by Emma Straub
Astrid rolled her eyes. “A long time. And to be clear, yes, it is okay to have secrets. Everyone has secrets. We’re human! We don’t like to tell everyone everything. That’s fine, I understand. And we’re not the most effusive family in the world, I know that too. But, Porter—I love you. And you could have told me about it. I would have gotten you hot water bottles. And Vicodin. Whatever you needed.” Astrid reached up for her daughter’s face. At first, Porter resisted and pulled away, but Astrid’s hands refused to let go. Porter let her mother turn her face.
“I love you. I love this baby.” Porter chewed on her lips, a habit that Astrid had always hated. “I’m sorry that I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me.”
Porter nodded. She had thought about telling her parents, but it made as much sense as hiring a skywriting airplane to fly over Clapham and puff the words out in smoke. Who would it have helped?
“I’m sorry,” Astrid said again. She pulled Porter’s face even closer, knocking them both slightly off-balance. Porter wasn’t used to her mother hugging her, and so it took them a few minutes to figure out which arms should go where, but they did it, eventually.
The elevator dinged and its doors shuddered open. Porter and Astrid took a step closer, and all of a sudden, both Porter’s and Astrid’s telephones began to trill and beep.
“What the fuck?” Porter said. “Cell service in this town sucks. Can you not call someone to fix that?” Porter held the phone to her ear and started listening to a string of messages. “Oh shit,” she said. “It’s Cecelia’s school.”
Astrid nodded, pointing to her own phone, also at her ear. “Me too,” she said. “Let’s go. Port, drive to my house, and we’ll go to the school together, okay?”
“Okay,” Porter said. She looked down and realized that she was digging her fingernails into her own palm.
Chapter 31
Cecelia Winds Up
It was the last period of the day, which, on Fridays, meant math. The junior high had tracked math classes, just like her school in Brooklyn had, which meant that the kids who were good at numbers were in one class and the kids who couldn’t add their way out of a paper bag were in another. Cecelia and August sat next to each other in the very last row, where they absorbed little to no lasting knowledge, which they both felt fine about. There were people who truly needed higher math, in order to become adults who did great things of a particular type: scientists, astronauts, professors who would someday be played by a sallow-skinned British actor in a movie adaptation of their lives. Cecelia and August were not those people.
Sidney Fogelman sat one row closer to the blackboard, separated from her cronies by aptitude, and spent the entire forty-five-minute class period putting her hair into a high ponytail and taking it out again.
August slid his notebook toward the edge of his desk, and wrote: I think Sidney counts by imagining My Little Ponies jumping over a rainbow.
Cecelia laughed and wrote in her notebook: I don’t think there are even numbers on her phone, just emojis.
Their math teacher, Mr. Davidson, was twenty-two. That seemed like math worth paying attention to—they had asked on the first day. A male teacher was always cause for a low-level celebration, or at least an interested oh from a parent, but neither of Cecelia’s parents had asked about her teachers, not specifically, not by subject, not actually thinking about the fact that she was interacting with all these adults every day and they had no idea who they were. Katherine would have loved Mr. Davidson. He was tall and thin, with a mustache that clearly existed just to demonstrate that it could. He wore pants the color of New England clam chowder, and New Balance sneakers.
There was an elaborate algebraic equation on the board, lines and squiggles that Cecelia could hardly make sense of. In most ways, she was a good student, and it seemed fine that in this one way, she was merely passable. As long as she passed. She raised her hand.
“Yes, Cecelia?” Mr. Davidson said.
“I’m sorry, could you explain that again? I got lost at the x/y.”
“Does anyone want to come up to the board and take a crack? Explain as you go?” He waved the chalk around the room.
“I’ll do it,” Sidney said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail, the way a fighter might take off her earrings before a sidewalk brawl. She turned around and gave Cecelia and August a nasty look. “You guys are fucking morons.”
She sauntered up in between the desks and accepted the chalk from Mr. Davidson with more than a smidge of lasciviousness, as if he had selected her, and not the other way around. She squeaked out some figures, handed back the chalk, and then dusted off her hands while Mr. Davidson checked her work.
“Great, yes. Now, can you explain how you got there?”
Sidney rolled her eyes. “It’s easy. You just have to factor for x, and then multiply everything that’s left.”
“Yes, sort of,” Mr. Davidson said. Sidney seemed satisfied and walked back to her seat. She nestled herself back in and worked on her ponytail until the bell rang. When they all stood up, shoving their things back into their bags, Sidney spun around on her heels and stared at August.
“You think you’re pretty slick, don’t you?” She was smiling, which would have been worrisome on its own.
“Well, I’m no math genius like you . . . oh, but wait, you’re in the dumb class with us! Never mind!” August slapped his forehead. “My mistake.”
“I have a friend who goes to Sunshine Village, did you know that?” Sidney crossed her arms over her chest. “She told me some crazy shit. Robin.”
“That’s his middle name,” Cecelia said, the words coming out fast. “My middle name is Vivienne, and sometimes people call me that. Especially the French side of my family.”
August was breathing hard. Cecelia reached down and held his hand.
“Wait, so if you dress up like a girl and call yourself a girl’s name and”—here Sidney pivoted her body to face Cecelia directly—“and you hold hands with girls, does that mean, oh my god, are you gay too? Like your grandmother? Your family is so crazy, I swear.” Sidney leaned back and let out a great big whinny of a laugh. She pulled her phone out of her bag. “I cannot wait to tell everyone.”
“Wait,” Cecelia said. She let go of August’s hand.
“Cecelia, it’s okay,” August said.
“Don’t!” Cecelia said. “That’s not fair! It’s none of your business, none of it!” She wanted to scream but gritted her teeth instead. She was not going to let it happen again. She wasn’t going to tell secrets, but she also wasn’t going to lie down and let another steamroller flatten her into the ground. It wasn’t about truth, it was about protection. That’s what she was trying to do for Katherine, and that’s what she was going to do for Robin too.
Sidney rolled her eyes. “I’m in the business of entertaining myself, and this is better than an episode of Vanderpump Rules.”
Cecelia looked at August, who had turned the color of unbuttered Wonder bread. “I’m sorry,” she said to him. “I have to.”
“You have to what, try to kiss me? Do it now, I’ll do a Boomerang.” Sidney puckered up and held her phone at arm’s length. “You get in here, too, Robin, all the girls in one picture!”
“Okay, that’s it,” Cecelia said, and pulled back her right arm until her fist was touching her shoulder, and then she let it fly, straight into Sidney’s nose. There was a sharp noise, like an aluminum can being crushed. A thin stream of blood spurted out of Sidney’s nose, like a single ketchup packet, and she gasped, in pain, surprise, or both, bringing her hands to her face. Cecelia and August stood patiently while Mr. Davidson quickly made his way to the back of the class, the smile fading from his face as he realized they were fighting about more than equations.
* * *
—
The middle school principal’s office had a carpeted waiting room, and that’s where Cecel
ia had been sitting for an hour. August’s parents had come to pick him up, leaving with damp faces and a little affectionate squeeze of Cecelia’s hand after a brief private conversation in the office, and then Sidney’s father had come and taken her home after a second private conversation, and still, there Cecelia sat, alone with the principal’s receptionist, a plump woman named Rita who was much beloved around the school for having a wide selection of Entenmann’s cookies sitting on her desk, free for the taking. So far, Cecelia had had three. The principal herself had vanished with her leather briefcase some time ago.
Rita held the phone to her ear, shook her head, and set it back in its cradle.
“Still no answer, honey.”
“Did you try my aunt Porter too?”
Rita consulted her notepad, ticking off names with the sharp tip of her pencil. “I tried your grandmother, your aunt, your mother, your father, then your aunt again.” She frowned. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’m sure one of them will call us back super soon.”
“I could still make the late bus,” Cecelia said, looking at the clock.
“It’s just school policy, sweetie, after an incident, to have an adult take you home.” Rita wore one pair of glasses on her face and another on a chain around her neck.
“Maybe you could try Shear Beauty? Ask for Birdie?” Cecelia looked at her palms. There was also Elliot and Wendy, but she didn’t want to sit in between the twins’ car seats and get hit by flying objects or, worse, sit in a totally silent car with her uncle.
The door opened, and Ms. Skolnick blew in, her arms full of books and a stack of paper between her teeth. She stuck the papers in her mailbox, which was next to the door, and then saw Cecelia and did a double take.
“Hi!” Ms. Skolnick looked at Rita. “What’s going on?”
“There was an altercation in Mr. Davidson’s eighth-grade algebra class,” Rita said. “We’re just waiting for a parent to pick her up. A family member.”
It was funny, to have adults talk about her over her head, but Cecelia had gotten used to the idea of having no say in her own destiny. If she could have chosen anyone to walk through the door, she didn’t know whom it would be. Gammy, she supposed, because that was the current arrangement. That was what was supposed to happen. If it had been her mother or her father, who she wanted to see so badly, so badly that she might do something crazy like punch a mean girl in the face, then it would mean something dramatic had happened. The irony was not lost on her, that her rage about being unfairly blamed had led to her doing something that was, without question, her fault.
Ms. Skolnick tiptoed across the carpet until she was behind Rita’s desk, where she crouched down beside Rita. She cupped a hand in front of her mouth like she was testing for bad breath, and spoke too quietly for Cecelia to hear, which she assumed was the point. Rita nodded.
“Do you have house keys, Cecelia?” Rita asked.
“To my grandmother’s house? Yes.” Cecelia dug them out of her bag and waved them in the air.
Rita looked at Ms. Skolnick again, who nodded. “Well, since the principal has already gone home, and I can’t seem to get ahold of anyone, we’ll have a meeting next week, okay, dear? Ms. Skolnick has offered to drive you home. Would that be okay with you?”
“Sure,” Cecelia said, and before she knew it, Ms. Skolnick had hooked her by the elbow and was pulling her out of the office, down the hall, and out the front door.
* * *
—
The faculty parking lot was at the back of the building, next to the soccer field. It was full of well-loved Hondas and Nissans, with an occasional Ford. The sky was pink and orange, with the sun already hanging low on the horizon.
“Sorry about this,” Cecelia said.
“It’s fine! No trouble at all.” Ms. Skolnick started to jiggle some keys.
“Yeah, but it’s just really weird that she couldn’t get in touch with literally anyone. It’s not your job, I know. I have an enormous family. Sort of. I mean, there are a lot of people in it.” Cecelia chewed on a fingernail. How enormous could a family be if not one member could come pick her up? She had some cousins in France—maybe she could get on a plane. She spoke enough to get by.
“I am happy to do it, really.” Ms. Skolnick put her hands on her belly as they walked—she was clearly pregnant. Cecelia had noticed before, but she’d been well trained to ignore such things unless she was on a crowded subway train. “Whew, sometimes she kicks me so hard that it feels like she’s trying to audition for American Ninja Warrior, and the obstacle course is just getting out of my body.”
“Congratulations,” Cecelia said. Talking to a teacher outside of school—even just in the faculty parking lot—felt like acknowledging something that everyone spent their lives pretending wasn’t true, which is that teachers were people with whole lives, not just puppets who slept in their supply closets, eating only apples and dreaming of lesson plans.
“You just socked Sidney Fogelman in the nose, is that right?” Ms. Skolnick stopped. They were standing next to a small blue car. Ms. Skolnick unlocked the driver’s side, climbed in, and then pulled up the lock on the passenger side. Cecelia looked at her blankly. “This is how cars used to work, in the olden days. Get on in.”
A few other teachers were in the lot now, and Cecelia could see cigarettes and vapes in their hands, ready for the second they were off school property, or maybe in the safety of their vehicles. Mr. Davidson had put on a denim jacket, which made Cecelia feel sad, for reasons she couldn’t quite identify. She walked around the back bumper and pulled the door open. Ms. Skolnick was already blasting the air-conditioning, pitched forward as far as her belly would allow.
“She really deserved it,” Cecelia said. “I can’t say why, but just believe me. She’s pretty much the devil. Like, if there are nice people, and then there are medium-nice people, and then there are people who would trip you at the top of the stairs, I think that last one is Sidney.”
“Unofficially, I don’t doubt that. Officially, I am equally supportive of all my students.” Ms. Skolnick moved her face from side to side. Her cheeks were magenta. “I’m friends with your aunt Porter, did I tell you that already? How is she doing?”
Cecelia fingered the zipper on her backpack. Gammy hadn’t yet followed through on her offer to teach her how to drive, and Cecelia wasn’t sure she wanted to learn, anyway. It seemed like too much responsibility for one person, being in command of so many thousands of pounds of steel. Horsepower, they called it, as if a horse could do to a human body the same thing that a car could.
“I think she’s okay,” Cecelia said, knowing the minute that she said it that she had no idea how her aunt was, not really, not in this topsy-turvy world where grown-ups were allowed to act like teenagers. “You know, pregnant.”
Ms. Skolnick shifted the car into reverse and they sped backward onto the street.
Cecelia had never punched anyone before. Not in boxing gloves, not in jest, not ever. Her knuckles hurt. Sidney had been so surprised that she’d dropped her phone, and it had clattered to the linoleum floor, the glittery pink rubber case winking up at them. August had slid behind Cecelia’s back, and someone toward the front of the room had cheered. Whether they were cheering the fact that Cecelia had punched Sidney or just the fact that there had been a punch at all—talk about spicing up math class!—she wasn’t sure. She definitely would have been kicked out of school in Brooklyn for this—it happened from time to time, fights, and that was it. Zero tolerance. When that wasn’t mentioned immediately, Cecelia felt like she’d crossed into the twilight zone. It was a genuine math problem—whatever she hadn’t been guilty of before, was she guilty of it now? If her biggest sin had been the threat of exposure, and she had just thwarted exposure with violence, was that in the plus column? She didn’t know.
What made her feel the most weird was that Cecelia felt, not for the first time in her
life, that she had been not only neglected in the way that bohemian parents sometimes did, letting their children fall asleep in their clothes at a restaurant dinner party, small body lain across a pile of coats, but also in the less glamorous way, where her parents just couldn’t focus on her, couldn’t focus on her, couldn’t focus on her, and so forgot about her instead. Where the fuck were her parents? They texted and sometimes called, but what the fuck? August’s parents waved at him—at her—when he—when she—got on the bus every morning, and made her dinner at night. Even jerky Sidney’s dad had hurried over to school, as if he’d been sitting in his car, key in the ignition, just waiting to be called into action. But her parents—separately!—hadn’t even picked up the phone. Cecelia imagined herself as a ten-foot-tall dragon, red-scaled and fire-breathing. She imagined herself as Godzilla, stepping on the Big House and crushing it with one giant webbed foot. She imagined walking through the Hudson River until she got back to Brooklyn and then crushing it too. The whole thing. Parents were supposed to be there. That was their whole job. Good, bad, whatever—the very lowest job requirement was to be there.
When they rounded the final turn into the Big House’s driveway, Ms. Skolnick screeched to a stop. Astrid’s car was barreling out backward and stopped just a few feet in front of Ms. Skolnick’s windshield. Cecelia took a deep breath. “Go on,” Ms. Skolnick said. “They aren’t going to hurt you,” as if she knew such a thing, as if that was a promise anyone could make, but Cecelia opened the door anyway and stepped out, her sneakers crunching the gravel. Astrid swung open the driver’s-side door to her car, and Porter swung open the passenger side, and they both sprang out, hands reaching for Cecelia. She watched them move toward her cautiously, hunters tracking a new species: Girl in Trouble—place of origin: Methodist Hospital, Brooklyn, New York. She didn’t smile. She wanted to make this second last as long as possible, when all the adults in her life were waiting on her next word.