But it was the way Carly said it. Absent of any self-doubt although, in her defense, she’d had time to process everything. To put her emotions within the context of reality. And how was I any better? I didn’t even want to ask my parents about taking in the mother cat. I was afraid just by asking I’d jeopardize my chance with the kitten. Maggie looked sad but she didn’t step up either.
After tiring of watching the kittens, we sat by Carly’s pool in her pristine backyard. Our conversation was already turning to school even with another month of vacation left. Luke was gone. He’d left early to scope out housing and begin the part-time job he’d keep during the school year. Our house wasn’t the same without Luke and I began to worry about Dad for the first time—how would he get on without his only son?
“We’re like the three musketeers,” Maggie blurted out of the blue. “We should call ourselves the three musketeers.” That seemed to cheer her a bit, putting an end to the sadness she was feeling over the mother cat’s dire future.
“The three musketeers is so cliché,” Carly said. “Plus, they were guys, and we’re girls. We need something better, so let me think about it for a while.”
We all understood that Carly would make the decision, and whatever she decided would be fabulous.
Carly’s parents took her to Hawaii for a pre-back-to-school family vacation. For the first time, it was just Maggie and me. We continued to get together, though not as frequently as when Carly was there. And when we were together, it was painfully obvious we could never survive as the two musketeers. Our bonds were with Carly, and without her we were only reminders of her absence. When we talked, it was about Carly. What was she doing right then? What time was it in Hawaii? Was she meeting any cute guys on the beach? How many days—hours—before she returned? Remember when we all did this? Won’t it be fun when we all do that?
But before Carly came home, I came to realize that Maggie was a genuinely nice person. I’d never seen that in her before, not really. I’d never actually seen her as anything beyond an appendage of Carly.
“Thirty-six hours before she’s home,” Maggie said one day when we were painting our toenails in my bedroom. The window was cranked open to neutralize the noxious fumes emanating from the tiny jeweled bottles of gleaming colors. A horsefly tentatively made its way across the window screen, testing for any weakness that might allow passage into our house. “What should we do this weekend?”
“I don’t know. Something fun,” I answered dumbly. I was never the one to make plans for the three of us. That was Carly’s role. Sometimes Maggie’s. Even when Maggie handed me the opportunity to decide, I declined it. I was along for the ride, wherever it took me.
“I’ll bet you miss Luke,” she said dreamily. “Must be lonely without him.” She carefully ran a Q-tip dipped in polish remover around the circumference of each toenail. I took a minute to admire her steady hand and precision.
“I guess. Kind of. Mom and Dad miss him a lot, especially Dad. We’re going to Sacramento to visit him in a week, so they’re excited about that. I might not even go, though.”
“If you do, tell him I said hi,” Maggie said, and when I didn’t respond, she pressed. “I mean it.” I felt sorry for her because Luke didn’t know she existed. Or he did know but she existed as background noise—his kid sister’s friend.
My new gray kitten raised its tiny head over the edge of the wicker basket where he’d been sleeping. He stared at us with huge amber eyes that always seemed to register surprise. White tufts of fur sprouted from his ears, giving him the appearance of a miniature bobcat. He padded to the litter box in the far corner and scratched uselessly before relieving himself.
“So adorable!” Maggie said. “I think Bob’s the cutest of the three.”
Secretly, I thought so too.
“How did you and Carly get to be friends?” I asked Maggie. At times, I viewed Maggie as Carly’s equal, but other times she seemed as submissive as me.
“We’ve known each other since we were seven,” she said. She pursed her lips and blew, aiming the jet stream at her drying nails. “She’s literally always been there for me, the best friend anyone could have. You’re seriously lucky, you know that, Grace?”
“Lucky?”
“That Carly’s your friend now. She’ll always look out for you. You won’t ever have to worry about anything.” Maggie threw her head over the side of my bed to find Bob who had disappeared under the edge of my duvet. “Here you are! Oh my God, Grace, you have to clean under your bed. Look at poor Bobby.” In a graceful arc of her arm, she brought Bob up to the bed and set him down between us. Dust bunnies clung to his dove-gray fur.
“What would I have to worry about?” I had a sense of the things kids did to each other in American high schools after seeing Timothy’s shame in the gym. But I wanted Maggie to confirm the blessing bestowed on me by this unlikely alliance.
“You know. People can be shitty. When I was in fourth grade I had to wear one of those head things for my braces for a month. It was like . . . wow, one of the worst times of my life. I mean, I don’t know how my mom ever thought I could survive that, and I wouldn’t have without Carly.” Maggie stroked Bob with her palms, protecting against the possibility of stray kitten hairs cementing themselves to her glossy nails.
I looked at the row of gleaming white teeth peeking out between Maggie’s lips when she smiled. They were perfectly aligned. Braces were a luxury which wasn’t even discussed in my family. My two front teeth angled back slightly, the eye teeth parasitically taking advantage of the extra room. My bottom front teeth fought for space, eventually working out a compromise that involved one moving slightly behind the other. Whatever this head thing was that Maggie had been subjected to, it appeared to have worked miracles in her mouth.
“What did Carly do?”
“You know Rich Benson?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“He was one of the guys sitting behind us at the movies.”
“Oh yeah.” I thought about the merciless way Carly dealt with those boys. Slicing through their dignity with her sharp words and then finishing them off with a crude and dismissive burst of laughter.
“He was the worst when I had to wear the head gear. He followed me around at recess and made stupid, mean jokes in front of everyone. Carly told me she was going to take care of him, so one day she brought a bike wrench to school. When no one was looking, she loosened the chain on his bike, and after school when he got on his bike and pushed down on the pedal, the whole thing came off and he fell on his face and lost his front tooth.”
I grimaced at the thought of falling on my face and losing my front tooth. I thought I detected a slight quiver in Maggie’s upper lip. Like she was reliving that time.
“Anyway, after that he didn’t have anything to say to me anymore. Everyone was there when he fell, and it was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to him.”
“Seems like you guys really don’t like him,” I said.
“I don’t mind him anymore.”
It occurred to me we probably never would have had this conversation if Carly was around. I never heard her brag about herself even though I knew she was one of the smartest kids in our class. She was also first chair flute in the advanced band and one of the top writers for the school newspaper.
“I think it was second grade when we really got to be friends though. We shared a double-desk that year. And I think that was the same year my neighbors’ Samoyed was terrorizing me whenever I rode my bike or went out on the street to play. My dad talked to the neighbors about not letting Blizzard run loose, but he kept getting out. Then Carly found a can of red spray paint in my dad’s work shed, and the next time she was over when Blizzard got out, she did a number on him. He was this humongous, fuzzy white dog, but by the time Carly was done with him he had huge splotches of bright red all over him. He l
ooked ridiculous.”
“Wow! Did you guys get in trouble?”
“Nobody knew we did it. She did it. And it didn’t hurt Blizzard. We wouldn’t have done anything to hurt Blizzard, because it wasn’t his fault. It was the neighbors’ fault because they couldn’t control their dog.” Maggie lay on her back, legs over the edge of the bed. She gently positioned Bob on her stomach and continued to caress him until he curled up and promptly fell asleep. “Next time we saw Blizzard, he was completely shaved down to his skin. There was a little bit of red stain on his skin but most of it came off with the fur. Anyway, he never got out again because the neighbors put up one of those invisible electric fences after the spray paint thing.”
Neither of those stories was a red flag for me at the time. I don’t think we ever truly judge a person except in hindsight, and my history with Carly was only just beginning.
“Blizzard died a few months ago,” Maggie said. “It was sad because I actually grew to love him. When I got older, the neighbors would hire me to dog-sit sometimes, and I always felt a little bad about the red paint. He was a good dog, just a little scary when I was small and he was so big.”
“Poor Blizzard.” I hoped I was suitably matching the sadness I read on Maggie’s face. I had a sudden rush of feeling for Maggie. We seemed to connect on a slightly deeper level than I’d ever connected with anyone before. When she talked to me, she expected I was capable of understanding beyond what her words were saying. She gave me credit for an emotional intelligence still in the development stage. She never talked down to me and never made me feel like I was a year younger or not her equal.
“When my parents were going through their divorce, Carly was amazing,” she said, her voice taking a perceptible drop in enthusiasm from the prior tales.
My neighbors’ dog hurled a dozen high-pitched barks in rapid succession into the stillness of that summer day. From the comfort and safety of Maggie’s stomach, Bob twitched his tufted ears without opening his eyes. Maybe he was incorporating the barking into a bad dream. A door slammed, and next door, Mrs. Bailey hollered out something, bringing the barking to an abrupt conclusion and restoring the oppressive and artificial calm that enveloped us.
“I practically lived at Carly’s house for a month when that was going on,” Maggie said. “My parents didn’t care because they didn’t want me around to hear them fighting and screaming at each other. They were both so into it, I think they forgot I existed. So Carly just took care of me, you know?”
I nodded yes, although I didn’t know. Couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be forgotten by your parents, although I would come to feel a little of it when Mom and Dad moved to Madagascar.
“I was all like—I’m not mad at my parents,” Maggie continued. “If this makes them happy, it’s better that way. I still love them both. But Carly opened my eyes to what an asshole my dad really was. I mean, he cheated on my mom.”
This revelation embarrassed me, and yet I was honored to be trusted with such intensely personal information about her life. I shook my head slowly. Incredulously.
Maggie looked right into my eyes, and I thought I saw the shine of tears on the surface of hers.
“I mean, that’s something you can never forgive. Right?”
“Right,” I said while wondering if it might be possible to forgive since he hadn’t cheated on Maggie.
When it came to Carly, there was always that push and pull, but the pull usually won out in the end.
Chapter Six
A few weeks before school started, Maggie asked Carly and me to meet up at her house. She had a surprise for us. Carly swung by my house to give me a ride. She was driving, as she usually was those days, her mom riding shotgun. From the backseat, I marveled at the way she maneuvered through the streets, made graceful turns at intersections, and glided to a smooth stop in front of Maggie’s house. She was so grown-up. A few more months and Carly would be driving Maggie and me around by herself. I could hardly wait.
“I wonder what Maggie’s big surprise is,” she said after I rang the doorbell.
Maggie flung open her front door before the door chimes finished playing.
“You’re going to die,” she said, the door partially closed behind her as though she was hiding something. A dog, I thought. A big, white, fluffy dog like Blizzard. Then she stood aside and opened it all the way. “Ta dah!”
A tall, pale girl stood behind Maggie in the doorway. She had shoulder-length white-blonde hair. Long-limbed and lanky with eyes so blue they were almost clear, like sapphires embedded in ice. Eyebrows that melted into the light color of her skin. She came from behind Maggie and stood by her side. Her long neck. The gracefully awkward way she shifted her body. She reminded me of a giraffe.
“Jane,” Carly said, her voice lifting in surprise.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Maggie hopped joyfully, her hands held out in prayer position. Not a dog, I registered. But who is this Jane who brings so much joy to the normally subdued Maggie? I experienced a flash of jealousy. Does Carly love her too? “Jane, this is Grace, she’s new here too. Grace, Jane used to be my next-door neighbor when we were in eighth grade for a year before her dad was transferred to Chicago.”
“But she went to Catholic school,” Carly interjected. “Not ours.”
I knew right then that Carly didn’t love Jane like Maggie did. Maybe not even at all.
“Hi, Grace.” Jane smiled timidly. She had an open expression and warm voice that was pleasing and disarming. I wanted to like her but was waiting for another cue from Carly.
“Why are you here?” Carly asked and, again, I got the impression she wasn’t thrilled by Maggie’s surprise.
“My dad got transferred back to the home office so . . . hello Indian Springs,” Jane said. I felt an instant wave of pity for her. It seemed she was ignorant of Carly’s feelings toward her, but maybe I was the one who was misinterpreting Carly’s body language. Her choice of words. I hoped so, but when I looked at Maggie, I saw the pure joy had disappeared from her eyes. She seemed guarded. Even worried. “We’re buying a house out on Durham Road.”
“Way out there?” Carly raised her eyebrows.
“My sister wants a horse so that was part of the parental guilt payoff. You know . . . for moving us again.”
“Back to St. Mary’s?”
“Hell no!” Jane said. “That was my guilt payoff. I get to go to Indian Springs with you guys, so no more uniforms. My sister’s going to St. Mary’s, but she wanted to.” Jane rolled her glassy eyes and smirked.
“Exciting, huh?” Maggie said, but she was looking right at Carly, and she didn’t sound so excited anymore.
“Exciting,” Carly said in a near monotone, and all doubt left my mind.
“So, come in,” Maggie said. “Let’s figure out what we’re doing today.”
We sat around the kitchen table, the other girls politely catching each other up on the past few years, with Maggie doing most of the talking, which was beginning to sound too formal and forced. We swiveled the open bag of chips around like spin-the-bottle, licking the salt from our fingertips and sipping cans of coke. My eyes returned to Jane whenever I thought she wasn’t looking. Her posture was slightly slumped in the way of too-tall adolescent girls, but the slope of her shoulders was seemingly perfect, as though carved from marble. The careless way she drew the back of her hand across her mouth to wipe away crumbs and then wiping the crumbs from her hand against her bare thigh. The expression of her eyes which was both far away and intensely personal at the same time. I noticed she wore no makeup except a barely visible lip gloss which vanished after the chips and drink. Her laugh was goofy and silver braces sparkled like diamonds when she smiled. She was natural, completely unselfconscious. She wasn’t a girl who seemed used to being judged harshly, or even being judged at all. I wondered how that felt.
A different girl in Jane’s ga
ngly body might have come off as ungainly, but Jane’s ease and quiet confidence combined with her strikingly unconventional looks transformed her into something more than the sum of her parts. She had that quality—call it charisma—that defies categorization. The ghost orchid of human attributes, it doesn’t discriminate between wretch or saint. Loveliness or hideousness. The strong or the sickly. It’s the peculiar allure that draws every eye in the room. Inspires both love and hate. Causes others to change the course of their lives.
Of course, I knew none of that then. I only knew that this girl, unknown to me only an hour earlier, possessed something Maggie and I never would. In my limited lifespan, I’d only encountered it twice before. There was Carly, of course. And a minister in Ecuador who had this same effect on me but, thinking back, I wasn’t sure if it was his words or his personal aura. Now I found myself sitting in an ordinary kitchen with two people, each of whom projected larger than life. Didn’t Maggie see it as well? Didn’t Maggie realize that Carly and Jane couldn’t possibly co-exist?
I felt a brush against my ankle which sent a chill up my spine. I looked down to see tiny Princess Leia, Maggie’s choice of the three kittens. Jane got up and disappeared down the hall, on her way to the bathroom.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” Maggie said. “I had no idea she was back until she called me last night.”
Carly smiled grimly.
“Now we can be the four musketeers.” Maggie’s cheerfulness wasn’t fooling me, and I’m sure it wasn’t fooling Carly. She was pleading. Pleading for Jane.
“There weren’t four musketeers,” Carly said. “And anyway, I thought of a name I was just going to tell you guys today.”
Maggie stared at the table and then, as if noticing Princess Leia for the first time, scooped the kitten into her lap.
The Kitty Committee Page 8