by Marnie Lamb
“Who wants to be friends with someone who’s being picked on?” I snorted.
“Maybe someone else who’s being picked on?”
“Forget it, Mom. Kallie hates me.”
“I don’t think so. I think she’ll come around.”
Yeah, and I’m going to be a tap-dancing astronaut, I thought.
That evening, as I was looking out my window at the moon, I remembered my tarot fortune. Kallie’s grandma was right on about some stuff, I thought. I do have problems with women, beyond my wildest dreams. The first card was the Fool. Maybe my journey didn’t begin with junior high, but with meeting Kallie. I wonder if junior high would’ve been better if I’d never met her. Probably not. I was probably fated to have a crappy year.
After the Moon was the Empress. A woman who would help me, if I let her. That must be Mom. We’ve finally negotiated a peace treaty — no, we’ve become friends. The Hermit and the Lovers … they mean I have to meditate and make a choice. A choice between Chanel and Kallie? Well, that’s pathetic. They both hate me.
The tarot cards made me uncomfortable, so I decided to do something to take my mind off them. But watching TV didn’t interest me and I didn’t have any more Nancy Drews to read. So I did something I hadn’t felt like doing in a long time. I wrote a story.
-18-
The Hermit’s Choice
I spent the next few days with my parents playing my Canadian trivia game, watching movies, and talking. We even resumed the famous cracking kernels-slurping drinks competition (Mom and I creamed Dad — of course). One morning I got up early to help Dad make pancakes, and we were in the kitchen for an hour, talking about everything from how silly the movie was to what colour to paint the downstairs bathroom. During those few days at home with my parents, I was happier than I’d been since the summer.
Of course this couldn’t last, and on Monday, Mom told me I was well enough to go back to school. But when I stepped through the front door at Mackenzie, I felt different than I had the last time I’d come in. As if I had a secret source of power. I walked with my chin up, and whenever anyone looked at me, I flicked my eyes away. It didn’t matter what anyone there was saying or doing because none of it involved me. If my classmates were zigzaggy lines crashing into one another, I was a cool white line far off in the distance, a line that would never touch the others.
Several people looked at me with widened eyes. Even the cool people were quieter. They were dealing with someone new, and they didn’t quite know how to handle her.
This new person didn’t hang around to be teased. She went to the library at lunch. She tuned out all conversation except what was being said by the teacher. She became fascinated by Mr. Benson’s lectures on fractions, thinking he was quite dynamic once you dusted him off. She wrote stories and drew pictures, and she never spoke to anyone because she had nothing to say to anyone. She was a high priestess. Not the high priestess from Jason’s house. This one had no followers, and she didn’t need any. She was there but not really there.
Once Kallie asked this person whether she was O.K.
“I’m fine,” she said coldly, walking away.
Then one day, this person was in the hallway during lunchtime. The cool girls were playing we’re-going-to-push-you-into-a-locker. By now they’d stopped pretending they were sorry and just shoved and squealed.
The first shove knocked Kallie over, sending her books flying. As she was picking them up, the others giggled, and she snapped, “I’m really sick of your dumb games! You better not shove me again, or I’ll —”
“You’ll what?” said Tiffany. “Tell the principal? He can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Yeah,” cooed Amber. She ran at Kallie. But this time Kallie was ready, and she elbowed Amber sharply, sending her flying backwards into Tiffany like a Barbie doll tossed into a basket of toys. The person nearby smiled.
Amber’s face twisted in rage, making her even uglier, and she was about to lunge at Kallie when Chanel intervened.
“Forget it, Amber. It’s better not to touch her. She’s contaminated.”
They stood there, expecting a response. But none came. Kallie looked at them, then lowered her head. They smiled like vultures who’ve just come across a fresh, juicy corpse full of protein.
The person nearby glanced from them to Kallie. A few seconds passed. Then this person drew a deep breath and folded her arms across her chest to control the pounding.
“Not as contaminated as some people,” I said.
It was a voice I’d never used before, loud and clear, but it was my voice.
The cool people’s lips became as round as Lifesavers. Their owners stared at me for a full ten seconds before Chanel said, “Excuse me?” But there was more disbelief than sarcasm in her voice.
“You heard me,” I said coldly. To my amazement, the pounding was slowing down.
“If you’re implying that we’re contaminated —” Chanel said.
“There are many kinds of contamination, but the worst kind is contamination of the soul. That’s the kind you have.” I stared into Chanel’s eyes, forcing myself not to blink or look down. For a while she stared back in her usual disgusted way, but finally her eyelids fluttered down like a butterfly with a torn wing.
“Come on, let’s go. She’s retarded anyway,” she muttered. The others looked at me over their shoulders until they reached the end of the hallway.
I smiled. Then I noticed Kallie staring at me, her lips in the same Lifesaver shape. My smile grew as I shut my locker and marched past her.
After the bell rang for the last class that day, Miss Stephanopoulos said, “Hilary, do you mind staying for a bit? I’d like to talk to you.”
“Sure,” I said, picking up my books.
She smiled. “It’s about your story.”
A hollow feeling invaded my stomach. I’d written this story in two nights the weekend before. When I was writing it, I felt feverish, in a good way. It was the first time I really wanted to write in over a year. But maybe I wrote the story too quickly. Maybe … it just wasn’t any good.
“What about it?” I asked nervously.
“I’d like you to see for yourself.” She handed me a familiar-looking purple folder. My stomach churning, I flipped to the end and found out I’d gotten …
“A+?” I gasped.
Miss Stephanopoulos’s smile grew wider. “Yes. This is one of the most intelligent, mature, and humane stories I’ve ever read. And it’s beautifully written.”
“Thanks,” I said fervently.
“This story is very different from the last one you handed in, the one about Diamond Summers.” I looked at the floor. “In that story, the girl had everything. And in the end, she didn’t have to face any of her problems because they all disappeared. But the girl in this story has a tougher time. She’s caught between two friends with very different values, and she has to make a difficult choice. Her problems aren’t magically solved, and that’s why the story is so intelligent and mature.”
I smiled.
She spoke gently. “The last story you wrote … that’s happening to you, isn’t it?”
For the first time since the talk with my mom, tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t know why I was crying. I mean, I knew Mr. Finn was going to talk to all my teachers. I wanted to say something, but I could only nod.
Her face softened. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
I nodded again. When I’d finished speaking, she sighed. “I was afraid something like this might be happening. I sensed some tension between Chanel and Kallie, and a couple of weeks ago, I spoke to Kallie about it. She said she’d had a fight with the other girls, but that she didn’t want to make a big deal out of a few comments and that she could handle it.” I swallowed. “I didn’t realize how bad things were until I read your story. If I’d known, I would’ve done something earlier.”
All these adults were apologizing to me. It was weird. I felt like I should bottle these “sorrys” and marke
t them to other disenfranchised teens.
“Mr. Finn told me about your meeting, and I wanted to tell you privately that I’m going to do everything I can to help. If you ever need anything, even just to talk, remember that I’m here.”
I gazed at the folder in my hands and mumbled a shy thank you. Then I turned to leave.
Miss Stephanopoulos said, “Oh, Hilary, one more thing. I think that the girl in your story makes a brave and compassionate choice, and that’s why the story is humane.”
As I was riding the bus home, I thought about my story and wondered if it was connected to my tarot fortune. Kallie’s grandma said that artistic and creative pursuits would help me in my confusion. Did she mean that by writing this story, I’d be making a choice? A choice to go back to writing about myself? But that wasn’t really a choice. It just kind of happened. Same with me talking to Mom, so that can’t be it either.
I still couldn’t let go of the idea that the choice involved Kallie and Chanel. But that didn’t make sense. Sure, the girl in the story makes a choice between two friends, but I can’t make a choice because no one wants me, I thought. But what else could it be? Unless…
When I got home, I told Mom what had happened that day.
“Do you think I made a choice by talking back to Chanel?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “And I think it was the right one.”
I smiled back.
And that’s when I understood how creative pursuits helped me in my confusion. My choice wasn’t an easy one. But let’s face it, thanks to Chanel and her gang, my path through Mackenzie was going to be filled with poisonous snakes anyway. I might as well use the twigs I had to beat them off. At least that way, I’d get a few less bites. And maybe my mom was right. Maybe if I put my twigs together with someone else’s, we’d form a branch. There was only one way to find out.
“What are we going to do!” she exclaimed, flapping her hands wildly.
I’d never seen Kallie all fluttery like this before, but I couldn’t calm her down because I didn’t know what to do either. The three of us looked at one another. We’d worked so hard. It couldn’t all be ruined!
One of Kallie’s paintings had fallen off our collage, just as the judges were making the rounds at the art fair. The painting showed the planets in our solar system, minus the earth, and was attached to a painting of the earth with a piece of tape. When the tape came off, Kallie tried to pick it up but it got all stuck to her hands. We didn’t have any more tape, and the painting was so good we just had to keep it in the collage.
Then Chu Hua unwound her rainbow hair ribbon. “You can make hole and attach,” she said.
“What? I don’t understand,” said Kallie frantically.
But I did. “Yeah! You can make holes in each painting and tie them together with Chu Hua’s ribbon.”
We used one of my barrettes to make holes and looped the ribbon through them. Kallie had just finished fixing the paintings when the judges arrived. We stood up straight and smiled.
The day after my talk with Miss Stephanopoulos, I’d gathered up all the work I’d done for the project and headed to Kallie’s house. I told her we needed to start putting the art fair collage together, and she agreed.
We called Chu Hua, and when she came over, we all made a plan of how the collage should look.
“Don’t forget about Marcia’s work,” Kallie said.
“Marcia’s?” I asked.
“Yeah. I told her we’d include it in the project, so she left it with me.” She looked at me warily.
“Good idea,” I said. “We should include it. Her stuff is some of the best work.”
For the rest of the day, we cut, folded, painted, sculpted, and drew, mostly in silence. It reminded me of the first time I’d been in Kallie’s room, when we painted the walls.
And now here we were, making our pitch to the judges. As Kallie was talking about her part of the collage, I looked around the usually empty gym, which had transformed into a scene from a lively farmer’s market. Dozens of colourful booths crowded together in long rows. The room buzzed with voices and laughter. Hundreds of students milled around inspecting the wares. And some of those wares were pretty impressive. One group had even made a papier mâché rainforest for a project on the environment. I held my breath anxiously.
But when I looked at our collage, I exhaled. No one had as many different colours, materials, and shapes as we did. We had Kallie’s sculpture of the dancing figures, Marcia’s abstract watercolours in ice-cream shades, Chu Hua’s precise pencil drawings of the grocery store her family owned, and my black chalk sketch of an old man sitting next to a stream, looking up from the book he was reading.
When the judges got to me, I was so nervous I forgot my speech and started rambling on about the old man and the paintings with the face. In these paintings, the face gradually moved away from the crowd, smiling more each time it moved. In the last painting, it was in a field by itself. But some of what I said must’ve made sense because all three judges, even the stern frowning one, nodded and smiled.
Then came the final question. “If you had to say one thing as a group about what freedom means to you, what would it be?”
I found myself answering. “I think freedom means you can be yourself and let other people be themselves, too.”
“I agree,” said Kallie firmly.
“Me, too,” said Chu Hua.
The judges thanked us and told us we’d done a very good job.
Now we had to wait until the winners were announced. We wandered around and looked at the other exhibits. I overheard two girls from another school discussing my sketch.
“It means he has the freedom to read without being interrupted,” said one.
“No, look. He stopped reading the book. It means he has the freedom to stop studying. I wish we had that at our school,” said the other.
I smiled inwardly. The sketch was called “The Hermit,” and only I knew what it really meant.
A few minutes later, the judges announced the winners — us! For a few seconds, we stared stupidly at each other, before we broke into amazed gasps.
I can still vividly remember walking to the stage with Kallie and Chu Hua, hearing the applause, shaking hands with the goldfishy Mr. Finn, and being blinded by the flash of cameras as All Teen TV took our picture. Standing there on stage wearing my medal, looking out at all those people, I felt like I’d just won an All Teen Entrepreneur Award. No, I corrected, like we’d just won an Entrepreneur Award.
When we returned to our booth, people started coming up and congratulating us. Miss Stephanopoulos hugged us and then left to set up our interview with All Teen TV.
“We did it, guys! Give me five!” Kallie exclaimed, turning to Chu Hua. Chu Hua slapped Kallie’s hand so hard it flopped over. We all laughed, and I exchanged high fives with both of them.
“Yeah. What-ever.”
We turned around to see Amber, Tiffany, and Lynn.
“I think it’s a piece of crap,” said Tiffany, crossing her arms.
“Yeah. Where did you get it from? The toilet?” said Amber, her lip curled in disdain.
Lynn looked at me silently. I stared back at her, and her eyelids fell.
I looked at Amber, with her beady eyes, stringy hair, and overinflated lips. Overinflated. That’s all she was.
“Oh shut up, Amber,” I said.
I noticed Miss Stephanopoulos standing with the All Teen TV people, waving to us.
“Now if you’ll excuse us, we have an interview to do with All Teen TV,” I said haughtily.
“Yes, excuse us,” said Kallie in the same tone.
“Excuse us,” mimicked Chu Hua, looking at Tiffany.
We strutted past them like ostriches. Then we looked at each other and burst into laughter.
Several hours later, the school was deserted. The TV crews had left, students from other schools had dismantled their exhibits, and everyone had torn out across the snow-dusted fields to head hom
e for Christmas break. But I was standing in the front hall, where our collage and medal were displayed in a large glass case.
I turned around and saw Kallie. We exchanged smiles.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” she asked. I knew she wasn’t talking about the medal.
“Yeah. And we almost didn’t even finish it.”
“But we did, thanks to you. You brought us all together and got us interested in the project again.”
Then — and I swear this never happens to me — we both said each other’s names at the same time. We laughed.
“Kallie,” I said, “I’ve been a really rotten friend to you these last few months, and I’m really sorry.”
“Oh, Hil, I’m really sorry, too. I haven’t been a good friend either. Chanel’s been picking on you, and I’ve just been ignoring you.”
“Well, we’re even. I didn’t talk to you when she started picking on you.”
“Yeah but you left all those notes in my locker. And you apologized to me, but I just threw your apology away like it was rotting kohlrabi.” (This is a kind of vegetable, in case you’re wondering.) “Besides, it’s different. I know how it feels to be picked on, but you didn’t.”
I looked at the puddles of slush on the floor.
“But if you want to know the truth,” she said, “I ignored you because…” She twisted her mouth. “You’re going to hate me.”
“Just tell me.”
“I figured if Chanel picked on you for a while and I pretended nothing was happening … you’d know how it felt.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, as if I could get rid of the tears that way.
“Told you it was awful,” she mumbled. We were silent a minute. “My mom said you and your mom went to the principal. You were super brave to do that. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my mom.”