Mandy was still vying to be Sandy’s favorite back then, so she laughed like she was at a comedy club. They were both wearing matching bra-and-panty sets and taking their time before they put on their gym shorts.
Ruth looked like she wanted her locker to be a portal to another world so she could climb in and climb out in Narnia. That was before I turned Dark, so instead of saying anything, I just put my head in my locker and hoped Sandy wouldn’t notice me. These sorts of attacks went on for weeks.
Ruth made some desperate attempts to fit in. She would fly into the bathroom as soon as she got to school and emancipate her hair from the braid snaking down her shoulder blade. I learned to replicate it for her at the end of the day so that her hair didn’t betray its daily freedom when her mom picked her up. She rolled up the sleeves of her dresses in a sad attempt to look more urban and worked at opening up more, smiling and even chatting with people other than me. Still, we didn’t manage to attract any more close friends. We were an oddball couple of library nerds who made easy shooting for Sandy and Mandy.
But Ruth and I were happy hanging out after school. We played in our imaginations, invented new worlds, and spent hours sketching characters who lived there. Ruth was the third oldest of seven brothers and sisters, so at her house, we were constantly interrupted to change diapers or make someone a snack. At my house, Ruth reveled in the quiet, with my mom studying for nursing school and my dad always coming home late.
It was in the spring of eighth grade when Ruth’s mom came to pick her up from school early one Friday for a church retreat. She found Ruth talking to me at my locker with her dress unbuttoned and her hair hanging in spirals around her face, eye shadow brushed onto both lids. As Ruth’s mother grabbed her hand and snapped her head toward the nearest exit, her own braid cast out like a whip. She didn’t let Ruth get her things from her locker or say good-bye. She just wrenched her from the clutches of public school like she was pulling her from the arms of Satan. Ruth held one hand out toward me like I might have a life ring to throw her. I didn’t.
I tried to call. Ruth’s mother answered both times, and the second time, she asked me politely not to call back. I got a letter in the mail a week later. Ruth wrote that she was going to be homeschooled from now on and that she wasn’t allowed to talk to me anymore.
I appealed to my parents for help. My dad said, “I’m sorry, Celia, but we can’t tell anyone else how to raise their children.” My mom twisted a finger in her curly hair and sighed, “Maybe her parents will change their minds. It’s painful, but sometimes a friendship just has to end.” They both seemed distracted. I read Bridge to Terabithia and cried every night, wishing the phone would ring. Two weeks later, my parents told me they were separating, and three weeks after that was the incident with the Book.
I was sitting on the park swing, thinking about Ruth and wondering if I would ever see her again, when Drake finally appeared twenty minutes late, pushing himself fast down the street on a skateboard. He skidded to a stop on the sidewalk closest to the swing set and stepped on one end of his board, grabbing the other with his hand.
“Dude, I’m so sorry. I overslept,” he said, running a hand through his hair and then attempting to force it into a style with his fingers.
“No big deal.” I shrugged, hoisting myself out of the hammock-like swing and disguising a relieved sigh. Drake had shown up; he hadn’t disappeared or decided he didn’t like me or been dragged away by a parent to be homeschooled. We walked as quickly as possible the twenty blocks to school.
CHAPTER
10
I slid into my desk for first-period Language Arts moments after the bell and received a warning glare from Mr. Pearson. From the desk ahead of mine, Sandy muttered, “Spend too much time deciding which black skirt to wear today?” Mandy, next to her, nearly choked with laughter.
“It’s probably easy to be on time when you are unburdened by creative impulses,” I said back in an agreeable tone.
“Yeah, that’s why everyone hates you Celia, it’s because you’re such a creative genius,” spat Mandy, defending her hero.
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” I hissed back, although I’m sure my Oscar Wilde quote was lost on Mandy.
She appeared to be prepping a counterattack when Mr. Pearson told us bluntly to be quiet and get out our books. Getting the last word with Sandy or Mandy would likely ensure a more vicious attack from them later, but I still relished the triumph for the remainder of class.
The rest of the school day was uneventful. No more locker notes or girl-on-girl hazing. Drake and I ate lunch outside, and he played impressively in the pickup game. I spent European History and math working on a poem I was writing about how braiding hair is like making pretzels out of dough. When the last bell finally rang, I was standing at my locker waiting for Drake when two terrible things happened.
First, Clock materialized, dressed, as always, in a black trench coat. Clock’s real name is Daniel, and his last name is Kloch, which most people assume rhymes with “blotch,” but really sounds like “clock.” I know because we had classes together in middle school, and every time we had a new teacher or a substitute, she would attempt to call out his name on the attendance sheet before he tensely corrected her by saying, “Clock, just call me Clock.” I never saw one teacher insist on calling him Daniel. Clock was always quiet and brooding, but in seventh grade he started going for the full, hungry vampire look. I think he even shades in half-moons under his eyes with makeup.
Clock was sliding down the hall in a gothic saunter when he noticed me. Clock didn’t really talk to me in middle school. But now that we were both freshman fish in the big, scary pond of upperclassmen sharks, I wondered if he might acknowledge me. Unfortunately, he did.
“Get the note I left you, Weird?” he taunted as he walked past, his black combat boots thudding on the buffed linoleum.
Despite my Darker instincts, my mouth hung open. As outcasts and freaks, Clock and I should have been natural allies. But in the chaotic battleground of high school, he had chosen to be my enemy. I couldn’t believe he was the one who left the note.
I shot back, “Don’t you have a vampire romance to read?”
“Wow,” he countered. “Finally grew a pair for high school. New boyfriend making you braver?” Then he was off, the tail of his black coat disappearing down the hall and into a crowd of students.
Boyfriend? What made Clock say that? Do other people think Drake is my boyfriend? I didn’t have a lot of time to ponder the issue. If Clock’s comments stung me like a jellyfish, then what happened next had the poisonous barb of a manta ray.
I looked down the hall to see Drake walking toward me. Clutching Drake’s arm at the elbow and grinning like he was her escort to a cotillion was Sandy Firestone. Catching sight of my face through the crowd, Sandy tugged at Drake’s arm to make him stop. Then she stood on both of her tiptoes, pressed her body along the length of Drake’s side, and cupped a hand around her mouth to whisper in his ear.
Drake seemed unaware that I was watching them. Sandy was not. After finishing her personal game of telephone, Sandy giggled once at Drake and then ran off down the hall. I bitterly regretted pissing Sandy off in first period. I spun around before Drake could catch me looking and tried with all of my lungs to catch my breath. I swallowed two bellyfuls of air before Drake made it to my locker.
“Ready for your bodyguard to get you safely out of the building, pop star?” Drake asked when he reached me.
Despite all the stings I was nursing, I forced a smile. “The water in my limo better be ice cold this time”—I shut the door to my locker—“or heads will roll.”
CHAPTER
11
“I think I’m doing the right thing. Do you think I’m doing the right thing? He likes me, right? I’m pretty sure he likes me. It feels like now is the right time, but maybe I should wait.” Drake’s internal debate club dominated the conversation on our walk home from school.
I wasn’
t responding much because I couldn’t stop thinking about Drake talking to Sandy. I almost asked him what they were saying to each other approximately forty-seven times, but I knew it would come out sounding jealous. I was glad I hadn’t told him about the eighth grade, about my stomach-growling desire for revenge. How could I trust him now that he was talking to the enemy?
“Just be honest,” I advised hypocritically. “Who wouldn’t like you?” When we got to the park in our neighborhood, we exchanged phone numbers—cell for Drake, landline for me—and IM names before parting for the weekend.
“Gran’s waiting to drive me to Harrisburg—train for New York leaves at six.” Drake got on his skateboard. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” I said with tepid enthusiasm as he rolled down the sidewalk away from me.
When I walked into my house, I was not shocked to find my mom on the phone. My aunt Alyce, Dorathea’s mom, lives in Oregon, and she and my uncle got a divorce a few years ago. Breaking up with your husband must give you a lot of stuff to talk about, because my mom and my aunt have been on the phone every day since my dad moved to Atlanta three months ago.
My mom was sitting on a dining room chair dressed in jeans, her thin legs propped up on the table. People always think she’s too young to be my mother, since my parents had me the week after they graduated from college. I was eight when I put together enough clues to solve the Mystery of the Unplanned Pregnancy. No one plans on being nine months pregnant when they put on a cap and gown. Plus, they got married a few months after I was born, so in my parents’ wedding pictures, I’m the one wearing a baby bridesmaid dress. As a result, at every school function involving parents, my mom looks out of place among the suburban, minivan crowd. She’s the young, pretty one who is always skidding in ten minutes late, perching awkwardly in the back of the cafeteria or classroom, or picking her way through the rows to a seat my prompt father has saved for her.
“Oh, Alyce, I’ve gotta go,” my mom said into the receiver. “She’s home.”
The minute she put down the receiver, my mom slapped one hand to her forehead. “Rats! I meant to put the roast in the oven at two o’clock. Don’t worry,” she called out, disappearing through the swinging door into the kitchen. “It can still be ready by five!”
If we all have spirit animals, then my mom’s would be the dingbat. My favorite game as a child was called Help Mommy Find Her ____. Depending on the day, that blank might be filled in with “shoes,” “keys,” “wallet,” “medication,” or “movie passes.” She created an evacuation plan for all the times we had to fly out of the house suddenly because she forgot about a doctor’s appointment or a meeting at school. Racing along in the car, she would enlist my help in concocting a lie. “So, we’re going to tell your teacher that there was a family emergency,” she might say. “Let’s just keep it vague and not offer any details.”
Of the hundreds of squabbles I have witnessed between my mom and dad, 90 percent of them started with my mom losing her wallet or forgetting to pay a bill or leaving the garage door open all night.
“Okay, Mom,” I yelled back into the kitchen. “I’m going to check email.”
I walked down the hall to my bedroom and reminded myself that it was in serious need of a makeover. If you saw my room and had to guess what kind of girl lived there, you would assume she loved My Little Pony and dressed in tulle. My dad painted the walls lavender when I was six, and my mom chose the pink satin-trimmed curtains. I have a tiny desk monopolized by my computer and a bookshelf that’s so overcrowded it’s barfing books onto the floor. My mom said that if I can keep my room clean for thirty days straight, we’ll redecorate. I haven’t made it past five.
I logged on and found an email from Dorathea and one from my dad.
I opened Dorathea’s first.
Re: question
From: Dorathea Eberhardt ([email protected])
Sent: Fri 9/10 12:12 PM
To: Celia ([email protected])
hey, celia,
to answer your question: yes. if a guy asks you to hang out, it means he likes you AND wants to be your friend. our society is too caught up in defining relationships, like “this person is my friend and that person is my boyfriend.” human bonds are more complex than that.
today in my ethics and industry class, we learned that the ivory coast supplies 46 percent of the world’s cocoa production and uses child slave labor to farm cocoa fields. the chocolate companies, including the one that monikered your hometown, don’t want kids to know about this. you and your friends should stage a protest in front of the chocolate factory. STOP BIG CHOCOLATE FROM USING SLAVE LABOR!
how are you adapting to life without the cokehead around?
dorathea
First off, when Dorathea suggested that me and “my friends” go stage a protest, I think she forgot about the email where I mentioned that I was a little low on friends. Dorathea is politically active. She grew up on the West Coast, which she says is more “conscious” than Pennsylvania.
Second, my dad’s not a cokehead. We call him that because he went to Atlanta to work for the Coca-Cola Company. Since he has worked for both Hershey and Coke, Dorathea also calls him a “corporate tool” or “sugar pusher.” He got his first job at the Hershey Corporation right after college and started climbing the corporate rope, knot by knot. When he lost his job at Hershey last year to downsizing, he said he had to move to Atlanta to work for Coke because distribution management for international companies is specialized work.
I opened the email from my dad.
Re: Hello, Celia
From: James Door ([email protected])
Sent: Fri 9/10 9:39 AM
To: Celia ([email protected])
Hi, Turtle,
Things are great in Atlanta. The new job is flexible, so I run every morning and come to work at ten.
I found three parks within walking distance from my condo and a new shopping mall with lots of teen stores. I’m not far from the library. Can’t wait to show you around at Christmas.
Please remind your mother about the mortgage payment.
I Love You,
Dad
My dad’s pet name for me is Turtle, or Turtledove. When I was three, Dad sang “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to me at bedtime, adding one more verse each night leading up to Christmas. I was learning my animals, and my dad explained that the “two turtledoves” in the song were birds. After that, I called all flying animals “turtles,” and my parents thought it was so cute, a nickname was born.
My parent’s informal custody agreement looks like this: Dad gets me for Christmas, summer, and spring break; Mom gets me the rest of the time, and I get no say in the matter. And every Friday, like clockwork, my dad sends me an email. There is a standard template to these communications. They contain at least three things that I would like about Atlanta and end with the same request, “Please remind your mother . . .”
My parents didn’t always squabble about Mom’s forgetfulness. The first time I remember them fighting was when I was six years old and into a series of books called Jane and Clementine. They were about two sisters who go on wild adventures together, and as a result, I was obsessed by the idea of having a little sister. I asked about it constantly, begging both of my parents to have a baby. The conversations I had with Mom and Dad were very different.
Dad: “Maybe, Turtle, if we’re lucky.” Then he would smile and pat my leg.
Mom: “You’re handful enough for me!” Then she would laugh and kiss me.
One night, after I asked my dad for a baby sister for the twentieth time during my bedtime reading, I overheard my parents talking in their bedroom.
“I always told you that I want a family,” said Dad.
“Yes, a family,” my mom said back. “We are a family of three.”
“You have to compromise in a marriage.”
“Compromise! Into nine months of pregnancy and the constant work of another child? I want to acc
omplish things with my life.”
“Gina, are you telling me we’re twenty-seven and that’s it, we’re finished having kids?”
“Don’t wake Celia.”
That was the first time I cried without running into my parents’ room for comfort. I lay in bed that night worrying that we might not be a family if we were only a family of three. The next night, I did not ask my father for a baby sister when he read to me at bedtime.
When I was in fifth grade, my mom went back to school for nursing. That was the year she started becoming forgetful.
“Gina, why are we getting a late notice on our water bill?” my dad would bellow after putting down his briefcase and flipping through the mail after work.
“We are both responsible for the bills now, not just me!” my mom would yell back from her desk in their bedroom.
My dad would then mumble something that ended in the phrase “can’t live like this,” before heading into the kitchen to make dinner.
My mom got her internship at the hospital when I was starting eighth grade, and her work schedule got crazy. She started on the night shift five days a week, so she would be getting home from work in the morning when my dad was leaving. The fighting got worse, and it wasn’t just in their room at night.
“Gina, are you taking Celia to the dentist after school?” my dad might ask in the morning as he and I were getting up. My mom, sleepy eyed and preparing for bed, would slap her forehead and say, “Oh no. I forgot. I’m so exhausted. Can we reschedule?”
“Damn it. How much longer are these night shifts going to last?”
“Someone has to work them.”
“You have a family.”
The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door Page 4