by Gurley, Jan
“Andrew. The Dog.”
“No, silly. Everyone knows him,” she said, shaking her head at my sub-normal mental abilities (why, I asked myself, was I standing here, being insulted by a baby-Uni?), “The other cute one. What’s his name?”
I turned to look. Curtis had arrived. “Curtis?” I said. “You’re too young for him.”
“He doesn’t look like a Curtis,” she said, eying me as though I was pulling some underhanded Academy trick on her. Her swarm of friends, also frowning, edged closer.
“I can’t exactly help that.” I’d had enough of disappointing the Uni-infants. “Take it up with his mom.”
When I returned, I noticed Curtis looked tense today, not as bad as if he’d been a victim of Mrs. Gleason, but definitely white around the eyes. His arms were full of books. Which, come to think of it, was a bit odd. When had Curtis or Nate ever brought books to tutoring?
I said, “Something on your mind, Curtis?”
He said, glancing around and lowering his voice, “Kate, would you say I’m a pitt or a depp?”
My eyebrows took flight. Before I could answer, both Drew and Tio said, without hesitating, in bored voices, “Pitt.”
Curtis stared at me, waiting for my opinion too, and I added, “Yeah, definitely pitt.”
“What do you think she likes?”
“Um, I never asked Bianca.”
Curtis flushed a deep, saturated red. By now both Tio and Drew stared at him, eyes hard with hostility. Curtis ooched closer to me and motioned.
We walked out of earshot of the others, but he still whispered, out of the side of his mouth, like we were spies and he was handing off the latest password, “Not Bianca. Phoebe.”
By now my eyebrows felt like they’d crawled into my hair in shock. I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times and finally said, “Definitely pitt. Yes. Phoebe’s a pitt kind of girl. I think. Maybe.”
Back straighter, Curtis turned and sauntered back to the others.
Tio and Drew eyed Curtis as he approached. Nate waited too now, and, in addition to his usual mega-expensive clothes, he wore an imitating-Alex fingerless black glove on his left hand.
“New look?” I said.
Nate tried to stare down his nose at me, which is hard to do when you’re both shorter and younger than the person to whom you’re speaking. “It’s a University thing,” he said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling.
Curtis said, as we shuffled to the door of tutoring hall, “Listen, Nate, about this arrangement. I’m thinking I’m, well, I’m out.”
Nate turned, stopping Tio, Drew and me behind them. “You’re just going to throw in the towel? I never pegged you for a loser.”
Curtis shifted his jaw, “First, I’m too old for this. Second, I mean, face it, Bianca’s not exactly a one-man kind of woman.”
I could feel Drew leaning forward behind me, and with my elbow I poked him hard in the ribs. “That’s right,” I said, giving Tio, who looked equally enraged, a warning look to settle down, “Bianca’s been keeping you all busy.”
Tio and Drew seemed to get the message — to remember that Bianca had agreed to intentionally keep Nate and Curtis distracted and involved so that Celia couldn’t rope the two of them into her plans for the missing felony-camera.
Which was apparently still missing. And in the hands of a now-enraged Celia.
Nate said to Curtis, “You’re not leaving me in the lurch. I pay you.”
“But for what?” Curtis said, “Listen, pipsqueak, I’m tired of this. Either we do some tutoring or I’m out of here.”
“Oh no you don’t,” Nate said as we went past the tutor-aide’s desk. Nate shot Tio a glare that would have impaled Tio if it had been solid. “I’m not throwing in the towel to that guy. You’re going to keep coming here every day and I’m going to keep paying you because I need an official tutor to get inside. Believe me, you break the rules here and you’re in trouble.”
Bianca arrived, and Tio and Drew stopped to talk to her in low voices. Curtis and Nate walked off, and, worried, I drifted behind to listen. I heard Curtis say, “This is screwed up. It’s supposed to be about Bianca, not some battle between you and Tio. And I think you’re overblowing the whole tutor situation. I’m sure I could duck out the last week of school and no one would notice you’re here alone. It’s not like they’re going to expel you for faking your way into tutoring hall.”
Nate said, his whispered voice harsh, “Oh yeah, give me a couple of days and I’ll prove it to you.”
All I could think about, right then, was the remembered image of Bianca, weeks ago, running with Tio’s forged tutoring form, back into Tutor hall.
Surely Nate couldn’t know Tio had a forged form. Could he?
If Nate did, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that Nate would report Tio for forging a parent’s permission form and lying about his grades. Nate was just that obsessed with “winning.”
Bianca, apparently unaware, floated past Nate and said, “It’s math time,” and with an overhead wave of her hand, led Nate into the side tutoring room.
I didn’t think my nerves could take any more. I sat in my cube first, with my chair sideways and my back to Drew, nose nearly touching the styrofoam wall barrier.
Drew didn’t say a word. He slid into his forward-facing chair, his shoulder exactly between my shoulder blades, and turned on the computer.
Curtis asked Tio, in a hushed voice, “So you do pretty well in math, don’t you?”
My heart dropped, swan-diving into my stomach. Before I could stop him, Tio said, “I suck.”
Curtis said, “See, I told Nate,” with a huff, then both were silent.
I wanted to kick Tio under the desk, but it’s hard to do through a wall. My shoulders were hunched so high I think they may have looked like they sprouted out of my ears. I didn’t know how I was going to make it to the end of this torture — I mean tutor — session.
A hand appeared to my right. In it was a tiny white earbud.
I looked at the bud, and, weirdly, it was like I could already feel something inside me start to give a tiny bit. It wasn’t like I really relaxed, but instead, it was more a loosening of the pressure inside just enough so things might not, necessarily, shatter.
I licked my lips, reached over, and put the earbud in my ear. I tried to stay facing sideways, listening, but somehow I ended up watching Buffy clips, facing forward on a sideways chair, shoulders jiggling with laughter, half-leaning back into Drew.
At the end of the episode, when I realized what I’d done, I whipped the earbud out like it was electrified. I held it in my fist, face staring down at the desk.
See, I was afraid, afraid of all the things I’d done and how impossible it felt that I could continue to hide them from Drew. Even if it was all for his own sake. I had to make sure the camera got returned, that Celia didn’t do anything horrible. I even had to make sure that Drew didn’t learn that Bianca helped forge Tio’s form, or Drew would be furious at Tio and decide Tio was a bad influence. I had to stop Nate, and most of all, I couldn’t say a word about my trees, and I had to get the money from his mother soon, or the trees would be lost. In only a few days he would be gone and that was the idea, for Drew to float out and never look back. So I had to save the trees without him ever knowing, even though the trees were something I’d worked to save all year, a bigger part of me than anything else in my life.
It all felt like too much to carry inside. Every minute I spent with Drew, it felt like these things were going to rupture, alien-like, out of me, no matter how much I tried to suppress them. I wanted to flee, but at the same time, I’d never wanted anything more than to just hang out with him.
He was funny and interesting and caring and he made my stomach clench and my palms sweaty and my pulse thunder from head to toe.
And me? I knew I acted weird and miserable and freakish with him, but the more I tried not to, the worse it got
. In that moment, it was so obvious. We were beauty and the beast, only he was the beauty.
“You want to hang onto the bud?” Drew’s voice rumbled beside me. “You can.”
So I turned away, sideways, my back to him, oddly comforted by holding the one earbud in my fist, like it tethered me to him, and went back to reading.
***
Nate stamped out of the side-tutor room, leaving Bianca behind. He didn’t bother to lower his voice when he said to Curtis, “You were right. She said she’s decided. She likes some guy named Luke.”
Drew loomed up, his voice also loud, “Luke?”
Poor Tio. When I stood, Tio had his face down, his hands under the edge of the cube desk, probably clenched together. I could see his ears go bright red.
Nate said, “let’s go,” to Curtis and they headed for Mrs. Tranio’s desk.
Bianca came to where Drew and I stood. Drew said, “Who the hell is Luke?”
“Oh you heard?” she said, and laughed.
It was so heartless, I gasped.
If that wasn’t bad enough, from behind us, right as the bell rang, Mrs. Tranio’s voice picked up volume. “No, young man, you cannot just come and go as you wish — we have strict rules about qualifications and access to this facility.”
Curtis looked baffled, “But I’m already an authorized tutor this year. If I want to pick up a few students during summer school, why can’t I?”
Mrs. Tranio didn’t even wait for him to finish. She clanged open a sliding file drawer and flapped open a folder on her desk. “Just as I thought. You’re here with special permission from,” she paused and her lip curled, “Dean Padua. We strictly follow the rules. Your eligibility expires.”
“That’s not true,” Curtis said, as Nate tugged at his arm. “The fact is, you let some Academy people bend the rules, but not University students. That’s how it works.”
I could see it coming, like a light that appears at the end of tunnel, an on-coming train, headed for Tio. And right after Tio had just been dumped by Bianca in the most unexpectedly careless way.
“WHO?” said Mrs. Tranio. “Who are you talking about that gets to bend the rules?”
Curtis seemed to wake up, and realize what he’d done. He took a step back, and said, “Nobody. No one.” He and Nate would have fled, but students, eager to be free at the end of the day, jammed the doorway.
Mrs. Tranio, raised her head, saw me, and Drew and Bianca and Tio standing there, frozen with horror, and then started pulling out files.
Mine. Drew’s. We could tell whose she examined because she looked from the paper to us, and back again. Her hands were shaking with anger, as though Curtis had publicly accused her of being a fraud and a cheat. Which, come to think about it, maybe he had.
Then Tio’s folder. When Mrs. Tranio looked up, her eyes were slits of anger. “You, young man, are in a whole world of trouble.” She closed the folder with a snap. “I expect to see you in Dean Verona’s office at brunch tomorrow.” She smiled a humorless, teeth-showing smile, “With your father. In person. I’m dying to meet a man who apparently fills out forms with a daisy dotting his i.”
Tio, as we exited into the sun, looked like he’d been hit with a Mack truck, scraped up with a spatula, and glued back together by a preschooler. Everything about him was flat.
He walked blindly away from us and I saw Bianca run to catch up with him, but he jerked his elbow out from her hand, turned blindly again, then broke into a trot.
She started to follow, but Drew shouted, “Bianca, that’s enough,” and she let Tio go.
I blinked hard, tears wavering at the edge of my sight. Poor Tio, poor poor Tio. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through.
That’s when Gonzo panted up, all the Greenbacks trailing behind him. Gonzo waited, hands on his kneecaps, catching his breath.
He gasped, “Kate, it’s bad.”
I felt a shudder ripple through me, the way a snake does when its skin is splitting. I swallowed, couldn’t find my voice, and Gonzo said, “Celia,” he raised stricken eyes, “She didn’t know, she didn’t mean to…”
“What?” said Drew, “She did what?”
Helena joined us, panting but more able to talk. “I’m not so sure she didn’t mean to…”
“Would somebody just tell us,” I said.
Bianca drifted back, her face blanched. Helena glanced at her, but thankfully stayed on subject. “Celia returned the camera.”
I let out a both-lungs-full gust of air. “Oh thank God.”
“No,” said Gonzo, “Celia gave it to the Dean, and told the Dean she found it at your house.”
They stared at me.
“Well, that’s sort of true, isn’t it?” I said, the world feeling like it was constricting around me. Something itched at the edge of my thoughts.
“See,” said Gonzo to Helena, “I told you Celia didn’t mean to.”
“Kate,” said Helena, her voice sharp, “think about it. Dean Verona said this was all highly unusual. Why would you hang onto something valuable like that? And there was also the odd agreement you made with Eileen Bullard, where you, Kate, would keep Drew in line, and Ms. Bullard is donating funds for it to the school and also wasn’t Tio supposed to tutor someone, which, now that she thought about it, was definitely irregular. Then the Dean asked her admin person to go pull all the records for that club you started and then changed her mind and asked instead for a bank balance.”
“Oh no.” My voice dropped through the hollow place inside me.
The rest of the Greenbacks straggled up. Phoebe said, “Dean Verona then said the Greenbacks are sitting on, at the end of the year, more money than any school club has had, ever, except for Leadership at Uni.”
I put my hands over my ears and starting shaking my head as I sank to my heels. Nothing would stop it now. It was like trying to stop a train by waving at it. There was, as Mrs. Gleason would say, momentum carrying it forward.
Viola said, “So Dean Verona asked, then why would Greenbacks want all that money from Celia for one picture? And where were the pictures that had been in the camera?”
Drew said, in his own hollow voice from where he stood above me, “What did you just say? About my mom and some agreement and money?”
Gonzo, oblivious, talking over Drew, said, “And Kate, I found out something even worse than Dean Verona thinking that you’re money-laundering and fencing stolen goods.”
I blinked, unable to stand for fear I might fall. “Tell me,” I said, from where I rocked on my heels on the ground.
It was like everyone suddenly realized that, in their eagerness to tell the story, they might have gone too far. There was silence. Drew said, his voice louder, “What did you say about my mom?” Bianca tugged at his elbow, but Drew yanked it away. Robin waved a hand low down at Gonzo, and nodding, said, “Tell the rest,” in the same way you’d say go ahead and put her out of her misery.
Gonzo, looking stricken, said, “At the start, when we were still doing a sort-of photo shoot, I saw a form on Dean Verona’s desk. I’m sorry Kate.”
There was another painful silence, then Helena stepped in, “It was a work-order, sweetie. You know those things authorizing payment. This one’s to a tree company. For a big removal job. Tomorrow.”
Both my hands were pressed against my mouth as I stared at the pavement underneath me. I felt a hand on my elbow, raising me up. I stood, facing Drew, my kneecaps twitching and jumping.
“Money.” He said, just like that. “Now I get it. You asked my mother for money. You made a deal for money.”
I couldn’t look at him. I gave a short, sharp nod and it felt like my insides exploded, one of those slow-motion movie explosions of shards of glass that arrow out in all directions and keep going and going, no end in sight, splitting farther and farther apart.
I thought it couldn’t hurt worse, so I looked at him. His jaw clenched over and over like he flattened a bit of paper between his molars. His eyes had such hurt, such contemp
t, such disappointment that I gave a gasping hiccup of air. He turned and headed to the parking lot. Bianca stared at me for a second and then sprinted after him.
I had thought it couldn’t hurt worse. I was wrong.
The world swam and shifted and smeared, nothing the way it had been just a bell-ring ago. Hands reached out and patted my shoulders but I hunched inside myself, a dull roaring filling my head.
I had to get away.
Then Gonzo’s voice, harsh and shrill said, “You’ve got some nerve coming here.”
I blinked hard enough to see everyone now facing behind me. I sniffed, and wiped at my face to get it in some semblance of order.
Eventually I turned, to see…Celia.
Three heartbeats of silence. Deep thud thud thuds of anger and hurt. Then she spoke.
“The funny thing is,” Celia said, “I always thought Uni was better at everything. Better at sports, better at clothes, better at getting ahead. Better at everything that mattered. But then it turns out you guys could give tutoring lessons on how to be vicious. Those Uni girls aren’t even in the same league as you freaks.”
Her face was raccoon splotchy around the eyes and her hair, for the first time ever, looked stringy instead of sleek and glossy.
“Did you have fun,” she said, “stringing me along with promises you never meant to keep, waiting until I was stupid enough to,” she waved her hand in the air, “somehow let down my guard so you knew that I don’t have a secret, tight group of people dying to hang out with me in Uni?”
Phoebe said, “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, let’s review, shall we?” Celia’s voice etched like acid with sarcasm, “First, there was never any plan to take a photo for me. Why even care about shooting it? Probably only blurred shots. That’s why there’s been no pictures that anyone’s ever seen except that silly old Eileen Bullard who’d believe a shadow was the Loch Ness monster if her precious prince of a son was in trouble. Hey, let’s just take Celia’s money and make fun of her. Second, now let’s trick Celia with a get-the-Dog-angry-and-then-he’ll-talk-to-you group joke. Funny, huh? Third, there’s the ‘ooh-watch-the-Dog-will-do-anything-I-say’ gag. That was a nice set-up to get me to agree to anything. But did he give me that interview? Nooo. Because then, best of all, we’ve got Celia manning the Dino-Dog counter for the day. Wasn’t that a laughingstock.” Celia imitated the girl at Sander’s party, “’Oooh, what’s that smell, what’s that smell?’”