Before, After, and Somebody In Between (27 page)

Nikki springs up. “Daddy, I have to tell you—”

“Not now, Nik. I have something to say.”

A cold iceberg of terror crunches my chest. Maybe Nikki already told him about my notebook, and now he’ll demand an explanation.
Adopt you? Are you nuts? Whatever gave you
that
bogus idea?

Unless, of course, it’s something even worse. Like something about Momma, about her wanting me back?

No! I won’t go.

I’ll do anything they want. I’ll be nice to Nikki. I’ll pretend last night never happened. Hell, I’ll even say
I
swiped her crappy bracelet. But I’m not going back to Momma, and nobody can make me.

Mr. Brinkman’s big hand rests heavily on my shoulder. “There’s no easy way to say this. But Mrs. Addams just passed away.”

44

Why didn’t I bother to call Shavonne back?

Why didn’t I say, “Yeah, come on over!”

Why did I blow her off?

Because I was too busy freaking out about Danny, and now it’s too late. What kind of friend do you call that? Shitty, that’s what I call it. I was even happy Mrs. Addams was sick, just so she couldn’t come back to the Brinkmans and expose me as a fake. Come on, Gina, admit it. Weren’t you jumping for joy?

Her mom can’t be dead.

Oh, yes she can be. And, yes, she is.

Tonight I’m going to the wake with Richard and Claudia, and it doesn’t even matter that Nikki knows. She knows who I am, that I’m friends with Shavonne. Soon she’ll announce to planet Earth that Gina’s a lying loser with a lunatic mom and a dead jailbird dad.

I wish I could disappear.

“Nikki, are you sure you don’t want to come?” Richard asks before we leave. He hasn’t said a word all day. Neither has Claudia, come to think of it.

Nikki, who hasn’t spoken to me, period, since that bracelet thing, is too busy counting out celery sticks and raisins to even glance up. Her shoulder blades poke through the back of her sweater, and I wonder if that’s the reason for Claudia’s suddenly pained expression.

“What for?” Nikki takes away a celery stick and adds another raisin.

“Because I think her
daughter
would appreciate it,” Richard says sarcastically, ignoring Claudia’s warning touch to his arm.

Whap!
Celery and raisins go flying off the table. “I’m not going to another funeral!” Nikki screams, and clatters out of the kitchen.

Another funeral.

Rachel.

That’s what this is about. Another funeral for the Brinkmans, probably the last thing they need.

“You spoil her,” Richard growls at Claudia.

“You had your chance,” she shoots back in a brittle voice I’ve never heard.

“What’s that remark supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means.”

I stare at the strange expression on Richard’s face—half agony, half fury—with no idea what it means. What’s going on? It can’t just be the funeral. He storms out ahead of us, and next thing I know, Claudia’s eyes spill over with tears. I reach for her limp hand, and she lets me take it, and together we follow Richard out to the car even though this, I know, is the last thing I need, too.

…

The chapel is packed with flowers and people, everyone bawling and praying and carrying on. Kenyatta and Monique hug me like
some long-lost sister, and I finally meet the infamous Rodney/Rashonda—dark-skin, slanted eyes, and astonishingly beautiful. In fact, he looks an awful lot like Shavonne.

Hunched between the grim, red-eyed Brinkmans, I endure the sermon, leaping out of my skin with every “Amen!” or “Praise Jesus!” All those endless eulogies about how wonderful Mrs. Addams was, how tragic this seems, and how God needed her more because God has a pla-a-an… oh, gimme a break! God doesn’t need Shavonne’s mom. Shavonne needs her mom.

Rocking like a metronome, I mentally zone out till the final “Amen!” The room explodes into ear-splitting grief, everyone wailing and sobbing and, in general, making a bigger commotion than the sinking of the
Titanic.
I can’t look at the coffin because it’s too hideous, too unreal. Instead, I flee to the back of the chapel while Richard and Claudia pay their respects.

Shavonne looks small and strangely nunnish in a black dress, probably the only one she owns that doesn’t show off her boobs. I touch her wrist. “Hey, you okay?”

She rips me apart with burning, glassy eyes. “Like you care?”

Everyone hears, and my face grows hot. “I-I’m sorry about the other night. I wish we could’ve gotten together, but—”

“Fuck off.” Shavonne turns away. “I’m through with you.”

Kenyatta puts an arm around her, but Shavonne flings it away and storms off. I rush after her, snatching at the back of her dress. “Shavonne, please!”

She pushes me hard. “You come cryin’ to me ‘cause Chardonnay’s after your ass. You come cryin’ to me ‘cause somebody throws you off a porch. You come cryin’ to me ‘cause nobody’ll buy you a damn cello. Now what? Your life is so perfect, so who needs me, huh? Why don’t you just go back home and shove your own self up your ass?”

Kenyatta and Monique cluster around, trying to drag her back toward the chapel. Stunned and silent, I watch her elaborate braids bob away, and then finally scream after her, “My
life
is not
perfect!
”

“So what?” she screams back.

I sneak outside and cry under the dark shadow of a brick wall, and this is exactly how Jerome finds me. Seeing him now is like seeing a flash of Bubby, and I think about how he’s dead, and why he’s dead, and I start bawling even harder. I don’t think I can ever stop.

Jerome pats me awkwardly. “Aw, c’mon, Martha. You know she didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, she did, and I don’t blame her! Her mom was dying and I just ignored her.”

“Ain’t nothing you could’ve done.”

“I could’ve been there, at least. She would’ve done it for me.”

“You heard what the preacher said. It was just her time. Shavonne, she knows that.”

I wrench away. “Yeah, like it was Bubby’s time, you mean?”
Bubby, Bubby!
And out it pours, the avalanche of truth. “If I hadn’t taken that money, he’d still be alive.”

Jerome grows rigid. “What money you talkin’ about?”

Who cares? Let him hate me. I so totally deserve it.

“Anthony’s money. He stole my cello, so I stole his stupid money, and then those guys came after him when he couldn’t pay up. It was all my fault! And I wanted to tell you so bad.”

“Girl, you crazy.” His voice is a hunk of steel. “You didn’t take no damn money.”

“Oh, yes I did!”

“Not all of it,” he argues, and I wonder how he knows. “How much you take?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe a thousand bucks? I don’t know what was left.”

Jerome picks at a shoelace, shaking his head. “Anthony, he had like twelve grand under that mattress.”

“What? No way! I never took twelve thousand bucks, Jerome.”

“I know you didn’t. I did.” At my disbelieving look, he shouts in my face: “I took the money! Man, you retarded or what? He never even missed what you took, ‘cause I took most of it first. And that’s why Bubby’s dead, okay? Not because of you.”

“But why? Why’d you take it?”

He drops to the grass and rests his elbows on his knees, his forehead buried in the heels of his hands. “I wanted my mom back, that’s why. I wrote her a letter and told her about the money. Didn’t say where I got it from, I just told her I had it. I figured if she thought I had money, she’d want to come back, so…” Jerome gulps. “Well, it worked. She’s back.”

“You gave her Anthony’s money?”

“I—”

I shake him with both fists. “And you know what she’ll do with it? She’s gonna blow it on drugs. She’s a junkie, Jerome! Why do you want her back?”

In the glow of the dirty streetlight I see tears stream down his cheeks, feel his shoulders shudder under my hands. “I don’t know, I don’t know. Girl, you
got
a mom. And maybe she’s crazy and maybe she treats you like shit, but at least you got one. You don’t know what it’s like.” He buries his head deeper, and I have to strain to hear his words: “So it was me, okay? Me, not you.”

We sit there for a long time, both of us crying, till Claudia
and Richard come looking for me. When they see our faces, I know what they’re thinking, that we’re just two old friends crying over poor Shavonne.

If only they knew.

45

March creeps into a gray, rainy April. I keep thinking about Mrs. Addams. I keep thinking about Bubby. All of it makes me wonder, Who’s gonna be next? Whose name is next on God’s needed-more-up-here list?

Momma?

No! Zelda swears she’s fine.

The fact that Nikki knows my dirty secrets makes life ten times worse, and each day I wake up to a putrid smog of doom. I can’t think. I can’t concentrate. By the end of the month I’ve lost five pounds and three-tenths of a point on my GPA, and I’m harvesting a zit the size of Pluto in the middle of my chin.

Because Nikki’s a grade ahead, I rarely run into her at school, but lately she seems to be lurking every time I turn around. Behind me in the lunch line, and we don’t even have lunch at the same time. At the end of the hall, hovering near my locker. Wandering out of a lavatory as I’m jiggling my way in. It’s like she knows where I’m going to be and makes it a point to be there. Maybe it’s a game, but it spooks the hell out of me just the same.

Chloe and Faith meet me for lunch today as usual, blabbing
about the school concert, their horny boyfriends, a possible cruise to the mall. Would they be acting this normal if Nikki had already ratted me out? Of course not. Still, whenever somebody glances my way, I wonder if they know, what they’re thinking, what they’re whispering behind my back. Stuff about white trash? X-ACTO knives? Oh, yeah, don’t forget “slum rats.”

As the lunch bell rings, Nikki strolls into sight with her drama-geek pals. Chardonnay-style, she smiles, holds up a pen, and jabs the air a few times.

Faith sends me a funny look. “What’s that all about?”

I’m not sure, but I think the so-called jig may be up.

Too freaking paranoid to go to my next class, I tell the nurse I have cramps, call Claudia to bring me home, and then hole up in my room, consumed by a blistering red fury. Why, why does Nikki hate me so much? Because she thinks I’m a suck-up? Because I remind them of Rachel? Well, thanks to Miss Nicolette Brinkman and her big honkin’ mouth, my whole existence is spinning back into shit mode.

Fine! If Nikki wants to fight dirty, I can fight dirty, too. Wait till Richard finds out his darling baby’s a crank queen.

By now, of course, those capsules are long gone. I hunt through her closets and every single drawer, and check under the mattress and even in the toes of her shoes. I find birth control pills—wow!—and some X-rated e-mails, but nothing stronger than a jar of chocolate-covered espresso beans.

But I do find one thing: that freaking bracelet! And that’s how I figure out she lied about losing it, that she only did it to get me into trouble.

I study the sparkling stones through a dull red haze. No way will I let her get away with this.

Minutes tick by, then an hour. Finally I hear Nikki come
home from school and start fighting with Claudia about some party she wants to go to with Justin tonight. Thundering up the stairs, she stops dead when she sees me.

“What are you doing in here?” she yelps when she notices her drawers open, her clothes flung around, and all her sheets on the floor. “You trashed my room?”

Claudia’s there in a flash, and smacks a hand over her mouth. “Gina! What happened here?”

Considering everything, I sound pretty calm. “I was looking for drugs.”

“Drugs!” Nikki squeals. “Are you out of your mind?”

“She is doing drugs. She even admitted it. She says everyone takes them, and it’s the only way she can keep up.”

Claudia whirls on Nikki, and Nikki jumps back in alarm. “Mommy! You don’t believe her, do you?”

“And look what I found.” I dangle the bracelet under Nikki’s nose. “It was right in your jewelry box. Nobody stole it. You made that up.”

“Yeah, right. If that bracelet was there, you put it there yourself. Mom, can’t you see what she’s trying to do? You know I don’t do drugs, and you know I don’t lie. Why would I lie about my bracelet? I mean, what’s the point?”

“It would get me in trouble,” I snarl. “That’s the point.”

“I never said you took it. I thought it was that friend of yours.”

“Yeah, well. You lied about that, just like you’re lying about those pills.”

“What pills?” she shrieks. “Did you find any damn pills? No!”

“Stop it, both of you!” Claudia grips Nikki’s arm. “Nicole, I want the truth. Are you using drugs?”

Nikki giggles. “Come on, Mom. Why don’t you ask
Gina
if
she’s on drugs? She’s the one making up fairy tales about my bracelet.”

“I—am—not—making—it—up.”

“She probably took it herself,” Nikki continues, “so why doesn’t she admit it?”

“Bullshit!” I shout in a very un-Brinkman-like way. “I never touched it!”

Nikki, cool and unperturbed, folds her arms with a sweet smile. “Mom, I promise you that bracelet was not in my jewelry box. I have no clue where it’s been. And I don’t do drugs. I swear, I’ve never even tried them.”

Gotta hand it to her, she’s a better liar than Gina. Both of them stare at me: Nikki with pity and contempt, like she already knows she’s won. Claudia with—disgust? Is that what I see?

Opening my fingers, I let the bracelet plunk to the floor. Nikki scoops it up like an abandoned baby. My face is numb, my fingers are numb, and I wish to God I could drop over dead because I can’t stand that look on Claudia’s face.

“We’ll talk about this later, when Nikki’s father gets home.” Nikki’s father, she says. Like she has to remind me who he is.

Nikki waits a beat after her mom leaves the room. “Justin’s picking me up at five. I’ve got to get ready.” Another unpleasant pause. “So, like, that means you can get out of my room now, Gina… Martha. Whatever your name is this week.”