by Abby Bardi
Every day when we come home, I throw myself onto the couch and am about to turn on the TV to watch all the usual stuff but M.F. plunks herself down at the dining room table and spreads out all her books and asks me to come help her, so of course I do. I'm not even sure that she really needs help, but we sit there and work on all this boring crap until Mom comes home carrying bags of groceries to be put away. When Emma calls and tries to tell me all about her summer in Colorado and all the cool boys she made out with in the woods, I never have time to talk to her, and I think she's getting a little offended but I can't help it, I'm busy.
Finally, I feel like I know my way around, and I can find my classes without being late, and I know when I have time to go to my locker, and who to sit with in the cafeteria. (I don't have the same lunch as either Emma or M.F., so I sit with a bunch of girls I knew in middle school.) By the middle of September, it isn't so hot out all the time and I can start wearing shirts with longer sleeves and jeans instead of shorts or short skirts. M.F. is still doing okay with clothes—between borrowing from me and rotating the outfits we bought at the mall, she's in pretty good shape. Boys are still watching her walk down the hall, and of course she doesn't notice it. She has grown some since she came to live with us, and the brown skirt has gotten shorter and tighter, which helps. I notice that when I walk past the cafeteria while she has lunch and I'm on the way toEnglish, she's starting to sit at the popular table with all the jocks, preps, cheerleaders, and some arty people who seem to be hanging out there by mistake. Later I try to tell her that it isn't really considered cool to be popular, but she says they just asked her to sit with them and she said yes, and that they seemed really nice. Oh, sure, really nice, I say, thinking of what buttheads all the jocks are, not to mention the cheerleaders. At one point M.F. tells me that someone has asked her to try out for cheerleading, but I manage to convince her it would be bad for her studies.
Emma and I have U.S. History together. It's the kind of class where you can't talk but you can still pass notes, so we send a lot of tiny little pieces of paper back and forth with our smallest writing on them. Our teacher, Mr. Hale, has bifocals and we're betting that he couldn't read any of our notes if he happened to find one. Emma has sent me a lot of descriptions of the boys in Colorado and then information on her newest crush, a guy named Nick who is in her drama class. I think he's probably gay but I don't mention this to her. Emma says I've changed since Mary came to stay with me. She says I'm not as sarcastic. She says she's worried that I'll become some kind of Christian fanatic, but I assure her that there's no chance of that. M.F. never talks about her religion at all. Emma says that people like that are always trying to convert everyone, but I tell her I get the impression that they don't want anyone to join, in fact they just keep to themselves and mind their own business. I say this so Emma gets the idea that minding your own business might be a good thing.
In fact, I'm not sure I even like Emma anymore. She wears too much eye makeup, and her skin is so pale it looks like she's drunk embalming fluid for breakfast (this is what Roy said last time she stayed overnight at our house). She's always sayingnasty things about everyone, and I used to enjoy this—we used to go to the mall and just sit there making fun of everyone who walked by. But lately I haven't felt like making fun of people, it just seems mean. M.F. always says that a person can't help the way he or she looks. Of course, that's not true, and I point out to her how people could have worn a different outfit or done their hair differently or at least washed it once in a while. But M.F. says it's what's inside that matters. I tried telling that to Emma and she threatened to puke all over me if I ever said it again.
I've tried hanging out with both Emma and M.F. a few times, but it's really not any fun. I can tell that M.F. doesn't really understand much of what Emma says. When Emma tried to talk to her about existentialism, M.F. said she had never heard of essisenstualism but that it sounded kind of grim to her. Emma rolled her eyes when M.F.'s back was turned, and I didn't appreciate that. Later, M.F. asked me to explain essisenstualism to her, and I at least taught her how to pronounce it but apart from that, I didn't do a very good job of explaining it because the truth was, although Emma and I had called ourselves existentialists all last year, I didn't really understand it myself.
So pretty soon it was fall, and the football games started at school. M.F. wanted to go to them because she liked football and a bunch of her new friends were on the team, though it was obvious she didn't really understand the game and kept asking Roy to explain it to her. He didn't know anything about it either, but he kept trying. They'd sit in the living room with the TV on talking about downs and flags, and I could tell that he was making up half of what he said. I told M.F. that it wasn't cool to go to football games, or to Homecoming, and that we weren't going, though the truth was that if someone had asked me to the dance, I might have considered it, but noone did. The kind of guys I liked wouldn't be caught dead at a dance unless they were standing around outside trying to buy some weed. A couple of guys asked M.F. to the dance, but they were jocks, of course, and I explained to her once again that she couldn't go out with jocks because they weren't cool. M.F. said they seemed nice, but I said niceness didn't matter, it was coolness that did.
I kept a pretty close watch on Dylan Magnuson. As far as I could tell, he didn't have a girlfriend, and I didn't think he was gay. He seemed to keep to himself, though sometimes I saw him in town on weekend nights, standing around outside the video store, where people sometimes hung out. Dylan was a senior, and though I hoped that he would be in one of my classes anyway, he wasn't. I had wanted to take Psychology with Dylan because you got to marry someone and carry a sack of flour around with him for six weeks, pretending it was your kid, and I was hoping maybe I could hook up with him that way. But they wouldn't let me register for it because I was only a junior, and seniors got first preference. It turned out that this year, they stopped doing the flour sack thing anyway, maybe because a lot of parents complained.
So I'm looking at the back of Danny Fox's head and trying not to inhale through my nose. He always smells like some breakfast cereal, I think it's Cheerios, and shampoo, and some sweaty boy smell that I hate. When the teacher assigns us lab partners, I cross my fingers and close my eyes and pray that I don't end up with him, but when I open my eyes, there he is sitting next to me in front of a Bunsen burner. He's wearing a Dragon Ball T-shirt, which is one of those dumb Japanese comics that he likes, with a picture of some stupid-looking guy with too-big eyes, and his jeans have obviously not been washed since third grade. Danny is famous with those of uswho were in third grade with him because he peed in his pants one day and was afraid to tell the teacher, so he just sat there, and pee started trickling out the ankles of his jeans and into two puddles on the floor. For years people called him Pee-Man and sang the song from He-Man to him, and every so often I still hear someone say it.
Maybe it's just because I know about the pee that Danny seems so icky to me and seems to smell so bad. Of course, by mid-fall it isn't hot out anymore and people aren't reeking so much, but he always seems to have this cloud around him like Pig Pen. It might just be a cloud of ickiness. Anyway, he's pretty good at chemistry, so it's not that bad being his lab partner. The bad part is he keeps phoning me to talk about school stuff, and it's really embarrassing that I have to talk to him. Sometimes Mary Fred gets on and chats with him and then hands me the phone with this “He isn't so bad” look on her face. I always roll my eyes, but I take the phone and listen while he blabs away about our boring homework and the group project we have to do. The only good part of chemistry is that we get to make helium balloons, but that's not till spring.
By October, Mary Fred seems pretty settled into school, in spite of her bad taste in lunch partners, and things are fine. It's not that I actually like school or anything, but I still like the feel of people. When we have an assembly and I sit there not really listening to lectures on drugs, or African storytellers, I feel the rustle and hum
of everyone around me, and when we all clap, of course I imagine myself in fifteen years, coming back to tell the new kids of Mt. Pleasant, kids that are just being born right now, how they can grow up to be as successful as I am.
Toward the end of the month, M.F. starts freaking out about Halloween. Every year I say I'm not going to trick-or-treat anymore,but then Emma and I end up putting on the witches' hats that we keep meaning to give to Good Will, and eye masks so no one will recognize us. When it gets dark, we walk around the neighborhood. Everyone is giving away all the candy they have left so they won't eat it and get fat. There are a lot of tough, nasty boys on the street at that time of night but we know how to walk fast so they won't bother us, and if we get scared we just ring someone's bell. A few years ago a toughlooking guy stole Emma's bag of candy but apart from that, we'd always liked the holiday and we looked forward to it.
But M.F. seems to think it's some kind of satanic festival and it seems to really bother her. There's a big Halloween dance at school, and she thinks that's horrible. And another thing, she not only doesn't want to put on a witch's hat and go out with Emma and me, but she doesn't even want me to go.
“Don't suffer a witch to live,” M.F. says whenever the subject comes up.
“It's just a costume,” I say each time. “I'm not really going to be a witch. And anyway,” I press on, finally, though I know I should keep my mouth shut, “Wicca is a perfectly decent religion. I know lots of people who are witches,” though actually I don't, just my mom's friend Kathy, who works at the antique shop in town. “They're perfectly nice people.”
“Heather,” M.F. says in an exasperated voice like she is talking to an idiot. “They worship the devil, for pity's sake.”
“No, I don't think they worship the devil. I think that's just a myth.”
“Heather, I think everyone knows that witches worship the devil.”
“No, M.F., I think it's the Great Goddess. And Halloween is like their big holiday or something.” I suddenly realize that M.F. and I are having an argument. It's our first one, and Idon't like it. I've argued with Emma a million times and made up. Sometimes we've gone weeks without speaking to each other, usually over something really stupid, like the time I was at her house and accidentally spilled glitter all over her rug, and she said I was a moron. Emma and I know how to have an argument, after so many years of practice, but I'm finding it scary to argue with M.F. What if she doesn't talk to me for a week? What if we stop being friends at all? It would be so awkward at the breakfast table. In fact, I suddenly realize that not hanging out with M.F. would totally suck. I would have to go back to doing everything alone, cutting school and wandering around D.C. by myself again, and I just don't think I can handle that after getting used to having someone there to talk to all the time.
“Heather,” M.F. is practically shrieking now, “I know this is a bad thing, okay? I just know it. It's evil. It's part of the devil's big plan.”
“Okay, okay, M.F.,” I find myself saying. “If you don't want me to, I won't dress up. I won't go to the dance or anything. We'll just stay home—” I try not to say anything sarcastic but the words “we'll bob for apples” pop out of my mouth. Luckily, M.F. thinks this is a great idea.
On Halloween night, we try to sit around in the living room, doing our homework or watching TV as usual, but from about four o'clock on, a thousand little kids in costumes come to our door. Mom has bought a million bags of miniature Hershey bars, though she says she feels bad giving kids candy and would really rather give them fruit, which is better for them, but you can't give out fruit anymore since people always think there are razor blades in it, and anyway, the fruit would be a lot more expensive than candy, and we can't really afford it. Mom is at the computer in her little corner, doing stuff forwork, and M.F. and I are trying to watch a made-for-TV movie about ice skaters, but the doorbell keeps ringing and we have to keep jumping up, which kind of ruins the movie for us.
I open the door the first few times, but after a while I get M.F. to do some opening, and I stand behind her with the bowl of candy. “Twick or tweat,” say a bunch of tiny little boys and girls with goofy plastic masks on the tops of their heads (I remember that it's too hard to breathe through the nose holes of those things), or funny hats and spots of red on their cheeks. “Oh!” I hear M.F. say the first time, and she turns to me and says, “Give them some candy, Heather.” I plunk a little candy bar into each bag, and some of the kids thank me, and others run back to their parents and the parents tell them to say thank you, and then some do and some don't. When the doorbell rings again, M.F. jumps up and runs to open it. “Here's a treat for you,” she says, and for a moment I'm afraid she's going to give them a big lecture on Satan, but she just grabs the candy bowl and starts flinging candy into everyone's bag. When she turns around, I see she's smiling like she's having a great time.
Our fight is over. I'm relieved.
Just before Thanksgiving, M.F. makes me go bowling. My idea of physical activity is to walk from the couch to the fridge, but M.F. says she needs to move around some and now that it's getting cold out, we're not walking to the soup kitchen or to the video store. I guess she's used to milking cows or whatever it was she did on that farm. M.F. works on me about the bowling for a few weeks until finally I say, “Whatever.” It turns out that she has met this guy named Jack in her U.S. History class and that he wants us to go bowling with him and his friend Todd. I'm totally horrified when I hear this because it's bad enough that we have to go bowling, but now it seems we'regoing on some double date with a couple of dorks, or maybe jocks, which is even worse.
But M.F. just hammers away at me about how nice Jack and Todd are and how much more fun it is to bowl with four people than two, and how it's not really a date, since she's not even sixteen yet and much too young to date, it's just for fun. I don't think it sounds like fun at all but finally there we are, on our way to bowl. Mom won't let us ride in cars driven by teens, so she insists on taking us to the bowling alley to meet Jack and Todd, which makes me feel like an even bigger geek. We make her drop us off at the corner so no one sees us. My eyes are darting around to make sure Dylan Magnuson is nowhere in sight, but of course he's not the type of person to bowl anyway.
I'm a little surprised when I meet Jack and Todd because it turns out that they're African-American, and there is no reason why they shouldn't be, but it just surprises me. It also turns out that they are pretty terrific bowlers. M.F. isn't too bad at it, being kind of athletic, but I have a problem with the ball going in the opposite direction of where I want it to go. Jack and Todd keep trying to show me how to hold the ball, and where to put my feet, and M.F. keeps saying, “You're doing just fine, Heather, just fine.” The first game we play is girls against boys, and they totally liquidate us, but the second game it's Jack and M.F. against Todd and me, and that works out a little better, though we still lose. Todd has a pierced eyebrow and is actually kind of cute, but he doesn't seem interested in me that way and anyway, when you get right down to it, I only have eyes for Dylan Magnuson.
“Why don't you try talking to him?” M.F. is always saying to me when I start whining about Dylan Magnuson, about how I saw him in the hall and he brushed against me when he passed, though it was mostly because some jocks behind himhad shoved him in my direction. “How romantic,” Emma says when I tell her things like this, but M.F. is always encouraging, and says, “Just go say hi to him. Tell him you need some help with your math and that you heard he's really good at it. Tell him you noticed he has a Nine Inch Nails patch on his bookbag and that you really like Nine Inch Nails.” She goes on and on with these helpful suggestions and I just keep saying, Okay, okay, I'll try that, okay, Mary Fred, I will, but then of course I don't do anything at all, I just stand at my locker and wait for him to walk past so I can see if he's with a girl, or if he's gotten any piercings. In fact, he's never with anyone. I have a theory that he has a pierced tongue, and I keep trying to see him talk so I can check, but he never says
anything.
So all in all, life is fine. School isn't too bad, and after a few months, I notice I haven't skipped class to go downtown, not even once. I can't cut even if I want to because I have to be back in time to walk home with M.F., and she wouldn't approve of it anyway. I told her once that I used to ditch school and all she could say was “Why?” She totally didn't get it. Anyway, I'm not hating it too much. M.F. and I stay busy working at the soup kitchen once a week and going bowling every other Friday or so. Bowling is pretty okay, as long as no one sees me going in there.
The one thing about school I really don't like is when I walk past the cafeteria at lunch and see M.F. sitting there at the popular table. One day I stand in the doorway, waving and trying to get her attention before the bell rings and I'm late to English, but she's laughing with some big football-playing creep, throwing back her head and giving him one of the biggest M.F. laughs I've ever seen, like he's David Letterman and she's a guest on his show. I feel myself getting annoyed and wanting to yell her name across the room, even though that would be totally uncool, and as I stand there I get madderand madder until finally the bell rings and I'm late, and Mrs. Flitcraft makes me go to the assistant principal to get a note. By the time I get back to class, I've missed the discussion of what's going to be on the quiz, and as I sit there I feel myself getting more and more pissed off at M.F. When I get back a D a few days later, it feels like it's all her fault.
“I always see you in the cafeteria talking to jocks,” I say to her on the bus on the way home the day after the quiz. The bus had been late, as usual, and we had to stand around waiting for it for a while, and a carload of jocks and cheerleaders drove right past us, honking and waving to M.F.