Not That I Care (11 page)

nineteen

I
peek inside my bag, now, at the
Barbie head I chose to include as a representation of myself. I can’t remember anymore what I meant for it to symbolize.

She’s still pretty, though, I think, touching her silky blond hair that had been sewn onto the cardboard of the package. I still like her, as horrible as she is, just a popped-off plastic head.

Mrs. Shepard repeats, “Cornelia Jane Hurley?”

Nobody calls CJ “Cornelia Jane.” It’s a family name—all the first girls for generations have been named Cornelia Jane, and then they’re called by nicknames: Mrs. Hurley is called Corey, and CJ’s grandmother is Nellie. Great-grandmother was Lia. Somebody way back a hundred years ago was called just Jane. I know CJ’s whole family history, I’ve seen all their photo albums. I even know where the photo albums are—in the bottom living room cabinet. CJ and Morgan, Morgan and CJ.

She’s still sitting there not moving. I know inside she’s not thinking any words, just cringing at the mention of that full big heinous name. If it were me, I might tell Mrs. Shepard to call me CJ, but CJ won’t. She won’t say anything. She’s standing up slowly. I knew it, nothing, not a word. We know everything about each other.

Totally pointless, getting to know every detail about a person if the person could just come in one day wearing a friendship ring with somebody else. I can just forget where the Hurleys keep the photo albums now, and the extra rolls of toilet paper, and the batteries. All the cow accessories in their kitchen.

Olivia flips a note back onto my desk. I cover it with my palm and check Mrs. Shepard. She’s looking at the clock. I quietly unfold Olivia’s note. It’s my note back again, signed “your best friend” and everything. Underneath that Olivia has written, in her perfect script,
Want to come over after school today?

I don’t have the energy to make a new best friend, I decide. I don’t want to learn where the Pogostins keep their batteries and what you’re not allowed to touch in their living room. I crumple the note softly and shove it into my desk, next to the envelope with the thermometer inside.

I rest my heavy head on my palm, watching CJ make her slow toe-pointing way up to the front of the room.

twenty

T
his morning I sat on the wall
with CJ before school, chatting away about boys and whether I should pull my hair back. I even—oh, shoot me—I even complimented her new ring. What a loser. I was surprised she’d gotten it already, but instead of thinking why would she buy our friendship ring without waiting for me to get the matching one with her, which I just assumed she was planning, I was all worried about how was I going to save up enough to buy mine? Mine. Like it was automatic.

And then Zoe got off the bus, practically waving her matching ring in my face.

“So,” CJ asked Zoe. “Did you say anything to Jonas?” CJ’s arms were folded, as if she could keep me from noticing her ring after the fact.

“Like what?” Zoe asked her. She hiked her backpack up on her shoulder and played with her ring again. “I mean, they’re at my bus stop.”

“No,” CJ whispered. “About Morgan.”

Zoe looked at me and so did CJ. I stared down at my sandals.

“Oh,” Zoe said. “Not yet. But listen, Morgan—my sister said yes, you can have her old cleats, for soccer. Size five, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, so ashamed I’d had to ask her, hating my father and my mother and everybody, everything.

The warning bell rang.

“I’ll bring them in tomorrow,” Zoe said.

I shrugged. What did I care about cleats? My best friend just dumped me.

“You’ll ask Jonas?” CJ asked Zoe.

Zoe said, “Sure.”

“Don’t,” I told her.

“What?” Zoe asked. “You changed your mind already?” She smiled at me. I wanted to spit. I closed my eyes, thinking,
I have nobody
.

Kids were passing us going in to school.

“You coming?” Olivia asked, stopping to wait for us.

“Zoe?” CJ asked. “Could you grab mine and Morgan’s bags? We’re too short.”

I grabbed my bag. “I can get my own,” I said.

Zoe pulled CJ’s bag down. “I’ll try to talk to Jonas today,” she told me.

“No,” I said. “I hate him. He walks like a chicken. Ew.” I caught up with Olivia and linked my arm into hers, whispering, “Come on, let’s go in.”

twenty-one

C
J turns carefully, now, as if she
might break her body if she moves it abruptly. There is nothing CJ hates so much as speaking in front of the class. In kindergarten she barely said a word. In first grade she never managed to get her full two letters out—all she managed was the first sound, Se-se-se, over and over. My heart hurt for her every time she was asked her name. In fourth grade, after we were best friends already, she told me that she’d rather write a ten-page book report than say her name in front of the class once. When we were partners for a science project last year, I did all the talking so she wouldn’t have to, and I also did half the research, but I didn’t care if we split the work evenly. I’ve just always tried to be there for her, to be strong for her, help her stand up for herself whether it’s on the playground or to her mother, who totally intimidates her and runs her life. I’d do anything for her; she knows that. Oh, well. Anyway.

CJ takes a big breath of air, the way she learned in speech class. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a toe shoe. Surprise, surprise. “I, I dance,” she whispers. Mrs. Shepard says nothing. I touch the ballet slipper in my bag. It’s small, left from fourth grade when I had such tiny feet. I never got on
pointe
, so I don’t have a toe shoe.

The toe shoe in CJ’s shaking hand has faded brown satin peeling off from the toe area; they spray-painted her toe shoes brown last year when she played a bug in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. She was so good. I went to two performances, even though I had to beg Ned for money for the second ticket and clean his room for the month of February to pay him back. It was worth it. I brought CJ flowers I’d made out of tissues. I sat beside her parents in the orchestra, getting sick off the smell of the beautiful pink roses in her mother’s lap through the whole performance. Afterward, we went backstage, and I stood with my green down jacket hanging off my shoulders and my work boots spread in second position, as all the little bun-heads buzzed around me in their sheer pale pinks. CJ smiled so happy when she saw me, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. She was still out of breath, pulling on her leg warmers and her tight little sweater top. The Hurleys invited me out to dinner with them. In the car on the way to the restaurant, I dropped the tissue flowers in CJ’s lap and said, “These are stupid, but . . .” She whispered to me that they were way better than the live flowers from her mother, because they’d last forever. She even brought them into the restaurant with us and left the roses out in the car.

Maybe one of those flowers is in her Sack. I see something pink in there, something that looks tissuey.

Please, Saint Christopher, let it be one of my flowers
.

I dig into my Sack, looking for the Saint Christopher medal I stole from my father. There it is, sunk down at the bottom. I grab it, hold it between my palms, close my eyes, and pray.

Please, Saint Christopher, please let that be one of the flowers I made for her, let her have chosen something to do with me in her Sack
.

She pulls out History, the stuffed dog she got for quitting sucking her thumb when she was two and a half. I almost expect her to tell the story: She stopped sucking her thumb, and as a prize her mother bought her this incredibly snuggly little dog, and suggested they call it Doggie, but CJ, in a rare moment of self-assertion, said, “No, his name is History.” I love that story. It’s so easy to imagine her all serious as a toddler, shocking everybody by her unexpected strength. People who don’t know her so well don’t realize that inside all her shy sweetness, there’s something tough as steel. I bet her new boyfriend, Tommy, doesn’t know it, and neither does her new best friend. I bet they don’t even know History’s name.

“This is, was, um,” CJ starts, and I grip the Saint Christopher medal to pray for her. “This, this, this, dog . . .”

I stop myself from running up to the front of the class and doing her presentation for her. It kills me to see her gulping air, struggling up there. I’m sure I could explain everything in her Sack. I wrap my feet around my chair’s legs to keep me planted.

“This is, was, when I was, was a baby, I had this,” she almost whispers, and drops History on Mrs. Shepard’s desk. She closes her eyes. I close mine.

Please, Saint Christopher, if you let there be something to do with me in CJ’s Sack, I’ll do anything. I’ll change. I’ll be nice about CJ choosing Zoe over me. I’ll get up in front of the class when it’s my turn and admit all this truth about myself. Anything
.

I open my hands and look at the medal clutched between them.
I swear it, Saint Christopher—do this one thing for me, and I’ll change
.

CJ has one more item to present. I hold the medal and pray.

twenty-two

E
xercise bands. “For ballet,” CJ
says. The same thing she said about the net that holds her bun together during performances, the same thing she said about the pink tissue-y wrap skirt I had stupidly thought might be a crappy fake flower she probably tossed a long time ago. I would’ve. You don’t need old tissues looped with a Baggie tie gathering dust in your room.

She lifts each thing soundlessly off the desk and places it back inside her bag without raising her eyes to us or Mrs. Shepard. I drop the Saint Christopher medal back inside my Sack. I never believed in him anyway. All that is just superstition.

A noise startles me. I turn around to see Zoe Grandon clapping for CJ, breaking the silence in the room by applauding. She doesn’t even care that nobody else is joining in, she just claps and claps, her big goofy grin showing every white tooth in her mouth. “Awesome,” she says.

I turn to see how CJ is reacting. Her head is bowed but under those thick brown eyebrows, CJ’s eyes peer toward the back of the room, and a slow, small grin fights its way onto CJ’s serious pale face. She raises her chin and smiles at Zoe.

“Woo!” Zoe yells, pumping her fist in the air.

CJ smoothes her hair back from her face and, smiling at Zoe, walks back to her chair. She turns in my direction but then right past me and whispers thanks to Zoe.

My hand is in the air. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

I stand up and head to the door, clutching my Sack. I can’t wait for an answer, I have to go, have to get out. Mrs. Shepard says something about leave my Sack.
You don’t need to bring it, do you?

But I am already out the door and I hear people laughing at me, behind my back, but I gotta go, gotta get out and I don’t care, laugh at me if you want. I hear Mrs. Shepard call Zoe Grandon to present next, but that’s the last thing I hear, because I round the corner and start to run.

Bathroom. Or nurse. Maybe get sent home, but Mom would have to leave work to pick me up and she’d be all annoyed and who needs it? And I’m not sitting there getting my temperature taken by the nurse like she’s doing me a favor. I don’t want any favors, I don’t want anyone.

It’s so pointless. I shuffle as fast as I can down the stairs to the first floor, just moving, just getting away. Pointless. You get attached and they leave, they dump you and there is nothing you can do, chump, nothing. That’s what I should have in this Sack. Nothing. I should just throw all this junk in the trash where it belongs and go up and present my nothing. Nothing and nothing and nothing. And if you don’t think that’s an accurate representation of me in all my various aspects, Mrs. Shepard, well, that’s because you have no clue who I am.

I slam my fist into the door of the girls’ room, then lean the weight of my body against it to get in. There’s a silver trash can in the corner near the sink, and I cross the room in two steps. My Sack is upside down. “Out!” I say out loud. “Get out! I don’t want you! I don’t need any of this crap, just a bunch of garbage I’ve been hoarding as if it means something to anybody. Get out!”

The branch is stuck. “Get! Garbage, that’s where you belong, you worthless . . .”

I shove, but it’s caught on the lid. I can’t even throw away trash. “Get in there you stupid fruitless—never grew a single pitiful cherry, you stupid, get in!”

I yank the branch out to put it in straight. My finger touches something sticky. I look down to see what disgusting thing is now all over my thumb, is it bird poop or what, so typical it figures. What is this thing, black and sticky?

Oh. Tape.

I close my eyes and sit down on the cold green bathroom tile, next to the garbage can full of my stuff. I touch the sticky spot on the branch in my hand, remembering Mom’s face when she was looking out the kitchen window, staring at the cherry tree.

It didn’t last, obviously, but for a minute she was happy. She believed, for that minute, that my tree wasn’t defective, that it had really managed to burst out in a thousand cherries. It was just a trick, not magic. I know, obviously, since I’m the faker, I’m the one who did the tricking. The only thing is, for a minute she believed, and that minute felt like magic to me. Real magic.

Too bad if she thought it was stupid and a waste of money. It was worth eighteen dollars, seeing her so happy she was shaking as she stood there pointing out the window. She thought she was witnessing a miracle. I made that happen. And it was my eighteen dollars, so screw her. Best eighteen dollars I ever spent.

I push myself off the bathroom floor.

twenty-three

T
he sealed box of red-hots.

The little white box with my baby tooth in it.

The spatula.