Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel)

by Angie McCullagh

  Embarrassed, Emily looked down at her big feet perched on a rung of the stool. She wished she felt as fabulous as Thomas thought she was.

  46. Worse Than Nothing

  BY THE TIME Emily got home, darkness pooled around the bases of trees, seeped into the grass, and hung in the air. Her dad had cloistered himself in his office. Melissa baked banana-nut-oat bread. Kristen was still gone somewhere. And a reply from Marilyn Wozniak waited in Emily’s inbox.

  Her breath caught and she clicked.

  Dear Art Aficionado,

  Thank you for your interest in my work. I will respond to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, thank you for supporting Southwest artists.

  Best,

  Marilyn Wozniak

  Emily closed her eyes and shook her head, willing her nervous system to relax. It was a form email. Nothing. Worse than nothing, it had pumped her full of temporary hope. She was only sixteen and already so many regrets. Why had she ever contacted her mom?

  Emily remembered a conversation she’d had with Kristen a few months ago, where her optimistic sister tried to convince them both that their mother having left wasn’t that big of a deal. They still had their dad, a decent stepmom and a nice big house to live in.

  To Emily, though, losing their mom was something that stuck with her every day. It hid between the clothes in her closet, slept in bed with her at night, squeezed into her desk chair, and hissed into her ear: Your mom left because you weren’t lovable enough.

  47. Slipping Away

  WHEN EMILY GOT to school Monday morning, Ryan was not waiting by the bike rack as he often did. He wasn’t hovering near her locker, either. She saw him in his normal seat in Johnson’s English class, though. She was sure her face was bright red as she slipped into her old desk.

  Trix was MIA, of course.

  Emily opened her notebook and pretended to study something intently until Johnson stepped into the classroom with a handful of papers fresh off the copier and started talking about expository essays.

  Emily couldn’t focus. All she could think about was what would transpire, or not, between Ryan and her after class. She was barely even conscious of the Farkettes sitting off to her left.

  Johnson looked, to her, like a large puppet moving his mouth without producing sound.

  Please let Ryan come up to me and apologize for being out of touch and kiss me in the hallway.

  She watched clouds swirl past the window until the bell rang. She didn’t want to obviously wait for him, so she slowly gathered her things, pretending to have lost her pencil.

  He approached. “How was your weekend?”

  So it hadn’t been just her imagination. His voice was remote, as if he stood at the end of a long pipe. “Okay,” she said, suddenly on guard. Though she was also aware that her own voice had turned a little whiny. “Surprised I didn’t hear from you, is all.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I know. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, without meaning it.

  She noticed Kennedy Furukawa sliding past her, taking in Emily and Ryan’s interaction.

  “History next?” he antiseptically asked.

  “Yeah, history next.”

  He started to leave the room and Emily followed.

  In the hallway, he turned. “Can we have lunch together?”

  Her heart leapt. Until he added, “I need to talk to you.”

  She agreed, then headed off to her next class. She slogged her way through the morning, wishing she could stop time so she wouldn’t have to hear Ryan break her heart, or speed it forward to get the bloodbath over with. By the time lunch rolled around, she had a stomach-ache.

  They met at the bike racks and agreed to go to a barbeque place a few blocks down where they wouldn’t see as many kids as at Fatty’s.

  The moment they’d ordered and taken a table, Emily said, “What, Ryan?”

  With a straw, he jabbed at the ice in his Coke. He looked up at her and his eyes were damp.

  Emily would’ve felt sorry for him, but she was pretty sure she knew what was coming. “You’re breaking up with me, aren’t you?”

  He sighed, slumped back in his seat and said, “You know I think you’re great, right?”

  “I thought I did.” She sat with her arms tucked protectively around her stomach. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

  “Well, you are.”

  So why the sad eyes? She wanted to ask. Why are you tormenting me like this?

  “But?”

  He shook his head and a small smile lit his lips. “You’re making this too easy for me. You should just pretend that everything’s fine and make me drop the bomb. Instead you’re pulling it out like one of those magician’s scarves.”

  “Except that I can’t. Pretend everything’s fine.”

  A twenty-something guy in a black sweater and jeans delivered their food. Neither Ryan nor Emily could look at it, much less eat it.

  “I know,” he said. “You’re not a game player. That’s one of the things I dig about you.”

  She considered asking if he wanted to date someone else, but no. He was right. She was making this too easy on him. If he was seeing another girl, he was going to have to tell her.

  “The thing is,” he began. “Well, there are a few things.”

  Emily pushed her plate away and stared at the CHS logo on Ryan’s t-shirt. She would not cry. She would not cry.

  He began to jiggle his knee. “The first thing,” he said. “is how you act when you’re with me. Kinda like you don’t want to be there. It’s like you’ve pulled away.”

  “What?” she cried. “No!”

  “It’s just a feeling I get.”

  “I haven’t! Not on purpose. I was afraid that you were pulling away from me. I’ve been hearing things.”

  His eyebrows jacked up and he looked nervous. “You have?”

  She decided to just tell him. To lay the truth out there. What did she have to lose at this point? “I heard someone was trying to … lure you away from me. And then there’s my weirdo family—”

  “We all have weirdo families,” he said.

  “I know, but, my dad. He’s so strict.” She still couldn’t bring herself to mention her lack of a mother. “And then, there’s, you know, how tall I am.” Why am I giving him reasons to dump me? She wondered. I’m too nice. I’m too damn nice.

  He gave a sideways nod as if he were conceding her height was an issue. Oh God, she thought. It is.

  Trying to infuse his voice with kindness, which only came across as condescension, he asked, “How tall are you now?”

  Emily buried her face in her hands. “You’re dumping me because I’m six foot, aren’t you?”

  “No, Em. No,” he reached across and grabbed her arm. She jerked it back.

  “I thought you were different,” she said. He’d found someone petite and girly. Someone he could feel like a man with. “Who is it?”

  “It’s no one.”

  She could tell he was lying. His eyes had gone all squinty and he wouldn’t look at her. “The least you can do is be honest.” A horrible thought came to her. “Is it Trix?”

  His face contorted angrily now. “God, no. She’s hella messed up. Be careful of her, Em. She’s no good for you.”

  “Oh, and you know what’s good for me, now.” You’re good for me, she wanted to say. Or, you were.

  An older couple came in with a small dog whose nails clicked across the concrete floor. Emily took a token sip of Diet Coke, then proceeded to hold her finger over one end of the straw suctioning up soda and letting it go over the ice. Hot tears stung the corners of her eyes and she couldn’t stop them. She felt like she was sitting across from a different person. She wanted Ryan back. Her Ryan.

  She suddenly knew she had to get out of there, that she couldn’t sit across from him and have that conversation for one more second. She stood and jammed her arms through her backpack’s straps.

  “Wait, Em,” he said, but his voice was
absent any sort of conviction.

  “See you around,” she said and scurried away before her chin began to quiver and she fell to pieces.

  Emily raced up the street, away from school. She rushed past house after house with small detached garages and dead plants in the yards. She barely felt the drizzle pinging her face or heard the barking of dogs.

  Ryan did not chase her. She realized this with a simultaneous sense of relief and disappointment.

  After a few blocks, she slowed and looked around. Salmon Bay Park, where she used to play as a kid, was to her left. Dejectedly, she ambled over to a swing and sat down. The rubber was wet and the dampness quickly soaked through her jeans. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything right then.

  The best thing that had happened to her in high school, or ever, had ended. She looked down at her long legs stretched before her on the swing and was disgusted. Just a few inches. If only she were a few inches shorter.

  Damn her tallness. Damn her absentee mother for passing down the tallness. It sucked to tower over everyone, weaving down the school halls like a sailboat mast caught in a hard wind, trying her best to blend when blending wasn’t possible.

  Wood chips clumped in wet piles under her feet.

  She imagined that if Melissa could see her now, she’d sympathetically ask if Emily was done feeling sorry for herself yet.

  “No,” she said aloud to the empty playground. “As a matter of fact, I’m not.”

  She shivered and tried to withdraw further into her sweatshirt. She suddenly ached to be home, in her room, wrapped in a thick fleece blanket, drinking something hot, and listening to sad music.

  Standing slowly, she started back to school. She wished she could call Trix. Nothing would be better, right then, than hearing her profanity-laced take on Ryan’s recent assholery. But Trix wasn’t on her side. Trix was jealous and insecure and done with Emily.

  48. Sadness/Hope/Remorse

  AVOIDING RYAN THE rest of the day wasn’t hard. He’d made himself scarce. After school, she unlocked her bike alone, imagining other kids from her class whispering, nudging. Did you hear that Big Bird got dumped today? It was only a matter of time.

  At home, she avoided Melissa and Kristen and burrowed into bed, where she let pent up tears drown her.

  Later, after she’d refused dinner, gotten into her pajamas at eight thirty and snapped on the upstairs computer, she found an email from Kennedy Furukawa.

  I heard what happened with Ryan today. Super annoying. We should meet up for coffee this week. Thursday?

  Best, K.F.

  Awesome. Just what Emily needed. One of the Farkettes setting her up for some cruelty, maybe a briefing on who Ryan was dating now.

  The house smelled like the patchouli wax chips that Melissa burned in a small saucepan on the stove. Emily’s dad bellyached that it made the place reek of a hookah lounge, but Melissa let the wax bubble and waft anyway.

  Emily wouldn’t answer Kennedy’s email just yet. She had some thinking to do.

  She watched a few videos on YouTube, checked her favorite sites, and zipped through her Facebook newsfeed. There was absolutely nothing from Ryan. No, Oh Crap. I don’t know what I was thinking today! I have to see you now! No forwarded jokes or posted photos.

  But just as Emily was about to sign out, a new message flicked to the top of her inbox. It was from Marilyn Wozniak. Re: I think I know you.

  Emily swallowed hard. She was tempted to get Kristen so they could read it together. She wanted so badly to let her in on the secret: that she knew the whereabouts of their mother and had contacted her. But Kristen seemed so happy and well adjusted. Why knock a hole in that?

  If she were honest with herself, she was also a little afraid Kristen would thwart her somehow, talk her out of communicating with Marilyn.

  Emily briefly considered deleting the email without reading it at all.

  Why today? What the hell?

  But then … all she had to do was click once to read words her mother had composed. To Emily. She may, in the email, ask Emily never to contact her again, but whatever she’d written, she’d written to her. Assuming it wasn’t another form letter from the gallery.

  Anxiety welled up in her chest like a third lung. She waved her hands in front of her face, as if this would help her breathe, and clicked the message.

  Dear Emily,

  Did you know your name means Rival. Laborious. Eager? Yes, your father picked that one out.

  Thanks for emailing me. I’ve wondered about you and your sister often over the years.

  To answer your question, I am just shy of six feet tall. I am married to a wonderful man, Winslow, who is six ten! He reminds me a lot of my own father.

  Do you have a photo of you and Kristen?

  “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something”. ~Henry David Thoreau

  Marilyn Wozniak

  At the bottom of her message, she’d attached a photo of one of her paintings. Or, what Emily assumed to be one of her paintings. It was a wolf standing on a cliff, howling into the sunset. The strokes were colorful and bold.

  Emily felt let down. The message was too short and sterile. But then, what had she expected? Pronouncements of love and regret? An offer of a plane ticket so Emily could fly to Arizona for a visit? This was a woman capable of leaving two young daughters. A woman who hadn’t sent a single birthday card in the past twelve years.

  And the Thoreau quote? Good God. Marilyn Wozniak was out of touch. Worse, she was delusional. Yes, don’t worry about being good, Marilyn. Don’t worry your frizzy little head about doing what’s right.

  Emily started crying and could not stop. Not even when Melissa knocked on her bedroom door with offers of smoothies and peanut butter/sprout sandwiches. She came back a second time saying she’d toasted Emily a Pop-Tart and made her hot chocolate. Emily could only respond with a choked, “No, thanks.”

  When she’d calmed enough to breathe, she called Thomas. She told him about the break up and the barren email from Marilyn. He was enjoying a rare day off, shopping a late night sale at Nordstrom. He clucked sympathetically and tried to talk her into meeting him so they could look for jeans together.

  Emily declined. She couldn’t have cared less about clothes right then.

  “I just needed to talk to a friend,” she said.

  “Anytime, babe. Night or day.”

  This made her smile a little. She was grateful for Thomas.

  Later, when Kristen jimmied Emily’s lock with a paperclip and stood in her doorframe, yellow light from the hallway pouring in around her, Emily only turned swollen eyes in her direction and grunted.

  “You’re scaring me, Em. What’s wrong?”

  “Close the door!” Emily yelled.

  So, Kristen did. But she stayed inside Emily’s bedroom. “I’m not leaving.”

  Emily rolled over and pulled a pillow on top of her head.

  “What happened today?”

  “Lots of things.” Emily’s voice was muffled and full of contempt. She did not want to say any of the day’s catastrophes out loud. Least of all to her always-together sister.

  “Well, can you be more specific?” Kristen asked, coming over and sitting on the edge of Emily’s mattress.

  “Not really.”

  Wind buzzed through the window screens and rattled the house’s siding.

  Kristen, wisely, sat still and didn’t say a word.

  Finally, Emily took the pillow from her head and said, “Do you really want to know?”

  “Duh. Why else would I be in here?”

  “Okay.” Emily took a deep, shuddering breath. “Ryan dumped me.”

  “Oh, Em.”

  “And Mom emailed me.”

  She heard Kristen gasp. “What do you mean ‘Mom’ emailed you?” She made air quotes around the word “Mom.” Her expression was a mix of horror and hope.

  There was a gust of wind
so powerful that the whole house shook. Emily said, “I found her online and emailed her. She emailed me back.”

  “What’d she say?” Kristen yelped, agitatedly cracking her knuckles.

  “Not much.” Emily filled her in on the content of Marilyn’s email.

  “That quote–What the hell?” Kristen cried.

  “I know.”

  Kristen jumped up from where she’d been sitting on the bed. “Did she ask anything about us and our lives? Did she apologize?”

  Emily’s throat was scratchy and she badly needed a drink of water. “No, none of that.”

  “What is her problem?” Kristen bellowed. She stood in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. Emily hadn’t seen her sister so worked up in years. Not since Emily had borrowed Kristen’s bike in middle school, run over a nail, and forgotten to tell her about it until Kristen was ready to set off on Schwinn with her friends. “The woman gave birth to us! And she doesn’t even care? She doesn’t even wonder?”

  “I know.”

  “Something’s wrong with her.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  Emily got up and moved across her room like a massive, wobbling bubble that hadn’t yet popped. She retrieved a glass of water from her and Kristen’s shared bathroom and took it back to bed.

  Sipping, she said, “She’s selfish. She’s a narcissist. We just have to accept it.”

  Kristen folded to the floor, looking wounded. “We already knew that. Why’d you have to find her and confirm it again?” she asked softly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  They sat there silently, wind thrashing the trees and house.

  “And Ryan,” Kristen said. “What happened?”

  “I’m too tall. Too mopey. I think he’s seeing someone else.”

  Kristen walked on her knees over to Emily’s mattress. She laid her head on Emily’s leg. “I’m sure it’s not that you’re too tall.”

  Emily felt wracking sobs overtake her again. She just managed to squeak, “I could really use a hug right now.”

  As her sister embraced her, Emily wondered what, when she was done wallowing, her next step would be. Email Marilyn? Fight for Ryan? Or just sit back and let her fate unfold?