Split Just Right

by Adele Griffin

  “Oh, with Brittany. That nasty dog-breath girl …” Her voice trails off. I wait for her to say something about Kahani’s, but instead she tucks herself up on her knees and twists some of her hair around her fingers, peeling away split ends. “She calls me Susan, you know. Seven years old. And her mom just lets her—it’s inexcusable, if you ask me.”

  Susan is one of those names that sounds prettier on a good-looking person and plainer on a homely person. Mom’s in the first category. She’s got a white apple slice of smile and pounds of soft brown hair that she hennas to a sundried tomato color, and her body is the soft curvy kind that wiggles even when she’s standing still.

  We have the same brown eyes and hair (although mine’s the original color) and so of course people always say we look alike. I’m definitely not as pretty; it looks as though Mom’s tiny, perfect features got overcooked and blurred when they were stuck on me. And I’m unwiggly but I’m tall—five foot ten to Mom’s five foot two-and-three-quarters (although she gives herself an extra couple of inches on her driver’s license). I appreciate my height, especially when Mom’s having a fit about something and I can lift just my eyebrows, cross my arms, and nod down at her, like a sunflower leaning over a ladybug. Now I stretch long and stand, resting my hands on my hips.

  “So,” I say, giving it another shot. “Anything else interesting happen at rehearsal, or any other time, or anything?”

  “Not really.” Mom frowns. “I’m beat, though. I’m glad tomorrow’s Tuesday and I don’t have to go to Bradshaw.”

  “Hey, that reminds me,” I say eyeing her. “I need a new monthly train pass. Got any money? Because if not—”

  “In my pocketbook.” She nods absently She stands up and starts to clear away the plate and tea mugs. “Oh, and I wanted to …” She clicks her tongue, like she’s forgotten something. I wait expectantly “Ty Amblin.” She grins. “Did you call him? Did you ask him to the Spring Fling?”

  “Oh. That.” I feel my face turning pink. “No, I—see, I think I’m going to wait until later on in the week, like maybe Thursday.”

  “Thursday? But you have to ask him, because that gives you—hang on.” Mom starts ticking off the days to the Spring Fling dance on her fingers, muttering, “Now today’s the third tomorrow’s the fourth Wednes—so … so Thursday’s the sixth …” but then she messes up her numbers once she hits the weekend. “Well, you should give him more than two weeks’ notice,” she says, dropping her hands in her lap. “Or he’ll make other plans.”

  “Mom, two weeks is plenty, and it’s not like Ty doesn’t know I’m asking him. It’s all pre-set up; Portia’s good friends with a friend of his, and the friend, Jess Bosack, told Portia all I had to do was ask. I mean, Ty wants to go. All the Rye guys want to go to the dance.” I feel like I’m talking to convince myself.

  “When I was in high school, there was such a boy shortage that you had to plan quick, or you’d just get scraps.”

  “Well, there’s no shortage at Rye, considering it’s an all-guys school.”

  “True.” Mom pushes her thumb and finger against the inside corners of her closed eyes and rubs gently “Take extra money and grab a to-go breakfast at the diner for tomorrow. I ate the last granola bar this morning.”

  “Are you sure? Will you have enough?”

  “Of course.” Mom gives me a curious look, and in the elastic snap of that moment I could pop out a question about Kahani’s, if I were braver. But I chicken out.

  “Good night, then.”

  “Wake me before you leave for school,” she says. “Just so I know.”

  “Okay.”

  Mom can be kind of annoying that way, always wanting me to check in with her at different points in my day, making sure I’m rolling down my daily track and not spinning off in any weird, mysterious directions.

  Mostly, though, there are plenty of good points to being a family of just two people, just Mom and me.

  Like I never have to go on family camping trips. Portia was forced on one last year, and she said she was MBG—Majorly Beyond Grumpy—the whole time.

  And a pint of ice cream and a liter of root beer splits just right for exactly two perfect root beer floats.

  And we always agree on the same TV shows, like the Monday-night movie about the call girls or serial killers instead of Monday-night football.

  I chalk up Mom’s eagle eye to being part of only-child/single-mom territory. And I can live with the eagle eye if it means Monday-night serial killers and no camping.

  Mom seems too tired for more talking, so I decide to ask her about Kahani’s sometime tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 2

  TUESDAY COMES AND GOES, though, and I don’t even see Mom, except when I wake her up to say good-bye that morning. Some days are like that, when Mom’s off to rehearsal by the time I’m home from basketball practice, and then she gets home long after I’ve gone to bed.

  On Wednesday morning, she looks tired, and I can tell she doesn’t want to go to school when she starts ordering breakfast in a foreign accent. Mom has this habit of melting into another person when she doesn’t want to be where she is.

  “Two sah-such, eck, an chez bees-kit, two arronch jooce, two coffee, plez,” she shouts into the fast-food drive-through box.

  “Sorry ma’am,” squawks the box. “Can you repeat that?”

  “Come on, Mom.” I slouch down in the passenger seat and push my knees up against the glove compartment. “I’ll be late—later—for homeroom. I’ll get a tardy slip.” Of course, Mom doesn’t pay me any attention.

  “Two sah-such, eck—”

  “I’m getting out,” I threaten her. “I’ll run in and order my own breakfast. I have money.” Mom turns and slides her oversize sunglasses down to the tip of her nose.

  “You’re a little crabby this morning.”

  “I have a math test I need to get studying for.”

  Mom sighs and leans out her window. She repeats our order in a slightly more American accent.

  “What is that accent, anyhow?” I grumble after we’ve been handed our paper bags and are chomping breakfast biscuits and slurping coffee at the traffic lights. “Sounded like some kind of Spanishy-Frenchish thing.”

  “Oh, it’s just for fun.” Mom yawns. “I should have gotten a large coffee. Rehearsal ran so late last night. I’m beat.”

  “When’d you get home?”

  “Two, two thirty. Patsy and I went to Casa Maga for chicken nachos after.”

  “You should have just bagged Casa Maga knowing you have school today.” I mention this for no other reason than sometimes in conversations with Mom I like to hear something logical being said.

  “Shoulda woulda coulda.” She yawns again.

  “Besides, Mom. Isn’t today the day you’re presenting that Tom Sawyer musical idea?”

  “Yep—aw, nuts! That reminds me.” Mom slams on the brakes. I shut my lips tight at the screechy Evel Knievel sound. In the rearview mirror, I can see Lacy Finn perched like a fluffy blond spaniel in the passenger seat of her mother’s white Saab. Mrs. Finn puckers her forehead, giving us an annoyed look. “I left all my notes and the script at home. Shoot shoot shoot.”

  “Can you present it tomorrow?”

  “Nope. It took me almost two weeks to get Lemmon to agree to this appointment. I’ll have to wing it. Improv. Shoot.” She presses her foot on the gas as if to drive away from her mistake, and we squeal and pitch into the faculty parking lot just as the Finn car cruises past us to the student drop-off zone.

  “You shouldn’t go so fast in a fifteen-mile-an-hour zone.”

  “I don’t believe you have a driver’s license yet, missy.”

  “Don’t yell at me; it was Mrs. Finn who gave you a dirty look.”

  “Elizabeth Finn, poster child for liposuction that she is, should butt out of my business.”

  I haul my bookbag over my shoulder and slam out of the car, causing the rusty hood of Old Yeller, our ancient Volkswagen Rabbit, to quiver. Whenever Mo
m doesn’t get enough sleep, she turns stubborn against reason. The best thing to do is just to get away from her.

  “Danny!” Portia jumps out of a school bus and bounds right up to my shoulder. “Are you ready for the assembly?” The assembly. I had totally forgotten.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot?”

  “No, no, I didn’t forget.”

  “We’re presenting it right after lunch, in the upper lobby? Twelve forty-five?”

  “Twelve forty-five,” I repeat, taking the front stairs two at a time. “I gotta go.”

  “Twelve forty-five, and don’t bail.” She leaps away

  Portia Paulson’s my best friend, but we’re complete opposites. And even though I think she’s the number one person after Ty Amblin I’d want to be stuck on a desert island with, the best-friendship was definitely Portia’s decision. One day in second grade she kept passing me notes on her American Girls stationery and next thing I knew I was on her slumber party list and her Christmas present list.

  One thing I like about Portia is how easy it is to read her moods, like when she gets mad, she absolutely roars, and when she’s sad, tears squirt out of her eyes like watermelon seeds. Portia can’t fake anything—unlike me, who will try to smile right through my meanest thought or my worst day.

  Also, Portia has this knack for not letting other people’s opinions matter to her. She’s never the person who rolls her eyes if she’s caught talking to nerds, or changes seats if she’s not sitting with her friends in assembly or at the lunch table. Sometimes in tennis class Portia even voluntarily teams up with class pariah Paige Outer, who sneak-snitched on her own classmates last year when some of us wrote our Latin declensions on our wrists. The note to Mrs. Perez-Torrez was signed “Anonymous,” but everyone knew.

  “Paige has a great backhand,” Portia says.

  “Probably from all that practice backstabbing,” I tell her. It was a good comeback, but the bottom line is Portia doesn’t care what anyone thinks. And basically, our class respects that kind of not caring. It’s why Portia’s always voted class vice president, even though this year she’s flunking biology and technically shouldn’t hold an office. Deep down, I know I’m pretty lucky to have Portia as my best friend, since even the most stuck-up girls in my class respect her and have to think twice if they’re going to say or do anything against me.

  What’s less lucky is how Portia counted on our friendship to bully me into taking fencing class with her for my Wednesday activity, and now there’s this whole stupid assembly that is going to use all the time I’d needed to study for math. My stomach is beginning to hurt and it’s not even eight thirty. I wish I hadn’t drunk that coffee, which is blasting through my stomach like acid.

  In homeroom, I scribble up a crib sheet to study through my morning classes, even though I’m already anticipating the usual C+. My last hope is that we have English SSR—sustained silent reading. Dr. Sonenshine lately is a big fan of SSR, because we’re reading The Odyssey, which no one wants to finish.

  “This is a boy book,” the class complained after the first chapter.

  “This is a classic.” Dr. Sonenshine had stared like an angry owl from behind her glasses. The Odyssey is a real snore, although I kind of like the part about Penelope weaving and unraveling her tapestry so that those free-loading suitors can’t marry her. Sometimes, Dr. Sonenshine reads sections of the book out loud in her low, twanging voice and you can feel the whole class sort of slipping back into those wine-dark sea days. But mostly we hate it.

  I’ve gone to the Bradshaw School for Girls since kindergarten, when Mom first got her job there. Part of her salary is that I get free tuition. If you can forget about wishing that someone like Ty Amblin were around to liven up classes, a school like Bradshaw isn’t as bad as it sounds. Girls get to be the captains and leaders of everything, which never happens in a school with guys in it. I’m captain of the freshman basketball team and ninth-grade student council representative, and Portia’s president of the stock market club, which are all positions guys would probably snag if Bradshaw went coed.

  Some people call the school “Breedshow,” as a joke, I guess because the school and students look so well groomed. My public-school friends say Bradshaw’s for snobs, and I guess that’s my biggest complaint against Bradshaw, too. Some of the girls, like Lacy Finn and Hannah Wilder, are spoiled beyond help. The worst of them also tend to clique around together and talk about stuff like whether the skiing’s better in Saint Moritz or Sun Valley. I think the day Lacy Finn found out I didn’t even own a pair of skis was the same day she stopped talking to me. But that’s only one type of Bradshaw girl. There are plenty of better types, like Portia.

  Mom generally likes Bradshaw, too, but she has problems with Mr. Lemmon, the fine arts director. The two don’t get along even in the best of times, but lately I’ve heard Mom’s standard pronouncement, “Dwight Lemmon is a world-class jackass,” thrown around a lot, because of this spring’s play. All Mom wants to do is direct this Tom Sawyer musical, but since Mom is just a part-timer, and since her loud opinions don’t exactly ratchet her up to number one on Mr. Lemmon’s list of favorite faculty members, he is resisting. I think she’s going to wear him down, though. Last year, when Mom was the assistant director for Mr. Lemmon’s deadly dull production of Saint Joan, she got all the Bellmont Players to come watch. If it hadn’t been for them, there would have been practically no audience, so Mr. Lemmon owes her one.

  “Can’t you just see it?” she’ll ask me whenever she’s obsessing over Tom! which has been for a couple months now “A bare stage, with all this—this space for the girls to just express themselves, and think of the choreography! Cartwheels, full-stage ensembles, straw hats, overalls. A play about energy. A play for athletes,” she suggests, to draw me in.

  Frankly, I can’t see it, and I guess neither does Mr. Lemmon, whose taste runs toward more serious productions, like Our Town and Inherit the Wind.

  When I read “English class is SSR, in the library” on the blackboard, I want to shout for joy. Dr. Sonenshine passes back our creative-writing essays and corrected quizzes on The Odyssey as we file out. She pulls me aside just as I’m priming to sprint down the hall.

  “Danny, may I chat with you a second about last week’s assignment? That short story you wrote, ‘The Darkest Man’?”

  “Um, was something the matter with it?” I feel a squirm coming on but I look at Dr. Sonenshine straight on. Mom is the master of the deadeye, go-ahead-I-dare-you face, but I’m pretty good at it, too—especially with rude salespeople and whistling construction workers.

  Dr. Sonenshine’s eyes widen behind her glasses. She wears her brambly gray hair caught on each side by large silver combs and her black freckles He scattered like pepper across her brown skin. She smiles at me now.

  “Not at all, Danny. Matter of fact, there was plenty that worked just fine, just fine.” Her southern voice twangs banjo-style through her vowels. “And that’s why when you look over my comments, and I know we’ve talked about this before, but with your talent, I just wish you could write something”—she exhales a papery cough into her fist—“something more true to life.”

  She pulls my paper from her pile and I stuff it into my book bag, not looking at the grade, to show her how I don’t care. True to life. A slow burn brushes across my cheeks.

  “Can I go? I need to get a library carrel.”

  “Go ahead.” Dr. Sonenshine frowns slightly and steps aside as though I might need a lot of extra room to pass by her.

  I don’t take out “The Darkest Man” until I’m sitting all by myself in an upstairs carrel. Tiny squirts of red from Dr. Sonenshine’s pen have rained air over the three and a half pages of my story “Watch verb tense agreement.” “New paragraph.” “Pls. use spell-check.” I can barely look at the tightly curled 82 in the bottom corner. A sideways-crawling comment takes up most of the page, but I don’t feel much in the mood to read it. What kind of talent could I have to get an 82, a medi
ocre grade, a Lacy Finn and Gray Fitzpatrick kind of grade. But now there’s no way I can concentrate on math. And with the fencing assembly this afternoon, I feel myself giving up (a role that dangled entirely out of her grasp …), so I stuff my books back in my book bag and leave the library. There’s one thing I know I can do—my last-resort tactic.

  Mom’s in the faculty lounge, writing vigorously in a spiral notebook.

  “Hey,” I say listing in the doorway She looks up and raps her knuckles lightly against her forehead.

  “I’m remembering everything about the Tom Sawyer pitch. Lemmon won’t know what hit him. What’s up?”

  “I can’t …” I wave my math book. “The test’s at one fifteen, I need more time to study, I have this stupid fencing assembly I didn’t practice for, I don’t know what to do.”

  “You want a note for your teachers? Then take the train home?”

  “I think so.”

  Mom nods and flips to a clean sheet of paper. “Back injury?”

  “How about just a headache?”

  “No one will believe a headache; we’ve used it too many times before,” Mom says impatiently. Then she lowers her voice. “Look, I tell you what. Just walk out to the front hall where Ms. Luff and Dr. Polanski are. Act like you’re going to get a drink of water, then just go, okay—watch.”

  Mom springs out of her chair and a look of unimaginable pain freezes her face. She twists her body into an S shape and her hands lurch wildly around behind her, as if searching for a knife lodged in her spine. “My back,” she moans. “I think I just heard something snap or twist … something. Agh—there it goes again.”

  “Mom, they’ll believe a headache, too.” I glance at the door. “Cut it out, okay?”

  “What have I done to my back?” she cries again, grimacing.

  “Susan?” Mr. Sallese, who has been hovering out by the faculty mailboxes, dashes into the room. “Are you okay?”

  “Pete, no, yes, I mean I’m fine.” She straightens up. “Really. It’s an old ice-skating injury.”