by Beth Turley
Name: Hannah Geller
Grade: Five
Reason for visit: Hannah came to office to suggest who was responsible for the bullying notes.
Demeanor: She seemed relieved to name fellow classmate as potential offender. Was passionate in her belief that the information was true. Came into office without hesitation.
Visit: Transcript follows.
COUNSELOR: Hannah, why do you believe Kimmy did this?
STUDENT: Everything I do makes her mad.
COUNSELOR: Have you considered that Kimmy might have other things upsetting her?
STUDENT: I beat her in the spelling bee every year, and she thinks that I throw away money.
COUNSELOR: Do you throw away money?
STUDENT: I don’t see it that way.
COUNSELOR: Differences in opinion don’t automatically lead to this sort of action.
STUDENT: She just said in gym class that she thought the notes were right about me.
COUNSELOR: I’ll bring her in and talk to her. We’re going to figure this out, I promise.
STUDENT: I just want it to be over with. Thanks, Ms. Meghan.
COUNSELOR: Did you reread “Lost in the Funhouse”? We have some time to talk about that.
STUDENT: I, um, haven’t had the chance to read it yet. I will soon.
COUNSELOR: All right, Hannah. We’ll talk soon, then.
Next action: Follow up with Kimmy Dobson about issues with Hannah. Meet with Hannah again. For lack of a more clinical term, try to crack that shell open.
Romeo and Juliet
I want to remind Courtney of why we are friends. It’s not just because my last name is Geller and hers is Gilmore, or because we both like carrot sticks more than cupcakes. These things are just coincidences, just tiny flowers in our friendship garden, things easily trampled and forgotten.
We’re friends because of Romeo and Juliet. We’re friends because I didn’t laugh when the worst thing that ever happened to Courtney, happened.
It was last year, when we were still fourth graders but just barely. It was springtime and the weather was warm, and the way the sun hit the playground had the whole class thinking about next year, when we’d be in fifth grade. We felt more grown-up. This was the same time that Mrs. Gayle the music teacher put up the cast list for the school play. All the fourth and fifth graders had to be in it, which meant a whole bunch of us (including me) had been cast as townspeople and trees. But not Courtney. In swirly purple font, she was Juliet.
She read her name and jumped about four feet into the air with her arms and legs curled out to the side.
“I’m Juliet,” she sang.
“I’m tree number six,” I said.
“Did you see who my Romeo is?”
I read the list again. “John Block.”
“The cutest fifth-grade boy. And he gets to fall in love with me.” Courtney twirled so hard, her skirt blew out like a pinwheel.
“It’s pretend,” I reminded her.
“For now.”
She kissed her hand and pressed it to the cast list where it said ROMEO—JOHN BLOCK. The crunch of the paper under her palm hit my ears like a sad-day sound, and I didn’t know why.
• • •
At the first rehearsal Mrs. Gayle had us read through the play.
“Everyone has at least one line,” she said. “So pay attention while we read.”
The thing about Shakespeare talk is that it’s hard. All the words make sense on their own but turn to mush when you put them together. It’s a pretty mush, though, the kind that makes you want to listen even if you don’t understand it. “Lost in the Funhouse” is a little like that.
I sat on one side of the stage with the rest of the trees, and Courtney was on the other side with the leads. John Block was next to her, wearing a T-shirt with a bear on it. I tried to see him like Courtney did but couldn’t find anything remarkable. Nothing worth “Romeo-oh-Romeo”-ing over.
We were halfway through the play when we got to a scene where Romeo climbs up a balcony to meet Juliet while calling her the sun and talking about broken windows. I read along with the lines and saw the little stage direction underneath: ROMEO KISSES JULIET.
“On the cheek,” Mrs. Gayle said. Courtney’s face turned as pink as cotton candy, and John’s had no color at all. The girls giggled, and the boys punched each other.
Me, I was suddenly over-aware of my dry lips, and how my very first zit was growing right at the corner of my mouth.
“Hannah?”
I looked up at Mrs. Gayle, who was pointing to the script.
“Your line,” she said.
Right after a fifth-grade boy kissed my best friend on the cheek, tree number six was supposed to say: “It was meant to be.”
I delivered my line in my best tree-number-six voice, and then spent the rest of the read-through imagining the bear on John’s shirt coming to life and swallowing Courtney whole.
• • •
“I don’t get why Mrs. Gayle won’t let us rehearse the kiss,” Courtney said at lunch a few weeks later. Ryan dropped his head to the cafeteria table, and I laughed. He could barely stand to sit with us anymore. All Courtney talked about was Romeo and Juliet. Well, mostly Romeo.
“She told you, Court. Nine-year-olds don’t need to practice kissing over and over. Even on the cheek,” I remind her.
“I’m not nine up there, though. I’m Juliet, and I would die for my one true love.”
If this were a story, I’d go back in time and steal Shakespeare’s manuscript for Romeo and Juliet. In a dark chamber with only a lantern to guide me and a feather to write with, I would change Juliet’s ending. She’d decide not to die for love and instead become an architect or an actress or an author with the power to make her own stories.
“Please, stop,” Ryan whined. He threw his hands into the air like they were branches, and froze.
“Looking good, tree number two,” I said. I lifted my own arms, bending them a little at the elbows. We did a few more tree poses and laughed together and went back to being Geller, Gilmore, and Grant for the rest of lunch.
That afternoon at rehearsal we all had to try on our costumes. Mine was a brown turtleneck and a green hat with fake leaves hot-glued to the top. Courtney had a cranberry colored dress and matching veil. We studied ourselves in the mirror.
“Won’t John love me in this?” Courtney asked, and curtsied to herself.
“He doesn’t have a choice. The script tells him to,” I said.
Courtney’s eyebrows pulled together in the mirror. “It’s like you’re not even happy for me. Are you jealous that I’m Juliet?”
I couldn’t tell her that I was the opposite of jealous, and that it felt like something was wrong with me. Ever since I’d read ROMEO KISSES JULIET, all I’d been was scared. Scared of growing up and kissing some Romeo and loving him so much that I couldn’t live without him.
“No. I’m not jealous.”
“Good.”
Courtney took me by the arm (technically my branch) into the hallway. John Block was sipping from the water fountain in a white shirt with puffy sleeves and a brown vest on top. He picked up his head and saw us standing there.
“You look nice, Courtney,” he said, and wiped his mouth with his hand. I swear I’d never noticed just how wet lips can look.
“Thanks, Romeo—I mean, John.”
He smiled a little bit and waved good-bye. We stayed quiet in the hall until we couldn’t see him anymore. Courtney turned to me and squealed. I squealed too, but it sounded more like an animal in pain.
• • •
On the night of the show, I peeked around the edge of the curtain into the gym, where all the parents sat in metal folding chairs. Mom and Dad were a few rows back with Ryan’s parents, reading a program. Courtney’s parents sat in the front row. Mrs. Gilmore had her camera pointed and ready to go. I let the curtain swing back into place and took my spot with the other trees.
Courtney walked onto the
stage, past the white masking tape X that told her where to start, and over to me. She pulled me by the arm (branch) into the corner.
“Smell my face,” she demanded.
“What?”
“Smell me!”
I leaned closer to the circle of red blush that Mrs. Gayle had painted onto her cheek, and inhaled. Courtney smelled like berries and sugar.
“Very sweet,” I said.
“That’s what John will smell when he kisses me.” She smiled, but her eyes didn’t. Other than the polka dots of blush, Courtney was as pale as a cloud.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Little lines formed around Courtney’s eyes, and her jaw clenched tight like there were tears inside her that needed to burst free. She nodded.
“It’s okay to be nervous. You’ll be great,” I reassured her. She stomped her foot.
“I’m not nervous.” She turned away from me and went to stand on the white X. I felt shivery, even when the curtains opened, and I hoped that I’d just look like a tree rustling in the wind.
The play was going fine. Everyone stumbled over the Shakespeare language, but in a good way that let the audience know we were trying. Ryan delivered his line, “It’s a cold night tonight,” at the end of the big party in the play, and Mrs. Grant stood up to clap and cheer. She cheered so loudly that eventually the rest of the audience joined in. Ryan bowed, and we had to wait until the clapping stopped to keep going with the play.
The time came for Romeo to cross the stage to the balcony made of a cardboard box, where Juliet waited.
“What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun,” John recited. He leaned over the ledge toward Courtney. She closed her eyes, and his lips touched her cheek. She was supposed to pull away shyly, put her hand to her face, and smile. Instead her arms dropped to her stomach.
And instead of looking into John’s eyes and delivering her next line, she opened her mouth, leaned over the ledge, and threw up all over his shoes.
Some of the trees and townspeople gasped. Some laughed. John jumped back like Courtney was a monster. I didn’t know what to do, so I said my line.
“It was meant to be.”
The curtains flew shut. From the other side Mrs. Gayle announced that we would take an intermission. Courtney ran off with her hand over her mouth. John left too. His shoes made a trail of her puke on the stage.
If this were a story, I wouldn’t want to read it.
“Everyone, into the cafeteria. We’ll be back on when we get this cleaned up,” Mrs. Gayle said. On the way to the cafeteria, Ryan and I looked at each other out of the corners of our eyes but didn’t say anything. The rest of the trees laughed about “Pukey Gilmore” and said lines from the play with gagging noises added in. I didn’t see Courtney anywhere.
“Cover for me,” I said to Ryan, and took off before Mrs. Gayle or her helpers saw me. I checked the bathroom first.
“Courtney?”
“You mean Pukey?” Kimmy was at a sink, laughing.
“No, I meant Courtney.” I looked under the stall doors for feet.
“I don’t know a Courtney, but Pukey ran outside.”
I glared at Kimmy.
“Maybe if you were nicer, people would actually like you,” I said to her, and headed for the door before I could regret being a mean girl like other people in our class.
The doors led out to the playground, where the sky was all kinds of pink and purple, and shadows covered the swings. Everything looked so different in the dark.
“Courtney?” I called out. I listened past the birdcalls and the crickets and the springtime sounds.
“I’m here,” she answered. Her voice came from behind the dumpsters. I crossed the four-square courts and hopscotch lines to join her. She was sitting with her back against the dumpster. The veil was coming loose from her hair. She didn’t smell like berries anymore.
“I can’t go back in there,” she whispered into the ground. I sat down on the gravel in front of her.
“You have to finish the show,” I said.
“Everyone is making fun of me.” She dropped her head onto her knees.
“They’ve all gotten sick too. Did you eat something bad?”
A tear sparkled like a star down Courtney’s face.
“I wasn’t sick. I was scared.” She drew a heart in the dirt with her finger and then wiped it away.
“Scared of what?”
“The kiss. John. But I don’t want to be scared, Hannah. I want to be a grown-up.”
I held my arms out to Courtney, and she slipped inside. I hugged her while she cried over things that I’d learned about from my Judy Blume books. I couldn’t let her give up before she got to her ending.
“Let’s go back inside,” I said.
“How can I show my face?”
“The same way as always, right?”
• • •
Courtney finished the play, and the rest of the school year, while being called Pukey Gilmore. Eventually Joanie Lawson had her incident during the summer movie night, and there was someone new to tease. People started to forget about what had happened during Romeo and Juliet, but Courtney never did. If I can remind her that I was there when other people were calling her names, maybe I can get her back. Maybe she’ll hold her arms out to me and I can cry over everything.
Courtney’s sitting with Rebecca in the cafeteria. I’m with Ryan in our normal place. He devours his cheeseburger while I can’t take one bite.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I need to talk to Courtney,” I say.
“Yeah, go get the third piece of our puzzle back,” he says. I wait until Rebecca gets up to throw her trash away, and then I approach their segment of the green table.
“Can I sit here?” I ask Courtney.
“I guess,” she answers to her peanut-butter-banana sandwich. I sit.
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” I say.
“We’re not fighting. There’s just too much going on with you.”
“You’re supposed to be my friend. You’re supposed to be there until it blows over.”
“It’s not only this. I don’t understand you,” she says. I see Rebecca making her way back to the table. I’m running out of time.
“But what about when everyone called you Pukey Gilmore? I didn’t leave you,” I say.
Courtney looks up from the sandwich, and I can almost taste regret. Her blue eyes go dark like the ocean at night. If this were a story, I would drown in them.
“Get away from me,” she says, and I do.
It was a mistake to bring up Romeo and Juliet. I should know better than anyone else how much it hurts to remember.
Dinner for Two
Dad is working late on a project, so Mom and I make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. When it’s just the two of us, we pull up stools and eat at the kitchen counter. We watch cartoons while we eat and leave the dirty dishes everywhere. It’s my favorite kind of mess. Mom’s bun is loose and relaxed tonight.
“How was school?” Mom asks.
“Good,” I say.
“What’s going on with the notes?”
I look down into my plate. If this were a story, I’d be able to turn a meatball into a cave in the middle of the Marinara Sea. I would hide there until the storm passed, making friends with the long spaghetti eels.
“They might know who did it,” I say.
“Who was it?”
“Kimmy Dobson. Ms. Meghan says she’s going to talk to her tomorrow,” I say. Mom nods.
“She’s a tough kid. Can’t be easy to live the way she does, but it’s no excuse. I’m glad they figured it out,” Mom says. She reaches across the counter to run her hand through my hair. I try to smile past the meatball-size lump in my throat.
“Me too.”
In the background a cartoon cat hits a cartoon dog in the head with a hammer. Stars and stripes and baby bluebirds spin around the dog’s head. He falls to the ground. The
impact should kill him, but he’s still there, still holding on, still fighting.
“That dog reminds me of you, Mom,” I say. She looks to the TV and narrows her eyes at the wounded cartoon character.
“That’s funny. Why would you say that?”
“You never give up.”
Mom tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “Your dad should be home from his renovation soon. Let’s get this kitchen clean,” she says.
I’d like to call in a team to renovate my brain. They can smash the walls that hold everything in. They can paint over the bad memories. They can flutter around like fireflies until I’m a brand-new Hannah.
Before we can start clearing the dishes, the front door opens and Dad walks in. His blue T-shirt and jeans and work boots are stained by gray paint. My heart thumps with panicked beats. The mess in the kitchen might as well be the town dump.
But there’s a big, fat grin on Dad’s face.
“Hi, Michael. We were just about to—ooh—” Mom starts to greet Dad, before he swoops her up into his arms. He spins her around like they’re doing a dance routine, and then lets her go to come hug me.
“It went great, guys. We’re going to be set for a long, long time,” Dad announces.
“That’s wonderful. You worked so hard for that project,” Mom says.
“Go, Dad,” I contribute. My bones feel like fizzy bubbles in a soda, all full of happiness.
“We’ll celebrate at bowling this week. Deluxe nachos for everyone.” Dad bowls every Friday with his league. Mom and I don’t go with him all the time, but I like when we do, because everyone says what a beautiful family we are, and it makes me believe that we could be, if the sad sounds would just leave us alone.
The idea of deluxe nachos makes me think about the dirty dishes, so I start to put them in the sink, but the bubbles inside me are too excited, and a plate slips out of my hand. One of Dad’s old-fashioned Packers plates. It shatters into pieces on the ground. I can almost hear the happy bubbles pop.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurt.
“That’s okay, Hannah. We have four more of those,” Dad says. He gets the broom from the closet, and I get the dustpan from under the sink. I hold the dustpan steady, and he sweeps the broken pieces in, the grin still wide on his face. It makes me smile too.