“Thank you, Stephanie. I hope you’ve learned a lesson about drinking?”
“Mom, it’s Christmas—stop lecturing,” says Peter, getting up from the floor.
At the sight of Peter, Tracy lights up brighter than the Parsons’ Christmas tree, which is glowing like a beacon through their living room window across the street, putting ours to shame. “Trace, congratulations on your YouTube debut,” he says, giving her a hug. Tracy blushes like crazy but looks way more thrilled than mortified, which I find kind of disturbing.
“It was good,” says Stephanie, always the supportive friend, twirling a strand of her red hair around her finger. “Tracy can really dance, you know.”
“Tracy, you have a video on YouTube?” my mother asks, clueless.
“Um, well—”
“What kind of cookies did you bring?” I interrupt.
Tracy shoots me a grateful glance as she takes the foil off to reveal a plate piled high with ginger snaps, butter cookies, chocolate-chip cookies, fig bars and candy-cane brownies.
“Wow, you really went to town,” Peter says.
Tracy grins. “We’ve been baking all day.”
“We made your favorite, Rose,” says Stephanie, pointing to the chocolate-chip cookies.
“My mom wants to know if you want to come have dinner with us,” Tracy says, looking at Peter. “All three of you,” she adds for good measure, in case we thought the invitation was just for Peter. Which, judging by the look on her face as she gazes at him, would be Tracy’s first choice.
I’d give just about anything to go over to Tracy’s house for Christmas dinner, but I can tell that my mom has had all she can take today and we aren’t going anywhere.
“No, Tracy, we wouldn’t want to intrude. And we’re just about to eat, too. But thank you for the lovely invitation, and please thank your mom for us.”
My mom takes the plates from them. As she hands them to Peter and asks him to bring them in the kitchen, Tracy leans in and whispers, “Did you tell him yet?”
“I’m going to walk them out,” I say as nonchalantly as I can.
My mother looks at me sternly. “Two minutes.”
Apparently she’s happy to change the rules of my being grounded if it involves emailing Robert, but not if it involves talking to my girlfriends. Interesting.
I grab my down jacket as Peter comes back from the kitchen. Tracy takes her sweet time saying goodbye to him and giving him an extra special, long-form hug. I roll my eyes at Stephanie, who giggles as Peter sort of has to peel Tracy’s arms off his neck and assure her that yes, he’ll come by her house and say hello before he goes back to school. Finally the three of us step out into the snow.
“Well?” Tracy asks. “Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“You should. Peter can help you figure out what to do.”
“There’s nothing to do, Trace. I just have to wait it out. Mrs. Chen is probably right—it’ll blow over after break.”
“What if it doesn’t? What if the nickname ‘911 Bitch’ sticks with you for the rest of high school?”
I’ve thought about this a lot over the past few days and I keep coming to the same conclusion: If I tell on Regina, there’s no doubt she’ll get revenge. And it’ll probably be a lot worse than just nail polish on my locker. It will involve rearranging my face, getting Tracy thrown off cheerleading and ensuring that I never lay eyes on Jamie again—not necessarily in that order.
“Who do you think did it, Rosie?” Stephanie asks.
“I have no idea,” I lie. “So what did you get for Christmas?” I ask, hoping this will be a good distraction for at least a minute or two.
“Matt got me these earrings,” Tracy answers, lifting her hair so I can see. The earrings are actually very pretty. I try to hide my surprise, ignoring the image in my head of Matt buying a present for Tracy and a present for Lena at the same store, too lazy to go to more than one place.
“And Mike got me this,” Stephanie beams, displaying a gigantic plastic bangle that I can tell Tracy wouldn’t be caught dead in. To her credit, she doesn’t say anything snarky about it, nodding in approval as Stephanie shows it to her for what is probably the millionth time. “Did you get good stuff, Rose?”
“The usual. I mean, it’s all nice,” I say, trying not seem ungrateful. “Peter got me an iPod Touch.”
“He should have gotten you an iPhone, so you can be in the twenty-first century with the rest of us. I’ll talk to him about it,” Tracy says, as if Peter calls her to ask for gift-giving advice on a regular basis.
“So, um, how are y’all today?” Stephanie asks, shuffling a foot back and forth over a ridge of dirty ice on the snowy sidewalk.
“It’s almost over.”
“To be honest, Rose, you and your mom and Peter look kind of miserable,” says Tracy. “Even though I can tell Peter’s trying not to.”
“It’s just…hard,” I say. That’s not what I mean, but I know that that’s what people say. Clichés are useful in situations like this, not just for the people who are offering condolences, but for the people who have to respond, too. But once all the clichés have been used, most people have no idea what to say to make someone feel better. I can’t really blame them—I don’t know what to say to make me feel better, either.
We stand there in the kind of awkward silence that I’ve gotten used to since the summer. Although, the fact that it’s happening with my best friends kicks the awkwardness up a few notches.
“I have to go. My two minutes are up,” I say.
“Rose, I’m real sorry that you got in trouble because of me,” Stephanie mumbles, tucking her left foot behind her right ankle as if she has an itch there.
“I know, Steph, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“You know, people might be mad at you, but you were smart to do what you did,” Stephanie says. “I think your dad would have been proud of you for, you know, taking care of me.”
One of the things that I love about Stephanie is that if something like what she just said comes into her head, she’ll say it out loud. She’s shy in some ways, but if she thinks somebody needs to hear something, she says it even if it’s scary to say.
But that doesn’t mean I know how to respond. And to be honest, I don’t even know if what she said is true. So I just say goodbye and start up the front walk, wondering if maybe I’ve just been rude. I stop and turn to say something else, maybe something funny, but nothing comes out, so I just watch them—arms linked, slipping and sliding down the icy street together—as snowflakes gently fall on my face.
* * *
“What’s the last happy memory you have from before Dad died?”
Peter thinks about it as I scrub a pot caked with fat and grease from the burnt roast, and he finishes drying a clean pan.
“My graduation party.” He puts the pan back in the cabinet.
“That was fun,” I say, feeling like a traitor for condoning his choice of a memory that does not actually include Dad, when of course I was fishing for one that does.
We’re both quiet as we think about that day. Less than twelve hours later, everything fell apart. We were all still in bed when the phone rang. Peter knew something was wrong before I did—his room is closer to Mom’s than mine, and he could hear her through the wall. She hung up the phone and knocked on our doors. We both came out into the hallway, and she said, “There’s been an explosion.” She didn’t have to say anything else.
“What about since he died?” Peter asks. I almost laugh at the idea that anything could make me happy these days, and then I remember sitting in the car with Jamie at homecoming. I’m still not sure I want to tell Peter, but I must have a weird look on my face because he says, “Does it have anything to do with Robert and that necklace?”
“No. Robert is a pain,” I say as I hand him the clean, wet pot.
“So he still likes you?”
“Yup.”
“But you don’t like him.”
“Not like that.”
“Who do you like?” he asks in that annoyingly parental tone of voice that he’s now used too many times this holiday season for my tastes.
“You sound all old,” I tell him, hoping to change the subject. “Adult, or something. I don’t like it.”
“Something’s going on with you. What is it?”
Everything is going on with me. Where to start? “Well, let’s see. My new nickname is ‘911 Bitch,’ according to the graffiti that’s all over the school.”
Peter stops drying and looks at me. “Seriously?”
“Yup.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“Yup.”
“Who?”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone? Ever?”
“Okay.”
“Regina. Deladdo.”
“Because of what happened at homecoming?”
“No, that just gave her an excuse to harass me.”
Peter puts the pot and dish towel down on the counter and leans against it, facing me at the sink. “So what’s her problem?”
Should I take Tracy’s advice and tell Peter? Maybe he can help me. Or is it stupid to think that anyone can help me with this?
“She thinks something’s going on with me and Jamie.”
“Oh, shit. That’s totally my fault. I’m sorry. I didn’t think that when I asked him to—”
“It’s not your fault. She’s sort of right. There is something going on. I just don’t know what.”
Peter pauses for a second. “What? Jamie? Rose, he’s too…” He trails off, realizing I’m about to tell him yet again that he sounds like an annoying adult.
“It’s not really like that. I mean, we kissed once,” I say, waiting for his reaction. His eyebrows practically hit his hairline. “But Regina thinks it’s more than that and she said if she saw me near him, she’d kick my ass and figure out how to get Tracy thrown off cheerleading. And if Tracy gets thrown off that stupid team because of me, she’ll never speak to me again.”
“Are you…into Jamie? I mean, more than just a crush?”
I don’t know if I should answer that. I know I’m not supposed to like him—he’s older, he doesn’t really fit into any category, he’s going out with Regina—but obviously I do. Although it doesn’t matter that I like him because that kiss was probably just a gigantic fluke. “He’s just being nice to me because you asked him to.”
“I sure as hell didn’t ask him to kiss you, Rose.”
I can’t help the smile that steals across my face.
He looks at me hard for a minute. “Whatever is going on, it doesn’t have anything to do with me anymore, that’s for sure.” He picks up the pot again. “Dad would fucking freak, you know. He was there when Forta got thrown off the hockey team for nailing Anthony Parrina. Dad knew what a badass Jamie could be.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to care what Dad wanted anymore,” I say quietly. Peter’s silence tells me I won the point, but I know he’s not going to admit it. “Maybe Dad would like that I’m with someone who can watch out for me in a certain way. I mean, isn’t that why you asked him to be my watchdog or whatever?”
“I guess. But if I hadn’t, Regina Deladdo wouldn’t be talking shit about you right now.”
Maybe. But if he’d never asked Jamie to look out for me, then Jamie never would have kissed me at homecoming. And as we’ve just established, that is the only good thing that has happened to me in the past six months.
“Listen, if Forta does anything—and I mean anything—”
I shut the running water off and hold up my hand. “Stop trying to be Dad, Peter.”
This catches us both off guard. I didn’t realize that that’s what he was trying to do until the words came out of my mouth. And by the look on his face, I can tell that he didn’t, either. He grabs another wet pot from the drain board.
“Just be careful,” he says. “I don’t want you to get hurt. Forta can be a good guy, but Regina sounds fucking certifiable. Is this thing with Forta worth the trouble?”
The question strikes me as funny, as if I have any say whatsoever in this whole Jamie thing, as if I get to define what is or isn’t happening between us. All I know is, he gave me one perfect kiss and then disappeared. The way my luck goes these days, that’s probably the last I’ll ever see of him.
* * *
After Peter and Mom are asleep, I crawl into bed with my laptop and visit the twenty-one-year-old sergeant’s website. As soon as the page loads, Christmas music starts blasting from the tiny speakers on my computer, and I quickly hit the mute button on my keyboard so I don’t wake anyone up. The sergeant’s graduation photo is wreathed in holiday garlands, and as I move my cursor, a tiny angel with a halo and wings flies across the page, mimicking the movements of my finger on the track pad. The other two photos that were on the home page before are gone now, and there is something new since the last time I visited—a box that is constantly scrolling, showing messages that people have posted for him. Today, there are twenty-three new ones, all wishing the sergeant a Merry Christmas. Most of the messages talk about how he died doing what God wanted him to, how the fact that he’s with Jesus now makes everything that happened to him okay, and that he shouldn’t worry about anyone because they’re all doing fine even though they miss him every second of every day.
The messages are written directly to him, as if he were still here, even though they talk about him being dead. It makes me feel funny, but I start to think about what I would write to Dad on his page, and I understand why the sergeant’s friends and family are doing it. It makes them feel like they’re still connected somehow. Like they can reach out, even if he can’t reach back.
Not everyone who died in the explosion has a memorial site, but since I first found the sergeant’s page, more and more links have popped up, and now the pages of most of the people who died—most of the Americans, anyway—are linked to each other through the sergeant. I wonder who is maintaining his site. Is someone sitting at a computer right now, searching for Dad’s site to link to, wondering if poor Alfonso Zarelli wasn’t loved enough by his family to be immortalized forever on the web?
Dad’s is one of the only names on the sergeant’s page that isn’t clickable.
I have to build Dad’s site.
I don’t know anything about domain names or servers that host sites or anything like that, but I can worry about that later. Right now, I just have to figure out how to design a page that he would like and that would be a tribute to him—a place where people could write him notes, or just see his picture if they want to. I have no idea who those people would be, but they might be out there.
My computer came with a program for building websites, and it has a tutorial. I open it and start following the step-by-step instructions. The first thing it suggests I do is pick a template from a bunch of premade ones. They have names like Retail and Invitation and Announcement. There is actually
one called In Memoriam, and I click on it, despite the fact that it is, predictably, black with cheesy digital bunting. Hopefully I can change that later.
When the template opens, a page full of placeholder photos and text fills my screen. The photo is of an old woman who looks like she spends her days in an apron making cookies for her grandchildren. The title says “Nana Betsy.” A second later, a pop-up box asks me for a new photo and title.
So much for easing into this—I’ve only been at it for two minutes and already, I’m stuck. Which picture should I use? How do I decide?
I click on my photo folder without thinking about the fact that I haven’t looked at pictures of Dad since we planned the service for him over the summer. I’m not prepared to see so many photos of him at once. The icons in the folder are small, but I can make out important details like a beach or a cake on the kitchen table, and I know exactly which photo is which. Suddenly memories of Dad from different times in my life are crowding in on me simultaneously, and I feel like my brain is short-circuiting. There are too many photos, too many different memories. I close the folder and take deep breaths to ward off any attacks that might be lurking.
No attacks. After my minute of deep breathing is up, I decide it might be better to start with the title.
I put the cursor in the big box where it blinks expectantly. I type, “Alfonso Zarelli.” Then I notice that there’s a narrow box underneath it with smaller font. The sample text says, “Beloved Grandmother, Devoted Mother, Wonderful Sister.” I type in a few different things—Great Dad, Word Lover, Funny Guy—and delete them all, feeling like there’s nothing I could possibly say to sum him up the right way, nothing I could put in that narrow box that could be enough.
Confessions of an Angry Girl Page 15