Like Mandarin (22 page)

I went to my window. For a moment, I stood there, recalling the time I’d climbed out and let go, weeks earlier, millions and millions of years before.

And then, although I knew it was melodramatic, I hurled the arrowhead outside. I hadn’t aimed for the baby pool, but it fell right in, scarcely making a splash in the circle of murky water.

When I woke the next morning, I felt like I’d been stomped on by a giant cement jackalope. I had to unglue my mud-caked legs from the top of my comforter. The back of my head ached and my elbows stung—probably from when Tyler had knocked me down. My brains seemed to overflow in my skull.

The worst pain, however, was the one in my chest. It throbbed with my heartbeat, blurred my eyes. It made me want to roll over and sleep forever.

But my headache drove me from bed at last. I pulled on my longest sweatpants and padded downstairs.

“Momma, do we have any aspirin?” I called blearily.

“I just want an
explanation
.”

My stomach sank, which made me feel even more nauseous. “What do you mean?” I asked as I rounded the corner into the kitchen, where I discovered that Momma wasn’t speaking to me at all—her words were directed at my sister.

Taffeta sat on the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, her head bowed. She scowled so ferociously she looked like a little old woman. Ghosts of the past night’s makeup still haunted her face, faint lipstick staining her mouth as if she’d been slurping a red Popsicle.

We probably look like sisters
, I realized, remembering the mascara smudges circling my own eyes. But I didn’t want to think about it. Thinking hurt.

“Aspirin?” I asked again, turning to Momma.

She wore her baggy blue muumuu and had her fists on her hips, so the satin ballooned in an hourglass shape around her. Her face was makeup free, and she’d pulled back her hair in a sloppy ponytail. Her eyes were narrowed. The vein in her forehead throbbed.

Momma was at the end of her rope.

“Taffeta,
how could you?
After all the time and money we put into your pageants
—how?
After everything I’ve done for you?”

“Tylenol would be fine,” I said. “Or Excedrin.”

“The pantry,” Momma replied without looking my way.

Ducking to remain out of striking distance, I found a bottle of aspirin on the top shelf of the pantry. I tipped too many tablets into my palm. When I tried to cram them back into the bottle, several spilled through my fingers and pinged on the floor.

“All I want is an explanation.” Momma turned to me. “You won’t believe what she did!”

I was suddenly positively, absolutely certain Taffeta had sung a dirty song, just like I’d suggested during Candy Land. “What happened?”

“She didn’t sing! She got up there, and just … didn’t sing.”

I glanced at Taffeta. Her chin was wrinkled like a dried-up fruit. Tears leaked from her immense brown eyes. So she hadn’t sung. That wasn’t like taunting the judges with a dirty song, or flipping up her dress and mooning the crowd.

All of a sudden, I remembered the way she’d seemed to pick me out of the audience as I’d followed Mandarin out of the Benton High cafeteria.

I had abandoned her.

Taffeta’s throwing the pageant was all my fault.

I placed a pair of aspirin tablets in my mouth and tried to swallow. I didn’t think I could feel any worse. I should have known: no matter how bad you felt, you could
always
feel worse.

Momma was still ranting. “I’ve put every ounce of energy I have into your looks, your voice. Making you beautiful, making you important. You
knew
how hard I’d worked. Last night was a slap in the face, Taffeta, a slap in my face! This pageant was going to be it for us, the real beginning, and you ruined everything.

“How could you
do
that to me?”

For a moment, I didn’t know who I pitied more—Momma or Taffeta. Then Momma turned on me.

“I thought Taffeta was going to be different,” she said, “but the two of you are exactly alike. And now there’s no chance left! None!”

Without thinking, I hurled the bottle of aspirin.

It hit Momma’s chest, right in the center of a fuchsia hibiscus. The white pills ricocheted off the countertops like tiny bullets, bouncing all over the floor.

Momma gaped at me, stunned.

“Taffeta’s not a
doll
, Momma. She’s a real person. She may be six years old, but she’s got a mind of her own.…” I trailed off when I remembered the quarry party. How mindlessly I’d walked into Mandarin’s scheme. Who was I to talk?

“Grace Carpenter,” Momma sputtered, “I didn’t ask for your opinion!”

“Well, she needs somebody to speak up for her.” I went over to Taffeta and held out my arms. “Let’s go play Candy Land. I’ll even let you make the rules—”

“No!”
Taffeta screamed.

I reeled in my arms as if she’d slapped them. She hopped off the counter and kicked the empty aspirin bottle as she ran from the room.

Momma and I stared at each other, both of us too thunder struck to speak.

School emerged like a pirate ship from a bank of storm clouds. I had no choice but to face it, even if it meant walking the plank.

I spent extra time getting ready Monday morning. I couldn’t wear one of Mandarin’s undershirts, or my jeans slung too low, because it would disregard all that had happened. But if I wore my normal clothes, everybody would suspect that my friendship with Mandarin was over. In the end, I wore my jeans at half-mast, under a simple gray T-shirt.

Fortunately, Mandarin didn’t show up to math.

She didn’t show up on Tuesday, either.

On Wednesday, Ms. Ingle asked me to stay after history. She had a new poster behind her desk: Rosie the Riveter in a red bandana, flexing her bicep.
We Can Do It!

Do what?
I wanted to ask.

“I hate to bring this up with you, Grace,” Ms. Ingle said. “But I don’t know who else would know. Have you any idea what’s going on with Mandarin?”

I tried to look nonchalant. “No. Why?”

“This is the third day this week Mandarin has missed history. And I had a talk with Mrs. Cleary this morning.” I pictured the two of them gossiping in the teachers’ lounge, Mrs. Cleary tapping her yellow nails on a chipped mug of coffee. “Mrs. Cleary says she hasn’t been showing up to math, either. And finals are next week.”

I stalled, rolling my palm over a wooden apple on Ms. Ingle’s desk until I realized what I was doing. I put my hands behind my back.

“I’m just concerned about her,” she said. “Mandarin’s missed some of the most critical prep sessions. And you’re the closest thing to a friend she’s got.”

How does
she
know
?

“Small town,” Ms. Ingle explained, as if reading my mind. “Everybody knows.”

I tried to concentrate on maintaining a straight face. I wasn’t sure if I was about to burst into tears or hysterical laughter.

“Have you talked to her father?” I asked.

Ms. Ingle just looked at me.

“Never mind,” I said. “I guess it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“Then there’s the service project.” Ms. Ingle tipped her head to the side. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

I thought of all the times I’d tried to initiate choosing a project with Mandarin, especially that time in her room, right before our fight. She’d always wanted to put it off. And now? There were ten days left until graduation. Without my assistance, Mandarin would never complete the project in time to graduate.

I knew I could defend her. I could lie and say she was working on something top secret, give her one last chance. In that moment, I had the ability to save her.

I closed my eyes when I spoke.

“Mandarin hasn’t even picked a service project. I don’t think she ever planned on doing one.”

The next day, Mandarin showed up to geometry. I knew she’d arrived when I sensed some subtle shift in the atmosphere, but I never turned to look. For once, Mrs. Cleary didn’t call her out for being tardy. Maybe she had some compassion after all.

At lunch, I headed for the end bathroom stall, like I had all week. No one was inside the bathroom when I knocked my English textbook to the floor. As I leaned over to pick it up, I noticed the red words scrawled along the very bottom of the stall door.

School is Horseshit
.

Despite the hours I’d spent in the stall, I had forgotten about it. A person could only read the phrase from ground level—sprawled out on the tile, or leaning over, like me. For some reason, it bothered me like it never had before. I rummaged around in my tote bag until I found a pen. I leaned forward and drew a fat black line over the first word. Then I hesitated, my hand hovering uncertainly. I wasn’t sure what to write.

Before I could make up my mind, I heard the outer door creak open.

I froze, trying my best to remain silent and motionless. I waited for the intruder to go into one of the stalls beside me.

Instead, the faucet turned on. I heard intermittent splashes and, indistinctly, a low humming. Strangely familiar.

Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.”

Every day after school that week, I’d been forced to avoid the places Mandarin and I used to frequent—which made up practically our whole town. I couldn’t grab a milk shake at the A&W or brood in the empty school yard. I didn’t go to the Sundrop Quik Stop, because it was across the street from Solomon’s. What if I passed Mandarin outside while she was on a cigarette break? The library was too close as well. And after what had happened with Tyler, I didn’t want to go to the Tombs. Maybe someday I’d be ready to return. But not yet.

All Mandarin’s fault.

If it was really her humming out there, I should fling open the door of the bathroom stall, confront her, tell her everything I was thinking.

But even after all this time, I was still too much of a coward.

At last, the faucet shut off. I heard paper towels cranking from the dispenser. Then nothing, for a moment, as the person seemed to hesitate.

I held my breath.

Then the outer door creaked open and shut. Silence. I exhaled shakily, lowering my crossed arms to my knees.

Life
, I wrote above my fat black line. I stared at it, frowning.

Every moment of that endless week, I had to live with the awareness that somewhere within the confines of Washokey, Mandarin existed without me. And the return to my ordinary life without her, to the lonesome, solitary Grace I’d been stuck with for years and years, was almost debilitating.