“So we can ask a question.” I snatch the tablet out of her lap and settle it onto my own. “What do you want to ask?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. I don’t have any questions.”
“It doesn’t have to be a real question. Last time I asked about how to woo my band partner. I don’t even play an instrument.”
She grabs a pillow and sets it in her lap like she misses having the tablet there. “That was you?”
“Good one, right? That was the first time he answered one of mine. I whooped so loud Mom thought I tripped and fell or something. So what should we ask? Maybe something about a bully? He’s pretty good at giving advice about that, though he’s better with the love stuff, don’t you think?”
She chews on her bottom lip. It’s astonishing that it isn’t chapped and bloody by now, considering how often she does that. “What if he answers our fake question instead of someone’s real one? That doesn’t seem right.”
I stop typing. “Okay, fair point. So we can ask a real question, then. What should we ask? Got any problems?”
She hugs the pillow to her chest and looks down. “No. Do you?”
The question shouldn’t throw me, since I came up with it in the first place, but it does. I glance at the chat, with its endless questions and jokes and ridiculousness scrolling by.
Last night’s party was just as much of a snore-fest as I thought it would be. Lindsey still hasn’t texted me. In fact, I haven’t gotten a single text from anyone the entire time I’ve been here. Brad used to text me all the time, but he broke up with me when I thought things were going great, and now his friends don’t text me either. And my stepdad—the only dad I’ve known—doesn’t want me because I’m not his real kid.
What could I possibly ask in this chat? Dear LumberLegs, is it my ADHD that’s scaring everyone away?
I force myself to grin at Kat. “Nope, me neither,” I say. “So, no questions, then.” Instead, I start typing into the chat box: TO THE RIFT!
Kat leans over to look. “Meg! You can’t!” She grabs the tablet from me before I can press enter.
I stare at her. “You’ve never started a chat spam before?”
“No! They’re horrible.”
“They’re not horrible. They’re power.” I grin as maniacally as I can. “Go on, do it. Press enter.”
“No,” she says, though she sounds less certain. “I’m not going to—”
“Do it. Do it, do it, do it.”
“I—fine!” She hesitates, her finger hovering over the touch keyboard, then she jams it into the enter button.
TO THE RIFT! appears in the chat.
And then, a split second later, the chat is filled with it as thousands of other viewers echo our battle cry—one of Legs’s most famous lines.
TO THE RIFT!!!!
TO THE RIFT!
to the rift
TO THE RIFT
to the RIFTTT
TO TEH RFIT
TO THE RIFT!
On-screen, Legs rolls his eyes. “Guys, not again.” He glares right at us, but his green eyes are sparkling.
I grin at Kat. “See. Power.”
“Shut up,” she says. Then she thrusts the tablet back at me, grabs a slice of cold pizza, and stares straight ahead at the TV screen. But the corners of her mouth are curved upward.
“To the rift!” I shout out loud to the room. Kat just shakes her head.
CHAPTER 4
KAT
ON MONDAY AT LUNCH, MEG APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE AND FALLS INTO stride beside me as I head to my locker. “You going to the caf?” she asks.
I wasn’t planning on going to the cafeteria. I was going to spend my lunch in the library, playing LotS. But here’s the thing: food isn’t allowed in the library. Which means I’d have to scarf down bites of my sandwich in the hallway and hope I didn’t stand out as that freak girl who eats like a friendless, famished hobo.
But here’s the other thing: Meg didn’t explicitly ask to eat with me. She might just be making small talk. Or she might just want to walk together, and then once we step inside the door, she’ll wave a cheery good-bye, leaving me standing alone on a cliff, staring at not just a pack of wolves, but the entire extended-family reunion. A horde. And no bow or arrows anywhere in sight.
“I’m thinking about it.” It’s the most ambiguous, noncommittal answer I can conjure up.
“Great. You getting your lunch from your locker? I have to grab mine. What’s your locker number? I can meet you there in a minute.”
That’s a lot of work to go to just to walk with someone and then ditch them. One cantaloupe . . . two be brave . . .
“It’s five ninety-two.”
“By the science labs? Got it. See you in a jiff.”
I don’t particularly like this plan—waiting alone in the hallway for an indeterminate amount of time like some hopeful, jilted loser—but she scurries off before I can suggest we meet at her locker instead. I needn’t have worried, though. I’ve barely lined my textbooks up on the top shelf before Meg is back, panting over my shoulder.
“Did you run?”
“I—uh—” She breaks off awkwardly, and when I look at her, her mouth hangs open a bit—though whether from trying to catch her breath or something else, I can’t tell. “Is that weird?” The question is part challenge, part worry. Part brave gladiator, part scared child.
All those glinting wolf eyes would have leered at her as she went flailing by. Yes, it’s weird. But also brave. “No,” I say. “It’s not.”
“I’m trying to be more normal,” she says. Maybe I should adopt that as my life mantra.
I needn’t have worried about the cafeteria either. Meg plops down at the nearest empty table and starts gabbing away to me about the livestream, reliving all the funniest moments, before I’m even sitting. Her chatter lasts through every slow-chewed bite of my sandwich and at least partway through my apple, and it’s distracting enough that it makes this whole sitting-in-the-cafeteria thing okay. Or mostly okay. Okay enough that I can handle it.
As I start on the baby carrots, though, her voice fades away, and I look up to see her surveying the room.
I follow her gaze around the place—the lunch line, the back windows, the throngs of people filling the cafeteria’s long tables. Nowhere in particular, it seems.
“Hey, do you know that guy over there? I keep seeing him around. The way he clenches his jaw when he’s thinking reminds me of Legs.” Her voice is airy, as if she’s trying to whisper but forgot to turn down the volume knob.
“Which one?” There are at least a hundred guys in here.
“Over there. Floppy brown hair, red shirt. White, but kind of tan. Boxers usually showing, though you can’t see that from here.”
That doesn’t help at all, but considering that I know the names of approximately two people in this entire school, the chances are that I don’t know him. So many people, and I don’t know any of them. I shake my head.
“I call him Boxer Boy. Because of the boxers thing. I mean, not to his face. I don’t actually know him. I think he’s a grade above us. But he’s got a jawline just like LumberLegs, so I bet he’s as hilarious as Legs. Well, no one’s as hilarious as Legs, but I bet he’s close. If I can’t marry Legs, Boxer Boy would definitely do.”
I scan the room again, searching for red shirts. Literal red shirts, not Star Trek crew members destined to die. There are so many people. So many annoyances attacking my brain. The prattling strangers, the fluorescent lights, the ever-present aroma of nacho cheese. One disco ball . . . two migraine . . . three stampede . . .
I was wrong; I can’t handle this. “Want to go to the library to work on our science project?” I ask, a little too abruptly.
Her head snaps back to me. “Oh hell no! Are you kidding me? It’s like a cardinal sin to do homework at lunchtime. The only homework I’ll do at lunchtime is history, and that’s not really homework, it’s just reading random books about epic and weird stuff.”
&n
bsp; “Well, when are we supposed to do it then? We still need a topic.”
“You can come over to my house this weekend. You said yourself that we have lots of time.”
I’ve never said that—she’s the one who repeated it as she settled into our home like she owned it—but the bustle of the cafeteria and the daunting thought of going to Meg’s unfamiliar house and the smell of that plastic cheese are all too loud and jumbled in my head to say that. Four unexplored territory . . . five fluorescent lights . . . six science project . . .
“Fine. Any chance you want to get out of here and go for a walk then?”
“Yes!” she practically shouts, and leaps to her feet, then sits right back down again. “Sorry, it’s just—no one ever wants to go for a walk at lunch. They just sit around blabbing on and on.”
I don’t bother pointing out the irony in her statement. “Well, let’s go then,” I say, rising. I gather the remains of my lunch. I should finish the baby carrots to prevent heart disease and eyesight deterioration, but sometimes I chew and chew and chew carrots to mulch in my mouth and still can’t figure out how to swallow them. I head toward the door, and Meg scurries after me and snatches the bag of carrots out of my hand. She pops one into her mouth like a gumdrop. “Don’t choke on that,” I warn her. “I don’t know the Heimlich.”
“Can’t I just throw myself over a chair or something?”
Okay, I lied—I do know the Heimlich, at least in theory. But we’re almost out of this noisy place, and I’m not stopping to explain.
I shrug and Meg pops another carrot in her mouth as we make it out the door.
We spend the rest of the lunch hour wandering about the school yard, walking laps around the football field and parking lot. Or at least, I walk. Meg’s walk is more of a saunter—sometimes forward, sometimes backward facing me, sometimes almost skipping around me like those whirling green shells in MarioKart.
It’s admittedly not the worst way to spend lunch. Better than being in the caf. Maybe tomorrow I’ll eat my lunch outside before going to the library to play LotS.
But at the end of lunch, Meg walks with me to my locker, then says, “See you tomorrow! Same time, same space! No, place. You know what I mean.” Then she’s off running down the hall.
So . . . I guess this is a thing now. Which shouldn’t make me smile, but for some reason it does.
LEGENDS OF THE STONE
[]Sythlight has entered the waterlands.
KittyKat: I like your new cloak
[]Sythlight: Thanks. I designed it myself.
KittyKat: really? how?
[]Sythlight: You can upload your own textures to the online profile. Not many people do it because it’s uber complex.
KittyKat: well it looks amazing. I <3 the black hood.
[]Sythlight: Thanks. I did one with a red hood too . . . couldn’t decide which looked better. Want to give me your opinion? www.blog.sythlight.com/art
[]Sythlight: So what do you think?
[]Sythlight has entered the barrenlands.
[]Sythlight: Found another rift.
[]Sythlight: You still there?
KittyKat: sorry, got distracted by all the stuff on your page. this artwork is incredible. I love the painting with the rocks and the darkening sky and the little duckling. it feels lonely. in a good way.
[]Sythlight: Thanks . . . I think. I did up that one for my final project last year.
KittyKat: I love it. what are you working on now?
[]Sythlight: For art class? Nothing. My dad thinks that since I’m a senior, I should be taking all “serious” classes to increase my chances of getting into university.
KittyKat: aren’t your grade ten and eleven classes more important? since they won’t even see this year’s marks until after you’re accepted?
[]Sythlight has entered the waterlands.
[]Sythlight: Don’t tell my dad that. He’ll figure out some way to create a time machine, go back in time, and retroactively remove me from grade ten and eleven art. Then, poof, that painting will disappear into nonexistence.
KittyKat: noooooooooo! not the painting! not nonexistence!
[]Sythlight: lol
[]Sythlight: waterling behind you
KittyKat: thanks
[]Sythlight: So which do you like better?
KittyKat: what?
[]Sythlight: The hoods . . . black or red?
KittyKat: oh right
KittyKat: black
KittyKat: the red is good too, but the black is particularly . . . I don’t know . . . . . . dark?
[]Sythlight: Profound. :P
KittyKat: shut up. I’m not an artist. how am I supposed to know what to say about artwork?
[]Sythlight: You don’t draw or do crafty stuff or anything?
KittyKat: nope, I can barely draw a circle
[]Sythlight: lol. You have other hobbies then?
KittyKat: yes. gaming. duh.
[]Sythlight: Ha ha. Guess we should do some of that, then, eh?
KittyKat: yes. stop distracting me with your airy aristocratic painterly ways. to the rift!
KittyKat has entered the barrenlands.
[]Sythlight: To the rift!
[]Sythlight has entered the barrenlands.
KAT
GRANDDAD’S FAVORITE GAME IS CHESS. WHICH IS A PROBLEM. NOT BECAUSE I don’t know how to play—I do—or because Granddad is beating me—he is, but only barely—but because we shouldn’t really be playing at all. I can hear my mother’s interrogation already.
“So, what did you do to help Granddad clean out his old house this week, darling daughter?”
“Um, well, I let him beat me at chess. To get his morale up, you know?”
“Katherine Putnam Daley,” she’ll say with a sigh, “you’re supposed to be packing and cleaning, not playing chess.” My parents want to get Granddad’s house ready to put on the market, since he lives with us now, but Granddad won’t let anyone work on it unless he’s there to supervise. Somehow I got put on the rotation, so I’m stuck here for the evening in this house whose insides are being stripped away until not even memories can live here. Alone with Granddad in this half-empty shell of a place.
When he asked me to play, I thought of saying, “No, sorry. You sit there and tell me which of your treasured belongings we should throw in the trash so we can sell this house full of a lifetime of memories and you can prepare for your impending death.” Really, what else could I say except, “Okay”?
I glance around Granddad’s tiny living room while he thinks about his next move. The kitchen’s been packed up entirely, leaving only a skeleton, but the living room still looks the same as it did when we visited a couple of years ago. The same as it did every time we drove out to visit before that. A worn, flowered couch. An entire wall of jam-packed bookshelves. A piano that I’ve never seen anyone play. And atop the piano, a framed photo of child-sized Luke and me, dressed in matching red shirts and black pants, sitting in front of a Christmas tree.
That was the year Granddad gave me a doll for Christmas. She had long, dirty-blond hair, just like my own, and she came with not one but three different dresses, and two pairs of shoes. I’ve always loved dolls—tiny, perfect humans who don’t try to talk to me or yell or expect me to be anything I’m not—but she was my favorite. She still sits on a shelf beside my bed.
The best part wasn’t that first Christmas, but every birthday and Christmas for almost a decade, when Granddad gave me outfit after outfit for her. I think the first was a frilly bubble-gum-pink tutu and a sequined top. After opening the gift, I escaped up to my room, where I dressed my doll, then dragged a fluffy pink skirt out of my own closet. In my birthday photo, the two of us—my doll and me—matched.
I sometimes wonder if my mom had a chat with Granddad about gender stereotyping, because after that there was a real mishmash—navy overalls and a jean jacket, a silky black evening dress, doctor’s scrubs with a mini stethoscope, shorts and a soccer jersey.
Luke
got something different from Granddad every time—a video game, roller skates, some levitating magnets, a Hardy Boys book—like Granddad’s feelings for him were always changing. My gift from Granddad was always predictable, and always perfect. As I opened each package and carefully smoothed out the outfit inside, I was conscious—in the way that one is conscious that the sun will rise tomorrow—that Granddad loved me best.
I study him now as he considers the chessboard—head poking out of his sweater-vest like a turtle’s out of its shell, eyebrows bushy with almost as much hair as he has left on his head. His jaw rises and falls as if he is chewing a wad of tobacco, though I’m pretty sure his mouth is empty.
When I was younger, I thought the reason I was too scared to talk to Granddad was because I only saw him a couple of times a year. But now I see him every day, and I still never know what to say.
That’s not quite right. I know what I want to say, I just don’t say it. My heart thumps loud enough to drown out the words in my head. I want to ask him about the doll clothes, where he got them, how he came up with the idea, but I don’t. I can’t.
One pink tutu . . . two corduroy jacket . . .
No, that’s enough. I’m being ridiculous.
“Granddad, where did you get all those doll outfits you gave me?” I replay the words in my head. Yes, the sentence was coherent. Yes, the words made sense.
“My friend Margaret,” he replies, looking up at me. “She lived next door. I told her the plan when I bought the doll, and she was excited to help. Measured the doll before I wrapped it up so she could make sure the outfits would fit her. She loved to sew. I’d tell her my idea and we’d go fabric shopping together. Though really, beyond the initial idea for each outfit, I had very little say.” He chuckles hoarsely.
“Why did you stop?” I ask, though I don’t really mean to. I already know the answer. It’s obvious—I got older. Of course he would stop.
That’s not what he says, though. “She died,” he says simply. “A few years ago. Heart attack.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I shouldn’t have asked. I should have picked up on the past tense. Lived next door. Loved to sew.
Kat and Meg Conquer the World Page 5