Chasing Boys (9 page)
“I think we are definitely going to get an award for this project,” says Sarah. “Group photo.” She bunches the three of us together, holds the camera at arm’s length, and clicks.
I’m in the middle, between Dylan and Sarah, and my head only comes up to Dylan’s shoulder.
T
hat afternoon I get home from school to find Mom home already. I ask her what’s wrong and she mumbles something about leaving early as she shuffles around the kitchen. I’m not really listening. My head’s full of my own problems as I grab a bowl of cereal and head to my bedroom. Half an hour later I’m lying on my bed with my earbuds plugged in when Bella thumps through the door. She’s wearing a scowl that could wilt full-grown trees.
“What?” I ask, removing one earbud.
“You lazy cow,” says Bella. “Are you going to be a leech all your life?”
Wow, you seem upset.
I hate to see you like this.
Is there something I can do to make you feel better?
Also, am I a cow or a leech?
“Shut up,” I say, as I put the earbud back in.
But Bella pulls both earbuds out.
“When are you going to grow up, El? You treat this place like a hotel. I’m sick of sharing a room with you—you’re a pig. There’s no housekeeper to clean up after you anymore. Mom’s not home to pick up your slack—”
“Well, whose fault is that?” I snarl.
“It’s not Mom’s,” she says.
But I don’t want to hear it. I blame Dad the most, but I blame Mom too. She should have been keeping an eye on things. The word “bancrupt” flits around my mind like a mosquito. I swat it away but it returns.
“Sick . . . lazy . . . bed . . . drugstore . . . medicine . . . dinner,” are Bella’s words that filter through to me.
“What? Slow down. What are you talking about?” I finally manage.
Bella’s lips are a thin grim line. “Our mother is sick,” she says slowly. “That is why she is home from work so early. So you need to get your lazy butt off that bed and make dinner while I go to the drugstore for some medicine. Got it?”
Then she leaves before I answer. I wait until I hear the door slam before I creep into Mom’s room. Her blinds are down. She takes up hardly any space in her big bed.
“Mom?” I say.
She answers with a coughing fit. “Looks like I have your cold, Ariel,” she says finally, with a shaky laugh.
Great, so it’s my fault.
She reaches out to me, but I pretend not to see.
“I’m going to make dinner,” I say.
Mom always used to make dinner.
When Dad had his own business, Mom would go into his office every weekday, but she would always be home when we came back from school. She’d have a snack for us. Make sure we were warm enough, cool enough, happy enough. She’d sit down and help with math. And listen to our funny stories. We might have had a cleaning lady, but it was Mom who sewed our concert costumes and read
The Little Mermaid
to us and chased out the shadows when there were monsters in the middle of the night.
And now I’m making dinner. And my mother is in her bedroom. And I know I should chase out the monsters in her shadows, but I just don’t know how to do it.
I make chicken with instant gravy, which is the only thing I know how to make apart from noodles and eggs. I hate dicing up the raw pink meat, so I throw it in the frying pan quickly to keep bad thoughts away. The hot oil spits and catches me as I push the meat around with a wooden spoon. The mark on the inside of my wrist is white-hot with pain. Instead of feeling angry or sad, I feel satisfied.
This is what I deserve. I am a lazy cow-leech.
After dinner, Bella spreads out her textbooks on the dining table. Mom is back in bed, after sitting on the couch and watching a little TV. She is asleep when I poke my head into her room, so I don’t disturb her. I go into my bedroom, shut the door, and take a good look at the room. It’s looking like a before and after photo, all in one. Bella’s bed is neat, her bookcase is tidy, and her shelves are full of interesting things.
My side of the room is the before picture. By the time I finish with it, over two hours have passed. I’m humming along to my iPod—the last present I got before the B word ruined everything—as I put the final touches to the bedside table that Bella and I share. I get an idea and sneak outside to the communal garden, if you could call it that. On my way back inside, the cat lady next door appears at her door calling for Socks or Shnookums or whoever.
“A bit chilly out,” she says.
I just nod as I sidle back inside.
When Bella comes to bed, she bends down to sniff the stolen flowers sitting bravely in a small glass of water. She doesn’t say anything about the room but climbs into bed, reads a while, then turns off her light.
“Night night,” she mumbles.
And the knot in my stomach loosens just a little.
Later on, when Bella is snoring quietly and Mom has stopped coughing from her room, I creep into the bathroom and dial Leonard’s number. He calmly lets me know that his hours are from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Friday, but that if it’s an emergency I can call his cell phone. Then his answering machine beeps and waits for my message and I hang up.
I find my way to Mom’s room, stand in the doorway, and listen to her breathe.
A
s I settle down to another session of Radio SRN on Wednesday, Margot and Desi give me sad little waves through the tiny window that looks out onto the hallway. Then they walk away. When the door opens, I expect to see the vice principal. Instead it’s Dylan—the last person I want to see. Dylan is now taking up 80 percent of the space in my little radio booth. A work folder dangles from his hand.
I figure Dylan is here to talk about the geography project.
“Can we do this later?” I ask.
“Listen, I just want to say . . . ,” he begins. “About the Eric thing . . .”
If he’s going to remind me that Eric is taken, I don’t want to hear it.
“I’m busy,” I say.
Dylan just closes the door behind him and leans against the wall.
“Go ahead,” he says. “Don’t let me stop you.”
I shuffle the papers, trying to get them in some order, and gasp when he grabs my wrist.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
I watch, mesmerized, as he traces the outline of the oil burn on the inside of my wrist.
“What happened?” he says. He seems angry.
“Cooking,” I say, pointedly looking at my wrist.
He finally lets go, but doesn’t look convinced that that’s the real story.
I’m not sure how to demand that he leave without sounding desperate, so I shrug as if it doesn’t matter and start the announcements. Halfway through I hear the door click shut behind me and I sense that Dylan has left. I’m not sure why, but I feel disappointed.
Today’s pile of announcements just goes on and on. Missing uniforms, lost textbooks, an invitation to join the debating team. To save myself from being bored I try a few different accents. This keeps me amused for a while. The last paper in the pile is a notice about the school newspaper.
“Don’t forget, Blair students, you can volunteer your talent to this year’s school newspaper—articles, fiction, illustration, and photography. Meetings are every Monday at lunchtime in the Library Conference Room.”
I switch off the system and tidy up the notices. There’s a scrap of paper on the floor and I pick it up, but it’s not a notice. It wasn’t on the floor when I first arrived. I crumple the page and throw it in the garbage. There’s still ten minutes of lunch break left—enough time for me to eat my limp sandwich from home.
I don’t know why, but something makes me stop at the door, grab the crumpled sheet from the trash, smooth it out, and put it in my pocket.
A
ngelique stops by my locker that afternoon and I try to ignore Margot’s exaggerated thumps as she loads up her books for home.
“Hey, El,” says Angelique. “You’re doing a great job on SRN.”
“Thanks,” I say. Neither Margot nor Desi has said anything about what I’m doing except to offer suggestions of how to get out of it.
“Eric told me you helped him out with that basketball court time thing—”
I wave her into silence and hope that Margot hasn’t heard.
“It was nothing,” I say.
“I wondered if you’d like to come to the game Friday night? The guys have to win this one to have any kind of chance of being in the finals. It should be good.”
I can feel Margot’s eyes burning into me, and my laugh is shaky.
“No can do,” I say. “Friday night is movie night.”
I suddenly remember that Angelique saw me shopping with Mom last Friday night and I hope that she doesn’t mention it.
A little frown forms between her two delicately plucked eyebrows and she lays a hand on my arm.
“That’s too bad,” she says. “It would have been fun.”
Margot makes some more noise with her locker, then walks off, her bag slung over one shoulder. She turns around halfway down the hall and says, “Did I mention I can’t make it this Friday night, El? Feel free to go to your basketball game.”
Angelique looks uncertain. “Hey, your friends are invited,” she says. “The more the better.”
“Thanks anyway,” I say, wondering whether I should run after Margot.
The stone in my shoe stops me from running.
That afternoon I make my usual visit to Leonard. He seems distracted, sad almost, and I want to ask him what the trouble is, but really that’s his job, not mine. When he says hello, I try to add a little warmth in my return nod.
Outside in Leonard’s park, the trees are finally bare. They stand bravely in the weak winter sunlight, but they look lost. I want to hug one as I leave, but I don’t want Leonard to see me and think that I’m crazy, so I just touch their trunks as I walk past.
That night Desi calls me to thank me for passing on my cold. She’ll be in bed for days, she says cheerfully.
“You know how my mother is,” she says. “I’ve already had enough chicken soup and lemon drinks to sink the Titanium.”
“
Titanic
,” I correct her automatically.
The thought of Desi’s mom fussing over her sick daughter is making my heart shrink. It’s hurting.
“Maybe you could come over on the weekend,” she suggests. “I’ll be climbing the walls by then.”
I leave her with the idea that this is going to happen, then I call Margot. I have an awful feeling that she’s not going to talk to me, but she gets on the phone and I tell her about Desi.
“That girl is a hypochondriac,” she says.
I just laugh. Desi is Desi.
“Of course, it’s quite a coincidence that we have that science test on Friday. I’m sure she’s devastated about missing out on that,” Margot drawls.
“About today,” I say.
There’s silence on Margot’s end. I picture the thin line of her mouth.
“About Friday night . . . ,” I begin again.
“Yes?”
“Are we going to the movies or not?”
“I told you,” says Margot. “I have other plans.”
“Oh.” I want to ask what those plans are, but something in her voice tells me the subject’s off limits. “So what movie does this remind you of?” I ask, trying to get a laugh.
“It’s not the end of the world if we miss a movie night,” says Margot briskly. “It’s not like we’re joined at the hip or something. I do have other friends, you know. It’s not like we come as a two-for-one package.”
I want to say something snarky but my voice is strangled in my throat, so I hang up. I play back the conversation in my mind. I wonder who Margot’s other friends are because, well, frankly, I’ve never met them.
I pull the crumpled scrap of paper from my school pants pocket. I smooth it out and study it.
It’s another piece of artwork from Dylan. This time there are no flames or spiderwebs.
The sketch is of a girl with wide eyes and a puzzled expression. Her face takes up the whole page. There is no room for hair—her chin finishes somewhere off the page. Each eyelash is clearly defined. There is a smudge of shadow under each eye.
It’s really pretty good.
Dylan has added his signature to the bottom left-hand side of the paper.
I shove the paper into the bottom of my drawer.
T
he next morning, Eric and some other guys are jogging around the track. As I stand watching, Eric waves. When I tell Angelique at the lockers that I’ve changed my mind about coming to the game, she seems pleased. She is surrounded by a group of girls giving me the once-over. Some of them are from the newspaper.
“I’m so glad you can come,” she says.
Then she scribbles her address and cell phone number on a scrap of paper.
“If you can get to my place by 6:30 we can go together.”
I want to ask her what she’ll be wearing, but I feel a bit stupid.
“Wear something warm,” she warns, as if reading my mind. “The gym can be freezing.”
Being with Angelique is confusing. She is the girlfriend of the only boy who has made my heart melt. She is my enemy. She is a person who can’t decide what to buy when she goes shopping. I want to look out for her. She’s warm. She’s really smart. She seems to like me. And I can’t help but like her.
What’s not to like?
I’ve left the lockers behind when I hear someone race up behind me.
“El, wait.”
It’s Angelique and she’s wearing an apologetic smile that makes me think she’s changed her mind.
“I just wanted to say . . . When you meet my father, if he mentions anything about me being at your place last weekend, can you just agree? Cover for me?”
“Red jacket,” I mumble.
“What?”
“That was you on Saturday. In the red jacket.”
“Saturday? Yes, I was there Saturday. Did you see me?”
“I thought so.”
“So you’ll cover for me?”
“Sure,” I say. “Did you rob a bank?”
“I was visiting my brother, Tony. It’s just that Dad and Tony aren’t really talking at the moment. I’m not supposed to be speaking to Tony either.”
“No problem,” I say, then Angelique leaves.
My idea of who Angelique is keeps changing.
Margot’s not at the lockers first thing and she doesn’t make it to class. I’d been worrying about seeing her but suddenly I’m worried that she’s not around.