Fetching

by Kiera Stewart

  It is time.

  It’s Friday, we’re in our secret lunchroom, and I’m practically starting to think in Spanish. I guess even a couple of days of La Vida Rica will do that to you, especially if your brain is thirteen and still spongelike. I am on my third pack of M&M’s when I finally get the nerve to bring it up.

  “Brynne?”

  “Hmmm?” I watch the chewing in her temples and feel a rush of overwhelming guilt. I’ve totally and utterly ruined the life of a regular eating, breathing, chewing, feeling human being.

  “Don’t you ever think we should, I don’t know, get back out there?”

  “Out where?”

  “I mean, maybe make some friends?”

  She shakes her head. “I like it here,” she says. “Want another?” She tries to hand me another pack of M&M’s.

  “No thanks,” I say quickly. She kind of shrugs and sits back again to stare at the TV, setting her foot up on the crate next to the buffet of snack food.

  “I miss it,” I say.

  She holds a hand out, signaling me to be quiet. Her eyes get big and her chewing stops. “Oh. Em. Gee,” she says through a full mouth. “No way he’s going back to her!”

  I take a breath and watch. Normally this would be enough to throw me off track—let’s face it, these things do tend to suck you right in, language barrier or not. When it’s clear that, yes, Ismael is begging Consuelo for her corazón, and that Consuelo isn’t sure it’s hers to give anymore, a tampon commercial comes on, and I say it again. Only more in the telenovela way.

  “I just can’t do this anymore.”

  Brynne crinkles up her forehead, trying to make it into a joke. “Well, I don’t know what you have against Ismael and Consuelo, but we can find something else to watch.”

  “I mean I can’t be your only friend, Brynne,” I say, and try not to think about the fact that it was my own engineering that made it this way.

  I’m kind of hoping that her pride will kick in, that she’ll deny that I’m her only friend and tell me that she’s been voted most popular since third grade—even if those elections were strongly discouraged by faculty and school administration and are in no way considered “official”—but instead she says, in a very breaking-heart way, “Why not?”

  I guess she realizes how very unpopular she sounds, because she says, “God, Olivia, what happened to me?” She laughs unhappily. “God, I sound like such a loser.”

  “But you’re not, Brynne. You’re the Most Popular Girl in School,” I say, as if the title stays with you for life—like it does for U.S. presidents and alcoholics. My voice is so awkward, so useless.

  “Was,” she corrects me, stabbingly. “Used to be.” She starts to cry. I’m a little worried Mrs. Vittle will hear us. Or worse, the hundreds of kids we go to school with, thus cementing our newfound reputation as pond scum.

  “People used to want to be my friend,” she continues, wetly. She snorts. “God, what happened?”

  “I really don’t know,” I lie. Bald-faced.

  “I’m such a joke. I wish I could just drop out of the elections. I don’t even care if I get an F in Social Studies now.”

  The guilt is gnawing through my heart.

  “Brynne—”

  “And now you don’t even want to be friends with me! You! ”

  It’s tunneling through my spleen.

  I swallow and say, “It’s not that I don’t want us to be friends. I like you, Brynne, I really do. I just don’t want to be your only friend.”

  Now it’s making its way up my esophagus.

  She looks at me like I’ve just slapped her or something, and says, “I would love to have things back to normal. You keep asking me that, and yes, I would love that! But I don’t know how to make that happen! I feel so…so worthless.”

  It’s pushing its way up my throat. I’m afraid I’m about to get sick.

  “Brynne,” I say, swallowing hard to fight the rising lump of guilt and M&M’s down. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “ON PURPOSE?!”

  Brynne is so mad, her stringy neck cords are showing. Her hands are in fists at her sides, and her head nearly hits the low ceiling of the room. The fourth period bell has already rung, and we are officially taking our middle school careers into our own hands. Not only are we cutting class, but we have trespassed on off-limits school property—not even for the first time.

  “Well, kind of,” I have to admit. I try to keep my voice calm and reasonable, even a little apologetic. “We were tired of being dorks. And tired of you guys all picking on us—we were sick of it.”

  “So you just—you just trained everyone to hate me? You just outright ruined my life?”

  I say a little prayer that she’ll understand. As if some kind of special magic will happen and she’ll turn to me and say, I’m sorry I drove you to that point. And training the whole school? Now, that’s clever. “Brynne, I’m sorry. I just meant to, maybe, take you down a notch or two.”

  “Congratulations!” she yells, her eyes bulging. “You succeeded! Satisfied?” Little splashes of spittle come out with her C ’s and S’s.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” I say. And I am. And for a fleeting second I feel relieved to finally be telling the truth.

  “Will you stop it with your sorries?” she yells again. “I don’t accept your apology!”

  “Look. Maybe I can fix it,” I say, hoping that I can, although I haven’t worked that out yet. “I’ll do everything in my power to make it better.”

  “You—” She jabs her pointer finger into my shoulder. “You have no power anymore! If you did, you wouldn’t be in here, with me.” And then she leaves, slamming the little door so hard that a super-duty-sized broom clangs loudly to the floor.

  I sit back down on the couch, curling into a little ball. My head seems to be exploding with thoughts that all confirm that what Brynne just said is true. Absolutely true. I’m about the most powerless person in school right now. And the sad thing is that I’ve dug the biggest hole—and have no idea how to get Brynne out of it. Or myself, for that matter.

  And now it’s even deeper, because Mrs. Vittle just walked in.

  Tears are pooling in my eyes faster than I can blink them away. For the last twenty minutes or so, I’ve been sitting in “isolation,” on a plastic chair in a room outside the assistant principal’s office. There are no windows, no plants, no cheery posters of cats hanging upside down that read hang in there. Not even a food-pyramid poster. Nothing to look at but the PTA newsletter, which refers to the upcoming bingo night and other things for good kids and not delinquents like me.

  And then a voice calls me. “Miss Albert,” it says. I look up to see an angry face framed with a high, tight hairline and bun that seems to be a living example of the word “severe.” My case has been fast-tracked right up past assistant-to-the-assistant principal, Mrs. Forester, and even past assistant principal, Mrs. Greve. I’m now face-to-face with Mrs. Vander-Pecker.

  “Your grandmother’s on her way in,” she says. “In the meantime, you can explain to me what’s going on.”

  My head is so full I feel like it could burst, and my words are trapped somewhere near my trachea.

  “You started this year as an A student, but lately you’ve been getting C’s and D’s on your assignments. You’re no longer taking part in”—she shuffles papers—“the Board Game Club.” Jeez. Middle school is so Big Brother. “And now you’re cutting class and watching TV in the janitor’s lounge?”

  I try to breathe in through my tight throat. Then I try Brynne’s line—the line she used with her mother. Not that I want to, but I’m truly desperate. “I’m going through something.” My voice is all warped from trying not to cry. Mortifying.

  Now she leans back and gives me a look that would be saying “bullcrap,” if it could indeed say that without breaking school rules.

  “I’m sorry. This is a difficult age,” I say. I’ve heard every adult say this at least once, so it�
�s something she can’t argue with.

  She sighs with disappointment and looks back to my folder—my life on paper—tapping her pen across her orange-lipsticked mouth. Someone should really tell her that orange brings out the yellow in her teeth. Of course, now is not a good time to give her any helpful advice.

  She puts the file down and looks at me. “You’re obviously a good student—normally, that is. You’ve never had any behavioral problems before. It’s rare when a decent student suddenly earns a suspension.”

  All of a sudden my heart is pounding in weird places, like my ears. “You mean,” I say, as my armpits begin to feel prickly and moist. “You mean detention.”

  She blinks. “No, I mean suspension.” I’m sure I go white. She continues. “Trespassing. Truancy. These are very serious offenses.”

  “But suspension?” I ask, the frustration ripping out of me. “What about Brynne?”

  “She’ll be seen to. It’s not for you and me to discuss.” She wheezes out a long exhale. “But let me ask you, Olivia. I never expected to see you in my office in this way. What happened?”

  “It all started,” I say, knowing how ridiculous this will sound. “It all started with ketchup.”

  “Okay, I’ve had enough,” she says, nostrils flaring.

  I feel faint. I’m only half aware of Corny coming in, saying little, signing papers, and hustling me to the pickup. “Sorry,” I murmur to her. She doesn’t say a word to me about it, doesn’t ask me to explain.

  Instead she tells me she’s scheduled an emergency session with Moncherie. Which I guess is good, because I really need to warn her.

  “I’VE GOT SOMETHING to tell you,” I say to Moncherie, before I even sit down.

  For a minute she looks worried. Then she sighs. “Olivia,” she says, shaking her head. “You do this every time. You always have something you’ve just got to tell me, and it’s usually so you can avoid talking about your mother, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not that,” I say, and shake my head, which feels like it is swelling. My eyes are bulging with tears. My nose is filling with snot. My throat is squeezing shut. I am sure that my head is about to explode.

  From the way Moncherie is looking at me, I could be right.

  “You have to stop the training,” I tell her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re using dog training on men, aren’t you?”

  “Why would—” she starts slowly.

  “Didn’t you cancel my last appointment because you had a date?”

  “What?” Her mouth opens and doesn’t shut. Her left eye squints, making her right eye look monstrously large in comparison.

  “I don’t think you can use this training on humans. It backfires!”

  “Olivia?”

  I can’t stop. “You’ll lose everything you ever cared about.”

  And then my head does explode, leaving a wet, soppy, snotty, Niagara Falls in its place. Moncherie hands me a box of Kleenex and then, when I use the last one, a roll of very thin toilet paper, and I don’t know how much time goes by while I leak and ooze and otherwise deconstruct.

  Finally, after the explosion slows to a trickle, Moncherie says, “First, let’s get this straight. I’m not using dog training on men. Is that clear?”

  “But you wanted to know the steps,” I whine. “And then when you canceled our appointment, I just thought—” My sentence dries up. I’m starting to feel really embarrassed. “Well, then, why did you cancel our appointment?”

  “It wasn’t for a date,” she says. “It was—look, never mind. We’re here to talk about you, Olivia. What’s going on?”

  Bathroom walls. Bathroom walls, my heads says to my lips—my old rule. Don’t tell her anything you wouldn’t want written on the bathroom walls. But my lips win.

  I tell her how Delia betrayed me. And how all my friends were part of it.

  Which takes us to the issue I’ve been trying to avoid all along.

  The issue of my mother.

  Moncherie leans forward in her chair. “So you’re saying Delia betrayed you because she said something about your mother’s, well, problem, to Brynne. Do you have any idea why she would have done this?”

  I shrug. “She said she was trying to get Brynne to stop teasing me. But she told all of our friends way before then—they all knew!”

  She sits back, taking a long breath. “I can see why you’re disappointed in Delia. You trusted her enough to tell her about your mother, and I know how carefully you guard that. You don’t like to talk about it even with me.”

  I start to feel a bit understood, and it makes me cry a little more.

  “But, Olivia, why do you guard it so carefully? What bothers you so much about your mother’s situation?”

  Okay, so I guess I’m not that understood. I squirm. “People judge you. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Like someone in your family having cancer, maybe?”

  “Cancer’s a disease.”

  “So is what your mom has, Olivia. It’s called mental illness. Illness. You really think your mom chose her depression?”

  “No,” I breathe. I feel a headache coming on. At least I hope it’s just a headache. “But she did choose to just leave me. How’s that supposed to make me feel?”

  She pauses. “How does it make you feel?”

  For a second, I don’t say anything. The butt-end part of my brain has been opened. The trunk has been unlocked. And this time, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. “Unacceptable. Unwanted. Unloved.” I look up at her. “Un-everything!”

  “Sometimes people do pretty drastic things, but not for the reasons we think. Have you been reading any of her letters?”

  “Not really.”

  “I seriously think you should. People with mental illness can get better, and she’s trying to do that right now.”

  For a second, I feel an inch better. But then she says something again.

  “Mental illness is not a choice.”

  Oh, jeez. Well, crap, then.

  “Olivia? What’s the matter?” Moncherie’s smile has left her face. Now she looks worried.

  “Well, if it’s not a choice—”

  Her eyebrows draw together and she nods slowly, like she’s trying to coax the words out of me.

  It works. “Then what? What’s that mean for me?”

  She turns her head slightly to the side. “I’m not understanding the question.”

  “Hello? The crazy gene? You and I both know I’ve got it. And now you’re saying there’s no choice—that I’m going to go crazy, whether I like it or not.”

  “The crazy gene?” she asks, looking at me as if it’s already taken over.

  “I don’t know what it’s really called, but you know what I’m talking about,” I say, flustered. “My mom and I are related. We even look alike, everyone who knew her tells me that.”

  “Ooh,” Moncherie says. “Well, think about it. You know how when you ride down Route 39 you see all those subdivisions? Those houses that look exactly alike from the outside?”

  I stare at her blankly.

  “Well, they may be the same model, let’s say a Dorchester, and the same exact floor plan, you know, a center-hall colonial—they may even be the same colors on the outside—but on the inside, they’re all so different. There could be two houses right next to each other, but inside it could feel like two different worlds!”

  She smiles at me and blinks.

  Do I have to even say this? I guess I do. “But we’re not houses. My mom and I, like, share the same genes. The same, you know, DNA.”

  She seems to think about this for a second. “Okay, let’s see. What color are your mother’s eyes?”

  I open my mouth to answer and then realize I’m stumped. I can’t remember my mother’s eyes at all.

  Moncherie seems to realize this, and steps back in. “Your dad—well, I only met him one time, but he’s got brown eyes. I mean, if I remember correctly,” she says. She cocks her hea
d and looks toward the ceiling. “Well, maybe chestnut is a better way to describe them. They’re very—rich.” She even sighs. Then she quickly looks at me and turns a little pink.

  Um, does she have a crush? Ew. “They’re brown,” I say with a flattened voice.

  “Right, right. And yours are green.”

  Well, okay, not just any green, but that’s okay. I’m still trying to remember my mother’s eyes—what color are they?

  “So not everything is passed along the way you think it is. Genes are more complicated than that. Even identical twins have differences.” The glint in her own brown eyes is just twinkling like crazy.

  The timer dings. She has this satisfied look on her face, like she just ate a really good meal. No doubt she’ll be drawing a hefty check mark on her notepad after this session. “Don’t worry. You’re not destined to go crazy,” she says smiling. “Even though you can act a little nutty sometimes.”

  I think I smile a little too.

  On the way home, sitting next to Corny and watching Queso act absolutely thrilled to be riding in a car, I remember something. My mother’s eyes. They’re blue. A gray-blue. Which is nothing like Caribbean green. Nothing at all.

  WELL, YOU’D THINK all that emotional stuff would be over. But the next morning, Saturday, I’m sitting on my bed, petting Oomlot, when I feel the weight in my chest start to rise again. It nearly chokes me as it climbs up my neck and starts pressing on my temples and streaming from my eyes. And once it starts pouring out, it becomes impossible to stop. I’m crying—sobbing, really—so loud that Corny hears me from downstairs and comes up.

  “Olivia?”

  I can’t answer. She comes into my room, trailed by Queso, who is acting rightfully concerned in that wide-eyed dog way. Corny hands me a box of tissues from my dresser and sits down on my bed. I don’t know how much time passes, but I become aware of the fact that she’s been petting my head. I curl up to Oomlot, who sighs deeply, as if he’s merely tolerating me. I don’t blame him. Even he can probably sense I’m a complete Marcie.