Just Another Day in My Insanely Real Life
Page 8
Now she grinned. “I love those! It’s all I read.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! I’ve read every single Tamora Pierce. And Robin McKinley and Nancy Springer. She’s my favorite. Have you read I Am Morgan le Fay?”
I grinned back. “Only, like, six times.”
Bess actually laughed. “My mom hates them. She says they’re all the same.”
“No, they aren’t! Not the good ones!”
“That’s what I told her, but she doesn’t believe me. Now she won’t let me buy any more until I get rid of my old ones.”
“You have a lot?”
“Millions. Maybe I can give you some? If you like.”
I looked at her hard. Was she wrapping up some “charity novels” in dorky pink cellophane because she’d heard somewhere that I was “short of books”? But Bess was looking right back at me, with a kind of question in her eyes. No, I decided, she wasn’t embarrassed or pseudosympathetic or anything. And her eyebrows were up, like she was really hoping I’d accept. “Sure,” I said. “That would be great. Thanks.”
Then we pretended to eat our lunches. By now my yogurt sundae was beyond gloppy, more like a yogurt puddle. And anyway, it seemed wrong to eat it in front of Bess.
“Well,” she said as the bell rang. “Thanks for eating with me.”
“Sure. Save me a seat tomorrow, okay?”
She shrugged. “Why not,” she said.
Somehow, it wasn’t exactly what I’d thought she’d say, but I liked hearing it anyway.
At dismissal two incredibly weird things happened, one right after the other.
The first happened when I was at the bike rack, unlocking my bike for the ride home. Only about six kids used the rack because everybody else took the bus. But I never did because my bus (Bus 8) went down my old street, and I couldn’t stand to pass my old house every day. It made me feel a million ways whenever I saw it, but sad and angry were at the very top of the list. Besides, the new owners had painted our blue house yellow, and it just looked completely wrong.
Anyway, I was unlocking my bike, when I dropped my key right smack in a pile of muddy, slimy oak leaves. “TURD AND A HALF!” I yelled, dropping to the ground to grope through the squishy mess.
And then, who should walk right up to me but Sir Mullvo himself.
“Cassie,” he sneered. “Your way with words never fails to impress.”
What was the Crayola word for the probable color of my face? Crimson? Magenta? Burnt sienna? “Hi, Mr. Mullaney,” I croaked.
“You appear to be looking for something. May I help?”
“Thanks, but you don’t have to,” I said quickly. “This stuff is disgusting to touch.”
“I take it you’re not doing it for fun, then. What exactly are you looking for?”
“My bike key,” I said, groping frantically now. “I heard it drop. It’s got to be here someplace.”
“That stands to reason,” he agreed, crouching. “You take that pile, and I’ll take this one.”
And there he was, squooshing his long bony fingers through the sloppy leaves, right beside me. We didn’t talk, we just concentrated on squooshing, until finally he got this funny sort of satisfied look on his face.
“Aha! Is this it?” He held up my key like it was Excalibur.
“Yes it is! Thanks a lot, Mr. Mullaney!”
He stood up slowly, then winced a little, like something hurt. “You’re very welcome. You know, there’s a great book you’ll read when you’re an English major in college. It’s about many things, one of which is the keylessness of the hero.”
“The what?’
“The keylessness, Cassie. He can’t find his key.”
“Sounds like a fascinating book,” I said, thinking, Well, what kind of book did I expect Mr. Let’s-Get-Cracking to read for fun?
“Anyway,” Mr. Mullaney continued, moving his shoulders up and down, like he was testing them out, “his quandary resonates because everyone feels keyless at some point in their lives. There’s never anything wrong with asking for help, Cassie. See you tomorrow.”
And then he turned toward the faculty parking lot and walked away stiffly, still checking to see if both his shoulders worked.
I just stood there, watching him, wiping my slimy hands on my jeans. If that wasn’t the insanest conversation on record, I don’t know what was.
And maybe ten seconds later the second weird thing happened.
Just as I was getting on my bike, I heard someone call out, “Hey, Cassie!” I turned around, but the only person I saw standing there was Danny Abbott. I tried looking past him, to see who could have been calling my name, but then he started walking closer. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“So, was that just Mr. Mullaney?”
“Yeah. He actually helped me look for my bike key. In the mud.”
“No way.”
“And he gave me a speech about resonating quandaries. And books about keys.”
Danny shook his head. “The guy’s a total freak show,” he said, laughing. Then his face changed. Now he looked like he was concentrating on finding a bike key in a big pile of muddy leaves. “So, Cassie, is this your bike?”
“Well, either that or I’m stealing it.”
A funny look crossed his face then, like he was confused.
Fabulous, Cassie. So he thinks there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’re a criminal. Way to go.
“So, I mean, do you ever ride it? Besides to school?”
“Not a lot,” I said truthfully. “Sometimes.”
“Do you ever ride in Bradley Park?”
Bradley Park is right by my old house. That would be the last place I’d go for a ride, actually.
“No,” I said. “Do you?”
“Not really. But some kids do.”
“Oh.”
Well, thanks for the fascinating travelogue, but now what?
“Okay, well, see you,” he muttered. He walked away fast, like he was summoning superhuman power not to run.
What exactly was the point of that entire conversation? Danny could be so weird sometimes. I strapped on my bike helmet, which I hoped would stop my head from exploding, and then I zoomed off for home.
The Funniest Words in the English Language
English sure is a funny language. It’s full of words that are silly, strange, and just plain weird. Here is a partial list: banana, picnic, squash, squiggle, squeegee, scrunchie, squelch, squirm, squirt, octopus, umbrella, placebo, lollipop, scissors, splurge, obtuse, acute, kumquat, snub, snoop, snore, snort, nostril, fuzz, elbow, knee, thumb, phlegm, stomach, kangaroo, ostrich, aardvark filibuster, blotch, blemish, Cranny, nook, quirk, quark, noodle, egg, giblet, parsnip, marshmallow, parallel, trapezoid, perpendicular,
“Cassie, what are you writing?”
I spun around in my desk chair. Miranda was standing right behind me, peering over my shoulder, grinning.
“It’s your secret diary, isn’t it? What’s that, a list of all the boys you secretly like?”
“I don’t do that, Miranda,” I said, trying to spread my fingers over the pages so they were completely covered. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Why not? You could trust me. I wouldn’t tease.”
“Ha!”
“Come on, Cassie. Let me see it.” She suddenly snatched the journal from under my hands. “Aardvark, filibuster, blotch, blemish.’ What is this?”
My face burned. “Nothing! It’s private, Miranda!”
“A private list of words? Are you psycho?”
“No, Miranda, I’m not! You wouldn’t understand.”
“Yeah, that my little sister is spending all her time locked in her room writing lists of ‘funny words’? You bet I don’t understand! Do your friends know about this?” She pointed accusingly at my journal.
I grimaced. “What friends?”
“Halley’s Comet and Banana. Those girls you used to hang out with at the pool, remember?”
“Good. I never liked them. I always thought they were nasty, to be perfectly honest.”
“You did? Then why didn’t you say anything?”
She snorted. “Because, knowing you, you would have defended them and told me to mind my own business.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s right. And that’s exactly what I’m saying now!” I reached for the journal, but she snapped her arm behind her, hiding it from me.
“So, don’t you hang out with anyone?”
“That’s personal information, Miranda!”
“Whoa, calm down. Why are you so touchy?”
“Because I’m trying to concentrate!”
“On your ‘list’? I’m really starting to worry about you, Cassie.”
“Listen, Miranda,” I said in my Authority Figure voice, “it’s a project for school, and you’d better give it back right now, or you’ll be sorry!”
Suddenly the doorbell was ringing. And ringing and ringing.
Miranda glared at me, like it was my fault. “I’ll get it,” she muttered. She tossed the journal back on my desk and stomped out of my room.
Thirty seconds later she was back, making meaningful eye contact, which I totally didn’t get. Then immediately I did, when I saw she was being followed by Mrs. Patella and her invisible cloud of stinky cigarettes.
“Everything all right, Cassie?” Mrs. Patella asked, her eyes darting all around my messy room.
“Yes, of course, Mrs. Patella,” I said. “Why?”
“Why? Well, I could hear you girls yelling at each other through the walls. They’re so thin, you can hear everything, and you know I promised your mother I’d keep an eye on you. So, I was just checking in to make sure everything was all right. 7s everything all right?” Eyes still darting.
“Yes, Mrs. Patella, sure.”
“Well, you know I worry about you kids here all alone while your mother—”
“We’re not ‘all alone,’ we’re here together,” Miranda interrupted. “And we were just having a little tiff, like normal siblings. So, thanks for dropping by, but we’re fine.”
“Yup,” I said, all cheery. “Thanks anyway, Mrs. Patella!”
She was barely out the door, trailing cigarette smoke behind her, when Miranda and I both started giggling. First giggling, then laughing. Then hooting and whooping so hard our faces were red and our eyes were tearing and our stomachs hurt. Laughing so hard we ended up rolling on my bed, holding our sides.
“A ‘tiff? A tiff? Where did you get that from?” I shrieked.
“I don’t know,” Miranda gasped. “England?”
We started laughing again. I was hot and sweaty and my sides ached. I could barely breathe.
“‘A little tiff, like normal siblings’? Why did you call us ‘siblings’? Why not sisters?”
“I don’t know,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “It just sounded more impressive.”
“What a funny word,” I said. “Siblings. Siblings. It sounds like giblets.” I started laughing again, but weakly.
“Cassie, you have issues,” said Miranda, getting up. She stretched her arms like she was yawning onstage, then shook out her long hair.
I watched her. My hair was incapable of being shook out; it was just barely long enough for a scrunchie. Miranda’s hair was nice. Too bad that wasn’t genetic. “Miranda?” I said, all of a sudden. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Maybe. What?”
“What do you think happened to Dad?”
She sat back down on my bed. “What? Whatever made you think of that?”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Maybe when you told Mrs. Patella that we’re all together. We aren’t, are we.”
“Yes we are! He’s just not in the family anymore.”
“But why? What do you think happened?
She looked at me, then sighed. “Do we really have to talk about this right now?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, why not now? We never talk about him, Miranda.”
“That’s because there’s nothing to say. He just disappeared.”
“But why?”
She didn’t answer. Finally, she sort-of-coughed a couple of times. “I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know this for a fact or anything, but I think it may have had something to do with money.”
“Really? Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about fights I heard between Mom and Dad, all this arguing about where the money went. And once I overheard Mom talking to Aunt Abby about money being gone from the bank.”
“Well, that could be anything—”
“Maybe,” Miranda interrupted. “I really don’t know. Every time I ask Mom, she says something like, ’I know this is awful for you, honey, but Dad really has to explain this himself.’ And since the phone isn’t exactly ringing off the hook with his quote-unquote explanations, maybe we’ll never know.”
“Well,” I said carefully, “you know, he did call, Miranda. He called three times in August, but you hung up on him.”
“That’s because he never had anything to say! He just wanted us to do all the talking.”
“Yeah, well, he might have said more if you hadn’t hung up.”
“If he had anything else to say, Cassie, he would’ve called back!”
“Maybe. Unless he thought we were too mad. And that maybe we didn’t want to hear from him.”
Her eyes flashed. “Oh, so what are you saying? That I don’t have the right to be angry? That it’s all my fault he doesn’t call?”
“Come on, Ran,” I said. “That’s not what I meant.” But it sort of was, and I didn’t want to start a war right then, so I quickly changed the subject. “Let me talk to Mom next time. I never ask because I don’t want to get her all upset, but maybe she’ll tell me something.”
“Oh yeah, right, Casshead. Like she’d tell you but not me.”
“She might.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
Neither of us said anything for a really long time. I picked four fuzzballs off my old red sweater. Finally I asked a big question.
“Do you think maybe Dad has a new family?” It was something I often wondered about, but this was the first time I’d ever asked it out loud.
Miranda snorted. “Why? He had a perfectly good old one, and he didn’t want it anymore. To tell you the truth, I don’t really care what he does.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Sometimes. But I’ve got too much else bothering me. Like my sibling.” She poked me in the rib. It sort of tickled.
“Sibling. Sibling. Sib-ling. It is a weird word, isn’t it?”
“Bizarre,” said Miranda, getting up again. “So take it. My gift. Add it to your psycho word list, Casshead.”
That night I couldn’t fall asleep, even though I had both cats on my bed, purring in stereo. Miranda’s theory about why Dad left was tumbling around and around in my head like dirty clothes in a washing machine. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, even though I kept ordering myself to just switch it off, space out, picture puffy clouds in a big blue sky.
Something to do with money.
Like what, exactly? How could anything to do with money make a person suddenly get up and leave his family and go off to somewhere, possibly to Florida, maybe forever? And then stop wanting “to hear our voices” just because Miranda got mad and hung up a few times? It made absolutely no sense.
Because Dad didn’t even seem to care about money. He never gave pointlessly boring lectures about Thrift and Saving and Investing, the way Brianna’s father did. And we always seemed to have enough, maybe not a ton of money like some people in Emerson, but enough for us. More than enough, really, when you counted Disneyland and Utah and the fitness club. I mean, money just never seemed to be an issue.
Unless maybe it was.
Maybe even all along. And maybe I just never reali
zed it.
I guess you don’t notice everything when it’s happening.
Even if you’re smart.
I punched my pillow.
Okay, I yelled at myself, so THINK, Cassie. Wasn’t there some incident, some clue, some kind of flashing neon warning sign that Dad was having money trouble? Or any other kind of trouble, for that matter?
There had to be, but I couldn’t think of any. From what I remembered he seemed pretty normal before he left: sitting in front of the TV on Sundays watching what he called “college hoops.” Playing incredibly loud guitar music from, like, the 1970s. Working late all the time. Reading.
Reading.
Suddenly I thought of something, but it probably wasn’t important. At least, I didn’t think it was. But I couldn’t stop it sloshing around in my mind. It’s like my mental washing machine was on automatic, and all I could do was watch the suds.
One morning last spring, maybe a week before he was officially “out of the picture,” Dad was racing out the kitchen door to catch his train. He hadn’t even bothered to eat breakfast; he just mumbled that he’d “grab something” on the way to work. And then, just as he was leaving, he stopped to open his bulging briefcase on the kitchen table. Then he started flipping through a thick bunch of papers.
“Hey, Dad,” I remember saying through a mouth full of soggy Cheerios. “Can I have ten dollars for the fitness club? There’s a new swim shop—”
“Not now,” he snapped, without looking at me. “I’m busy, Cassie. Can’t you tell?”
“Sorry.”
I ate my Cheerios while he read his papers. Then I said, a bit louder this time, “The thing is, Dad, I desperately need new goggles. My old ones ripped, so can I please just buy a new pair?”
He stared at me in disbelief, as if I’d just asked him for two new eyeballs.
“Not now,” he repeated. “Do you think I’m a bank?”
He stuffed the papers back into his briefcase, but there were so many of them that this time it wouldn’t close. I heard him mutter a word I wasn’t supposed to hear, then he reached into his briefcase and took out a small, thick paperback, one of the “airport books” that he liked to read on the train. Then he did the ugliest thing I’d ever seen in my entire life.