Chasing Boys (14 page)

“It’s in storage,” says Mom. “I suppose I should sell it—”

“And school? Don’t tell me I’m stuck at crappy Blair till twelfth grade. I need to get back to my old life.”

“But you have new friends now. And you can still have your old friends.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mom. That wouldn’t work. Me at Blair and them . . .”

“Bella’s kept in touch with her friends. Nothing’s changed. She still goes out.”

“They’re at college. She’s lucky. And Leonard. What about Leonard? Why has he taken me on for free? Am I some kind of guinea pig? Is he some kind of pervert or—”

I see it coming before it happens, but I can’t believe she’s going to do it. Mom slaps my face and I stop talking.

“Jesus,” says Bella, then a door slams and she is gone.

I stand looking at a stranger who has tears in her eyes. She reaches out to me and I flinch away. Then I go to my bedroom and lie down on my bed. In my mind I take out my secret jewel—my walk home with Eric. It’s starting to look dull, but I take it out anyway and give it a polish and look at it from different angles.

Although my door is shut I can still hear the sound of Mom crying in her bedroom.

53.

M
om’s left for work by the time I get up the next morning. She’s made me lunch and I grab it and chuck it in the garbage. It lands with a delicious thump. A thought jumps into my head and I say it out loud, trying it on like a new piece of clothing.

“I am a beaten child,” I say. “I have suffered child abuse,” I say a little louder.

“I’ll give you child abuse,” says Bella, who has been watching me from where she is drying her hair in front of the wall heater.

“You saw her. She slapped me. I should call the police,” I say.

“She was wrong. But you . . . you need to grow up, El,” she says. “Asking her all that stuff. What did you think was happening?”

“I just want it to be like it was. I want to wake up and find everything back to normal.”

“This is our normal now. Get used to it.”

“Mom’s never hit me before.”

“Well, what do you expect? Talking about furniture and school, as if that’s what matters. And trashing her boyfriend like that—”

“Boyfriend? Since when did she have a boyfriend? I didn’t say anything about a boyfriend.”

“Well, friend.”

“What friend?”

“Leonard,” says Bella.

“Leonard!” I repeat. “Leonard. What about Dad? And isn’t Leonard married?”

“Divorced.”

“Oh.”

I need to talk about this with someone right away. Not Bella, because she’s acting like it’s all normal. Not Mom, obviously. I could call Angie, but I’m not sure that she would get it. The whole hugeness of it. She’d probably be nice to me, but I feel the need for some straight answers from someone who knows the whole story.

I call Margot’s cell phone. She’s the only one who can help me. Before she can answer, I hang up. I decide to text her instead. Somehow it’s easier to write it than to speak it. My mind races as I consider the possibilities of my new situation. It takes me three attempts before I get a message that works.

M
OM’S NU BFRIEND IS MY
L
EONARD. SHE SLAPPED ME
. W
HAT WILL
I
DO
?
X
E
L

Already I feel better.

My good feeling doesn’t last long. By the time I get to school it drops away like the floor of an amusement park ride beneath my feet.

A bunch of Angie’s friends (I still think of them as that) gather around me, patting my arm and cooing like a flock of pigeons eyeing a bag of scraps.

“Are you okay, sweetie?”

“Hey, he wasn’t worth it.”

“Are you still talking to her?”

I drop my bag and raise my arms so that they fall back a little.

I’m panicking that maybe Dylan has been blabbing about my crush on Eric.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“We got your message,” said Jessy. Even she looks concerned. “About your mom and Leonard—your Leonard.”

“Oh. Holy—oh.” Little bits of information trickle into my brain, like the first thawing of a frozen stream.

“I mean, we didn’t even know you had a boyfriend,” says Jessy.

“Oh,” is all I can say again. Then I pick up my bag and head for the bathroom.

I am still sitting on a toilet-seat lid when the bell goes for first period.

This is what I have worked out so far:

A.
I have sent a group message to everyone in my phone’s contact list about Mom and Leonard.

B.
People in the list include Angie, my mother, my sister, Leonard and Eric and Dylan, to name just a few.

C.
By now there is a rumor spreading around the school that my mother has just run off with my boyfriend.

D.
Eric thinks I have a boyfriend.

E.
Dylan thinks I have a boyfriend.

F.
By now there is a rumor spreading around the school that my mother beats me and the vice principal is probably contacting Children’s Services as I sit here thinking.

The bathrooms are probably my second-favorite place to be at Blair. Now, school bathrooms are usually disgusting, but the principal has this thing about cleanliness. I know this because there’s always a notice for Radio SRN about keeping the school clean and tidy. The fact that he offers a cash prize at the end of each term is enough incentive for students to give it their best. I’ve seen kids grab garbage out of the trash cans and take it to the yard monitor, just so they can get points for the end-of-term garbage tally.

The tiles in the girls’ bathrooms are yellow. Not an abusive yellow, but a nice mellow yellow of morning sunshine. Some are cracked, but the grout between them is white. The school janitor cleans the toilets twice a day. They smell like lavender—in a bathroom kind of way. The best time to be there is when everyone else is in class. Sometimes I get a pass to go to the bathroom, shut the door, and just enjoy the quiet dripping of the taps.

I am still running through A, B, C, D, E, and F when Desi finds me about twenty minutes into first period. When I say Desi, I mean her hand. I’d know that hand anywhere.

“El?”’ she says.

I want to say something, but my voice just makes a little squeak. The next thing I know there are two hands waving under my door.

“Open up, El,” says Desi.

I sag with relief. By the time I open the door I hear the machine-gun clatter of Ms. Clooney’s heels enter the bathroom.

“Omigod,” says Desi.

“Well, well,” she says as she rounds the corner. “Do you girls have a pass? No? I didn’t think so. See you at lunchtime detention—today.”

“I guess we’re even now,” whispers Desi.

54.

I
get through the day without any further interruptions. I sit by myself in class, though Desi keeps looking at me like a mother hen might look at a stray chick. Lunchtime detention is non-eventful. I sit alone at the back corner of the room, and Ms. Clooney lets me sit there, away from prying eyes.

At the end of detention, Ms. Clooney says she has some good news for me. I doubt it, but I listen politely. She tells me she has submitted my detention story to the school newspaper and that it has been accepted for the end-of-year publication.

“Okay,” I say.

I don’t even bother getting angry that she has done this behind my back. I wonder why Angie hasn’t mentioned it. I head for the door, but Ms. Clooney stops me.

“What are you doing with your life, Ariel Marini?” she says.

“What?” It was the cat-and-mouse game with a twist. Just me and Ms. Clooney and no one watching.

Ms. Clooney looks me long and hard in the eye. For once I look back at her, really look, and I see a person. Just a person with washed-out gray eyes.

“I don’t wish to see you in detention again,” she says quietly.

Then she goes and I’m a mouse left without a game.

At the end of the day I check my phone and there are eighteen messages. I scan through them. Bella’s says I should be banned from using technology and was I all right. There is a message from Mom that just reads “sorry.” There is no message from Margot. This hurts more than any slap on the face.

The days roll on.

Mom and I are civil to each other. She has told me sorry about thirty-seven times and I’ve said sorry too, but I spend a lot of time in my room. I curse the fact that we don’t have Internet access at home, but then reconsider and think maybe it’s just as well no one can instant message me. In the end I get so bored I do my homework. That’s when I know that I’ve reached an all-time low.

I don’t go to basketball that week. I tell Angie that I have a headache, then I sit at home and watch a rerun of a classic chick flick called
Sleepless
in Seattle
. This gives me a chance to cry without anyone asking questions. It actually turns out to be not a bad night. Mom has been given a box of chocolates, I don’t ask by who, and we sit on the couch together and watch TV, eat chocolates, and argue about the ending.

Then Bella gets home from work and the three of us watch the next movie—some Elvis movie—and though Bella groans through all the corny lines, she has us up twisting and rocking and rolling and we laugh together like we haven’t laughed in years, until Mom collapses against the door frame and says, “Oh, that’s enough. I have to go to bed. Good night, you two.”

I wait for her to kiss me on the forehead, but I haven’t let her do that for ages, so I just say, “I think it’s cool.”

“What?” says Mom.

“I think it’s cool that you’re going out with Leonard.”

Mom looks bewildered, like she’s opened the door to the wrong house.

“We’re not going out, Ariel,” she says. “He’s just someone I can talk to.”

Then she kisses me on the forehead, goes to her bedroom, and shuts the door quietly behind her.

On Sunday, Angie drops in. She’s been visiting her brother and seems happy.

“How’s your headache?” she asks.

“Headache . . . oh, yeah. Fine, thanks.”

“I should introduce you and Tony one day.”

“Yeah, that would be good,” I say. I can think of a few things I’d like to say to him. Him and his water pipes.

“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine,” I say, still embarrassed about the group text message.

“El, someone told me something on Friday . . . something that I need to ask you about.”

A tap has turned on in my stomach. A trickle of cold water is slowly filling me up.

“Sure,” I say. “What?”

“It’s Eric,” she says.

I can’t believe Dylan has done this. It suddenly occurs to me to wonder why Dylan hangs around the basketball group.

“Someone told me you have . . . that you’re interested in Eric.”

Surprisingly, I’m very calm. “Who said?”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Angie. “Is it true?”

“Yes,” I say. I feel embarrassed. Like I’m at an AA meeting and I’ve just stood up and said, “My name’s Ariel Marini and I have a crush on Eric Callahan.”

She nods her head slowly. “I just wanted to ask you. I wanted it out in the open between us.”

I laugh and it’s a little shaky around the edges but I manage to pull it off. “Doesn’t every girl at school have a crush on Eric Callahan?” I ask. “He
is
the most gorgeous guy in school.”

She lays a hand on my arm. “Are we okay?” she asks. “This is really awkward.”

“Are you crazy?” I pull a face. “Eric Callahan is your boyfriend. Yours. There’s no way I’d interfere with that. Besides, there’s someone else I’m into now. Your informer was a little behind in the news.”

Angie looks relieved and asks me who it is, but I shake my head and change the subject. She tells me she tried out for the school play and got the lead role.

“Hey, that’s great,” I say. “Is it a musical?”

Angie shakes her head. “
Romeo and Juliet
.”

“Fantastic.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done a real drama role before.”

“You’ll be great. What does Eric think?” Oh, good one. I’m trying to convince Angie that Eric isn’t on my mind and he’s the first thing I talk about.

Angie doesn’t seem to notice. She just shrugs.

“He thought it was a bit, you know, lame.”

“Lame?” I echo.

“Eric’s not really into the whole theater thing, if you know what I mean. It’s going to be taking up some of my Friday nights.”

“So?”

“So that’s our night. Eric needs me at the game. He says I keep him focused.”

“Focused,” I repeat. “But you’d be great.”

“I was in the Future Players Theater Company for a while. Did I mention that? I never got a part, but it was fun selling tickets at the door and helping backstage.”

“So why did you stop going?” I ask.

Angie just shrugs. She’s looking so lost I change the subject. I tell her that Mom and I are at least talking politely to each other, and what started out as an awkward moment turns into an okay afternoon.

Before Angie leaves for home, I stop her at the door and ask her casually how she and Eric got together.

“Dylan,” says Angie. “Dylan and I went out for a little while about a year ago. We were in the Future Players together. He used to paint the sets. He was really sweet.”

“Dylan?”

“But we weren’t really going-out material.”

“Then he introduced you to Eric,” I finish off.

Angie nods. When she leaves all I can think of is one thing.

Poor Dylan.

I nearly forgive him for telling Angie.

55.

S
ometime, late, late on Sunday night, an idea gets into my head and won’t leave. I struggle to find the word, but it takes a midnight trip to the fridge to crank my gears.

Hypocrite.

I, Ariel Marini, am a hypocrite.

I have ranted at my best friend for having the secret hots for a boy I like. I have abused her and shunned her and had some awful thoughts. I even threw up in her mother’s perfectly manicured shrub. But I am doing exactly the same thing to my supposed friend Angie. Well, not exactly.

If there’s a movie for this, I don’t know it.