of my all-time favorite assignments.”

  We all looked up. And I stared at that cricket. And, for the first time, I noticed that it had a very pointy butt. It was a good thing that I was going to get rid of it.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Constructing arthropods.”

  For the first time in a long time, I felt a little bit excited, because this was the assignment I’d been waiting for all year.

  “As some of you may or may not know, modern arthropods include insects, spiders, centipedes, shrimp, and crayfish,” he said.

  I felt my spirits lifting higher and higher. Because I knew that a butterfly was an insect. And so I could build one of those for my arthropod.

  “Traditionally, I ask my students to assemble their arthropods using affordable craft items from home.”

  Which meant I could use blue material, and glitter, and pipe cleaners, and beads, and yarn, and feathers, and sponges, and toothpaste, and anything else I wanted. I licked my lips.

  “But it’s been brought to my attention that some of my assignments have been too similar to what I assigned to my sixth-grade students,” Mr. Hawk said.

  Uh-oh. I wondered if that was why my mother was here.

  “I believe in challenging my classes,” he said. “But based on a recent conversation, I’m beginning to think that the arthropod assignment might be a little too advanced.”

  I lowered my head and looked at the floor.

  “Instead of building arthropods, I’m going to assign a project that’s related to solar power. For the first part of the assignment, I’d like you to all go home today and count how many lightbulbs you have in your house. Any questions?”

  I looked around the room. Was everybody okay with this? I mean, we weren’t going to be building arthropods. That wasn’t fair. Because all year long I’d put up with a hornet dangling above me. And then a cricket. And the reason I did this was because I had hope that there would eventually be a butterfly up there. But now Mr. Hawk was telling me that there was no hope. And that I had to coun
t lightbulbs. I put my head down on my desk.

  “Do porch lights count?” Penny asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Hawk said.

  “Do fish-tank lights count?” Boone Berry asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Hawk said.

  “What about the motion-detector security light that’s attached to my garage?” Nina asked.

  “Absolutely,” Mr. Hawk said.

  “Does the light in the refrigerator count?” Lilly asked. “Because most of the time, it’s not even on.”

  “Yes, the lightbulb in your refrigerator counts,” Mr. Hawk said. “Any lightbulb you find, you should count.”

  I lifted my head up and opened my desk so I could peek inside it. I’d already started collecting stuff to build my butterfly. A blue shoelace. Sparkly paper. Blue sticky tape. Now none of those things mattered. Those things were as useful as garbage. Which didn’t have any use. All garbage was good for was spreading bugs and disease. I closed my desk and tried not to look up at the cricket.

  “All right, Mrs. Zirklezack is having play practice in the gym this afternoon. But she’s dropped off the scripts for us to read through. It’s a very interesting story.”

  I wasn’t very excited to read Nora Saves the World. But I took a copy of the script anyway. Mr. Hawk had everybody take turns reading it aloud. We read about Nora, a bus driver, who realized that if it rained every day, soon all the animals in the zoo would drown. Nobody who ran the factories would listen to her. They all had huge egos and didn’t care about the size of their carbon footprints. Not a single one of them loved the earth. So one day, Nora took her bus and loaded it with hay and provisions and rescued all the animals. Some of them, like the gorillas, didn’t want to come, and she had to trick them onto the bus by tempting them with bananas. In the end, Nora and the whole bus drove to a sunny spot. And they disembarked. And planted an amazing garden. And celebrated never needing another factory. And they lived happily ever after.

  “Pretty good story,” Mr. Hawk said, after we finished reading it.

  “Wait a minute,” Penny said. “There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense.”

  “It’s a story,” Mr. Hawk said. “You’re supposed to suspend your sense of disbelief a little.”

  “But if I’m a sea lion, why do I care if the world floods? I can swim,” Penny said.

  “Good point,” Lilly said. “I’m a dolphin. I shouldn’t be stuck on a bus with hay. I’ll die!”

  “This play feels like it was written for kindergarten kids,” Penny said. “It’s not even believable. I mean, in addition to everything we’ve already pointed out, Nora doesn’t save a single bear.”

  “Yeah!” Tony Maboney said.

  And at that point, we all decided as a class that Mrs. Zirklezack’s play was rotten.

  “We should do Peter Pan again,” Jory said.

  “Yeah!” Tony Maboney yelled. “I want to play Captain Hook!”

  “Stop yelling,” Mr. Hawk said. “Everybody needs to take five deep breaths.”

  I listened to my class suck in air and blow it out. We did this five times. Then I saw Polly raise her hand.

  “I have a problem with the play too,” Polly said.

  “Let’s try to stay positive,” Mr. Hawk said.

  And so Polly never got the chance to say what her problem was.

  After lunch, Mr. Hawk’s class gathered in the auditorium. Because Mrs. Zirklezack had forgotten that I existed, I hadn’t been assigned a role yet. So I just tried to blend in with the students who were animals. It seemed like everyone else had a place to be. During practice, I felt left out, especially when I stood near the zebras. They were pretty snooty. Mrs. Zirklezack explained where everybody was supposed to stand. And she put masking tape on the floor so that we wouldn’t forget our spots.

  “You’re all doing such a good job!” she cheered. It took over an hour, but we went through the whole entire play.

  “Does anybody have any questions?” Mrs. Zirklezack asked.

  “Yeah,” Penny said. “Why are the sea lions and dolphins being forced onto a bus?”

  I looked at Mrs. Zirklezack to see what her reaction would be.

  “It’s symbolic,” she said.

  “But they’d die,” Penny said. “I thought this play was about saving things.”

  “Again, it’s symbolic,” Mrs. Zirklezack said.

  Penny shook her head. She looked pretty mad about being a sea lion. And Lilly looked pretty disappointed about being a dolphin, too.

  “I’d prefer to swim alongside the bus,” Lilly said.

  “Oh no,” Mrs. Zirklezack said. “In the final scene, all the animals disembark from the bus together. It’s a very important moment.”

  Penny rolled her eyes.

  “Any other questions?” Mrs. Zirklezack asked.

  Polly raised her hand. This surprised me. Because she usually didn’t raise her hand except when she had to go to the bathroom.

  “Camille doesn’t have a part. She hasn’t been assigned anything,” Polly said.

  Mrs. Zirklezack studied her clipboard. “What’s your last name, Camille?”

  Everybody looked at me and I began breathing very quickly.

  “McPhee,” I said.

  “Camille McPhee,” Mrs. Zirklezack said. “Well, this is a problem.”

  I didn’t like being thought of as a problem.

  “But every problem has a solution. I’ll figure something out,” Mrs. Zirklezack said. “Now, everybody go back to class.”

  We walked back to class in a big clump, our shoes squeaking across the gymnasium floor. Penny and Lilly wouldn’t stop talking about how much they hated their parts.

  “I’ll look like a joke,” Penny said. “Everybody is going to laugh at me.”

  “Me too,” Lilly said. “It’s not fair.”

  And when Penny said that, I almost jumped right into her conversation and said, “That’s right. Life isn’t fair.” But I didn’t do that. I just kept walking. In the end, I didn’t think being a symbolic sea lion or dolphin was as bad as they made it sound. At least they both had parts.

  Chapter 16

  Talk it Out

  When I got home, I didn’t even look for my mother. I grabbed the phone and tried to call Aunt Stella. I dialed her number so fast that I accidentally called a dry cleaner.

  “Sorry!” I said.

  Next time, I dialed more carefully.

  “Camille, I got your message,” Aunt Stella said.

  “Isn’t it the worst news ever?” I asked.

  “It’s pretty bad,” she said.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Dad can’t stay gone for four weeks. He can’t!”

  There was a little bit of silence.

  “Aunt Stella?” I asked.

  “Camille, I’m going to tell you something and it’s not pretty,” Aunt Stella said.

  “I’m ready,” I said. But that was a lie. I was not ready to hear anything ugly.

  “These are your parents’ problems. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do,” Aunt Stella said.

  I started to cry.

  “I wish I could fix this,” Aunt Stella said.

  “It’s because we’re in the hole,” I said.

  “Well, that’s part of it,” Aunt Stella said. “But sometimes married people hit rocky times.”

  “I know. I know,” I said. “They have ups and downs.”

  “That’s very perceptive,” Aunt Stella said. “Camille, I love you so much. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

  But I couldn’t think of anything.

  “I just like talking to you,” I said.

  “You can call me any time,” Aunt Stella said.

  “You’re not worried about our phone bill?” I asked.

  “I’m more concerned about you,” she said.

  And I thought that was one of the nicest things anybody had ever told me.

  “What’s going on at school?” she asked.

  And I d
idn’t even know how to start to answer that question. Because way too many things were going on at school. So I just said the first thing that popped into my mind.

  “I miss my friend Sally,” I said.

  “The girl who moved to Japan?” Aunt Stella asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Well, parents tend to move most when their kids are still in grade school. But once they start junior high, it’s usually a different story,” Aunt Stella said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “In my experience, parents tend to move around more when their kids are younger. Once they get into the upper-grade levels, it’s more likely they’ll stay put,” Aunt Stella said.

  “How come I’ve never heard this?” I asked. Nobody had ever mentioned that rule before. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to make friends until I was in junior high. This was useful information. Because I didn’t know whether or not I was prepared to be a dingo for that long.

  “I’m sorry you miss Sally,” Aunt Stella said.

  “Moving ruins everything,” I said.

  “You’ll make other friends, Camille. You’re very charming!” Aunt Stella said.

  But I didn’t even care if people found me charming or not. Because if my friends might move at any moment, I decided it was better to wait until they were in junior high and would stay put before I became friends with them.

  “I better go,” I said. “We’ve been talking for a lot of minutes.”

  “Camille, I’m going to call you tomorrow. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you still there, Camille?” Aunt Stella asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  After I hung up the phone, I went in search of jelly beans. Because those things always made me feel better—for about five minutes. And then I began to feel worse. After I’d shoved quite a few into my mouth, my mother came into my room.

  “What are you eating?” she asked.

  And I knew that I wasn’t supposed to eat jelly beans, so I didn’t exactly say that I was eating them.

  “Fruit flavors,” I said.

  “What do you mean, you’re eating fruit flavors?” my mother asked.

  “I’m eating the flavors cherry and lime and blueberry and piña colada,” I said. Then I wished I hadn’t said that last flavor.