Being Mary Bennet Blows

by Mary Strand

  I rolled the dial on my locker combination, hardly aware of the numbers spinning around the dial.

  “Mary? MB?” Josh’s voice was right at my ear, and I jumped. “Sorry! I was, uh, wondering if you were having trouble with your locker.”

  I glanced to my left and looked into his eyes, the way I hadn’t dared do in Physics class. Also unlike in Physics class, his eyes were firmly focused on mine, not on some other part of my anatomy.

  “Um . . .”

  God. I couldn’t speak in front of the guy. Except in Physics class, of course, and I wished that hadn’t been the exception to the rule.

  “You okay?”

  For an idiot? “I guess. I mean—”

  He held up a hand. “I know. You’d rather not talk to me, obviously. It’s just that you seem a little— I don’t know. Different today.”

  I felt myself getting angry, which loosened my tongue just like it had in Physics class. “So I’m different. I bought some new clothes, okay? Why does everyone have to make such a big deal about it?”

  All I wanted to do was get out of there. Before Josh said anything else. Or before I did.

  I concentrated on my locker com and finally yanked the damn thing open. Too late, just as it all tumbled out on the floor, I remembered what I’d stuffed in my locker. Books, papers, the remains of my lunch—since I hadn’t been able to stomach it but figured I might get hungry by the end of school—and oh, God. The overalls.

  As my face flushed a bright shade of crimson, my skin feeling like I was being boiled alive, I tried to stuff everything back inside and slam the locker shut before Josh could take a peek and, worse, comment. Especially on the overalls.

  Too late.

  The door slammed against a pile of books wedged at the bottom, and Josh bent down to pick up . . . my overalls.

  “You really don’t have to—”

  “Happy to.” He held the overalls out to me as if they were biohazardous. “Hey, what’s up with this? Didn’t you want your parents to see you in your new clothes?”

  I rolled my eyes. First thing in the morning, Mom was out the door and Dad was too busy contorting himself into lotus position number forty-two in the middle of the living room to notice a nuclear bomb detonating, let alone what one of his daughters was wearing to school.

  “It’s not like that.”

  I couldn’t possibly explain to Josh that I brought the overalls in case things didn’t work out today. Kinda like a security blanket. Not that they’d helped, since I’d decided at some point during the morning to just suck it up and take the abuse being heaped on me.

  “You sure?” Josh still stood there, my overalls in his hands, since I’d frozen in place, utterly unable to reach toward him to retrieve the overalls, let alone admit that the overalls belonged to me. Even though obviously they did. I mean, not only were they in my locker, but no one else at Woodbury High—and this included the kids whose parents farmed—wore overalls. Overalls were my fashion statement. Such as it was.

  “Yeah.” I sighed, finally grabbing the overalls from Josh’s hands and tossing them back on the floor. “I’m sure.”

  “I’d understand if you did. Like with your ponytail.”

  I narrowed my gaze at him, even though my stomach went queasy. “What’s the matter with ponytails?”

  “Nothing! It’s just that my sister used to wear her hair in a ponytail every day, no exception. Finally it started to screw up her hair, I guess, so Mom told her to leave it down. Like, under pain of death. So she left the house every morning, and when she got a block away from home, she put her hair in the ponytail. And pulled it back out in the afternoon right before she got home.”

  His sister sounded even more twisted than me, but I wasn’t sure that was Josh’s point. “How long did she do that?”

  He shrugged. “Ninth grade. The whole year.”

  Definitely wacked. In a ninth-grade sort of way. And I should know.

  “Well, I didn’t do that.” I admit my mom would be thrilled if I did anything with my hair other than cramming it into a rubber band seven days a week, but she never said anything. Okay, maybe she sighed once in a while, but I was used to it. I had Mr. Skamser for class, after all.

  Josh kept glancing at my ponytail, probably thinking I was just like his sister, only she limited her wacked behavior to ponytails and ninth grade. I went all the way: overalls and hiking boots, too.

  Not that I went all the way. I didn’t mean that at all!

  He frowned. “What’s the matter?”

  If I stayed here much longer, I’d blurt out something even more stupid, which was hard to imagine but definitely possible. Knowing me.

  “Nothing. I just like to wear my hair in a ponytail.” Or, at least, I’d never figured out what else to do with it, and I hadn’t ever wanted a hairstyle anyone might possibly call cute. “My mom doesn’t care about my hair, and she doesn’t care about the overalls, and in case you’re wondering, she’s never mentioned the hiking boots, either.”

  Josh stared down at my hiking boots. Great.

  “Aren’t those a little warm?”

  At the end of September? When it was seventy-five degrees outside and, standing here by my locker babbling nonsense to Josh Lawton, felt twenty degrees hotter?

  “No, they’re just comfortable. I guess.”

  Actually, they were probably the opposite of comfortable. Liz wore boots like this, but only if she really was hiking, and I didn’t even hike. Jane wouldn’t be caught dead in them, and Cat and Lydia probably didn’t even know they existed unless they ever looked at my feet.

  Which, considering their high levels of self-absorption, seemed unlikely.

  Why did I wear these stupid hiking boots? Because I associated sneakers and running shoes with Gym class, which I loathed? Because I wouldn’t wear any kind of heels if you paid me?

  Okay. Because they went with overalls. Which I wasn’t wearing at the moment.

  Argh.

  “So.” Josh glanced again at my ponytail, and at my overalls lying in the heap on the floor, and at my hiking boots. And tried really hard, I thought, not to stare at the rest of the outfit I’d worn today. “I guess I better get going. Kyle and I need to work on the roller coaster project.”

  The one I’d supposedly finished.

  I nodded, hoping he wouldn’t ask about it. “Are you going to the Mall of America to ride more roller coasters and call it research?”

  My jaw dropped as I realized with horror the subject I’d just brought up, but it was Josh who turned pink.

  “Uh, no.” He gave me kind of a lopsided grin and shrugged as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I think I’ve had enough roller coasters for a while.”

  “Look, I’m sorry.”

  He held up a hand. “No need. You tried to warn me, I guess, and you gave me all that money back. Not that I wanted it. I was happy to pay.”

  I stared at the floor, watching the toe of one of my hiking boots scuff the other. “I really am sorry. It’s just that I don’t do well with roller coasters.”

  “Believe me, I know.” Josh whistled. “My mom wondered why I broke down and did my own laundry that day for a change. I figured if she saw all that puke, she’d think I’d been out partying.”

  Puzzled, I looked at him. “On a Saturday afternoon?”

  “You really don’t get out much.”

  So he’d figured me out. Finally. I turned back to my locker, stuffed what I needed into my backpack—including the overalls—and the rest inside, and shut it firmly. I glanced at Josh but didn’t meet his eyes. “Anyway. I gotta go.”

  “Hey, I was kidding. I don’t party on Saturday afternoons, either.” He shrugged. “I don’t even party too much at night. It’s not good for my training schedule.”

  Skateboarders had training schedules? “But you party.”

  I wasn’t even sure what he meant by partying. Drinking? Drugs? Making out? I had a pretty good idea they wouldn’t be playing pin the tail on the
donkey. I just didn’t know what they would be doing. Like, at all. That had to be the definition of not being a party girl.

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “Like I said. I gotta go.”

  Before Josh invited me to party with him sometime.

  Or before he didn’t.

  Chapter 9

  “What say you, Mary? for you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and read great books, and make extracts.”

  — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume I, Chapter Two

  As of Monday night, I had two sisters firmly following The Book—not including Lydia, who seemed to have a talent even for messing up Jane Austen’s plans. When Dad quizzed Liz about Alex Darcy, she finally admitted she was dating him.

  Alex Darcy. And Jane was dating Charlie Bingham. Sure, it’s Bingham, not Bingley, but that comes within spitting distance of Jane Austen’s prophecy. At this point, you’d think Jane and Liz would be registering for china, but from the rumblings around the house last night, it sounded like they were just going to look for an apartment. For the two of them, not the four of them.

  It wasn’t as bad as picturing Lydia living with Justin and pole dancing in a strip bar, but the thought of Jane and Liz doing the wild thing with those guys left me unsettled.

  It also made me think even more about The Book. Jane Austen hadn’t said that Mary Bennet ended up a spinster who died of old age or, for that matter, was eaten alive by a pack of wild dogs. As Liz put it, even if we were following The Book, Jane Austen had given me a blank slate for my life. Jane was with Charlie, and Liz with Alex, but I was a free agent.

  Luckily, Mom paid no attention to free agents. At least, not this morning. She was still haranguing Liz about Alex and Jane about Charlie when I slipped out of the house for school.

  In my overalls.

  So sue me. I just couldn’t handle the thought of wearing another new outfit today. Eventually the other kids would get tired of cutting on me, right? But not this quickly. I finally appreciated the benefits of being ignored. No one ever talked to me before, but they left me alone. Lately, they talked about me, and sometimes to my face, but never as friends. More like bloodthirsty jerks.

  Then there was Josh, who slouched next to my locker before first-period English class. I tried to ignore him as I spun the combination on my locker.

  “Mary?” He slapped the side of his head. “I mean MB. Sorry. For some reason I just can’t get used to it.”

  Welcome to the club.

  I kept spinning the dial and finally wrenched my locker open. “Hey. Time for English class, right?”

  Josh didn’t say anything, so I finally glanced at him. He was staring at my overalls. I had my hair in a ponytail and my feet in hiking boots, but that almost seemed redundant.

  I rolled my eyes. “Was there something you wanted? Did you have a question or something?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “I mean, a question other than what happened to the clothes I was wearing yesterday?”

  “They’re dirty?” He grinned as I sputtered. “To be honest, I was trying to decide which I liked better: the overalls or the new clothes.”

  “Right.”

  “No, really.” He waved at a cute girl who walked by, who definitely wasn’t wearing overalls. “You must like overalls. You act more comfortable in them.”

  I tossed my backpack and half my books into my locker, held onto the rest, and slammed the locker. I took off down the hall, even though the warning bell hadn’t rung yet. Unfortunately, Josh stayed beside me.

  Glancing at him, I noticed his baggy black jeans and green plaid shirt. Typical skater look. He’s cute, I admit, but no one cares what he wears, do they? “People are used to me in overalls. They don’t ever say anything.”

  “And . . . that’s good?”

  I screeched to a halt. “Of course it’s good.”

  The warning bell rang, and we both started walking again as a crush of kids shoved past us. Josh glanced at me sideways, as if I was an exhibit in a museum. “I would think you’d be pretty sick of it.”

  “I was. Totally sick of it. That’s why I’m wearing overalls again today.”

  Geez. I thought Josh was smarter than this, but he didn’t seem to grasp the most basic concept. Probably because he liked talking to people like Kyle and Chrissie and the other morons who populated our school.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  I frowned at him. “What don’t you get? When I do anything different—anything at all—everyone makes fun of me. They’ve been making fun of me all year so far, and it’s been the longest month of my life.”

  “Because you’re doing things differently?”

  “Because you’re talking to me, for starters. Because my sister is in reform school. Because I don’t have a partner for Physics. Because yesterday I wore something different. Just once.”

  “You can’t help the part about your sister being in reform school.”

  We walked into our classroom, and I dropped my voice. “I can’t help the rest of it, either.”

  “You wore some new clothes. That was your decision.”

  I reached my desk as Mr. Skamser followed the last kid inside the room and shut the door. “Actually, that was more my sister Jane’s fault. She’s trying to do me a so-called favor. As if.”

  “And I asked you to be my Physics partner.”

  I swiveled halfway around in my seat and gaped at him. “Aren’t you forgetting? You dumped me as your Physics partner.”

  “Not exactly.”

  He actually said that with a straight face.

  “What part of ‘Kyle is my partner’ am I not getting?”

  “Mary? Josh? Is this something you want to share with the class?” Mr. Skamser sat on the front edge of his desk, twisted up in his usual pretzel imitation, but today his beady eyes were skewering Josh and me.

  A few kids laughed, and the guy next to Josh nudged him and winked. I just raised my eyebrows at Josh. He proved my point, didn’t he? Now that he talked to me, I kept getting nailed in class. The whole thing was out of my control.

  I turned and made a show of opening my English book to the right page—I hoped—and grabbing a notebook and pen.

  A note, folded into a triangle like one of those tiny “footballs” the guys used to punt across the cafeteria tables in grade school, flew over my shoulder and skittered onto my notebook. Startled, I slapped a hand over it, drawing another look from Mr. Skamser.

  I gave him the most benign smile I could.

  Unfortunately, I don’t do “benign” too well, and he headed toward my desk just as my clammy hand tried to slide the note across my notebook. I made it to the spiral binding just as Mr. Skamser stopped in front of my desk.

  “Is there a problem, Mary?”

  “Uh, no. I thought it was a mosquito, so I was trying to hit it.” With my free hand, I slapped the side of my neck. And winced.

  Mr. Skamser stared at my other hand. The one that looked guilty, clammy, and clumsy. I bit my lip when Mr. Skamser reached for my hand. Just then, I heard a loud slam behind me as Josh’s textbook dropped on the floor. Mr. Skamser’s head jerked up at the noise, but he started to turn back to me just as someone else’s textbook hit the floor on the far side of the room. The girl who’d been hanging with Josh by my locker, and in class, a couple weeks ago. Who was now wearing overalls.

  I swear Mr. Skamser’s back cracked from all the twisting and turning he was doing, which proved that his pretzel position wasn’t exactly good for him. My dad—or Deepak Chopra—could’ve told him that.

  As I was thinking this, though, I whipped the football/note under my desk and crammed it in the side pocket of my overalls, then returned both my guilty hands to the top of my desk a moment before Mr. Skamser whirled one more time. On me.

  “What do you have in your hand, Mary?”

  I shrugged as I turned my open palms toward the ceiling. “A pen? If that’s okay?”

  The whole clas
s laughed—but this time with me. Not at me. For the first time in my entire life!

  Mr. Skamser glanced again at Josh, then slowly ran his gaze around the room, sighing as he walked back to his desk.

  I’d escaped capture and likely torture, not to mention humiliation, since Mr. Skamser would’ve undoubtedly read the note from Josh out loud. I’d made a tiny joke at Mr. Skamser, and the class had laughed with me. And I had a note from Josh burning a hole in my pocket.

  I should wear overalls more often!

  Still buzzing at lunchtime—despite the usual disasters that befell me in second-period Gym class, where we played soccer and Ms. Gonzalez made me the goalie and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty—I practically skipped into the cafeteria.

  Okay, I didn’t skip. Hiking boots pretty much prevent a girl from skipping, even if she were still in the habit of skipping by the point she reaches her senior year of high school, and I wasn’t. But I felt good. I had the note in my pocket, and I couldn’t wait to read it. Lucky thing no one ever sat with me at lunch.

  I blinked when the girl from English class, who was wearing overalls probably for the first time since age three, plopped down across from me. When Josh took the chair next to her, I frowned. Cozy. Even though they helped me avoid Mr. Skamser’s wrath today, I wanted to gag.

  The girl smiled at me. “Hi. I’m Penelope.”

  “I’m Mary.” Glancing at Josh, I flushed. “I mean, MB.”

  Josh looked back and forth between the two of us, comparing us. Ew. Unless he’d just never seen two girls in overalls within a hundred yards of each other.

  I studied Penelope, too. She wore glasses almost identical to mine, although hers looked so clear I wondered if she needed them. She didn’t have her hair in a ponytail, but it was too short and curly to be subdued by a mere rubber band. Her hair wasn’t the only thing that needed subduing. I couldn’t believe someone as short and voluptuous as Penelope would want to wear overalls. Her boobs practically burst out the sides. Or was that her goal?

  I almost looked under the table to see if she was wearing hiking boots, but I held myself back. Besides, she wasn’t my clone. She was the wildly curvy version of me, wearing the same clothes but giving a totally different impression. Independent, maybe, but smoldering.