by Emma Straub
“All aboard,” she said.
“It’s my first day,” Cecelia said.
“Me too,” the driver said, her face screwing into a facsimile of a smile. Could she sit there, right next to the driver? Could she operate the shifter knob, the way every kid at a train museum gets a turn to be the conductor?
Cecelia ran up the steps as lightly as possible, trying to project an air of easy self-confidence. This was the plan: pretend to be the person you’d like to be. No one knew any better, and so Cecelia could be confident and cool if she said she was. It wasn’t that she wanted to lie, or to be fake—she didn’t want to do either of those things. Cecelia just knew how things worked and knew that projecting confidence was her only hope for survival, the way some harmless snakes had almost identical markings to very deadly ones. The bus was about half full, and she immediately felt every eyeball on her. Cecelia quickly scanned the rows—scowls, to a person. The girls looked her up and down, inspecting her outfit’s every detail, the boys inspected her face and body with the same x-ray vision, and Cecelia felt the weight of every stare—until she saw August waving in the back.
“Oh, thank god,” she said, when she’d finally reached his row. The cool exterior she’d been holding in place melted into a genuinely relieved puddle.
“Yes, well, welcome to hell. It’s lovely here, isn’t it?” He handed her a muffin. “My dad baked.”
Cecelia slung her backpack around her body and collapsed onto the bench seat next to him. “My parents don’t bake. For a while, they were into making their own almond milk, and then their own sourdough bread, using this space alien they kept in the fridge, but not normal baking, like with butter and sugar.”
“That’s too bad,” August said. “Butter and sugar are two objectively good things in the world. Maybe your parents just don’t like carbohydrates.”
“Or thoughtfulness,” Cecelia said, taking a bite. The muffin was still warm. “If my grandmother loses it, I’m moving in with you.”
“I always wanted a sister,” August said.
“Me too,” Cecelia said, and took another bite. “Do you ever feel your parents forget that they’re your parents and not just, like, your buddies? Mine are major buddies. Not so great on the discipline. Not that I want discipline, just . . .”
“Rules. I get it.” August nodded.
The bus bounced over a bump in the road, sending Cecelia and August an inch into the air. They rounded a corner and slowed to a stop. A clump of long-haired girls got on, an optical illusion of homogeny. It took Cecelia a few moments to realize it wasn’t three copies of the same girl, but three different girls in identical clothing, down to the holes in the knees of their jeans and the visible belly buttons poking out from beneath their cropped tank tops, with identical expressions of boredom on their dour faces.
“Are they sisters?” Cecelia asked, pointing with her chin.
“No, they wish. Just spiritually. And by that I mean, they have given their souls to their same succubus.”
The girls piled into a row near the front of the bus, the only empty seat left, two on the seat and the third on their lap like a baby doll.
“Two to a seat,” the driver said, after she’d cranked the door shut. “Find another seat, miss.”
The girl on top rolled her eyes, and there was some whispered negotiation, and then the three all switched places, a game of human three-card monte, and one, the tallest of the three, got spit out into the aisle.
“That’s Sidney, at the window,” August said, “and those are her henchmen, Bailey and Liesel. Liesel’s the one who got the boot.” Booted Liesel had sulked back two rows, and now was sitting next to a girl with large headphones who had not acknowledged her existence.
Cecelia leaned back against the squeaky vinyl of the bus seat. They didn’t look like her friends at home, not really—compared to Brooklyn, Clapham was about as white as a snowstorm in Vermont—but seeing them all together, a posse, reminded her of what she didn’t have anymore. She felt simultaneously grateful to be on this weird murderous school bus and mad that she was the one who had been deemed least important and kicked to the proverbial aisle.
“Are you okay?” August asked. “You look kind of green.”
“I’m fine,” Cecelia said.
“Well, we’re here.” The bus rounded another corner and pulled up in front of the school. It slowed to a stop, and everyone stood up and lumbered off, the exact opposite of people hurrying to get off an airplane. It seemed to Cecelia that if this new bus driver had taken off and kept driving, everyone would have sat back down and been willing runaways. August and Cecelia were the last ones off the bus, and when Cecelia hit the pavement in front of the school, the clump of identical girls was standing a few feet in front of her, each one checking her makeup in her phone’s forward-facing camera.
The second-in-command, Bailey, made eye contact with Cecelia through the screen, and then whipped her head around. “What?”
This made the other two girls turn as well. New students, in a school of any size less than gigantic, meant potential ripples in the social hierarchy. They had to make sure Cecelia wasn’t a threat.
“You’re new?” Sidney asked. Up close, Cecelia could see the differences between the three girls. Liesel was a good four inches taller, a fact that she tried to correct with terrible posture, with a rip in only the left knee of her skintight jeans. Bailey was the blonde, with a face as round as a full moon, and rips in both knees. And Sidney, clearly in charge, had an upturned nose like a sniffling pug that had been told it was beautiful every day of its butt-sniffing life. Reality had no bearing on her power. Cecelia recognized her type immediately—it was the same look Katherine would have given her, the Queen Bee stare, and somehow identifying it as such did not lessen the impact.
Cecelia nodded. “Yeah, hi!” She waved, her heart beating fast. Friendliness was key to survival.
“Um, okay,” Bailey said, and turned back to her phone.
Liesel and Sidney followed suit. When they walked by, August leaned over and whispered into Sidney’s ear, “She’s a witch,” and then he hooked his arm through Cecelia’s elbow and they walked into school. Once they were safely through the front door, Cecelia laughed nervously.
“Don’t worry,” August said. “If she really thinks you’re a witch, she’ll at least give you a little distance. You’re not, are you?” He paused for effect and then pretended to be relieved when she shook her head. Cecelia crossed her arms over her chest. The jumpsuit was a little heavy for the day, but she’d worn it anyway, like a suit of armor. It was okay, it was okay. Cecelia often felt like she was late to things—late to her period, late to attempting to put on eye makeup, late to her life—but maybe she was showing up in Clapham at the right time. Maybe those girls weren’t so bad. Maybe, just maybe, Cecelia would always know August, even when they were fifty years old, even if August moved to Buenos Aires and became a flamenco instructor, even if he became a Rockette, or a doctor, or an astronaut. It was a reassuring idea. Just because her last friends hadn’t stuck around didn’t mean it would happen again. She could be cool this time; she could roll with it, whatever it was. Friendship was so weird. People spent so much time talking about falling in love, but making friends was just as hard—if you thought about it, it was crazy: Here, meet some total strangers, tell them all your secrets, expect no hurt or humiliation to come of it.
“Not that I know of.” She looked down and realized she was still holding half a muffin in her hand, and so she stuffed the rest into her mouth and crumpled the wrapper in her hand, holding it there like a good luck charm.
* * *
—
The eighth grade had four different homeroom classes, each with thirty students. Thirty sounded like a lot but the rooms were enormous and spacious, with a tidy, labeled desk for each of them, all with their own narrow pencil grooves. Cecelia’s seat was in
the second row from the back—alphabetical. That seemed in some way discriminatory, or at the very least, rude. What if she had terrible eyesight? What if she had a quiet speaking voice? In her Brooklyn school, where half the students had teacher’s aides to assist with their ADD or ADHD or their autism, the teachers arranged the room over and over again like a game of Jenga, always trying to make sure that so-and-so didn’t climb out the window, or that so-and-so’s parents didn’t call to complain about her treatment in the great educational machine of New York City. Clapham Junior High looked, on the inside, the way her Brooklyn school looked in 1960, probably. The carpets were clean, with earth-toned concentric circles. The water fountains shot springy geysers high into the air. The bathroom’s tampon machines worked. August was in another homeroom, which meant that she had to say goodbye after he helped her find the office and jimmy open her locker, and now she was alone. Alone with twenty-nine other kids and one adult, her new homeroom/English teacher, Ms. Skolnick, Cecelia slid into her seat and gently put her empty notebook down on the desk.
Ms. Skolnick was pacing the narrow corridor between her large desk and the blackboard. She was short and smiley, with an unseasonably bulky sweater. She held a piece of chalk in one hand, balanced in between her fingers like a cigarette. Some students grunted greetings when they came into the classroom, but most didn’t. Cecelia watched from her seat. An air-conditioning vent was directly above her, blowing freezing cold air, and Cecelia was glad, finally, to have worn the jumpsuit.
“I have an extra sweater, if you need one.” It was Ms. Skolnick, who had somehow made her way down the side of the room to Cecelia’s desk. “This seat is the Arctic Circle. I’ve complained to maintenance a thousand times, but there just doesn’t seem to be a way to temper the temperature, if you know what I mean.”
“Okay,” Cecelia said. “I didn’t know, but I’m warm enough.”
“Didn’t know that your assigned seat would be a Popsicle stand? Four demerits! I’m kidding,” Ms. Skolnick said, looking at Cecelia’s face. “We don’t have demerits here. We have detention, but no demerits.”
“Am I in trouble for something?” Cecelia asked.
“No! Why? Have you done something?” Ms. Skolnick widened her eyes. “I am just introducing myself, saying hello, offering a port in the storm. It’s cool. Welcome! I moved a few times as a kid, too, so I know the whole new-school-yikes feeling.”
Behind Ms. Skolnick, a bell rang, and at the same time, Sidney and one of her cohorts—Bailey, the blonde—appeared in the doorway, which startled Cecelia, but the expressions on the girls’ faces didn’t flicker; they split up without a word, homing pigeons who knew the way. Cecelia had never felt that confident, not even in her old school. Even if her desk had had a photograph of her printed on the seat, she probably still would have asked if she was in the right place.
“That’s my cue,” Ms. Skolnick said. “Morning, Sidney.” Cecelia watched as Sidney slid into the seat right next to her. She made eye contact with Cecelia, but when Cecelia smiled in what she hoped was a very normal and friendly way, Sidney kept her lips in a tight, flat line and turned toward the blackboard.
Cecelia shivered. Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and she took it out as little as possible, just to see who had written. Dad, it said, in those big block letters, as if her dad was the same as anyone else’s, as if he were a sitcom dad, with a basketball hoop and unflattering jeans and a toolbox full of things that weren’t weed or other herbs to be used medicinally. Hey, the message read. I miss you, sweet pie. Sweet pie. He couldn’t even call her a normal nickname. Cecelia felt her eyes fill with tears and daubed the corners of her eyes in a way that she hoped looked nonchalant. Her father had flown back to New Mexico, probably sitting cross-legged somewhere with his eyes closed. It was weird, to be a part of a whole that was no longer whole, and to be the part that was missing. Cecelia didn’t want to be missing. She wanted to be in her pretend room in her small apartment with her parents, and to push a button and to rewind a little bit, so that everyone could handle things differently. She wanted her mother to join the PTA and to bake American apple pies and to scream at the top of her lungs when an absurd suggestion was made, like Katherine’s parents.
“I’m not a witch,” Cecelia said. Sidney raised an eyebrow, as did a few other kids sitting nearby. “I mean, obviously.”
Sidney leaned over. “You know who would say that? A witch.” She laughed and turned toward the front of the room with her arms crossed over her chest. Cecelia started to sweat.
That was why they’d sent her to Gammy’s, Cecelia thought. She wasn’t good at handling things on her own, and neither was anyone else in her family. If her father had been sitting next to her, he would have nodded, or even chuckled. He wouldn’t have made a cutting remark back. Her mother—a teenage version of her mother—would have scared Sidney to death. But her actual mother would just have rolled her eyes and thought it beneath Cecelia to feel stung. Her parents—her loving, delusional parents—seemed to believe that if Cecelia was at Astrid’s, it would feel almost like an extralong Christmas vacation, a cozy nap on the couch, but clearly that wasn’t true. She was here because no one had said or done the right thing. When the guidance counselor had suggested that another school might be healthier for her, for the bullied, in order to prevent more bullying, her parents had nodded. She was thirteen. There was no world in which the decision was up to her. And so when her parents had sat there the next morning, at their tiny kitchen table, and asked if she was okay with the idea, she had nodded too—what else could she do?
* * *
—
A book landed on her desk with a soft thud. The Catcher in the Rye. Ms. Skolnick was handing them out one by one.
“This looks boring,” said Sidney. “It doesn’t even have a picture on the cover. What’s it about, baseball?”
Some of the other kids chuckled, not wanting to seem dumb for not knowing, but equally clueless and willing to scoff.
“No,” Cecelia said. She’d read it the previous year. “It’s about a kid who gets expelled from school and wanders around New York City and he’s kind of crazy but he’s also funny and it’s a really good book.”
“Spoiler alert, Cecelia!” Ms. Skolnick laughed. “But yes. Not about baseball, strictly speaking. Everyone read the first two chapters tonight, and we’ll get started.”
“Teacher’s pet,” Sidney said under her breath.
“Whatever,” Cecelia said. “I’ve just read it before.”
Ms. Skolnick clapped her hands. “Okay! Now let’s do a little Getting to Know You Freewrite! Everyone take out a piece of paper! And a pen! Five minutes! Write anything you want, I will never look! No one will ever know! You are free little birds, free!”
Sidney rolled her eyes. “I bet you love this, witch. Be free! Cast spells!”
Cecelia raised her hand. “May I go to the bathroom?” Ms. Skolnick nodded and pointed toward the door.
“You’re doing great,” she shout-whispered as Cecelia walked past the big desk. “Great first day so far, right?”
“Right,” Cecelia said. “Just peachy.” She stepped into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind her. The linoleum floor was spotless and shiny, an Olympic ice-skating rink. Cecelia dragged her sneakers until they squeaked. She was in no hurry. The hall was wide and empty, with lockers on either side. The bathroom was fifty feet ahead, and she ambled, peeking into the small classroom door windows as she went. Children were differently bored in every room. Bored in math class, bored in French class. Heavy eyelids; it was still so early in the morning. After a whole summer of sloth, the students weren’t used to filling their brains at such an hour. Television, yes. Irregular verbs, no. They would all adjust, in time.
On the wall beside the bathroom door was a large bulletin board, filled with printed-out computer paper advertisements for extracurriculars, athletic team tryouts, fall musical a
uditions, and clubs. At her old school, Cecelia had done debate, but that didn’t seem to be on offer. She scanned past the comedy and tragedy masks—the play was The Music Man, which seemed awfully on the nose for a small town. She had no interest in soccer or volleyball, inane exercises in futility. Dance, at least, offered artistic expression and beauty, but that wasn’t for her, either. No, the only thing that caught Cecelia’s eye was the sheet of paper in the lower-right corner of the board, clearly the loser’s spot: PARADE CREW! HELP DESIGN AND BUILD THE FLOAT FOR THIS YEAR’S HARVEST FESTIVAL! NO SKILLS REQUIRED, and below that, Ms. Skolnick’s name and homeroom, which Cecelia already knew how to find. Building a float for a parade was something no New York City school could offer. Take that, cosmopolitan elite! Cecelia pictured herself with a hammer and some bunting and buckets of glitter. Why not.
Chapter 15
Strick Brick
When Astrid felt unsatisfied about the time she was spending with her children, she would just show up and pay for a meal. It had worked when they were in college and subsisting on packaged Ramen noodles and peanut butter, and it worked now, at least on Porter, who could always be swayed by the promise of risotto and a glass of wine in the middle of the day. Because she did it when she had nothing in particular to say, Astrid thought it might also work when she did. Astrid did not like to apologize. She did not like to admit that she’d done anything wrong. It had gotten easier to forget about apologizing after Russell died—without a spouse to bicker with, Astrid was down to apologizing for accidental toe-steps and bumping into people with her shopping cart.