The Ordinary Life of Emily P. Bates

by Anna Cackler

  “Emily!” she scolded, though she was grinning despite herself. “Spreading rumors like that!”

  “It’s not a rumor!” I said. “I had it straight from the horse’s mouth. She’s no good.”

  “She probably just needs practice.”

  “Maybe.”

  I pulled the bulky blanket up to my chin and buried my face in the pillow. “So, how drunk did you get tonight?” I asked her.

  “I didn’t,” she said with a sigh, closing her eyes. It was almost four in the morning by now, and my eyes were feeling a little heavy. “I had maybe one drink that had anything besides orange juice or soda in it all night.”

  “Well you’ve got me beat.”

  “We’re both yellow.”

  I laughed into the pillow. “Jeez, Shannon. Don’t be such a hick. Yellow?”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  “You go to sleep and leave me alone.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  I grinned at her in the dark and she smirked back at me. “So what’s the deal with you and Charlie?”

  “There is no deal with me and Charlie.” Her half concealed giggles gave her away.

  “Well there’s gotta be something,” I said. “He’s been hanging around for a week now, and now you guys have gone out and most likely made out in the kitchen?” The last part was more of a question than a statement of fact.

  “So?”

  “So you did make out with him!”

  She hugged her pillow. “I really like him,” she said.

  “Really?” This I genuinely didn’t expect. Shannon had never once in her entire life “really liked” anyone.

  “Yeah. I mean, I know he’s been around forever, but this summer we kind of hit it off at camp.”

  I sat up. “At camp?”

  She nodded.

  “Charlie was at camp with you? Why didn’t you say?”

  She hid her face under pillow, muffling her confession. “I know! I’m sorry! I was embarrassed! I should have told you ages ago!”

  “Why were you embarrassed? Was he a counselor, too?”

  “He was a lifeguard. And we kind of made out a couple of times behind the pump house.”

  “Oh my god!”

  “But then when school started, it was like nothing happened! I couldn’t figure it out!”

  “Is that why you haven’t been dating all semester?”

  She nodded. “I needed an excuse to ask him out.”

  I stared at her. “So you threw a party.”

  She nodded again.

  “Why didn’t you just ask him to the movies or something?”

  She glowered at me. “A girl can’t ask a guy out!” she said, affronted.

  “Yes you can!”

  “Girls shouldn’t chase boys. It makes you desperate.”

  I frowned. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Well it doesn’t matter. It worked. Me and Charlie are together now.” She giggled again and snuggled down into the blankets. “And it’s been perfect!”

  I settled back down, too tired to disagree with her. “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  “Good.”

  “And you and Finn aren’t alone either. It’s all turned out okay after all.”

  “After all what?”

  “Hm?”

  “It’s all okay after all what?”

  “What?” she mumbled. “I don’t remember. Go to sleep.”

  Her eyes were already closed. She could already be asleep for all I could tell. It didn’t matter. “G’night.”

  “Hm.”

  “Emily! Wake up! Now!”

  I jerked awake, my heart pounding. I was asleep on the very edge of Shannon’s bed, though all of the covers had been pulled off onto the floor and my hair was stuck up crazily on one side in one giant tangle.

  “What time is it?” I grumbled, squinting at the clock. Ten twenty-seven.

  “Dad’s home!” Shannon hissed. “Get up! Get out!”

  “What?” I sat up, glaring at Shannon through sleepy eyes. My entire midsection clamped into a painful knot. “I thought he wasn’t coming home until tomorrow!”

  “Well he’s here now!” The front door clicked open, then slammed shut.

  “Shannon Elizabeth! Finnegan! Get down here NOW!” Mr. O’Malley’s rumbling voice boomed up the stairs. Panic washed over me as I stumbled out of the bed.

  “Crap, crap, crap, crap.” Shannon opened her bedroom door just as Finn stumbled by her room, rubbing his eyes wearily and wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants. He didn’t even glance at me as he passed. His face was a mask of indifference.

  Good old Finn. Not even now, in the face of mortal agony, did he break a sweat.

  I, on the other hand, was freaking out. Mr. O’Malley and my mother always kept each other in the loop on everything. He wouldn’t say a thing to me, but he’d be on the phone with her the instant I started my car. I gathered up my few belongings and jammed them into my knapsack. Mr. O’Malley’s voice was echoing through the house so loudly that I could barely hear the other kid’s cars roar into life outside. Obviously he’d not only walked in on the remnants of a party, but also the leavings of a co ed slumber party.

  My mother’s worst nightmare.

  I pulled on my jeans and slung by bag over my shoulder as I stepped out into the hall. All too soon I had stepped off of the bottom stair into the devastated living room. Mr. O’Malley’s face was beet red–redder even than his hair. I caught a brief glance of the twins, too. Shannon was crying–no shocker there–and Finn at least had the presence of mind to look ashamed of himself. I mean, it wasn’t Finn’s party, but he hadn’t exactly reined Shannon in. Neither had I. We were both culpable.

  I had never seen their dad so angry before in all my life, and the pair of them had gotten themselves into some pretty pickles in their lifetimes.

  Usually I was in the thick of it, too, which is why there was not even a shadow of surprise on his face when Mr. O’Malley spotted me hovering on the bottom step. His mouth clamped shut the instant he saw me. He pointed at me with one shaking hand, and then pointed at the door.

  I didn’t need any more encouragement than that to disappear. Sure, I was leaving Finn and Shannon to their punishment, but I had my own doom waiting for me at home.

  Sure enough, the second I walked in the front door, I found my mother waiting for me in the living room. She was standing very still, her arms crossed over her bulging stomach with the phone still clenched in one hand. Her face was almost an exact replica of Mr. O’Malley’s.

  I said nothing. There was nothing to say. We had been caught red handed and there was no use making excuses or trying to explain anything. I’m sure I looked pretty miserable about the whole thing, but I wasn’t trying for the pity vote. I really was miserable.

  “You’re grounded for a month.” Mom’s voice was eerily calm, despite her red face. “Straight from home to school and back again. Four full weeks starting today.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. “What if Finn needs a ride to work after school? What about my studying with Ethan?”

  “Finn can fend for himself, and Aaron can help you with your math. He’s already had that class.”

  “Mom! No!”

  “Don’t argue! No TV. No computer except for school work. No phone. No friends over. Nothing.”

  I sniffed, trying not to cry. “Okay.”

  A tense silence filled the room and I wanted desperately to break it, but nothing I could say would help anything in the slightest. I had to wait for Mom to finally burst.

  “You lied to me, Emily!” my mother said, her voice tense. The hurt was so plain. I hated it. “You lied and you put yourself in such a dangerous position last night! I’m so disappointed in you.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words were barely audible, but she got the message. It was impossible to stop the tears completely and a couple got away from me. Why couldn’t she
just yell at me and get it over with? It was so much worse when she didn’t yell.

  She seemed to relax a little when she saw my miserable expression. “I’ll call your father later today and you can tell him exactly what happened. Every detail.”

  “Mom!”

  “No. You can just fess up to him, and that’s the end of it.”

  “But-”

  “That’s the end of it.” My mouth snapped shut. “Now go on up to your room. You might as well clean it up a little since you’ve got nothing better to do anyway.”

  I turned and trudged up the stairs to my room. When I got there I dropped my bag on the floor and flopped unceremoniously onto the unmade bed. The happiness of the night before melted into an oozing slush in the pit of my stomach. If I didn’t clearly remember refusing all alcohol, I would have attributed the nausea to a hangover. Now, all I could thank for my rolling stomach was the knowledge of my deceit. I had lied to my mother. I had given her undue worry, and for what? A stupid high school party? For loud music and sweaty teenagers all crammed into one living room doing nothing but laughing at their own inebriation? Looking back, I realized that everything that seemed so funny last night now seemed moronic and lame. My face burned in shame. Thank God in Heaven that I hadn’t drunk anything at all. I couldn’t imagine living with the shame if I’d acted as stupid as all of the other kids at that party.

  And not only was it a dangerous situation to be in–as Mom had pointed out–but it had been completely and utterly moronic behavior. All it would have taken is one drunk teenager to get offended at nothing and start a huge brawl in the middle of Shannon’s living room.

  How could I have been so stupid?

  “Nice one,” Aaron said as he passed my door. Thankfully he didn’t push it any further.

  I didn’t even bother telling him off. I wasn’t crying now, but I may as well have been. My throat was sore and constricted and my nose was so clogged that I had to breathe through my mouth. Staring around at my room, I saw that Mom was right about my room. It was a mess. I got up mechanically and started gathering up clothes and random trash. Anything to occupy my mind even a little bit.

  Ten

  The next morning at school, I was the last to arrive as usual. Finn pushed a Styrofoam bowl filled to the brim with gravy toward me and opened a battered copy of a Nancy Drew novel. I could only assume there was a biscuit under all that gravy.

  “Thanks,” I said, sticking a plastic fork into the hard mass.

  “So how long did you get?” Shannon asked. Her eyes were a little puffy, but otherwise she seemed in decent shape.

  “A month. And she made me explain it all to my dad over the phone. It was a nightmare.”

  “So did we. I figured you’d get a little less considering you didn’t host the thing.”

  “You must be forgetting who my mother is.” I glared at Finn through his Nancy Drew novel. “How can you read that crap, Finn?”

  “That’s what I said,” Ethan said.

  “It’s engaging,” Finn answered without looking up. Obviously he’d been asked that particular question one too many times today. Margo frowned and focused even more on her food.

  “You didn’t get in trouble, too, did you?” I asked Ethan

  “Yeah. Two weeks. I didn’t know Mr. O’Malley had my dad’s number.”

  “He has everybody’s number,” Shannon said as Charlie appeared. He sat down next to Shannon and put an arm around her waist. He leaned in and kissed her lightly. She smiled.

  “So what do you say you and I stop by Rick’s after school?” Charlie asked Shannon.

  “Can’t. Not for a very long time, Charlie.” The bell rang then. We all gathered up our things and joined the tide of students moving toward the hallways. I left my untouched biscuit and gravy and moved ahead of everyone else, waving at Ethan as he disappeared around the corner.

  The days of my sentence passed slowly. Too slowly. But I didn’t complain. I knew I deserved every second of punishment, and it hadn’t even really been worth it. I didn’t even feel better now that I’d had the classic teen experience of a party. How lame.

  It was halfway through October now, and the air had started to turn brisk. The trees had begun to turn yellow around the edges, but it would be another month before they turned completely. The sky was constantly overcast, though it didn’t rain much. It didn’t really matter what the weather was like, though, because I wasn’t allowed outside.

  My calculus grade was slipping fast. We’d had a test about two weeks into my confinement, and I got a D on it. A D! I’d never gotten below a C on any test in my entire life, and that included my Spanish oral exam last year. Ethan had tried his best to salvage the situation, but I was beyond five or ten minutes during breakfast. I needed several hours of solid catch-up time with someone who really knew what they were doing, and that someone was certainly not my brother.

  “Explain it to me again,” I begged Aaron during one of our mandatory study sessions. He was just as unhappy about the situation as I was, but at least I was trying to make the best of it.

  “No.” He was furiously texting someone on his cell phone.

  “But I still don’t get derivatives.”

  “No.”

  “Aaron, please!”

  “You really should control that anger, Emily,” he said without looking away from the screen.

  “You really should explain this crap to me again.”

  “Sorry.” He got up from the kitchen table. Mom was out shopping for groceries at the moment, so I had no one to turn to for support.

  “Where are you going? We’re not done!”

  “I’ve got a date,” he said on his way out of the kitchen. “You’re on your own.”

  “Arg!” I clawed at the air in frustration. Why did Mom have to be out now?

  “Temper, temper!” Aaron called back.

  I got up and stormed across the kitchen the instant I heard the front door close. I had the phone in my hand and was dialing Ethan’s number before I had time to think. I stopped one number shy of completing the call when my better judgment kicked in. I was grounded from the phone, and with my luck Mom would walk in just in time for me to say Ethan’s name. I’d get another week added on to my jail time.

  I slammed the phone back into its cradle. There was no chance that I’d be able to finish this assignment on my own. No possible way. I resolved to get to school as early as I could and petition Shannon for the answers, if nothing else. Hopefully I could get her away from Charlie long enough. Slamming my textbook closed, I plopped into the chair and picked up an issue of Scientific America that I’d already read in an attempt to pass the time as well as I could.

  Mom finally pounded back into the house at half past five and I rushed to help her carry in the bags. She was starting to show a little more now and finally actually looked like she was pregnant instead of just heavy. I wasn’t stupid enough to mention it, though, not after the tongue lashing that Aaron got for his one remark on her size the week before.

  Mom dropped four or five plastic sacks onto the table. I started putting the groceries away, not necessarily because I was a good daughter, but because I was utterly and completely bored. “Thanks, hon. Has your dad called yet?”

  “No. Was he supposed to?”

  “Yes. I told you that.” She settled herself into my chair as I made trip after trip from the table to the pantry with various canned goods. “He’s hoping he’ll be able to get home a day or two early, but he won’t know until tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “He was going to stay and do a fishing trip with your uncle, but now it looks like the weather’s going to be bad.” She looked around, pushing her thick hair out of her eyes in confusion. “Where’s your brother?”

  “Oh!” I remembered what had happened that afternoon. “That stupid jerk left me in the lurch! He left to go on some date before I was finished with my calculus.”

  “Don’t call your brother a jerk, Emily.” She sighe
d and settled back into the armchair. “I forgot he said he was going out tonight.”

  “I wish I could go out tonight.” I dumped a bag of cheese into the bottom drawer of the fridge.

  “No complaining,” Mom called cheerily over her shoulder as she flicked on the TV. “If you’re bored, you can vacuum in here.”

  “That’s all right.”

  The next morning I awoke to find the world a gray, dismal place. The overcast skies had finally opened up and rain was falling in buckets. I groaned as I dragged myself out of bed and got ready for school. I didn’t bother drying my hair; nobody was going to look great today.

  Except for Shannon. Of course, not Shannon. Her hair and make up were as perfect as ever when I plopped down into my seat at the breakfast table. Everyone else in the cafeteria was sopping wet, laughing and squealing after the rain.

  Shannon and Charlie were the only ones waiting for me. Ethan was sitting across the room with his basketball groupies. He’d finally joined the intramural team about a week into our incarceration in what he claimed was “a desperate attempt to stave off the boredom.” Finn congratulated him on his use of the word “stave,” but that was the extent of the announcement’s excitement.

  As for Finn and Margo, they were nowhere to be found, though a shiny green apple was waiting expectantly for me at the empty seat across from Shannon.

  “Is that for me?” I pointed at the apple.

  “Yeah, Finn left it for you,” Shannon said. She was flipping through a fashion magazine while Charlie wolfed down what looked like two helpings of instant scrambled eggs. Neither one of them looked even remotely interested in talking to each other, which was a little odd. I hadn’t seen the pair of them pay attention to anyone besides each other since the fated party. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to get some math help after all.

  “Where’s your brother?” I asked, still warily watching Charlie’s single-minded progress with his breakfast. I had never seen a boy so focused on his eggs.

  “He’s doing a make-up exam for one of his classes, history, I think.” She didn’t even look up from her magazine. “And Margo, of course, refuses to sit with us unless Finn is here. She’s over there with Jessica Musgrove and that weird kid.”