“I don’t want you to set foot on that stage!” Mrs. Zirklezack said. “This is a disaster already.”
Lightning and thunder continued to flash and crack.
“This is your fault!” my mother said, pointing to my father.
“No, it’s your fault!” my father said.
Then my mother let loose a huge list of all the things my father had ever done wrong. He was an emotional firecracker. And a tightwad. And last year he bought her a vacuum cleaner for Mother’s Day. And once he dropped a jar of applesauce in the grocery store and walked away and didn’t tell anyone. “It’s just like you to leave things in a mess!”
And my father had a list of everything my mother had done wrong. She’d bounced more than twenty-three checks since they’d been married. She’d forgotten to bring her passport with her on their honeymoon and they missed their flight to Brazil. She’d driven on a flat tire all day and ruined it. And once she hadn’t properly cooked a chicken and they both got food poisoning.
Finally, Mrs. Zirklezack couldn’t take it anymore.
“This whole family suffers from an impulse-control disorder.” She threw her hands up in the air.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” my mother asked. “Camille was only improvising. It’s the mark of a true genius.”
“Yeah!” my father said.
I guess it was okay for Mrs. Zirklezack to insult them, but not me.
“I said no improvisation!” Mrs. Zirklezack roared. She grimaced at me and revealed her yellow, fanglike teeth. “None! You have betrayed the director and your fellow cast members. Such antics are an offense against the theater!”
I was feeling so light-headed. I felt wobbly and fuzzy and then I tipped over. At first, I thought my father had caught me, but then I felt the gymnasium floor squashing my face. I’m not usually a proud person, but I did feel a little ashamed about tipping over in public right after both of my parents had declared that I was a genius. I wondered if anybody else saw. It wasn’t as bad as what had happened with Gracie. She went down in front of everybody. And I was kind of off to the side.
I felt my father scoop me up from the floor. As he carried me out to his truck, I could hear Mrs. Zirklezack insisting that the show must go on.
“For the theater!” she pleaded. Her voice echoed in my ears as I wrapped my arms around my father’s neck.
“Did people see me fall down?” I asked.
“Probably not,” my father said. “It was dark.”
I hoped that was the truth.
“Are you putting her in your car?” my mother asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“But I wanted to take Camille out and celebrate,” she said.
“She just passed out!” he said.
“But I promised,” my mother said.
He released a big, unpleasant sigh.
“Hey, Mom and Dad,” I said. “I think I need a piece of cheese.”
They both looked down at me as I clicked the seat belt across my lap. Their eyes were filled with softness and worry.
“Where’s your cooler?” my father asked.
“Inside,” I said. “I couldn’t stand on a bucket and hold my cooler and make taunting body actions all at the same time.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” my mother said.
“Should we get it?” my father asked.
“No. It’s empty,” I said. “I made sure to eat everything before the play.”
“I don’t have any cheese with me, Camille,” my mother said. “We’ll have to go to the store.”
“One second,” my father said. “Your mother and I need to talk about something. Eat this. It has a lot of protein.”
My father opened up his glove box and pulled out a piece of beef jerky. He tore it out of its plastic wrapper and handed it to me.
“Mmm. It’s salty,” I said. “And very chewy.”
I watched my mom and dad walk a few feet away. I thought they were going to turn into wolverines again. I kept hoping that one of them would leave, but deep down I knew that a wolverine never retreats. I knew they fought till the end. So right there in the Rocky Mountain Elementary School parking lot, I waited for my parents to attack each other.
I’m not an overly dramatic person, but the next thing that happened was a complete miracle. Instead of hearing the sound of yelling, I heard the sound of a parakeet. And a hammer. Wait. No, I didn’t. I heard the song of the red-bellied woodpecker. Then I heard Aunt Stella’s voice. I looked out the window. My mother had answered her cell phone and put Aunt Stella on speaker phone. But things got even better! Mrs. Moses walked over and she began talking to my mother and my father and, I guess, Aunt Stella. They were nodding and talking. And nobody was yelling. At one point my mother reached over and rubbed my father’s shoulder. Then my father stretched his arm out and hugged my mom. Finally, something fair was happening. They didn’t look like wolverines anymore. They looked like my parents! And then I realized something very important. Not only did my parents love me, but they also still loved each other.
I swung open the pickup door and ran to them. But I tripped on a stick and fell right on my face. Dry grass and small pieces of gravel stuck to my smooshed makeup. I must have looked like a very pathetic cat. My parents walked over and helped me up. Mrs. Moses came too.
“Are you okay?” they all asked.
But instead of answering them, I cried out, “It’s a miracle!” Then I tipped over again. I fell over another stupid stick.
Chapter 33
Mediation
After everybody helped me up again, Mrs. Moses asked if she could have a word with me in private. I wasn’t thrilled about this, because I was afraid she’d bring up what had happened in the play I was worried that I might get suspended. I bet this was how the Bratberg kids felt all of the time.
“Camille, life can be challenging.” We stood beneath a tree. The breeze blew lightly through our hair. I could see my mother and father waiting for me in the parking lot.
“I agree,” I said. “I feel like I’m always being hit with challenges.”
“Yes, I bet you do,” she said. “I had a talk with your parents. It looks like they’ll be attending a seminar.”
“That’s fantastic!” I yelled. “They’ve needed mediation for a while. You’d be great.”
“No,” she interrupted. “It’s a financial seminar. Your aunt Stella suggested it, and I encouraged the idea.”
“That’s perfect. Our Visa bill is huge. We’ve been in the hole for months!”
Mrs. Moses shook her head.
“Camille, I don’t know how things are going to turn out. No one does,” she said. “I just want you to know that you can always come and talk to me. I see this a lot.” While she spoke, she put her hand on my shoulder and softly squeezed it. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re in this alone. You’re not. And I don’t want you to feel like you’re in the middle. These are your parents’ problems, not yours.” The sun was behind Mrs. Moses’s head. Her poofy blond hair held its light. She looked like an angel. Except she didn’t have any wings. In fact, her arms were very skinny. Her legs too. Mrs. Moses was one of the few people I’d met in my life who I thought should eat more.
Mrs. Moses pulled me closer to her and gave me a hug. Some of my makeup stuck to her pale yellow skirt and I felt a little bit bad about that.
“Don’t worry about it. I own spot remover,” she said. “By the way, it looks like someone else wants to talk to you.”
When I turned around, I saw a very worried-looking, feathery-headed Polly.
“I just wanted to make sure that you were okay,” she said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be inside?” I asked.
“Once we disembark from the bus, we can pretty much do what we want until we harvest the garden.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I like what you did. It was nice seeing you stand up for the cats.”
“Yeah.”
After she said the wor
d cats, I could tell that we were both thinking about Checkers. Polly stood there and waited for a little bit. But I didn’t say anything else. And she didn’t say anything else. It was pretty awkward. Then she turned around and ran back toward the gymnasium. I knew that I should call after her.
Even though I didn’t think it could happen, Polly Clausen had become my very good friend. But she had my cat. It wasn’t fair. And as bad as I felt about her father dying, I still felt like she should give Checkers back to me. It was a horrible situation. And I didn’t want to tell Mrs. Moses about it because I was afraid that she’d make the same suggestion that she gave to me and Penny about the rock and offer to cut Checkers in half for us. I didn’t want that to happen, but I had to do something. So I picked up that stupid stick and threw it at Polly.
“Camille,” Mrs. Moses said.
“I’m just trying to slow her down,” I said, smiling. The stick bounced off Polly’s shoe and she stopped.
“I miss Checkers,” I said, running up to her.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Polly said, taking tiny bites of her bottom lip. “My grandma has a time-share in Florida. She gets it part of the time, and other people get it part of the time.”
I thought that sending Checkers to live in Florida with Polly’s grandma was a lousy idea.
“Maybe we could time-share Orca,” she said. “I could have her part of the time and you could have her part of the time.”
“I want to call her Checkers,” I said. “Orca isn’t her name.”
“Why don’t you call her Checkers,” she said, “and I’ll call her Orca.” She was grinning so wide that I could see her upper gums. Usually this sort of thing would gross me out. But her gums looked healthy and pink and didn’t bother me at all.
Looking at Polly and her healthy gums, I wanted to agree. But I was worried that Checkers might develop a multiple-personality disorder. People on my mom’s daytime talk shows were always developing them.
“Okay,” I finally said. “That sounds fair.” Polly gave me a hug. I turned to run off, but I tripped over another stupid stick! I couldn’t believe it. It was like I was living in a land of tripping sticks.
“Shoot,” I said. “I can’t believe I fell down again.”
“Gracie’s fall was much worse,” Polly said. “She’s still in there moaning.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t even talking about that one.” I stood up and brushed grass off my unitard. (Black is a terrible color to wear if you fall down a lot, because it shows everything.) Then I picked up one of those tripping sticks and I was going to throw it, but instead I just held it. “Sometimes, I feel like there’s something really wrong with me.”
Polly took the stick out of my hands.
“I don’t think anything is really wrong with you,” she said.
“But I always fall down,” I said.
“And you always get back up. That’s what I like about you. You’re never on the ground for more than a minute.”
Suddenly, I felt a little bit better.
“That’s true,” I said. “I always get back up. And a lot of the time, unless I’ve suffered a contusion, I’m on the ground for a lot less than a minute.”
“You’re right,” Polly said.
I smiled at her. She waved goodbye and I ran toward my parents in the parking lot. I was ready to feel happy. But then I saw my father pop the hood of his pickup. This was bad. Car problems made him blow up.
I frowned. Five minutes earlier, I had experienced a really good miracle. Now, I had to face more problems. Like commercials that I didn’t want to see, they just kept coming.
Chapter 34
The Awful Truth
Luckily, my dad didn’t blow up. He’d forgotten to turn his lights off and he’d run down his battery.
“Why don’t I drive us all home and we can take care of this tomorrow?” my mother said.
My dad agreed and we all piled into her Chevy. I thought they were already making progress, because they didn’t fight over who would drive. Normally, I liked to sit behind my mom, because she left me more legroom. My dad liked to have his seat rolled back pretty far and he reclined it so much that it looked like he was in a dentist chair.
When I got into the backseat, I thought they might think I was picking sides, so I sat exactly in the middle. I dug deep into the seat crack to find the seat-belt buckle. I also discovered a bendy French fry and a raisin. Not a lot of people sat in the middle. And I think the reason not a lot of people sat in the middle was because there was an uncomfortable hump. I decided to endure the hump. Home was only twenty minutes away.
I think that when you’re uncomfortable, it’s easier to make confessions. Because all of a sudden, for no real reason at all, I started to spill the beans about everything. I told my parents about falling underneath the bus, pretending to be a dingo, calling 911, almost kicking Officer Peacock, sitting underneath the hornet, Tony Maboney poking me, digging up Muffin with Nina, my international calling card, hating Japan, and killing the resurrected fish. I also told them about all the evil things I wanted to do to Tony and I asked them if they knew where to buy fish guts. Then I told them that I’d found Checkers.
“I wasn’t going to bring this up, Mom. I was going to try to move on. But I can’t. I’m stuck. I loved Checkers. How could you give her away?”
My mother almost swerved off the road.
“I didn’t give your cat away,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“Camille, I need to tell you something,” my father said. He reached into the backseat and put his hand on my knee. “It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. But I knew that we could get you another cat. Polly had become very attached to Checkers, and her father had died so recently. The cat was a special link between them. Life isn’t fair, Camille. It’s just not, and so I gave Polly your cat.”
“You lied to me?” I asked.
I knew that I lied to my father, but I had no idea he lied back.
“And you lied to me?” my mother asked.
Then it was sort of quiet. And all three of us just sat there for a minute and thought about what enormous liars we’d been this year. Then my mother broke the silence.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “We gave that cat a funeral. We bought two more cats to replace that cat. It’s like we’re playing God with cats! Talk about bad kismet!”
And even though I should have been very mad, in the spirit of forgiveness and giving everything, including doomed cats, second chances, I decided to let this go. It seemed like the fair thing to do.
“Luckily, Polly and I have worked out a cat time-share,” I said.
I could only see the back of their heads, but I was sure that both of my parents were smiling. Then I told them about how Polly and I worked this out on our own, and didn’t even need Mrs. Moses’s help. I told them about the pink rock and my fear that Mrs. Moses would want to cut Checkers in half.
“That Mrs. Moses is one smart cookie,” my mother said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m aware of that.”
“So why do you hate Japan?” asked my father.
Thinking about Sally and Japan and my international calling card with only three minutes left made me so mad I almost kicked the back of my dad’s seat.
“It’s not good to hate another country,” said my mother.
“I hate Japan because Sally moved there and she never wrote me or sent me my kimono.”
“Camille,” my mother said, “I just got three letters today. She put the wrong zip code on them. They’ve been in postal limbo.”
I didn’t know where postal limbo was, but I thought it was rotten that they kept mail that didn’t belong to them. My father reached into my mother’s purse and handed me the letters. They were in baby blue envelopes and had funny-looking stamps on them. Sally had dotted my name with a heart over the i in Camille. This made me very happy.
As we drove home, I peeked at one of the letters and saw
that Sally had written down her e-mail address. I didn’t know she had one of those. I guess her parents changed their rules about computers. This was a thrilling development. I held my letters and took several deep breaths. Reading in cars made me feel like puking. I decided to stop peeking and read the letters when I got home. I didn’t think Sally had stuffed a kimono in one of them, but maybe she’d sent me a coupon or something.
It had been a long day.
“Let’s pull over here,” my mother said, turning into a parking lot by a grocery store we’d never been to before.
“Why?” my father asked.
“They make great pepperoni pizza,” my mother said, reaching over and touching his knee.
“Pepperoni pizza,” I said, closing my eyes and smiling.
“Look,” my father said. “Right next door. There’s Dan’s Fish Shack. I bet they have fish guts.”
I opened my eyes. In front of me, a giant plaster slice of pizza stood on top of a small white building. Next to it, a large green fish attached to a metal pole swam in the air. I tucked my hair back behind my ears and giggled.
“Fish guts,” I said.
My mom turned off the car and we opened our doors. The air outside smelled just like a pepperoni pizza. I took a deep breath. That’s when I caught a whiff of the fish guts. But that’s life. Sometimes you get pizza. Sometimes you get fish guts. Sometimes you get both at the same time. I stepped out of the car and smiled. A cloud moved over the sun, darkening the day. But I didn’t care. My mother took one hand and my father took the other. And at last the world felt a little more fair.
A Little Bit About the Author…
Kristen Tracy grew up in a small town in Idaho, where she could see the Grand Tetons from her house (though it wasn’t a very good view). She’s lived in many places since then, including Los Angeles; Provo, Utah; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Washington, D.C.; and Montpelier, Vermont. She currently resides in San Francisco, where she writes young adult and middle-grade novels, to-do lists, and poems. She has a lot of degrees, including a PhD in English.
Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus ... Page 18