Fetching

by Kiera Stewart

  “Um,” I say, “you’re sort of hurting me.”

  “Oh! Sorry!” She backs away. “I think those jeans are beyond repair.”

  Corny is standing on the sidewalk with Mrs. Taylor, counseling her. Loomis has gone back to playing Good Dog, and sits there panting and just looking around, relaxed and happy.

  “What happened with Loomis?” Delia asks. “Hasn’t your grandma been working with him for a while?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. I point out the way Mrs. Taylor tensed up when I approached on the bike, and the way she started yelling at Loomis. “She got really nervous because she thought he was going to go crazy when he saw the bike. But it wasn’t really the bike that set him off—it was her reaction. She got scared, so he wanted to protect her.”

  “Wow,” Delia says. “That was actually pretty sweet of him, then.”

  “Don’t tell her,” I say quietly to Delia, “but I think she’s really the one we’re training. Or trying to.”

  “We’ll try again next week,” I hear Corny tell Mrs. Taylor. “In the meantime, keep walking him and don’t let yourself get nervous.”

  Mrs. Taylor looks a little embarrassed, but Corny gives her a little shoulder hug and says, “It’s never really easy.” Which I have the bruises to prove.

  Corny feels so bad about my torn jeans and about, well, using me as bait that she drops me and Delia off at the mall and gives me money to buy some replacements.

  “You know,” Delia says gently, “they do make jeans in long sizes.”

  “Not where my dad shops,” I say, trying to make it funny. It might be if it weren’t true.

  “Maybe it’s time that your dad stops doing all the shopping.” She says this so nicely, so sweetly, that I just nod and start to feel a little grateful. She’s absolutely right.

  I follow her into a store where everyone looks like a model—well, not like the six-foot-two magazine models, but like perfect little models of what people who make jeans expect people who buy them to look like. You know, no crazy, jutting hip bones, or warped butts, or tree-trunk thighs. “I’m not sure about this,” I tell Delia. I can’t help but stare at one salesgirl who’s so pretty and willowy she almost looks like she’s been drawn by some expert artist with a nice flowing charcoal pencil. Everything about her looks perfectly put into place.

  I, on the other hand, look like I was drawn by that artist’s third-grade student. I try to explain this to Delia, but she just hands me six pairs of jeans and leads me into an ant-sized dressing room. We cram in together, and when I slip out of my awful jeans, she takes them and looks at the tag. “These are guys’ jeans.”

  “Yeah, well.” I shrug. I don’t tell her about the other pairs my dad bought me that have tags that say irregular. And yet seem to fit me.

  The first pair mocks me by riding up in the crotch. The second pair plays a trick on me by making my butt magically disappear. The third pair serves me up a generous portion of muffin top. After the fourth pair just whines at me and sags so much in the crotch that I look like I’ve changed genders, my frustration takes over. “This is why I just give up.” I reach for my jeans. “Why even bother?”

  She snatches them out of my hands. “Last time I shopped for jeans, I tried on fourteen pairs!” Which I know is only because she was seeking absolute perfection, not simply trying to be passable, like I am. She may have acne, but she’s like a little mannequin. Clothes look as good on her body as they do on the displays.

  Three stores, nineteen pairs, and one heated argument later (about which was worse, cystic acne or bad bone structure), I find them. Two pairs! On sale, even! They are magical. I can’t help smiling when I see them in the mirror and find that I look incredibly normal. Somehow they’ve made my legs look less like odd appendages created strictly for the function of walking, and more like flowy things a dancer might have. Okay, that might be pushing it a little, but still, I do feel a little graceful in them. There’s a shape to my butt, and it’s not a rectangle. The crotch is perfectly gender-appropriate. It’s just—normal. And acceptable. Both such beautiful, glorious words.

  I AM MAKING my way to first period on Monday morning when I hear the word “Holy,” right behind me. I turn around and see Mandy staring at my new jeans. “Cow,” she finishes.

  I disregard the Hubert C. Frost “Rules of the Road,” which are posted every twenty feet in every hallway, and pull her across the hall to where a line of lockers ends, providing a small bunker. “Delia and I went shopping,” I explain.

  “You look so different in them,” she says, but with a little shock.

  “Thanks,” I say. But she stands there kind of wide-eyed, looking me over. “What? Don’t you like them?”

  “Well, yeah,” she says. I expect her to smile, but she doesn’t. “I mean, they work.”

  My own smile starts to fade. “But?”

  “But nothing,” she says, and then adds, “Just don’t change too much, okay?”

  I give her a bewildered laugh. “The only thing that’s changed is I have a couple of pairs of new jeans.”

  “And a shirt,” she says. “Which, I have to say, is cute.”

  It is. It’s a button-up with little pinstripes, and it goes in at the waist so I look a lot less pointy. “I borrowed it from Delia. Her aunt sent it, but it’s like eighteen sizes too big for her.”

  “And mascara,” she continues.

  “Um, hello? Your idea.”

  “I know, but.” She pauses. “I thought that was just mascara. But now the clothes, and I don’t even know what else. You just look so different.”

  “Do I have to remind you? I have been working on my posture. Like you’re supposed to be doing.” I do a few shoulder slumps (before) and squarings (after) to demonstrate.

  “I know and you’re probably right,” she says. “It’s just, I don’t know, every day you look less and less like my strange little buddy.”

  I snort out a laugh. “Oh, and by ‘little,’ you mean ‘freakishly tall,’ right?”

  She shrugs. “So you’ve got a couple of inches on the rest of us. Big deal. In some cultures, that’s a good thing.”

  “Yeah, well, so are bound feet,” I say.

  She laughs. I do too.

  “Anyway.” I bring my hands to my mess of hair. “Does the fact that my hair is still a big poof of frizz bring you any comfort?”

  “Actually,” she says, smiling, “yes. I think it does.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I was kind of hoping she’d say that it looks different too, because I put some “all-day control” spray on it this morning—some stuff I found in the back of my grandma’s bathroom cabinet. The label was yellowed and peeling, and it had a name like Georgie Girl, but I thought it was worth a shot. Apparently not.

  I’m giving up. It’s just going into a ponytail.

  “Just so you know,” Mandy says, “I’m not going mainstream.”

  “I’m not either,” I argue. I mean, I doubt I’ll ever be able to pull that off. Seriously. “I’m just trying to look halfway normal.”

  “Whatever you say,” she answers. “Just don’t become one of them.” But then she gives me a soft punch in the upper arm, so I know she wants me to think that she’s kidding. And I give her a soft arm-punch back, because I want her to think I am, too.

  MR. DEWEY WAVES from his front stoop as we pull up after school. Kisses is next to him, on a leash. “Would you just look at that?” Corny beams.

  But when we pull into the driveway, Kisses runs toward the car—as far as her leash will let her. She doesn’t make the usual scene, but she looks like she’s thinking about it. When she starts to lower her head and pull her lip back just a bit, Corny taps on the horn. Kisses startles, jumping away from the car. “Now, that’s an easy distraction.” She laughs.

  We open our doors and I go around to the back of the truck. It was Corny’s idea to bring sod today. It’s like little squares of lawn. She thinks if Kisses can handle walking on a small strip of grass, it may be the stepp
ing stone to bigger things, like backyards and parks.

  “How’s it been going?” Corny asks Mr. Dewey.

  “Better,” he says. Kisses starts to mash up her face. As her sharp teeth start to show, a low growl comes out of her. “Except she still acts like this whenever we have company.”

  “All that growling and teeth-baring is telling you that she feels anxious. When you see these cues, you’ve got to distract her immediately, before she can start acting on those feelings. Watch,” Corny says, and claps her hands together just once. Kisses’s lip drops a little and she tucks her head back.

  “So when you tapped your horn…?”

  “Right. That was a distraction too. Sometimes you have to get creative.”

  We follow Mr. Dewey through the house and out to the back patio—a little stone surface surrounded by grass. I place the sod down on the stone. Then Corny hands Kisses’s leash to me.

  There’s not much room out here, but I need to get her used to me handling the leash, so I walk her around in a loop until she seems comfortable. Then I walk her up to the square of sod. She growls and pulls back.

  “That’s a cue,” Corny says. “So you need to distract her. Give a little tug on the leash. Gentle, but firm.”

  I pull upward on the leash, and her growling stops.

  “Now, have her sit,” Corny continues. “She needs to relax.”

  Luckily, Kisses listens to me. She sits down, still two feet from the sod.

  “Good. Now try again,” Corny says. This time Kisses takes two steps forward and one step back, pulling again. We do it all over again.

  On the third try, Kisses gets close to the grass, even sets a tiny foot on it for a brief second, and then starts pulling and growling. Corny takes her leash. “Just a second too late on the distraction, Olivia,” she tells me.

  I’m ready to try again—I mean, her paw made contact with grass!—but she tells me it’s time to give it a break, that we’ll be back soon to try again.

  “Ah, well,” Mr. Dewey says. “At least she’s going on the paper now.” He’s talking about her potty habits. “I couldn’t even get her to do that before.”

  “That’s better,” Corny says. “But we’ll get her going back out here again. Just not today.”

  Later, on the way out to the pickup, she says, “Don’t worry. It’s okay. You did really well with her. In cases like these, it’s always baby steps.”

  I’m already thinking. Cues and distractions. The next step in our plan.

  BETWEEN FIRST AND second periods the next morning, I see Phoebe engulfed in the herd making its way down the hall in front of me. “Hey, wait up!” I call to her.

  She shoots a panicked look over her shoulder at me and slows down. The other kids move like liquid around her. “I’m stressed,” she says as I catch up. “I’ve got a quiz this period.”

  “You always get A’s,” I remind her. “You’re lucky.”

  “It’s not luck,” she says, eyeing me.

  “Hiii Phoeee-bee,” we hear, in a booming, slow, and extra-syrupy boy-voice. It’s coming from the gorgeous-toothed, sweepy-haired Brant, who happens to be traveling in the crowd moving toward us.

  “Oh hi, Brant,” she says, with a wave of her hand. “Can’t talk!”

  He gives her an exaggerated frown and floats away in the human river. For a second I am speechless. I’m wondering if maybe she’s finally getting it—that maybe she knows, or at least suspects, that he’s mocking her.

  But I’m wrong again. “I told him I had a vocab quiz third period,” she says, shaking her head. “Who has time to talk when you’ve got a quiz?”

  Over near the doorway of a classroom, the little kid from the bus, my silent seatmate, is trying to get across the hall. He eyes the traffic hesitantly, like a chicken trying to cross a busy road. He jerks his body forward, and then quickly back—a false start. I wonder if we should stop and help him or if that would make him feel worse, when we hear the chanting.

  “S-P-I!” Pause. “R-I-T!” Suddenly the human waters part clumsily, and a blue spandexed line of about fifteen Spiritleaders starts snaking down the hall toward us. And—

  Blam!

  Little Kid has chosen the wrong moment to cross, and now both he and Head Spiritleader Brynne Shawnson are on the hallway floor. For a second they both flop around like fishes. Except for the flopping, the hall is pretty quiet—just a few sharp intakes of breath, a stray “Oh. My. God.” Or two. But then the laughing begins.

  Brynne makes it to her feet first, dusting off her unitard. “I’m okay,” she says, neither sounding nor looking it. Her head starts to tilt back, and I quickly nudge Phoebe.

  “Watch this,” I whisper.

  “What?” she whispers back.

  “What she’s doing! See?”

  Brynne’s lip starts to curl and her shoulders start to square as she eyes the kid. And then a stream of cruelty spews from her mouth. “You idiot! What were you thinking!? Are you blind or just stupid?!”

  Little Kid gets up, blinking, and picks up his books. “Sorry,” he murmurs, and shuffles quickly across the hall.

  “God, Brynne, calm down. He was like, eight,” Corinne d’Abo, one of the other Spiritleaders, says to her.

  “So? I was just kidding,” Brynne says back. “Let’s go!”

  The Spiritleaders shuffle back behind Brynne. “ARCTIC WIND!” she calls out. They organize themselves in a single-file line, facing sideways. “Let’s get ready to bloooowww!” People start bumping into each other, scurrying for safety, as the Spiritleaders cartwheel down the hall like whirling blue death stars, the kind you see in ninja movies.

  I turn back to Phoebe. “So did you see what she was doing?”

  “Didn’t everybody?”

  “I’m not talking about the obvious stuff, Pheeb. I’m talking about the way she moved her head, the way she curled her lip—the stuff she did right before she started yelling at that kid?”

  “Oh. I guess so. Why?”

  “Why? Only because it’s one of the most important parts of this plan.”

  “Liv, I’ve really got to go,” Phoebe says. “That quiz—”

  And then she’s off. Thanks to the Spiritleaders, the crowd in the halls has thinned, but the floors are littered with wreckage—loose papers thrown about, full binders splayed open, even a random but seriously unfashionable clog. I’m sure somewhere in the school, a Teen Life teacher is walking lopsided, mourning its loss, but thanking her lucky stars that she escaped the hallway with all limbs intact.

  I’m almost to my classroom when I slip on someone’s algebra homework. My foot shoots forward, and I wind up on the ground in what a P.E. teacher would call a hurdle stretch. Luckily I scramble to my feet before I hear “You okay?”

  I turn around and see Uncle Jesse. From Full House. Only much younger and much more three-dimensional. This version also has a better haircut. I try to speak but can’t. And then the Young Uncle Jesse smiles, and you can almost hear the roar of blood rushing to my face, prickling every nerve from my belly button to my sagging ponytail. I mean, the way he looks at me makes me feel like I’m some type of fancy show dog.

  The bell rings, making us both officially late, but neither one of us moves. Me, because I’m physically paralyzed. Him, because—well, that part I can’t figure out. Maybe my crazy gene has kicked in and I’m seeing things? Maybe I have a concussion from my fall? Maybe I’m actually dead and in heaven?

  Finally, I get it out. “I’m fine.” And then, before I can stop that stubborn inner dweeb, I hear myself say, “I’m Olivia.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m Caleb. I’m new.”

  New? So he doesn’t know about my reputation as a Marcie? The misfit? The outcast? The smelly dog-girl? He’s never seen me with too-short—and irregular—jeans? Or with anything but long, lush lashes and Caribbean green eyes?

  I laugh. But nothing’s funny, and now I’ve just made it even more awkward. But instead of getting all squirmy, he laughs a little too. And then I
notice a little red patch on his chin—zits!—and I feel a flurry of hope. Because maybe wherever he came from everyone looked like the salespeople in the jeans store, and just having oily skin demoted you to Marciedom. Maybe he doesn’t realize how out of my league he is here, where standards are so much lower!

  And then, my heart quickening all over again, I start to wonder—could he actually, just maybe, perhaps, I mean, I know it’s a crazy thought, but could he actually…? Just a little…? You know, be liking me?

  But then he says, “This is probably a stupid question since I see you’ve got two on your feet, but any chance you lost a shoe back there?” And he dashes my dreams. He brings me back to cold, hard middle school life. Did I really think I could put on a new pair of jeans and suddenly stop being a Marcie? Because anyone who could possibly think I’m dorkish enough to own a clog can’t possibly like me like that.

  I realize I still haven’t answered his question, and he’s starting to look a little dismayed. He’s probably wishing he could think of a polite way to end this conversation. So I help him out.

  “No,” I say, and turn away, starting toward my class.

  “Well, nice to meet you,” he calls to my back.

  “You too,” I mumble. But then I turn around just one more time. “Thanks,” I say. I mean, sure, I’m mortified, but what does it hurt to get a second glance? And then I’ll never think about him again.

  Really.

  IT’S LATER THE same day and we’re in Bored Game Club, but the games all remain in their boxes. Word has spread throughout the school about Brynne and Little Kid’s hallway collision, but now it includes stuff like ambulances and comas, so Phoebe and I, as eyewitnesses, are trying to set the record straight.

  “There wasn’t even any blood,” I explain to Mandy, Delia, and Joey.

  “What does ‘critical condition’ mean?” Joey asks.

  “He’s not in the hospital, dummy!” Phoebe says to him. “He probably just got sent to the nurse’s office and went home.”