Love Me, Love My Broccoli

by Julie Anne Peters

  Brett's face brightened, but only a glimmer before dimming again. "I was really looking forward to our first all-nighter."

  Our first what? Chloe's stomach somersaulted. Hooboy, she thought. Maybe I can persuade Dad to order me home before dark.

  The party was a mob scene. "Jensen respects more people than I even know," Chloe thought out loud. She squeezed Brett's hand for reassurance. "You look scary," she yelled to him over the din.

  "Rrrrrroar," he growled back. They'd decided to dress as endangered species. Even though she was secretly dying to go as Rhett and Scarlett, she couldn't get up the nerve to suggest it. Brett was a Rwandan mountain gorilla and she was a Pacific green turtle—at least that's what they were supposed to be. The closest thing they could find at Clothes Encounters, the costume rental store, was King Kong and a Ninja turtle. Chloe absolutely refused to wear the Donatello rubber mask, though. Instead, she topped off the turtle shell with her green pillbox.

  She'd scoffed at Muriel's suggestion to go as an animal rights activist. Muriel was just mad because Chloe had asked her if she'd mind manning the ARC table two days a week, so Chloe could eat lunch with Brett. Twice a week. Was it so much to ask?

  Turk appeared out of a wrinkle in the crowd with his new girlfriend, Bayleigh. They were dressed as two peas in a pod. "Hey, what are you guys supposed to be?" Turk said. "The tortoise and the hairy?" He cracked himself up. Bayleigh giggled.

  "Make like a pea and split," Chloe muttered.

  Turk curled a lip at her.

  "Where's the food, pea brain?" Brett asked through his breathing hole between the fangs. Turk pointed. He and Turk exchanged insults for a while, which gave Chloe a chance to survey the party crowd. There were some pretty wild costumes, upside-down men and belly dancers, Draculas and Lady Gaga lookalikes. Over in the corner a few couples were making out.

  Brett removed his gorilla head, leaned down, and kissed Chloe. "You want to—"

  "No," she said.

  He gave her a funny look. "Vegans don't dance?"

  "Dance? Oh, uh, sure. I love to dance."

  He wrapped a hairy paw around her shoulders and steered her out onto the patio dance floor. Thirty minutes later, after rocking out inside a sweltering rubber turtle shell, crushed by a thousand other hot bodies, Chloe felt faint. "Could we get something to drink?" She fanned her face.

  They found the ice chest in the kitchen and dug out a couple of Sprites. Turk and Bayleigh joined them. For a joke Turk shook Bayleigh's can before handing it to her, and when she popped the top it exploded in foam. She lurched backward, right into Chloe, who fell against a couple of high school guys.

  "Hey, watch it," one of them snarled, but not before his drink sloshed all over Chloe's costume.

  "Oh, great," she mumbled. Now she wouldn't get her deposit back. She sniffed the shell and snarled back at the guy, "You know it's illegal to drink at your age."

  He sneered. "You gonna call the cops?"

  Brett yanked her away. "Sorry," he called over her shoulder. "No problem."

  "Why are you apologizing to them?" Chloe said. She reeked of beer. "If the cops show up we're all going to get arrested."

  "That's Jensen," Brett whispered.

  "Yeah, so? Do his parents know he's drinking?"

  Brett just looked at her. "He called and got permission, okay? Come on, Chloe, lighten up. We're here to have fun. Nobody's drinking." He held her eyes.

  She broke the stare down and glanced around. She wondered now what all the plastic cups were full of. Maybe she didn't want to know.

  Chloe had to admit, she was having fun. Brett knew everyone and when they talked to him, they included her. Every once in a while, Brett would lean down and kiss her. She felt good, special. Like being Brett's girlfriend was an honor.

  They danced and ate and drank. As the night air cooled, the party moved inside. Just as everyone was heading for the basement, Chloe heard someone's wristwatch alarm beep and beep and beep.

  "Brett," she said, "What time is it?"

  He checked his watch. "Uh-oh." He showed her.

  Chloe freaked.

  It took forever to find Kenny and drag him away, so by the time Chloe got home it was after midnight. When she opened the door to tiptoe in, the foyer flooded with light. There, looming in silhouette at the end of the hall, was her father.

  CHAPTER 12

  Chloe's father perched stiffly across from her at the dining room table, hands folded in front of him. "I want you to break it off," he said.

  "Can't we talk about this in the morning, Dad? I mean, later in the morning. Like, the afternoon? Say, tomorrow or next week?" Chloe yawned.

  His eyes bore into the wall behind her head. "I don't think you understand the seriousness of this situation. Number one, you've been drinking."

  "I have not!"

  "You smell like beer."

  "Oh, that. Someone spilled a drink on me. But we weren't drinking."

  "Who was? The person who drove you home?"

  "No." I don't think so, Chloe added to herself. Had Kenny been drinking? She never thought to ask, just jumped into the car to rush home.

  "Number two," her father went on. "You violated your curfew."

  "I didn't mean to. We lost track of time."

  "Number three, you are not the same person you were before you met this boy. I want that other Chloe back, the one I could trust."

  She focused on her father's face. His very intense face. "You can trust me. You can trust Brett, too. Come on, Dad. I said I was sorry."

  "Sorry doesn't cut it."

  Chloe expelled a long breath. "What do you want me to do? Tell Brett to take a hike?"

  "The farther the better."

  Chloe's jaw dropped. "You're serious."

  "Damn right."

  "Dad!" she gasped. She'd never heard him swear in all her life. "You can't mean it." She swallowed the sickness rising in her throat. "No." She shook her head. She rose slowly from her chair. "I can't. I won't. I love him."

  A heavy stillness descended on the room. Chloe felt the weight on her shoulders. "You can't keep us apart," she said. "What are you going to do, confine me to my room? Hire a bodyguard?"

  He looked up and locked eyes with her. "No. I'm simply going to ask you to obey me. Stop seeing him."

  Hot tears welled in her eyes. "Don't do this, Dad. Please."

  He turned and looked away.

  The tears flooded their banks. Whirling, Chloe fled from the room. She raced up the stairs, slammed her door, and fell on her bed, sobbing. Deaf burrowed in under her shoulder, purring. She pushed him away.

  A locomotive roared through Chloe's head. She jerked awake. The clock on her nightstand read six-fifteen, and she prayed, "Oh, please, God. Make last night be a bad dream."

  A whistle shrieked and Chloe groaned, pulling the panda over her head. The noise continued, the chugging of an engine, followed by the whoo-whoo of a whistle.

  She staggered to her feet and slipped into her robe. Sometime during the night, or early morning, she must've gotten up to take off her costume. It lay on the floor by her closet, a smelly lump of rubber.

  At the bottom of the stairs Chloe saw the basement door open a crack, so she shuffled toward it. She had a pounding headache. All the way down the rickety wooden steps she clung to the railing for dear life. On the last step, she pulled her bathrobe cord tight around her waist, folded her arms, and rested her throbbing head against the cement wall. "You've resurrected the Orient Express," she said to him.

  Her father didn't look up. Instead, he pulled a lever at the far end of the tracks that switched the oncoming train to an alternate route, through a tunnel marked "To Europe." Whooooooo-whooooooo. He leaned on the whistle.

  Chloe winced. "Can we talk?"

  Without so much as a glance in her direction, he said, "Go ahead."

  "About last night." She watched the train take a wide arc at Brussels, then pick up speed as it headed toward Amsterdam. "I apologize," she said. "I pr
omise I'll never come home late again."

  He pressed a button that sent a cough of smoke up the engine's smokestack. Whoooooo-whoooooo.

  "Quit that. It hurts." Chloe pressed her palms to her temples. She swallowed hard. "About Brett . . ." The express came zooming toward her. Whoooooooooo-whoooooooooo. "Dad, will you shut that damn thing off?"

  He glanced up at her then. Shifting his attention back to the speeding bullet, he said, "There's nothing to talk about."

  The train chugged by Chloe, across Finland, speeding toward Russia. Right in front of her it derailed. Her father grumbled, "Would you put the Pullman back on track?"

  She shot him an icy glare. Without a word, she stomped up the stairs. At the top, Gran leaped out from the kitchen, wielding a celery stalk. "Traitor," she snarled at Chloe. "Defector," she accused.

  Chloe brushed by her. "Leave me alone."

  She stood in the shower until it ran cold. Then shivering, she dried herself, took two aspirin, and went back to bed. But she couldn't sleep. She couldn't win the war that raged in her head.

  How could she stop seeing Brett? What she'd told her father was true. She loved him. She couldn't bear the thought of not seeing him anymore. But she loved her father, too, and she'd never defy him.

  The phone rang downstairs. When no one picked it up, it stopped. A minute later it rang again, and again. Fifteen minutes later the doorbell dinged, and dinged, and dinged. Chloe hollered, "Can't a person even rot in peace around here?" She flung back the covers and threw on her robe. When she heaved open the front door, Muriel blew in out of a blizzard.

  "Where have you been?" she asked, stamping off the sticky clumps of snow from her boots. "I have fantastic news. Also, Nicole Medina's been trying to get hold of you to find out if you're planning to go to the shelter today. She says you were scheduled to work this morning. Whew," Muriel unzipped her coat, "it's really coming down out there."

  "What time is it?" Chloe mumbled. She took Muriel's wet coat and tossed it into the hall closet. "When did it start to snow?" Maybe she had fallen asleep, or into a coma. "What month is this?"

  Before Muriel could speak, Chloe's father appeared from out of the basement. When their eyes met down the long hallway, Chloe glared daggers at him. She turned her back and tromped up the stairs ahead of Muriel.

  Muriel said behind her, "It's one o'clock. November first. Aren't you even up yet? Wait till you hear the incredible news."

  "I'm sick," Chloe said, crawling back into bed.

  "Oh. I'm sorry." Muriel plopped down on the bed beside her. "How thoughtless of me to just barge in here. Did you catch that flu virus that's going around? My brother got it. He's barfing all over everything. Do you have a fever?" She felt Chloe's forehead.

  "If I don't, I'm going to work one up," Chloe muttered. "Do me a favor, Mur. Call Nicole and tell her I can't make it today."

  "Sure. But that wasn't the only reason she was trying to get hold of you. She wanted to tell you herself, but you know me." Muriel shrugged. "For some reason, I cannot keep a secret. Maybe I have concealaphobia." She giggled at her joke.

  "Get on with it, Mur," Chloe said. "I have a date with death."

  Muriel bounced on the edge of the bed, jerking Chloe's neck around like a tetherball. Her headache roared back. Chloe snuggled up against Deaf and squeezed her eyes shut to concentrate on Muriel's words.

  ". . . a bill being introduced to the legislature that would require all animal research in the state to be justified scientifically. Not only that, there'd be a ban on the sale cosmetics that aren't cruelty-free. This is so incredible, Chloe. If we can get it passed, it'll be the first step in totally eliminating all testing on animals. It'd be a model for the whole nation."

  Chloe shared Muriel's enthusiasm, even though all she could work up was a weak, "Wow."

  "There's more. Listen," Muriel went on. "The ASPCA is going to be here, the National Anti-Vivisection Society and, get this, PETA! It's finally happening, Chloe. What we've always dreamed of. The end of animal slaughter."

  Chloe smiled, then squinched at the ensuing pain. "It is exciting, Mur. Really exciting. But can we talk about it tomorrow? I need to sleep—"

  "You haven't even heard the exciting part!"

  Chloe stifled a groan as Muriel bounced again.

  "At the committee hearing the Humane Society wants to include the voice of youth, so to speak. Nicole recommended you. The vote was unanimous. They want Chloe Mankewicz to be their keynote speaker."

  It took Chloe's numb ears a minute to absorb what Muriel had said. She opened and widened her eyes. "Me?"

  Nodding, Muriel bit her lip. "Isn't it thrilling? To be a pioneer, a leader in the movement? Oh, Chloe. Haven't you just prayed for this day? We've worked so long and hard, you especially. Your convictions have always carried me, you know that. And now you have a chance to influence thousands, maybe millions." She squeezed Chloe's hand through the covers. "I'm so proud to be your friend."

  Chloe gulped as she watched Muriel's eyes fill with tears. Could she do this? Be the voice of youth? At a state legislative hearing? Well, of course she could do it. She'd given dozens of speeches before. With all her heart she believed in the movement. So why did she feel hesitant? Reluctant? The fact that this law, if passed, would destroy her mother's career couldn't possibly have anything to do with it. Could it?

  Chloe flipped open her mental journal to start a new list: People who already hate me or who are going to hate me, she scribbled in think ink, depending on the decisions I am about to make:

  1. My father

  2. My mother

  3. My best friend

  4. My boyfriend . . .

  She paused. Deaf purred and rubbed against her cheek. No, you don't make the list, sweetie, she sent him a mental message. No matter what I did you'd always love me. That's the thing about animals. They don't have the capacity to hate. There is someone else though.

  She refilled her mind's ink well. Then she added the last entry:

  5. Myself

  CHAPTER 13

  It was a devastating decision, but what choice did she have? If her father threw her out, where would she go? To live with her mother? It wasn't even an option.

  "I can't see you anymore," she told Brett on the phone. She'd never called a boy before. She even got him out of bed.

  "Because of last night?"

  Chloe blinked back tears.

  Brett said, "We didn't even do anything. Did you tell him that?"

  "He doesn't care. He forbids me to see you."

  Brett snarled, "Parents. I hate them. Chloe—"

  "I'm sorry, Brett. Goodbye." She slammed down the phone and raced upstairs, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  The breakup left a gaping hole in Chloe's heart. A place once filled with unconditional love for her father. She couldn't bear to be in the same room with him; refused to speak to him; didn't acknowledge his existence. It hurt him, she knew it, but she wanted her father to feel her pain. Deep and hard.

  It wasn't so easy to avoid Brett. He kept hanging around. He was always there—by her locker, in the halls, the cafeteria. He invaded her space, her thoughts. He wouldn't let her go.

  "We could see each other in secret," he said.

  She thought seriously about it. And decided she couldn't live that way, sneaking around behind her father's back. "No," she told Brett. "I'm sorry. I can't."

  It was the roses that finally sent Chloe over the edge. They were delivered to her house Friday after school. The card read, "Pigs Have Hearts, Too. Come back, C. I love you. B."

  After that she couldn't even motivate herself to get out of bed in the morning. For a week she just lay there, feigning flu, and staring at the roses as they shriveled. She shriveled with them. Chloe the comatose. She liked the sound of that. Chloe the vegetable. She liked that even better. She buried her face in Deaf Leopard and slept.

  Muriel stopped by every day after school, and as much as Chloe wanted to, needed to, talk to someone, she kne
w Muriel wasn't the one. Her best friend would side with her father.

  Instead, they worked on the speech for the legislative committee hearing. Or rather, Muriel worked on the speech while Chloe stared blindly out the bay window, unconsciously stroking Deaf Leopard and herself into a stupor.

  "Listen to this study, Chloe. You might want to include it. Researchers at the University of Oregon amputated the forelimbs of white mice to determine its effect on grooming behavior. Conclusion: The animals still tried to groom themselves with their limb stubs. Isn't that gruesome?"

  Chloe sighed.

  On Saturday she dragged herself out of bed and down to the Aspen Grove animal shelter. She hoped that a little unselfish giving might boost her sagging spirits. It didn't. Late in the afternoon a sweet beagle puppy was brought in. It'd been thrown from a truck bed into highway traffic and was so severely injured it had to be put down. The puppy's cries of agony echoed in Chloe's ears all the way home.

  Chloe found her father in the dining room nursing a cup of tea. "Hi," he called, looking up expectantly. "Where've you been? I called the shelter—"

  Chloe turned away. By now the ice floe between them had frozen over solid. "Chloe, I should warn you—"

  She tuned him out. She didn't figure her life could get any worse. It wasn't until she dragged into her bedroom and closed the door behind her that she discovered it could.

  "What are you doing in my stuff?" Chloe threw her bag on the bed and stormed across the room. She grabbed her Rhett Butler doll out of her mother's grasp.

  "I was admiring your collection. You never told me you were into Gone With the Wind."

  "I'm not into anything," Chloe snapped.

  They had a brief stare down before Chloe whirled and resettled her RB doll on the shelf next to Scarlett.