by Laura Preble
“T, b, a, t, s, t is the first line. Unless he speaks Russian, I don’t think it’s relevant.”
“No, no.” She grabs the paper and pencil from me. “It could be scrambled…b, a, t, s, that’s bats…and the double ts could be…for tee-tee. Tee-tee bats!” she whispers excitedly.
“Or titty bats!” I whisper back.
“You’re not taking this seriously.” She looks wounded.
“You just tried to make sense of titty bats. How seriously can I take it?”
She throws the pencil onto the table. “Why are you being so difficult about this? I just want to find out what the letter means!”
“It means some guy likes you, and he’s too shy to tell you, and like many guys throughout the history of the world, he’s written you a crappy poem to express his interest. End of story.” I hear my own voice getting louder, more pointed. Why am I angry with her?
“It’s all very well for you; you have a boyfriend.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
She stands, hands on hips, lips pursed tightly. We’re at some impasse, I guess; it’s been building up since summer started. She sighs and flops into a chair like a deflated balloon, throwing the letter to the floor as she sits. “Everybody is hooking up, and I’m just left here alone, living with Thea and her mud sculptures.”
“You’re jealous of me? And of Amber?”
“No, not jealous.” She picks up one of the books from the table and thumbs through it as if she’s looking for something very important. I think she’s just distracting herself. “Last year, before Fletcher, you and I were together all the time. We did all kinds of stuff, and then we met Amber and Elisa, and the whole club thing happened…but now it’s almost like we all walked through some big looking glass and we’re on the other side, where everything isn’t as it seems.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“And that’s the problem right there.” She puts the book down forcefully on the table. “Last year, you would have understood. Now, it’s all hormones all the time with you.”
“All hormones! Who was the one telling me I wasn’t giving Fletcher a fair chance, huh? Who was always telling me I was afraid of commitment and all that? And now that I am actually spending time with him, you’re mad about it! How is that fair?”
She looks down at her knees, and I’m afraid she might actually cry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry. I can’t believe I said those things to my best friend. I am the worst person in the history of bad people. She looks up at me, chin quivering, and says, “Titty bats.”
We both laugh so hard tears run down our faces. Then we both start chanting, “titty bats, titty bats,” until we get so loud that Thea comes storming in, covered in red clay mud up to her elbows.
“What is going on in here?” she yells. “I’m trying to create! I can hear you in my studio, for goddess’ sake. Can you keep it down?”
Becca’s reply is, of course, “Titty bats.”
Thea throws her arms up in the air, growls in frustration, and stomps back, presumably to continue wallowing in high art.
The laughing dies down, and I feel much better, all in all. Becca comes over, puts an arm around my shoulders, and sways with me for a moment. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“For being stupid. You’re right. I shouldn’t be obsessing about guys, mine or yours, or ones we don’t know yet. I don’t know what’s going on with me.”
“We need a project,” I say, hugging her as I let go.
“Definitely.” She scoops the books off the table and picks up the discarded letter from the floor. “But I’m still curious about the bunny man.”
9
BACK TO SCHOOL
(or August, the Cruelest Month of All)
It’s August, and sitting on my bed one day, Becca screams and jumps up as if she’s been scalded by hot oil. “Oh, God!”
“What?” I’m checking my room for deadly snakes or invisible animated voodoo dolls, but see nothing. “Why are you screaming?”
“Look at this!” She rips my Tolkien calendar (present from my dad for Christmas) from my wall. “We only have two weeks before school starts. Two weeks!”
“No.” I check it and, sadly, verify that she’s right. “How is that possible? We just started summer vacation!”
But it is true. The last two weeks slip like sand through our fingers. As hard as we try to stop it, the night before the first day of sophomore year arrives like a big, black storm cloud hovering over us, threatening to rain down pigeon poop on our beautiful sleek summer.
The four of us get together for supper at my house (pizza on the floor), and Dad wants in on the dismal depression so he hangs out with us.
“Will eating this much fat send me into a coma that will last til Thanksgiving?” Elisa asks as she stuffs yet another piece of veggie pizza into her mouth. I think she ate half the large pie all by herself.
Dad reaches over from the couch and snags a piece for himself. “I don’t know why you girls are so upset about going back to school. I thought you liked school.”
“Dad, it doesn’t matter if you like school or not. Nobody wants to go back, even if they like it.”
“Why not?” He squints at us, puzzled. How can you explain it to somebody who hasn’t been in school for years?
Becca wipes sauce from her chin and gestures emphatically. “It’s the freedom, Mr. Chapelle. It’s not so much school, it’s just anything.”
“Exactly,” Elisa adds. “I mean, if I had to go see a Johnny Depp movie every day, it wouldn’t be fun.” She considers this for a minute. “Okay, well, maybe that would be fun. But school? No.”
Amber, who has been uncharacteristically quiet even for her, weighs in. “Actually, I’m sort of looking forward to school this year.”
Elisa throws a dirty napkin at her. “That’s only because of your boyfriend.” She says it like it’s a dirty word. “You probably scheduled all your electives together too.” Amber blushes violently and concentrates extra hard on her pizza crust.
“Well,” Dad says, yawning, “you girls had better mop up here, and then get going. You’ll need your sleep for tomorrow.”
“Oh, uh, Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“Can you give everybody a ride home?” I smile my brightest, cheeriest, perfect daughter smile at him. “Please?”
“And can we stop for ice cream, Dad? Huh?” Becca runs over to him and gives him a hug.
He smiles and shakes his head, defeated. “I’m a sucker for a pretty face. Or pretty faces, I should say. Sure, we can go get ice cream. And yes, I can take everybody home. It’s the least I can do in preparation for tomorrow’s impending doom, right?”
Euphoria rolls in to clean up the pizza remains. “Where are y’all going?” she asks as she vacuums crumbs silently off the floor.
“Ice cream!” Becca shoves her paper plate into Euphoria’s trash compartment. “I wish you could taste it, Euphoria. It’s one of the wonders of the world!”
“I’m sure it’s fantastic, but food gives me repeating data strings.” She hums a tune as we file out of the living room behind my dad like a bunch of hungry ducklings.
We pull into the Whippy Dip at seven, and the line is pretty long. It’s a cool drive-through place all decorated with rainbow umbrellas over the tables. The nerve center is a little expanded shed that’s painted to look like a red barn. The line of cars to go through the carryout part is about ten cars long, so Dad parks on the street and we all skip up to the walk-up line.
“Mmmm. What to choose?” Elisa licks her lips and studies the poster for the Caramel Turtle Explosion as if she’s checking out a painting at the art museum.
We still have to wait for a while, but it’s a nice evening, cool for a change. Dad puts an arm around my shoulders while the other girls babble about who they have for which classes, and how much they hate getting up in the morning. “So, you ready for tomorrow?”
“
I don’t know.” I lean into him, and I enjoy the safe feeling of just hanging there for a minute. “I think maybe this year will be harder than last year.”
“Well, if it’s not harder, what’s the point of going?” Elisa pipes up.
“Oh, I don’t know. Less stress, more fun,” Becca says, stretching lazily, arms reaching toward the wispy clouds.
“Aren’t we going to try to change the world again this year?” Amber jokes. Becca abruptly shifts into high alert.
“We have a whole year this time,” she says excitedly. “Think of the possibilities!”
I groan. “I don’t want to think, period.” It’s our turn to order, so we all get buckets of ice cream topped with gooey fudge or caramel, and Dad even orders a cone. There’s one table open, so Becca snags it and we all crowd under the rainbow umbrella to lick the drips from our ice cream and eat it before it melts altogether.
“So,” Dad says between slurps of ice cream, “I assume your little club is still in existence?”
“Our ‘little club,’ Mr. Chapelle?” Becca says teasingly. “Queen Geeks is most certainly still going. And we will be doing even bigger and better stuff this year, right, ladies?”
“Like what?” Amber asks as she dangles a string of caramel from her spoon and wraps it around so she can get more into her mouth at once.
“We should keep the website up,” Elisa says. “It was good, even if I didn’t like the spandex.”
“No more dances, that’s all I ask,” Amber says, shaking her head. “That was a lot of work, and I didn’t get to get my groove on as much as I wanted.”
“Get your groove on?” Becca throws her a disdainful look. “I didn’t know you had a groove, Amber.”
“Maybe you should get a barn and put on a show,” Dad says innocently, not realizing how such a comment could fuel a frenzy of obsessive work for me. But it’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, and I see by Becca’s crazed expression that she’s already started to calculate the exponential worth of a geek showcase.
“Yes!” she screams, gesturing with her spoon so violently that she flings whipped cream at Amber. “A geek show. Perfect. That would be a hoot! And we could charge admission, and use the money for…for…”
“Ice cream?” Elisa asks hopefully.
“Charity work?” Amber says.
“World domination?” I suggest.
“Well, something. But it could be a geek talent show, with all the geeky people bringing their weird talents to the stage. We could get the drama department to help too.”
“They’re already a bunch of geeks,” Amber points out.
“True.” Becca nods. “Maybe we could get a band too, somebody really popular but geeky.”
“Are there any popular bands that are geeky?” I ask. Here’s my thought on this big celebration of geekiness: I think we should just do something a little less big. Last year, we took over the spring dance, and that was a lot of fun, but a huge amount of work and stress. I thought maybe the website and Comic-Con would have purged Becca’s system of the need to make an ostentatious spectacle of herself, but as usual, I am wrong. Ironically, I cannot tell her this, even though she’s my best friend. Resistance is futile. So I’m stuck trying to keep my head down and minimize any damage to my ego, immune system, and grade point average.
Dad just laughs at us, which is his usual reaction to our wild schemes. “Well, if you need help with the lighting or robotics, let me know,” he says casually, not comprehending the impact this statement will have on his life for the next few months. I understand the impact, because I know from experience that when somebody casually offers something to Becca, she takes it, and then some.
“Really, Mr. Chapelle?” she squeaks endearingly. It’s one of her weapons. “You’d help us with lighting?”
“And robotics?” Elisa arches an eyebrow and nods. “Might work. With lights and robotics and geeky bands, we might be on to something. I don’t think anyone would pay a dime to see me on stage, but Euphoria? That’s another story.”
“Oh, not Euphoria,” I chime in. “That would be a bad idea.”
“Why?” Becca grabs my arm. “It would be so cool. We could teach her to rap or something. Can you imagine?”
“But she’s not really built to do that sort of thing,” I say lamely, knowing it won’t matter.
“Oh, I could make some adaptations to her programming,” Dad says, leaning forward intently. “It wouldn’t be that difficult.”
“Our ice cream is all melted,” I say. It is too. And with it, all my hopes of a normal school year, apparently.
My alarm goes off; it is still dark. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
Oh, never mind. It’s just the first day of school.
“Good morning, Shelby,” Euphoria chirps. She starts playing the Beatles song of the same title, which is way too perky for me.
“Please.” I groan, covering my head with my pillow. “Pretend I don’t exist.”
“Too late,” she says, grabbing my covers with her claw and yanking them over my head. “Best to just hop out of bed and get going.”
I do understand her logic, of course; it’s best to just do something unpleasant as quickly as possible. After a shower and a cup of coffee (and a huge dollop of Euphoria’s disapproval with the coffee), I navigate back to my room to be sure my clothes are okay. First-day-of-school clothes are always significant, even for geeks; it’s your way of letting new people know what you’re all about (as much as you can within the confines of preshrunk cotton and fake leather). For this first day of my sophomore year, I’ve chosen a red-and-black plaid mini (not too short), black nylon knee socks, my red-and-black tennies, a red cotton camisole, and a black gauzy overshirt, short-sleeved. Hair? Brushed, and that’s as good as it gets on the first day. Luckily, I have great hair.
Dad bursts into my room without knocking. “Time to go, honey.” He checks his watch, puts it to his ear, then bangs it against the wall. “I’ve got to work on this thing again. It didn’t go off when I programmed it to beep.”
“Maybe if you quit banging it against the wall…” I say as I contort my face and apply makeup.
“Shelby, do you really have to wear makeup to school? Does it matter what you look like?” He puts his hand on my shoulder and looks at my image in the mirror. “When you scrunch up your face like that, it really doesn’t do much for you.”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m going to go around school all day with my face like this.” I turn around and give him a Bride of Frankenstein expression that would scare any ordinary person. My dad, of course, is not in any way ordinary.
“Yeah, that’s attractive, keep doing that. All year, especially in front of boys.”
I finish with a quick gloss of lipstick and turn. “Ta-da!” I do a quick spin for Dad. “I present to you, a high school sophomore!”
He groans and whacks himself in the forehead. “No! It’s too soon!” We both laugh, and then the laugh kind of fades to smiles, and then Dad is hugging me a little too hard. “Hope you have a good first day of school.”
“I will.” He doesn’t let go. “What’s up, Dad? You’re cutting off the circulation.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He releases me from his bear hug. “You just look so grown up. Last year you didn’t look like that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m older.” I grab my backpack, which is blessedly empty, and give Dad an overly bright grin. “Okay, so, see you later! Will you be home?”
“I think so.” He looks distracted, so I know something is up.
I kiss him on the cheek and pat his shoulder. “Okay, whatever it is, we’ll talk when I get home.”
He laughs again. “You sound like me!”
“Well,” I say as I dash out the door, “I’ve learned interrogation techniques from the best!”
Walking to school sucks. Even with my iPod, it takes too long, and I know that when I do get to school, I’ll be all sweaty, which is partly my fault because I’m wearing black in
Southern California in August. It gives me time to think, though, which is good and bad. I think too much, really, so when I do have time with nothing else to do, thoughts jump around in my brain like popcorn in a hot pan, and sometimes they run into each other and cause an explosion that gives me a headache.
For example, I’m thinking about Fletcher as I walk to school. Images of him kissing me float in front of my eyes, and then his smile, and the feeling of his arm around me, and then those thoughts crash headlong into thoughts of Becca and the club, and about how I shouldn’t be letting a guy dominate my thoughts. But when you think about something that you think you shouldn’t be thinking about, you just think of it more intently. And that’s why I’m always so confused.
One good thing: Time flies quickly when you tie yourself in mental knots, and so I’m at school before you know it. Green Pines has about 2,400 students, so on the first day the campus kind of resembles a rolling, green pasture full of blue-jeaned cattle grazing on Starbucks and cinnamon rolls. Everybody is waiting for their schedules, and the freshmen look especially bewildered. I wonder if I looked like that last year? Naw. I’m too cool for that, right?
We always meet at the Rock, a big boulder sitting in the middle of the lawn near the school’s theater. Amber is already there, perched on top like nature’s hood ornament, reading a book. “Hey,” I call, waving to her.
“Hi, Shelby. What’s up? Nice shoes.” She closes the book, which looks suspiciously like a literature text.
“You’re not doing homework already?”
“Yeah.” She slides off the rock and tucks the book back into her pack. “Honors English. We had summer reading to do. At least it’s Edgar Allan Poe. I love his stuff, all about death and crazy birds. Did you know he took opium?”
“I didn’t know that.” Amber, as it turns out, has taken a little too much Poe, and she’s dressed in black (all black, as opposed to my outfit), including a long black trench coat with buckles from neck to knee. Her makeup is different too; it used to be pretty natural looking, but today she has wide black streaks across her eyes, and it makes her look a little like Cleopatra. If Cleopatra wore combat boots, I mean.