Playing Nice

by Rebekah Crane

  ***

  We make it to my house five minutes before my parents pull into the driveway. I'm nervous the entire ride that Lil will take a wrong turn and refuse to drop me off, but she drives straight to my house without saying a word. I don't even need to give her directions.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," I say as I climb out of the car.

  "Tampa. I'm from Tampa, Florida." She keeps her eyes forward as she speaks. I can't help but smile.

  Once through the front door, I drop my backpack on the ground and put on the house slippers my mom insists everyone wear to protect our bamboo floors. My limbs hurt from exhaustion. The day has been long and I want to curl up in bed and sleep. I plop myself on the couch and stare at the quote my mom painted on the wall above our mantle. Where can a person be better than in the bosom of their family? She put it there after the construction was completed to remodel the main floor.

  I know my dad misses the way the house used to be. He always tells stories about my grandma and how happy she was in her simple kitchen, making jam from berries in her garden. She moved into Shady Willows Retirement Community and Nursing Home right before I was born. My mom updated the house with fancy cabinets that don't make a sound when you close them and stainless-steel appliances and no walls right at the same time Grandma died.

  During dinner, I push around my potatoes and chicken, not saying much and taking little nibbles here and there as my mind swims. I can't believe what I said to Lil. How mad she made me, how it made her smile, how I don't feel bad for saying it because it was the truth.

  "How was your WelCo meeting?" my dad asks. He's still in his baby blue scrubs. My parents spent the last fifteen minutes discussing a difficult root canal he did at the office today, and the question catches me off guard.

  "It went good."

  "Well, honey. It went well," my mom says, dabbing the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin.

  I nod, having heard my grammatical mistake the second it came out. "There's a new girl in school. Ms. Everley wanted me to show her around."

  "That's nice. What's her name?" my dad asks.

  "Lily Hatfield."

  He swallows the chunk of chicken in his mouth with a huge gulp. It makes a weird sound, like I just dropped a rock off a cliff and it landed in deep water.

  "Did you say Hatfield?"

  I can tell he's trying to keep his face straight, but there's tension in his throat, like when he told me my pet guinea pig died.

  I nod. "Why?"

  "It's nothing." My dad shakes his head back and forth and smiles, like he's clearing away the last few seconds. I can smell the mint mouthwash on his skin.

  "I thought Lil was new in town." I say, looking from my dad to my mom. Seconds pass while I wait for an answer; I don't understand how, with one name, I've managed to bring dinner to a grinding halt.

  Neither looks up from their plate. Then, in a causal move, my mom lifts her glass of Chardonnay to her pursed lips and sips the slightest bit of wine, leaving a peach lipstick ring around the top. I know the look. It's the same one she gave me when I asked her about sex in seventh grade. In one movement, my mother has told me to drop it.

  "I just hope you were nice to her," she says.

  CHAPTER 4

  That night, I have a dream that I'm running down a hallway, fleeing something. My heart beats out of my chest, echoing in my ears, thump, thump, thump, and I keep falling down. I'm terrified of what's chasing me. The second before I reach a door to escape, I look back, but the only thing behind me is me.

  I wake up in a sweat. My skin and hair smell like mold and salt mixed together and I cringe. It's the worst smell in the world, next to maybe the rotten fish stink that sticks to the air after my mom cooks salmon. Even my pillow is wet. Gross.

  I look at the clock, sitting on the nightstand next to my favorite picture of my grandma. She's standing in an empty cornfield in the middle of winter, thick work boots on her feet, wearing an ugly brown barn coat. Grandma wasn't much for fashion. Her silver hair is streaming out behind her because the wind is so fierce and she's laughing, a smile as big as the moon on her face. She was really pretty.

  The picture was taken before I was born. Before Grandma went all crazy and couldn't remember how to put on underwear or take care of her personal hygiene.

  The clock says 5:45 AM. It's that time of morning when I could go back to sleep, but chances are I'll only scrape together a few extra minutes and I'll end up way more tired than if I just got up. Plus, I don't think I can sleep with the disgusting sweat smell tingling in my nose.

  Some days, I actually like getting up early. I can watch the sun rise through my window and be quiet with my thoughts. Being an only child, you'd think I'd be alone a lot. It's not true. My parents are constantly on me. Did you do your homework? Have you shaved your legs? (My mom has a thing about prickly leg hair.) Did you brush your teeth and floss after lunch? I hate flossing. It hurts. But I do it anyway because my dad's a dentist and it's important to him.

  But early in the morning, when they're still in bed and I don't have to worry about what my breath smells like, I can just be.

  I get up and walk over to the antique wooden desk that sits in front of the only window in my room. My U of M application is laying next to a picture of Sarah and me from last year's Spring Fling dance. I touch it and remind myself of what I want in life. I picture myself reading something sophisticated, like Lord Byron or Emily Dickinson, under a tall oak tree on campus next to a handsome young man with an anatomy textbook. He's pre-med, of course, and not dentist pre-med, real pre-med. But this morning, somewhere in the back of my daydreams, Matt is strumming his guitar and swerving his hips all sexy-like and the picture goes fuzzy. Then I hear Lil's coarse voice say, Have you ever even seen a penis?

  I shake my head and look out the window. The sun is starting to crest the flat horizon of farmland that stretches for miles to the east. I read once that the sun's going to fizzle out and die in five billion years. Scientists know this for a fact. I'm glad I'm here now. I'd hate to be alive in five billion years and know that any day the earth was going to go dark. Without thinking, I grab a sheet of paper and write:

  Yellow is the morning,

  Like the first petals of spring's early flowers,

  I open my heart to daylight,

  The panoply of rays spraying the night's sky with color,

  And hope its sunshine will seal my cracks,

  But worry I'm ridged so deep,

  Nothing can fill the void.

  I stare at the paper, as if the words appeared there by themselves. I even managed to use one of my English vocabulary words for the week. Panoply: a wide-ranging and impressive array or display.

  This happens some mornings when I'm lying in bed and staring at my pink walls or looking at the picture of my grandma, wishing I could talk to the four-inch image and hear her talk back. My brain feels like it needs to expunge the thoughts roaming around in my head, so I write a poem.

  I keep the poems locked in a box in my desk. I would hate for anyone to see them, but I can't bring myself to throw them out.

  Now I take out the box from the bottom drawer. The stack of papers always surprises me. Thousands of words scribbled on paper and locked away. I add this morning's to the pack. Now that the sun is up, I need to get the sweat off my skin.

  ***

  "So did she want to suck your blood?" Sarah asks in her best Transylvanian accent as I meet her at our bus stop. It's Friday, so she's dressed in her red and white band uniform, the kind with gold tassels on the shoulders and large buttons over the pockets that look like nipples. To Sarah's chagrin, the orchestra performs at every football pep rally and game. Minster would be nothing without football; I have an array of 'school color' shirts that I wear every Friday throughout the fall. Today, I went for my red and white striped boat-neck shirt and jeans. I even had my mom tie a red ribbon around my ponytail.

  "No." I roll my eyes.

  "Seriously, you never texte
d me last night. I almost called out a search party."

  I don't realize until this moment that I didn't text Sarah like I said I would. My mind was too wrapped up in Matt and his arm accessories and the way Lil knew I liked him just from looking at my face. I tried to hint to Sarah about my crush all last year while I was tutoring Matt, but she never once asked me about it.

  "I'm sorry. I totally forgot."

  "So..." Sarah raises her eyebrows.

  "So... what?"

  "Come on, Marty. That girl is a total crazoid. She's like a vampire, and not the kind that sparkles and eats animals. You can NOT hang out with her anymore." Sarah grabs my arm and looks me directly in the eyes, her pupils wide and rimmed with deep brown. "You've done your good deed, and now there's no need for anymore interaction."

  I nod, even though inside I don't know if that's what I want.

  "So, for real, what did you do with her?" Sarah asks.

  "Nothing, really. We went to Vinyl Tap and she bought a record." I shrug, but wonder if I would really call yesterday nothing. It felt like something. "I ran into Matt James-Morrison-Walker there."

  "Of course he would be there." Sarah shakes her head, red curls bouncing. They match her band uniform spot-on. "Did you tell him that it's totally stupid to have three last names? I mean, what was his mom thinking? That's, like, so hippy-feminist."

  She rummages around in her purse. I wait for her to say more, to ask me about Matt, for her to see like Lil did that I'm interested in him so I can get her advice. Instead, Sarah pulls out a tube of lip gloss and says, "Do you think this matches my uniform? If I'm going to be forced to wear this gross thing, my face better look pretty."

  I nod, disappointment creeping up in my stomach as the bus rounds the corner.

  When we pull up in front of the school, I can't help but look at the tree Lil and I sat under while she smoked yesterday. She's there.

  "Look Marty, it's your girlfriend," Sarah jokes. "God, what is up with the combat boots? This is Ohio, not Afghanistan."

  I shrug her off and look away from the window. "She's not my girlfriend," I whisper almost to myself. "Hey, did you tell your parents about Lil being in school?"

  Seeing Lil reminds me of last night. Something about Lil is familiar to this town, and for some reason my parents don't want me to know about it.

  "No. We try not to talk about the living dead at the table. So, are you going to meet me tonight after the game?" Sarah continues speaking without waiting for my answer. "Thank God football season is almost over. I don't think I can stand this uniform much longer. Polyester does nothing for my figure."

  It's what we do every Friday. Sarah plays in the halftime show and I wait for her either in the stands or at home, depending on the weather. I hate sitting in the rain. It makes my mascara run. We usually watch a movie or paint our nails or pick out wedding dresses on the internet until my eyes get clouded over with white Vera Wang's.

  If I didn't have Sarah, I'd probably spend every weekend in my bedroom just waiting for college. Sometimes that scares me, but my dad says it isn't a big deal. That you don't need a lot of friends, just a few good ones. And Sarah's a good one, most of the time.

  "Sure. I'll meet you at the east entrance after the game."

  As we walk away from the bus, my eyes find Lil across the street again. She's wearing a deep purple t-shirt and black jeans today. Her red sunglasses are propped on top of her head, even though so many gray clouds have rolled across the early morning's bright sky that it looks like it might start raining at any moment.

  My insides feel pulled, with one leg wanting to walk over to Lil, while the other knows I need to go into school and do what I do with Sarah every day.

  And I can't get the eerie look on my parents' faces last night out of my mind. It should propel me closer to Sarah. It should make me never want to talk to Lil again. Instead, it makes me want to know more.

  ***

  My mom and I planned all week to go to Hobby Lobby on Main Street on Saturday to pick out decorations for the Hot Shot Dance. She got so excited when I told her I was in charge; she pulled out her old Youngstown High School yearbook and showed me pictures of when she was senior class president and planned what she called: the best prom my high school has ever seen.

  "I spent months sewing fake flowers that fell from the ceiling during the last dance," my mom said, laughing. "By the time prom rolled around, my fingers were so covered in calluses that I had to soak them in a vat of cocoa butter the night before so my date wouldn't notice!"

  Then we went page by page through the entire yearbook, and my mom told me about every single person in her graduating class. I saw her eat a tomato like an apple once. Ugh, he was in my Math class and picked his nose. She turned to the page with the Homecoming King and Queen. Last I heard, he's working at a car plant and weighs 300 pounds … she got pregnant in college.

  I kept staring at the pictures and thinking how young everyone looked and how old they are now. If my mom's right, life is basically downhill from the second you graduate; I started freaking out about how I'm living the peak of my life, but so far it consists of watching Sweet Home Alabama for the seventh million time with Sarah and daydreaming about kissing Matt without actually doing it.

  "Do you have a date yet?" my mom asks as we walk into Hobby Lobby. "Please tell me it's not Sam Higgins again." She rolls her eyes. Along with asking me out in a text, Sam broke my parents' three cardinal rules of dances. 1) Be on time. 2) Bring a corsage. 3) Don't smell like your father's cow farm.

  I have few more secret rules. 4) Don't wear boots. 5) Hair gel is meant to be used in small amounts. 6) All undershirts must have sleeves. 7) No camouflage, flannel, jersey, or pink shirts. And finally, and this is the most important, 8) Slow dance.

  When I'm slow dancing, I like to pretend we're in some romantic movie, like Dirty Dancing or Step Up, and we're doing something dangerous and sexy. Plus, I get to press myself against a boy and lately that's all I want to do. I blame it on my hormones and lack of sexual encounters. Plus, it's safe. Everyone in town expects kids to slow dance. It's a completely acceptable activity.

  "Sarah and I are going stag," I say.

  My mom stifles a laugh. "If one of you doesn't get a boyfriend soon, this town is going to think I have a lesbian for a daughter."

  "Mom." I look around to see if any of the old ladies perusing the store at nine in the morning heard her. I can't believe she just said lesbian on a Saturday in Hobby Lobby.

  "I'm just saying: my daughter is beautiful and smart and deserves the best boyfriend Minster has to offer." Mom smiles at me and tucks my hair behind my ears. "Maybe if you pull your hair back and show off those gorgeous cheekbones, a boy will notice you."

  I force a laugh; really, the comment stings. Sometimes when my mom thinks she's being funny or kind, she's really hurting me. But I know she means well and only wants me to be the best person I can be, so I swallow the lump in my throat and leave my hair behind my ears.

  "So, what've you come up with?" she asks as we grab a cart at the front of the store.

  I take the piece of paper with my dance decoration ideas out of my purse. It looks more like an architect's blueprint. Last week, I went to the gym and copied down all the dimensions I'd be working with. I almost made a diorama, like the ones you build in elementary school out of an old shoebox, but I thought that might be taking it too far.

  "The theme I've come up with is, 'Two is Better than One'," I say as we push down the first aisle. It's crowded with different spools of yarn arranged by color.

  My mom walks over to the pink section and picks up a magenta-colored spool. "Um-hmm," she says, closed mouth. "This color is pretty, don't you think?"

  A rock drops in my gut. Oh crap. "It is pretty. I love magenta."

  Mom puts it back and walks farther down the aisle, running her hand over the different yarns, not saying a word. I follow behind her, my mind racing with what to say.

  "The theme has a double meaning
. Two people are better than one, and the second amendment allows people to bear arms." I look at her, hoping for eye contact.

  It doesn't happen. My mom rubs a fuzzy aqua spool against her cheek.

  "Um-hmm," Another closed mouth response, her eyes on the yarn. "This feels great on the skin. Maybe I'll buy it for Mrs. Schneider. She's a great knitter. You know those wool socks I wear all winter? She made those."

  This is worse than I ever could have imagined. Mom's talking to me about Mrs. Schneider, a mean old lady from church who smells like mothballs and foot cream. I start to fidget, wringing my hands, as my stomach flip-flops over and over.

  "I figured we could decorate the gym in fake trees and leaves with Cupid hiding in the branches." My heart pounds as my mom places the blue yarn in our basket. I clutch my sketch, a physical representation of all the hours I've spent thinking about this dance, of the seventeen pieces of white paper I covered in different theme ideas until they turned black with words.

  "I think I'll ask her to make you a sweater. Blue is a great color on you. Would you like that?" My mom still won't look away from the yarn. Yarn that I'm sure is pokey and uncomfortable when made into a sweater that will make me sweat in the dead of winter. A sweater that will constantly remind me of this moment, and how awful my mother's icy answers felt.

  "That would be nice," I say. I take a deep breath, one that pushes all the oxygen I can suck out of the air into the deepest part of my lungs. And then I ask the question I know I have to. "What do you think of my idea?"

  My voice curls up on the ends with extra sugar, as I hope against hope that my mom will hear my plea.

  She pushes the cart down the aisle, moving away.

  "I think it's fine, dear."

  Fine.

  The world's worst word. It doesn't mean what the dictionary says. Fine should be a synonym for good, but it's good's ugly, pimple-faced younger brother who smells like B.O. and could never get a girlfriend. Fine is terrible. I close my eyes and stuff my drawing back in my purse, weeks and weeks of work crushed with one word. Fine.