by Nancy Rue
I was still on the word presentation. To the whole fifth grade and our sixth grade. Those Girls. The BBAs.
The Tribelet.
“Right,” I said.
Then we looked at each other and I said, “Can you come over?” at the same time he said, “Can I come over?” We finished with, “Saturday?”
We had until then to figure out what we were going to do, which we worked on at lunch and during fifth period and sometimes even before school for a few minutes if we had time.
In the meantime, that tension that was building before? It kept climbing.
Chapter Fourteen
This time it was the teachers who were making people stress out. Well, not all people. Just Kylie and Those Girls.
In Spanish class, Mrs. Bernstein was all over Kylie because she was being so bossy about the Spanish booth.
In science, Mr. V made Those Girls split up and be lab partners with other people, and then he watched them like detectives on TV when they’re on a stakeout, only he did it with his big elastic smile on his face.
Kylie got so prickly about it she was even snappy with Heidi and Izzy and Riannon. In math class, I heard her tell them all to stop copying her and get a life. They looked as confused as I was. I mean, if they didn’t copy her hair and her fingernail polish and her Barbie doll smile, they basically didn’t have a life. Nobody knew better than me how she could take that away.
If I let her.
The Kylie Stress really hit the wall Thursday in the lunchroom. It was pretty calm in there, for the sixth grade anyway, and Colin and I were still brainstorming on how we were going to do our presentation, when Mr. Jett marched down the aisle between the tables. His arms pumped and his mustache quivered and his entire bald head was shiny red.
“He’s on a mission,” Colin whispered to me.
And evidently that mission was about Those Girls because he halted (not stopped, halted) at their table and stuck his hands on his hips.
“Danner!” he said, pointing his chin at Heidi.
“What?” Heidi said.
Kylie jabbed her so hard I clutched my own side. She put on the Barbie smile.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Jett?” she said.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Steppe. I was talking to Danner.”
Once again with the chin jab. By then the whole cafeteria was silent as a movie theater when you get to the scary part. I could see Heidi’s ’tude draining from her face. Any other teacher would take you aside and bust you, but we all knew Mr. Jett was more into taking people down in public.
“I just got a message from Lydia Kiriakos. You know her?”
“The bullying lady?” Heidi said in an almost-whisper.
“The anti-bullying lady. She wanted to know when I wanted to reschedule your meeting with her since you got there late the last time I sent you.”
Kylie’s entire group had oops on their faces. Even Kylie’s eyes shifted like she was looking for the emergency exit.
“Imagine my surprise,” Mr. Jett said, “because I never sent you to her in the first place.”
“Heidi kind of sent herself down,” Kylie said. “She knew she violated the Code so . . .”
He slammed his palm on the table, and the whole lunchroom jumped. “What is with this group and your lying? Huh? Lunch detention for all of you. With me. Tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you supposed to send us to that Lydia person?” Kylie said.
“Is she brain damaged or what?” Colin muttered to me.
“I’m supposed to send you to Mrs. Yeats, and you know what she would do. So I suggest you stop pushing me.”
Yeah, they took that suggestion.
But as Mr. Jett marched back up the aisle and the bee-buzzing began, Kylie shook off the Barbie face and aimed her blue eyes right at Tori.
Like it was Tori’s fault they lied to try to see what was going on with Lydia and me? Like the Tribelet was to blame for any of this? Like . . .
My thoughts tripped over each other and fell in a pile because Kylie tossed her hair and turned to me. I guessed she was looking at me, although her eyes were in such tight slits I wasn’t sure she could even see me.
Just in case, I put on my Stone Face and waited for my stomach to hurt.
But it didn’t. Somehow, it just didn’t.
That was lunchtime. Fifth period, Mr. Devon got interrupted about ten times with people coming in to use the computers. By sixth, there was so much whispering and people sneaking looks at their cell phones, I was getting afraid that they were starting up about my dad again, although I didn’t know what worse things they could say. I got a little stressed out myself and got a pass to the restroom from Mrs. Bernstein so I could regroup.
I washed my hands and went over all the cards and my steps and everything in my head. I could do this. No matter what, I could climb to the Heights. I could take off the Stone Face and go for it.
I looked up at the mirror to watch myself morph back into me, but somebody else’s reflection was there with mine. It was Shelby, and her lips were in a frightened bunch.
“I just thought you should know,” she said, still looking at me in the mirror.
“Okay,” I said.
“Kylie’s spreading it around that they’re backing off of Tori and her friends. She calls them the G-Gs. For Goody-Goodies.”
“Okay,” I said again. Shelby was getting the words out fast like she needed to just say them and escape. I wasn’t going to slow her down.
“But they’re planning to take down the anti-bullying campaign at the fair next week and make it look stupid in front of everybody.”
I watched my eyes bulge in the mirror. “Does Tori know?”
Shelby nodded. “I told her. But I thought you should know too because you’re doing so good and everything. You can’t let them take you down either.”
I turned and looked at her instead of her reflection. “They can’t,” I said.
Shelby looked at me through her veil of hair before she left. I reached for a paper towel.
But then I heard the door swish open and I heard her say, “You’re way braver than me.”
Yeah, well, I didn’t feel so brave the next morning in first period P.E., and this time it wasn’t about Kylie and Those Girls. It was about having to take the final obstacle course test.
“This is pass/fail, people,” Coach announced in his pit bull voice. “You do everything, you pass. You don’t, you fail. Simple as that.”
I looked over at Tori’s team. Ophelia had her arm slung around Winnie, and Tori was giving her a thumbs-up. This was good news for Winnie because she’d gotten to the top of the wall the day before.
It was miserable news for me.
“The two teams that win—boys and girls—get extra credit points.”
Kylie poked Riannon, who of course poked Heidi. But Heidi shook her head. By the time Riannon gave Izzy a jab and Izzy said, “Is that even fair?” Coach had already walked away. I knew the whistle blow was coming, so I covered my ears, but not before I heard Riannon say, “We’re not getting bonus points with Ginger on our team.”
Kylie let her eyes glance over me. “We don’t need bonus points.”
My stomach wanted to know what that meant. But my stomach wasn’t in charge. I took a deep breath and followed Coach to the starting line.
It was kind of exciting, actually, with people sprinting and climbing and jumping their best and their teams screaming, “Go! You got this! You can totally do it!”
I even liked doing some of it. Coach made Winnie and me be some of the last ones so we wouldn’t slow anybody behind us down. Once Winnie got going, I ran my fastest and wriggled through the tunnel without getting stuck in the middle like I did the first time and jumped all the hurdles without knocking any of them down. The rope was a challenge, but I could hear Mitch yelling, “Look up! Use your legs too!” and I made it up and didn’t even have hand burns.
And then came the wall. It loomed over me, and I could almost hea
r it saying, Are you serious? You’re going to climb ME? Why do you even try?
Because I never stopped trying.
“Talking to it isn’t going to get you up there.”
Coach was standing right next to me. I looked at him and looked away fast, but I saw enough to know I’d said it out loud.
“But that’s the right attitude,” he said. “You gotta try. Let’s go.”
I did try. I really did. I kept my eyes up, and I reached for the next handhold and found the ones below with my feet. I was halfway up before I realized it.
“You’re doing it,” Winnie whispered from above me on her side.
I was. I was doing it.
I stretched to the next plaster “rock” with my hand and felt around with my foot. It didn’t land anyplace. I didn’t know where the hold was because I’d never been up this far. My leg flailed around, but still it didn’t find the bump. So I did the worst thing you can do when you’re climbing the wall.
I looked down.
Way down, or at least it seemed that way to me. Mitch was yelling, “Look up! Look up!” The soccer girls all had their hands over their mouths. Kylie was examining her nail polish.
I closed my eyes and tried to make myself get calm. There was a foothold there someplace. Everybody else found it. Why couldn’t I?
Maybe I didn’t have to. Maybe I could just get the rest of the way up with my hands.
I let go of my lower hand and groped for the rock just above me. But it was out of my reach and my other hand was shaking and sweating . . . because the only thing holding me now was one slippery palm.
“I’m gonna fall!” I cried out.
“No, you’re not, Ginger,” Winnie said. She was even with me, on her way down. “Hold on!”
But there was nothing to hold on to. My hand shook off of its rock, and I plunged toward the ground. I’d been right that first day. The mattresses weren’t thick enough. All the air came out of me when I hit, and I was sure I felt my brain slosh inside my skull.
“Everybody to the locker rooms!” Coach barked.
I tried to keep my eyes closed as the feet all retreated and left us in quiet, but Mrs. Zabriski told me to look at her.
I did, and they both peered into my eyes.
“You’re okay,” she said. “Can you sit up?”
I struggled to get myself upright and shook my head. “I’m not okay,” I said. “I failed.”
“Not yet.” Coach’s voice was a low growl, but his eyes didn’t look mad. “You gave it a shot. You can do a retest on just the wall Monday. I’ll let Iann climb it with you, and she can coach you. Fair enough?”
“Okay,” I said, although my head was spinning and I knew it wasn’t from the fall. Coach was saying this?
“I’m doing this because you have a good attitude,” he said.
Mrs. Zabriski gave a really loud sniff. “Which is more than I can say for some other people in this class.”
“Some other people in this class” didn’t say a word to me for the rest of the day, not even to ask if I was okay, which was perfectly fine with me. Except I knew from Shelby that ignoring me and the Tribelet was part of their takedown plan. I kept watching Tori and Winnie and Mitch and Ophelia, but they didn’t act worried at all.
By fifth period, I stopped worrying, too, because Colin and I decided how to do our presentation. We couldn’t exactly act it all out in eight minutes, but we could read it with the voices, and Mr. Devon took a picture of each card so he could turn them into a PowerPoint presentation that everybody could see while we read.
“This goes beyond epic,” Colin said.
He was right. But it was hard Saturday when I was getting ready for him to come over not to picture the fair without seeing the anti-bullying booth being torn down or something. If the Tribelet knew, Lydia knew. They wouldn’t just let it happen.
But somehow that didn’t seem like enough. So while I was arranging granola bars and banana slices on a plate, I stopped and made sure nobody was around, and I whispered, “If you do care, God, will you please help us?”
Colin and I rehearsed our reading for, like, two hours, and while we were having snacks at the table, Colin said, “I have a brilliant idea.”
“Are you sure it’s brilliant?” I said. “Mr. Devon only uses that when something is really, really awesome.”
“This is.” Colin hunkered over the table a little. “What if we didn’t read our parts? What if we did them from memory?”
“Are you kidding? I’m freaked out enough just reading in front of all those hundreds of people. What if I forget my lines?”
Colin’s eyebrows all twisted up together in the middle. “You already have the whole thing memorized. You weren’t even looking at the script last time we did it. You’re the one who gave me the idea.”
“But that’s here in my house, with nobody else watching.”
“You need an audience?”
Dad let the screen door bang shut behind him and stood between us and the kitchen. A big blob of sweat covered the front of his T-shirt.
“Can I have some of this iced tea?”
He was asking me?
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Dad opened the freezer and got out an ice tray. “Why don’t you practice your thing on me?”
“That would be awesome,” Colin said.
No, that would be a miracle. I didn’t say anything as Dad poured tea in his glass and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Get set up then,” Dad said. “I’ll be in the living room.”
Colin was smiling his whole smile. I was not. Maybe I could do the whole presentation from memory in front of every fifth- and sixth-grader in Grass Valley, but I couldn’t do it in front of my dad. First of all, he wasn’t even acting like my dad and—
“Are you in a trance or something?” Colin said. “Let’s prop the board up near him so he can see it, and we’ll try it without our scripts. It’ll be easier to get into the voices and stuff that way.”
All I was into was finding a way not to do this. Dad didn’t know characters in stories were real to me. He didn’t know I could practically become them. He was going to think this was silly and ridiculous and lame.
But Colin was all jazzed about it. He set the storyboard up on the couch next to Dad and got some chairs from the table, in case we wanted to use them as props to stand on or whatever, he said. The whole while he was doing it, his face was light pink, the way it got sometimes when he was excited about a thing.
Our thing. And my thing too.
Okay. I could try. After all, it wasn’t like climbing a wall.
Well, not a real one anyway.
Colin and I got in position, and he started us off. His voice was different from when we just did it for ourselves. It was a little deeper, and it had a lot of expression, like this was super-important stuff and the “audience” should listen carefully. When it was my part of the introduction, I didn’t expect any voice to come out of me at all. But when I spoke, mine was different too. Not like a bullhorn or a whine. Dad’s chin came up, and his eyes opened wider. So I kept going.
It was fun doing it without paper in my hand. Colin and I both used the chairs to sit, lean, put a foot up on. When we got to the part where Samantha and Frank reached the Heights, we were both standing on them, without even planning it.
On the final lines, we looked at each other and then out at the Others. Well, Dad, who I’d kind of forgotten was still there.
Maybe it was still Dad. The man who sat there on the couch crinkled all his freckles into a smile and clapped his big hands. For a long time.
“So it was okay?” Colin said.
“Don’t I look like it was okay? It was great. You kids—this is good.”
That was Dad for “brilliant.” It had to be because I’d never actually heard those words come out of his mouth before.
“Now you need outfits,” he said.
“You mean costumes?” Colin said.
He turned to me, all smiley, but I looked down.
Colin’s smile faded by a half. “I have one I could wear, but if you don’t, I won’t wear one either.”
“I don’t have any costumes anymore,” I told the floor.
“Hold on,” Dad said.
He went down the hall, and I stood there feeling blotchy.
“He liked it,” Colin said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I wish my mom was as nice as your dad.”
My head came up. “I bet your mom is too,” I said. “I didn’t even know my dad could be this nice, so maybe we just don’t see it when we’re around them every day.”
“My mom would never sit there and watch like he did. She probably won’t even take off work to come Tuesday.”
“But there has to be some nice in her. She takes you to church.”
“No, she doesn’t. I go by myself. And I couldn’t even go on Easter because we went to her boyfriend’s for an egg hunt. Like that means anything when she doesn’t even care about God.”
He had gone from light pink to strawberry. I looked out the window so he could get himself back together. Dad came back down the hall just in time.
“I kept a few things of your mom’s,” he said.
He was holding a brown tunic thing with a wide belt and a floppy green hat and something green draped over his arm.
“That’s perfect!” Colin said.
“You have a cloak or a cape or something?” Dad said to Colin.
“Yeah, it’s dark green.”
“Good.” Dad opened up the green velvety thing and put it around my shoulders. “Guess you’ll have to pin it up some so you don’t trip over it.”
No way. Even I couldn’t trip in something so elegant. It spilled down from my shoulders to the ground in one long train of wonderfulness.
“Your mom used to wear that when we’d go out someplace special,” Dad said. “And she’d make me wear a tie.” He swallowed, like it was hard to do. “You look more like her than ever in that.”
“You look like Samantha,” Colin said.
Maybe so. Or maybe I just looked like Ginger.
Chapter Fifteen
The only thing that even dared to pinch at my stomach Monday morning was having to do the wall climb test first period. But when I got to the locker room, there was a sign on the door saying no class because of preparation for the fair. We were all supposed to go to the gym to help set up.