Truth & Dare (24 page)

Sounded sort of like a broken toaster to me. Enough. These weren’t details anyway. They were advertisements.

“Will you go to the funeral with me?” I asked.

“What?” Violet was far away, dreaming of her love. I guess you forget about death in the land of toast. “You want to go to Danny Bommarito’s funeral? Why? Funerals are awful—besides, you didn’t really know him.”

Right then I came up with a rule of my own, but I didn’t tell Violet: if you love somebody, you should show up at their funeral. “Well, I’m going,” I said solemnly. Violet frowned.

“They’ll probably let us out of school to go,” I said. “Like they did in middle school when that girl died of leukemia.”

“That’s true.” She thought about it as she snitched half a piece of my bacon. “Did he really wink at you?”

I nodded.

Violet returned from Loveland to earth. She looked deep into my eyes. “Well, you can’t go by yourself, Casey. I’ll go with
you so you can just fall apart if you want to. I’ll be there to hold you up.”

But when Wednesday afternoon rolled around and we signed out of school with a throng of other, mostly older kids, I thought Violet might be the one who’d need holding up. I’d gone to look for her and found her standing in front of her locker having an argument with Burt. I waited in a doorway down the hall, but I could still hear them.

“Don’t be like that, Burt,” Violet said in a begging voice I hated.

“Hey, go if you want to. I don’t care. But I’m not wasting my afternoon at some crying-fest funeral for some kid I don’t even know.”

“The point is, you know Casey. We’d be there to support her.”

“I don’t know Casey. She’s your friend.” Burt was scanning the passersby, giving big grins and thumbs-ups to kids he was willing to admit he knew.

Violet gave up. “Fine. Are you coming over tonight?”

“Why don’t you come by my house? Everybody’ll be out again.” He was looking at her now, his arm creeping around her side to lie on her butt. I felt like knocking it off myself, but Vi let it stay.

“I have a paper to write,” she said, but she didn’t sound too sorry about it.

“So? Write it afterwards!”

“No! Burt! Just because …” And then her voice got too low for me to make out, but my imagination filled in the blanks.

Burt looked angry. “God, Vi, I didn’t think you’d turn into such a priss afterwards. What’s wrong with you! How about this? You call me when you don’t have so much homework to
do.” He stalked off, shaking his head; Vi slammed her locker door and then slumped against it. Was this what happened after you floated on clouds together?

“Hey, Vi!” I called, like I’d just shown up. “The bus is here.” She took a deep breath before she joined me.

The school had chartered a decrepit bus to take those of us who didn’t have a car or a ride to the funeral. It was too old to have seat belts, which seemed pretty lousy considering where we were going and why. Violet and I chose a front seat as the bus filled up with the JV football team and a bunch of the younger cheerleaders.

“I don’t even know any of these kids,” Violet said. “I bet they think it’s weird we’re going.”

“It’s not weird. Anybody can go to a funeral.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t know this guy,” Violet reminded me in a grouchy whisper.

“We could have known him,” I said. Anyway, I felt sure that by watching him all those months I knew the real Danny a lot better than most of these second-stringers did.

Violet rolled her eyes at me, scratched the back of her head, then stuck her hand down her turtleneck jersey to rearrange her bra strap. She was so fidgety she was making me jumpy too.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I feel all itchy,” Violet said. “I think I’m allergic to funerals.”

“I’ve never even been to one before,” I admitted.

“You haven’t? God, my mother is always dragging me to say goodbye to every ancient relative who bites the dust.”

“Violet!”

“I’m sorry, but I hate funerals. They’re so fake. You stand there looking at this person you barely knew lying in a big silver bullet, all powdered and dressed up for the big trip to
nowhere.” She shivered. “People act like they’re so upset, even when they aren’t. It’s a funeral rule. When my great-aunt died last year, everybody came up and shook her daughter’s hand and said how terrible it was and how they’d all miss dear old Polly.
Nobody
liked this woman—she was the crab of the family. She had a cocker spaniel she trained to bite people. But as soon as she’s out from underfoot, they’re all crying about it. It gives me the creeps.”

“This funeral won’t be like that. Everybody will be upset.”

Violet sighed. “Oh, yeah. That’ll make it a lot better.”

“You know what I’ve been thinking about?”

“God knows.”

I wasn’t sure I should actually mention this to Violet, but the coincidence of it kept occurring to me. “You slept with Burt Sunday night, right?”

“Shh!”

“Sunday?” I whispered.

“Yes!”

“I keep thinking, you and Burt were probably doing it when Danny had the accident. He probably died while you were making love for the first time. Isn’t that weird?”

“Casey! God, you’re freaking me out!”

“I don’t mean it that way. I just mean, there was this terrible event happening at the same time that a good thing was beginning. In the same town. It just seems weird that I know about both things.”

“It seems weird that you thought of it like that. Sex is nothing like death.”

“They’re both life-changing experiences. Especially death, I guess. But sex changes you too, doesn’t it? You’re not the same afterwards.”

“That’s the truth.” Violet bent forward in the seat, her arms
hugging her stomach. “Could we just not talk for a few minutes? This whole funeral thing is making me nauseous.”

There was no room to sit down by the time the bus unloaded us at the church, so we stood at the back not far from the closed casket, which was on a wheeled cart surrounded by Danny’s football teammates. They all had on dark suits and ties, so they were hardly recognizable as the same guys who shoved each other around in the halls at school. I had to look away from their faces as they wheeled the casket up the aisle to the front of the church. Some of them had tears rolling down their cheeks already. When I saw that, it hit me like a punch in the gut. This was real—Danny Bommarito was on the big trip to nowhere.

I couldn’t actually hear too much of the service because there was a lot of crying going on. I cried too—it was almost impossible not to when everybody else was, but I wasn’t feeling as heartbroken or cheated as I had on Monday when I first found out. I was actually having a hard time remembering exactly what Danny Bommarito looked like. Violet managed to stay dry by scowling at the bald head of the man in front of us.

When the minister was finished speaking, the organ music blasted out of the ceiling speakers and the pallbearer team started rolling the casket back down the aisle. Behind them came a couple who must have been Danny’s parents, and a younger sister—the father was in the middle with an arm around both females. All of them had swollen faces and red eyes. And then I saw who was coming next: Nicole Nesbit, Danny’s girlfriend, one parent on either side of her, holding her up.

I watched her come closer. The president of the Peer
Leaders couldn’t seem to pick up her feet and kept stumbling on the carpet. Her mouth sagged open as if she didn’t have the strength to keep it closed, and her eyes were swollen shut like two raw, red clamshells. Even her hair—Nicole Nesbit’s beautiful dark hair—hung alongside her cheeks in damp, lanky hunks. When she passed me, I could hear how her breathing made a rasping noise in her chest; I could see she wasn’t even inside herself. If you love somebody, it should show on your face.

“I have to sit down,” I whispered to Violet, clutching her arm. She lurched to attention; this was the job she’d signed up for. Some of the people in the back rows had left through side doors, so Violet steered me to an empty pew and eased me into it like I was breakable. For a minute I had trouble breathing.

“It was too hard for you, wasn’t it? God, Casey, I didn’t know you loved him so much!” I looked up at her, my mouth open to explain, but nothing came out. Violet began to cry.

“I feel so stupid now,” she said, slumping down next to me, holding my hand. “All that crap about being in love with Burt. That’s how I wanted to feel, but it wasn’t real, like … like this.” Now she was really sobbing and everybody was respectfully averting their eyes. “It wasn’t wonderful. It was weird and embarrassing and I don’t care if we never do it again!”

Miraculously my voice returned. “Really? No clouds?” I asked, digging in my purse for tissues.

“I guess Burt made it to the clouds, but I sure didn’t,” she said, shuddering and mopping her face. “I slept with him to find out if I loved him or not. I guess I got my answer.”

We sat there by ourselves until the church was almost empty. Violet, not in love with Burt Baldwin. Me, not in love with Danny Bommarito.       

D
ISAPPEARING-
A
CT
D
AD
(D.A.D. for short) has lived up to his name and down to my expectations. Again. It doesn’t matter, though. I am independent and perfectly able to cope.

I am also in a foreign country, alone and terrified.

I start by exploring the flat. This is my new home for the summer while my confident big sister, Sofia, “travels the world” (last heard from while boarding the Eurostar to Paris) and my mother “expands her horizons and finds herself” (currently on a residential “life skills” course on the Isle of Wight). And me? I run away from the humiliation of school and into the total abandonment of staying with my estranged D.A.D. I cannot believe that this seemed like a good idea when Mum suggested it.

The full self-guided tour doesn’t take long. I find three bedrooms, and I don’t think any of them can be Dad’s. I know from Sofia that he has a New Woman and It’s Serious. But these rooms all contain single beds and there are no signs in the flat of Wicked Stepmothers-to-be, or any of the ingredients for making poisoned apples. Or any food at all, in fact. There’s also no perfume, no straighteners, no rail of designer clothing. No trace at all of Glamorous Woman, aka Dad’s “type.” (My hippie-chick mother was a two-kid-length blip in his
trophy-wife
life.)

The kitchenette has seen cleaner days and there’s some suspicious black stuff on a pan in the sink, but I don’t think it’s relevant to my investigation so I don’t obtain a sample for forensic analysis. I also find a bathroom (just as well, really). This features a titchy bath, a shower attachment, an antique toilet with a chain and a rusty-tapped bidet. Next, my
super-sleuth
skills locate a balcony that extends from the bedroom to just past the cooker. The view is pretty amazing—all rolling hills and churches and old-looking stone houses. Taking that and the bidet as evidence, this explorer concludes that she is definitely in Central Italy.

I knew that, though, of course. What I haven’t worked out is who exactly I’m supposed to be living with, since it is clearly
not
Dad at all. I’m also not sure how my father can be capable of disappearing
again
so spectacularly when he hasn’t seen me for nearly four years, and the last time ended in me telling him I didn’t need him. In fact, I told him I didn’t need
anyone
. I said I was independent, like a cat.

I was almost thirteen. I was also testing him. I’ve had a cat phobia since I was tiny and a neighbor’s cat took a dislike to me and got his claws out to prove it. Dad was supposed to remember that. He was supposed to have replied, “How can you be
anything
like a cat when you’re
terrified
of cats?” Then maybe he was supposed to laugh and give me a hug, or tickle my anger out of me with that annoying, oafish-dad technique my best friend Fazia is regularly subjected to.

But Fazia’s dad is always around. My dad is just some stranger, and I’m just stopping by at his house for a saucer of milk.

Except he’s not here and there’s no food.

And I’m now fairly certain that he doesn’t live here.

I go back for a deeper investigation of the bedrooms.

The first one has a 95 percent pink Hello Kitty throw-type
cover on the bed and several graphic novels covering Kitty’s ears on the matching pillow case. Hello Kitty is not the kind of cat I’m scared of, but she’s also not a cat I’d emblazon on any of my clothes or bedding. One reason is that I have my own style (big, low-cut, homemade dresses, combat boots). Another is that they probably don’t put Hello Kitty on plus-sized clothes. My size is the main reason I have my own individual style. I need camouflage tents to go with my boots. Ha.

Looks like I’ll be sharing a flat with a cutesy cartoon girl. So far so alarming. But Bedroom Number Two is at the other end of the scary spectrum. The bed has black sheets on it—
all
black—and it looks like it hasn’t been made in several years. According to my dad’s mumbling before he dumped me here, my housemates have only been here one night. They haven’t even unpacked, as far as I can see. How can you rumple a bed that much in one night? Goth Sheet Girl must be a restless sleeper, or possibly an actual vampire who uses her bed for killing sprees.

I go to the third bedroom and dump my stuff on the
non-vamp
, non-cartoon-covered bed, as I conclude that this room has to be mine. It’s the only one without an unpacked suitcase or duffle bag in it. It’s also the only one with a neutral bedcover. I wonder if my dad chose it, though I suspect it was New Woman. If I remember one thing from Dad’s eight years of living with me, it’s that he doesn’t really get involved in the house or the kids. Especially not the kids. I lie back.

It’s another minute before I realize that the quilt features tiny embroidered animals, white on white. Slinky, long-tailed silhouettes.

Cats.

I leap off the bed and back to the balcony for gulps of air.

ELLIE AND DISAPPEARING-ACT DAD: SIXTEEN MAGICAL YEARS IN SEVEN EASY STEPS

• Ellie aged naught to eight. Dad present at occasional family dinners but mostly working at work, working at home, working at working. Generally absent.
  
• Ellie aged eight to twelve. Occasional weekend visits at Dad’s place in London after the divorce. Dad laughs a lot with Sofia, the fun-loving, perfect daughter. Ellie feels left out—imperfection embodied in girl form. Ellie goes to bed early every night and is pronounced a “good girl, but so serious.”
  
• Ellie aged twelve to sixteen. Dad chats to Ellie weekly on the phone from Italy, the country of Dad’s birth, which he has now moved back to, taking up a professorship at the university. Both stick to the following script:
  

• Ellie is sixteen and escaping school-related humiliation. Dad meets Ellie off Cheapie Flight at the No-frill-o Airways terminal. Small talk is made, covering topics such as Knowledge of Italian (Dad’s is native, Ellie’s is basic) and Mobile Phones (Dad’s is lost, Ellie’s is expensive to use).
  
• In the car. Ellie and Dad now stretch to topics as diverse as The Weather (unsurprisingly hot—it’s August) and The Traffic (surprisingly light—it’s August).
  
• Ellie is brought to the apartment, assuming Dad will be living there too. Well, you do, don’t you, when you go to stay with your dad for the summer? You expect that your dad will actually be staying with you. You have clearly forgotten the truth of D.A.D.
      Dad mentions two housemates—teenage girls he’s renting to, sent by the letting agency, who moved in yesterday. He says he hopes they’ll all get on. He hands Ellie a wodge of money. He says she should call if she needs him.
  
• D.A.D. disappears, his trademark move, and how he gets his name. Ellie remembers that Dad has lost his phone and she couldn’t call him even if she wanted to.
  

When I’m breathing again, I grip the balcony railing and crane my neck slightly so that I can make out the main square with its fountain and grand medieval buildings. There’s a United Nations of studenty people hanging around on the stone steps. They’re all draped over each other and half of them have mobile phones pressed to their ears.

People. Connecting. Everywhere.

I want to go home. I want to hide in my bedroom, under my patterned duvet and total lack of cat insignia.

Let’s face it: I am no intrepid explorer. I don’t have the people skills, for a start. I mostly only ever do sociable stuff for Mo-related reasons, and look how that all turned out. (Fazia’s the big exception to my “books are my only friends” rule because she’s been my best friend forever, and
not
because I’m in love with her brother. And I so wish I wasn’t in love with her brother.)

I feel achy and empty.

Maybe it’s hunger. I thought the new Fancy Signora
Stepmum would be cooking me local delicacies. Now I’m thinking I might not even meet her. I’ll have to survive on the Italian equivalent of Pot Noodle from the convenience store across the road. Potto Noodle-o. I bet it’s more delicious because it’s Italian. My stomach rumbles.

There’s another sound too—metallic and hollow.

A key in the lock.

Disappearing-Act Dad, perhaps back already to say sorry for abandoning his youngest daughter? Or to tell me he’s found his phone and/or he’s giving me a new number?

No one calls my name, no one seems to know I’m here. So it has to be a housemate. I’m not ready to meet her. I don’t think I will ever be ready to meet her. In fact, if I manage to go back into my room, I’m going to phone Mum and ask her to change my ticket home. My dad and I might be estranged, but these girls are
actual
strangers. Mum won’t expect me to stay here. I know she doesn’t have Dad’s address either, because she “can’t keep track of that man,” and all these arrangements were made on the phone—the phone he’s lost. Mum will call Dad a “useless, unreliable, irresponsible man.” Again.

I wait. A door shuts inside the flat. And then silence. My new housemate must be in her black Goth-ness or pink
Kitty-ness
, and I should brave my white felines and ring Mum.

But when I do, there’s no answer. I’m only supposed to use this phone to contact England in emergencies, but I think this counts, so I text Fazia and tell her my life is falling apart and it’s all her brother’s fault.

She texts back that she’s out shopping with her mum and she’s sorry—again—about her brother, but men are rats, except Hot Harry, and she’ll write more later. She ends with, “Hang in there, Ellie Els! Xxx”

She has kinder nicknames for me than her brother does.

I’m used to it really. When you’re my size and at my level of shy not-fitting-in-ness, and you’re also called Elena Minghelli, you’ve got to expect it. I’ve been Ellie the Elephant since I was small. Though I was large even when I was small, of course. A baby elephant. It was a few years before I realized that “elephant” was not a good thing to be.

Just the other week, Mo managed to top that when he called me “Minger-Ellie.”

Minger-Ellie, get it? Ellie
Minger
-Ellie. What took
that
nickname so long to emerge?

Ha.

Ha.

HA.

This is especially funny coming from the mouth of the boy you’ve fancied all your life, who also happens to be your best friend’s brother. And, oh, perhaps on the night your best friend told you she’s sure you’re “in with a chance.” Say the night of the Thank God The GCSEs Are Over Party—the one everyone calls The TGTGCSEAOP (also known as the “Big Sneeze”).

Normally you wouldn’t be seen dead at this sort of
skinny-bodied
-cloney, no-self-respecty snogfest of a phlegmy
school-related
disco. But tonight is different. Tonight you’re officially “in with a chance” with Mo! And you’ve worshipped him for years! Since when you were five and he let you eat his last Christmas tree Santa chocolate! And when you were ten and he interrupted Space Monster Spewing Mutants II: The Revenge, Level 22: The Oozing Dungeon, to let you and Fazia play Pink Princesses Get Dressed! And when you were thirteen and you slept over at Fazia’s and the smoke alarm went off and he held the door open for you! He practically scooped your
not-remotely frail, damsel-in-distress body up in his manly fifteen-year-old fireman arms and carried you through the raging flames of Casa Khareem. (Turned out there was no fire—Mrs. Khareem was up early and burned some toast and the Khareem smoke alarm is ultra-sensitive. But still. There was plenty of fire in me.)

So. I am In With a Chance at the Big Sneeze.

I arrive, wearing a new red dress I’ve spent a week making. And matching lipstick. And a smile. I stand near him, holding a bottle of beer I have no intention of drinking. Fazia raises her eyebrows at me and wanders off to find Hot Harry, the guy she always snogs at the end of any given social occasion. One day, one of them might actually ask the other out.

Tonight I’m in with a chance with Mo.

He’s with his deep-giggly friends. They’re going, “
Haw-haw
, haw-haw,” like a pack of donkeys.

“Look, it’s Smelly Ellie Minghelli. Haw-haw,” Donkey Number One says.

“Ellie the Elephant. Haw-haw,” adds Donkey Number Two.

Donkeys One and Two nudge Mo.

“She’s made an effort tonight. Haw-haw,” Donkey Number Three says, giving Mo a full shove, clearly far manlier than his puny nudging donkey friends.

There’s a silence. The donkeys stare at me. This is the bit where Mo sweeps me up in a fireman’s lift and rescues me from the burning, um, donkey barn.

Instead, he says something to his friends. They all bray madly. And then I hear something else. Fazia denies it for days afterwards, but I hear it. I hear him call me “
Minger-Ellie
.” Minger. It’s a few steps closer to loserville than “elephant.” It’s like “smelly” and “ugly” combined. I’ve been promoted.

The donkeys go wild—haw he haw he haw.

So I have a new nickname and it’s coined by Mo.
Fan-bloody
-minger-tastic.

I stay put, because I am independent. I hold out until I see Mo snogging Holly.

Holly is the kind of fair maiden guys fought over in the olden days; duels at dawn. Holly is
perfect
. Holly is “in with a chance” with every single boy in the school. Guys are lucky to be “in with a chance” with Holly, not the other way around.

That’s when I burst into loud, stupid, obvious tears and storm out of the party. Oh yeah, I really am that dignified. Minger-Ellie leaves the Big Sneeze in sniveling disgrace. It’s a surefire way to make the new nickname stick. And stick it does.