My Eyes Are Up Here

by Laura Zimmermann

  From stage, Aidan Neal says, “Excuse me?”

  Mr. Coles claps his hands and rushes in front of the stage. “That’s looking good, dancers. Big night tonight. Let’s see everybody back here by six thirty, on the nose!”

  The cast filters out, glad to be released even if the offstage drama is heating up.

  Two of Lizzie’s friends walk by Jessa and me. One says, “See, all the lesbians like to stick together.”

  Jessa, unfazed, says, “GSA meetings are every other Thursday before school. All are welcome.” I don’t know if Jessa is the G or the S, but she is absolutely the A. I slide a little closer to her.

  The principal is ready to rule. “Maggie, whatever concerns you have should have been brought to the directors in a mature way—”

  “I did! I—”

  “Don’t interrupt. You are not going to ruin this production for the rest of the students who have been working so hard. Not everyone can be the lead, and most students are happy with whatever part they have. Since you can’t seem to understand that, you’re going to sit this one out.”

  “ARE YOU CRAZY?”

  Everyone, including me, is surprised to hear my voice. I guess I’m in it now, too.

  Pat Moss turns to me like I’m a mouse that’s just challenged a bobcat to a fight.

  Like a mouse that realizes that everyone else in the auditorium has just stopped what they are doing to see how this turns out. In other words, to watch the mouse get swallowed whole. So much for staying under the radar.

  “They can’t even do the play without Maggie.” Everyone is staring at me, which is not exactly comfortable. But Maggie looks like she’s just discovered her best friend is secretly Spider-Man, so I keep going. “She sings half of Lizzie’s parts because Lizzie can’t hit anything below a G. If you take her out of the play, it’s going to look bad for everybody. Including Lizzie.”

  Lizzie shouts, “Shut up, Greta!” Maggie and Jessa laugh out loud, which makes Principal Moss and the Barneses even angrier.

  Dr. Moss says, “This has nothing to do with you two. Out of the auditorium. NOW. Or I will have Coach Reinhold bench you both for the season.” We stand there, waiting for Maggie’s okay. She nods and mouths, Love you.

  “We were just on our way to practice,” says Jess, as we back up the aisle. “You should come to a game sometime, Dr. Moss.”

  My phone buzzes and I peek at the text. “Maggie, your mom is parking. She’ll be here in a minute.”

  “Yeah, don’t say anything without your lawyer present,” adds Jess.

  “Bridget Cleave is on campus?” Moss is the one who looks scared now. I wish I could stay to watch, but there are sprints to hell to do in the gym.

  Rafael Ramos-Sikes is waiting and watching from the back of the auditorium, so quiet we almost don’t notice him, until he high-fives us on the way out.

  Jessa and I will have to do extra sets of sprints for being late, but it’s worth it. I would sprint to hell and back for Maggie. Or for Jess.

  CHAPTER 48

  Maggie is back in the play!

  There’s a long video message waiting for me when practice is over. Her mom showed up right after Jessa and I left. Maggie’s favorite lines from her mom:

  To Mr. Coles: “How can you be a director if you can’t even express an opinion about anything? Isn’t that your freaking job?”

  To Mrs. Barnes, when she said that green hair wasn’t “period” for the 1850s: “Oh, and I suppose Lizzie’s balayage is?” (Sylvie, who was watching over my shoulder in the locker room, had to explain that it’s a fancy hair-highlighting technique. Jessa and I were clueless.)

  To everyone: “See, this is why I never wanted to do drama in high school. Everybody’s so freaking EMOTIONAL about everything.”

  At this point, the verdict was that Maggie would perform, but that she would wear a bonnet over her green braids. Even Maggie realizes a bonnet is the best deal she’s going to get, but her mom wasn’t quite done.

  To Pat Moss: “And in the future, if my daughter has an issue at school, I expect that you’ll include me in the conversation, not some other student’s parents. Or maybe the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act means nothing to you?” Leave it to Maggie’s mom to make our principal squirm.

  So, Maggie’s back in the play, and once Coach heard we were arguing with Dr. Moss, Jessa and I only had to do a few extra sprints. It’s turned out to be a pretty good day. Everyone told me my serve looked less pathetic; Mr. Feiler says I’m far enough ahead in APUSH I can skip the next group assignment; I found my big blue cardigan in the winter bin, which will save my mother from criticizing my sweatshirt; and what was that other thing? Hmmm, was there one other thing to be glad about today?

  Oh yeah. I don’t have to sit next to Tyler at the musical.

  Because I am going to sit next to Jackson.

  It’s like my freaking birthday.

  * * *

  σ

  On the way back to school, I say super casually, “Oh, I told Jackson Oates—you know, your client’s son?—that I’d sit with him tonight. He didn’t have anyone else to go with.” I’m trying to make it sound like I enjoy helping new folks settle in. Just like she’s raised me.

  “That’s nice of you,” says Mom, sort of suspiciously. “He can have Dad’s ticket.”

  I am prepared for this. “Right. That’s what I was thinking. But it might be better if we don’t actually sit by you. Just so he can meet more people. More kid people.”

  She looks at me sideways. “Mmm. Of course. Good idea.” I don’t care what she thinks as long as we don’t have to talk about it.

  “Why do I have to go to this?” In the back seat, Tyler seems to be working very hard on creating a duct-tape ball. He has informed me that it must be very even and very, very tight or it won’t work right. I wonder how you know if a duct-tape ball “works right.”

  “We’re going because we like to support the arts,” Mom says. What she really means is “We’re going because I like to see other parents to compare children.”

  * * *

  σ

  Turns out Melinda Oates and Quinlan have also decided they wish to support the arts. Jackson sees me see them and gives a big shrug. Mom spots seats near someone she thinks Melinda should meet. Jackson and I decide to head to the other side of the auditorium where more of the underclassmen are.

  “Jackson wants to sit by his new friends,” Mrs. Oates tells Quin.

  “But Greer can still sit with us,” she says.

  We take off before there’s a scene. Tyler glances back at me like I’ve left him to the bears, which might be true in the case of Quinlan and my mom, but Mrs. Oates seems pretty nice.

  We spot an open pair of seats down in front, but on the way, we hear, “Klaus! KLAUS!” German-class girl is furiously waving. I follow Jackson like a straggling sheep. “I got you a seat!” She pats the spot next to her.

  Jackson looks uncomfortable. “I was going to sit with Greer.”

  “But I thought we were going to meet here?”

  Now Jackson looks like there is an invisible scorpion stinging him. “I thought you just said you’d see me here.”

  “Well, I have this seat for you.” She talks like she’s giving instructions. She crosses her legs, which makes her short skirt ride up shorter. Her legs are smooth, not a bit of stubble showing in the house lights. There are no moles, bruises, scratches, or veins, either. Maybe they are plastic. She drapes a bangled wrist over one knee, and that’s when I really notice the rest of her. She’s got on a sheer black top over a lacy cami. Her hair is down and she’s straightened it. She’s wearing enough mascara to make her eyes look like spiders (pretty spiders), and her lips are so glossy and reflective you could use them for night biking.

  To a school play.

  I, on the other hand, am wearing a Hagrid-size
cardigan that I now see has a hole in one elbow, the same jeans I had on at school, and some faded orange Keen sneakers I borrowed from my mom on the way out because my own shoes were sweaty. This is how it is. Girls like the Fräulein bring their A game, and I don’t even realize there’s a game on. No wonder Jackson looks like he is in pain.

  There’s an awkward conversation in which I offer to go sit by our moms (guess who loves that plan?) but eventually the other people in the row move down so we all fit. Me, Jackson, Her. (Turns out her real name is Elliana and her German name is Monika, but I am going to keep calling her Dummkopf because every time I repeat, “Greer,” she says, “Keira?”)

  * * *

  σ

  The play, surprisingly, is really good. Not the story, which is if anything even more ridiculous since Maggie persuaded them to make it less kidnappy. But the performance is solid.

  Maybe the lights or the makeup or the acoustics make things seem better, but even the brothers are pretty good. And however much Maggie and Lizzie hate each other, they seem like the sweetest of friends out there in nineteenth-century Oregon.

  There are little curls of green snaking out from under Maggie’s white bonnet, like a secret she’s doing a bad job of keeping, but she sings like a finalist on a TV voice competition, and when she harmonizes with Lizzie, it makes Lizzie sound better, too.

  At intermission, I talk with Anitha Das and her little sister about a girls coding clinic they went to, while Jackson and you-know-who share a bag of Gummibärs. I spy my mother looking over at us. She looks disappointed. No kidding, lady. Best case was that this was kind of a fake date. Now it doesn’t even turn out to be my fake date. I am a third wheel on someone else’s fake date. Maybe this whole thing was him making sure I had somebody to sit next to. He seems to have no problem making friends.

  The last act finishes with barely a hitch, except for Keely jumping her cue and starting a song early, and Aidan Neal stepping on another brother once or twice.

  But now things get interesting. At the end of the bows, someone hands Lizzie/Milly a bouquet of grocery-store flowers, because she’s the leading lady. She crosses her hands over her chest like it is the most moving gesture ever made, even though it happens in every play. The whole cast motions to the orchestra pit, as I know they’ve practiced, so the lowly musicians will know that we are clapping for them, too.

  Here’s where things go off script. Very off script. A bunch of kids from the pit orchestra stand up on their chairs so you can actually see them—or at least their heads—for the first time. They are wearing bonnets, or if not actual bonnets, then kerchiefs or babushkas tied over their heads like bonnets. Most of the audience, which doesn’t know about Braidgate, laughs. They think the musicians are being cute. They don’t know that bonnets are a symbol of civil unrest.

  Rafa Ramos-Sikes, in a floppy, flowered sunbonnet, pulls himself onstage from the pit. He walks straight up to Maggie, bows deeply, and lays a giant bouquet of long-stemmed roses in her arms. Like Miss America roses. Only they’re for Maggie, so imagine a pageant recognizing someone for their feminist achievements, or she’ll get mad. Only she’s not mad. She’s beaming. And so is Rafa, who turns out not to be so shy after all.

  Lizzie’s mouth is hanging open in a way that will not look good in the yearbook photo. Picture it like this: If Lizzie’s flowers were a grungy little toy poodle, which seemed really sweet, Maggie has just been presented with a thoroughbred racehorse, with silky-shiny muscles and a wreath of laurel leaves around its neck who could step on the poodle and not even notice. Maggie throws an arm around Rafa and everybody takes another bow. Lizzie Barnes looks like she’s going to beat both of them to death with her own stupid flowers.

  When the lights go up, everybody is still whooping their heads off, including Elliana/Monika/the Gummi Baroness, who doesn’t even know why it’s the most perfect thing Rafa could have done.

  CHAPTER 49

  Mom and I stop at Tyler’s school to pick him up. She has to run in to drop off holiday gift cards for the teachers. If she sees anyone she knows—and she knows everyone—she will be a half hour at least, and a half hour in my old middle school sounds as fun as, well, a half hour in middle school, so I tilt back my seat and roll down the window to wait.

  Tyler is messing around out front with a group of kids who look like they’re filming an Old Navy commercial. They’re wearing a rainbow of colors, no one is sulky, and everyone’s hair is flopping at just the right angles. I recognize most of them, boys from his team and girls that have been in his classes forever. Seventh graders. They’re little/big people—little to their families and teachers, but big to themselves. Sometimes it’s the opposite when you get older.

  Was this what seventh grade was like for me? I think it was. I think I’ve been in this ad, too.

  I think I was the Emily in this crowd. Not Maya, who keeps stealing the boys’ hockey sticks, or the curly-haired girl I don’t know who has fixed herself to the side of one of the Sams. Emily is finishing a bag of chips that the boys passed around, talking about a statue of Crazy Horse while everyone else is hoping for Maya to steal their gear next.

  “If it ever gets done, it will be bigger than Mount Rushmore. Crazy Horse’s head is actually much bigger than Lincoln’s head.”

  Maya is after Tyler now. She manages to get his stick, the one he just taped pink, and holds it up. It’s warm for December, so everyone has left their jackets in a pile. Her shirt rides halfway up and at first I’m embarrassed for her until I realize it’s the kind of shirt that’s supposed to do that. It’s tiny and short on purpose. I’m wearing a sweatshirt meant for an extra-large human male, and she’s wearing a top that would fit an extra-small squirrel. She holds the stick over her head, like no one could get to it there. I worry that she’s got some kind of a cognitive disorder that makes it impossible to judge relative size, because Ty has at least four inches on her.

  But Tyler knows how to play this game, too, and instead of taking the stick back, he fakes her out, reaches for her butt, and grabs her phone out of her pocket. She lunges for him but he tosses it to the next kid, and Maya fake-pouts with her hands on her hips. She is not worried about that phone, though. She is in total control.

  I look back to Emily, on her own. At first I think she hasn’t got a clue, but then I realize she likes it this way. She’s safe sitting on the bike rack watching the rest of them like it’s a Sunday at the dog park. Why jump in if it just means having someone else’s greasy fingerprints on your iPhone? Plus she’s got the chips. I want to tell her that soon, very soon, when she decides it’s not enough to be the foremost school expert on Native American monuments—when she wants Sam, or Sam, or even Tyler to look at her like they’re all looking at Maya now—it’s going to be way more complicated than just jumping off the bike rack and stealing someone’s gear. But I don’t, because she looks happy now. And I still haven’t got a clue what she should do next.

  CHAPTER 50

  “You didn’t borrow my sunglasses, did you?”

  “The giant ones with the gems on the corners? What do you think?”

  “You don’t have to be a snot about it, Greer.”

  I stare into the fridge wondering if eleven fifteen is breakfast or lunch. “They’re probably in the car.”

  Breakfast, I decide, and take out a yogurt. Maybe a freezer waffle, too. Maybe two freezer waffles, too. It’s the first morning of a long and Jackson-less winter break. Yeah, yeah, Christmas, Hanukkah, school’s off, blah, blah. I need these waffles.

  Mom stands at the kitchen island with her hands on her hips, like she wants to scold her sunglasses for wandering away. “I know I had them inside, because Melinda asked me where I got them.”

  Madame Butterfly wakes up from her hibernation. You said they were gone for ten days, she accuses. “Mrs. Oates was here?”

  Mom is opening and closing cupboard doors as though her glasses might
have been accidentally put away with the Tervis tumblers.

  “She stopped by to pick something up.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “Jackson was not here, if that’s what you’re asking.” She’s smirking, like it’s so amusing I might care whether or not Jackson was here. I don’t know why I would. It’s been a week since the play and everything is exactly like it was before. Plus today they are heading to Banff. The Oateses always ski at Christmas. The butterfly goes back to sleep, but not before reminding me that there is another Oates who might be responsible for the missing shades.

  “Was Quin with her?”

  “Yeah. They were just here a minute. Maybe I carried them with me downstairs?”

  I follow Mom down the stairs. I suspect that those sunglasses are in the hot little fists of Quinlan Oates on a plane to Canada, though I thought the two of us had an understanding. She wouldn’t steal stuff anymore and I wouldn’t tell anyone she was a kleptomaniac. But maybe she saw those sparkly rhinestone frames and couldn’t help herself.

  “What were they picking up anyway?” I doubt they swung by for more of Mom’s re-lo coupons and sample-size laundry detergents.

  I can tell by the space before her answer that she did not mean to mention any of this to me. “Just a few hand-me-downs. Things you don’t use anymore.”

  “Things I don’t use anymore? I doubt Quinlan Oates needs or wants anything of mine.”

  “You wouldn’t even notice unless I told you.”

  “Mom?”

  She pretends to be looking for her sunglasses in the basement, but really she is trying to escape from me.

  “Mom?” I repeat. She says nothing. “Toys? Clothes?” Now she’s literally moving the laundry detergent jug and looking behind it, like she might have worn her sunglasses into the basement to do laundry, then taken them off between loads. She’s pretending not to hear me. “Ski boots?” Please let it be ski boots. But no. Those are not the things Mom thinks take up precious shelf space that could be used for weathered wooden signs that say things like LIVE LOVE LAUGH with no punctuation. No no no. The things she thinks take up too much space are my—