Camo Girl (11 page)

I have to get something off my chest. “He got in the fight because of me.”

“Oh?”

“He was protecting me.” My knight in shining armor, I almost say. But I trip over the words because he can't be my knight. Z is. Bailey has to be something else. “He's really brave. Like his dad, right?”

Mrs. James sits, listening, so I go on.

“Jonathan said something mean to me. He's just really mean,” I blurt. “I'm glad Bailey hit him. He deserved it.”

“What did he say?”

I sit quietly. It echoes in my head, but I don't like to say it out loud.

“Well, I suppose it doesn't matter,” Mrs. James says after a moment.

I sip my juice. “Is he still grounded?”

“Oh, yes, ma'am.”

“But—”

“You can't make someone fight, Ella. It's not your fault. And he has to learn to solve problems another way.”

“It was just one time,” I say.

Mrs. James sips her tea.

I don't know much, but I know that when grown-ups sit quietly, it means there's a secret in the room. It means you're a child and there are things you're not supposed to know. Sometimes you know them anyway. Like how I know when Mom is missing Dad, or when Grammie's worried about money, or when the teachers think Z's all screwed up. Like how I knew something horrible was happening when Dad got sick, even before anyone told me. Before Dad showed me
The Body Book
and tried to explain.

I don't know what all is in the room with us now. Maybe I don't want to know.

I set my juice cup on the coffee table. “I have to go home now.”

“Of course.” Mrs. James settles her teacup in the saucer.

“Will you tell Bailey . . .” I pause. I roll the basketball off my lap and onto the sofa where I was just sitting. I wait as it settles in the cushion crack.

It's better this way. I want to go back to the way things were. With Z, I never have to wonder where I stand. I never have to wonder what's real and what's not.

“Tell him he can still use the hoop if he wants.”

T
he front door slams a little too hard
on my way into the house, but I try to slip away to my room, unnoticed. That, or my stomping footsteps, gives me away.

“Just one second there, sparky,” Grammie calls, motioning me back. “What's this face?”

“That's just how I look,” I mutter. “I'm ugly.”

“Nonsense,” Grammie declares. “I don't want to hear that kind of talk out of you, missy.”

I touch my cheeks in despair. “Well, it's true whether I say it or not, so what's the difference?”

“Come over here.”

My feet stay planted, far away. I want to fight Grammie's sharp tone, fight the words that try to fix it when we know it can't
ever be fixed. So she springs toward me, the Energizer Bunny of unhelpfulness.

“This is a beautiful face,” she says, her fingers flitting over the surface of me.

“Ugly,” I insist.

“Nope. One day you're gonna see it. I promise.” She kisses my forehead.

“We're not supposed to lie to each other,” I say. That's one of the rules around here.

Grammie clucks her tongue at me. “Anyone who can see will see you beautiful,” she says, which is what they always say. She slides her fingers into my knots of curl.

It's not Grammie's fault. Grandmas are supposed to think you're beautiful. They have to, because it's their job, and also because if they didn't love you as hard as they could, you might just die of ugliness.

“Oh, no you don't.” Grammie reaches out and clutches me to stop me from running past. “Come into my arms, cuddlebug.”

She folds me up against her, and I let her. I squeeze my eyes shut. Sometimes, for just a second, I find a way to believe her. But it never lasts.

“Now then, what's the real trouble here?” She sets me back and studies me.

“There's this boy.”

“Ah.”
Grammie gazes upon me wisely.

I shouldn't have brought it up. “Just don't say anything, okay?” I close my eyes.

Grammie goes, “Humph.” Which in this case means,
Child, how long have you known me?

All the breath and the fight go out of me. “Okay, let's have it.”

“I lived a whole long life,” Grammie says. “Only one man I found worth giving the time of day.” She touches the locket that Grampa must've given her.

“Hey,” I say, lifting my head. “What about Daddy?”

Grammie waves her hand. “Oh, he doesn't count for me. That's my baby.”

“Tomorrow—,” I say, so she knows I didn't forget.

“That's right,” Grammie says. She opens up her locket so we can see the tiny pictures of Daddy and me. “It's three years tomorrow.”

I
wake in the morning and turn to my night-
stand, gazing at the framed photo smiling back at me. I know what he's trying to tell me. Today is a day to be brave. Today is a day to not close my eyes.

Sorry, Daddy
.

I make my way through the bathroom the way I always do. Something should be different about Dad's day, I think, but for some reason I can't let it be that. The radio's playing quietly when I come down the hallway. Grammie stands in her socks in the kitchen, sipping coffee from her big blue mug. I hug her around the middle.

“Goodness knows, you're getting tall,” she murmurs. It's true. My head reaches her shoulder, and I can look over without standing on tiptoe. I lean my head against her anyway.

Grammie smooths back my braids, then smacks me lightly on the hip. “It's just a regular day, kiddo. Up and at 'em.”

It's not a regular day, but it sure looks like one. I ride the bus beside Millie, who sits in stony silence for two minutes before informing me that she's thinking of going with Max instead of Rick, and what do I think.

When we get off, Z waits at the corner of the school, two cheese biscuits in hand. He gives me one. I wonder what sort of place he's found in his world for our fight. How he's able to make sense of it and let it wash away.

I tear the biscuit in half and give part back to him. “You eat it, okay?” I haven't been very good to him lately, and maybe I owe him a little more kindness. He munches happily, and I sit beside him, watching the other kids in their groups. We're comfortable. Apart. Like usual.

The first bell rings, and we go inside. At the lockers, Z digs around in his bag for an extra long time. We're about to go our separate ways, finally, when I feel his little hand on my backpack. I'm wearing it on both shoulders, so I don't see what the problem is. I keep walking.

“Milady,” he murmurs.

I turn, even though at this rate we're going to be late for class. “Z—”

He holds out his palm. In it rests a little wooden heart, painted pale blue, with the number three on it.

This is the kind of thing he does just right. Just right enough to break my heart.

“You remembered.”

Z tilts his head, stares into the near distance. I wonder what he's thinking, or if this is just a little too close to real for him to come all the way with me.

“Thanks,” I whisper. I grab the tiny token off his hand and hurry toward the classroom.

S
chool feels empty without bailey. i'm
sure he's in the building, in the in-school suspension classroom with Jonathan, but I can't catch a glimpse of him. Everyone's done talking about the fight, so it's like he never even existed. Business as usual. Almost.

The Mirage casino chip still in my pocket reminds me that he was real. Is real. That he'll be back, with his basketball jerseys and his giant grin and trying to win me over. Or maybe he can take a hint. Maybe it's all already over.

“Can I borrow a dollar?” Cass says to Millie on the way to the cafeteria. “My mom gave me lunch money this morning, but I can't find it now.”

A second later this guy Brad starts complaining that the
five dollars that were in his pocket before gym class weren't there after.

“It's an epidemic,” Max says. “Brandon's cash disappeared, too.”

People's lunch money is missing. That's the topic of conversation today. I hear them talking, but I also kind of float above it, thinking of Bailey while trying not to step on Z's heels. He moves at a stalking pace in front of me.

In my other pocket rests the little blue heart he gave me. This is one of those times when I just don't understand him. Remembering the anniversary is about as real as it gets, but he finds a way to go there. Although he won't say an actual word about it. It's like the fantasy is heightened, or something. But he does know what's happening.

All around, Z is in rare form today. Maybe it's the lack of Bailey, I don't know, but he cannot stop talking all through lunch. He's high on something—some tidbit of fantasy, or just having me all to himself again. Sort of. To be honest, I'm not really listening.

“The quest begins today, milady,” Z says.

“What?” I say for the thousandth time this morning.

“The quest,” Z insists. “It's a long journey, but in the city of gold we will find the treasure,” he chirps.

Just then, I see him. Bailey. From a distance, going
through the lunch line after everyone else has finished. I sit up straighter.

Z chatters on and on about his adventure, his quest. This is something new. I don't get it yet. Eventually I'll figure it out and be able to play along.

Bailey's already headed for the door, trailing Jonathan. Both look extremely bummed out over their current lot in life. The ISS teacher nudges them to keep moving. They're not allowed to talk to anyone.

At the last possible second, Bailey turns his head. Looks at me, sees me looking back. His expression is flat, full of nothing. He stares for one second, then slinks out the door. I don't know what it means.

W
hen the last bell rings, z is
nowhere to be found. I wait by his locker for a minute, but when he doesn't appear, I figure maybe he already knows it's a no chess kind of day. I go ahead outside and, sure enough, Mom's waiting in the pickup line.

It's Dad's day, so she drives us straight to the Unitarian church. There's no service going on, but the doors are open, so we sit in the back pew. We fold our hands and bow our heads to say a prayer of thanks for his life. It's okay to cry a little, so Mom does, but I don't feel like it today, so I just lean my head on her shoulder. Who knows what you're supposed to say in a prayer, so I ask the angels to give him good wings and fresh batteries for his halo so it will shine nice and bright.

Last year we wore a lot of black, went to the Catholic church, and lit candles. The year before that, Dad's day actually fell on a Sunday, so we got to do a whole big worship service with the Baptists, who sing a lot. We were at the church all day, because we figured out that saying “Lord Jesus, amen” is like a form of currency that can buy you things like hugs and fried chicken with a side of coleslaw. We don't really fit in any of these places, but Mom says it's the least we can do in memory of Dad and that it doesn't hurt to spread it around.

Mom keeps tissues in her purse, and now her face is running like a faucet, so I dig around until I find some that seem unused. She accepts them with one of those teary smiles that is supposed to say a bunch of things at once, things like
I'm sad and it's okay,
but also
I wish you didn't have to see me like this,
and
Don't worry, I'm really happy underneath, even though I don't look it.

I lean against her again and try to pray something different. I want the angels to look out for Mom, too. Dad being gone, well, I don't think about that too much because it's sometimes hard to remember when he wasn't. Mom being gone, though. I think about that a lot when she's away. A few days at a time is bad enough. I can't imagine it being forever.

She knows what I'm thinking, I guess, because she
slides her arm around me from the side and hugs me closer. “Love, and stuff,” she whispers in my ear. “Love, love, love.”

On the way home, Mom's still a little sniffly. I don't like it when she cries, but Grammie always says if you feel like crying, you should just go ahead, and there's no shame in it. So I can't really ask her to stop.

“Oh, I miss Daddy,” Mom says, blotting her face. “I miss him a little bit every day.”

She glances at me, and I think I'm supposed to say something, but I don't.

Instead, I stare out the window. I miss Daddy. I do. I have the picture of him on my nightstand that I look at every morning and every night. But when I don't look right at it, sometimes it's hard to picture his face. Some days I come home from school, and I see the picture, and I realize I forgot to miss him. Usually it's because I was too busy being mad at Jonathan or worried about what he was going to do to me or to Z. Or because we had a really good chess game. Or, lately, because of Bailey.

Speak of the devil.

Mom pauses the car in the street, because Bailey's in the driveway. We watch for a moment as he loops the ball high a few times before he sees us. He waits in the grass by the pole while we pull into the garage.

Mom puts her hand on my thigh. “What do you want to do?” she says. I suppose she means about Bailey.

“This is what we do after school,” I say, leaping out of the car before she can follow me with more words.

H
ey,” I say.

“Hey,” he says. He bounces the ball slowly, such that when it returns after each drop it seems to hang in the air. His fingers barely skim it, guiding it down. Graceful. Sad.

“Hey,” I say again. I'm glad he's here, but I don't know what to do with him.