The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (27 page)

“I have an idea,” Gammy said, smiling. “How about after Mass we go to Marie Callender’s for the Early Bird Special? You can have that salad you like.”

Food on top of everything else? “I guess,” Lindsay said.

They scooted over in their pew so other people could file in. Old-time Catholic women, the same as Gammy, wore scarves over their hair. Lindsay thought that was a good idea, at least when it came to her own messy hair. Because she’d “forgotten” the hat, Gammy had bobby-pinned a Kleenex to her hair. At least it was a clean one.

“Two for lunch,” Gammy said as they walked into the restaurant. “I get the senior discount,” she told the hostess who led them to a booth. “That means I get the free slice of pie, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said, while Lindsay withered.

“Just the thought of Banberry pie makes my mouth water,” Gammy said when they were seated. “How about you, honey?”

“I might not be hungry enough for pie.”

“You can have ice cream if you’d rather.”

“Maybe.” Something cold on her stomach sounded good. The restaurant was barely half filled. Across the way in another booth, they could hear girls laughing.

“Must be somebody’s birthday,” Gammy said. “Good Lord and little fishes, Lindsay. What’s all over your hands?”

Lindsay looked down. “Printer toner. It brushes right off.”

“You don’t want that stuff in your pores. Believe me, your pores are going to matter in the long run. Go wash up.”

“Okay.” Lindsay walked by several booths until she came to the one the laughter was coming from. Sitting there was Taylor and two of her clones, and with them was Sally. Lindsay stopped in the aisle and looked at them until they noticed her. “Hi,” she said tentatively.

“Look, it’s the gherkin,” Cheyenne Goldenblatt said. “Are you here for the child’s plate?”

Everyone laughed.

Lindsay looked directly at Sally. Sally was doing her fake laugh, and when Avril picked up a pickle from her plate and threw it at Lindsay, Sally fake laughed even harder. Lindsay walked away.

She ate all the hardboiled egg whites out of her salad, and the chunks of cheese. The bacon, tomatoes, olives, and lettuce, she put into her napkin when Gammy wasn’t looking.

“Looks to me like somebody was hungrier than she thought,” Gammy said. “Now how about dessert?”

Mariah was in the kitchen when they got home. The Hobart mixer was running and the smell of cinnamon filled the air. Gammy tucked the church newsletter under a wooden spoon that lay on the counter. Mariah punched down bread dough and shook her head. “Where did you get that awful dress?” she asked Lindsay, and Lindsay, her day in ruins, ran upstairs.

Monday morning, before the bell rang, Lindsay searched fruitlessly for Sally in all the usual places. She wasn’t in homeroom. When it was time for Dr. Ritchie’s class, Lindsay entered the classroom without her, taking her regular seat. Sally came in late, tardy slip in hand. She carried a hot pink Kate Spade backpack. On her wrist were two yellow Livestrong bracelets. She briefly flicked her eyes over Lindsay and then sighed dramatically, taking the seat between Taylor and Avril. Dr. Ritchie huffed at her for interrupting her deadlines on the upcoming Science Project Presentation night, then droned on about some movie they were going to see, but Lindsay didn’t listen. She knew it was pretense, Sally sitting with Taylor, them making faces at her, but it hurt. Even Belva was giving her the oh-poor-you look. On Wednesday Lindsay had been Sally’s friend, and by Monday she was nothing. Sally had to act like their friendship had been nothing more than a blip in her life before she went back to Taylor and the clones. The trouble was, to Lindsay, it really did feel that way.

She put her head in her hands and rubbed her temples. If this was what it felt like to lose a friend, then maybe it wasn’t worth having one. What if Taylor decided to tell after all? What would happen to the science project? There was time to do something else if she did it quickly, but nothing as great as what they’d planned. Nothing that said, “Wow, these girls deserve the scholarship; or, ladies and gentlemen, the future of the world will soon lie in these girls’ hands.” Maybe Sally didn’t care about grades since she wasn’t planning to go to high school, but Lindsay didn’t want an F anywhere near her. She compared Belva Satterly getting a B for her fast-food investigation with all the planting, growing, feeding, and harvesting that went into the cannabis project. All that work, Gammy might say, would fly right out the window. Lindsay pictured little hand-rolled cigarettes winging their way to freedom.

Then she pictured Allegra’s funeral.

What if the blackmail never ended? What if Taylor Foster—she was rich enough—invited Sally on a European vacation? Lindsay couldn’t compete with that. She raised her hand. “Dr. Ritchie?”

“What is it, Lindsay?” she asked, clearly irritated at the interruption.

“I need to go to the nurse.”

“It can’t wait?”

“No.”

“Very well, then. Go. But remember, your rough drafts for science projects are due tomorrow.”

“I know.” The paper was already done. It “discussed” the growing of marijuana, but didn’t exactly admit they’d grown it. Subject A, Subject B; they could have been in a hospital laboratory where it was legal to grow pot. She would e-mail the paper to Blackboard the second she got Sally’s okay. It was weird that it hadn’t arrived yet. Lindsay hefted her backpack and headed for the door. As she passed by, Taylor stuck her foot out and Lindsay tripped, but caught herself before she went down. Dr. Ritchie, as smart as she was, didn’t even hear the giggles that followed, a sound that hurt Lindsay a lot more than her stubbed toes.

The next day, around dinnertime, Lindsay said she didn’t want any, and stayed upstairs, too upset to eat. She heard Dr. G talking to her mother and Allegra. They were worried, because on Monday Lindsay had made her mother come and get her before school even started and now it was Tuesday and she didn’t feel any better and Lindsay never missed school. Sally had not e-mailed, or called, so Lindsay had sent the paper on to Blackboard and ever since this weight in her heart was more than she could bear. Why not miss school? Why not get a B? It didn’t matter all that much. Her stomach was its usual dull achy self, and plenty of people skipped school. She even felt a little dizzy. Emotions took a lot out of a person. As did crying, which she managed to put off until she had her face in her pillow. Crying made a person tired. That was because of ACTH, the stress hormone. Onion tears were about irritants. Emotional tears were higher in protein, hormones, and neurotransmitters. Dr. William Frey’s theory was that emotional crying was like sweating, exhaling, or even taking a dump: a way to rid the body of wastes, but that didn’t mean it had to feel good.

Dr. G poked his head up into the attic space. “Hi there. I heard you weren’t feeling a hundred percent. That’s a shame, because I was hoping to take all of you to dinner to celebrate the engagement.”

He looked so happy she had to smile at him. “Sorry I can’t go.”

“Your mom says you’ve been resting all day. Sure you don’t feel well enough to have some dinner?”

Lindsay shook her head no.

“Mind if I come up?”

She rolled over on her bed. “The ceiling’s pretty low. Don’t bump your head.”

Dr. G looked around her room and smiled. “Aw, this is nothing. In Vietnam, I had to crawl through much tighter spaces than this.”

“You were in Vietnam?”

“Yep. I crawled around in tunnels and put bandages on guys. Then I came home and went to med school and learned how to put on bigger bandages. It’s a toss-up to say which place taught me the most. Okay if I stay a minute?”

“I guess.”

He sat on the end of her bed. “Here’s how we did it in Nam. Symptom review. Fever?”

“I don’t think so.”

He felt her forehead. “That’s a negative. Belly ache?”

“Yes.”

“You’re supposed to say ‘affirmative.’ Get them a lot?”

She shrugged.

“Unknown. They run in my family, too, Lindsay. All of us, our tension goes right to the gut.”

“I’m the only one in my family who gets them.”

“Okay if I prod your tummy a little?”

She put her hands over her stomach. “No. Really, I’m okay. It’s better than it was.”

“Private refuses examination. Disregard. Are you a junk-food junkie?”

“I don’t even like Coke.”

“Soldier, that’s excellent. Resist the Doritos as long as you can. Your cholesterol will thank you for it. Did you have a rough day at school yesterday?”

She sat up and crossed her legs. “Affirmative.”

“This have anything to do with the science project you’ve been working so hard to finish?”

Lindsay pushed a thumbtack that was about to fall out back into her Carl Sagan poster and bit her lip. She had to lie to Dr. G to make things sound authentic, and she didn’t like to lie at all. “The paper is finished. All that’s left is the lab work. But my project partner, well, she went back to her old friends, the ones she had before me.”

He made his eyes wide, and lifted his eyebrows. “Is this person, by any chance, insane?”

Lindsay smiled. “No, she’s the smartest girl in the whole entire school.”

“Except for you, of course.”

“Maybe in some subjects, but definitely not all of them.”

“So what’s the worst that can happen?”

Lindsay picked at her jeans. “If she doesn’t finish it with me I’m afraid I’ll get an F.”

Dr. G rubbed his chin. “The way I see it, you have three options. You can do nothing and you’ll get at least a C. After all, you did complete the paper. You can try to convince her to act like a professional and finish what you started, or you can take the project away from her and finish it yourself.”

“I’d do the last option if it wasn’t for our long-term experiments. They’re all at her house. I don’t have the right set-up to finish it here.”

“Guess that only leaves option number two.” He gave her shoulder a pat. “Lindsay, I look at you and you know what I see?”

“A crybaby?”

“Just the opposite. I see someone highly intelligent, like her mother. I see someone who cares passionately about the world, just like Allegra. Don’t really know if there’s any Gammy in there, but I suspect you have her common sense. Don’t let that flame of yours be doused by anyone, particularly someone who clearly doesn’t realize what she’s losing by excluding you from her group.”