by Rachel Vail
I was shivering, hugging myself in my see-through shirt. “That’s not what I meant to do.”
“Sure it is,” she said.
“I wasn’t even allowed to tell! My mother is totally freaking out. And I have to, you know, support her. She’s the one it’s happening to, not me.”
“It’s happening to you, too.”
“Not according to her,” I said.
“Well, then she’s wrong. It’s not just her issue. It’s happening to you, too, whatever this is, and you’re entitled to tell your best friend.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I would’ve given you the stupid green dress, you know.” She sat down next to me, not too close, but on the wet step.
“I know,” I said, feeling worse.
“I bet it looked great on you.”
“It did,” I admitted.
“It looks like crap on me.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, too, and asked in almost a whisper, “Am I really such a conceited bitch?”
I shrugged. “Am I really such a distrustful jerk?”
“Yeah,” she said. We glanced at each other, then away.
“Hard to believe my mother thinks we’re so great, huh?” she asked. “Sounds like we belong in the ‘slightly imperfect’ discount bin.”
“Slightly?” I asked.
We both kind of tried to chuckle, not all that successfully.
“I really meant it,” I whispered. “When I promised the party would be great, I really thought it would be. I could picture the whole thing, the best night of our lives so far.”
“I know,” she said. “Bet you pictured the last dance, too, with Luke.”
I started to object, but stopped myself. “Why do you hate him?”
“I don’t,” she said. “I never said I did. I just asked if you liked him, because it sure seems like you do, and you kept denying it.”
I wasn’t sure that was really true. It seemed to me like she had made her opinion of him pretty clear. But I wasn’t in a great position to argue. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me what was going on with your mom.” She stood up and turned her back to me. “I would’ve been there for you, you know, if you’d let me.”
“You were there for me anyway.”
“Yeah,” she said, opening her door. “Of course I was.”
She let the door slam behind her.
24
MY WHOLE FAMILY WANTED to know what had happened, but I said please leave me alone and after pushing food around on my plate for a while asked to be excused. I went to bed early, dreading that everybody would act all allergic to me in school the next day. But it was way weirder than that. Everybody acted extremely normal. As if nothing had happened. As if I actually had imagined the whole fight, the whole breakup of our group of friends, everything. Ann was absent. Why didn’t I think of that? Lots of girls were watching us, even more intently than usual, whispering, asking one another behind their hands what was going on with us. Was the biggest graduation party in the history of our grade on, or off? Hadn’t I screamed that it was canceled? Hadn’t I completely humiliated Kirstyn, and myself, yelling like a lunatic outside the school entrance so everybody could hear? And yet, there we were, four out of the five of us, walking down the hall together, heading toward our lunch table. All I could think was, should I go find some other table?
That thought nearly made me cry so I just kind of drifted into the lunchroom telling myself, Don’t think, don’t think, and accidentally sat down at my usual spot. Nobody yelled, What do you think you’re doing, get out of here (they never would; we never yelled other than that one time when I did), so I opened my lunch and ate it and they ate theirs and there it was. No Sharpies out, no notebooks, the four of us smiling politely but not talking.
On our way out of the cafeteria, Luke caught up to me and asked, “You okay?”
When a person is just barely holding herself together, that is a horrible question to inflict on her.
Luckily, right then Ms. Alvarez dashed toward me and, apologizing, asked if I’d mind using the rest of lunch period to practice my speech for her and the principal, Ms. Clumph. I said, “Not at all,” and completely meant it.
I stood on the stage of the auditorium, surrounded by stacks of folded metal chairs and some toppled music stands, reading my words off slightly crumpled pages:
Welcome, faculty, parents, family, friends, and fellow graduates!
Today we celebrate an important milestone in our lives, and before we move forward, let’s take a moment to look back.
Like ingredients of a good pot of soup, we students started out as individuals. Some of us were carrots, some onions, some barley, and others turnips. But with the dual challenges of time and fire, and some expert stirring by our teachers (Ms. Alvarez cheered at that), we have changed. Just as oil and heat conspire to sweeten the bite of the onion, and beans soften as they thicken the stock, we have changed, too. We entered Goldenbrook young, scared, and alone. But over these three years, we came together and changed one another. We leave today, still ourselves but now something more, something better. We leave Goldenbrook united.
United? Ugh. I was barely paying attention to what I was saying; I couldn’t or I’d lose it. I was just making the sounds the letters represented, saying the words I’d written down: Our eyes are set on distant horizons, the solid foundation we spring from, or some such garbage. I don’t even know. I hadn’t ever actually practiced it before; I’d just written it in a hurry after I ate too much of Gosia’s White Bean Provençal soup and had other things on my mind.
But they liked it. Ms. Clumph had tears in her eyes when I finished and told me I wrote even better than my sister Quinn did, which is really saying something. I thanked her. Ms. Alvarez told me it was perfect except maybe I could think of something other than turnip because turnip is a silly-sounding vegetable and she wouldn’t want people to interrupt my metaphor with laughter. I thanked her, too, but what I was actually grateful for was the fact that the bell ending the period had just rung.
I made it through the afternoon by concentrating on breathing. I didn’t talk to anyone, and rushed past Luke when he tried to catch up with me again. Almost home, almost home, I told myself the whole bus ride home, and ran from the corner all the way up the street, up the driveway, thinking, Thank God it’s Wednesday, and that I hadn’t signed up for chess club after all. I couldn’t wait to be home alone. I closed the door behind me, locking out the humidity and tension.
And then I noticed something cluttering the clean kitchen counter. I think I knew what it was instantly, before it pulled me magnetically into the kitchen to open it.
The invitation.
There, in the purple ink Kirstyn and I chose at the shop next to the salon, was my own name in calligraphy on the envelope (Kirstyn’s mom made their housekeeper take a class in it last year), my name and address, my invitation to my own party that I thought I wasn’t throwing anymore.
How were our names still going round and round, chasing one another eternally around a neon bright cheery invitation for a party that wasn’t going to happen?
It was the prettiest invitation ever. We had designed it ourselves, chosen the colors and the font and the wording. We really loved it.
We.
I never realized how often I think of myself as part of we rather than just I. I? How can that even be a word? I? It looks like a stick, poking up all weak and lonely, alone there with no other letter for company. Which is how I’d felt all day. The air around me had felt so…so there, separating me from everybody else.
I was distracted by the air. Well, clearly I had really lost not just all my friends but all my marbles, too. I kept bumping up against the air between us. What a freak!
When my cell rang inside my clutch, I dropped the invitation on the counter. My hands were shaking as I fumbled with the clutch’s zipper. Who was calling me? Ann asking what had happened at school? Gabrielle acting
like everything was fine? Zhara calling to explain? Kirstyn? Oh, please be Kirstyn.
I got to the phone and saw a name I wasn’t expecting.
“Luke?”
“Hi, it’s Luke,” Luke said.
“I know,” I said. “Caller ID.”
“Right,” he said. “Um.”
I picked up the invitation again. So pretty. So perfect.
“I, um…” Luke said. “How’s it going?”
“All good,” I mumbled. “You?”
“Well I got the invitation to your party and I was wondering if, like, if you want to kind of, I don’t know if this is what you, were, if, you want to go together? You know?”
“What?”
“I don’t mean, like, my mom could give you a ride, which she totally could, if you, you know, need one, but like, I mean you’re probably going early with all them, your friends.”
“Luke, you were right there. The party isn’t, I don’t think we…”
“Asking you out,” he was saying, meanwhile.
“What?”
“I’m trying to…Can I start over?”
I had to sit down. “Okay, but the thing is—”
“Phoebe I am practically having a heart attack and it would help me if you just let me get through this!”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just, the thing is, the party is canceled, Luke. Is the thing.”
“I’m holding a fancy invitation to nothing, then?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what you’re holding, Luke.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Anyway,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “So, well, see you in school tomorrow, I guess.”
“All right,” I said.
We hung up before I could get us back to the part where he was asking me out. I sat waiting on the back stairs for my sisters to come home, staring at the invitation in my hands. When they finally came, I followed them up, to tell them what had happened on the phone with Luke, and earlier at school, show them the invitation, and get some advice.
Allison stopped short in the upstairs den and said, “You are acting like a stupid girl, Phoebe. Get over yourself.”
“Wh—what?”
“There are bigger problems than a boy you like who keeps asking you out.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s just the beginning. Today was the worst—”
“Pull your head out of your butt. Everybody has stuff going on.”
“Did something happen to you?” I followed her to her room and it was only when I sat down on her bed that I figured out what seemed weird—it wasn’t made. Allison’s bed. I’d never seen it all discombobulated before. “What happened, Al?”
“You don’t even want to know,” she said, twirling her hair. She looked rumpled, from her T-shirt to her puffy face.
“Yes, I do,” I told her. “Tell me.”
“Just get out!” She shoved me off the bed, then dragged me out of her room. “You are so annoying!”
“Fine!” I yelled to her closed door. “You lost your chance! I’m a totally sympathetic listener, you know, you big moody nasty jerk!” She didn’t even yell back that she didn’t need my sympathy. Nothing.
I came down for dinner when Gosia called through the intercom. All five of us politely avoided eye contact, our forks clanking against our plates loud as thunder in the silence of the dining room. The whole meal lasted maybe fifteen minutes before we flew up the stairs to our own rooms, doors quietly shut.
Thursday morning at school everybody was buzzing about the party again, asking one another, “Were you invited?” “Yeah, were you?” and then jumping around, so excited. I noticed even a few of the brainy girls had brought in ElleGirl and Teen Vogue, with pages folded down, to consult. All through lunch I tried to get my act together and say, Hey, guys, what’s the deal? But I just sat there instead, unable to open my yogurt or even my soda, smiling vaguely at everybody, or nobody.
After school, though, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I sprinted down the track and caught up with Gabrielle. I figured it would be easier to talk with her about it than Kirstyn. Other than how fast my legs had to be pumping.
“So what’s up with the party?” I asked, trying not to show how out of breath I already was.
She shrugged. Does the girl ever break a sweat? How could a person not be the slightest bit blotchy at that speed?
“I mean, it seems like it’s still, like, happening,” I managed.
“The invitations had already gone out, obviously.”
I kind of grunted. I didn’t mean to but I was concentrating on not doing a reprise of my face-planting trick.
Gabrielle slowed down a little. “Listen, I think I know what really happened.”
Kirstyn told her? “You do?”
“Yeah,” Gabrielle said. “You were angry about the weekend. You had every right to feel left out and pissed off. You took it out on Kirstyn but really you were mad at me. Right?”
“Um…” I said.
“I don’t blame you,” Gabrielle continued. “I should’ve made a better case to my mom about inviting all four of you. I was a jerk. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “It’s okay.”
Kirstyn had caught up with us by then.
“And in your anger at me, you struck out at Kirstyn, right?”
Kirstyn looked perplexed. I shrugged at her.
“So?” Gabrielle smiled. “Say you’re sorry!”
“I’m sorry,” I said to Kirstyn.
“Good!” Gabrielle said. “So everything’s fine with the party then?”
“Sure. Um, if we run any slower, Coach P will have to time us with a calendar,” Kirstyn said, speeding up.
“Oh, yeah?” Gabrielle taunted, racing after her.
I let them go. Coach P yelled at me; I didn’t care. I ran alone, and only caught up with Kirstyn at the mirrors after we’d changed. “You didn’t tell her?”
She shook her head.
“She thinks the party is still on,” I whispered. “Everybody does.”
Kirstyn flipped her head down, gathering up her hair into a high pony. “It was too late to cancel. As far as anybody needs to know, you and I had a fight, we made up, nothing’s changed. The rest is nobody else’s business.”
“But Kirstyn,” I whispered, bending down pretending to tie my sneaker. “I, my family didn’t pay our share. We can’t. You know that. I can’t.”
“So what?” she whispered. I followed her to our lockers helplessly, and fake-smiled good-bye to everybody. Kirstyn took forever gathering her stuff so I rummaged through my bag, too, waiting for her. Finally she closed her locker. I closed mine, too. The last ones there, we headed for the locker room door.
“It’s not like any of us paid out of our own bank accounts,” Kirstyn mumbled as we walked through the deserted corridors together, toward the main entrance of the school.
“Yeah,” I said, “but…”
“It’s just money, our parents’ money. If your parents don’t have it to pay right now, that sucks for them, but why should you suffer? My parents will write a slightly bigger check. Nobody else will ever know.”
I shook my head. “We’d know. My parents, me. You.”
“I’m not trying to lord it over you or anything, Phoebe.”
“I know, I’m not—”
“Our parents’ money has nothing to do with us. You know you’d say the same thing if the situation were flipped. Right?”
I shrugged. She was right. It’s just a lot easier to say money is irrelevant if you are the one being generous. We passed the main office and a gaggle of seventh-grade girls waving tentatively at us. “It’s just hard,” I whispered. “For me, for us…”
“Well, suck it up. Sometimes you have to be on the receiving end, you know?” She pushed open the front door. “So that’s settled, then.”
I grabbed her elbow and turned her to face me. “I just don’t—please understand. I appreciate your, your generosity, a
nd your parents’, too. But I can’t accept it. I just…I can’t. And I think it would really hurt my mom, anyway, if I did.”
Kirstyn shrugged. “We already signed the contract. The money has to get paid. The only question is who’s paying, and that’s not really a question either, is it?”
“I guess not,” I admitted. I felt completely hollowed out. “I guess there’s nothing I can do at all.”
“You could say thank you.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Kirstyn pushed her hair back toward her ponytail and sighed. “Listen, Phoebe. Some things you can fix, the rest you’re stuck with. I have a fat ass. You have this family financial disaster. Okay? Not our fault but still our crap to cope with. The only thing for you to figure out is how you’re going to act—like nothing happened or like a droopy sad loser.”
Her mother was waiting in her big SUV in the center of the circle. She lowered the passenger-side window and gave me a huge smile. “Hi, girls! Come on, get in!”
Kirstyn opened the passenger door; the back door slid open. I shook my head and said, “I’m walking home today.”
“Are you sure, honey?” Kirstyn’s mom asked. “Are you allowed? I’d feel better if—”
“No,” I said, and straightened up. “Thank you anyway! I’m great. It’s such a beautiful day. I’d like to walk.” I forced a charming smile onto my face. “Bye!”
I waved and walked away, long strides taking me down the hill from school, arms swinging by my sides as if nothing bad had ever happened. I decided on my way home that, no matter what, I had to keep up that act from then on. It’s all good. Nothing happened.
I was going for Kirstyn’s Option A, and why not?
My friends had forgiven me. Nobody had to know the secrets of my family. Everything had been solved for me. Everything could actually seem perfect again.