Please, Please, Please (9780698139558)

by Vail, Rachel

  “Your dance bag,” Mom said.

  “What?”

  A strand of her hair was hanging down over her eyes, and her pocketbook fell off her shoulder onto her elbow, which jolted her coffee cup so some spilled on her white Ked.

  “CJ, please,” she said, stamping her foot, tucking back her hair, opening the car door, and throwing her pocketbook in. “Don’t go spacey on me today. Go get your dance bag so it will be in the car when I pick you up this afternoon.”

  I stood there for a second thinking, Oh, my God. This can’t be happening. There has to be a way out. What am I going to do?

  “Earth to CJ,” Paul said.

  “Shut up,” I said, hating him for his pretty face and lack of responsibilities. I mean, honestly, if I had left the sliding door open last night, my mother would’ve killed me. She never expects anything of Paul. He doesn’t even have to say excuse me when he gets up from the table. He doesn’t have to dance for her.

  “CJ,” Mom said. “Please.”

  I looked at her. Her dark green eyes rested on mine, and for a second I felt like she was reading my mind, like she knew what my plan was. Like she was saying, Please, admit to me what you were thinking of doing because I know anyway and it’s fine—go, have a good time, I want you to.

  “Please what?” I asked.

  She rolled her head back and looked at the sky. “Aaah! Your dance bag! Come on, CJ. I have an appointment in twenty minutes!”

  So she didn’t know.

  Too complicated to think of a solution, I told myself as I pulled open the back door. In too deep to get out, no use worrying now. I picked up my dance bag. Maybe it will all work itself out later.

  Halfway down the stairs I remembered my new pink leg warmers were drying over the shower rod. I walked back up the steps, pushed open the bathroom door, put my dance bag on the floor, and pulled the leg warmers down. They were dry and even softer than before. I folded them carefully, then unzipped my dance bag and placed them inside, on top of my toe shoes. I zipped the bag closed, wondering when I would open it next, and walked downstairs and out again to the car.

  nineteen

  I opened the car door before Mom had even stopped. We were both looking at the apple-picking bus, the huge gray bus waiting in the circle with its motor running. I didn’t want to get into a discussion. It was too late.

  “So it’s all arranged?” Mom asked. “The independent—”

  “Yes.” I slammed the door shut and waved without looking at her. Morgan was already waiting beside the bus. She waved at me with her friendship-ringed hand. I waved back and said, “Just have to go to my locker,” pointing at my bag. She nodded.

  I walked slowly down the hall to my locker and dialed my combination carefully. It was still neat; I like to try to keep my locker neat as long as possible. I lined up my books carefully inside, taking them one by one out of my bag, and positioned my homework folder between my math text and my Spanish. I almost set my lunch on the shelf, where I always put it, then remembered I should take it with me, because, obviously, we wouldn’t be here for lunch. I peeked inside to see what lunch I’d gotten and saw there was a note from Mom. It said, Love you. I crumpled it and dropped it in my locker, which I slammed shut.

  I carefully dialed my locker combination again, opened it, and picked up the note. I smoothed it, folded it in quarters, and stuck it in my overalls pocket. Then I slammed my locker shut again and sprinted back outside.

  By the time I got there, most of the other kids had arrived. Morgan, Olivia, and Zoe were standing together, so I went right over to them.

  “Did you do it?” Morgan asked.

  How did she find out? “What?” I asked.

  “Break up with Tommy?”

  I’d forgotten all about him. “Oh, um.”

  “You didn’t?” She looked at Olivia and Zoe, shocked and disappointed.

  “I just, I didn’t get the chance,” I explained.

  Morgan rested her hands on her hips and asked, “But you don’t like him anymore, do you?”

  “Oh, no. No way.”

  I heard sneakers crunching on the pebbles behind me and spun around to see Tommy’s back, scooting away. I covered my mouth. “Do you think he heard?”

  “Do you care?” Morgan asked.

  “Well,” offered Zoe. “Still, you wouldn’t want to . . .”

  “What?” Morgan asked, turning to Zoe. “You’re the one he made a fool of. You of all people shouldn’t stick up for him.”

  Zoe shrugged. “Let’s get on the bus and compare junk food.”

  Relieved, I followed her on. We chose seats near the back, across from each other—me and Zoe in one seat, Morgan and Olivia in the other, and dug through our bags. With our heads down near our knees, Zoe whispered to me, “Did you talk to your mother?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “What’s going to happen?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “Are we not talking about it?”

  “Right,” I said.

  She gave me some Cheez Doodles.

  twenty

  What a great day. The actual apple picking felt almost beside the point. We each filled up a bag pretty quickly, and since the rule is you can eat as many as you want, everybody except poor sore Olivia did a lot of eating, too. I’m not sure who started it—Morgan, I think—but it quickly became a “thing” to take a bite of an apple, spit it out, and say, “Sour.” We thought we were a real riot, doing that. Even the boys did it. The whole seventh grade. Mrs. Shepard, the English/social studies teacher who is very sour herself, told us we were all disgusting. We loved it. We think Ms. Cress was laughing, no matter how serious she tried to look to impress Mrs. Shepard. Zoe said at least we’d all achieved unity in being disgusting.

  A skinny, enthusiastic guy with a huge Adam’s apple and a red name tag announcing MY NAME IS LARRY! wrote our names on our bags. We each said, “Thanks, Larry!” as we left the bags beside him in the barn and went to drink apple cider (sour!) and listen to some hokey music.

  “Come on,” Larry! yelled, skipping out of the barn. “Everybody square dance!”

  We were all hanging back, rolling our eyes, like, Do they honestly expect us to square dance? Please. But then Larry! grabbed Zoe who grabbed Morgan on her way out and they got really into it so everybody else joined in, too. It wasn’t like ballet at all. Nobody cared about the beauty of your line and how long your neck looked or how high your legs got. Nobody really looked at anybody. We were all just laughing. I tripped over Lou’s foot one time, and it wasn’t even weird. I said, “Sorry,” and he said, “You clod,” and I said, “Look who’s talking,” and he looked at himself and pretended to be surprised. Then we switched partners and I had Tommy, which I admit was a little awkward. I tried to think of something to say, but as usual I couldn’t, so I just do-si-doed him and went on with my day.

  After the square dancing Larry! yelled, “Time to line up for the three-legged race!” He and two perky women with bandanna headbands started cheering, totally psyched. When we have three-legged races in gym, nobody in our grade wants to do it. My grade is just like that—when grown-ups get gung-ho, we get turned off. The grade ahead of us gets totally into everything—like Olivia’s gorgeous thirteen-year-old brother, Dex, is always organizing cleanup drives and charity auctions. My grade, when they announce three-legged races in gym, we all develop stomachaches, and if they force us, we just walk as slow as we can.

  Especially me. A three-legged race is the perfect way to twist your ankle. I have never in my life strapped my leg to another person’s to try running. It’s insane.

  But there we were, grabbing at the ties. I grabbed. Zoe and I were laughing as we pulled the ties tighter on our ankles and calves. I was psyched, I really was.

  Tommy and Jonas ran by us strapped together, yelling, “Don’t eve
n bother!”

  “You’d better watch out!” Zoe yelled back. She shrugged at me. “Now we have to win.”

  “It’s not even fair,” I pointed out as I wrapped my arm around her waist. “They’re twins. They’re exactly the same size.”

  We tried moving but fell immediately. My first thought was, Did I twist anything? But my next was, Who cares? It felt like fresh air was pumped into my body, just to be able to think, who cares? I jumped up and dragged Zoe out of the dirt.

  “Your bun,” Zoe said.

  I lifted my hand and felt my frizzy hair coming loose. I tried to smooth it down, shove the stray pieces in, and clip them with the silver clips on the side. “Is it better?” I asked Zoe.

  “Well . . .” she said. “Um . . .”

  “Forget it,” I said. I took out the clips and dropped them on the ground, pulled off my new flowered scrunchie and looped it around my wrist. Tommy and Jonas were whizzing past us again. I yelled, “We’re leaving you in our dust!”

  “Yeah!” Zoe said, pointing after them. That tipped us out of balance, and we toppled over again.

  “Is my hair blocking your vision?” I asked her.

  “It cushioned my fall,” she said.

  Morgan and Olivia limped over, tied to each other. Olivia put a hand out to us, which Zoe grabbed. I had a dirt smudge on my sleeve and one on the knee of my overalls. I liked how that looked, so I didn’t bother wiping it clean, and anyway my Keds were filthy; I must’ve stepped in something. My hair felt huge. I pushed it down, but it’s very boingy, so it doesn’t go down easily.

  “You guys know how to do this?” Morgan asked.

  “Sure,” Zoe said. “We’re a machine.”

  “Yeah,” said Olivia. “You look like you’re getting the hang of it.”

  “You, too,” I said. Then we all cracked up.

  Our buddy Larry! blew his whistle. We all yelled, “Larry!” as we hobbled over to the starting line. Somehow we managed to get there still on our feet. Morgan and Olivia were next to me; Tommy and Jonas were on the other side of Zoe.

  “On your marks,” Larry! said.

  “You die,” I heard Tommy growl to Zoe.

  “You wish,” Zoe said back.

  “Get set!”

  “Wait—my left or your left?” Morgan asked Olivia.

  “Go!”

  The whistle blew and we were off. We were running, galloping, Zoe and I, in a rhythm together, keeping up, passing Tommy and Jonas, all the way to the line at the other side. “We win!” I yelled, throwing my arms into the air. I never felt so purely happy.

  Until Zoe fell on top of me.

  “Turn!” she yelled on our way down. “We have to go back!”

  “Back?” I twisted, following her to the ground, and as we fell I noticed that the other pairs were turning around to go back to the starting line. I must have missed that part of the rules.

  Tommy and Jonas made the turn smoothly, but Olivia and Morgan were falling, too, or maybe they would’ve been OK if I hadn’t knocked into them. By the time the dust started settling on top of our human pile, Larry! had come over to disentangle us.

  He scooped up Morgan first. She said, “Larry!”

  His Adam’s apple bounced around as he lifted Olivia, then me. Somehow my free leg had gotten twisted around Zoe’s head, so that her face was in the dirt. When I saw that, I stopped laughing.

  “Are you OK?” I asked her.

  She lifted her head. There was dirt from the tip of her nose down to the bottom of her chin. She looked awful. I felt my hand go up to my chest. “Oh, Zoe,” I said.

  She spit, smiled, and said, “Sour.”

  twenty-one

  We sat on top of a haystack, drinking lemonades. The four of us had decided we didn’t want any souvenirs, so while everyone else was scrambling around the gift shop in the last few minutes before getting back on the bus, we sat up high on the otherwise unused haystacks, sipping our lemonades and just feeling happy.

  Same seats on the ride back, so I stared out the window with Zoe beside me. I crossed my legs. It felt weird but sort of ladylike. I watched the trees and telephone poles go by and didn’t think about anything, my forehead pressed against the cold window. At one point Zoe offered me an apple. I said, “Oof.” She smiled and I smiled.

  The bus groaned as it made the turn onto the driveway of school. We were tired and dirty and full, but all, I think, pretty happy. Nobody had hay-stacked, but if the whole point is doing something to unite the seventh grade at the beginning of the year, well, it had.

  Mrs. Johnson was waiting in the circle, her normally friendly face wrinkled and harsh. And, worse, right behind her were Mom and Dad, with their hands on their hips. I closed my eyes.

  Kids were standing before the bus made its tst sound and stopped completely. Bags of apples were dragged out from under seats, and the aisle was filled, though some kids were looking out the windows to see if their parents were here yet or late. I sat, eyes closed. One more minute, I wished for.

  Mrs. Johnson pushed against the tide of tired seventh graders, up onto the bus. “CJ?”

  I lifted my head and met her eyes.

  “You march your pretty little self down the aisle. This instant,” Mrs. Johnson said. Then she turned to the teachers. “I tried to call you on the cell phone. You never answered.”

  Ms. Cress said, “I never heard . . .” She dug it out of her bag and looked at it, saying, “Oops.”

  “Is something wrong?” I heard Mrs. Shepard whisper.

  I was starting to pull my bag of apples out from under my seat, but Zoe whispered, “I’ll get ’em for you.” She stood beside our seats to let me out, tucking her hair behind her ears. I could tell she wanted to say something helpful. I took a deep breath and she took one, too. When I looked over at Olivia and Morgan, they were staring back, worried about me. That felt good, at least. I lowered my head and squeezed down the aisle toward Mrs. Johnson, thinking as my arms brushed other kids’ arms, Well, this is it. As I walked, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail in my scrunchie, because I didn’t need my parents seeing me looking quite so wild. I stepped over Lou’s bag of apples at the front of the bus and could smell Mrs. Johnson’s perfume, clean as white sheets.

  She grabbed me by the elbow and growled, “I’m appalled at your behavior.” She pulled me down the bus steps. “You have some explaining to do to your parents. And I’ll see you at eight o’clock tomorrow morning in my office.” She yanked me across the black concrete up onto the sidewalk, where my parents were waiting. My mother’s face was red, my father’s was white.

  Mom grabbed me out of Mrs. Johnson’s grip, hugged me hard, then stared at my face. The most frightening part was, I couldn’t tell what in the world she was thinking. Usually I can spot any thought flickering for a second across my mother’s face; I’ve spent my whole life looking into it like my own personal crystal ball. But it was cloudy as she stared into my eyes, and that even more than the yelling I was braced for made me feel like I might fall down.

  Other kids were thumping out of the bus, jumping down off the bus’s step, and glancing over at me. I could feel them doing it and could hear them whispering: “What happened?” “What did she do?” Everybody was going to know. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Ms. Cress and Mrs. Shepard looking up at Mrs. Johnson, who was telling them, “I’ll fill you in later. Right now let’s send everybody home happy.” The sun had just set, so the sky was turning pink and orange behind the line of jeeps and minivans lined up waiting to take home kids and apples. Someone beeped. I looked to see who it was.

  Mom cupped my chin and yanked it back toward her. “Don’t you turn away from me.” Her voice was quiet and fierce.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  “What were you thinking?” Dad asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  He asked ag
ain. “What were you thinking? What?”

  Nothing, I thought. I had decided not to think. But there was no way to explain that, so I just looked at my shoes, my muddy grayish-brown Keds.

  “I don’t even know where to start, CJ,” Mom whispered. “Tell me where we should start. With what I was thinking, waiting here for you at two forty, when you never came out? At three, when I finally went in to school looking for you and Mrs. Johnson informed me that you had never arranged independent study, that you had gone apple picking? That I had signed a permission slip? I! Signed it. Did I sign that permission slip, CJ? Did I?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Who signed it? Who signed my name?”

  “I did,” I said.

  Dad grabbed me by both arms and shook me. “Do you know that it’s a crime to forge another person’s signature? You could go to jail. Look at me.”

  I tried to lift my eyes to meet his. I got as far as his belt with the silver square buckle Paul and I had bought him for his birthday.

  “Look at me!” he screamed.

  I looked up into his furious face. I could tell he hated me, and I didn’t blame him. “We’ve been sitting here worried to death about you,” he yelled, shaking me. “Your mother called me, frantic. I had to run out of my meeting and stand here waiting and praying that my lying, cheating, conniving daughter really did go to pick apples and wasn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to begin to solve this.” He turned to Mom. “I’m going in to call the baby-sitter. Paul was near hysteria, last time we called.”

  Mom nodded, and we watched Dad stalk toward the school. He threw open the door so hard I thought it might fly off the hinges, and my dad is not a muscle man at all. He’s very gentle, normally. And careful. He’s an architect. He always puts pen caps back on. I twitched when the door slammed shut behind him.

  Mom stared at me again but didn’t say anything. I could tell she had lost all respect for me. She would be right never to trust me again, or like me, or love me. I had lied, Dad was right. I lied, and I went behind their backs, and I made them worry, just being selfish. Just because I felt like going with my friends. What a terrible person I am.