The Moment Keeper

by Buffy Andrews

  “So why’s he in earth science and not bio?”

  “He took bio last year so that’s why he’s taking earth science this year,” Emma explains.

  “That’s backward.”

  “Whatever. Can’t you just be happy that he touched me?”

  “I’m happy. I’m happy. I’m also hungry.”

  Olivia and Emma go to the à la carte line and pick up ham and cheese sandwiches and fruit salads.

  On their way to a table, several of the girls on Emma’s cheerleading squad wave her over.

  A tall girl with big silver hoop earrings moves over. “Sit here, Emma. We cheerleaders stick together – on and off the field.”

  Emma looks at Olivia, then back at the girls. “That’s OK. I’m sitting with Libby.”

  “But she’s not one of us,” says the petite girl whose breasts are so big you’d think she’d have trouble staying upright.

  “It’s OK,” Olivia whispers to Emma. “If you want to sit with them.”

  Emma whispers back, “No. I’m sitting with you.”

  Emma looks at her teammates. “Maybe another time.” She follows Olivia to a table on the other side of the cafeteria.

  After Rachel moved, I ate lunch alone. My only companion was whatever book I was reading. Mostly they were romances that I picked up at the used bookstore really cheap. I’d read the books and imagine I was the heroine. The lives I read about in books always seemed to be better than my life. At least the girl always seemed to have someone who loved her. Me? There was Gram and that was it. Not that I wasn’t grateful for Gram’s love, but it wasn’t the same as a boy’s.

  One day, a guy I had never seen before approached my lunch table. He was blistering hot. He had dark eyes and dark hair that fell to his shoulders. He wore a gray T-shirt that was tight around his bulging biceps. A barbed-wire tattoo wrapped his left arm.

  “Mind if I sit here?” he asked.

  “Help yourself. There’s plenty of room. It’s not like there’s a crowd fighting to sit with me.”

  I returned to reading my book and flipped the page.

  “That book good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Chase, by the way. Just moved here.”

  “Hi. I’m Sarah. Where’d you move from?”

  “California.”

  “So what made you come to the east coast?”

  “My dad’s job.”

  Just then Tracey Carmichael and one of her minions strutted over, swinging their hips and sticking out their chests.

  “Hi, Chase,” said Tracey, throwing back her long black silky hair. “Why don’t you sit at our table? You’ll be more, uh—” she glared at me and then smiled at him “—comfortable there.”

  Chase looked at me. “Mind if I move? Since you’re reading your book and all.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Chase picked up his tray and followed Tracey to her table where the girls slid down the bench to make room for him. I should have known that Tracey would have her claws into a guy so smokin’ hot. Well, at least I had the guys in my books. Fiction for me was definitely better than real life.

  “I haven’t seen much of Emma lately,” Elizabeth tells Olivia. They’re on their way to Olivia’s dance class.

  “Me neither. We’re both always busy. I’m usually at dance and now that she’s on the cheerleading squad she’s either at practice or at games.”

  “Still, you used to see her more. Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah. Everything’s great. We’re supposed to go to the movies Saturday.”

  It hasn’t been great. Ever since the cafeteria incident, the girls on Emma’s squad have tried to alienate Olivia, pulling Emma away every chance they get. Olivia might be at the top of the school food chain, but she’s not a cheerleader so it doesn’t count.

  Olivia’s phone rings.

  “This is Emma now.”

  Olivia answers the phone.

  “Yeah. (pause) OK. (pause) No, I’m not mad. (double pause) Go to the party. We can go to the movies another time. (pause) I’m sure.(pause) OK. Bye.”

  “What was that all about?” Elizabeth asks.

  “Emma got invited to a party Saturday and wants to go to the party instead of to the movies with me.”

  “Who’s having the party? Can’t you go, too?”

  “Are you kidding, Mom? One of the cheerleaders is having the party and only cheerleaders are allowed to go. Well, cheerleaders and football players. No one else.”

  “I see,” Elizabeth says. “And how do you feel about that?”

  “How do you think I feel? Crummy. My best friend just ditched me to hang with her cheerleader friends. So, yeah, Mom. I don’t feel so great. Everything in Emma’s life revolves around cheerleading. There’s no room for me anymore.”

  Elizabeth pulls into the parking lot. “Sorry you’re going through this, Lib. I hate to see you hurting. I wish I could make it all better.”

  “Well, you can’t, Mom. I’m not a little girl anymore. You just can’t kiss my boo-boos and make them all better.”

  “You’re at dance now. Try not to think about it. Concentrate on what you love most of all.”

  Olivia grabs her dance bag from the back seat, opens the door and gets out. “See you in a couple hours, Mom. And don’t worry. I never let anything get in the way of dance. I’d die before I let that happen.”

  Chase never sat at my lunch table again. It wasn’t long after he started sitting at Tracey’s table that they became an item. One day, Chase stopped to talk to me in the hallway. It was just small talk. I think he asked me what book I was reading. Tracey came around the corner and saw us.

  She threw back her long black mane and strutted up to us and kissed Chase, taking a little longer than usual for added emphasis. She gave me the death stare, and I knew she would get me back somehow, some day.

  It ended up being that day.

  I hated gym class. I was the most uncoordinated girl in the entire ninth grade. I couldn’t dribble a basketball, hit a softball, kick a soccer ball or get anywhere close to being graceful on the balance beam or uneven bars.

  Our gym teacher, Mrs. Montgomery, a middle-aged round woman whose claim to fame was that she won the county tennis championship thirty years ago, made us take showers. She’d herd us into that blue and while tile shower lined with showerheads and we’d get sprinkled and run back out.

  I was embarrassed by my body. My right breast was noticeably larger than my left and I always felt the girls’ stares and heard their giggles.

  When I dashed out of the shower that day, my stuff was gone. I was naked. Dripping wet with no towel, no clothes, no backpack, nothing.

  Tracey’s locker was a few feet down from mine. She wiggled on her designer jeans. “Missing something?” She laughed.

  I covered my privates with my arms and hands the best I could and flashed the meanest look I could muster. My nose flared and my eyes narrowed in on her blemish-free face.

  “Look, girls,” Tracey said. “Little Miss Goodwill can’t dry off or get dressed. Her stuff is missing.”

  “Where’d you put it, you bitch?”

  “Me?” She pulls her silk shirt over her black-widow-spider head. “You couldn’t pay me to touch your icky, stinky, second-hand clothes.”

  The other girls laughed.

  The bell rang and they left, laughing, and I was stuck naked in the locker room. I sat down and cried.

  “Is someone in here?” Mrs. Montgomery called.

  I buried my mouth into my upper arm to muffle my noise. I heard her walk down the center aisle of the locker room. She apparently turned around because the next thing I knew the lights went off and I was alone, huddled in the corner. Naked.

  Chapter 23

  “So are you going to the homecoming?” Lexie asks Olivia on the bus ride home.

  Lexie is Olivia’s neighbor. She’s a year older. She moved into the ivy-covered stone home down the street. The one with the circular driveway and the
three-tier granite fountain with scallop edges in the front.

  “Mom asked me the same thing this morning,” Olivia says. “No one’s asked me yet.”

  “Me neither. But at my old school, you didn’t have to be asked. Last year, I went with a bunch of girls. I mean, who needs guys to have a good time, right?”

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “Totally. My dad rented us a limo. It was the coolest limo I had ever been in. Actually, it was more like a bus that had been totally tricked out. Black leather lounges and chairs and a huge flat screen on the wall. Dad had it stocked with soda and snacks. The driver drove around for an hour and then we had dinner at the country club before going to the dance. After the dance, the limo driver picked us up and Dad had him stop for ice-cream sundaes on the way home. It was so much fun.”

  “I’ve never been in a limo before.”

  “Well, it’s way fun. I’m sure my dad would rent a limo for us if I asked him. We could go together. Anyone else you’d want to ask? What about your friend Emma?”

  “I heard that she’s going with one of the football players.”

  “I didn’t realize you two weren’t talking,” Lexie said. “I mean, I knew things weren’t great, but I didn’t know it had gotten to that point.”

  Olivia had filled Lexie in on the entire saga soon after they met. She liked Lexie. They had a lot in common, including that they were both adopted. Lexie was born in China, though.

  “We don’t have much to talk about anymore,” Olivia says. “All she wants to talk about are the girls on her cheerleading squad and the guys on the football team. She’s changed. Or maybe I have.”

  The bus turns into their street, lined with towering maple trees. They go about two blocks until the bus puts on its flashing yellow then red lights and stops. A red stop sign swings out from the side.

  Olivia follows Lexie off the bus. They walk in front of the bus, pausing to look both ways in case an idiot decides to ignore the flashing red lights and stop sign. It happened the other week at a stop across town and a kindergartner was injured. Luckily the bus driver got the license-plate number and they caught the jerk.

  When Olivia and Lexie get to the other side, the bus retracts its stop sign, turns off the lights and pulls away.

  “So, are you going to think about it?” Lexie asks.

  “Sure,” Olivia says. “Maybe I’ll say something to Mom tonight on our way to dance. See what she thinks.”

  I never went to a homecoming dance. No guy ever asked me and, at my school, if you weren’t asked by a guy, you didn’t go. The idea of a bunch of girls — or guys — going as a group was a more recent development in the history of high school homecomings. Besides, I wouldn’t have had anything to wear. And I certainly could never ask Grandma to buy me a fancy dress for just one night. And the costs didn’t stop there. Even if you did your own hair and nails and didn’t tan or buy the photo package, you still had to pay for the ticket and flowers. That alone was more than we could afford.

  Tracey Carmichael had to rub it in that she and Chase were going to the homecoming. Her dad did the whole limo thing, too. Only hers was going to be a white stretch limousine with a fiber-optic starlight. I knew this because she made it a point one day to stop and tell me as she and Chase were walking by. I’m sure she waited until Chase was with her.

  Tracey stopped in front of my locker as I was bent over getting the books I needed. “What color’s your dress?”

  I stood up and turned around. “Excuse me?”

  “Your homecoming dress. What color is it?”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Why not?”

  I knew that Tracey knew the answer to that question and the only reason she asked it was because she wanted to embarrass me in front of Chase.

  “I have something else that night,” I lied.

  “Glad to hear it’s not because you don’t have a date,” Chase said. “Because I’m sure there are a ton of guys who would love to take you.”

  Tracey jabbed Chase in his side with her boney elbow. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She emphasized the “that”.

  “I’m just sayin’ that Sarah’s a pretty girl and there are probably lots of guys who would take her,” Chase explained.

  Uh-oh. I was in trouble again. Chase said that word “pretty”. I knew that he was only trying to be polite, but Tracey was going to make me pay – again.

  “What do you think of going to homecoming with a group of girls?” Olivia asks Elizabeth while driving to dance. Now that Olivia trains at the most prestigious dance academy in the state, there’s always plenty of time to talk on the hour drive there and back.

  “Sounds fun to me,” Elizabeth says. “A daughter of a lady who works for me did that. She said they had more fun than if they had gone with boys they barely knew. Apparently guys go in groups, too. So who would you go with? Emma?”

  “Emma has a date. She’s going with a football player. He’s a junior.”

  “Really?” Elizabeth says. “I’m surprised her parents let her date someone so much older.”

  “Not everyone is as protective and as strict as you, Mom.”

  “I don’t think your dad and I are too strict. We just don’t see that you need to go out with an older guy. There are plenty of boys your own age.”

  “You can have sex with a younger guy just as easily as you can have sex with an older one.”

  Elizabeth coughs. “Lib, I didn’t say anything about having sex.”

  “You didn’t have to. I know what you were thinking. Besides, you don’t have to worry, Mom. I’m not going to have sex for a long time.”

  “A long, long time, I hope,” Elizabeth says. “But now that you brought it up, I have been wanting to talk to you about some things.”

  “I know all about the birds and the bees, Mom.”

  “I’m sure you do. But I want you to know that when you think you’re ready for that kind of relationship. When you think you’re mature enough to handle that kind of relationship and the emotional baggage that comes with it. Please, for the love of God, talk to me. I will put you on birth control. You know that I don’t want you to have sex before you’re married, but I’m also not naïve. I know how teenage hormones are. So if you ever get to that point, talk to me. OK?”

  “Yes, Mom. I promise to talk to you if and when I decide to have sex. But I really do think that I can probably take care of that myself. The birth control, I mean.”

  “Sometimes, Lib, things happen fast. So fast that you can’t remember how it began. Just be careful.”

  Olivia is saved from further discussion when they arrive at the dance studio.

  “Remember, Dad’s picking you up tonight. I need to go back for a meeting. Have a good practice.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  I never had anything I loved doing as much as Olivia loves dancing. Grandma taught me how to sew and had hoped that I would love it as much as she did. But, it wasn’t for me. I could sew simple things, like window valances or pillow covers, but that was about it.

  Most times I put puzzles together. Grandma brought them home from yard sales or the Goodwill store. If I was really lucky, which was almost never, all of the pieces would be there.

  I remember the puzzle I was working on when I got that first prank call from Tracey. It was a fall landscape with lots of reds and yellows and oranges. I had completed the border and was working on the farmhouse. The phone rang and Grandma wasn’t home so I let it go into voicemail. I didn’t feel like talking.

  After the phone rang a few times, the answering machine clicked on.

  “Hello,” Grandma said. “You’ve reached the home of Grace and Sarah. We aren’t home at the moment, but if you leave your name and number we’ll return your call.”

  “Sarah,’ the voice said.

  I stopped searching for the chimney piece and listened.

  “I was just calling to see if you got the
results back from your pregnancy test. I’m worried about you.”

  Then the phone clicked.

  It wasn’t Tracey’s voice, but I was sure she was behind it. If Grandma would have heard it, I would have had some explaining to do. Mostly why someone would hate me so much to leave a message like that. But it was just the beginning of the prank calls. They would continue over the next two years. Some I would catch before Grandma heard them and some I wouldn’t. It was always the ones that I didn’t get to before Grandma that seemed to be the worst.

  “Hey, Lib,” Lexie says as she approaches the bus stop. “Think about homecoming last night?”

  “Yeah. I’ll go.”

  “Great. Already talked to Dad and he said he’ll get us a limo. Who else should we ask?”

  “Don’t you have anyone you know from your classes?” Olivia says.

  “Not really. The girls haven’t been real friendly here. Except you, of course.”

  “They probably view you as competition.”

  “Me, competition?”

  “Absolutely. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You are a model, after all.”

  “You promised not to tell anyone,” Lexie says. “I don’t want anyone to know that part of my life. It makes them see me differently.”

  “Yeah. You’re even more of a threat,” Olivia says. “But your secret’s safe with me.”

  “You know I only model because it’s something fun to do. It’s really no big deal.”

  “I know it’s no big deal to you, but, to the girls at the top of the food chain, they would kill to have their picture plastered all over glossy magazines and catalogs.”

  “I’m getting out of that anyway,” Lexie says.

  “Why?”

  “Getting tired of it. I want a break. I figure moving here gives me a chance to be a regular girl at a regular school where no one knows anything about any of that stuff.”

  Olivia laughs. “I don’t think you’ll ever be regular, but you’re definitely the coolest girl I know. Mostly because you don’t know how cool you are or care. You’re just you.”

  The girls talk about homecoming the entire bus ride to school. What, if any, girls to invite along in the limo? Where to shop for a dress? Should they tan, get manicures and pedicures? By the time the bus pulls up to the school, Olivia is actually excited about something other than dance. I haven’t see her this happy in quite some time, and it fills me with warmth.