by Tish Cohen
The phone rings from out in the hall and Michaela looks even more terrified. Mom tells her she’s safe now. That nothing is going to hurt her. That she’s in Andrea’s room and should get a nice rest. As we back away, Michaela squeals like a frightened kitten.
Mom rushes back to kiss her braided head, but Michaela squeals again.
“I know what might help,” I say to my mother. I grab an armload of stuffed animals off the foot of my bed—I’m miles too old for these, I know—and hold them in front of her. There’s a stuffed giraffe from the San Diego Zoo. I got that when I was about nine. A pink cat wearing a sweat suit. A raggedy sock monkey that used to have buttons for eyes but now just has knotted black thread, and a floppy-eared dog with matted fur the color of a Kraft caramel. That one I got from Gran when I had my tonsils out. The story behind it was simpler than most. She picked it up for a quarter at a neighbor’s garage sale.
Michaela ignores the menagerie and vanishes beneath the white sheets.
I look at my mom. “What happened to her?”
Mom shakes her head. “Better you don’t hear it.”
“Gran already said it was on TV, so you know I’ll find out eventually.”
Mom thinks about it a minute and guides me over to the window. She whispers, “Michaela and her parents were crossing the street, right in front of Disneyland.” She stops to make sure Michaela is still beneath the sheets. Once assured the child cannot hear, she continues. “Hit by an SUV, both parents. Neither parent is conscious at this point. And the driver didn’t even stop. Just took off. Left an entire family to maybe die right there on the street. There are roadblocks set up all over the city tonight. Looking for the vehicle.”
“That’s awful …”
“Yes, well. Unfortunately, there’s a whole lot of awful out there.”
The cotton moves. Mom and I turn to see tiny fingers appear with nails trimmed short. The sheets lift up and one blue eye is visible. Nothing happens for a second, then the hand shoots out, takes the garage sale dog by the tail and whisks him out of sight. Soon afterward, we hear deep, restful breathing.
Mom and I tiptoe out of the room, into the bright light of the hall. “Listen, Andrea. Don’t tell the other kids. I don’t want word to spread that the girl from the accident is staying here or the press might come sniffing around. Let’s just keep it quiet. Okay?”
“Sure.”
Brayden tears out of the living room and, in his tube socks, slides along the wooden floor and into my face.
“You had a phone call, Mandrea.”
I stare at him a moment. He wants to get me riled up.
“Andrea,” Mom sings a warning from farther down the hall. “Remember what I’ve told you …”
Of course. She says it’s the broken kid in him. That he’s had a tough life and I should handle this like an adult. Or a near-adult. It’ll make him respect me. And once he respects me, our relationship will mature. Supposedly. It’s worth a shot.
“Brayden, I would prefer you don’t use that nickname. I find it offensive and demeaning. Do you understand why that would be?”
I hear Mom’s approving footsteps walk away.
“Oh, I understand,” says Bray.
“Good.” I look at his smiling face. “This is good. Now, who was on the phone?”
“Some guy. I told him you were in the bathroom, and judging from the number of tacos you wolfed at dinner, our Mandrea would probably be tied up for quite a while.”
Forget maturity. Forget understanding. Forget respect. I chase him down the hall and into his room, where he throws himself onto the bottom bunk and covers his boy parts with his pillow. I jump on top of him and grab him by the shirt collar. “Who was it, Braceface?”
He rolls out from under me and leans against a poster of Nigel Adams in pants made from a British flag. “Unhand me, Mandrea!”
“Fine.” I sit back, tucking hair behind my ears. “Who was it?”
No answer.
“Who was it, Bray?”
He sits up, fusses with his shirt and squeaks, “You totally messed up my collar.”
“WHO WAS IT?”
“Get off my bed or I’ll never tell you.”
I stand up and kick his mattress. “Do you want me to tell Dad I saw you and your goons smoking by the metal shop today? And cutting class?”
“I’ll just say I was late for Phys Ed—because I was watching you drive across the freaking quad! And what were you doing with the hottest girl in school anyway?”
Brayden has had a crush on Joules for over a year now. Thinks she’s about the coolest female on the planet. Partly for being Nigel Adams’s offspring, partly because her legs are as long as a racehorse’s. I kick his mattress again. “Tell me! Who was on the phone?”
“Some guy.”
“Some guy who?”
He gets up and pushes me toward the door, tearing another Nigel poster on the way. We struggle in the doorway and I slip on the wooden floor, lose my stance just long enough for him to slam the door with me on the outside. “Some guy you have a total crush on,” he hollers through the wood.
“Who?”
“Do you really need this information, Mandrea?”
“Yes!”
He sighs dramatically. “Promise not to tell about today?”
“I promise!”
“All right. It was Will Sherwood. Happy now?”
I lean against the wall and hug myself, smiling so hard it hurts.
Yes. I’m happy now.
chapter 3
I drop the attendance for my Spanish class into a wire basket in the office during second period. All the three secretaries can talk about is Michaela’s parents’ accident. The whole room is all “Can you believe the driver just took off?” and “The papers don’t say how the little girl is.” I lean against the counter and fuss with my shoe for a bit, just in case these ladies reveal more than Mom told me.
“They’re setting up checkpoints again today, you know,” says Mrs. Chalmers, the one with pictures of her wedding all over her desk. “I saw two on my way to work this morning. Pulling over every dark SUV that passes by, looking for a damaged front end.”
So no one has stepped forward to claim responsibility. No real surprise. I mean, the kind of person who runs over a family and takes off is probably not the kind of person who signs up for punishment twenty-four hours later.
“Where’s this?” asks Angie, the younger, chubbier secretary, who, as long as I’ve known her, has pronounced library as liberry. “Over by Disneyland?”
“Nope,” says Mrs. Chalmers. “All over Orange County. Random places. Because who knows where the driver lives.”
“Not sure what it’ll accomplish now,” says Naseem, the little one with the tidy desk over by the window. “It’s been all over the news. I’m sure the driver’s hidden his truck until the thing blows over.”
“It’s like that other time,” I hear myself saying. “When that boy was killed. Tyler Glass.”
Mrs. Chalmers looks up, shakes her head. “Wasn’t that just terrible? Poor kid, just getting out of the hospital in time for Christmas, then killed getting into his car just across the street …”
“And in front of his parents,” says Angie. “That was what got me. The papers are saying it could be the same person. Which is exactly what I was thinking.”
“Nearly a year later and that case isn’t solved. Unbelievable.” Mrs. Chalmers crosses the room and scoops up all the attendance folders, presses them against her chest and looks at Naseem. “I’d love some chow mein from China Gardens for lunch. What do you say?”
“Sounds good. I’ll drive this time; you drove yesterday.”
I back toward the door, a bit stunned by the quick change of subject. This is what it would be like to be someone other than me—I could hear terrible news and then wonder what to have for lunch. That’s how detached you can be when a little girl isn’t cuddling a stuffed dog in the corner of your bedroom.
Just as I
pass the English building, I spy none other than Brayden and his band of goons cutting class again. They’re hiding between some bushes, leaning against the wall of the English building as if no one can see them. Here’s the thing about Brayden’s friends—they’re going nowhere. One of them, Dillon, is repeating ninth grade for the third time. And another, Tomas, was caught breaking and entering an empty house over in Placentia. The idiot set fire to the carpet in the living room and claimed he did it to keep warm. To stay alive. The judge felt sorry for him because his parents were going through a messy split. But come on—the kid lives up on Diamond Ridge. No one is dying of cold in that family. Especially not in Orange County.
I walk over to them, pick up a pebble and flick it at Brayden. “Dude. You’re fifteen minutes late for English.”
Dillon and the short one, Ace, shove Brayden around and laugh.
“We have a substitute,” Bray says, pushing his friends off. “No one’s in there. We don’t have to go.”
“Should I mention this to Lise, Bray?”
“No!”
“Then get going.” I wait and watch while Brayden, with great reluctance, says goodbye to his doofus friends and heads for the door. He moons me real quick before disappearing inside. Once I’m sure he’s not waiting for me to leave so he can slip out again, I head back to class.
I hear an acoustic guitar being strummed in the music room of the Arts & Language building. So soft you can barely hear it. And if you’re thinking there’s nothing weird about a guitar being played in a music room, think again. The music teacher, Mr. Buchanan, is this really old grizzled guy who wears T-shirts with the sleeves cut off to show the muscles he might once have had. And if he ever really was a tough guy, all that’s left now is that he teaches self-defense at the retirement center on Thursday nights and is seriously manic about his instruments. No one is allowed in his classroom when he’s not there unless they feel like having, as he says in his croaky, cigar-butt voice, their “ass mown like grass.”
For a while, it became a school-wide goal to make Buchanan mow someone’s ass. Kids made plans to, say, bang their trumpets on the hard floor one morning to completely flatten them. Once someone stuffed part of a bagel down the neck of a trombone, so Mr. Buchanan had to dig it out with a pen. The ass-mowing never happened, but only because Mr. Buchanan didn’t know who did what.
So now he has a rule: no one enters his room when he’s not there. No exceptions. And I just saw Mr. B. in the office, trying to convince Principal McCluskey to order some kind of special mouthpieces for the clarinets, which means he’s not in his room. But he will be any second.
Curious to see who the risk-taker is, I decide to travel the scenic route back to Spanish via the second floor. The door is wide open and there he is, sitting in the middle of the room with his back to me. I don’t need to see his face to recognize that shaggy brown hair. It’s Will.
Very quietly, he starts to sing.
I can’t help it; I slip into the room. He has a great voice, all raspy and soft, and though he’s singing about a girl, it isn’t sappy or boy-band in any way. It is sweet and simple and makes me melt.
Once, in seventh-grade science class, Will and I were assigned a project. We, along with two or three other kids I can’t remember, were to plan an eco-friendly neighborhood and sketch it out on paper. One day after school we worked at his house, because his father is an architect and he has this huge drafting table we could use. It was cool being in Will’s home, seeing his room with its walls covered in cork panels. He has this huge bulldog, Mack, with a face mashed in like a rotten apple. Truly the ugliest dog ever born. And while we were taking a break to eat pizza and play video games, Will started goofing around with the dog and singing to it—that old song “You Are So Beautiful.” Only Will hammed it up in this funny, screechy voice. It was adorable and beyond.
Don’t ask me why I start thinking about that right now. I just do.
Will has to get out of here. Buchanan will be back any second. I lean back against the wall and accidentally hit the light switch. Right away the lights go out. The music stops. Will spins around in the semi-darkness and I do something very dangerous in my nervous state. I start to speak.
“Sorry … I was just passing by and, well, I heard you, and Mr. Buchanan was just in the office but he’ll be back, like, any second and I think you should go … like really fast. He was just finishing up with McCluskey, and if he sees you, he’ll—”
“Andrea,” Will says, standing up and turning around. “I was working on an assignment.”
“But Mr. B’s going to find out.”
“I’m almost done. Just wanted to practice the chorus.”
My cheeks flush hot. “The chorus. The chorus was, like, perfect. It was slow and fast, and so sad but so happy, you know?” I’m painfully aware I am making him hate me with my inane babbling. It’s a curse: when I get anxious, a massive amount of words come tumbling out of my mouth. And not just any words. Empty words that come out incomplete because they lack important things like thoughts. There is only one way to stop the leak. Exit, and fast. I tilt my head and move toward the hallway. “Was that … wait, did someone call me?”
“Listen, Andrea, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Yes?”
He blushes and kicks at something that doesn’t exist on the floor. He sets the guitar down, then glances up at me. He’s never looked so cute. Never. It might be the sunburned freckles across his nose or the not-quite-square-ness of his teeth or that impossibly deep dimple on his left cheek. Or the faded-Levi’s blue of his eyes. I bite down on the side of my tongue to keep it from leaping into action again. “Yesterday,” he says, picking up the guitar again and slinging the strap over his shoulder, positioning the instrument against his back. He pauses. “Back when you and Joules were in your car.”
“My mother’s car. That’s not my station wagon. I would never, you know, get a station wagon.”
“Okay.” He laughs. “Your mother’s car.”
I wait for him to continue but he doesn’t. Instead, he gets all hunched and sheepish.
My insides heat up and I twist my body from side to side to keep from smiling too wide. “So, you were saying?”
“I was just wondering. I mean, I showed up kind of after the fact, but still. I saw you there in the car, in that cute red shirt, and it just hit me …” He stops talking and stares at me intently. So intently I start to blush.
What just hit you? I want to scream. There I was in that cute red shirt and … what?
There’s a noise in the hall. I turn to find Joules right behind me, standing there in my white shirt from yesterday. She holds up a hand and waggles her fingers hello.
Of course. Will wasn’t staring intently at me; he was looking at Joules Adams.
She sashays into the room and slides herself beneath Will’s arm to rest her head on his shoulder. “Look at the two of you in here all by your lonesome. Should I be jealous?”
No! Joules Adams cannot be here right now. This is the single most interesting moment of my life so far—here I am, alone with Will Sherwood, waiting for him to ask me who knows what kind of question—and the Lucky One walks in and takes it from me.
“No,” I say. “I was just, he was just …”
No one’s listening. Joules is walking her fingers up Will’s T-shirt and he’s laughing, burying his face in her messy hair. An arrow could penetrate my forehead right now; I could drop to the floor and lie here in a pool of my own blood, the person who shot the arrow could burst in, slip on the blood and land on the floor beside me, and no one would notice. The world around these two has become that invisible.
They face each other now, and Joules rises up onto her tiptoes, rubs her nose against his. He pulls her closer.
It’s wrong to look. They’re too intimate, completely lost in each other.
But I can’t move away. I’m stunned by the cruelty of nature. Think about it. Mice being swallowed whole by snakes? Cru
el. Hurricane winds felling trees that have been growing for hundreds of years? Cruel. Me being born Andrea Birch and her being born Joules Adams? Cruel. And then for nature to dangle a creature like Will in front of me and have him openly adore the girl I am not?
Deeply cruel.
They poke at each other jokingly a bit, then he runs his hands up through the base of her hair, leans down and kisses her.
The kiss is gentle at first, his lips barely touch hers. I should look away but I can’t. She reaches up for more, but he pulls back, making her wait. It’s only once she allows him to lead that he moves into the kiss with more force, searching her mouth like he wouldn’t mind swallowing her whole.
It’s wrong that I watch. I know it. But I can’t move.
Will’s guitar strings collide with a desk and reverberations of musical notes strum without any rhythm. Thrum. Thrum Thrum. Thrum.
Joules liquefies—who wouldn’t? It’s the most perfect kiss I’ve ever seen, far more exciting than I will ever experience in my Andrea Birch existence. I close my eyes and imagine my lips are touching Will’s. That it’s my back his fingers are caressing. My life his is entwined with.
The sound of shuffling. I open my eyes to find Joules and Will heading outside, and right away I’m embarrassed. Here I am, the dorky third wheel, watching them kiss, then standing there with my eyes shut as they exit. Unwilling to face either of them out in the hall, I count to ten before starting through the doorway.
Bad idea. Mr. Buchanan walks right into me on his way into the room, and he looks none too pleased. “Andrea Birch, you know the rules about my room. Report to detention after school.”
chapter 4
If my mother looked upset after yesterday’s detention, she looks furious after today’s. As I walk across the crispy lawn Dad tries so hard to make green—can it not rain just once a week, for his sake?—I feel her eyes boring into my soul.