Just Another Day in My Insanely Real Life

by Barbara Dee

  “True, but why is it a Double Day?”

  Silence.

  “Isn’t there something you’re all forgetting?”

  More silence.

  “Should I just assume you’re all unprepared, or should I give you the benefit of the doubt?”

  Duh. Benefit. We want benefit!

  “Cassie? Any ideas?”

  Everyone turned to look at me, including Danny Abbott. I felt my cheeks burn. Journal, Danny mouthed. He pantomimed writing. Journal.

  I stared at him stupidly. Then I got it: Danny was trying to tell me that today was the first journal check. But that was impossible! I was positive the first journal check was next week, not this week! Could he be wrong? Could I be?

  “Um, is it the first journal check?”

  “Are you asking me, Cassie, or telling me?”

  “Asking?”

  “Wrong! You should be telling me.” See? This man absolutely hated everything I ever said. “Yes, Cassie, it is the first journal check. Pass in your journals, everyone, and then we’ll have our quiz. Let’s get cracking!”

  I took my journal out of my backpack and passed it in with the strong stomachachey feeling that I was dangerously underquota. We were supposed to write five singlespaced pages a week, and it was three weeks since this assignment started, so that meant fifteen pages. Had I written that much? When was the last time I’d counted? I couldn’t even remember. Since I spent most of yesterday afternoon helping Jackie with his stupid book report about sadistic Farmer Joe, I’d hardly done any journal writing since class yesterday, which was when I got in trouble. Something told me I was a whole bunch of pages short. But the truth was, I was just so into the story that I wasn’t really keeping track.

  And then Mr. Mullaney passed out his Evil Quiz of Doom, so I couldn’t waste any more time worrying about page numbers. Here is what we had to deal with:

  Identify the Correct Relative Pronoun:

  1. Scurvy was a disease (that, which) afflicted sailors (who, which, whom) suffered hideously from the deficiency of a nutrient (which, that) we call Vitamin C.

  2. I read the will to Miss Von Faalkenburg, (whom, who) was benefited the least by the departed, (whose, who’s) vicious joke left us all starving and penniless.

  3. The man (who, whom) we called Uncle Bob confessed he’d been hiccupping nonstop since last April, a period (which, that) is roughly equivalent to seven dog years.

  And so on. Whoa. Mr. Mullaney sure was a strange, strange man. I realized that if Danny hadn’t bailed me out on the Double Day of Reckoning question, I’d probably be eating lunch with Mr. Mullaney until Christmas. (Which makes a better tree ornament, Cassie? Blinking lights or candy canes? Candy canes, you say? Are you ASKING me, or telling me?). So at lunch, after filling my tray with neon-orange macaroni and cheese and another big gloppy yogurt sundae, I forced myself to sit next to Bess Waterbury. She was sitting catty-corner from Danny and, unfortunately, directly across from Zachary Hairball.

  “That quiz was so easy it was a joke,” he was practically shouting. “I can’t believe Mullaney thought that was a challenge.”

  I gritted my teeth. Yeah, well, maybe not as big a challenge as digesting food across from you, you little oxymoron. I kind of leaned past Bess, which was not easy to do. “So, Danny, thanks for helping me out,” I said.

  He looked up, alarmed, then nodded.

  “So, um, what did you get for scurvy?” I asked.

  He looked even more alarmed. I realized that my question hadn’t come out quite right, but it was too late to change it, so I just kept chattering on.

  “And what was it? The repulsive pustule which, or the repulsive pustule that? And was it the sniveling toady whom or who?”

  “Whom,” Danny muttered, then quickly turned away.

  Shhhhinguards! Could I have screwed that up any worse? Why couldn’t I have just said thank you and left it at that? Now Danny probably thought I was as weird as Mr. Mullaney, and he’d never talk to me again. Plus, I was going to have to sit here for the rest of lunch listening to the Hairball shout about “jokes” and “challenges,” and ignoring Bess Waterbury while she nibbled on her salad and tried to get me to talk to her. Suddenly that seemed unbearable. Totally, completely unbearable. Before I knew what I was doing, I picked up my tray and moved over to where Hayley and Brianna were sitting.

  Brianna gave me a big smile. “So, Cassie. The wedding’s off?”

  “What?”

  “We heard you and Danny called off the wedding,” she explained. “Such a shame. You had the hall picked out and everything. And O-Bess would’ve made such a lovely maid of honor.”

  “If she could fit into the dress,” Hayley said, giggling.

  Now I glared at them both. “Shut up,” I said.

  Brianna smirked. “Oh, yeah, right. We forgot. Cassie Baldwin, Bess’s personal bodyguard.”

  “And that’s a lot of body to guard,” said Hayley.

  I felt my throat getting tight. “I’m not her bodyguard. I’m not even her friend. I can’t help it if she keeps trying to talk to me!”

  “So, go talk to her,” said Brianna, nodding encouragingly. “Sit with her. I’m sure you two share a lot of interests.”

  “Well, we don’t, Brianna. And for your information, she happens to be very nice. Why do you always have to make fun of her?”

  “Why do you always have to act like you’re better than everyone else?” Brianna shot back.

  I was stunned. My mouth literally hung open. “What?” I repeated, like a moron.

  “You heard me,” said Brianna.

  “But that’s wrong, Brianna, I don’t think—”

  Then I just stopped. I wanted to defend myself, I wanted to tell them I didn’t think I was better. I actually thought I was a totally excluded social zero who really just wished we could still go swimming together. But then I saw the way they exchanged a private look that meant something I didn’t understand—couldn’t begin to understand—and suddenly I realized how badly I was doing these days. I was screwing up so many things in so many departments that it seemed impossible to keep track.

  Seventh period, the next-to-last class of the day, was Art. Art was actually sort of fun because the school had gotten a new kiln over the summer, so Ms. Sutter, our Art teacher, was always having us make sculptures. She didn’t even care what we made, as long as she could bake it in the kiln. Once I made a six-headed Hydra, and she just said, “Very nice, Cassie,” and snatched it from me and tossed it in to bake. But I never bothered to bring it home because a head came off.

  Today, though, was too hot for the kiln. It was Indian summer, almost eighty degrees, and the sky was azure. Azure. Azure. Azure. What a beautiful word, I thought. It sounded like the name of a heroine. Maybe for my next novel, the one after Cat. Lady Azure. Princess Azure. Azure, Queen of the Faeries. So I wrote “azure” on a little slip of paper and stuck it in my jeans pocket.

  Then I joined the rest of my Art class on the front lawn. Ms. Sutter was handing out sketch pads and number two pencils and putting a shhh finger over her mouth. “Listen carefully, everyone,” she was saying. “We’re going to try something a little different today. I’m going to break you up into groups of three, and you’re going to wander around the front yard taking in this beautiful autumn day. Your group will choose something to sketch—maybe a tree, or a plant, or a rock, anything at all. Then you’ll sketch it from three different angles. Any questions?”

  Zachary Hairball’s hand shot up. “Do we each sketch it from three different angles, or does each person in the group take a different angle?”

  I was standing next to Danny, so I heard him groan.

  “Each of you will take a different angle, because each of you approaches nature from your own special place,” Ms. Sutter replied.

  “And Zachary, your special place has bars,” I muttered.

  Danny guffawed, which made me feel proud, even though I’d just said a pretty mean thing.

  But it
was different from the stuff Brianna and Hayley said about Bess, I told myself.

  Oh, really, Cassie? And why is that?

  Because Zachary Hairball was always showing off and sucking up. But Bess was just trying to be friendly.

  Oh. So it’s okay to be mean to smirky little jerks?

  Well, I wasn’t mean to him; I was mean about him. And sometimes people just deserve meanness.

  But not Bess. And of course not you.

  Yup. That’s exactly right. Not us.

  While I was figuring all this out, Ms. Sutter was announcing that since Danny and I were the only ones left, we would have to be a group of two. And immediately we both started turning red because everyone else was in a group of three. But I guess it’s not very surprising that Art teachers stink at division.

  “Have fun, you guys,” Brianna said, tittering. That made Danny walk ahead of me, even though we were supposed to pick the nature thing together.

  Finally he stopped at a small red maple. “How about this?” he asked, like he just wanted to get it over with.

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  But actually I was glad. Because I’m the worst nature-sketcher in the world, but the one thing I can draw is trees. And the reason for that is, one day I read somewhere that when your IQ is being tested, a lot of the time the tester asks you to draw a man and a house and a tree. So I spent a lot of time practicing men standing in front of houses with trees. Just in case.

  The only problem was, I only ever practiced one kind of tree, and it wasn’t a red maple. But I knew that if I tried drawing a red maple, it would come out looking like a mushroom or a tube of toothpaste. So I automatically started drawing my standard sprawling sycamore.

  Danny was standing on the other side of the red maple because he needed a different angle. That meant I couldn’t see how his picture was coming out. But my guess was that it wasn’t very good, because after he drew a few lines, he just tossed the sketch pad on the grass and plopped down.

  “I hate Art,” he grumbled. “I don’t even see why we have to take it.”

  “What would you rather take?”

  “Gym. Nothing but Gym.”

  “All day? Wouldn’t that be incredibly boring?”

  He scrunched up his face, and I thought, Fabulous, Cassie. You practically just called him a potato.

  “I heard you like to swim,” he said, picking up his pad again but avoiding eye contact.

  “Yeah, I do. But I don’t do it anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? Well, that was a good question. Because we were practically destitute, and even if we could rejoin the fitness club, how would I get there and back three times a week? And even if I could work out transportation with someone besides Hayley and Brianna, who would watch Jackson?

  And not just watch him, but actually take care of him. The truth was, I was really starting to worry about my little brother. Not only was he being ignored at school, where he wasn’t even starting to learn to read, but he was also so teary and quiet at home. All he ever did lately was play Power Rangers in his room, but it was weird how you hardly ever heard a peep out of him. And he never asked to play with anyone from his class. That in a way was a relief, since the last thing I wanted was to have to deal with some other six-year-old boy after school.

  Anyway, the point was, I couldn’t just abandon Jackson three afternoons a week and go off swimming, even if by some miracle we could afford it and I could get a ride. But Danny didn’t want to hear all that, and even if he did, I didn’t want to explain it. To him or to anybody else, for that matter.

  So all I said was, “I just don’t.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I guess.”

  Think of something else, Cassie. Use syllables.

  “Well, maybe all-day Gym wouldn’t be so bad,” I said. “At least there wouldn’t be stupid quizzes about scurvy.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “I hate English.”

  “I don’t hate English, I just hate Mr. Mullaney. What is his problem?”

  “Whatever it is, you’d better be careful,” Danny said, now looking right at me. “He fails people all the time.”

  “Really? How do you know?”

  “My brother had him two years ago. He had to repeat English in summer school. It totally wrecked our vacation.”

  I drew another branch on my sprawling sycamore, which was more and more resembling my semi-decapitated Hydra. “Well, fortunately, we don’t have any vacation plans. And anyway, Mr. Mullaney would never fail me. I’m writing a novel.”

  And then I winced, because I realized I sounded exactly like Zachary Hogan.

  Miranda shocked me by coming straight home from school that afternoon carrying two bulging bags of groceries.

  “Well, lookee here,” she announced. “Diet Coke, cat food, thank you, thank you, pasta, bread, peanut butter, tomato sauce, apples, lightbulbs, and yes, Ring Dings. No, please, hold your applause, you’re too kind.”

  I had to smile. “Thanks, Miranda, really. But listen, can we talk about something?”

  “Sure, sure. First I need to call Mad, then I have a U.S. History paper I need to finish up, then fine, no prob.”

  “Can’t we talk now? It’s important. About Jackie.”

  She stopped putting away the groceries to look at me. “What about him? He’s okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, he’s okay.”

  Big dramatic sigh. “Listen, Cassie, I’ll be happy to talk about SpongeBob, Britney Spears, anything you want, but later, like I said, all right?”

  “Fine!”

  The phone rang. Mom.

  “Everything okay?”

  Oh sure, Mom. Just peachy.

  “Well, I’m about to step into a meeting. I may miss supper tonight, Cassie.”

  No problema. Have fun at your meeting. Later, Mom.

  I grabbed a Ring Ding and sat down at my desk, which was so insanely cluttered with Post-its, eraser chunks, gum wrappers, pencil stubs, and wispy clouds of dust-balls that there was barely room to work. Until Miranda was finally ready to squeeze in our little chat, what I really felt like doing was writing in my journal. I had this great idea about how Cat uses one of her dragonfire arrows to slay the Mystyck Beast, who may have killed the King. The King’s exact whereabouts were still unknown, but maybe his army was just hiding in the woods somewhere, preparing an ambush. I didn’t have all the details worked out yet, but it would be something really big and dramatic, that much I knew.

  So I started hunting under the desk dirt for one of my black extra-fine-point Rolling Writers, or even, if absolutely necessary, a chewed-up pencil stub. But then my stomach clenched: Stupid me! Of course I couldn’t write. Even now, my story was in the clutches of the evil Mr. Mullaney, who might be seriously unamused by his uncanny resemblance to Sir Mullvo Clausebiter. The thing was, I’d created Sir Mullvo after Mr. Mullaney had been so nasty to me at lunch. I might have erased him before the first journal check, which I thought was next week. Now, of course, it was too late. Would he penalize my grade for it? Would he make me stay in at lunch? If he was any kind of teacher, he’d be able to separate his own feelings (of embarrassment? betrayal? rage?) from his recognition of my talent. Okay, sure, my life was getting more chaotic and pathetic by the second. But I knew that my story was really, really good so far, way better than anything else I’d ever written. It may have been a page or two short, but so what? Even Mr. Mullaney would have to acknowledge how great it was, I told myself, despite how much he hated my guts.

  The phone rang. So that meant Miranda was off the phone, finally—miracle of all miracles. I heard her say, “No, sorry, who’s calling?” then slam down the receiver. Guess it wasn’t Adam. Poor Miranda, I thought, sitting by the phone, jumping every time it rang. No way was I ever going to turn into one of those pathetic teenage girls, so insanely desperate for a boy to call that it was like her whole life.

  I started my Math homework, to get it out of the way. Dividing fractions: defin
itely a ten on the barf-o-meter. Mrs. Gillroy was a really nice Math teacher, kind of like a fat old grandmother who always made your favorite cookies when you came to visit. But she still couldn’t get me to understand dividing fractions. I started the endless double-sided Math sheet; when I looked up, it was an hour later, and the phone was ringing again. “NO, SHE’S STILL NOT HERE,” Miranda was saying over the “music” she listened to while “studying.”

  I got up from my desk and yelled down the hallway, “WHO WAS THAT ON THE PHONE, MIRANDA?”

  “NO ONE!”

  Now Jackson came out of his room looking flushed, probably from playing under the hot blanket. “Can I tell you something? I’m hungry,” he announced.

  Miranda finally turned off her “music” and joined us in the hallway. “Okay, Jackie, but I’m just about to start supper, so no snacks.”

  “When will Mommy be home?”

  “Later, so be a good boy and let me finish my history paper, and then I’ll make you some yummy pasta, okay?” She scooped him up in her arms and twirled him around, kissing his cheeks. He yelped with joy, which should have made me happy, considering how miserable the poor kid seemed lately. Instead, for some strange reason, all I could say was, “Put him down, Randa, and stop treating him like a baby!”

  She let him go, and he ran back into his room. I felt terrible. “What’s your problem, Cassbrain?” Miranda accused.

  “Nothing! It just really bothers me how you baby him all the time. He’s not a baby, he’s a person, and he’s got problems too, just like the rest of us.”

  Miranda looked at me like I’d suddenly started speaking Icelandic. “What are you talking about?”

  The phone rang again, and of course she immediately answered it. Apparently this time it was Madison Avenue, because she went into her bedroom and slammed the door. Every once in a while I could hear her screeching, “I DON’T BELIEEEEEVE IT!” When she came out twenty-five minutes later, she looked different. I couldn’t figure it out, but it had something to do with her eyes.

  “What’s with your eyes?” I asked.

  “You like? It’s this new mascara, supposedly no-clump, but time will tell.” She batted her eyelashes at me.