Hancock Park (5 page)

S
eventh graders rushed ahead of me, dragging their rolling backpacks behind them, desperate to be on time to class on the first day. As a student advisor, I would get to know some of these girls throughout the year, but I had no idea who my co-advisor would be now that Amanda was gone. Whitbread had a student advising system that paired two juniors or seniors with one faculty member and ten underclassmen. Not every junior or senior did it—but I was the type who did. The idea was that we, the student advisors, would help the younger girls navigate the rocky waters of adolescence and Whitbread. Because we were so much older and wiser.

I reached Mr. Elwright's classroom, took a deep breath,
and opened the door. Inside were ten seventh graders, twenty backpacks, and several tote bags filled with brand-new binders and colored pencils. I spotted Mr. Elwright struggling with the printer. When he saw me, he waded through the mess of school supplies to greet me. “How was your summer?” he asked. Then, before I could answer he turned to the seventh graders and said, “Girls, why is all of this in my room?”

“Is there somewhere else we can put it?” a girl whose skirt went down past her knees asked.

“Yeah, anywhere!” Mr. Elwright exclaimed, moving a plastic bag of locker shelves so that he could reach his coffee.

“Mr. Elwright.” I nudged him. “It's their first day. They don't know about the purple lines.” Mr. Elwright had never dealt with seventh graders before. He was the MUN advisor, and he usually taught only in the upper school. And there was a reason for that: He wasn't one for patience.

“You can leave your stuff mostly anywhere around campus,” I explained to the new girls.

The door opened from behind me, and a heavy bag hit me in the calves. “Oops, sorry. Hey.” Taylor Tremaine, the only girl in my class who still occasionally wore her waist-length hair in pigtails, entered the room. “So you're my co-advisor?” she asked, nodding toward me and stating the obvious.

I popped the top of Kim's Red Bull and took a long gulp as I sat down on top of a nearby desk. “Yeah.” This
wasn't exactly who I had had in mind for a co-advisor. It totally sucked that Amanda couldn't be here, but I had sort of been hoping that this might be an opportunity to get to know someone cool. That is, cooler than me. And definitely cooler than Taylor.

“I was so glad I got to do this. I mean, I only found out last week that they had an opening. Because…” She stopped. “Sorry. I mean, I'm sorry Amanda left. It's just…I hope we'll have a good year, right?”

“Yeah,” I said again, trying to smile my most enthusiastic smile. I looked out at our charges, who were busy comparing their schedules for the day. Taylor was probably a nice girl. I shouldn't be so quick to judge. It was just that…well, she still occasionally brought a rolling backpack to school. Even I knew better than to do that. I wondered when I had most recently spoken with Taylor. I mean, she did drama. That was a world away from Model UN. I couldn't even remember if she had been in any of my classes last year.

Advisory was seven minutes long. Exactly. It began at 7:50 and ended at 7:57—Whitbread had an odd way of timing classes. As Taylor explained important first-day information and answered questions from the seventh graders, Mr. Elwright pulled me aside. “Becky,” he said, straightening his polka-dotted tie. Mr. Elwright was famous for wearing suits, even on casual-dress Fridays. “How are you doing? Is everything going okay, you know, without Amanda?”

“I'm doing fine,” I said, with a harsher tone than I intended. “I mean, I don't
need
Amanda….” Really, I was scared that I did need her. But I didn't want to admit that.

The bell rang, and I turned to leave. “Wait,” Mr. Elwright said, reaching out and putting a hand on my shoulder. I turned back to face him. “We need to meet about MUN.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “My schedule's outside. I can e-mail you with my free periods.”

“That sounds good. Listen, Becky, everyone loved what you did last year, with Pakistan and coming up with the activism component.” I nodded again, staring at the map on the wall behind Mr. Elwright. His face grew softer, and he lowered his voice a little. “You know, you can do this, even without Amanda. You've been leading this club all along.” He paused, and although I wasn't looking directly at him, I could feel his eyes on me.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Thanks.”

“I mean it, Becky. You'll survive this. And you'll be wonderful at leading this club.” The start-of-class bell rang. Mr. Elwright looked down at his desk and shuffled a few papers; I shifted my feet a little, wondering whether I should go. “Okay, that's it for my motivational speech. Go to class. Don't be late.” He reached over his desk and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder.

“Have a good first day,” I called as I walked out the door.

 

First period that day was an All-School Assembly across campus in the Whitbread Auditorium. The whole school, faculty included, fit into that one room, where the seating sections were assigned by grade. I started to walk toward the sophomore entrance but quickly corrected myself, instead heading down the hallway to the back of the auditorium. The noise of squealing seventh graders mixed with the sound of reuniting upper schoolers (the all-girls alternative to upperclass
men
), and at the front of the room, a projector screen was being set up. There was an empty seat next to Taylor Tremaine, and despite the fact that I wasn't sure I liked her—and that hanging out with her certainly wouldn't increase my social prospects—I urged myself to go sit next to her. It's not like I had a lot of other options. “Hey,” I said, sitting down. “Do you know what this year's assembly is about?”

“The construction project, probably.”

I nodded. “I heard it was going to last three years. Sucks we won't get to be here for the result.”

“Yeah, but I'm kind of ready to get out of here. Aren't you? This place is like a bubble.”

At that moment, as if on cue, Kim Turner, who was seated in the row in front of us and had been craning her neck to scan the room, spotted me and stopped. “Oh, Becky, I forgot to say this earlier…but I'm so sorry about your parents!”

I grimaced. Thanks, Whitbread bubble.

Up at the podium, Ms. Morton, our head of school, cleared her throat into the microphone. “Welcome back, girls. I hope you've all had a wonderful summer. I am very excited to share with you the details of our new construction project!”

Whitbread had recently decided that our state-of-the-art art studios weren't state-of-the-art enough, and that we could use a bigger, better library. Plus the underground parking.

It's a sixty-five-million-dollar project.

Taylor and I looked at each other, each with raised eyebrows. It struck me that maybe Taylor was different from the other Hollywoodified robots in my grade. And maybe that was a good thing. But was she
too
different?

The lights dimmed, and a slideshow revealed what our new ceramics studio and photography darkroom would look like, along with a large student resource center filled with couches and computers and a cafeteria. Photographs of current Whitbread students had been Photoshopped into the slideshow, as if to prove just how great this would be for future Whitbread students. At the end of the slideshow, about half of the students cheered, and a couple of teachers rolled a tented table to the front of the stage.

“Now, in honor of the new construction, and to thank you all for supporting and enduring it, we have a few goodies for you. Coming around are pins for our new Construction Campaign, and here”—Ms. Morton paused as she walked toward the table that had just been wheeled
out—“is something I think you'll all like.” She pulled off the tented cloth. I couldn't see the stage very well, so I missed the big reveal. “Girls, this is a model of what the school will look like after the construction. And here's the great part—it's a cake!”

There were gasps and murmurs in the audience. “Is she kidding?” I whispered to Taylor. “A cake model of the school? Isn't that a little excessive?”

Taylor shrugged. “Of course it's excessive. It's Whitbread.”

A
s soon as I got home from school, I laid out my calculus homework in front of me on my bed. I meant to actually do the homework, but I guess at some point I must have fallen asleep, because two hours later, my cheek was pressed against my open textbook, and my mom was calling my name. Groggily, I sat up on my bed. Mom had come in and sat down at the edge. “How was school?” she asked.

“I…it was…” I shrugged. I usually shared all the details of my life with her, so this avoiding-her business was hard. But if I suddenly started talking to her again, she might think that I was giving in—that I wasn't really mad at her for this whole divorce thing.

I guess my mom read my mind. “Honey,” she said,
“you must have known this was coming. The divorce. All the warning signs were there.”

I folded my arms tightly across my chest. If this was her way of comforting me, it was a lousy one. As my mom waited for me to say something, one particular memory stuck out in my mind. It had been a few months earlier, on a Friday night. We were all sitting down at the table—Mom, Dad, Jack, and I—when we realized that nobody had made dinner. Usually, Mom cooked or we went out, but once in a while, Dad made dinner. Dad was a better cook than Mom, who often got distracted and forgot ingredients. I wasn't sure if that Friday was meant to be my mom's or my dad's night to cook, and apparently I wasn't the only one who couldn't remember. The silence was painful as we sat at the table behind empty plates.

Mom and Dad excused themselves to the kitchen, but the walls are thin, and Jack and I could hear their conversation clearly.

“Kathy, ever since this show started…,” Dad had begun.

“Harold, this has nothing to do with my show. Besides, I'm doing something I love; you should be happy for me.”

“It's not that I'm not happy for you, it's just that this is disrupting things. You're less available for the kids…and for me.”

“Less available? Me?” My mom's voice got higher and louder practically with each word. “Harold, I do my research from home. My political committee meetings are
held here. I am always available when the kids—or you—need me. It's not me who's unavailable, it's you! You're so disengaged, you don't even realize how much you're working. This is projection—that's what my shrink calls it—projection, Harold!”

The conversation had gone on, but either I'd stopped listening or I'd blocked the memory of it out of my mind, because I can't remember what had happened next.

Maybe I
had
seen it coming. Maybe I just didn't want to admit that it was true. Thinking back on that dinner, I found myself growing angry with my dad—the way he had acted really wasn't fair to my mom.

“I rented that apartment I was telling you about,” Mom said when it was clear I wasn't going to break my silence. “We're going to move next week, sweetie. Your father and I have decided that you and Jack will split your time between us, half and half. No lawyers or anything, so that's good, right? One week with him, and one with me. That seems fair, right?”

I looked away. She wasn't really asking my opinion, after all.

“Sweetheart, please. I could use some help here.” When I still didn't respond, she put a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it away. “This whole situation is pretty tough on me, you know?”

“Tough on you? What about me, Mom? What about
me
?”

She didn't say anything. I knew that she was right—of
course she was right,
her
life was about to change, too—but that didn't matter to me right then. That wasn't my problem; it was hers. “Not only are my parents getting divorced, but I found out through a slip-of-the-tongue by my psycho grandmother. And I'm almost out of tranquilizers, and Sara Elder hasn't answered any of my calls, and my best friend just moved away!”

Mom looked hurt, but her eyes softened. “I'll call Sara Elder in the morning,” she said. “And I can't even express how sorry I am about Grandma. As for Amanda, I'm sure she'll be back in no time. You've met her parents—you think they'll survive one New York winter?” I knew she was trying to make a joke, but nothing seemed funny in that moment. “Besides, look on the bright side: Now you'll have a chance to make new friends. Plus, you have Joey.”

It was true; I did have Joey. But unless I put him in a skirt and gave him a wig, he was no help when it came to the problem of who I was going to sit with at lunch.

“I'm so sorry, sweetheart, but can you understand a little bit where I'm coming from with this?”

I shook my head no, not knowing exactly what she meant.

“It's not like I just woke up one day and thought it would be a good idea to get a divorce. This has been building for a while. And moving out—well, it's a good way for me to get a fresh start. I can't stay here. This is your father's house.”

It was weird to hear her say that. I'd always thought of this as
our
house. Not his or hers.

“It's hard, being here,” she went on, “you know, when your dad is never home. And even when he is here…well, he's not
really
here.” And then she started talking about the lump she'd found in her breast a few years ago, which seemed like a non sequitur to me.

My stomach aching, I turned away once again and found myself stuck facing a large mirror that was mounted on the wall next to one of my bookcases. Staring, I tried to focus on the reflection of the girl looking back at me: bright blonde hair and flat brown eyes, the residue of eyeliner from several days ago creating shadows beneath them. Was this really me? Behind me was the reflection of my mom, still in work clothes, her head resting on one of her fists, eyes glassy. I had her eyes and her nose. And when we smiled, people said that I had her smile. But neither of us was smiling now. I remembered how I had always wanted to be just like her, back when I was little and she was perfect.

“You stayed at Amanda's that day, so you wouldn't remember. But your dad didn't even offer to come to the hospital with me. I took a taxi,” Mom said, pulling at the fraying edges of my duvet cover.

I was in the eighth grade when my mom had a breast cancer scare. She was so frightened. I was, too. How could my dad have done that? It couldn't have been
my
dad—the Dad who used to take me out to get pancakes for dinner,
who would pretend to be a horse so that I could ride on his back around and around the bedroom. Was it possible? Then I realized it was definitely possible, since I hadn't exactly seen that Dad in a long time.

I turned back to face Mom. “I'd never make you take a taxi to the hospital,” I told her as I reached into her arms, hot tears dripping down my cheeks.