by Gail Banning
“Trade you for peanut butter and honey then,” said Twyla.
“But chicken’s worth more.”
“Uh-uh. Peanut butter’s illegal. That makes it valuable,” said Twyla.
“Does not. The Supervee could confiscate it.”
“Then how about, I’ll give you the rest of these.”
Twyla looked inside her bag of barbecue potato chips.
“Five eighths of a bag. Maybe eleven sixteenths. You must act now to receive this generous offer.”
“Deal.” Bridget turned to me. “What sandwich do you have?”
“Smoked oyster,” I said.
“Never heard of that,” Bridget said. “Are they hard to trade?”
“Never tried. I love smoked oyster.”
“Have some chips,” Bridget said, and I took one.
Kendra burst the air with a laugh. “Remember at summer camp,” she said. “That peanut butter? And that tire?” They all laughed, Bridget too. “And the flying spoon?”
“Spoons and Ammo!” Sienna declared, and they all killed themselves laughing.
“And Counselor Bob when she caught us?” Kendra said.
“The call of the pileated woodpecker!” Everyone shouted it out, but laughter wrecked their timing. I forced a smile.
“What’s the story?” I asked.
“Oh, you wouldn’t think it was funny,” said Kendra.
“No,” Sienna said. “You wouldn’t get it.”
“No,” Twyla agreed. “You had to be there.”
“Then let’s talk about something else,” Bridget said. “’Cause Rosie wasn’t there. Who’s started that Ancient Egypt project?”
“Remember Counselor Bob?” Kendra continued as if Bridget hadn’t spoken. “One’s groundsheet must never exceed ...”
“The perimeter of one’s tent!” shrieked Kendra, Sienna, Twyla and Nova, and they were in hysterics again. Bridget and I started talking about possible Ancient Egypt projects. We were about forty-eight seconds into our conversation when Devo arrived and raised a professional looking sandwich above his head. “Okay,” he called to everybody at the Lunch Exchange. “Prosciutto and provolone on focaccia. What am I bid?”
“Tuna?” offered one guy.
“Boring,” Devo declared.
“Chicken?” asked Twyla.
“Miracle whip or mayo?” Devo asked. Twyla looked to Bridget for the answer.
“Miracle whip,” Bridget said.
“Gag. Forget it. Doesn’t anybody have anything that’s actually edible? What’s this?” Without even asking, Devo took my smoked oyster sandwich and pulled up a corner of the bread. “Oh, God! Slugs?”
“They’re not slugs,” said Bridget.
“You know, I’ve seen some gross things at the Lunch Exchange, but that is the grossest,” Devo said. “Definitely the grossest. A slug sandwich. That’s right out of Fear Factor.”
“They’re smoked oysters,” I said. My ears were hot.
Devo flipped off the top piece of bread and held my sandwich open-faced on his palm. “Slugs? Slugs anybody?” he said, making the rounds to all the picnic tables. “Nice fresh slug sandwich? Come on, people! Somebody bid something! Chewed gum, maybe? Some pop backwash?”
He returned to our table and brought my sandwich right up to Sienna’s face. “How about you?”
“Eeeeewwwww,” she said, leaning away. Devo rushed my sandwich at Kendra, and she actually screamed.
“How do slugs taste?” Devo asked me.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, wishing that I was not a blusher. It is impossible to
“Or is it the texture you like? The little bursts of guts?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Kendra.
“Quite the delicacy,” Devo said, dropping my sandwich back on my waxed paper. A smoked oyster fell to the ground. He stamped on it and twisted his heel.
“You’re a jerk Devon,” Bridget said.
He faked a gasp. “Oh! She called me a jerk! Oh! My self esteem! Get me some counseling.”
“That would be a good idea,” Bridget said.
“Mine always are,” Devo said.
“So, you’re admitting you need counseling?” Bridget asked.
Devo nodded. “To cope with the horror of seeing you.”
“I’ll spare us both. Come on Rosie.” Bridget said, getting up from the picnic table. “Something stinks around here.”
“Uh,” Devo said. “That would be the slug sandwich.”
Bridget walked off, dark hair swinging, back perfectly straight. She looked great. I followed after her, all hot and red, a half sandwich in each hand, and my juice bottle under my arm. Kendra and Sienna and Twyla and Nova sat watching us go.
“That guy!” Bridget said. “He is such a troublemaker! You know he even says making trouble is his hobby?” “That’s weird,” I said.
“It’s mental,” Bridget agreed.
“Why does everybody like him then?”
“Everybody doesn’t like him.”
“I thought he was popular,” I said.
“He is.”
“Well, that means people like him, doesn’t it?”
“Not really,” said Bridget. “It’s not exactly the same thing.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference?” Bridget thought. “Hard to explain.”
“So why is he popular then?”
Bridget shrugged. “Looks cool, acts cool, has cool stuff.”
“What cool stuff?” I wanted to know.
“Like everything,” said Bridget. “He’s really rich. You must know that already: he brags about it enough. He’s got more stuff than you could even think up. His mom actually orders his recess snacks from some big-deal catering place in New York, if you can believe that. Designer junk food. He’s totally spoiled.”
I felt okay as long as I was with Bridget trashing Devo. Afterward, though, sitting in communication skills with no one but Miss Rankle to distract me, I was bothered again. While Miss Rankle talked about conjunctions, my worries formed a dark mass in my mind. The dark thought I had was this: if the kids at Windward gave me this much trouble about having a different sandwich, what were they going to do when they found out I lived in a treehouse?
NOTEBOOK: #13
NAME: Rosamund McGrady
SUBJECT: Very Own Style
It had been the nicest summer on record and the good weather continued the whole first month of school. Every night in September we ate dinner at the campfire, cooking on the metal grill over the embers. We were barbecuing chicken on the very last night of September when I felt something hit the top of my head. “It’s raining,” said Tilley, and suddenly it was. Rain pocked the dust around our campfire and the air was full of that rain-on-dust smell. We wrapped our half-grilled dinner in foil and put it in the dumbwaiter, along with some fire logs. As we climbed the ladder to the treehouse, the oak leaves quivered with rain. By the time we winched up our dinner and firewood, we were clinging wet. Inside the treehouse, all was in dull shadow, and the stove was cold. Mom dumped everything from the foil into a frying pan. Dad knelt down to build our first-ever fire in the cast-iron stove.
The rain fell harder. It pinged on our tin chimney out in the oak branches, and it drummed like fingers on the treehouse roof. I had a thought. “What am I going to wear in the rain,” I asked. “I’ve got no rain gear. Tilley either.”
“That’s what you think,” said Mom, lighting the camping stove.
“You got us some?” I didn’t get many new clothes, so I was interested.
“I did.”
“So are you gonna show us?”
“If you want,” said Mom, turning the heat down to low. She looked so pleased that I got all hopeful. That was dumb of me, but I’d temporarily forgotten that she was pleased by pretty much everything. She crouched at the drawer under her bunk and tugged something out.
“Ta DA!” She held up two capes. “Made them myself.”
The capes were a throbbin
g, chemical orange. They were made of plastic. As for their style, it had clearly been inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. As the orange capes pulsated at my eyeballs, Mom bragged that she had made them from a three-dollar tarp. She’d also made gaiters to keep our legs dry, she said, displaying four weird Scrooge McDuck sort of things. Because we had no sewing machine, she said, she’d just glued everything together.
“Has it ever occurred to you that Red Riding Hood was actually named after her rain gear,” I said.
“No,” Mom said. “It hasn’t.”
“And if I wear this in public, I’ll be Orange Plastic Hood. It will become my identity.”
“I don’t think so, Rosie.”
Tilley was looking at the capes too. “The little one’s mine, right?” she asked.
“Right,” Mom said, and she twirled the cape for Tilley to admire.
Tilley took a turn at twirling the cape herself. “Cool,” she said. Obviously she was completely starved for dress-up clothes. I, however, knew the cape was totally uncool, and I felt it was my sisterly duty to let her know.
“Tilley, it is so not cool,” I advised. “It’s hideous.”
It didn’t seem fair that I got such a big lecture just for trying to educate my little sister. We weren’t made of money, Mom said, and did I have any idea what it cost to buy a rain jacket and pants; and our capes had industrial mildew-retardant, which was important when your only closet was a shed; and she’d spent a lot of time making them when she had important research to do; and she thought I’d appreciate it but instead I was rude and surly and ungrateful; and why was I so insecure anyway, because didn’t I realize that all I had to do was believe that my cape was cool and everyone else would believe it too?
“Like the emperor’s new clothes,” Tilley suggested helpfully.
Mom pushed her eyebrows together. “Sort of,” she said and finally the lecture came to an end.
If we lived in a bigger place Mom and I would have stomped off to different rooms, but in the treehouse on a rainy evening all I could do was stomp two steps to the left while she stomped two steps to the right. All the tension stayed highly concentrated in that small space. Mom stood at the frying pan, attacking our dinner with a wooden spoon. I set the knives and forks on our checkered tablecloth with more force than was strictly necessary. After dinner I washed the dishes in our plastic washbasin, and hurled the steaming dishwater over the porch railing. I did my homework by kerosene lamp until climbing off to bed. That whole evening I barely spoke to Mom.
In the morning the roof was pattering and my porthole streamed with dribbles. I pulled back my curtain and got out of my bunk. The wooden ladder was cold on my bare feet, and I could see my breath. Through the belly door of the cast-iron stove, I saw cold, grey ash. There was no firewood in the treehouse; it was all out on the rainy porch. My feet were turning all white and ghoulish on the treehouse floor. I would be freezing by the time I got a fire lit. I climbed back into bed, and eventually Dad got up and made the fire.
The porch firewood was rain-soaked, and Dad’s fire was not a success. There was a lot of hissing and a lot of smoke, but not much flame or warmth. Mom made porridge on the camping stove and we cradled our bowls to warm our fingers. When it was time to leave for school the rain was still bouncing off the porch boards. I was already way too cold to let myself get wet. I put on my awful cape, and I even put on the bizarre gaiters. Vain choices about outerwear are for people with central heating. Tilley put on her own miniature cape.
Mom had calmed during the night. “Have a nice day girls,” she said, kissing us both on the tops of our heads. My kiss crackled like thunder through my plastic hood. Although I hated to admit it to myself, our rain gear was very practical. The weird gaiters kept our legs dry in the wet meadow grass. The hideous capes were waterproof, but roomy enough not to be sweaty. When Tilley and I got on our bikes, they sheltered our legs but didn’t interfere with pedaling. I began to feel a grudging appreciation of them as we made the long ride through the rain and the new mud.
When I arrived at Windward, Kendra was standing undercover with Sienna, Twyla and Nova. The instant I saw them, I hated my rain gear again. Waterproofness is not prized by kids who are only out in the rain between their heated SUVs and their heated schools. Fashion is. Kendra’s group was not dressed for rain. As I got off my bike they all looked me over, from hood to gaiters and hood again.
“Omigosh!” Kendra said as I approached the bike rack. “That’s so cute! Barbie clothes in life size!”
“Yeah, wow,” Sienna said. “So orange! Quite a fashion statement.”
“Yeah, Rosie definitely has her very own style,” Twyla said, and the three of them exchanged mean smiles.
I went into the cloakroom and took off my rain outfit. Instead of hanging it to dry out in public view, I folded it into my backpack. I sat at my desk. As the morning bell rang, Bridget slid into her desk across the aisle. I was glad to see her. She was Windward’s only friendly face.
It rained hard until after recess. Halfway through socials the rain stopped, and by the end of the class the sun beamed through the classroom windows. I felt ecstatically warm. Everybody else got hot and stripped down to T-shirts, but I kept my jacket on. I felt like heat was a precious commodity that I was storing up for cold times. The noon bell rang.
“Coming for lunch Rosie?” Bridget asked.
“Sure,” I said, wishing I could hang out with just Bridget and not her nasty friends.We headed for the Lunch Exchange. Nobody was sitting: the picnic tables were still too wet. Devo walked up to me, hands in pockets.
“Got a sec?” he asked me. Matt and Zach and Heath hung in the background.
“What?” I asked.
Devo sighed. “Okay. Friday? At lunch? Your sandwich? Just.... I felt like sort of a jerk later. For going on about it. Sorry, I guess, is what I’m saying.”
“What, are the Supervees making you say this or something?” I asked. He did seem sorry though.
“Nobody makes me do anything. I just thought later that it might have made you feel bad. Cause you’re new, and all.”
I nodded once.
“So I brought you something. To eat.”
I remembered Devo’s designer junk food from New York. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he nodded and he stuck out his arm. “Your favourite.” His hand was so close to my face that it took a moment to refocus on the glistening thing he held. It was a big green slug, waving its feelers in slow motion. It was the most revolting thing I’d ever seen close up. As I jumped back, I heard this wimpy little scream. I am sorry to say that it was me.
Matt and Zach and Heath were yukking it up, but Devo’s face hadn’t changed. “Help yourself,” he invited, all gracious. I didn’t know how he could hold that slug in his bare hand.
“Get that away from her,” Bridget demanded.
I backed away until the bricks of the school were right behind me.
“Come on, try it,” Devo said, and he chucked the slug underhand. His aim was perfect. The slug belly sucked onto my forearm and held. I thought I might pass out from horror, but I didn’t. I flapped my arm to get it off. Devo and Co. all found this hilarious, but the flapping had no effect on the slug. It clung to me. My brain pulsed. Should I flick it off? I’d have to touch it with my bare hand. Brush it against the building? I might squish its guts out. I flapped harder.
Bridget picked up a stick. She stepped forward with it cautiously, a bit at a time, as though she were going to tame a lion. She poked at the slug, and when she nudged it off my arm she leaped backward, as though the slug might make a lunge for her. I’m not criticizing though. I would have done exactly the same.
The slug hit the courtyard and curled up, traumatized by the poke, the fall and the grit. Devo bent to pick it up. I was not about to go through the same ordeal again. I ran.Feet pounded behind me.
“Try it,” Matt called.
“Eat it,” Zach giggled stupidly, all out of breath.
I wrenched open the door of the girls’ washroom and charged into sudden silence. With a paper towel I rubbed silver slime off my forearm. My knees were shaking. I was probably more traumatized than the slug. As the washroom door swung open I prepared to defend myself. But it was not my attackers. It was Bridget.“
You okay?” Her voice reverbed off the white tile walls.
“Yeah,” I said. “What a total psychopath Devo is,” she said.
“Total,” I agreed.
“Don’t go outside,” Bridget warned. “The three of them are right by the door.” There was no other exit from the washroom: the door to the hallway was locked because of Windward’s rule that students have to stay outside at lunch.
“Jerks,” I said.
“Total jerks. Let’s just stay here,” Bridget said, “so they waste their whole lunch hour waiting.”
“Okay.” I was touched by Bridget’s offer to keep me company in a smelly school washroom.
“Not much to do though, is there,” Bridget said.
“No.” I was worried that she’d get bored. “Ever notice your reflection in the paper towel dispenser? Lean close.”
Bridget put her face near the warped silver metal. “Hey yeah,” she said. “Cyclops eye.”
“Go back a bit.”
“Weird! Three eyes!”
We leaned from different angles, checking out our pear-shaped faces, and our hourglass faces, and our faces shaped like light bulbs. We were killing ourselves laughing when two Grade Eight girls came in. “Our turn,” one declared, and they crowded us away from the dispenser.
“Okay, I thought up something else,” Bridget said. “Take a paper towel and bunch it up and stand back here and aim for the spot that turns on the automatic hand dryer,” she said. “We can keep score with toilet paper. One piece per point.”
Before I knew it lunch hour was over. I was sorry to hear the one o’clock bell, and I think Bridget was too. We stayed a few minutes extra to break the tie. When we headed to our classroom everyone else in the class was already in the hallway waiting for the door to open. Kendra watched us approach with her eye corners. “Want to come to my place after school?” Bridget asked me. I guess Bridget thought that if we could have fun in a school washroom, we could have fun anywhere.