by Rachel Vail
While we washed the dishes, he sprang it on me: “Hey, can I ask you a favor?”
“If you love me and I’m beautiful,” I said.
“I love you and you’re beautiful.” He handed me the pan to dry.
“Yes, then.”
“Come with me to bring in the Salvation Army bags.”
I groaned. “I hate doing that.”
“I know,” he said. “But just think, you’ll be doing good, and we’ll work on our harmony.”
I rolled my eyes. “We could use it.”
“Yes, we could.” He shut off the sink. “Great. Fifteen minutes?”
I groaned again and headed upstairs to get dressed.
We loaded up his car with about twenty bags, then got in and sang the whole way there. He sounded good. I am pretty tone-deaf. Luckily, neither one of us cared.
In the Salvation Army parking lot, I got a big gray bin and he loaded the bags into it, and we pushed it in, together. Up at the desk, while Daddy was telling the guy with the clipboard his estimate of what all that stuff was worth, I noticed that Quinn’s jeans with the cool back pockets were on top of one of the bags. “Hey,” I said. “I love these.” I pulled them out of the bag and held them up to me. They looked like they might fit. “Can I keep these?”
“I guess so,” Daddy said, not even looking. “Gosia just put in all the stuff you guys don’t wear anymore.”
I glanced over at the other bags. What other things were they giving away without asking me if I wanted them? One bag had some of Allison’s shirts in it. I picked the ugly top one up, to see what was under it. The really cute purple one! I knelt down next to it, to find more treasures.
Somebody next to me started digging through another bag. I looked up. It was Bridget Burgess.
She looked at me like she was seeing a ghost. She had Allison’s pink tank top in her hand.
I forced myself to smile and say hi.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you taking those jeans?”
I looked at Quinn’s jeans in my hand, scrunched up with Allison’s purple shirt. “No. I mean, I am, but…”
“They’re really cute,” she said softly. “If you decide you don’t want them, let me try them on, okay?”
I nodded, trying to think of how to explain that I wasn’t actually shopping, I was donating, without sounding like a judgmental jerk and completely embarrassing her. And myself.
“There’s some cute tanks over there, too,” she said, pointing toward the back. Her fingers were long and very graceful, their rounded nails painted black. “Sometimes they have good stuff, sometimes just crap. Do you shop here a lot?”
“No,” I said quickly.
“I didn’t think so,” she answered, lowering her heavily lined eyelids. “Though you do seem to have a little more, what? Individuality? Than the others. But still, I didn’t figure you for thrift shop.”
I shook my head and stood up next to Daddy. “No. I’m not—”
“Hi,” Daddy said to Bridget, who was still kneeling on the floor, picking through our stuff. “You look familiar. Are you a friend of Phoebe’s?”
She planted one long bony hand on the hip of her faded jeans. “We go to school together.”
Daddy pulled his eyes away from her and asked me, “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
I died a little inside. How can he be so thick and embarrassing? “Bridget Burgess, this is Jed Avery, my father.”
“Hi, Bridget,” my father said, smiling. “Good to meet you.”
Bridget looked at him steadily and said, “Hi, Jed Avery.” Then she bent over the Neiman Marcus bag to her right and pulled out my yellow shorts that I was looking for just the other day. “Do you think these are cute or too short?”
“Too short,” I said quickly. Just what I need is Bridget Burgess slinking around school in my favorite shorts.
“Really?” she asked, inspecting them. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She dropped my shorts disdainfully onto the pile. “Some of this stuff is beyond, huh?”
Daddy laughed. “I thought you loved those!”
“Daddy!” I balled up the jeans and purple shirt a little tighter in my fist. “Let’s go. Come on.”
“Are you buying those or no?” Bridget asked, standing up and pushing her long bangs out of her actually kind of beautiful almond-shaped eyes, then pointing at Quinn’s jeans.
I couldn’t even look at her anymore. What was I going to do? Explain? Buy the jeans we just donated? I shook my head and handed the jeans over to her, and the purple shirt, too.
“Really? Thanks!”
I waved my hand like don’t mention it. Please don’t mention it. And please don’t be like every other suck-up in school and ask me about the party!
She didn’t. She just said, “Later.”
Heading straight to the door, I was trying my hardest not to turn back and yell at Bridget Burgess, I don’t shop here. I shop at Neiman Marcus. I am not like you! I pushed through the door and went out into the gray drizzle. I tipped my face up to the sky and let the rain join the tears cruising down my face.
I was never like her, I thought, even before. Bridget Burgess lives down on Maple Lane. I am not like her.
The memory of our one playdate crashed around in my mind, despite all my years of practice, since that afternoon in third grade, at blocking it out. We had walked there alone after school. I had never walked home even with my sisters, so I was scared from the outset. Then we got to Bridget’s house, there was a rusty bicycle on the patchy brown lawn next to some tires and some other junk, and a broken screen door she let slam after us when we went in. A huge amorphous mother overflowed a shredding upholstered chair in the living room, smoking cigarettes and coughing horribly. I felt like I had wandered into the opening scene of a scary movie. She barked at Bridget to get her a drink and Bridget said, I will never forget, “All right, all right, keep yer pants on.” To her mother! I was only in third grade so I didn’t know that was an expression, and the horror of the thought that if we didn’t hurry and get her a drink, she might actually take off her pants for some reason made me feel like I was going to throw up.
We went into the kitchen and there were dirty dishes piled in the sink, on the counters, everywhere, and food out, unwrapped, even an open container of milk. Bridget asked me if I wanted a snack. Was there anything I wanted less? Turns out, in fact, yes there was: When I said no thanks, she said, okay let’s go out back and I’ll show you my pet, which ended up not being a mangy dog as I had feared, but a boa constrictor.
Bridget told me, while holding the snake up to my face so that it looked straight into my eyes, that a boa constrictor will squeeze its prey to death and then eat it, digesting it slowly over time, like for it to digest a whole human child might take more than a week. When I could get my voice working, I managed to remind Bridget that she was supposed to bring her mother a drink. She asked me to hold her snake for her while she got it.
I knew there was no way I was ever holding that snake, which had started licking its lips hungrily, threateningly, so I lied. I said I was allergic to snakes. “Really?” she asked, sounding unconvinced as always, and said she thought snakes were hypoallergenic. I told her, honestly this time, that I thought I might actually be getting hives, and maybe I should call my father to come get me. She sort of deflated then, like some of the air had been let out of her, so I said I was so sorry I should have asked if she had a pet snake beforehand and I would’ve taken my allergy medicine in the morning, oh, well. “Yeah,” Bridget said, “maybe next time,” and she let me use the phone and then she waited out front with me for my father. She looked really sad as we were waiting and said, “Sorry.” I wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for but I spotted my father’s car making the turn onto Maple Lane so I smiled reassuringly and said, “Oh, don’t worry about it.”
The next day in school, Kirstyn came up to me in the playground. She was the princess of third grade, already tough and cute in equal portions, and she
had never particularly singled me out before that moment. “So you’re friends with Bridget Burgess?”
Gabrielle was on one side of Kirstyn, and Ann was on the other. Ann, who had been my best friend until not long before that. They were all staring at me, their tight little fists on their hips.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“You had a playdate at her house yesterday after school,” Kirstyn said.
“Yeah,” I admitted, but then I made a choice—I was not getting lumped in with Bridget Burgess. I didn’t even like her. I was not her friend. I knew even then that what I did in the next few seconds would affect the rest of the year at least—whether I’d get my name called in the first few or last at recess kickball; whether I’d be picked as a buddy on class trips or be left to hold hands with the teacher.
It barely even felt like a choice. “I went there,” I said. “And it was disgusting!”
A shift in Kirstyn’s eyes, almost imperceptible but not completely, told me I had chosen wisely. “Really?”
“Totally,” I said. “Dirty, gross—she has a pet boa constrictor!”
“No!”
The three of them crowded around me, but not hulking anymore; eager, admiring, awed. “There was spoiled food everywhere!”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Bridget, twirling her greasy hair around and around her long, thin index finger. I slid my eyes away. I hadn’t said anything untrue, but I knew what I was doing. I just surprised myself by how good I was at it, and how awfully fun it felt to be mean.
“Ew!” the girls were all shrieking around me. I couldn’t help it; I looked over again to where Bridget had been standing, but by then she was gone.
“You want to go to the far fence with us?” Kirstyn asked, and I knew I had passed the test. I was in.
That was the day the four of us started being best friends, and then, when I moved down the street from Kirstyn, she and I naturally bonded the closest, the tightest pair within the group. Zhara moved here two years later and was so cool and pretty it was obvious she’d be in with us, too. We were the ones at the center of things, not because of anything we did, so much. It’s just who we were.
I am not like Bridget Burgess, I reminded myself, my hand on the cold wet door handle of my father’s car.
“Get in, you nut!” He reached across the passenger seat and opened the door for me.
I slumped into my seat. Daddy turned on the warmer. “You okay?” He checked his mirrors and backed up slowly. “She seems nice, Bridget. Beautiful girl. Didn’t you used to be friends with her?”
I shook my head. “Never.”
We waited at the light to pull onto the main road. Even the roads are dirtier there than near us; litter lined the sides near the crumbling curbs. It gave me the creeps. I turned on the radio. Dad turned it off.
“I have to talk with you, sweetheart.”
“What?”
He pulled onto the road and started driving. “Mom told me about yesterday, what happened at the store.”
I looked out the window, watching the raindrops squiggle down over the reflection of my face.
“That must’ve been uncomfortable,” he continued.
I shrugged, thinking, Please don’t talk about it! I don’t want to know!
“There was just a glitch at the bank,” he continued. “Our checking account was overdrawn when Mom had to transfer—”
“I know!” I said. “She told me. It’s fine!”
He flicked the blinker and I listened to its rhythmic clicking. “I don’t want you to worry.”
“I’m not.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
“That’s why I’m not worried,” I said. Man, he can be so frigging irritating! Bridget Burgess beautiful? What? She’s not even close to a pretty girl.
“But, that said,” Daddy said. He made the turn and the blinker clicked off. “We are going to have to be careful.”
“Careful?”
“We’re in a challenging economic situation right now, and I think you are old enough to be made aware of some of the ramifications of it.”
When he starts talking like a thesaurus, I get a fever. The car, as big as it was, started to feel like it was closing in on me.
“With Mom’s work situation,” he said, even-voiced, “we are not going to be able to splurge on unnecessary luxuries like extravagant dresses.”
“It’s not unnecessary,” I grumbled.
“A five-hundred-dollar dress? I beg to differ,” he said.
“Four-forty, and it’s not like I chose it for the price tag! Mom’s the one who said I should get it, not me.”
“I just think it’s a little extreme to expect—”
“Everybody is wearing dresses, Daddy! You want me to go back to the Salvation Army and pick out some dirty old reject rag? Why is this all suddenly my fault?”
“Phoebe—”
“Forget it! Fine. I’ll wear jeans to my graduation party. Happy?”
He swerved the car into the Food Emporium parking lot, yanked hard to the right to pull across two parking spots like a slash, and slammed on the brakes. I grabbed onto the door handle. He is normally a highly cautious, safe driver. I turned to ask him if he was crazy but I didn’t have to because it was obvious that he was. There were practically flames shooting out of his eyes at me.
“No,” he growled. “I am not happy. I am not happy at all. Your mother is going through probably the worst time of her life and are you thinking, Gee, how can I be supportive of the woman who has given me everything I’ve ever wanted, as soon as it pops into my head? The woman who has worked her ass off all her life so that I can live in this cushy heaven with every desire instantly fulfilled? No. Instead of thinking of her for a change, it’s all about you! Four hundred forty dollars for a dress you’ll wear once? At fourteen years old? And a sarcastic, snide mouth—are you happy?”
My mouth dropped open. Was he seriously mocking me?
“It hurts me,” he went on. “It disgusts me that these are the values my kids have. To see my daughter pout and feel sorry for herself that she can’t get any overpriced designer gown she pleases—are you kidding me?” He slammed the palm of his hand hard into the rim of the steering wheel. “Am I happy? That I am raising a spoiled brat? No, Phoebe, I am not happy. Not happy at all.”
The windshield wipers were squeaking back and forth. The rain had stopped. He turned them off.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, slumping farther down.
He took a deep breath and then another.
I started crying. “I don’t care about the dress.”
He twisted his hands on the steering wheel.
“You really think that I’m like that? A spoiled brat?”
“I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
I shook my head. He hadn’t said No, sweetheart, of course I don’t think you are a selfish, self-centered spoiled brat. He was just sorry he let it out. I could feel myself shivering. I didn’t care. I watched the raindrops chase one another down my window.
“It’s going to be okay, Phoebe. We just all have to be…thoughtful.”
I nodded. Thoughtful. “We’re not, like, poor, though, right?”
He didn’t say no right away, like I expected. I had been afraid he might laugh at the stupidity of that question. Suddenly I was afraid because he didn’t. “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen. I do know that right now we are not in any position to be spending thousands of dollars on this extravagant party you and your friends have cooked up.”
I stared at the window, placing mental bets on the left raindrop to beat the one next to it. “So now you’re canceling my party?”
“Phoebe,” he said. “I’m sorry you’re disappointed, but—”
“My graduation party?” I looked at him. He was totally serious. He tilted his head sideways, sympathetically. I felt my mouth drop open in disbelief.
“You can’t!” I yelled. “It’s all planned, the place, the DJ, th
e invitations! Everybody in the whole grade is looking forward to it. My friends are counting on me!”
“So am I,” he whispered. He looked at me, narrowing his dark eyes. “So are we.”
“Fine,” I said, sinking down inside myself.
“Maybe we could have a party at home. A pool party—everybody could come over after graduation and—”
“No!” I shouted. I took a deep breath to calm myself down, so he wouldn’t go off on me again. “Not gonna happen. Please don’t.”
He nodded. “I’ll call Kirstyn’s parents,” he said quietly. “I’ll just let them know we’re sorry, but this isn’t something we can do right now. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“You said I could do this party,” I grumbled. “You and Mom both said yes already! And now you want to call all my friends’ parents and say, Oops, sorry, we’re poor?”
“I don’t think I’d put it quite that way,” he said.
I shrugged, not looking at him. “Let me tell my friends. Okay?”
“I really think it’s my job, not yours, Phoebe.”
“Please?” I begged him. “Please. It’s my party, my friends.”
“Of course,” he said. “But it’s not your responsibility to—”
“Yes it is!” I yelled. “I’m part of this family, and I’m not a baby or a spoiled brat, Daddy, no matter what you think. You can at least let me, after you tell me I have to, whatever, do my share, can I please at least be given half a chance?”
“If you’re sure you want to handle this on your own…”
“I am,” I said, sounding more sure than I felt. “Please.”
“Okay,” he said again, staring out the front window. “Okay. I love you. You know that, right?”
I shrugged and turned away. My raindrop, the one on the left, had gotten stuck, clinging stubbornly to its spot on the glass, as the other one zigzagged down, down, down. I rested my hot forehead against the window and closed my eyes.
16
FIRST THING MONDAY MORNING, Ms. Alvarez knocked on my desk, where I was resting my head, and asked me for the draft of my graduation speech. I cleared my throat, stalling. I was so tired, my brain was in slow motion. Think! I had already said, Friday morning, that I was still working on it, not ready to show it yet, and she had told me to work on it over the weekend but not be such a perfectionist—after all, it was only a draft.