What Every Girl (except me) Knows

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  “I looove the chocolate glaze,” I answered back equally as loud.

  “You guys are so ditzy,” Peter said to us. He tried to blow his straw paper at us as we scooted by.

  “So are you,” Taylor and I said at the exact same time. Peter leaped from his seat like he was going to chase us.

  “There will be absolutely no communicating!” The cafeteria lady swooped down from her observation perch.

  Laughing wildly, we ran for the door before she could give us detention.

  “Quick, head for the hills,” I said, laughing. I felt the rush and fear of being chased. Taylor was right behind me.

  As we stepped into the cold air and it was quiet, I realized I had let Taylor think I meant “an accident,” like a car accident or something. An accident—I had let her think I didn’t have anything to do with my mother’s death.

  But it was an accident, I told myself, so I hadn’t really been lying.

  Chapter 12

  Friday there was an assembly. The auditorium was loud, filled with the noise of kids talking and teachers trying to talk over it. Everyone was up and down, sitting and then standing, signaling for friends. Classes filed down each row. Boys leaped over seats to be next to or away from someone, or to sneak out altogether. Peter was just ahead of me in my row, sidling down the aisle.

  I spotted Taylor with her fourth-period social studies class, the only class we didn’t have together except for Spanish. I waved my hands around but she didn’t see me. She was moving along the seats four or five rows behind. The lights were starting to dim, so I pulled my seat out and sat down.

  It got pitch-black in the auditorium, and slowly the sounds from the audience quieted. Eventually the Shhs and Shushes and Be quiets stopped, too. African drumming music rose into the air. The lights onstage came up on two white-gloved hands that seemed to move without a body. As the music got louder, a large, colorful mask became visible in the darkness. Then someone started screaming.

  At first I thought it was part of the show. But soon there was an uncomfortable rustling from the people around me, voices whispering, and I had a feeling that something was not right. The music kept on playing, and the hands and mask moved around on the stage in their native dance. More and more hands appeared, but the screaming didn’t stop. It turned into loud sobs and crying, one shriek then another.

  The din from the audience was louder now. Disorder was erupting. I turned to Peter, who was sitting next to me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t even have to whisper; everyone was talking now. “I think someone got scared.”

  Just then we all saw Lynette Waters being escorted up the aisle by Mr. Salinger, the principal, followed by Lynette’s two friends and a teacher. Lynette was crying and had her hands over her ears. A sliver of bright light pierced the darkness as the back doors were opened to let them out, and then all was dark again. The music, which had stopped, suddenly began, and the masks and hands began dancing once more.

  “What the heck was that all about?” Peter said to me when it was nearly quiet again.

  “Lynette knows things other people don’t,” I whispered back.

  “I think she’s just retarded from being hit by a truck.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Say what?” Peter asked.

  A loud “Shhh” came down our way. Peter made a funny, mock-angry face back into the blackness where that sound had come from. It made me giggle. (Funny, because I am definitely not the giggling type.) I clamped my hand over my mouth, and we both turned to watch the stage.

  By the end of the day, the speculation had stopped and no one even mentioned the screaming incident anymore, though Lynette didn’t return to class before the school day ended at two thirty-five.

  This was the day I was going to Taylor’s for a sleep-over. I had my overnight stuff in my backpack; my toothbrush, a comb, a handful of hair bands, pajamas, clean underwear, socks, and a fresh T-shirt.

  Mrs. Tyler wasn’t waiting at the door this time. She wasn’t even home. After knocking and ringing, Taylor let herself in with a key that was hidden in a fake rock with a secret compartment.

  “She said she might be working,” Taylor said.

  “What does she do?” I asked, stepping inside. I pretended the house was familiar already; that I lived there, too.

  “She’s an interior designer but she doesn’t get paid, yet.” Taylor flung off her shoes in two different directions. One hit the wall. “That’s why she’s so fussy about the house.”

  “I’m home, Mom,” Taylor shouted. “Here’s my coat!” She threw it on the floor.

  “I thought you said…” I felt a quick panic.

  “No, don’t worry. She’s not here. I’m just being wild and free,” Taylor said. Then she quickly straightened out her shoes and hung up both our coats. “But not that free.…”

  “Let’s have a snack on the couch in front of the TV before she gets home,” Taylor said. Her eyes widened. Her eyebrows lifted. I was learning that was Taylor’s sign for misbehavior.

  We plopped down on the white leather couch, our hands holding big glasses of milk and the entire box of Chips Ahoy between us. Taylor threw me the controller with the glee of a prisoner just let out of jail.

  “You pick,” she said.

  We dunked the cookies in the milk and flipped through every channel.

  “Hey, what was that?” Taylor said and pointed. She wanted me to stop on MTV.

  “I’ll go back,” I said, but as I deftly pushed the button on the controller I knocked my glass over and milk spilled onto the seat beside me, one cookie floating in the puddle it created.

  “Oh, no!” I cried at the exact same moment we heard the front door swing open.

  “Hello? Taylor? It’s Mommy.” It was Mrs. Tyler’s voice. “Are you home?”

  In the single second, Taylor leaped up from her spot and then sat directly down again into the pool of white. When her mother turned the corner into the living room Taylor was smiling pleasantly, the spill completely covered.

  “Taylor, you know I don’t like you eating in here.” Mrs. Tyler frowned when she saw the glasses and the empty cookie box.

  “Oh, sorry, Mommy. I know,” Taylor said. “But we are being so careful.”

  “Hello, Gabby,” Mrs. Tyler said as she turned to me.

  “Hi,” I said. I was so afraid of what might happen next. I was wondering how much milk Taylor’s jeans could absorb if she had to stand up.

  “Well, I’m going to change,” Mrs. Tyler said. She headed down the hall to her bedroom. “Please, don’t make a habit of this,” she called back.

  “We won’t,” Taylor shouted. Then she quickly jumped up. The milk was gone, for the most part. The cookie was stuck to the seat of her pants.

  “Hurry, get a paper towel,” Taylor whispered, and she ran into her room.

  Chapter 13

  By the time Mrs. Tyler came back, the milk was gone, the glasses were in the dishwasher, and Taylor was in a new pair of pants.

  “So how was school?” Mrs. Tyler asked us both later, when we were in the kitchen eating dinner. I could tell she meant me, too, because she looked right at me when she asked.

  “Good,” I answered.

  “Taylor, did you get your vocabulary test back?”

  “Mom, you know I did,” Taylor said, slipping her napkin onto her lap.

  I did the same. Napkin in lap.

  “You already looked in my binder,” Taylor continued. “You know I got an eighty-two.”

  “You lost points on spelling,” Mrs. Tyler said between chewing. Mrs. Tyler ate more slowly than anyone I had ever seen, as if she didn’t really enjoy it. She set her fork down on the edge of her plate after almost every bite. I almost never put down my fork till I am done eating.

  But I did then.

  After we finished eating and had cleaned up, Mrs. Tyler announced we were having ice cream sundaes for our just-the-girl
s night. She put out two kinds of ice cream, vanilla and coffee, and three toppings—hot fudge, chocolate crunchies, and whipped cream. She made Taylor wait until I had made my sundae before she could eat hers. Maybe Mrs. Tyler was liking me a little more. Or maybe that’s just another thing girls have to do—wait till everyone is served before eating. Then Mrs. Tyler made herself one, too. A huge one. And we all dug in. Three girls eating lots of ice cream.

  Mrs. Tyler turned to me. I got ready.

  “Gabby, I read about your father in the paper this week,” she said. She smiled. She looked so much like Taylor, I could see, not just her hair. When she smiled, she had the same squinty-eyed smile.

  “I read that he’s in the faculty art show,” Mrs. Tyler told me.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, but it was the first I had heard of it. It upset me that Mrs. Tyler knew more than I did about my father.

  “The opening is in two weeks. Are you going?” she asked me.

  As she spoke I had this clear image of standing before a painting, a single brush stroke across this huge canvas. It was a long time ago at a gallery opening. I was looking up at this enormous, empty painting, while my dad stood next to me and explained its place in postmodern history. It almost made sense to me the way he said it, and I stood for a moment taking it all in, trying to understand. I reached up to take my dad’s hand. But it wasn’t my dad! While I had been thinking, my dad had walked away and someone else was standing there. I was holding the hand of some total stranger.

  I must have had that same lost look on my face; I wasn’t listening to what Mrs. Tyler had just said.

  “Is the gallery open to the public, do you know?” Mrs. Tyler asked, and, by the way, she sounded as if she had tried more than one time.

  “Oh, yeah. Anyone can go,” I said. “You should come.”

  “Yes, I’d love to.” Mrs. Tyler took another scoop of ice cream and drizzled hot fudge all over it.

  “Ice cream is my one weakness,” she said, licking the spoon.

  I could believe that one. Mrs. Tyler didn’t seem to have many weaknesses.

  Chapter 14

  Taylor and I lay in bed that night, in the darkness, talking. Taylor’s bedroom (which I hadn’t gotten to see on my first visit) was perfect. It was symmetrical. Two twin beds, one on each side of the room, exactly the same distance from the walls; matching bedspreads that also matched the curtains; two white, warm rugs for our feet when we stepped out of bed; tightly tucked blankets to keep us under the covers like little pastries.

  After dinner, after some more TV and a little time on the computer, Mrs. Tyler had told us to go to bed. No talking. It was late. We brushed our teeth, frothing our mouths full of toothpaste and making faces in the mirror.

  Taylor used the toilet first while I waited in her room, carefully sitting on the bed, afraid to pull down the covers until I saw Taylor do it.

  “Your turn,” Taylor said when she came into the room.

  I got up and went into the bathroom. When I finished and came out, Taylor was hanging upside down. She was lying across the bed on her back and her head was nearly touching the floor, her hair spread out loosely like it was floating underwater.

  “Look at this,” she called. She covered the top half of her head, her eyes and nose, with her hand. “Pretend this is right-side up and my chin is the top of my head.”

  It took me a while to get what she was doing. Taylor kept talking, reciting the Gettysburg Address, exaggerating her mouth movements. Finally her face started to look like a long, bald head with no eyes and a crooked mouth. It looked so bizarre, then so real. If you looked at it long enough your mind adjusted to the optical illusion and made it appear a correct face, right-side up.

  “You try it,” Taylor insisted.

  We took turns hanging over the beds and making each other laugh. We did it at the same time, while the blood weighed down our heads and made us dizzy.

  “You two better not still be awake!” Mrs. Tyler called out from somewhere in the house.

  We quickly flipped back, and I dove under the covers. Taylor got up to shut out the light. She kept her door open just a little so that a shaft of light from the hall lay across her floor. I could hear a shower running from the bathroom in the master bedroom.

  Taylor and I talked about school, about the other kids, about The Ones, and about Amber, who did finally come to school in new platform sneakers, not black but red.

  Then the water shut off, and a few minutes later Mrs. Tyler appeared at the door. She wore a white terry cloth bathrobe, long to the floor. A white towel was turbaned on top of her head. She looked like a queen. (I silently noted to myself that I would have to add this to my list. I swore to myself that one day I would own a bathrobe like that.) She came into the room and sat at the end of Taylor’s bed.

  “Try and get a good night’s sleep,” she told Taylor. She patted Taylor’s feet through the thick blankets.

  “We will,” Taylor answered.

  Mrs. Tyler kissed her daughter on the top of her head and then stood up. She paused in the doorway, backlit by the hall light, creating a tall, graceful silhouette.

  “Good night, Taylor,” she called softly.

  “Good night, Mommy,” Taylor said.

  “Good night, Gabby.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Tyler.”

  And she left. Her footsteps padded away from our door.

  I was seized with a pang of jealousy that I had never felt so strongly before. It wasn’t as much that Taylor said “Good night, Mommy” as what I had said: “Good night, Mrs. Tyler.”

  Had I ever said “Good night, Mommy” to anyone?

  It reminded me of my dream, the one I had about Taylor’s house. The mother’s voice calling out but not to me. In my dream I had been crying, but now, awake, I could not.

  I lay quiet, but I didn’t fall asleep. Some time passed in the darkness. I heard Taylor crying softly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were sleeping,” Taylor said.

  “No, I’m awake. What’s wrong?” I pushed myself up and crossed my legs.

  “I miss my father,” Taylor confessed. She remained lying down, staring up at the ceiling while she spoke. “I know I always say how happy I am that my mom is happy and about Richard and everything…but I miss my dad so much.”

  I tried to think of what I could say to comfort her. After all, I of all people, should be able to understand.

  “I know it’s hard,” I said.

  “I always miss him at night. He used to tell me stories before I went to bed.”

  “My dad does that, too,” I said. As I thought of it, I started feeling homesick.

  Taylor wasn’t really listening. It sounded like the first time she had thought these things. First time she said them out loud. They were meant more for her than for me.

  “It’s harder for me, I think,” Taylor started slowly. “I mean, what happened to your mother…well, it happened so long ago. I still have to live with this all the time.” Taylor sniffed. “Every time I leave my dad’s apartment I feel terrible all over again. Every time.”

  Taylor cried softly, but I didn’t try to say anything else. I lay back down in the bed and looked hard into the endless grayness where the ceiling would be if the light were on.

  I felt so completely wronged, simply because there was nothing I could say to defend myself There were no words to describe my pain, because I wasn’t supposed to have any. What happened to my mother happened so long ago, it wasn’t supposed to matter anymore.

  Hadn’t I spent my whole life proving that very point?

  Chapter 15

  Taylor had a tennis lesson first thing Saturday morning. I was grateful that Mrs. Tyler was dropping me off at my house early in order to get Taylor to the Field Club on time. I didn’t want Taylor to see that I was upset. My sadness had turned to anger and grown during the night. I didn’t know at who or for what, but I knew I couldn’t hide it long.

  W
e woke up, dressed in a hurry, ate on the run, and the next thing I knew I was saying “Thank you for having me” and waving good-bye from my front lawn. Taylor and her mom drove off down my driveway.

  I could hear Ian inside playing electric jazz. He was plugged in. I saw Cleo’s Volkswagen parked in front of the garage. So she had stayed over again.

  Cleo used to leave very early in the morning, before she thought Ian and I were awake. Ian probably was sleeping, but I certainly was not. I used to hear Cleo’s noisy car starting up before the sun. But they didn’t bother hiding that anymore. My dad had never let that happen with anyone else.

  I must have been standing still for a while, staring at nothing, before I felt how cold it was out there. I suddenly had this tremendous urge to tell Cleo what had happened. I wanted to tell her how my heart had clamped up last night when Taylor said her life was worse than mine. I wanted Cleo to explain my anger to me, to tell me I was justified in being so mad. I wanted something from Cleo. And though I wasn’t sure what, I was certain she could give it to me; as certain as I was that I couldn’t talk to my dad about it. It was all part of that stuff we never talk about, so we can pretend it never happened.

  I opened the back door and was met by the warmth from the studio’s space heater, which was humming loudly.

  “Hi, sweetie,” my dad said, still busy at his desk.

  The extension arm of his clip-on lamp stretched as far as it could over his work space. There were no windows, since the studio was a sectioned-off part of the garage, which my dad had built when we first moved here, but an overhead light lit the whole room so he could work.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said. “Where’s Cleo?”

  I started past him toward the inner door to the house.

  “She’s not here. A friend of hers picked her up. They went to look at some fabric warehouse,” he said. Then he looked up from the sketchbook he was drawing in. “Why?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, but I couldn’t believe the disappointment that was creeping up on me. I felt sick.

  “Gabby?” My dad was looking at me now. He put down his piece of charcoal. He always made a sketch before he began work on his big paintings.