Frannie and Tru (4 page)

For ages, I'd dreamed about the Sophomore Summer Retreat. SSR, to all of us at St. Sebastian's. I dreamed about it the same way I dreamed about kissing and prom dresses and being a grown-up with my own place. Yes, on some level I knew that unless I became some sort of freakish hermit cat lady, those things would happen to me eventually. They had to. It's just that right now they seemed as distant as the moon. The stars. Magic glowing monuments that I would never ever reach.

And when it came to SSR, I suppose I'd been right to be worried. That dream was never coming true.

For kids at St. Sebastian's, the retreat was huge, epic, this one special weekend before sophomore year when the boys and girls were carted off to neighboring cabins, where everybody did spiritual exercises and talked about feelings. For years, I'd heard older
girls whispering about things that had been said during those weekends in the woods, about the intense talks and tears as everyone sat in a circle. Who knows what went on with the boys—Jimmy and Kieran still gave each other these stupid, knowing looks whenever somebody mentioned it. But the circle part was only kind of important, anyway. What really mattered was that kids always snuck in beer and met each other in the woods late at night. I'd been sure that I was going to have my first drink. My first kiss. I just had to make it to that cabin, into those trees, and my real high school life would finally begin.

Except now, of course, that dream was over. There was no St. Sebastian's for me. No summer retreat full of spilled feelings, secret booze.

I'd planned to bunk with my three best friends: Mary Beth, Dawn, and Marissa. They must have picked another roommate by now, but I had no idea who. I hadn't spoken to any of them since school let out, had actually been pulling away from them for months, ever since they found out about my dad, about my new school. When I first told them, their eyes had gone all big, and afterward they'd begun to tiptoe around me as if I were dying. First I resented them and then I began to think of them as silly. Pathetic, even. Pathetic little girls who lived sheltered little lives.

And then had come that morning in the hallway.

It was the end of winter, an icy March day. I was running late. My hair was knotted, and I was wearing last year's uniform sweater, the only one I could find in the mess of my closet, the polyester stretched and worn, the sleeves too short. Rushing to
my locker, I turned a corner and was surprised to see the three of them clustered around Kat Deveraux. She towered over them, slender, polished, and cold, not one of us. Their voices were hushed but thrilled, and I heard my name, a breathy whisper about my father and my new school.

I couldn't figure out why they would be telling her this, why she would care, but there was something in their voices that was a little nasty, and I started to suspect that I was being used. That my life was a hard flint of gossip, a way to strike a flame that would impress this witchy blonde.

I tried to brush the thought away—I didn't want it to be true—but then I caught a final hiss from Mary Beth.

“She'll be, like, one of the only white girls.”

Just then the bell rang, sending everyone in different directions. At the same moment they spotted me and mumbled embarrassed
hello
s before rushing to class. I'd wanted to run away before they saw me, but I was frozen there, struck dumb not only by Mary Beth's words, but the way she'd said them. With just a little too much eagerness, that desire to shock.

Her voice, that closing thought, had echoed in my mind all morning. I'd never really thought of myself in those terms before, as a white girl. At least, I'd never felt that being a white girl actually meant something or mattered. But in that hallway that morning it suddenly did, and I got a flash of complicated feelings, a fleeting sense of what it would be like to be labeled like that. The words were a cold burn, harsh as snow on skin.

When I saw the girls again at lunch, I was too big a coward to
confront them, pretending, as they did, that nothing had happened. But things changed after that. I started ignoring their calls. I made excuses not to go places with them.

Which was exactly why I'd had no plans to go tonight to Stix for Chix, this silly charity field hockey tournament that benefited a local women's shelter. Girls came from all over the city to play little scrimmages in goofy costumes, while pop music blasted in the background. It went all night, like Relay for Life, so parents hated it, and kids loved it. Mary Beth, Dawn, and Marissa all played field hockey, so they'd be there, wearing ugly old prom dresses they'd bought at a thrift store about a month ago, one of the last times I'd really hung out with them.

That day, I met them at the thrift store counter ready to buy some clothes of my own. Not joke clothes. Real clothes. Clothes I could actually afford with my babysitting money. Dawn noticed first, then poked Mary Beth who gave a little
whoa
of surprise and stifled a noise that might have been a laugh. Marissa sort of turned away, like she was trying not to see.

The most painful part about it was that, in a way, they were just pretending. Acting. They weren't that snobby, not really. Pushing me away had become a game, a power play, the kind of thing we'd done to other girls in middle school for no real reason except that we could. And we could, of course, because those girls were weak and scared. They didn't speak up. And now that was me.

As I counted out my cash and grabbed my bag of secondhand shirts and jeans, I decided that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. Not ever, ever again. They could have their stupid
dresses and stupid all-night fun fest and stupid mean-girl games, all the more stupid because they weren't even that cool. They didn't party, didn't have boyfriends. And who knows? Maybe that's why they needed to push somebody around.

I'd tried hard to forget that day, but now I was all tangled up in the memory as I told Tru what Stix for Chix was in a confused rush. I started to explain that my friends were there, only they weren't really my friends anymore, but all I could do was trip in and out of an unfinished sentence. I finally just shut my mouth. Tru's face grew supremely amused. He paused, considering me, and I could see he was fighting a smile.

“Did you . . . want to go to this thing?” he asked.

There was a level of politeness to this question. He seemed genuinely interested in what I would say. To be honest, before things had changed with the girls, I absolutely would have gone. It was the perfect excuse to be out late, and I would have loved any chance to run into boys from school, or better yet, new boys from different schools. But after everything that had happened, I didn't want to go. Not at all. So I was happy, then, to answer with a roll of my eyes, giving the kind of opinion that I was pretty sure he'd appreciate.

“I would rather die.”

When I told my mother we were going to watch Stix for Chix, and that I wanted to say hi to Mary Beth, Dawn, and Marissa, she became a happy wreck. She knew I hadn't really been speaking to them, and now there were tears in the corners of her eyes.

Hot guilt coursed through my body but didn't stop me.

She offered to drive us three separate times, until finally I yelled, “My god, it's a ten-minute walk! Ten minutes! Tru
likes
to walk. It's one of his favorite things!”

And with that we were finally out the door. I told him that we'd have to make an awkward loop so that it would seem like we were moving in the right direction, in case Mom was watching. We moved temporarily toward the shining stadium lights.

“So that's where your little friends are, with their little sticks? What college is that?”

“Johns Hopkins,” I said. “It's a smart kids' school. Science and premed and stuff.”

Just a few weeks ago, I'd heard my Dad call it “loserville, land of the unlaid” when he was talking to my mom, not realizing the twins and I could hear him from the other room. “Yeah,” Jimmy had yelled with a snort, “I bet Frannie will go there.”

Dad sort of huffed around, face red, caught between being embarrassed and pissed. Not Mom. She'd come over and slapped Jimmy on the back of the head. She had a way of doing that where it was light but still shocking, not so much a physical thing but the surest, fastest way to make you feel like crap.

After a couple of blocks, I turned left and Tru followed, as we moved toward our real destination. The two of us arranged ourselves side by side on the sidewalk. I watched him watching the houses. We lived in what people called a working-class neighborhood, which I was pretty sure meant kind of poor, but not really poor. Still, our street was on the outer edge, the part closest to the university, where things were nicer. People on our block sent their
kids to some of the cheapest private schools, just like my parents did. And our neighbors cared for their lawns and planted flowers.

Things changed quickly, though, on the way to Siren. Soon Tru and I were passing yards that had rusty chain-link fences and tacky plastic flamingos perched in the ground. The cars were dented or duct-taped and the dogs, staring at us from side yards and front windows, were uglier. Meaner. We were quiet for a while, and when Tru finally spoke, I thought for sure it would be a joke about where we lived.

“You know what's funny?” he said. “I actually do like walking. It really is one of my favorite things.”

The mysterious item was back in his fingers, flitting between them and hiding from view. I tried to look without making it obvious. For a second, he paused the elliptical motion and simply held the item in his fingers—a cigarette, I finally saw.

No, not a cigarette. Something hand-rolled, tapered at the end.

He resumed his magic trick and chuckled.

“We're almost there,” I told Tru as we turned down a busy little street, its sidewalks crowded and storefronts lit up.

Two boys in short-sleeved hoodies whizzed by us on their skateboards, almost knocking over an older couple dressed nicely for a date. Tru took in the scene and asked where exactly we were, what kind of neighborhood. I explained that lots of people thought the houses around here were dumps and the residents were trashy, but they also thought the stores and restaurants were cool. Rich folks came here for shopping and dinner.

“This area is gentrifying,” I added.

That was something I'd heard my mom say. I didn't really know what it meant, and had no idea why I'd repeated it, except as some lame attempt to sound smart. I prayed that Tru wouldn't ask me more, and he didn't, we just moved quietly down the block past the fancy shoe store and the antique gallery. We began to see packs of young people. Young people with tattoos, young people wearing boxy glasses, young people in tight jeans and band T-shirts. Tru whistled.

“Didn't know you lived so close to hipsterville,” he said, giving me a side-eye.

I struggled to say something clever, settled on the simple truth.

“You told me to take you to Siren. It's hipster ground zero.”

Tru laughed. “Touché. I didn't realize it was that kind of place, but I'll take your word for it.”

I looked away, not wanting him to see me smile.

We arrived at Siren, a brick building with a black awning and big windows littered with fliers. Half a dozen people were taking a smoke break out front. I felt about eight years old, but Tru looked as cool and calm as could be. He took out his phone and texted his friend to come get us. I peeked in the windows and saw a small stage. A girl with a blunt, purple bob was singing while a nerdy-looking guy hunched over the keyboard behind her.

It was madness, the idea of trying to get in there. Total madness.

Tru tapped one of the fliers, an advertisement for tonight's show. The photo showed the two people on stage, sitting in a pile
of black feathers. Their band was called Nevermore.

“Get it, Frannie? Like what the raven says in the Edgar Allan Poe poem? It's very subtle, right?”

“Very.” I tried to sound casual while desperately hoping that none of the people around us were friends with the band.

Tru turned around to lean against the window. “Baltimore is really into its Poe references.”

“Well,” I said with a shrug, “he lived here.”

“Mostly he
died
here. In a gutter. Probably from syphilis.”

To this I had nothing to say, but I was saved, because right then the door opened and a girl came out—a girl so beautiful I may have actually sucked in my breath. She put her arms around Tru and kissed him on the cheek and I could actually see guys on the sidewalk turning jealously in our direction.

“Frannie,” Tru said. “This is my friend Sparrow. Sparrow Jones.”

He hadn't said her name until this moment, a delay I could tell was on purpose. A little game of surprise he was playing with me, revealing her all at once.

Sparrow was tall and elegant. We met each other exactly eye to eye, and for some reason that made me happy, as if we were two kids who'd met on the playground and realized that we were the same age. Her hair flared out into a little afro, like a halo around her face. She wore bright pink eye shadow and a black-and-white-striped dress, perfect and simple.

“Did you know,” Tru asked me in a whisper, “that we have black people in Connecticut, too?”

Sparrow covered his face with her hand, pushing him away, inspiring him to fake-stumble backward. He somehow looked cool when he did this, falling with a kind of grace.

She stepped toward me then, and gave me a hug, a vanilla scent radiating so strongly from her skin I could almost taste cookies. Pulling back, she kept an arm around me and fingered the ends of my hair.

“Gorgeous. Isn't this gorgeous, Tru? You can always tell a natural redhead.”

Tru rolled his eyes and asked when we could go in. She did a come-hither gesture with her fingers, and we followed her through the front doors.

Inside the skinny entryway to Siren there was a bouncer waiting on a chair. He had a sad blond mustache and scrawny arms. My whole body stiffened at the sight of him.