The Way Back to Happiness (12 page)

T
he morning of the first day of high school seemed to last a decade at least. The whole time, people stared at her as if she were an insect. First they gaped at her because of her hair—and okay, maybe there was a good reason for that—but then they also sniggered because of the name Alabama. The friendliest or most curious asked if she was related to the home ec teacher. It felt as if any attempt to make a new start was doomed. No matter what she did, or how different she tried to be, her identity was sealed as Miss Putterman’s niece, which was the one thing she didn’t want to be in the first place.

At lunch she braved the cafeteria, keeping an eye out for Stuart as she pushed her tray through the line. He hadn’t been in any of her classes since second-period algebra. He wasn’t in the cafeteria, either, so she surveyed her options. The popular table announced itself by the Dentyne-fresh appearance of the kids gathered there. Two girls wore cheerleader uniforms, and she veered away from them by instinct. Nearest to her was the nerd table—and sympathetic though Alabama was to geeks, she wasn’t ready to throw in her lot with the protractor set yet. Finally, in one corner she spotted a table that appeared more mixed—black and white, jocks and normal kids—and she headed in that direction.

“Okay if I sit here?”

All conversation stopped and they looked her up and down—mostly up. Her hair was an eyeball magnet.

Nobody indicated not to so she sank into a plastic chair and started gulping down mashed potatoes.

The girl across from her nodded at her hair. “Did you do that yourself?”

“Sort of,” Alabama admitted. “But I had help.”

“Not enough help,” the girl said, sniggering.

The other girls nearby cracked up. Alabama smiled along, but for lack of anything to say, she kept bolting her salty, starchy, slightly nauseating food. She felt nervous and disheartened, and a lump of dread sat in her stomach, such as a prisoner facing a life sentence might have on his first day in the slammer.

Thirty seconds later she’d almost finished her food when Stuart sped over to the table, set down his
Return of the Jedi
lunch box, and began unloading a little feast, including a sandwich, broccoli florets with a container of ranch-dressing dip, a cored and sliced apple in a Ziploc baggie, a Capri Sun juice pouch, and a Little Debbie Star Crunch for dessert. He said hello to the other kids, most of whom ignored him. He didn’t really seem to care. Stuart might be new to high school, but he’d been around these people all his life.

He noticed her staring at his lunch. “What’s the matter?”

“I haven’t seen anyone use a lunch box since . . .” Since fifth grade, actually, but she didn’t want to insult him. “The last one I got had the Muppets on it.”

“This one’s from last year, but it’s still good. The thermos got kind of stinky over the summer, though.” He was too distracted by other things to keep his mind on lunch boxes. “I was signing up for play auditions.
Alice in Wonderland.
You should try out.”

“Why?”

“I thought you were interested in theater.”

Stuart was obsessed with this subject, and was so over the moon to be able to take theater as an elective that you’d think his whole life had just been a prelude to the moment when he could sign up for Drama and Speech 1. He probably thought that since she listened to him talk about his enthusiasm, she shared it.

“I’ve never been in a play.”

“I was a Cratchit kid in
A Christmas Carol
one year. It was great.”

It must have been. On the basis of this one experience, he’d woven an entire life plan. He wanted to be an actor of stage and screen, like Meryl Streep. He loved Meryl and owned videocassettes of several of her movies, which he watched all the time. He even did a very plausible dramatic imitation of her as
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
.

Even so, imagining movie audiences flocking to see Stuart Looney in anything was difficult.

“You should let Mr. Hill know that you’re a dancer,” he told her, dipping a floret in dressing. “He probably could use people who are good at dance in the production.”

She squirmed a little. When Stuart had been going on about his ambitions, she hadn’t wanted to lie to him, exactly, but she’d have felt weird confessing she had no interests of her own. Or that her interest had always been survival, and making sure her mother kept it together from day to day. So she’d said she was a dancer . . . and maybe she had overstated her experience.

Which—big reality check—was exactly one three-month tap class and a dance recital at Lil’ Steppers Dance Studio in Cleveland, Ohio.

“Mr. Hill says the costumes are going to be amazing.”

She frowned. “Mr. Hill . . . is that Glen?”

His jaw dropped. “You
know
him?” It was as if she’d revealed she was on a first-name basis with Martin Scorsese.

“My aunt does.”

“That is so cool. I was just talking to him, and he was saying that there’s going to be a talent show, too. On Halloween. I’ve got to think of what I’m going to do for that.”

“You’re going to enter a talent show?”

“Of course—it’ll be like
Star Search,
only more . . .” He frowned. “. . . rinky-dink.”

She remembered the kids making fun of him in the library. “Did you sing a Boy George song once at a talent show?”

Stuart looked amazed, and pleased. “You heard about that?”

“Sort of.”

His reaction, including a modest shrug, showed he believed there was no bad publicity. “It was only a lip-sync, but I put together a great costume, with makeup and everything. I even plucked my eyebrows. Ouch! Man, that hurt. But this year I want to do something
really
memorable.”

As if an eighth grader dressed as Boy George in New Sparta, Texas, wouldn’t stick in people’s minds.

“I’m going to make a costume in home ec. I hope.”

She felt like hitting her head against the cafeteria table. “I still can’t believe you want to be locked in a classroom with my aunt every day. I went out of my way to fix my schedule so I
wouldn’t
have to take home ec. I had to sign up for choir, and I can’t sing a note.”

It was that or PE, so she’d decided on the one that offered fewest possibilities for sweating. This meant she’d have to take PE next semester, but by then she’d at least know the people undressing next to her in the locker room.

“I wanted to take choir.” Stuart shook his head in frustration. “There’s not enough time for everything. I wish there was a way to go to school and take nothing but electives. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think it would count as school.”

He laughed. “Right. Then it would be fun.”

The weird thing was, even in algebra, Stuart had appeared to be enjoying himself—or enjoying not enjoying himself. He had a knack for finding entertainment even in life’s unpleasant bits.

Looking over to see that the others were involved in conversation, he hesitated a moment and then said, “When Ms. Michaelson called out your name in homeroom today, she said Alabama Putterman.”

“That’s my name.”

He looked confused. “So . . . Ms. Putterman is your father’s sister?”

She took a long drink of chocolate milk. “My mom’s.”

“Then how come your name’s Putterman, too? Wouldn’t your mom have had a different name from your aunt?”

She bit her lip. “My dad died before I was born. He was in Vietnam. He and Mom never got married.”

“Oh.”

It was faint, but she could sense that tiny catch of judgment in his tone.

“They were going to.” She wanted to kick herself for making excuses, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. “Except he got killed.”

“That’s really sad. So maybe that’s why your mom—” He broke off.

“Why my mom . . . what?”

Two red splotches appeared in his pale cheeks. “I don’t know. I guess I assumed . . .”

“My mother died accidentally.”

“I’m really sorry.” From the distressed look on his face, he meant it. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Especially not in the cafeteria. I’ve never known anybody without parents before.”

Much as she wanted to stay mad at him for bringing up the subject, she couldn’t. “Me neither, actually.”

She’d known lots of kids with one parent. She’d met kids who lived with grandparents because their parents were screwed up, or in jail. She’d known kids who’d been adopted. But her situation was completely new to her. She lacked a road map to deal with it.

“You should come over this afternoon after school,” he said. “I found the
Sunday in the Park with George
Broadway cast album at the library yesterday. We can listen to it after we circle by the tennis courts on the way home.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“Because it’s Stephen Sondheim!” He frowned. “Don’t tell me that New Sparta’s already turned you into a Top 40 zombie, country music freak, or worse”—he shuddered—“one of those Amy Grant girls.”

“I meant why would we want to go to the tennis courts? It’s eight hundred degrees outside.”

“To ogle the tennis players,” he said, as if this should be obvious. “Have you ever seen Kevin Kerrigan in shorts? He’s a hunk.”

The first time she realized she and Stuart lusted after the same guys, it had taken her by surprise. He was the only boy she’d known who admitted—to her, at least—preferring other boys to girls. But it really didn’t make any difference to her. In fact, when she thought about the dumb or catty way girls acted sometimes, it amazed her that more boys weren’t gay. Although maybe it didn’t work that way, like choosing sides. Stuart said the only girl he’d ever had a crush on was Tracy, David Cassidy’s youngest sister on
The Partridge Family,
but he now suspected that had been intense envy more than love.

Anyway, being on the same page boys-wise simplified things, and gave them something else in common.

“Okay,” she said. “But afterwards, at your place, won’t your parents be sick of me? I’m over there a lot.”

He looked surprised, then laughed. “They’re sick of me, maybe.”

Not likely. The strangest thing about Stuart’s family, the most amazing thing, was how normal they all were, and how kind. His dad owned a car dealership—“Looney Deals!” was the slogan of all the ads—and his mom stayed at home and kept house. His big brother, Justin, was a jock. Medals and trophies from the endless sports activities Justin excelled at crammed a cabinet in the family room.

When she’d first set eyes on the cabinet and realized that it was basically a shrine to Justin, she’d muttered something about how lopsided the parental attention seemed to be in the Looney house. Like with her mother and Aunt Bev—Bev, the oldest, the A student, had gotten all the praise, all the attention.

Stuart had been puzzled by her reaction. “Justin’s really good at sports. They don’t give out trophies for the things I like,” he explained. “But when I win my Oscar, it’ll go here.” He patted the cabinet proudly, as if it was a mere matter of time before the gold statuette would be residing next to the tiny track trophies and faded blue ribbons.

She’d never been around optimists before. Not genuine ones, like the Looneys. People who really felt happy, and weren’t just manic to appear that way so they wouldn’t swirl down into a depression if they let their guards down.

Actually, it was a nice change. Her one fear was that the Looneys would worry about her corrupting their sunny-natured son, but they always welcomed her with open arms.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks. It beats going home.”

Somehow she managed to survive choir, which had a surprising number of boys in it, and then she went to English. Her teacher, Mr. Ferrell, seemed really nice. He didn’t make any snarky comments about her hair. No other teacher had been able to resist a sarcastic remark or two.

At the end of class, he handed out paperback copies of
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens. It wasn’t the longest book she’d ever read. The copy of
Love’s Savage Fury
she’d stolen from Bev gave Dickens a run for his money in the page-count department, and she’d polished that novel off in a few days. But this looked a lot harder, and Mr. Ferrell instructed them to read carefully, find definitions for unfamiliar words, and keep an eye out for imagery.

Last period, she had study hall, and she sat in a classroom reading the assigned pages of
Great Expectations
for the next day. The book was told in first person by an orphan living with his mean older sister and her kind husband. The text wasn’t actually that hard, and she became so lost in Pip’s story that she forgot to look up words she didn’t understand, or to hunt for imagery. She read several chapters beyond the first chapter Mr. Ferrell had asked them to and almost resented it when the final bell rang.

Waiting for Stuart at the bench in front of the school, she opened the book again and was so absorbed that she only grudgingly closed it again when he showed up.

When she and Stuart walked into his house, a pan of iced brownies awaited them on the kitchen table, warm from the oven and filling the house with
Leave It to Beaver
goodness. His mom even set out glasses of milk for them.

“Thanks, Mom,” Stuart said.

Mrs. Looney, a tall woman with short, naturally curly dark hair, looked like Stuart, only more athletic. Stuart said she was as good at sports as Justin was. “How was school?”

“Great. I’m going to try out for the school play, and there are a million parts, so I might actually get one.”

“Way to go,” Mrs. Looney said.

Once they had consumed brownies, they went to Stuart’s room. Geeked up from sugar and first-day excitement, Stuart alternated between
Sunday in the Park with George
—Alabama had to learn all about who George was—and reading from monologues he was considering for the talent show.