by Nancy N. Rue
“Tyler’s definitely outside the box,” Alyssa muttered.
Ms. Dalloway gave her a look that could’ve blistered the paint off a wall. Alyssa snapped her face away.
Meanwhile, I was starting to feel like a painting that nobody could decide where to hang.
“Can I say something?” I said.
“Talk to us,” Patrick said.
“I want my picture to convey that I’m passionate — “ Alyssa exploded into a laugh that spewed spit onto the back of Ms. Dalloway’s neck. A laugh she didn’t even try to disguise.
“All right — you, you, and you,” Ms. Dalloway said, pointing at Alyssa, Hayley, and Joanna in turn. “Out in the hall until I call you.”
Alyssa nodded to the other two girls, but she didn’t leave without giving Egan a hard look. If he made it until the end of the day still in the Ruling Class, I would be dumbfounded.
When they were gone, Egan glanced at me, face so drained every freckle stood out in bas-relief. What did he want me to do about it?
“You were saying you’re passionate?” Patrick said.
“Yes,” I said. I refocused on him. “I’m passionate about making the prom available to everybody, so even if you don’t have a bank account the size of Montana you can still go and make it special and not feel like you’re pond scum because you didn’t arrive in a coach and four.”
Patrick grinned at Ms. Dalloway and Egan. “Don’t you love the way she talks?”
“Yes,” Ms. Dalloway said, voice dry. “It’s called being literate.”
“Okay, so I have an idea,” Patrick said. “Egan, do you mind, buddy?”
“Go ahead,” Egan said. His voice cracked. “Let’s put her on that ladder they use to get the books off the top shelves — you know the one I mean?” Ms. Dalloway nodded. “Go on.”
“She could be up there, like, looking down on the way things are with an expression on her face, like, ‘I see how it is and it’s about to change.’ “ He grinned at me. “What do you think?”
“No offense, but nobody’s gonna get that,” Egan said. “He wasn’t asking you,” Ms. Dalloway said. Patrick said again, “What do you think?” “Actually,” I said, “that feels good to me.” Valleri would’ve been proud.
It was easier to talk about than to pull off, but after a couple of tries, Ms. Dalloway got me and the lighting and the angle just right and took what seemed like fifty shots.
“I’m not as good at this as Mr. Linkhart,” she kept saying.
I personally was ecstatic that he wasn’t the one doing it. He’d be in a puddle of his own perspiration by now. I was no slouch in the sweat department myself when we were done. Even my hall pass was damp when I handed it to Ms. Dalloway so I could go to History.
“You still have the interview to do,” she said.
Ugh. I’d forgotten that part. “Where do I go for that?” I said.
She nodded toward a table. “Over there. Patrick will take care of you.”
I looked up to see the eyes practically doing the polka.
“He’s doing the interview?” I whispered.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “Try not to drool too much.” Then she shook her head at me. “I’m sorry, Tyler. You’re not the drooling type. Thank you for being a good sport about all this. It’ll be over soon.”
I felt strangely deflated as I went over to Patrick, which made it easier for Alyssa to nearly mow me down on her way to the camera.
“Well,” she said, “were you ‘passionate’?”
“Define ‘passionate,’ “ I said.
“Don’t you ever give it a rest?”
“What?” I said. “My brain?”
“Alyssa, are we going to do this or not?” Ms. Dalloway said. She was back to her chronic fatigue voice.
Alyssa huffed at me and flounced off. When I turned back to Patrick, he was watching, without the grin. Great. Just when I was thinking he might have an intelligent thought in his head, I had to go and insult one of his women. I was not good at any of this.
I sat down across from him and proceeded to chew off the lip gloss.
“You okay?” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Are you okay? Did Lyssa say something witchy?”
“Witchy?” I said.
He did grin then. “Are we just gonna sit here and ask each other questions?”
“I thought you were supposed to ask the questions,” I said. “Isn’t this an interview?”
“Yeah. I’m supposed to ask you why you want to be prom queen.”
“I don’t.” “I know.”
My mouth came open.
“So I’m not going to ask you that,” he said. “I want to know about your idea of making the prom available for everybody.”
“And then what are you going to do with it?” I said.
He blinked. “I’m going to write it up for the article.”
“The way I say it, or the way you hear it?”
Patrick sat back, and the grin evolved into what might be an interested expression — although I still wasn’t ready to believe it. “Dude — that’s a great question. Both, I guess. I mean, I’ll try to make it the way you say it, but it’s going to come through me, so my filter will probably show. You want to look at it before I turn it in?”
“Oh,” I said. “Is that, like, normal procedure?”
“No. But what about this is ‘normal’? That’s why I’m diggin’ it.”
So he was into it because it was outside the box …
Uh, wasn’t that what I dug too?
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what I’m thinking.”
As I went into my spiel, he bent over a spiral notebook and wrote furiously with a ballpoint. Every so often he stopped and chewed the end of it while he watched and nodded and then went back to scribbling. He asked a couple of questions, like —
“Why do you think people spend so much money on one night?”
“Why not just outlaw the prom altogether?”
They were things I had to think about before I answered them. I hated to admit it, but it was the most challenged I’d been in a week — even at my own dinner table.
“Cool,” Patrick said when Ms. Dalloway signaled for him to move it along.
She was already photographing Joanna, and Alyssa was visibly fuming several feet away.
“I’ll show you this tomorrow,” he said to me. “You want to meet at lunch?”
“Hello,” Alyssa said. “You have plans for lunch tomorrow.”
If she narrowed her eyes any tighter she wouldn’t be able to see. I stood up briskly.
“That’s okay,” I said. “You can just email it to me. Tbonning at gmail dot com.”
“How original of you,” Alyssa said. “No — how passionate.”
I turned to go and almost plowed into Egan. He was holding a clipboard.
“I just need to know who your escort’s going to be,” he said.
“Escort?” I said.
“You have to have a guy escort you in the prom queen presentation. It’s tradition.”
“Oh.”
“It can just be whoever you’re going to prom with.” “Oh,” I said again. Was I waxing eloquent or what? “If you don’t know yet, you can just let me know when you do.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Alyssa didn’t even try to hide her snickers as I escaped from the library. The worst part: somebody else was laughing with her, charming as ever.
I charged down the hall, wondering where my hooded sweatshirt was when I needed it. At least I could hide behind my enormous history textbook this block — especially since we probably had a substitute —
I stopped dead in the classroom doorway and stared at the person standing in front of the room. We definitely had a sub.
“Hi, Tyler,” she said.
“Hi,” I said, and slid into my seat.
Next to me, Matthew roused himself from slumber and looked through his shaggy hair a
t me. “Do you know her?” he said. “Yeah,” I said. “She’s my sister.”
At the dinner table, I decided that gravity had taken over the day. Once it had started downhill, it wasn’t going to stop on its own, and I obviously had no power to do it.
“That is excellent news, baby,” Dad said to Sunny, bobbing his head like a Muppet.
She had just announced her gig as Mr. Linkhart’s sub and was basking in the beams coming off my father’s face. Even my mother looked pleased. Of course. Sunny wasn’t crying into the gravy boat.
“It was just for one day, but it puts me in the system,” Sunny said. “And I have to say, it felt good to be in front of a classroom.”
“How did it feel to you, Ty?”
I looked at my father. “Are you talking to me?”
He grinned. “You’re the only ‘Ty’ at the table.”
“It isn’t actually fair to ask her,” Sunny said. Well, thank you.
“She wasn’t there for most of the period.” But you shouldn’t have. “Why was that?” Mom said.
“I had to do something in the library,” I said quickly. “Could somebody pass the rolls?”
My mother did, still looking at me with one eyebrow raised.
“Well, what I like,” Dad said, “is that you have a high point today, baby. Let’s raise our glasses to that.”
We lifted our water glasses. I thought of dumping mine in my lap so I could excuse myself from the table, but Dad leaned toward me and said, “I want to hear your high, Ty.”
I would have taken a pass, but I could feel my mother’s eyes still on me. And lying was never an option. It wasn’t one of my core competencies.
“I had an interesting conversation,” I said.
“With …” Mom said.
“This guy.”
“We need more information,” Dad said. His face was still shining with Sunny light, and I was sure he didn’t catch the edge in my voice. My mother, on the other hand, apparently did.
“His name is Patrick,” I said. “We were discussing equality.”
“Excellent. And what conclusion did you come to?”
“We didn’t,” I said. “We’re going to continue by email. Which, I really need to get to. Does anybody mind if I …”
I nodded toward the door. My father’s face fell, and Sunny looked down at her plate.
“It’s family time,” Mom said. “We’d rather you stayed.” She looked at my father. “What was your high?”
Three guesses. I chewed heartily on my salad so I wouldn’t hear the answer.
One answer I did need was why I was having such a huge problem with Sunny when I already had about six other things to worry about. I tangled with that when I was finally allowed to escape to my room.
She herself said being Mr. Linkhart’s sub was just for one day. Even if she got called in regularly, most of my teachers didn’t miss days. Mr. Zabaski had never been absent from anything in his life, I was sure.
I flopped down on the window seat and stared dismally at the cherry tree that even in the gathering dusk was bright enough to cheer up Sylvia Plath, the single most depressing poet I had ever read. I wasn’t cheered, because I pretty much knew why Sunny was, as Mr. Linkhart himself often drawled, getting on my last nerve.
It wasn’t just that she was so emotional and I wasn’t. It was because my father was coddling her like she was a motherless puppy, while I was expected to work everything out in my mind and practically put together a PowerPoint presentation for every problem I faced.
But then, wasn’t that the way I went about things naturally anyway? Why did I suddenly want him to ask me how I felt about me?
Someone knocked lightly on my door.
“Tyler?” Mom said.
“Come in?” I said.
She opened the door a crack. “Was that a question or an answer?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know if you just wanted to tell me something or —”
“No,” she said, crossing to my bed. “I want you to tell me something.”
When were we going to get to the bottom of this day so it couldn’t go down any farther?
She sat on the edge of my bed, and I had to look down slightly from the window seat to meet her eye to eye. Even at that, she had control. No wonder people got better when they were in her care. They didn’t dare stay sick.
“You want to tell me what’s going on with you?” she said.
Funny. Now that somebody was asking, I didn’t know how to answer. I gave it a shot. “Okay — “ I said. “Sunny gets on my nerves. But I’ll get over it. She has a job now. Kind of. That should help.”
“Except that she’s encroaching on your territory.”
I considered that. “It’s not that. I just can’t get away from her — and I don’t know why it bothers me yet. I’ll get back to you on that.”
I waited for her to leave. Intimate talks weren’t a normal part of our mother-daughter relationship, and she looked as uncomfortable with it as I was. While I was starting to get sweat beads on my upper lip, she was rubbing her arms like she was cold.
“I was thinking more about your general attitude,” Mom said.
“Like my ‘tone’?” I said — and then wanted to tear my tonsils out.
“We could start with that,” she said. “I know there’s a fine line between sarcastic wit and disrespect, but you’ve always stayed on the right side of it.”
I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t shut out Mr. Baumgarten, and now her, telling me I couldn’t express what I felt.
“Tyler.” Mom’s voice was sharp. “Look at me.”
I did. Her skin was taut across the bridge of her nose. The dimples were absent.
“If you’re mad about something, let’s have it. We don’t do the anger-ridden adolescent around here.”
“But we do the depressed young adult really well.”
Mom sat up tall — and then someone pounded on the door and opened it before I could even think “There’s already one too many people in here.”
Sunny flew in, eyes shining, smile pushing her cheekbones into points.
“Guess what?” she said.
Do tell.
“Mr. Baumgarten just called.” She looked at Mom.
“That’s —”
“I know who he is,” Mom said.
“Mr. Linkhart has to have quadruple bypass surgery. Not that that’s good news —
I mean, it’s horrible for him. But they want me to be his long-term sub!”
“For how long?” Mom said.
I already knew the answer before Sunny said, “For the rest of the school year!” On a day like this, what else could it be?
“I am so jazzed,” Sunny said. I didn’t even get to attempt an appropriate reaction, because she turned immediately to me. “I promise I won’t cramp your style, Tyler. I even asked Mr. Baumgarten if it was appropriate, since you’re in the honors class.”
I sucked in air.
“And?” Mom said.
“He said if you gave me any trouble to send you his way.” Sunny laughed. “He has kind of a dry sense of humor. Anyway — I think this is a real turning point for me.”
“Have you told your father yet?” Mom said.
Now that was a ridiculous question.
Sunny nodded happily. “He’s opening a bottle of sparkling cider. He wants us all in his study for a toast.”
“I really — “ I started to say.
“Tyler’s buried in homework,” Mom said. “But I’ll be right down.”
Sunny bounced out of the room and I turned gratefully to my mother.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I didn’t do it for you,” she said. “I thought Sunny’s angst dragged on too long too, but now that she’s moving in a direction, she needs support. I’m excusing you from the celebration until you can do it without a sour look on your face.”
When she was gone I turned to my reflection in the window. Sour. Was that what it looked like on the
outside when you were being split open on the inside?
I didn’t actually see “sour” in the glass. I saw a sheen of perspiration on my face — and, come to think of it, I felt it on the back of my neck and behind my knees. And it wasn’t just frustration oozing from my pores.
I got up and went to the radiator, but it was iron-cold. The air on that side of the room was actually chilly, but the seat of my jeans was so warm you’d have thought I’d been perched on top of the stove.
Still feeling my rump to make sure I wasn’t losing it, I went back to the window seat and lifted the cushion. Heat came up in a rush like the explosion in the chemistry lab. I stuck my hand into it, and my palm touched the heat source. Something leathery.
I drew my hand back and peered in. It was that book Candace lifted from the bus. I’d stuck it under there and forgotten about it.
I remembered it being warm before, but why was it now giving off heat like — like nothing I’d ever felt?
Moving with caution, I touched it again, and when it didn’t burn my flesh off I pulled it out and sat with it on the seat. Now the warmth was in my hands.
Seriously — there had to be a logical explanation for this. It would only be a matter of time before I discovered it. The first step was obviously to open the thing and see what it said, but I was having a hard time bringing myself to do it. Tyler Bonning, afraid of what she was going to find?
Not likely.
I opened the cover and pressed my palm on the first page. I was surprised — and relieved — to feel coolness against my skin. But there was still something warm in there …
Curiosity won out over feeling ridiculous. I flipped through the pages until I came to one that exuded the same heat that had previously burned my backside. The words seemed to rise up to meet me.
You like to have things put to you straight, and that’s the way you prefer to shoot too.
Despite the warmth, I shivered. That was me to a T.
But there are some things that won’t be explained in facts and statistics. You can’t google them. They’re things you can’t know until you live them. If you’re willing to accept that, this book will help you experience your way into what you want to know.
I stared at the words. Who said I wanted to know something?
YOU did.
When?