The Princess of Las Pulgas (2 page)

Mom’s attempt at keeping it
light doesn’t fool me. She was embarrassed having to work with the
catering crew at a party she should have been enjoying as a
guest.

“Oh, and I saw Eric
Peterson. He was parking cars.”

“Wonderful. Now I suppose
he’ll spread the word about our money problems.”

“I don’t think so. I gave
him an excuse about volunteering and escaped to the back entrance.”
She turns the flame under the pan to low and sits at the table. “It
was a small uncomfortable moment.” Mom’s humor fizzles
again.

For years she helped Mrs.
Fogger organize her charity party. She hired the caterers. She
walked in the front door with the guests. From the way Mom looks
and sounds, tonight's been an embarrassing hell.

“You didn’t go out? No
party at Lena’s this year?”

I shake my head.
There was a party. I didn’t go.

We jump at the sudden sound
of the front door slamming. Keith’s familiar shuffling footsteps
start at the entry and cross the dining room toward the kitchen. He
pauses at the kitchen door.

“How was the movie?” Mom’s
voice gives her away, at least to me. She wants Keith to stick
around and talk to us. She knows he won’t.

“Didn’t go. Stayed at
Mitch’s.” His jaw is tight like it’s been for months, and I’ve
forgotten when he looked at either one of us as if we were really
there.

“Do you want some co—?”
Keith has already started upstairs. When his bedroom door closes,
not with a bang, but something close, Mom slumps in her chair and
rubs her eyes.

Thanks to my mole of a
brother, she looks more exhausted than when I came in. Slowly she
straightens her back as if every muscle aches, then she goes to the
stove and pours cocoa for each of us.

We sip from our mugs,
staring into the steamy liquid and letting the quiet hang in the
air between us. We have more to think about than we have to talk
about.

“I do have some good news
for the start of the year.” Her words should sound hopeful. They
would if the way she said them did. “When I finally opened last
week’s mail I found I made ninety percent on my first realtor’s
exam.”

“Great, Mom.” I try to mean
it, but everything that has to do with her real estate course
reminds me how different our lives are now.

“It’s only a practice test,
but I feel a lot more confident after taking it.”

We fall into more silence.
I have no good news, except that Lena called to tell me
the
Nicolas Benz might
be asking me to the Spring Fling. It’s not a sure thing, so it’s
only semi-good news and not as important as it was last
year.

“Carlie. . . I,” Mom clears
her throat and looks up at the ceiling. She does this when she has
things to tell us that aren’t of the good news variety. When Dad
was first diagnosed with cancer, she studied the ceiling for a long
time, letting the tears trickle back into her hairline before she
looked Keith and me in the eyes and told us about the
reports.

I can’t take too much more
of her staring-at-the-ceiling news.

“I made a decision.” Now
her eyes are on me and the way the word, “decision” sounds sets off
an alarm in my head.

“I wasn’t going to say
anything yet, but . . . Well, there’s never going to be a good time
to tell you. It’s not something I decided tonight either, and it’s
something—” Mom sits back in her chair. “We need to sell this
house.”

“Sell?” I sound like all
the air is leaking between my ribs.

Mom puts her hand over
mine, but I snatch mine back.

“We can’t make it
otherwise. I have to free up some capital and the house is the only
asset that will get us out of this mess. The health insurance
company isn’t coming up with any more money to cover the last of
the hospital bills unless we sue. I can’t face that right now. Not
ever.” She sighs. “All I want for a while is some
peace.”

“But Mom! It’s the middle
of my junior year!”

“I know, Carlie. It’ll be
very hard for you and Keith, but no matter how I add the figures, I
come up way too short. Even if I finish the real estate course and
start working by summer, we’ll lose everything. I can’t even
promise you college right now.” Mom gazes into her mug as if she’s
looking for answers. “We can’t afford to live in Channing
anymore.”

“No!”

“I borrowed money on the
house and now the payments are—” She presses her hand against her
lips as if she doesn’t want the words to escape. “They’re bigger
than I thought. I made a mistake when I figured out how much I’d
have to pay each month,, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I knew I
needed money, so I got it the quickest way I could.”

I push away from the table
and get to my feet. “You can’t do this. There has to
be—”

“It’s late. We’ll talk
tomorrow. Let’s keep this between us until we have a family
meeting, okay? Your brother’s so edgy that I need to choose one of
his good moments to tell him.”

I hurry out of the
kitchen.

“Wait.” She catches me at
the stairs. “I need you to understand.” There's pleading in her
voice, something I've never heard when she talks to me.

I yank my arm free and run
up the stairs.

“I wouldn’t do this if I
didn’t have—”

Slamming my door, I lean
against it, squeezing my eyes closed and tasting the salt tears at
the corner of my mouth. Quicken jumps from my bed and rubs against
my legs until I pick her up and cry into her short gray fur. She
nuzzles her Siamese understanding and sympathy under my
chin.

With her tucked close to me
I open my bedroom window, inviting the sound of the Pacific inside.
When I set her onto the window sill she wraps her tail tightly
around her haunches and stares across our beachfront. Like me,
she's never lived anywhere but here. The steady rhythm of waves has
always rocked me to sleep, and I’ve never thought how important
that sound was until this moment. I get one of those heart shock
moments.
What if there’s no ocean where we
end up living?

I lift Quicken and close
the window, leaning my forehead against the pane, wondering where
we’ll wind up and what the next bad event will be that we have to
face.

The shelf over my desk
holds a paperweight I won in the eighth grade poetry contest. Two
Channing Yearbooks lie stacked next to it and on top of those sits
my broken Jack-in-the-Box. When I crank the handle of the metal
toy, it swings around freely, not catching the tiny gears. The
puppet’s trapped inside.

Cradling Jack’s small
prison, I lie curled around it on my bed.
I hate you for dying, Dad. I can’t bury my face any deeper in
the pillow. I hate everybody in this stupid world.

“Carlie love, this is tough, but you’ll be
fine. I know it.”

No! This will not be just fine.

Chapter 7

The house sells less than
three weeks after it goes on the market. Prime location, top- notch
school district. The buyers need to move in ASAP and are willing to
pay moving expenses if Mom agrees to be out before the end of
February. The day they came I kept my fingers in my ears and tried
to block that realtor’s voice. She stiletto-heeled her way through
the rooms with a clipboard in hand, calling Mom Sarah as if they’ve
known each other a long time.

She sweeps in Sunday
morning after the sale and before even my early bird Mom dresses or
any of us eats breakfast. The woman waves the papers that, once
signed, will turn our house over to a couple from Arizona with a
teenage daughter.

I can’t watch while Mom
signs away our family home. I grab Quicken and take the stairs two
at a time. In my room I put her on her cushion and throw myself
face-down across my bed. I can’t cry, but my heart feels bloated
and heavy. It’s holding all the tears my eyes can no longer
shed.

Who’s getting my room? That snotty redheaded
sophomore with the tight jeans and too much mascara, that’s
who.

“Missy will be a sophomore
at Channing. I’m so happy that she’ll already have someone she
knows there.” That’s what the girl’s mom said the day they came to
see the house.

I wanted to scream, “Get
out” as Prissy Missy swaggered her way through the rooms, fingering
my bedspread, peering into my closet.

Rolling over I cover my
eyes with one arm.

So she arrives in Channing and, what, takes
my place? My house that’s right on the beach? The house everyone
wants to come to for the end-of-school-year party?

Why did you have to leave us in this mess,
Dad?

I’d hurl myself out the
window, but I’m smart enough to know I’ll probably only break a
leg. Instead, I hurl a pillow at the door. Quicken does a cat
stretch, then curls up again. I dive under the covers.

The next day at school I
write a short essay in French class, but after I hand it in I can’t
remember what it's about. I stumble through chemistry and one of
Mr. Mancy’s pop quizzes in English. Listening to my teachers’
voices, studying faces of friends, capturing the sounds and images
of the school, takes on a kind of frenzy. Each desk I sit at
becomes important. Each conversation about homework or Mancy’s
quizzes becomes precious, something to be tucked into a scrapbook.
On the English bulletin board the deadline for the Scribe’s yearly
nonfiction contest is posted as April 20th—a lifetime away and a
contest that might happen without me.

A phantom hand clenches my
stomach at the thought that I might not be at Channing much longer.
Mom kept saying she’d try to keep us in the district, but she
couldn’t promise anything. And then yesterday, when I brought up
the subject, she had somewhere else to go.

As I pile my books into my
backpack Lena catches my arm. “You haven’t answered my emails. How
come?”

“I’ve been sort of
busy
. You
know—”

She squeezes my
hand.
“Busy”
has
become my code for “crying in my bedroom.”

As we make our way to the
hall, Lena says, “What I wrote was Nicolas is definitely asking you
to the Spring Fling.” I must not look as happy as she expects.
“What? You don’t want a date with Nicolas Benz?”

“No. I mean,
yes.”

She shakes her head. “Well,
there’s more. You’ve got to check out Sean Wright, the new French
tutor.”

“I don’t need a tutor.” I
learn French almost the same way I learned to walk. It’s the one
class I can ace with little effort.

“You need one now.” She
flutters her eyelashes, performing her coy act, then she grabs my
arm. “It’s him. Don’t look.” She tightens her grip. “Okay.
Now.”

He’s closing his locker
when I glance back, then he walks past us, our eyes locked onto his
dark hair that’s swept behind each ear, his deep set blue
eyes.
Where did he get that tan in
January?
He must need glasses because he
doesn't’ notice either of us gaping.

“I’m signing up for French
and dropping study hall.”

I roll my eyes. “You hate
French.”

“I’ve changed my mind.” She
looks over my shoulder. “Eric’s coming,” she says, then whispers in
my ear. “Need a tutor now?”

“No.” I thread my arms
through the straps of my backpack.

“So are we meeting for
lunch?”

“Sure. See you after
chemistry.”

Eric steps around me and
hangs his arm over her shoulders, and they nuzzle their way off to
their next class. At the end of the hall Lena glances back,
mouthing,
au revoir
.

Before I tackle lunch with
Lena, I need to figure out how to tell my best friend I’m moving
and may not finish my junior year here, so I cut chemistry. It’s
one class I shouldn’t cut, but it’s also one class I wouldn’t miss
at Channing.

The wide sweep of lawn
leading to the grove of eucalyptus at the edge of the campus offers
a quiet hideout. I slide my back down the peeling bark and draw my
knees under my chin. If I could I’d stay here until the end of the
day.

“Carlie love, hiding doesn’t make what’s
scary go away.”

You don’t understand, Dad. Once I tell Lena
what’s happening it becomes all the more true.

“You’re brave enough to handle the
truth.”

I hope he hears my sigh.
It’s full of messages about how
brave
I feel.

Heading into the cafeteria,
I spot Nicolas in the Bistro section. I haven’t hung around school
or gone to Sam’s Shack in months, so even if he did want to ask me
to the dance he hasn’t had the chance. I haven’t given
anybody
a chance to ask
me
anything
. I’ve
avoided talking to friends by making excuses about needing to
study, needing to help Mom, needing to clean my room. Dad’s right.
Hiding won’t change what’s about to happen, but he’s wrong about my
being brave.

Before I can duck out the
door, Nicolas spots me, waves and comes straight toward me in that
slow stroll that makes every female stop what she’s doing and gape.
He leaves a wake of huddled chatter and longing down the center of
the room.
No wonder he has an ego the size
of Planet Earth.