Liam stared at the smelly kid for a beat, and, though I have no idea how, managed to not roll his eyes. “No. I’m using the term ‘text’ loosely here. You can choose anything you want as long as it purportedly documents an historical event. And it doesn’t have to be a book. It can be a song, a film, a poem scrawled on a cocktail napkin for all I care.”
As Liam continued his lecture, I couldn’t help pondering the awesomely endless possibilities for my independent project. Should I dissect one of my dad’s favorite Westerns? Or was I finally ready to share a bit of my own obsession with the world? Houdini and H. P. Lovecraft, Frankie and Miyu’s fave horror legend had collaborated on a supposedly true story that might be ripe for historical analysis.
Bzzzzz. The vibration of my phone in my back pocket pulled me out of my nerdy daydream. I knew it couldn’t be Stella. She’d never text in class. I willed myself to ignore it and focus on class. When it buzzed a second time, my fingers began to tingle. After the third buzz, I couldn’t take it. I pulled it out of my pocket and tossed it in my lap. Will had sent a text to me, Stella, and Frankie.
>Betsy just posted this photo of the two of us on her LifeScape page with the caption “my most fave person ever.” Kill me now.
Will gazed out from the photo with the best smile he could muster as Betsy, all porcelain skin and wispy blonde curls, planted a massive kiss on his cheek.
Frankie had replied to Will’s text.
>She looks like she’s going to suck all the skin off your face.
Stella had broken her self-imposed rule of never texting in class and chimed in.
>I hate to say this, but maybe it’s time to rip the Band-Aid off?
I picked my phone up out of my lap and followed Stella’s text up with:
>The longer you wait, the more she’ll hate you. Also, your face would look gross with no skin.
When I looked up, I realized Liam was staring at me. I shoved my phone back into my pocket and apologized. The girl with the ear buds snickered.
“Did your new hobby lead to a few new friends this summer?” he asked.
“Something like that.”
“Great. Just try to keep your phone out of sight so I don’t have to take it away.”
***
By lunchtime, Stella’s nerves had given way to caffeine-fueled excitement.
“The new AP Chemistry teacher is brilliant, Mattie. We’re so lucky to have her.”
I nodded, though even the smartest woman on earth couldn’t teach me how to comprehend chemistry. Fortunately, I had no plans for a career in the hard sciences.
As we headed toward the cafeteria, a redheaded woman bounded toward us through a throng of students.
“Is that Ms. Simmons?” Stella asked.
Oh fuck.
Our effervescent and always dedicated guidance counselor sidled up to me with her big, bright blue eyes. “Mattie, can I borrow you for a minute? If you want, you can bring your lunch to my office.”
I took a deep breath and followed Ms. Simmons down the hall, carrying my PB&J in a paper bag.
“Am I really worthy of first day treatment?” I asked as I took a seat in her office. My face twitched as soon as I got a look at those god awful Successories posters behind her desk.
“Mattie, most of my students fall solidly into two camps. Those I’m not worried about, and those I have no hope for. You don’t fall into either camp.”
My throat went dry and I crumpled the edges of the paper bag with my sweaty fingers.
“You had almost three months to think about our last conversation. Any thoughts? Do you think you can pick a few extra-curriculars you can live with?”
“Definitely not. But I have a plan. Kind of.”
“Okay,” she chirped. “What, exactly?”
“Um . . . I can’t tell you.”
She stared at me for half a minute before picking up a pencil and snapping it in half between her clenched fists. “Sorry,” she said with an almost frightening degree of composure. “Sometimes I need to do that to keep myself sane.”
“I would have gone for one of those posters behind you,” I quipped.
“Let’s change the subject. Do you know what schools you want to apply to?”
“Not yet. I’m going to look at a few in September.”
“Excellent. I would suggest applying to at least three. And you’ll need one hell of an essay and a fantastic letter of recommendation from a teacher. I’m sure Mr. Prentice will be happy to help you out.”
“I think I can handle that.”
“Do you have any ideas for your essay?”
“Yes. But I can’t tell you what they are. They have to do with . . . you know . . . that other thing I can’t tell you about.”
Ms. Simmons’s narrowed eyes and flared nostrils conveyed her disgust, loud and clear.
“You’ll just have to trust me,” I said.
“Mattie, I’ve been doing this for eight years. I trust high school students about as much as I trust people who email me claiming to be Nigerian royalty.”
I couldn’t help but snicker at that. “You know, you should really drop the peppy act. I think this snarky-scary version of you would be much more effective with people my age.”
Her lips curled into something almost resembling a grin. “I’ll keep that in mind. Am I going to get anything else out of you today?”
“Probably not.”
“Then go eat your lunch and hit the books. You promised me you’d up your GPA this quarter.”
As I left her office, my phone buzzed in my back pocket. I pulled it out to find a text from Miyu.
>I booked you for Oct 31st, Girl Scout. Salone Postale takes All Hallows’ Eve seriously. You better deliver.
***
Stella and Frankie stayed after school to go over an AP Chemistry assignment, and Will offered to give me a ride so I wouldn’t have to take the bus.
“I haven’t taken the bus since Stella got her license,” I said as I buckled my seatbelt.
“I took it once last year when my car was in the shop. It was pretty demoralizing. And louder than a bag full of feral cats.”
I invited Will in for an afternoon snack and a brainstorming session for my next escape act.
“Miyu booked me for Halloween night,” I mumbled as Guinan greeted us at the door. “I might as well be performing in front of the doors of Macy’s on Thanksgiving Day. I don’t know if I can take the pressure.”
Kyle stumbled into the kitchen with Connor and Austin in tow. The three of them looked like they’d just woken up and were still recovering from yet another night of drinking.
“’Sup,” Kyle said as he nodded toward Will.
“Um, hey,” Will replied.
Kyle and Austin continued on to the fridge, but Connor lingered by the doorway, smirking at me. “You’re not going to introduce us to your friend?” he asked.
“Nope.” I took two apples from the fruit bowl and headed upstairs with Will.
“That’s him, right? The guy she’s boning?” Connor asked Kyle, loud enough for me to hear. “God, I thought she’d be less of a bitch once she started gettin’ some on the regular.”
Will stopped dead in his tracks on the stairs, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.
I sighed and nodded.
“Oh my god, Mattie. Colossal asshole might have been an understatement.”
“I know.” I pulled him the rest of the way up the stairs.
“The blond guy’s kinda cute,” Will said once we were safely in my room.
“His name’s Austin.”
“Cool name,” he said with a grin. “Sounds like he should be the rough and tumble hero of a romance novel or a character on an old-school soap opera. Seems a little mopey, though.”
“They weren’t always like that. Even Conn
or. When we were kids he . . . he was always a jerk, but he wasn’t so mean about it. They used to be fun.”
“What happened?”
I spilled the story of my brother and his two supposed best friends to Will, starting with Austin moving into town and ending with my brother’s college fail and subsequent inability to get his life back in gear.
“I hate to say it, because they’ve been friends for so long, but the three of them are toxic to each other.”
Will nodded as a grin crept over his face. “Oh. Oh, man. I have an idea.”
“What?”
“It’s obvious, right? You should invite them to see your next act.”
I blinked at him. “Are you insane? They are the last people on earth I’d want to share this with. Especially Connor.”
His eyes got all wide. If he were a cartoon, I would’ve been able to see a thought-bubble above his head, bursting at the freaking seams. “Just hear me out. It kills so many birds with one stone. One, you get to show them that your summer hasn’t been all about some hotsy-totsy guy. Two, you might actually inspire them to . . . I don’t know . . . get off their drunken asses and do something with their lives. Three, and I know this is selfish, I might get to hang out with Austin for a night.
“No. No way, Will. They’ll think I’ve lost my damn mind. Even worse, they might tell my parents.”
He squinted at me. “Stella was cool with it.”
“Stella’s my best friend. Of course she was cool with it.”
“And yet, just talking about sharing it with her got you all in a tizzy.” He tapped his forehead. “I remember these things.”
I planted my feet on the Oriental rug. “That’s not going to work on me. This is completely different and you know it.”
He watched me pace the edge of the rug. If I forced myself to be brutally realistic, I knew Austin probably wouldn’t care one way or the other. And my brother? Well, he’d either be so horrified he’d tell Mom and Dad ,or he’d be psyched out of his mind that I’d pulled him into my grand conspiracy. Truly, it was the mischievous conspiracy to end all mischievous conspiracies. If just slipping me a bit of parent-management advice had brought out a flash of the old Kyle, maybe Will was right. Maybe, with this, he’d find a way to climb out of his depression spiral. But it was a big maybe and carried the even bigger risk that he’d rat me out for me own good.
And Connor. Ugh. Just picturing the smirk on his face made me want to scream into a pillow. He would either pick and pick and pick at me until I’d revealed every last freaking detail of my double life or, worse, he’d do that aloof, cool-guy thing he does and say nothing at all. I’d be left with my neurotic imagination running wild over what might be going through his head behind that punch-worthy smirk.
“Can you at least think about it?” Will said.
I walked the length of the terminal, trying to find a signal for the blasted contraption I’d bought on a whim. It seemed anytime I actually wanted to place a call on my new phone, there was no tower to be found.
I climbed over a railing and inched toward a window. One little bar appeared, and then another. Success!
The Hummingbird didn’t pick up. The sound of my own voice on the answering machine grated against my ears. “You can’t even bother to pick up the phone, hachidori?” I said after the beep. “Ugh. I’ll be boarding in a few minutes. I’ll call you when I land in L.A. Try to drag yourself off the couch and pick up the damn phone, all right?”
Ten minutes later, I shuffled down the jet bridge with the other first class passengers and collapsed into my seat. I took a deep breath and felt my lungs shrivel up. My palms had already slicked over with sweat. I could free myself from chains and cages, but flying always made me feel trapped.
“Can I get you a drink, Ms. Miyake?” a stewardess asked, her lips shellacked in pink.
“Scotch. Neat. Please.”
I swallowed half a Valium dry and put on my eye mask. Before my scotch arrived, I slipped into a deep, drug-induced sleep.
I didn’t wake up until an oxygen mask fell from the overhead compartment and smacked me in the face.
– Akiko Miyake, Houston, December 3, 1999
Mattie Knows It’ll Never be a Cakewalk
On the first Saturday in September, I turned eighteen the same weekend Frankie turned fifteen. To appease my mom, and because Stella declared it “mandatory,” we spent the morning touring colleges. Stella and Frankie were both smitten with Watson University, an intimidating institution on the coast of Massachusetts.
“Oh my god, they have such an amazing neuroscience program,” Stella gushed as we strolled across the quad, buffeted by a mid-autumn sea breeze. “I think I’d give my left arm to get in.”
Will and I exchanged resigned glances. Watson’s campus boasted a number of architectural wonders, and a progressive history program, but Will and I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in. Even with three years of varsity basketball under his belt, Will would need to up his GPA a full point before the Watson board would give his application a serious look. And if I applied, my resume would surely end up on a cork board in the employee break room, so the admissions staffers could have a good laugh while they sipped their morning coffee.
Will stood a much better chance of getting into Bristol College, a little liberal arts haven forty minutes from Tivergreene that I was fully prepared to hate. My disdain lasted all of ten minutes because of my insta-crush on our tour guide, a chubby-cute sophomore with a Charles Mingus t-shirt. Charles Mingus for frig’s sake! I could practically feel my mom giving me a self-satisfied See I Knew You’d Like College look from thirty miles away.
As an added bonus (like my mom rubbing it in from afar), he recognized Will and me from the salon.
“Hey-o,” he said as he pulled us aside. “Always nice to have a few local celebrities on the tour. When’s your next act?”
“Halloween night,” I replied. “Be there or be square.” Or please just be there because you are adorable.
But don’t think for even one second that I was all Rah! Rah! Bristol! just because of some cute Mingus fan (I can be a silly girl, but not that silly). Their history department was so legit I’d actually already read books by some of the visiting professors.
“What do you know about the fine arts department?” Will asked. “Do they look down on fashion design?”
“Not at all,” our tour guide said. “My roommate is an FA major with a concentration in fashion. They take it seriously here.”
With his grades, extracurriculars, and overall winning personality, the admissions board at Bristol would eat up Will’s application with a spoon. But my grades fell below the median for Bristol and my mediocre SAT scores weren’t doing me any favors. I’d have to play up my new hobby on my app, or languish for four years at some party school where, inevitably, my party-girl roommate would sexile me on a nightly basis.
After a long day of trekking through student centers and flipping through course catalogs, the four of us headed to the edge of East Providence for a birthday dinner at Frankie’s. I wore my blue and white party dress from the ’50s with the Peter Pan collar and cap sleeves.
“Oh meu deus!” Frankie’s mom proclaimed when I walked into the kitchen of their second floor apartment. “You look like Donna Reed!”
“Like Donna Reed after a stint in prison,” Will whispered in my ear. “The don’t-fuck-with-me version of Donna Reed.”
I stifled a giggle and inhaled the rich, buttery scent of something that had been cooking low-and-slow all day. Frankie introduced us to his two older sisters, twins who had graduated from Cianci Regional the same year as my brother.
“How is he?” one of them asked as she set the table.
“Fine,” I said without going into any details about my brother’s current state of affairs.
The other twin glanced at me
as she emerged from the balcony with two folding chairs. “I heard he dropped out.”
Her sister snapped at her in Portuguese before I even had a chance to reply. “It’s not easy for people our age,” she said. “Even with a college degree, good jobs are hard to come by.”
“Even bad jobs are hard to come by,” the other twin mumbled.
Frankie’s mom had made him his favorite meal for his fifteenth birthday—traditional Azorean pot-roast with a side of Portuguese sweet bread.
“We can make hot dogs if you don’t like Alcatra,” she assured us.
But no hot dogs were harmed in the making of this birthday party, just a hunk of beef Mrs. Campos had simmered and roasted to juicy, tender perfection. Even after I’d stuffed myself, Frankie’s mom tried to heap another ladleful on my plate.
“I can’t,” I protested as I dropped my napkin like a white flag of surrender. “I’ll explode.”
Frankie’s twin sisters conspired in Portuguese, then slipped out of the kitchen and returned with a chocolate cake topped with enough candles to burn down a city block. Frankie and I blew out the candles on the count of three and dished out thick slices of cake and scoops of coffee ice cream. The cake melted in my mouth, and I downed every last bite, despite my stomach’s gurgling protests.
After dinner, Will and Stella washed the dishes, standing hip to hip at the kitchen sink. I volunteered to help but Mrs. Campos wouldn’t have it.
“Birthday girls don’t wash dishes,” she said.
Instead of watching Stella and Will scrub glassware, Frankie and I headed to his storage locker in the basement so I could check out his collection.
“You’re lucky the police don’t know about this cache,” I said as I surveyed the hodgepodge of carefully organized knives, swords, and other miscellaneous instruments of death. “They’d send a SWAT team in here.”
Frankie laughed and took a seat at a small desk where he probably spent hours ensuring his collection remained shiny and sharp. “I think the police have bigger fish to fry. There was a drug bust a few blocks down about a month ago.”
The Art of Escaping Page 16