I'm Not Your Other Half

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “It’s called an antimacassar,” Kit told me. “I know, because my grandmother inherited some from her grandmother. No. I have something to tell you, Fraser.”

  “What’s that, Kit?”

  “I’ve outgrown dolls.”

  She stood there so seriously. I wanted to hug her eleven times and tell her she was my favorite little girl in the whole world. That she could play with dolls all her life as far as I was concerned, and grow up to design them, too.

  “I’m going to be a scientist, like you,” she informed me.

  “Like me? I’m not a scientist,” I protested.

  “Yes, you are. Your photograph was in the paper last week. My mother showed me. You and seven other people at the high school are taking your science projects to the state science fair. I’m going to be a scientist too, so give me a science thing to check out.”

  I nearly wept. I’m so emotional today, I thought. I wonder if it’s true about premenstrual syndrome. “Well, let’s see. We haven’t much in right now. A microscope kit. A Sun Graphics kit. A project pamphlet on snow crystals and a metal detector.”

  “What do you recommend?” said Kit. Her eyes were fixed on me as if I were God, about to redistribute brains and ability.

  “Sun Graphics. You’ll make prints of leaves using sunlight and shadow.”

  “It’s winter,” she objected. “There are no leaves.”

  “Nobody said it would be easy being a scientist,” I told her, and she left laughing.

  Two little boys exchanged video-game cartridges. An adult checked out Pente. A girl about twelve returned a detective kit that claimed to offer hours of fun and excitement. “It’s boring,” she said accusingly. “Boring, boring, boring. You shouldn’t have given it to me. I planned my whole weekend around it and I was bored. It wasn’t even interesting for five minutes.”

  “Then how come it’s a week overdue?” I snapped. The nerve of these kids, I thought. I kill myself laying in these toys and I’m still responsible. They have a boring weekend and it’s my fault. “What do you want? A money-back guarantee?”

  Naturally she left without checking out another toy, and Miss Herschel could not get her to take a book either. “Great work, Fraser,” called Miss Herschel. “Alienate a few more people, will you?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Boredom and anger and pressure crawled over me like bugs. The Science Fair project isn’t ready, I thought. And I’m the one who’s behind, not the other girls. And we have that extra Madrigals Choir rehearsal coming up. And I have no doubt whatsoever that on Wednesday next week Mr. McGrath is going to assign the term papers. How am I supposed to see Michael with all this junk cluttering up my life?

  I sat down and color-coded the play money in a newly returned Monopoly set. I was tempted to look up who had borrowed it, telephone them, and scream at them for not returning it in good condition, but I restrained myself. A terrible thought slithered into my mind, taking my words and inverting them.

  How am I supposed to lead my life, with Michael cluttering it up?

  I caught the thought and killed it, superstitiously, as if I could actually stomp it out, like a brush fire. And looked up to see wispy blond hair. Thin shy face. “Hello, Katurah,” I said.

  Michael’s here. Something in me bent, and relaxed, and I sagged mentally the way I did physically—slumping with relief. All these crazy thoughts will vanish now. Michael’s here. The moment I see him I won’t feel this way.

  “Look at my Christmas doll,” said Katurah. “She’s why I haven’t come in lately. I’ve been playing with her all the time, and she came with lots and lots of clothes.”

  A Victorian doll. The kind that the woman who built Annie’s mansion must have given her children. Large, beautiful, graceful, dressed in lace and velvet, with china hands and lovely leather-buttoned boots. A doll to sit on a window seat in a turret, and dream of gazebos and roses.

  “I named her Viola Maude,” said Katurah. “Just like you told me.”

  “I love her,” I told Katurah. “She’s a perfect Viola Maude.”

  “But now I’m bored with her,” said Katurah. “Now I want to check out Chinese Checkers or else Leverage.”

  “They both take two players,” I warned her. All these bored kids, I thought. It’s boring to have them tell me they’re bored. I am so sick of Toybrary. I have to find someone else to do this for me. If I’m not going to have Annie to share these hours with, forget it.

  “Michael will play with me,” said Katurah with absolute certainty.

  “Oh, yeah?” said Michael, looming over us. I looked up the wide wales of his corduroy trousers, past his pullover sweater, into his laughing brown eyes and I loved him. He is perfect, I thought. I’m the one who’s crazy. Imagining there’s something wrong.

  “Yeah,” said Katurah, in the voice of a gangster who will otherwise put cement on your ankles and drown you. Michael laughed. With his left hand he pulled her hair; with his right hand he found the nape of my neck and stroked it.

  Miss Herschel agreed to watch Toybrary while I took a break. We drove to a Dairy Queen. I ate a chocolate sundae and gave Katurah my maraschino cherry. Michael told me about a computer program he was writing to keep track of his father’s philately.

  “That’s stamps,” said Katurah. “My stepfather loves stamps.” Clearly people who loved stamps were to be suspected of other sinister things too. “In fact, that’s why Michael is baby-sitting me tonight. They’ve gone to a big stamp show.”

  “How interesting,” I said, although it was not, and I fervently hoped Michael did not expect me to take up stamps. “Does Judith like stamps, too? Is that how they met?”

  “No, that’s Dad’s consuming passion,” said Michael. “Judith took it up when they got married. Judith used to go to Audubon Society. She was always going off on owl prowls at four in the morning.”

  “Owl prowls! Now that sounds exciting.” I was definitely going to be on Judith’s team now.

  “It’s not,” Katurah informed me. “It’s cold and dark and all the owls do is hoot and fly away.”

  “Now if only we could figure out a way to get you to hoot and fly away,” Michael teased Katurah.

  But she did not laugh. She took him literally. Her face grew pale and pinched and after a moment she stared back into the remains of her ice cream and shivered. “I’m sorry,” said Michael swiftly, and he scooped her up in his lap and kissed her hair. “Here. Want some of my Coke? Want to play tic-tac-toe with me on the napkin? Nobody’s going to run out on you again, Katurah.”

  I loved him even more. He could have ignored this new person in his life, this little girl who demanded a lot. But he had chosen to be her ally.

  “Guess I’d better get you back to Toybrary,” said Michael, reluctantly, and his eyes, dipping down toward Katurah, told me he needed to talk to her a little alone.

  We went outside into softly falling snow.

  “Snow!” cried Michael, and he laughed exuberantly, and hugged both of us. “I thought we’d never get snow! All Christmas vacation without a half an inch; all January without anything but ice. Snow! Thank God.”

  “I hate snow,” said Katurah. “It’s cold.”

  “We can cross-country ski Saturday,” said Michael excitedly. “There are terrific trails up at Spring Meadow. Fraser, don’t forget to go to Action Sports and rent your equipment tomorrow. They might be out if you wait till Saturday morning.”

  “Spring Meadow is a dumb name for a snow place,” observed Katurah. “Ugh. Michael, don’t kiss her. I hate kissing.”

  “And then afterward, we can go down to my basement,” added Michael, ignoring Katurah and kissing me again. “I’ve got a new computer game. You’ll love it.”

  “Michael, I’ve told you and told you. I don’t love computer games. They’re always war. You have to kill to survive. I don’t like being pitted against you like that. Anyway, on Saturday I was going to go shopping with my mother.”

  “You can shop any
time,” said Michael. “Don’t forget to rent the skis. Here we are. Say Hi to Toybrary for me.” He leaned over both of us to open the passenger door for me, and kissed me as he did so. Katurah, between us, said, “You’re smothering me, Michael.”

  “All in a good cause,” said Michael.

  I love you, I thought. I love your lips and your hair. I love how nice you are to Katurah and to me. I have to learn to love the things you enjoy, too. Look on the bright side. It could be stamps.

  Chapter 6

  I DID NOT START Toybrary on purpose. It began of its own accord because I happened to speak out of turn in front of Miss Herschel. I was not at the library by choice. There was a term-paper assignment, and I was bored, because it was a contemporary subject. I detest newspaper files, microfiche and microfilm. I just like books. Facts are so much more factual in books.

  The topic was war. We had to list every single war now occurring on the globe and analyze its current status. I had had no idea how many people were working at killing one another off. Africa, the Near East, the Middle East, the Far East, islands in this ocean, islands in that ocean, all of Central America …

  Needless to say, I tired of all this bloodshed. I began circling the library looking for something to break the monotony of brother gunning down brother. Actually, I was hoping to find a handsome youth with blond hair and broad shoulders who would be so struck by my brains and beauty that he’d carry me off into the sunset. Or at least as far as McDonald’s. But I didn’t know most of the boys at the library the day Toybrary was born. It’s harder than you think to strike up a conversation in a library. Heads are bent over books. Faces are hidden by periodical indexes. Hands are closed around pencils, not other hands. Everybody has postponed his research till the last possible moment, and who has time for romance when there are six more sources to investigate?

  The only boy doing nothing had pimples and sagging socks and wasn’t fourteen if he was a day, so I ended up talking to the children’s librarian.

  “What we need, Fraser,” said Miss Herschel, “is something that will really bring people in.”

  I thought the library was jammed and the atmosphere would have been much more pleasant with fewer people, but perhaps I was just naturally antisocial after all this war reading. “Maybe if you offered something besides books,” I suggested.

  I wasn’t thinking about anything. I wasn’t even thinking. I was just there, propped up by Miss Herschel’s desk, killing time.

  “Something besides books?” she repeated.

  “I read about a library in New Hampshire that also loans toys. They have everything. Especially stuff that people would love to have but don’t buy because they might not use it more than once. Giant stuffed giraffes or unusual board games. And standard stuff—wooden blocks, Teddy bears, Monopoly.”

  “Fraser! What a wonderful idea!” she cried. “Look into this at once. Set aside war temporarily. Look up toy-lending libraries and see how they did it.”

  We peacemongers are all happy to set aside war temporarily, so I dipped into the newspaper indexes to find out about toy lending.

  It was a better topic than war—but only marginally. Because somehow, between the looking-up and the talking-about and the expanding-upon, old Fraser MacKendrick became the chief administrative officer of Toybrary.

  I gave a speech to the P.T.A. and didn’t die of fear and didn’t forget any of the words, and in fact the Junior Women’s Club asked me to talk to them too. I learned how to address groups, and how not to be afraid of an audience and how to convince them to donate to my cause. My father said, “Fraser, if you never learn any other skill in your entire life, you will get good jobs, because you’ll be able to get money out of sticky club fingers.”

  Toybrary was an astonishing success. Organizing Toybrary, establishing it, advertising it were as much fun as I had ever had in my life. But from there on in, it was down hill.

  Miss Herschel was too busy to administer it. Annie surrendered to my appeals and helped, and then she convinced Susannah to pitch in too. Susannah was a help in a dim-witted sort of way, and the three of us operated Toybrary from three till eight, in overlapping shifts.

  With appalling speed, Toybrary became just another dull routine in my week.

  It was a bad season for local news (no wars in Chapman), and we were pounced upon by television, radio and newspaper. After you have been on morning talk shows, giving examples of the fine things our youth can accomplish, expounding on your imagination, community spirit and hard work, it’s embarrassing to say the following week, “Actually this is boring and I quit.”

  Nevertheless that’s just what Susannah did. She began dating Matt, and although Matt would never be number one on my list—or even number fifty—he was certainly more interesting than a Barbie Doll swimming-pool set.

  I stayed with Toybrary but I would wish that I was still just starting it; that was fun. Launching anything was always so much more interesting than actually doing it.

  Then I’d wish that I had never gotten into Toybrary at all, that I had met some fantastic eighteen-year-old with brains, manners, a sense of humor, looks, build and a classic Corvette …

  I sat at the Toybrary desk, my knees hunched near my chin, checking to be sure there were still dice in the Parcheesi game, and I thought, Five out of six isn’t bad. I have to relax about Michael. I’m not some rigid type whose life can’t expand to include new things. What kind of relationship am I going to have with him if I keep complaining and whining whenever he suggests something?

  “Dropping out of Madrigals?” said Mrs. Ierardi. Her long thin face became longer and thinner. She regarded me as the Revolutionary troops must have looked at Benedict Arnold. “But Fraser, we need you. You’re the best low alto we’ve got.”

  Ordinarily I love compliments. This one upset me. “Really, it’s a good time for this,” I said. “We’ve finished the winter concerts, and it’s another five weeks before the spring concerts. Lots of time to audition more altos.”

  Mrs. Ierardi frowned at me. “Fraser, you of all people need to stay in Madrigals. You lead a very intellectual life. Singing is one of the outlets you need.”

  “I took up skiing, you know. And—and other things. I just don’t have time for Madrigals any more. I’m sorry, Mrs. Ierardi. I’ll miss it a lot. But I have to drop out.”

  And Michael could not stand classical music. He refused to go to any more of Annie’s concerts. He had not even managed to sit still through a tape of my last Madrigal concert. And he was free the two afternoons Madrigals practiced.

  “I understand you have quite a firm relationship with the Hollander boy,” said Mrs. Ierardi.

  It was like having someone dip into my head without permission. Gossip, I thought. Thin beady-eyed old gossip.

  “Don’t lose your head over him,” said Mrs. Ierardi.

  “I am not losing my head,” I said, trying not to yell. “That sounds like some wimpy little cheerleader going haywire because some boy smiles at her.”

  “Well?” said Mrs. Ierardi.

  I could have kicked her. “Well?” As if Mrs. Ierardi, and all her gossipy teacher cronies, had decided that Fraser MacKendrick had “lost her head over the Hollander boy.”

  “I’m too busy for Madrigals, Mrs. Ierardi,” I said.

  “He ought to be able to give up a little for you,” she snapped. “This is not nineteen fifty-five. You don’t have to rebuild your life to suit the whims of some boy.”

  “I am not following Michael’s whims. We’re both giving up a lot. He’s quitting Computer Club. And he was going to teach a class in game design, too. And I’m quitting Madrigals. We have to have the time.”

  “And what are you going to do with that time?” demanded Mrs. Ierardi, as if it were her business. “Go sit at the Dairy Queen and have a sundae together? Kiss on the couch? You can do that any time. Don’t surrender what counts, Fraser.”

  “I’m just officially telling you I am no longer a member of the Ma
drigal Choir,” I said stiffly, and I walked out of the room, and I was shaking all over.

  “You wouldn’t believe how she talked to me,” I told Michael. We were not at the Dairy Queen. We would have been, but I felt self-conscious about choosing it after what Mrs. Ierardi had said. We were at McDonald’s instead, having cheeseburgers, although I was in a chocolate-marshmallow-sundae mood. When you are angry, a cheeseburger is gone in three furious chomps. You need soft ice cream to slide gently down, wrapped in chocolate, to soothe your distressed throat.

  “I would believe,” said Michael. “Mr. Duffy really threw it at me. He says anyone with a grain of responsibility wouldn’t do this to him. I pointed out that Dick Biaggio agreed to take the class for me, and Dick knows how to write game programs as well as I do, but Mr. Duffy said that didn’t matter. I was the one who agreed to teach the class and I was the one who drew up the curriculum and I was the one the kids signed up to study with and therefore I was the one who should be ashamed of myself. Putting my own selfish desires ahead of my commitments.”

  “Sometimes I think they become teachers just so they can impose their beliefs on other people,” I said.

  “Like my father,” agreed Michael, chewing on French fries and angrily grinding his teeth. “He’s harping on college now. I’m a junior, I don’t have to apply till next fall, but he says we have to visit at least a dozen colleges before I can possibly make a judgment on where to apply. Every weekend he wants to do this, Fraser. I mean, when would we get together?”

  Visiting colleges! I could see broad grassy campuses—well, snowy, at this time of year, anyhow—dormitories, brick buildings, huge libraries, hundreds of college students rushing from class to class. Visiting a dozen of them. “That sounds like such fun, though,” I said. “I won’t get to do that. I’ll be going to State. My whole family went to State, and anyway, it’s all we can afford.” The only activity my mother was still active in was the Alumni Association. Of course, I reflected, Dad was active in it too; probably she’d drop out of even that if he weren’t involved.