by Nina LaCour
“Why aren’t you at work?” I ask, slouching so I won’t be so conspicuous.
Mom has the most presidential name ever—Margaret Carter-Madison—and even though all she runs is a small elementary school, people are always clamoring for her time. It’s amazing the things she has to deal with—parents who are obsessed with their six-year-olds’ social development; Mrs. Smith, who’s this warped fifth-grade teacher who insists dinosaurs never existed; occasional lice epidemics—sometimes I don’t understand how she can handle the pressure of it all. Somehow, though, she always manages to stay calm. She has a voice that’s a little quieter than most people’s, so you have to pay closer attention when you listen to her, and instead of sitting in the audience during the little kids’ productions, trying to look interested, she plays the piano for them. She gets all excited, even though the songs are the same every year.
She’s not answering my question, so I say, “I thought if you left Riverbank Elementary before seven P.M. the results would be disastrous.”
“Well, it’s your first day back,” she says, sounding a little too cheerful.
“And that means what exactly?”
“I thought we’d go to our Japanese place. You’ve just begun the second half of your high school career. We should celebrate.”
I get kind of squirmy when she says that. I don’t know why she’s trying so hard. I mean, our Japanese place? We haven’t been there since I was a kid. We used to go sometimes back before she became a principal and started working all the time, when I could still order the children’s special bento box. I don’t know how to respond, so I open up the glove compartment and dig around in it, just for something to do. Tic Tacs. A pair of old sunglasses. The car manual.
I pop a Tic Tac in my mouth and offer her one. She accepts. I keep eating them, one by one, crushing them to minty dust between my teeth. By the time we pull up to the restaurant, I’ve finished them. I toss the empty see-through box back into the glove compartment before I get out.
It’s that slow, in-between time—too late for lunch, too early for dinner. Mom and I are the only customers, which is something I hate. Whenever there are no other customers in a restaurant, I can’t stop thinking that if we weren’t here, the waiters would probably be eating or talking on the phone or turning the music up, so I feel like we’re ruining what should be their downtime. I especially hate it when they hover in a corner, waiting to refill the water glasses. That really depresses me.
The whole time we’re looking at our menus, and ordering, and pouring green tea from a hot metal pot into tiny cups, I can feel Mom preparing to say something. I don’t know how I know exactly, it’s just this feeling I get. She keeps looking at me and smiling.
“Who did you eat lunch with at school?”
I pick up the tiny cup and start to take a sip. Too hot. I set it down and stare at the wet circle it made on the paper place mat.
“Guess,” I say.
She doesn’t.
I trace the circle with my finger. “Come on. It’s obvious.”
“Not to me.”
I roll my eyes. “Obviously, I ate with no one.”
Mom’s cheery mood disintegrates.
“Caitlin,” she says.
She says my name all the time, but this is different. It’s all disappointed-sounding, like I had a choice, like there were a million kids lined up to eat with me and I was like, Sorry, I’d rather eat by myself.
“What?” I snap, and she doesn’t say anything else.
After about two seconds of waiting, the waiter comes with our food. I stare into the enormous bento box I ordered, heaped with tempura and chicken teriyaki and California rolls, and part of me wishes I could still get the kids’ box. It has everything that this one does, just smaller portions. I eat one tempura carrot, and feel full.
“My friend Margie at work suggested a very good therapist. Her daughter enjoys working with her.”
“What’s wrong with Margie’s daughter?”
“Nothing is wrong with her. Like you, she’s just going through a difficult time right now.”
“Oh,” I say, all sarcastic. “A difficult time.”
Mom sips her tea. I bite into a California roll and soy sauce dribbles down my chin. I swat it away with my napkin and hope the waiter isn’t standing somewhere watching us.
“I’m not going to see some therapist,” I mutter.
Mom looks, sadly, into her rice bowl. I wish I knew what she was thinking.
We don’t say much after that, and I feel kind of bad about it, but I don’t know why she had to bring that up. She can’t expect me to go along with every suggestion she makes just because she’s taking me out to eat.
8
Friday-night dinner, I sit at the table with Mom and Dad and eat in silence. Dad asks questions about my first week back at school in the cheerful tone Mom has been using for days. I give him one-word answers, stab pasta with my fork. Soon they start talking to each other and I tune them out. When I can’t sit there any longer I get up, push the leftover food into the sink, and stick my plate in the dishwasher.
I climb into the backseat of my car and put my knees up against the seat covers I ruined. I was supposed to have gotten my license three months ago, but instead of making three-point turns, I was watching my best friend’s casket lower into the ground. Now I can’t seem to call the DMV to schedule a new appointment.
This car is so old it only has a tape player. I only own one tape. Fortunately, it’s a good one. Ingrid’s brother, Davey, made it for my birthday one year. It has all these indie bands on it that I had never heard of. The songs kind of blend together, but they’re all so great. I reach up, turn the key in the ignition, and a boy’s voice wails through the speakers. A few minutes later my dad comes out to the car.
“Do you have any homework? If you get it done now, you’ll be able to enjoy the weekend.”
“No,” I lie.
He lifts my backpack into the air. “I brought you this just in case.”
After a while I pull out my math book and some paper. The tape turns itself over. There’s the sound of a quiet guitar; a woman’s voice starts and then a man’s joins her. It sounds pretty. I try to do my math, but I don’t have a calculator in the car. All of a sudden I want the phone to ring. I picture my mom coming out with the cordless and handing it to me when I roll the window down. I would stretch out on the seat. And listen. And talk. I would come up with something interesting to say. But the only person who ever called me was Ingrid, so I know it will never happen. I reach up and turn the music as loud as it can go. The whole car shakes and it sounds like I’m tuned to a radio station that doesn’t come in clearly.
I push everything off the backseat and lie down. Through the moon roof, the sky darkens. I imagine that the phone is propped on the seat, right next to my ear.
So what was Veena wearing the first day? Ingrid asks.
I didn’t notice.
Of course you noticed. I bet it was something new.
She acted like she didn’t know me. I wasn’t exactly paying attention to her clothes.
Imagine her cleaning out her cat’s litter box.
Did you hear what I said? All week long, she acted like she hates me.
Oh my God, I know: imagine her finding moldy leftovers in her refrigerator.
I don’t feel like it.
How was it without me? Did you hide out in the library at lunch with all the nerds?
Actually, I ate with Alicia McIntosh. She brought me a tank top that said CHARITY and told me that if I promised to wear it every day she would let me follow her around and stand in the cafeteria line to buy her Diet Cokes.
Did you miss me?
Why are you asking?
I want to know.
It’s obvious.
I want to hear you say it. It’ll make me feel good.
Fuck you.
Come on. Just say it.
Mom appears right outside my window. She waves at me from s
ix inches away. I don’t move. She points at her watch, which means that it’s late and she wants me inside. I don’t sit up. I just close my eyes, wish her away from the car. I’m not ready.
Wailing Boy is back on—I’ve been in here for ninety minutes—and I squeeze my eyes shut tighter and listen to him. His guitar gets urgent, his voice trembles. I can feel it: his heart is broken.
9
The next morning, my dad knocks on my car window to wake me up. I snuck back out in the middle of the night and slept here.
“I have a surprise for you,” he says, beaming, voice muffled by the glass. “It’s around the side.”
“What is it?” I’m so tired I can hardly talk.
“Come see,” he says, real singsongy.
I unlock my door and step out into the daylight. I need to brush my teeth.
Dad covers my eyes with his hand and leads me around to the other side of my car. Beneath my thin slipper soles, I can feel the pebbles of the driveway, the stepping-stones that run through the grass alongside the house, and, finally, the grass itself. We’re in the backyard. Our actual house isn’t anything special. Like most of the houses in Los Cerros, it’s big and new and plain, but I love our yard. There’s a path that weaves around all the vegetables and flowers and on the weekends my parents spend hours out here in the dirt, gardening. The best part is that if you stand on the path and look away from the house, you can’t even see where the yard ends. It stretches on and on for acres. It’s hilly and there are a bunch of ancient oak trees.
He uncovers my eyes, and sweeps his arm out toward a huge pile of wood lying on the brick patio that separates the house from the garden. It’s cut in thick planks that are at least ten feet long. Dad’s standing there in front of the gigantic messy pile, smiling all proud like he just bought me a beach house in Fiji and a private jet to get me there.
“Wood,” I say, confused.
“It’s all sanded already. I got you a top-of-the-line saw, too. That should be coming on Monday.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea,” he says. “You’re the expert.”
My parents have this crazy idea that I’m good at building things just because once I went to this arts-and-crafts summer camp and made a little wooden stepladder that actually turned out okay.
“That was like a million years ago,” I remind my dad. “I was twelve.”
“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it again soon.”
“This is a lot of wood.”
“There’s plenty more when you need it. I don’t want you to feel limited.”
All I can do is nod my head up and down, up and down. I mean, I know what’s going on. I hear my parents talking about me, sounding all worried. I know that this is supposed to be some alternative to therapy. Dad thinks it’s a really great gift that will take my mind off my screwed-up life.
He stands there, looking hopeful, waiting for me to react. Finally, I walk over to the pile and run my fingers across a piece on the top. I knock on it with my knuckles. I can feel him watching me. I look up and force a smile.
“Great,” he says, all final, like something has been decided.
“Yeah,” I say back, like I understand.
10
The first day Ingrid and I ditched was gray and cold. We left at lunch and I was sure someone would catch us, but no one did.
Once we were safely out of view, we started walking up this hill to where the condos are all jammed up against one another; windows look into neighbors’ living rooms. It was so quiet.
The diner or the mall? Ingrid asked.
Too many people at the mall. I kicked at some rocks on the path and watched the dust rise.
When we got to the top of the hill, Ingrid ran into the middle of an empty street. She turned to face me, wavy hair blown across her face, arms lifted until they stuck straight out at her sides. She started twirling. Her red skirt billowed. The wind blew harder and she spun so fast she was a blur. When she stopped she crouched over.
Oh my God. She laughed. Oh my God, my head.
She tried to walk back over to me, stumbled, and laughed harder.
You’re such a nerd, I said.
A middle-aged woman came toward us from between two condos and my stomach tightened. But she just walked by us, didn’t even say anything. We were at the top of this hill and we didn’t have anywhere to go.
I turned around. Look, I said.
Below us was our school, a collection of rectangular boxes. Even though we knew that the kids were studying for tests and kissing and worrying about one another, in that moment they were so small—only colorful specks moving around.
This feels good, Ingrid said.
The day was gloomy, so I got this idea. I said, I bet there’s no one at the park. And I was right. When we got there, the field where little kids usually ran around was empty. No one was sliding on the slide or dangling from the monkey bars. We made sure that there wasn’t anyone at the sandbox and then Ingrid put her hands on my shoulders. You, my friend, she said, are a genius.
She ran over to the swings and I followed her. I sat on the rubber seat, and started to pump really hard with my legs. We were both going so high, moving through the air together, shouting our conversation because of the wind and because we didn’t have to worry about anyone listening. We got so high that I thought any second one of us might go all the way around. Ingrid had her camera around her neck and she clutched it to her chest with one arm so it wouldn’t fly off.
The clouds were low and heavy and dark. Then the sky turned this bright gray and it started to rain.
Ingrid snapped a photograph of me swinging before she tucked the camera under her jacket, but if she ever developed it, she never showed it to me.
Soon it was pouring. The cold felt good, and we kept swinging until our hair and our clothes were drenched, laughing, talking about something that I can never remember, even though I try.
11
Ms. Delani stands in front of us, her smile tight across her face.
“Today,” she says. “I’m going to hold short conferences with each of you to establish your personal artistic goals for the semester.”
She scans the room, probably wondering if any of us are worth her precious time. In her other life, she’s a real artist. Once Ingrid and I went to this tiny gallery in the city for one of her openings. We were the only students who showed up—she hadn’t mentioned it to many people. Everyone there was dressed up, and there were a couple bottles of champagne and a platter of grapes and some Brie. We had spent the whole BART ride trying to predict what her art would be like.
When she caught sight of us in the gallery, she touched the arm of the man she’d been talking to and came up to us. She gave us these quick, firm hugs, so casually, like she’d hugged us a million times before. She introduced us as two of her most promising students, and Ingrid and I showed off for her, dropping names of the famous photographers she had taught in class. All her photographs were of the same things: doll parts scattered over brightly colored fabric. Porcelain arms and legs and middles, but mostly heads. I don’t know what I had been expecting, but I hadn’t been expecting that. They were beautiful, but kind of unsettling at the same time.
After being there and seeing her drink champagne and talk with this low voice to a bunch of impressed people, I could just feel how lame we all must have seemed to her. All of us except Ingrid, who was actually talented. Like last year, we had an assignment to photograph something that was meaningful to us. I guess she expected us to turn in pictures of really profound things—I can’t even think of what—because when she started coming by our desks to see what we came up with and saw a jock’s picture of his baseball glove lying on the grass, and a girl’s pom-pom against the gym floor, she just about lost it. That smile vanished. She walked back to her desk and put her head in her hands and didn’t speak for the rest of the class.
She looks more optimistic today, calling
kids over to her desk, one by one. I’m in the far right corner, alone, of course. She starts with Akiko, who is sitting in the front left of the room. I assume that she hopes she’ll run out of time before my turn comes. I lay my head on my desk and shut my eyes.
Forty minutes later I wake up.
Everything is muffled, but it only seems like that because I’m disoriented and kind of embarrassed that I actually fell asleep. When I lift my head and see that nothing new is happening, that everyone is still sitting together at their tables and Ms. Delani is meeting with Matt, I just close my eyes again and listen to people talking. Meghan and Katie are writing notes to each other and whispering, Oh my God! and No he did not! Dustin and James are talking in low voices about some new skate park.
I hear Katie saying, all importantly, “Henry’s mom is the real estate agent who was showing the house they bought, and she told Henry that the family was nice but just not the kind of people who belong in our community.”
“I heard she’s a lesbian,” Meghan says. To judge by her tone, she might as well be saying, I hear she digs garbage from trash cans and eats it.
“I heard that, too,” Lulu whispers. “I heard she got kicked out of her old school for making out with a girl in the bathroom.”
I realize they’re talking about Dylan, and for some reason it really pisses me off.
“Excuse me, but some of us are trying to sleep,” I say, glaring at them.
They look at me, then at each other. They stop talking for a moment. Meghan runs her hand down one side of her neatly combed brown hair. Katie buttons a pearl button on her sweater. They look like miniatures of their mothers.
“Caitlin?” Ms. Delani says. She’s scanning the classroom, like she called my name off a random list and she doesn’t know who I am.
“I’m over here,” I tell her.
“Will you come to my desk, please?”