Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (6 page)

So, we at Joyful News are thrust together not because we are alike but because we are different: mostly newcomers like my family (okay, so in Sterling Creek that means we can’t trace our roots back three generations or more; in our case, my parents moved here when Eric was a baby and my mother was pregnant with me), or, in some cases, recent converts to Christianity.

In any case, Drew Godfrey is not my friend, no matter how nice I am to her on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If only she would figure this out, youth group might actually be tolerable.

“I heard you got on the newspaper staff,” she says, and then she giggles, like it’s funny. She pulls the end of her messy ponytail over her right shoulder as she sidles up to me, her fingers twining into the split ends. “That’s so cool. I heard Annika and Britney are really exclusive, so, you know? Instant awesome.”

See, that’s another reason Drew will never be popular. She makes it obvious how much she longs for it—her desperation speaks to those with power over her, makes it clear how easily she could be used.

I turn slightly from her. A normal person would see this, but Drew presses closer. “They barely ever involve juniors on the staff of the paper. They must really like you,” she says. “And it’s a good thing, you know, to be on the good side of those two.”

I remember the way they looked at Drew last week in the nurse’s office. “Well, they’re pretty desperate for help, what with one of the Vomit—uh, Jenny—in the hospital or whatever. I’m not really on the staff, like writing or anything. I’m just filling in to do the page layout.” I edge away from Drew, but she takes a step closer for every step I take back until I’m up against the Kool-Aid table, with no other options besides taking a cup of red sludge for myself and one for Drew.

“Thanks,” she says, tipping her cup back and drinking deeply. “I was, like, dying of thirst for some reason tonight. We had pizza for dinner, so that might be why.”

She looks at me for a response, but what is there to say to that? I can’t even. I make a sound that I hope seems vaguely agreeable and take a tiny sip out of the cup in my hand, while searching for Eric among the people gathered around the fellowship hall.

“Your hair looks really pretty like that.”

“What?” My non-Kool-Aid-bearing hand wanders up to touch the nape of my neck, where I’ve spiked up the back of my hair with gel. “It’s the same as always,” I say, and then, almost despite myself, I keep on talking to her. “It’s probably time for a new style or something, but I don’t know what to do with it.” I bring my hand down, uncertain. “I could grow it out, but really, I only like long hair when it’s super amazing. Otherwise it’s sort of … ” I look at her and her sad, dishwater-blond mess. Oh, damn it. I don’t really want to be that mean girl, you know?

Drew doesn’t notice my jab, or at least her smile doesn’t falter as she flips her ponytail back over her shoulder and leans in a little closer, reaching past me for another cup. “No, keep it short,” she says. “It emphasizes your face this way. You could actually do some really wild highlights, like … black or red or purple. My mom does a bunch of different colors all the time.” She pulls her ponytail again. “She always wants me to do something wild, but … you know. I hate having attention on me.” She colors and takes a step back, occupying herself with her cup for a moment, and then she looks up at me again, but this time her muddy brown eyes are strangely intense.

“Cass? Can I ask you something stupid?” Her cheeks and the hollow of her throat are pink, and I catch a subtle wave of nervous body odor. I look away, my eyes landing at last on Eric, who has noticed my predicament.

He waves. “Time to head out, Cass!” I flash him a grateful smile.

“My brother,” I say, moving away from her. “I guess I’ll see you Friday.”

Drew’s face falls. “Oh. Sure,” she says, and then she shakes her head quickly. “But wait a sec. I’ve got … I’ve got this
thing … I was hoping … ” She sets her two soggy paper cups on the table and digs in her shoulder bag. “Wait a minute, Cass. Please.”

I wait. Of course I do. I’m not a horrible person.

“Will you take a look at it, and maybe, if it’s not too stupid, you could pass it on to Annika or Britney? Not, like … not with my name on it, you know. Anonymously. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s totally stupid, but like, maybe you could read it?” Drew takes a final look at the notebook in her hands, and then she tears a page out and hands it to me—pink pen on gray, lined paper, all her i’s dotted with tiny circles.

“It’s a poem?” Somehow I’m holding it, trying not to seem like I’m actually accepting it. Like I’m going to read it and pass it on to the newspaper, hand it to Britney, to Annika. What if it’s terrible? Worse, maybe—what if it’s actually good?

“Sort of.” Her face is in a deep blush now, and the pungent smell of her nerves wafts up at me. She smiles, and it’s almost painful. “It’s this thing I wrote, you know? But like, maybe if it’s any good, it could go in the newspaper?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Drew. I’m not … I’m not really in-volved in any of that.” I wave the pink scribbles vaguely in front of me, still trying to decline the proffered page.

“Well, maybe you could just … read it then? And if you think it’s worth publishing? Maybe … ” She’s picking at her ponytail again and makes no move to take back the poem, so I fold it in half to keep the pink poetry inside and take an uncertain step away from this awkward exchange.

“Bye, Cass. See you.” She nearly whispers the words, into her hair, and I don’t quite know what to do.

“Yeah, see ya,” I say, and then I nearly bowl Eric over on our way back to the minivan, where we wait for the rest of the family to arrive.

“What was that all about?” His eyes linger on the folded sheet of notebook paper.

“What? Oh, it’s nothing.” I shove the poem into my coat pocket.
Nothing.

11. Your definition
of a good friend …

Monday morning is always pure chaos, and I’m already on the stupid bus when I realize I forgot to grab food or money for lunch today. “Beautiful,” I mutter, regretting that last punch of the snooze button and the stupid Morning Prayer Circle playacting. Okay, so it’s not like I’m going to starve over the course of one day without a lunch, but it’s still annoying.

I spent the whole weekend worrying over that stupid Song of Myself assignment, and I’ve got nothing to show for it. Okay, so it was sort of hard to concentrate on writing when I think I was really waiting on Kayla to call. That’s stupid, right? Waiting on her. But we used to do something every Saturday night, and every week she swears that
this
Saturday is going to be the one that we get back to our old routine.

Maybe she’ll buy me lunch for once. We used to eat together every day, the two of us, plus Emily and Cordelia and a few others. We used to giggle over inside jokes and squish our chicken-patty buns flat and Kayla would show us her angsty dinosaur comics and I would tease her until her disdainful-of-everything face would crack into a slow smile. Not anymore, though. Not since she talked Mr. Cavner into letting her lurk in the art grotto, crouching in the dark like a bat with her tortured fountain pen, all misunderstood. I scrunch down into the bus seat. Now Kayla doesn’t eat; she lives on charcoal and paint fumes.

I pull my glove off with my teeth and slide my hand into my coat pocket to check for spare change. Maybe I can at least get a candy bar out of one of the vending machines in the student center, if I feel like walking past the stupid football team perched on the ledge throwing out ratings of every girl’s ass. Well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing but a half-used Kleenex in my pocket. Gross.

I check the other pocket, expecting more of the same. Instead, I pull out Drew’s poem and smooth it against my legs, which are braced up against the seatback in front of me. I check to make sure nobody’s looking, but everyone on the bus has that Monday morning look, wrapped up in their headphones and sleepy thoughts. I spread the paper out and skim over the loopy pink writing. I was wrong—the i’s aren’t dotted with circles, they’re dotted with tiny hearts. Gag me.

The poem is called “My Imprisoned Heart,” and a quick skim tells me all I need to know about this poem: it’s grosser than the Kleenex in my other pocket.

Trapped by your voice, which cuts me in a
hidden vein,

My heart is imprisoned, writhing in pain.

Your indifferent eyes, not even a glimmer?

My lonely heart twists; my hope grows dimmer.

Seriously. The whole thing goes on like that—forty-two sets of anguished couplets. I’m no poet, as evidenced by my weekend failure, but there’s no way I’m submitting this to the newspaper. Even if I kept it anonymous, I don’t think I could handle hearing Britney and Annika mock it, knowing that Drew wrote it. It would feel too mean. Besides, what if they thought I wrote it? That I wanted my stupid poetry in the school newspaper?

Newspaper.
I promised the princesses of perk that I’d come by the office during lunch tomorrow to start doing the layout for this week’s issue. I wonder what it’ll be like to have somewhere to go for lunch. I wonder if they’ll actually talk to me.

Will I always be the lonely one, hiding in my cell?

Everyone hates me—will you as well?

The way your dark hair frames your face,

My captive heart commences to race.

I’m going to commence to throw up. What is this crap? And who is she writing to? I unzip the top of my backpack and shove the page into the gap, where it joins the neglected ranks of candy wrappers and old homework and dead pens at the bottom of my bag. Thank god I don’t have any classes with Drew except for last-period study hall.

I see Kayla waiting for my bus outside of school, which is completely abnormal. Usually she makes me find her, track her turpentine scent down to the basement art room, where she’ll be huddled up with her music in her ears, scribbling away at her tiny black ink worlds that I never quite understand. Today she glares at me through the little hole I’ve scraped in the frost on the bus window as we pull up.

“Your stupid church is trying to ruin my life,” she says, by way of greeting.

I raise an eyebrow, hitch my backpack over my right shoulder, and step off the bus. “Join the club?”

“They want to cancel the Winter Carnival.
Cancel
it. Cancel my first and
last
act of extracurricular leadership and nullify the entire reason I ran for junior class student council representative and gave that ridiculous speech that still makes me break out in hives if I think about it too much.”

“And ruin your chance to get Martin Shaddox to turn straight and decide to make out with high school girls who wear too much eyeliner?” I smile. I’m not overly worried about the church succeeding in canceling the Winter Carnival. The carnival is a tradition at Gordon High that school board members have fond memories of, and many businesses in the community sponsor booths and events on the midway, along the shore of Sterling Lake.

“He is
bi
, for your information, and I wear exactly the right amount of eyeliner.” Kayla glares at me with her raccoon eyes. “And yes. Exactly so. And you
must
make them stop.”

“Why do they want to cancel the carnival?” The event kicks off our winter break, which is the first week of February, and the whole community participates in the cross-country ski race around Sterling Lake at the center of town. Instead of classes that Friday, there’s ice skating, games, food stands, a bonfire with a big outdoor dance, and this year Kayla’s getting this famous illustrator guy to come up from Minneapolis to judge a snow sculpture contest where teams sculpt their favorite comic book heroes. Eric apparently has a team working on a sculpture of Northstar, one of the first openly gay characters. Which is probably not a good idea, but whatever. He’s not going to take my advice about anything, obviously.

“Why else? Because it’s fun.” She stalks off ahead of me toward the school, fleeing the light of the morning sun. “They object to the bonfire, for one thing, or to the dancing happening in conjunction with the bonfire, I don’t know. They say it has some kind of pagan significance, and they’ve also got their undies in a bundle about some of the proposed snow sculptures. Like, of course they’re going to be ‘scantily clad.’ Hello? They’re superhuman crime-fighting heroes. Isn’t that synonymous with wearing your underwear in public? The church is saying that the school has to have a Bible study or something for kids who choose not to go to the carnival.”

“A Bible study? At school?” Um, separation of church and state, how about.

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have all the details, but they’re making demands, Cass, and you have to talk to someone over there. I’ve gone through a lot of trouble to make this all come together. Martin Shaddox is coming all the way up here in the middle of nowhere because of me, and I
cannot
have Jesus on the welcoming committee.”

“I’m nobody. Joyful News is not going to listen to me, Kayla. Why don’t you get your newspaper friends to—”