I lean back in the bench and swing my feet. I feel the rough wood pull at my hair. Even though I’m glad my mom’s not mad at me, their laughter makes my stomach hurt. It may be selfish to think it, but I don’t want my mom to be happy. The happier she is, the farther away my old life gets.
chapter four
The first day of school always gets me out of bed early. The first day of school at a brand-new school got me out of bed at 4 A.M. By the time I left Gram’s house my room looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Every piece of clothing I owned was on either the floor or the bed. I checked my e-mail five times and tried unsuccessfully to find something to eat that wouldn’t make me feel like yakking four times. I kept speeding up and then slowing down during the walk to school. I didn’t want to be late, but I really didn’t want to be too early, standing around and staring at my shoes while everyone else talks to one another and pretends not to see the new girl staring at her shoes. I managed to make it to the school office without actually making eye contact with anyone. It’s like if I don’t see them, they can’t see me.
So, here’s my theory. Every high school in the whole country has the same secretary working in the front office. She’s usually about my mom’s age or maybe a little older, like forty-ish. She’s a little overweight, but she’s trying to lose it and you know that because she always has a Diet Coke or a Slim-Fast shake on her desk, and her candy jar is filled with sugarless Jolly Ranchers. Her name is something no one names their kids anymore, like Esther or Geraldine or Margery. She wears clothes that are about ten years out-of-date, and around every holiday she brings out the theme sweatshirts, like the reindeer one with the light-up Christmas lights on his antlers. She has a calendar with sayings like HANG IN THERE with a picture of a kitten hanging from a branch. I might be wrong about all of this—I haven’t been in that many schools—but I think I might be onto something here, because when I walk into the front office at Hog’s Hollow High School, a woman with apple earrings and a cardigan with apples all over it is sipping a Diet Pepsi. I notice the sign on her desk reads CONSTANCE PITTMAN.
“Sign in,” she says, tapping the clipboard on the counter. She takes it from me after I write down my name. “Penny Lane,” she says, and I wait for it, the humming, the comments, but she just rolls her chair to one side and opens a file drawer. “Lane, Lane, Lane . . . Oh, here we are.” She takes a folder from the drawer and drops it onto her desk. She slips a pink sheet out of the folder and glances at it. “Looks like you’re with Madame Framboise for first period.” She hands me the sheet and starts rummaging in another file. I scan the grid on the sheet and find first period. French I.
“I think maybe there’s a mistake.” I have to lean over the counter to make sure she can hear me. “I don’t take French. I mean, I haven’t. I take Spanish.”
A bell rings. Great. I’m late. She flips through the pages and then starts at the beginning and goes through them more slowly. “Not here. Here we have French. I can’t seem to find . . .” She sees a piece of blue paper in my folder and slides it free. “Well, I must have given you a locker already.” She folds the sheet in half and hands it to me. “Memorize that and then destroy it.” She seems so serious that I smile.
“Do I have to swallow it?”
She tilts her head and squints at me. “Why would you do that?”
“Never mind,” I say. I fold the blue piece of paper, push it into the back pocket of my jeans, and follow the directions she gave me to find my first class. I stop at Room 110 and double-check my schedule. French. Well, this should be interesting. I turn the knob slowly and push open the door. As expected, every eye in the class is immediately on me and no longer on who I guess to be Madame Framboise.
“Bonjour,” she says. Okay, I know that one.
“Bonjour,” I mumble.
“Class,” she says, turning back to them. There is a murmur through the room. Whispers of “She’s new” filter toward me. I keep telling myself that it’s no big deal, that I’ll be moving back to New York soon and then this nightmare will be over. “Class,” Madame Framboise says again. Then she says something that sounds like a cootie bean, but that must mean “listen,” because everyone gets quiet. She puts her hand out toward me and I start to put out my own, thinking she wants to shake it. “Votre schedule,” she says. I catch the last word and hand her my pink sheet. “Ah, Penny,” she says, putting a stress on the end of my name so it sounds like she’s saying “Pen Knee.” There are more whispers and this time I hear “Pen Knee” thrown in. One girl toward the front says it in a particularly nasty way, and I recognize her from the birthday party. Great. “Pen Knee. Prenez le____.” This one I have no idea. She repeats it. I can feel myself turning seventy-five shades of red.
“I don’t—”
“En français,” she says.
“I don’t understand—”
“Vous ne comprenez pas.”
Okay, I can do this. Comprenez. Comprehend. I shake my head.
She sighs, and the whispers start up again. “Take your seat.”
The only free desk is one toward the back of the third row. I have to walk past Charity’s friend, who slides her backpack into the aisle, making me step over it. Luckily, I’m ready for it. Unfortunately I’m not ready for friend number two about halfway back, who decides at that moment to stretch her leg. I only fall partway, catching myself on the edge of a desk.
“Bon voyage?” she asks, smiling.
I feel my face get hot and then the backs of my eyes get hot. Do not cry, I tell myself. I slide into the empty chair and pretend to study my schedule while everyone begins whispering again about someone named Pen Knee.
Somehow I make it through French. Then math, where it’s a lot of stuff I already did in eighth grade. There don’t seem to be any of Charity’s friends in that class, but art class is another story. The whole back table is full of them. And there she is, Charity, right in the middle. I hear “Pen Knee” under their breath as I walk in. I find a seat near the window, next to a girl with dark hair with the tips dyed blue. She’s wearing glasses with rhinestones in the corners. The teacher, Miss Beans, begins talking about all of the projects we are going to do this year. She seems nervous as she talks, and I wonder if she’s new, too. One of the girls at the back table makes a coughing noise and in the middle says, “Pen.” Another coughs, “Knee.” And another, “Loser.” Miss Beans looks at them for a long moment until they are quiet. How is it possible that after only one day I have more enemies than after nine years of school in the City? And that’s including the mashed potato incident in fifth grade and the BeefSteak incident in eighth. I try to put on my tough face, but it probably looks more like my vaguely ill face. I look over at the girl with the rhinestone glasses, but she’s busy drawing something in her sketchbook.
Miss Beans is still talking about learning objectives and methodology, which tells me that she isn’t just new here, she’s new at teaching, because she hasn’t figured out that kids don’t care about that stuff. As she’s talking, I try to distract myself from the nasty looks I’m getting from across the room. I wonder if all the teachers at this school are named for food. Madame Framboise’s name means “raspberry,” which I know from the French jam my mother always buys. Then for math there was Miss Mellon. . . .
Just as I’m about to make another one of my life observations, he walks in. He hands a note to Miss Beans. He glances around the room while she reads it. He looks in my direction and I smile, hoping he’s looking at me and not someone just past my shoulder, some willowy blonde with perfect teeth. But he seems to be looking through me. I start thinking that maybe I was wrong, that this isn’t the guy from the beach. I stare down at my desk, feeling my cheeks get hot. Miss Beans finishes the note and scribbles something on it before handing it back to him. He looks at me again, and then he’s gone.
As the door shuts, the back table starts up again, and I hear words like “cute” float toward me before Miss Beans calls for quiet. I take a peek
at the back table again. This time Charity is looking at me. She glares at me for a moment, then mouths, “Mine.” I turn back to the syllabus on my desk, realizing that somehow I’ve stepped in it again with her. I scan the words on the page, wondering if in between the list of weekly assignments and the list of topics for the research paper, maybe I’ll find a clue about how to get myself out of this mess.
At lunch, instead of sitting alone in the lunchroom or trying to find a small bit of grass to myself out on the lawn, I decide to find my locker. I slide the blue sheet out of my pocket. 311. It’s at the end of the next hall. I notice the two girls from my French class whispering together near the water fountain, but I walk past them. Just ignore them, I tell myself, but it’s hard. I feel my face heating up again. I stop in front of my locker. At least it’s a top one. I try the combination, but it won’t open. I try it again. Still it won’t open. The group near the water fountain has gotten larger. I notice that the bottom part of the locker is bowed out a little and I push it in and hear it click. Maybe that will help. I try it again and this time the latch comes up.
It’s another one of those common mistakes people make. The voice inside your head just keeps saying, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it, even though the evidence is right there. It’s the voice that seems to be controlling your muscles, though, because you just stand there, watching. Sometimes the voice in your head changes it up a bit. “No way.” “Nuh uh.” “There is no freaking—” By the time you convince yourself that what you are seeing is real, it’s too late. That’s how it is with my locker. It starts slowly. One penny falls out. Then two, but then the weight of them pushes the door open and it’s a wave of pennies. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. A penny tsunami. I mean, how many pennies does it take to fill up a whole locker? And if you’ve ever poured out a whole jar of change, you know how loud it can be. Now take that noise and multiply it by the number of pennies, the height of the drop from the locker to the floor, and the hardness of the tile in the hallway. If you’re thinking car engine gunning or maybe a waterfall, you’re close. I keep watching them gush out until it’s just a trickle and then done.
“Oh, Pen Knee.” I turn and see that the group of girls has grown by one. At the center is Charity. She is smiling that ice smile of hers. “Just our way of saying welcome to Hog’s Hollow, Pen Knee,” she says. Then all of the girls turn at once and walk away. In fact, most everyone who came running down the hall to see what the commotion was walks away. I guess no one wants to hang around after the prank. I look at the copper sea around me and wonder if I’m supposed to pick all of this up.
“Can you spare some change?”
I turn and see the girl from my art class, the one with the blue-tipped hair, leaning against one of the lockers. She smiles at me.
“Just leave me alone,” I say. I shake my Chucks to get the pennies off them.
“You have to hand it to them,” the girl says from behind me. “There must be like fifty dollars here.” I turn and watch as she bends and fills a hand with pennies then lets them fall back to the floor. The tips of her hair sparkle in the light.
“What do you want?” I ask.
She stands back up and smiles at me. “I’ll help,” she says.
“Help what?” I have to keep reminding myself not to cry. My eyes keep forgetting.
“Help pick it up. The least you can do is take their money.” I turn and face her. “I’m Tally,” she says. She tilts her head after she says it and seems to be watching me, waiting to see what I’ll do.
“I’m . . .” I look around at the mounds of pennies all over this end of the hall. I look back at Tally and can tell she’s trying hard not to laugh, which makes me start smiling. I try again. “I’m Penny,” but then I’m laughing and Tally’s laughing with me and for one quick moment, I can remember what normal used to feel like.
We empty our backpacks and take turns holding them open and shoveling the mounds of pennies inside. “The way I see it, you’re lucky your name wasn’t Rotten Egg or something,” Tally says.
“Yes, because it would be at this very instant that I would realize what a truly terrible curse the name Rotten Egg is.” I scoop the last few handfuls of pennies out of my locker and into my backpack.
“Maybe you led a very sheltered life. I mean, maybe your parents were named Old Gym Sock and Mothball.”
We have to leave our backpacks in the office with Constance, who offers us each a Jolly Rancher. We walk back to the main hall, where Tally turns left to go to English and I have to go straight to something called Occupational Investigation.
“Under the clock after school,” she says.
“Sure,” I say. “I mean, as long as I don’t have to be somewhere to embarrass myself in front of the whole school again.”
Tally shakes her head and smiles. “It wasn’t the whole school.”
“Half,” I say.
“Maybe half.” She’s still laughing as she turns to walk down the hall toward her class. It’s then that I see the back of her shirt, something that was hidden under the backpack and her hair. RPS FOR PEACE.
chapter five
After school, Tally and I start walking to the bank to change our backpacks full of coins into bills. “I just can’t figure out how she got all those pennies,” I say. “Even if all of them emptied their coin jars, they couldn’t have come up with this many pennies.” I shift the straps of my pack slightly to keep them from cutting into my shoulders.
“That part’s easy,” Tally says. We stop at the corner and wait for a truck pulling a trailer full of pigs to pass. The smell seems to cling to us as we keep walking. “Charlotte’s father owns the bank.” We cross the street and start up the block toward the bank. The pennies make even the slight hill hard to climb.
“Which one’s Charlotte?” I ask.
“Red hair. Pinched face.”
“She’s in my French class,” I say, thinking of the girl in the front row who tried to trip me with her backpack.
“Oui, oui,” Tally says.
We walk in silence for the next two blocks. The tiny hill at the end of Main Street makes my heart thud in my chest. I look across the street and see the guy from the beach talking to a guy from my math class. The guy from math has a soccer ball in his hands. He keeps dropping it against his knee and catching it as it bounces. The guy from the beach catches the ball and manages to keep it aloft with his knees for almost a minute. It was probably just bad timing, but when he looks in my direction, he knees the ball too hard and sends it into the street. I duck my head and hurry to catch up to Tally, who is now waiting in front of the bank. She holds the door for me, and we go into the lobby. There’s a pretty long line in front of the counter.
“So how did they know my locker combination?” I ask.
“One of the Lindseys helps out in the office during first period. You really have to admire how organized they are,” Tally says, scooping a tiny bag of pretzels off the New Accounts desk as we pass.
“Yeah,” I say, “very admirable.”
“I’m just saying”—Tally rips the cellophane bag and takes a pretzel out—“we need to be even more organized when we get back at them.” I like the way she says we. “Let me think about it,” she says as she bites into a pretzel.
Lining the walls are old photographs of Hog’s Hollow. Most of them are black-and-white, but some are color. There’s a photo of an old fishing dock near the end of the town’s beach, when it still was a working dock and not just somewhere to hang out. There are pictures of horse-drawn carriages on Main Street and several of women in long dresses with crowns on their heads.
“Hog’s Hollow Days,” Tally says, looking over my shoulder. She keeps munching away at her pretzels while I walk slowly along the wall. I look at the women in the pictures, their hair-styles hinting at the years when the photos were taken. Bee-hives and sweater sets take up the first row. The second row features photos of girls with impossibly long hair and dresses with lace-up fronts and
long skirts. I stop suddenly at one with a girl with blond hair and a long blue dress. Tally almost runs into me. “What?”
“That one,” I say, leaning in. “That’s my mother.” And it’s weird how I know it’s her. It’s not her smile or her hair or her eyes, but the way she was standing with her hands clasped in front of her, one hand holding her other wrist. It’s the way she always stands when she’s nervous, like she’s holding on to herself to keep herself from floating away.
“Your mother was Miss Hog’s Hollow?” Tally asks.
I look at the shiny crown perched crookedly on her head. “I guess,” I say, and shrug.
“Around here that is a very big deal.”
I look at my mother’s face in the photo. I try to see what she was thinking when they took the picture, but after a moment I give up. I can’t even figure out what my mom is thinking when she’s standing right in front of me.
A man in a three-piece suit walks up to us. “Can I help you girls?” He looks at us as if we smell bad, which we might, after all that walking with heavy backpacks.
“We need to change some money,” Tally says. She crunches another pretzel, emptying the tiny bag. He looks at us for a long moment before deciding that stinky or not, we do have money. He directs us over to a teller named Linda. We have to help each other with the backpacks. I put mine on the counter first. It makes a heavy sound followed by a short jingle.
“We’d like to turn these in,” I say. Linda lifts the backpack with some effort and upends it over the sorting machine. When most of the coins have filtered through, she takes Tally’s. We watch the numbers on the meter flicker past thirty dollars without showing any sign of slowing. Finally the clinking slows to a trickle and then it’s silent.
“Seventy-four dollars and ninety-eight cents,” Linda says.
“We must have missed a couple,” Tally says, winking at me.
The Cupcake Queen Page 3