Just Another Day in My Insanely Real Life

by Barbara Dee

  “Not really,” Jackson said. He poked his Cheerios with his spoon.

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Mom looked at me for help, but I just looked back at her like, Dang if I know!

  “Okay, then,” she said in her back-to-business voice. “I’m going to miss my train.”

  Then she got up, blew us a group kiss, and left. Miranda immediately dumped her bagel into the garbage and stormed into the bathroom.

  “Is Miranda mad?” Jackie asked.

  “Who knows,” I snarled. “Time to get ready for school, Jackie boy.”

  I helped him pack his Spider-Man backpack, then stood with him in the Shady Woods driveway to wait for his bus. (Usually this was Miranda’s job, but she was still locked in the bathroom, probably gnashing her teeth and putting on no-clump mascara.) Of course, the bus chose this morning to be four minutes late, so once Jackson finally got on and gave me a combination pout/good-bye wave through the window, I had exactly six minutes to zoom on my bike to school.

  First period was Math, which today meant converting fractions to percents. We did that back in fifth grade, and then again in sixth, and here we were in seventh grade, and we were still converting fractions to percents. You’d think they’d all be converted by now, but apparently not. While Mrs. Gillroy was writing on the whiteboard, I slipped my journal out of my backpack.

  Forty-seven pages since the last journal check. Despite what Bess Waterbury had said to me at lunch that time, I was still going to keep filling pages with totally bone-headed nothingness, at this point purely out of spite. I uncapped my black extra-fine-point Rolling Writer.

  The Complete List of Occasions When Converting Fractions into Percents Comes in Handy

  Hmmm … well, for starters, there’s … no, that’s not one. Well, then, there’s always … no, not that, either. Well, there’s always … no, come to think of it, you really don’t need to convert fractions to percents to write fantasy novels. Maybe you did in the prehistoric pre-calculator days, but not anymore.

  Oh dear. Maybe you NEVER need to convert fractions to percents to live a normal, productive life on planet Earth. Maybe this is just a pathetically unnecessary waste of time, after all. Maybe this is just an incredibly mindless exercise for pathetically boring kids (who/whom) one day, if they study hard enough, will become pathetically boring Math teachers.

  Mrs. Gillroy started handing back a pop quiz. I knew I’d bombed it; no suspense there. Then she handed me mine: a 72. “Cassie, you can do much better! See me if you want some help!” she wrote next to the grade. “Thanks, but I’m busy writing novels,” I wrote back.

  Then I flipped to the next page in my journal:

  YOOHOO! (HOOM!) ANYBODY HOME?

  Whom really cares about who? Whom works on a stupid English assignment (which, that) everyone whom knows anything thinks is a total waste of time, ink, and paper? Whom really cares? Whom is reading this? No one, that’s whom.

  I can write anything (that, which) I want, and nobody will even notice. Especially not you, Mr. Mullaney, because you don’t notice ANYTHING. You just count pages, don ‘t you? Like this: one two three four five six! Seven eight nine ten eleven! What comes next? Twelve? Thirteen! No, fourteen! Wow! Counting pages is oodles of fun! Tralalalalala. I‘m just filling SPACE… with words. Words words words words words words words. More words. More words. Even more words.

  Wore mords.

  Wordy words. Wordy words-words. Wordy wordy wordy words. Words? Words! WORDS! WORDS!! WORDS!!! WORDS!!!!

  (Words. Wordswordswordswordswords.)

  Words are weird. Why, for example, do people say tuna fish? They don‘t say salmon fish or halibut fish or mackerel fish or sardine fish, but they do say tuna fish. Is “fish” totally necessary? You don’t say hamburger beef or chicken poultry. So why do you say tuna FISH like you have to specify what it is? This makes absolutely no sense. Except, of course, if you order it in the lunchroom. Then I guess you really DO need to specify.

  What else? What else? Hmmm …

  Here’s what else:

  You can tune a piano but you can’t tune a fish.

  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hah hah ha ha. Yessiree, it sure feels good to get that out of my System. There’s nothing like a good laugh to make you feel all better. Don’t you agree, Mr. Mullaney? Don’t you just love to laugh your head off about how POINTLESS and MEANINGLESS everything is, especially this stupid, insulting journal assignment? Yup, laughter truly is the best medicine. At least that’s what they say. I thinks I’ll laugh some more: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Heee, heee, heee! HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH! He, he, he, he, he, he! Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh! hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HO HO HO, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

  When the bell rang, it was time for English. And when Mr. Mullaney sneeringly announced a journal check at the end of class, I didn’t pass it in. Instead, I brought my journal to the front of the class, and then dropped it on his desk. Just like I’d dropped Fuzzy on Miranda’s head.

  Whoops. Sentence fragment. Right, Zachary Hogan? Right, Mr. Mullaney? Right?

  The whole rest of the morning I was turning cartwheels in my head. It felt great to drop the journal on Mr. Mullaney’s desk, and even better to imagine his long bony fingers flipping through entry after entry of wordy-word-words, as he mindlessly tallied up the number of pages. Sixty-three, he’d sneer. Cassie, your way with page counts never fails to impress.

  I could just imagine the scene when he handed them back.

  “This page number requirement is such a joke,” Zachary Hairball would announce. “I got a twenty-seven!”

  “That’s very good,” I’d reply encouragingly. “Of course, I got a sixty-three!”

  Total mayhem.

  I replayed the scene in my head all through Science, and all through Gym, refilming it from different angles, sometimes with Danny (“Wow, Cassie, you’re amazing!”), sometimes with Hayley and Brianna (“We somehow never realized how clever you were, Cassie. Or how amusing. Want to sit with us at lunch today!”).

  But by lunchtime my stomach was starting to feel weird. I can’t explain why; it was just jumpy, somehow. So even though I filled up my tray with two cheese enchiladas and another yogurt sundae, when I sat down with Bess, I hardly took a bite.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, nibbling her fruit salad.

  “Fine,” I answered. “I’m just not very hungry, I guess.”

  I poked an enchilada with a spork. Spork, I thought. Spork. Spork is definitely a funny word. Maybe I’ll add it to the funny-word list. When Mr. Mullaney gives me back my journal.

  “Don’t sit here if you don’t want to, Cassie,” Bess said, maybe a little too loudly.

  “What?” I looked up at her. “Who said I didn’t want to?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, if you’d rather sit with Hayley and Brianna, go ahead.”

  “I’d rather pull out my toenails,” I answered. And I realized I meant it too.

  She giggled. “You aren’t friends anymore?”

  “I don’t think we ever were.”

  “You hung out with them.”

  It was almost an accusation. “Well, yes,” I said, surprised to be defending myself. “But we had zero in common. Besides swim team, which I dropped.”

  She speared a suspiciously orange slice of cantaloupe. But she didn’t eat it; she seemed to be deciding something. Finally she spoke. “I have those books for you, Cassie. If you still want them.”

  Oh yeah, right. And no pink cellophane. “You mean the books your mom wants you to get rid of?”

  She nodded. “There were too many to bring to school. And I didn’t know which ones you wanted. So, maybe you could come over sometime and just take some?” Now she started to blush, which made me feel even weirder. Because how could anybody actually be nervous about inviting groupless loser me?

  Before I knew what I was doing, I’d agreed to come to her house that very afternoon. There was a pay phone in the outer lob
by, and I always kept some quarters in my backpack (“For an emergency,” Mom said). So, what I did, also before I knew what I was doing, was call Mrs. Patella.

  She answered the phone like she’d been expecting a call from the CIA. “HELLO?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Patella? This is Cassie Baldwin.”

  “CASSIE?”

  “Your neighbor. Anne’s daughter? I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but I’ll be detained at school on a special project. I’m sure Miranda will be home from school at two thirty-five. But on the outside chance she’s running late, do you think you could possibly meet Jackson at the bus?”

  “A SPECIAL PROJECT?” she repeated.

  “Yes,” I said, absolutely refusing to give her any more information.

  Silence, while she considered. Or smoked a pack of cigarettes.

  “Well, what time do you think you’ll be home?”

  “Three fifteen at the latest,” I promised.

  “Okay,” she agreed, finally. “But he has to come to my house. I’m in the middle of a lot of things right now!”

  I bet you are, I thought. Like bugging my bedroom, for starters.

  I ran back to Bess, who was getting her stuff from her locker. We agreed that she’d take the bus and I’d ride my bike to her house, which was only seven blocks from the school.

  We’d lived in Emerson all my life, so it was strange to me to be riding down a street I’d never been on before. But I’d certainly heard of it: Evergreen Road, one of the nicest streets in Emerson, with the biggest, newest, fanciest houses. That horrible Lindsay Frost lived here somewhere, and so did Danny’s friend Noah. And I realized it was surprising to me that Bess lived here too, but I couldn’t figure out exactly why.

  I arrived at her driveway about five minutes before she did, so I had time to study the outside of her cream-colored house and imagine all the rooms. It looked enormous, like one of those houses you see in magazines in the orthodontist’s office. Roundish windows, a funny little turret, two separate balconies, possibly a sunroom. The kind of house with a million bathrooms and a sauna and a home theater with a humungo TV screen that doesn’t sound the slightest bit like buzzing bugs. In other words, not a ratty little “unit” like ours.

  But not like our old house either. Our old house was pretty big, I always thought, but it was about one tenth the size of this one. And much plainer, too.

  And then I started thinking about how nice and cozy it was, and how much I missed it.

  Could it just have gotten “lost” somehow, like a bicycle key?

  How could you lose a house?

  There had to be a reason. Maybe I didn’t know it yet, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. A really good one.

  The bus arrived, and the door opened, and Bess got off looking flushed and happy.

  “So you found it!” she exclaimed, out of breath.

  “Sure. It was easy.”

  She opened the front door, and immediately a huge yellow Lab came springing out at us, barking like crazy, leaping up at Bess, and then at me, and then at Bess again.

  “Rudy, NO!” she commanded, grabbing the dog’s front paws and forcing him down. Then he looked up at her sweetly, and wagged his tail.

  “I’m sorry, Cassie,” Bess said, laughing. “Rudy’s actually only ten months old, but he’s an obedience school dropout. We’re getting a private tutor to teach him some manners, aren’t we?”

  Rudy jumped up again, and licked her face.

  I laughed too, but I was thinking: Rudy is another surprise.

  Then she led me up to her bedroom, which was somehow not a surprise. It was like a personal, private library, with shelf after shelf of paperbacks, and one whole book-case filled with fancy hardcovers, the kind you get for your birthday. She had a big white desk not covered with gum wrappers and Post-its, and her own personal laptop. Her bed had a special clamp-on reading lamp and one of those enormous pillows so you can read in bed without leaning on your elbow. And the walls were painted a light sky blue, so you felt like you were drifting on a cloud of books.

  Fantasyland.

  “I love this room,” I breathed. “Bess, you are so, so lucky!”

  “Thanks,” she said simply. “Well, why don’t you see what you want? Mom’s working in her office upstairs, and I just need to tell her I’m home. I’ll be back in a second, okay?”

  Of course it was okay. I walked up and down the shelves, taking down books, putting them back. Bess was exaggerating only a teeny bit when she told me she had millions of fantasy novels. She had all the good ones, plus tons I’d never even heard of. I wanted everything, but finally I took only three paperbacks, because I had to cram them into my bulging backpack and I wasn’t exactly about to use Dad’s “old packing trick.” I was struggling with the zipper when Bess walked back into the room.

  “I’m taking a Robin McKinley and two Diana Wynne Joneses,” I told her.

  “Sure. You can take more if you want, Cassie.”

  “Thanks, but my backpack’s totally stuffed! It’s a good thing we handed in those journals today, otherwise I’d have no room for even these!”

  She groaned. “Don’t mention the J word.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I had almost nothing to turn in this time.”

  I looked up at her. “I thought you told me you were writing a novel.”

  “Well, yes, I am, but I decided it was too personal to show Mr. Mullaney. Even though he can be sort of nice.”

  “WHAT?”

  She started giggling. “Okay, I know, I know, he’s really weird. But the other day I showed him these poems I wrote, and he said he really liked them, and that maybe I should submit one to the school literary magazine.”

  I didn’t know why, but it was very hard to speak right then. “Great!” I said. “So, will you?”

  “Maybe. I can’t decide which, though. Maybe I can show them to you and you can help me pick?”

  “Sure! Well, I think I’d better go now. My neighbor’s watching my little brother for me.”

  “Okay, well, thanks for coming,” she said, looking a little unsure. Maybe she thought I was racing out of her house. Maybe I was.

  And the whole time I rode home in the freezing November afternoon, I was thinking to myself: Sixty-three pages, Cassie. Sixty-three whopping pages.

  The first thing I did when I got home from Bess’s house was check Miranda’s room. She wasn’t there, of course. It was exactly ten after three, and since this morning Mom had ordered her to come straight home from school, that meant she was thirty-five minutes late. Not a good sign.

  And really bad for me. Because I couldn’t be here right now. I had something important to do for once, and I absolutely couldn’t be sitting around the “unit” babysitting my little brother.

  Sometimes you just have to leave.

  My heart was pounding as I banged on Mrs. Patella’s door.

  “CASSIE?” she guessed, as she peeped through the peephole.

  “YES!” I shouted back. That must have alarmed her, because she opened the door without first asking a zillion follow-up questions.

  I took a step into her “unit.” It felt like I was walking into an ashtray.

  “How’s Jackson?” I panted.

  “Fine,” she replied, staring at me. “We’re playing chess.”

  “Chess?”

  “He’s very good. He says they taught him to play at school.”

  “Jackson’s playing chess?”

  I ran into her living room, which was exactly the same as ours, same windows, same slanted ceiling—except hers was smoggy from cigarette smoke. I practically needed a searchlight to find Jackson, but there he was, sitting at her coffee table, his head resting on his fists, studying a chess-board.

  “Hey, Jackie boy!” I greeted him, probably a bit too enthusiastically.

  He didn’t look up. Maybe he was angry at me for leaving him here. Maybe he just expected it. After all, everyone else had abandoned him. Why should I b
e any different?

  I felt like a total skuzzball. Still, I had something important to do.

  “Listen, Jackie, do you think you could stay here for, like, fifteen more minutes?” I whispered to him. “Maybe twenty at the most?”

  “I don’t care,” he said, still refusing to look at me. “Do what you want. Mrs. Patella is making brownies.”

  I didn’t even want to think about eating brownies in this stinky house. “Okay, then, be good,” I said. “Try to hear if Miranda gets home.”

  Now he looked up. “How will I know?”

  “Just listen through the walls,” I said. “Or ask Mrs. Patella.”

  Then I raced to the kitchen, where sure enough Mrs. Patella was taking a tray of slightly burnt brownies out of the oven. “Would you like one, Cassie?” she asked skeptically.

  “No!” I practically shouted. “I mean, thanks, but I’m in a big rush. I just realized I have to get back to school for a second.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “For your special project?”

  “Yes! That’s right, I need something for my project, and I have to go back and get it.”

  “Weelll,” she said slowly. “How long will this take?”

  “Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. And Miranda should be back any second.”

  “Where is she? I thought you said she’d be back by now.”

  “She must have gotten held up.” My heart was practically leaping out of my chest. It seemed crazy to me that she couldn’t see it.

  “Weelll, okay,” Mrs. Patella finally decided. “But come straight back. I’ve got other things to do, you know.”

  “Thanks!” I called, racing out the door, back into the freezing November air, which felt amazingly good after two minutes in that stinky, smoggy, smoky little “unit.” I restrapped my bike helmet, got back on my bike, and zoomed back to school.

  This is why: I needed to get my journal back. I don’t even know what made me decide this. Maybe hearing about Bess’s poems, and how Mr. Mullaney told her they should be in the literary magazine. But what did Bess’s stupid poems have to do with me?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.