Always, Abigail (16 page)

1.
“Abigail, what is the meaning of these inappropriate outbursts?”

2.
“First, you tackle your dear friend Gabby Marco.” (I knew Old Hawk hadn't believed Gabby's cover-up story.)

3.
“Now you disrupt a perfectly lovely game of Spelling 500 by lunging at Jackson. Who, no doubt, somehow deserved this, but that is beside the point.”

4.
“You seem to be forgetting that in middle school it is important that you be striving to not only excel academically, which by the way you are struggling to do, but also to excel in the area of becoming a well-mannered young lady. Controlling your temper is of the
utmost
importance.”

5.
“And furthermore, your mother would be appalled at this kind of behavior.”

6.
“Now I suggest you begin using some type of anger management coping strategy, such as counting to ten, or you will be counting your steps as you march yourself straight down to Mr. Buckley's office.”

7.
“Are we clear, young lady?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

1.
When I got to the gym, the girls were laughing behind my back about the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad puddle incident. As soon as they saw me, they pretended to be sympathetic.

2.
Alli, fluttering her mascara-crusted eyelashes (since when did
she
wear mascara?), said, “You must've
died
when that ‘flabby freak' Gabby got off the bus and helped you.”

She sounded exactly like Jackie when she said it. She even cracked her gum like Jackie.

3.
I felt the lava inside me start to heat up. Silently I counted 1…2…3…and in my mind, I stirred the simmering lava.

I was mad at J&M and supermad at AlliCam for laughing at me. But deep down, I was even more furious with myself for not telling Alli to shut up when she called Gabby a flabby freak. But how could I?

As I counted well past one hundred, I kept picturing myself smothering each of the pom-pom girls with their own pom-poms. But Old Hawk's warning about being sent to Mr. B's office was fresh in my mind, so I held myself back. The lava continued to simmer inside me. Pretty soon, my head felt like it would explode.

1.
What's wrong?

2.
Are you sick?

3.
Do you want to talk about anything?

1.
Everything.

2.
I wish I
were
sick so I could stay home from school. Forever.

3.
Did you ever wish you hadn't been so mean to someone?

Yes.

What did you do about it?

Figured out how to make it right.

I already knew what I had to do before my mom even answered my question.

1.
I
had
to apologize to her, for everything.

2.
Walking so far would be a good way to punish myself for being so mean.

1.
I was afraid of what it might look like inside the dented-up trailer barn house.

2.
Her tree-climbing, crazy brother might be home.

3.
I really didn't know what I was going to say.

1.
The knot in my stomach tightened when Gabby's lumberjack brother, Paul Bunyan, came to the door. He was dressed in a clean sweatshirt and jeans that looked new, not the tree-climbing flannel shirt and ripped pants he'd worn when he came to terrorize the kids on the bus. He smelled like an oak tree.

When I said I was there to see Gabby, he smiled through the screen door of the dented-up trailer barn house.

“You must be Abigail.”

I couldn't believe he knew my name. My older brother barely knew Cami's and Alli's names, and we'd been friends since we were five.

2.
He said Gabby was babysitting somewhere in the neighborhood. He told me to wait so he could get some paper. He wanted to write down my name and phone number.

I didn't really want to leave my name and number with a crazy lumberjack, but because he seemed so happy that someone had come to see his sister, I just stood there on the porch, and he disappeared into another room in the house.

3.
While he was gone getting the paper, I peeked through the screen door to see what it was like inside. Surprisingly, the house wasn't bad. The furniture and carpeting weren't new, but they were clean. The living room was picked up. No weird odors, except for the oak tree smell. The History Channel was on the TV in the corner showing
Ax
Men: Man vs. Mountain
. I always wondered what kind of people watched that show.

In the corner on a card table, I noticed a stack of old paperback books, some boxes, and a few rolls of clear packing tape. I knew the books were probably part of Gabby's “collection,” but what were the boxes and tape for?

4.
Paul Bunyan came back, opened the screen door, and handed me the paper and pen. I scribbled my name and number on the memo pad and handed it back to him. “Gabby'll be sorry she missed you,” he said. “Things have been kinda hard, well, since you know…I'll have her call you.”

Paul let the screen door close, and I felt my Gabby Guilt headache turning into a migraine.

What did Paul Bunyan mean when he said, “Things have been kinda hard since…”?

1.
Since what? Since her mom died?

2.
Since kids started making fun of her?

3.
Since she started laughing for no reason at all?

4.
Since I started being a big fat jerk to her?

Even if I used every one of Old Hawk's vocabulary words, there would
never
be enough of the right words to apologize for how I'd been treating Gabby.

Gabby never called.

1.
I sat with AlliCam and stared out the window while they argued about whether Audra Marshall used fake tanning lotion or not.

2.
Gabby got on and sat in her new usual seat behind the driver. She didn't even look at me.

3.
Jackson Dawber tossed someone's shoe up the aisle of the bus. He was smart and threw it low enough so the driver didn't see. It hit Gabby in the calf. She turned around and gave Jackson a nasty look. (She knew he had done it because everyone was pointing at him.) She passed the shoe back.

The whole thing would've been over if Jackson wasn't such a moron.

“If your calves weren't as big as cows, it never would've hit you!” he yelled. Jackson's audience laughed. And when he started saying, “MOO! MOO!” AlliCam started giggling.

Since when did
they
think Jackson was funny? They both turned around, and Alli said, “Oh, Jackson, you're hysterical.”

4.
All the attention gave Jackson the incentive he needed to be even more of a moron, which I didn't think was possible.

He started singing to the tune of “Bingo.”

“There was a farmer who had a calf that turned into a cow,

G-A-B-B-Y,

G-A-B-B-Y,

G-A-B-B-Y,

And Gabby was her name oh.”

AlliCam actually started clapping along.

That's when I knew an apology would never be enough. I couldn't just
say
I was sorry. I had to do something to
show
I was sorry.