“Because she hates me, that’s why. Because she knows I like Gooz, and she feels threatened.”
Anna took the book from Paige and looked closely at the comments. “I really don’t think Casey wrote that. It’s not anything like her handwriting.”
“She disguised it,” said Paige matter-of-factly. “And I’m going to pay her back. Let me have the book.”
Anna handed it over.
Since Paige’s handwriting was distinctive—angular and slanted, with quirky flags on the k’s and l’s—she got a special pen from her desk and, in beautiful calligraphy that looked nothing like her usual penmanship, wrote at the bottom of Casey Reade’s page: “What a liar. Everyone knows you didn’t really do it with Gooz.”
“Paige!” exclaimed Randy with a gasp. “She never said … that.”
Paige shrugged. “She might have.”
Jessie began to giggle. “I think it’s kind of funny. It’s just a joke anyway, right?”
“Sure,” said Paige. “Listen, I’m going to get us something to drink. That pizza made me thirsty. I’ll be right back.”
Anna and Randy glanced at each other. Very slowly, Anna picked up the slam book, closed it, and put it in her duffel bag.
“Wait!” cried Jessie. “Randy and I didn’t get to read the stuff on our pages.”
Anna handed Jessie the book.
Jessie began to read silently. After several seconds her face grew red.
“Jessie?” asked Anna.
Jessie swiped at her eyes. Then she closed the book and threw it against a wall.
“Hey!” said Anna.
Without a word, Jessie ran into the next bedroom, gathered up her gear, and started down the staircase.
“Jessie! Where are you going?” cried Randy. She and Anna ran after her.
“Home,” Jessie replied briefly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to walk. I’ll call my mother.”
“I’ll do it for you,” said Randy. She dashed back to Paige’s room.
As Jessie and Anna were running down the staircase, they met a bewildered Paige on her way up with a tray of sodas.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
And it was then that Anna was sure she smelled liquor on Paige’s breath.
Chapter Six
WHEN MRS. TAYLOR DROPPED Anna at her house the next morning, Anna dumped her duffel bag inside the front door and shouted hello and goodbye to whoever might be at home.
“Where are you going, sweetie?” called her mother from the kitchen.
“Over to Jessie’s. She left the party early last night.”
“Everything all right with her?”
Anna stuck her head in the kitchen. “Actually, I don’t think everything is all right.”
“Oh, dear. Poor Jess,” said Mrs. Wallace. “Invite her over for some refugee time if she needs it.”
“Okay,” replied Anna. “Thanks, Mom.” She dashed out the front door.
Anna was two houses away and across the street from the Smiths’ when she heard the fighting.
She paused, feeling a wave of nausea. Then, slowly, she crossed the street.
The screaming grew louder. It was coming from the second story. Anna could make out separate voices.
“You keep your face out of my business!” That was Jack. Anna could picture him standing in his bedroom, which was more like a garbage dump.
“Young man, as long as you live under this roof, your business is my business. Where have you been? Kids your age do not stay out all night.” That was Mr. Smith.
“I called last night, didn’t I?” Jack shouted. “What else do you want?”
“First you call to tell me you’re not coming home. Ten minutes later, some woman I barely know calls to complain that you and God knows who else are hanging around her house corrupting her son. Then you don’t show up here until noon today.”
“Corrupting her son! That pothead—”
“Shut up! Shut your mouth. I don’t want to hear—”
Anna shivered. She had never heard her own father tell anyone to shut up. She’d never even heard him raise his voice.
There was a pause in the fighting.
Then Mr. Smith’s voice could be heard again. “You stay out of this!”
Who? Who did he mean? Jessie?
“What’s the matter, Dad? ‘Pot’ is a dirty word, huh?” It was Jack.
“You’re damn right it’s a dirty word.”
“It’s so dirty that practically every kid in school uses it, and a lot of other stuff. Ever heard of crack, Dad?”
“Ever heard of the police?” Mr. Smith shouted back.
More silence. Anna bit at a nail.
Jack was notorious at CHS for his drug use. At least, so she’d heard. As far as she knew, he hadn’t been at school those first days. Of course, he was over sixteen. He was dropout age.
But really. Anna agreed with Jessie. If the Smiths couldn’t see what was going on with Jack, they were blind. Jack had lost weight. He was wired and jumpy and nervous as a cat. He couldn’t hold still for a second. Whenever Anna saw him, his hands were moving and his feet were tapping. According to Jessie, he was never home for a meal. He lived on Twinkies and cupcakes and potato chips. His room was a wasteland of crumpled-up wrappers, cookie crumbs, half-empty Coke cans. Once last spring, Anna had arrived earlier than usual at the Smiths’ to walk to school with Jessie, and there was Jack stumbling around the house, swaying if he tried to stand still, gazing at Anna from red, hooded eyes. He smelled as if he hadn’t showered in weeks.
The silence in the Smith home was shattered by a shriek and the sound of glass breaking.
Anna shrieked herself. It was time to alert her parents. But she hadn’t run more than a yard when she heard the Smiths’ front door slam. She hesitated. If it was Jack, she wanted to get out of there. But if it was Jessie …
She turned around.
“Anna!”
“Jess!”
“What are you—” Jessie began to say at the same time Anna said, “I was coming over to see—”
They paused to catch their breaths.
“I was coming over to see if you were okay,” said Anna. “But I can—I mean, I heard … you know …”
“It’s World War Three in there,” said Jessie, her voice quavering. “I was on my way to your house. I had to get out of there.”
“I don’t blame you. Listen, I heard something break.” Anna looked nervously over her shoulder at the house. “Are they okay? Do you think we should call—”
“No!” cried Jessie. “We shouldn’t do anything. Just go to your house, that’s all.”
“Okay, okay.” Anna took Jessie by the hand, trying to comfort her wordlessly, but the farther the girls walked, the more upset Jessie became. By the time they reached the Wallaces’, Jessie was crying so hard she could barely speak.
Mrs. Wallace must have been watching for them from a window. As soon as they reached the front stoop, she opened the door, put an arm around Jessie, and led her inside.
Over cups of tea, Jessie’s story emerged. The fight had started when Jack had come home that morning, having been out all night.
“Dad gets mad at Jack,” said Jessie, “and then he gets mad at Mom. I’m not sure why. He hardly ever gets mad at me, mostly just ignores me.” Jessie sipped her tea, slowly gaining control of herself. “I feel so bad for Mom. Her whole life is Dad. Cooking for him, keeping house for him. He’s such a pain. Everything has to be just so, in place, in order. And boy, she better be ready to entertain if Dad says he’s bringing home clients or something. It’s like he’s a—a dictator.” Jessie flushed. Her eyes met Anna’s over the rims of their teacups.
Anna flushed, too. She knew where dictator had come from. She’d read Jessie’s page in the slam book to see what had upset her so much the night before. And she’d found it, a sarcastic comment in handwriting that, oddly enough, looked something like Paige’s: “Meet the Smiths, the all-American family—Hitler, Houdini, Cinderell
a, and the addict.”
Hitler was Mr. Smith, the dictator. Houdini was Jessie, the escape artist. (She did run away from her problems.) Cinderella was Mrs. Smith. And the addict, of course, was Jack.
“The thing is,” Jessie went on, “Mom knows Jack has a problem. Well, anyway, she thinks he’s difficult. But she won’t do anything about it because she says my father wants to handle Jack his own way. It’s like she’s afraid to do anything on her own.”
“Would your mother like to have a job, Jessie?” Mrs. Wallace asked suddenly. “It would be a part of her life that’s separate from your father.”
“Oh, she’d never try to get one,” replied Jessie. “But she would like to have one. You know what she’s trained for? Interior design. She says she used to be pretty good. She also says that if she got a job, my father would divorce her.”
Mrs. Wallace raised her eyebrows.
“Which is funny, because I wish he would divorce her.”
The talking continued until dinner. Jessie decided to spend the night at the Wallaces’. She hadn’t brought any clothes over, but it didn’t matter. She could borrow Anna’s.
Anna didn’t think of the slam book again until after she and Jessie had gone to bed that night.
Hitler, Houdini, Cinderella, and the addict. The words came back to her. Anna envisioned them on the page. And she envisioned the look on Jessie’s face when she’d read them.
For the first time, she felt a twinge of doubt about the slam book.
Chapter Seven
“ANNA, HAVE YOU GOT it?”
“Where is it?”
“I have to show Polly something. She won’t believe this!”
Three girls pounced on Anna the moment she walked into the cafeteria on Monday. They were three of the most popular girls from Summit Junior High.
Grinning, Anna pulled the slam book out from between her notebook and her history book. “It’s right here. Come on.” She led the way to a much larger table than the one she, Randy, Jessie, and Paige had slunk to on their first day at CHS.
The girls took the slam book and hustled to one end of the table. Anna sat at the opposite end, saving seats for her friends, who showed up shortly. The girls who had taken the slam book were squealing, groaning, and laughing.
“Aughh! ‘Wears her underwear inside out’!”
“‘Prettiest girl in Ms. Fox’s homeroom.’ Thank you! Thank you!”
“Anna, where’s the slam book?” Two breathless girls ran over to Anna’s chair.
“Hi, you guys,” said Anna. “It’s down there. With that boy next to Charmaine Kroll.”
The girls rushed to the other end of the table. “I’m coming with you,” Paige called after them. “I want to see something.”
Paige abandoned her half-eaten lunch and made a dash for a seat near Charmaine.
Anna looked at the table with great satisfaction. Close to twenty kids were now crowded around it, wolfing down sandwiches and poring over the slam book. This was the way things should be, she thought. She and Jessie and Randy and Paige were the center of attention again, or at least connected to the center of attention, which was actually the slam book.
Even the kids who weren’t sitting at Anna’s table seemed drawn to it. One was Cheryl Sutphin, eating alone as usual. She was wearing a faded, shapeless housedress that she must have made herself. Her father, who held various odd jobs, earned barely enough money to pay the bills, so Cheryl was forced to cut corners wherever she could. Judging by her weight, however, she didn’t cut many corners when she went grocery shopping for herself and her father. Cheryl gazed at Anna’s crowd while she slowly ate a mayonnaise and baloney sandwich on a hamburger bun and drank a Coke.
Not far from Cheryl, a group of completely unfamiliar, mousy-looking girls watched Anna’s crowd enviously.
And not far from them was another lone figure, only she had turned her back on the cafeteria and was looking out the window while she ate.
The figure was Casey Reade … Wasn’t it?
Anna nudged Randy. “Is that Casey over there?” she whispered.
“Yup,” replied Randy grimly.
“What’s she doing alone? Where’s Gooz?”
“Didn’t you hear?” asked Randy. Randy glanced at Paige, now engrossed in the slam book with the others, then turned back to Anna.
“Hear what?” asked Anna.
“Yeah, what?” added Jessie, turning away from another conversation.
“Casey and Gooz broke up this morning. They had a big fight,” said Randy.
“You’re kidding!” Jessie exclaimed. “It must have been over what Paige wrote in the slam book. Remember—about Casey not really … you know … doing it with Gooz.” Jessie blushed.
“No way,” said Anna. “How could that get around so quickly? Paige wrote that on Friday night. It’s only Monday.”
Randy shrugged. “Who knows? Paige probably made one phone call to one person and happened to mention what she wrote—although not the fact that she wrote it. That would do the trick.”
“Wow,” whispered Anna.
“Hey, there’s Gooz!” Jessie was peering toward the far entrance to the cafeteria.
The girls watched as Gooz edged around tables, hands in pockets, unsmiling.
“Maybe he’s going to talk to Casey,” suggested Randy.
But Gooz walked by Casey. He bought a sandwich, walked by Casey again, and approached Anna’s table.
“He’s coming over here!” squealed Anna.
“What do you bet he sits next to Paige,” said Jessie. “I’m sure she managed to plant a rumor about herself, too. Something intended to attract Gooz.”
Gooz, sandwich in hand, pulled a chair up next to Tim Skelly, a football friend of his, and the two started a quiet conversation.
From across the table, Paige watched them solemnly. After a few moments, she edged closer to them. She lowered her eyes so that her long lashes kissed her cheeks. Then she glanced up at Gooz.
“Gooz?” she said softly.
Gooz looked as if he didn’t hear her, although he faltered in his conversation with Tim.
“Gooz?” Paige said again.
“Yeah?” He finally turned toward her.
“Gooz, I wanted to tell you how sorry I was to hear about you and Casey. That’s just awful.”
“Well … thanks,” said Gooz. “Listen, I really don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”
Before Paige could answer, Gooz returned to his conversation with Tim.
Paige looked wounded. But not for long. “Gooz,” she said, this time breaking right into the discussion, “did Carson assign your class any homework for tonight? I just can’t—”
“Paige, listen, if you don’t mind, I’m trying to talk to Tim.”
“Oh. Excuse me.” Paige turned away in a huff and flounced back to the end of the table.
Gooz and Tim shook their heads.
“Wow,” said Anna to her friends. “Did you see that?”
“Pretty interesting,” commented Jessie.
“I had a feeling Gooz didn’t like her,” added Randy, “but I didn’t think he felt that strongly about it.”
“You knew Gooz didn’t like her?” Anna whispered. “How come you didn’t say anything on Friday when she was going on about Casey feeling threatened by her?”
“What was I supposed to say?” Randy whispered back fiercely, her eyes flashing. “She barely tolerates me as it is. She thinks I ought to clean her house, not visit it.”
“Randy!” Anna exclaimed with a gasp.
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
Jessie shrugged, and Anna mumbled, “I don’t know,” but they both knew it probably was the truth.
For several moments, none of the girls spoke. Randy finished her lunch, crumpled up her sandwich wrapper, and deposited it neatly in her milk carton. Anna and Jessie mechanically spooned lukewarm tomato soup into their mouths.
“Pretty quiet down at this end of the table,” said a deep voi
ce.
Anna looked up to see Gooz Drumfield moving to the chair next to hers. He smiled at her with his toothpaste-commercial teeth.
“I guess we’re all talked out,” replied Anna, trying to laugh.
“I don’t believe it,” said Gooz. “Three beautiful women all talked out?”
“Ooh, you’re treading hard on the thin ice of the women’s movement,” teased Randy.
Anna saw that Randy was smiling and knew that she wasn’t really angry, at least not at Anna or Jessie.
“But go ahead and tread,” added Jessie. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
Gooz settled into the chair, and his smile faded.
“We’re, um, sorry about you and Casey,” Jessie said quietly.
“Yeah, well …”
“Gooz …” said Anna slowly, aware that he had told Paige he didn’t want to discuss the subject and not knowing where her nerve came from, “don’t you think that rumor was just, well, a rumor?”
Gooz flushed.
“I mean, I don’t know. What did Casey say when you asked her about it? Did she say she had really been telling people that you … you know?”
“She denied it,” said Gooz flatly, “but that’s not the point. It was the way she reacted when I confronted her. She just blew up. It started this big fight about our entire relationship. We would have broken up sooner or later, anyway. I guess.”
Anna nodded sympathetically, feeling guilty at the same time. Maybe they would have broken up, and maybe not, but Paige had seen that they did—and Anna could have prevented it.
“Listen,” said Gooz, leaning close to Anna, “I was wondering—”
“Well, I better be going!” said Jessie suddenly. “Come on, Randy.”
“Right!” answered Randy, too quickly. “I wanted to—to show you—”
“Whatever,” Jessie supplied. She grabbed Randy’s elbow and hustled her toward the trash cans so they could empty their trays before they left the cafeteria.
“That was subtle,” Gooz commented, and Anna giggled.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I was wondering if you’d want to work on that history project with me. Mrs. Seifert said we could either work alone or in teams. I don’t have any ideas, but the proposal isn’t due for two weeks. You want to try working together?”
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