Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe (2 page)

“You’re not listening to me!” Grams yelled from the adjacent living room.

“I can’t hear you when you’re shouting at the top of your lungs!” Mom fired back.

The fiery ache in my chest expanded. This is how things had been between Grams and Mom since the day after the Mistletoe
Ball. There was no way I could attempt to broker peace between them. I slipped off my swing heels and tiptoed across the marble entryway, up the spiral staircase, and into the black hole. The massive second floor of my home was cold, dark, and as of five months ago, void of living matter. Except for me.

I beelined to my room to call Mercedes, the third member of our best-friend triumvirate. Mercedes and I met the first week of sixth grade at Del Rey Middle School when she rescued me from the dangerous white-water rapids of pre-algebra with daily tutoring. At the time I didn’t know Merce was a social zero. All I knew was she was smart enough to help me get through math with a B, and she laughed at my jokes. While I had a million friends from elementary school, I hooked up with Merce in a fierce way. She was the kind of girl who spent lunch periods with her math book, alone and in need of a friend. A year later Brie moved to Tierra del Rey and rounded out our trio. I’m not sure why the überpopular Brie gravitated toward us. Maybe it was the whole balance thing. Brie was the beauty, Mercedes was the brains, and I was all personality. Together we were whole.

When I called Merce, I got her voice mail. “It’s me,” I said. “Give me a call as soon as possible. Emergency.”
I’m bleeding to death
.

With the hope that Mercedes might be online, I logged on to OurWorld. When I tried to access Mercedes’s page,
DENIED!
flashed on my screen. Was this some kind of site error? I clicked on the smiling avatar of Gabe, the founder of OurWorld, whose
face always showed up in the top-right corner, and he reported no problems. I clicked on Brie’s page.
DENIED!

The single word stared at me, glowing red, pulsing, grotesquely alive.

A chat bubble above Gabe’s avatar popped onto the screen.
Want to try another friend?
Gabe wrote.

“No, Gabe,” I said. “I want my two
best
friends. I
need
my two best friends.” I flicked off Gabe and ran downstairs to check the phone in the kitchen. Woot! Four messages.

“Beeeeep
. Good morning, Chloe, this is Ms. A. Lungren from the Del Rey Guidance Center. There’s a serious problem with your JISP. You need to call me ASAP.”

I needed Ms. A. Lungren, whoever she was, to zip it.

I played the other three messages, all from A. Lungren. When her annoying voice finally tapered off, I noticed the quiet, so sudden and unexpected, it sent the hair along the back of my neck upright. What happened to Grams and Mom? Had they called a truce? I jammed the phone in the cradle. More likely they retreated to gather more things that went boom.

That’s when I heard a soft creaking coming from the backyard. It was a low, steady squeak, familiar and comforting. I followed the sound beyond the fountain, pool, and terraced flower beds to the side of the house, where I found Grams. She sat on a swing of my old play gym, her orange Converse dragging along the pea gravel as she swayed.

The play gym groaned as I sunk onto the faded plastic seat next to her and started to pump. Brie had morphed into a zombie
and was furious with me, Merce was MIA, and Gabe was directing me to other friends. I pumped harder, faster, the swing’s chains creaking and spitting off bits of rust.

Grams’s swing synched with mine, but she didn’t say a word. Usually she knew when my world was falling apart and said and did appropriate Grams-y things. I watched her, noticing for the first time her slumped shoulders. She looked like she, too, had been bayoneted by her best friend. Pushing aside the image of Brie’s frosty eyes, I asked, “What happened?”

Grams stayed tight-lipped for the longest time. Then she said, “I borrowed my neighbor’s car.”

I made a
hmmmmm
sound. Now I understood why Mom went ballistic.

“Why the hell won’t everyone leave me alone?” Grams asked. “Damn it, I’m tired of everyone getting in my business. It’s my business. Mine!”

Grams wasn’t yelling at me. I knew that. Lately she’d been mad at the world. I stopped pumping. Was that Brie’s problem? My BF’s voice hissed inside my head.
Sometimes you are so self-centered, I can’t stand it
. Was Brie mad at someone else and taking it out on me?

As we slowed, Grams kicked at the gravel, sending gray-blue pellets raining around us.

My parents and five older brothers always dealt with problems using their brilliant scientific minds. The family rebel, I traveled a different route. “What kind of car?” I asked with a tick of my eyebrow.

Grams booted another pile of pea gravel. “Miata.”

“Red or white?”

“Red.”

“With or without a spoiler?”

The corners of her lips twitched. “With.”

I waited. This line begged for a dramatic pause. “At least it’s better than the Dodge Duster you jacked last month.”

Her face creased in a million lines, and she laughed, just like I knew she would, although the whole thing wasn’t funny. The fine state of California had suspended her driver’s license two months ago, after she plowed into an ATM.

“How about a ride to the Tuna Can?” I asked. Before she could argue, I added, “We can make twice-baked potatoes and pop in
Legends of the Fall.”

Grams stared at the pea gravel, but the faraway look on her face told me she saw something beyond little gray and blue stones. Where was she? I reached for her hand. Papery skin over old bones. “Grams?”

She blinked. “Huh?”

My eyebrows bounced. “You, me, potatoes, and Brad Pitt. How’s it sound?”

Grams patted my hand, and she was the old Grams. Crooked grin. Eyes that had seen eighty-plus years but were ready for more. “You’re the best, Chloe.”

“Brie doesn’t think I’m so hot,” I said, more to myself than to Grams. And who knew what Mercedes thought?

DENIED!

“What’s wrong, Poppy?” Grams tucked a curl behind my ear. At birth she nicknamed me Poppy because of my orange-red hair.
As bright and soft and wavy as a handful of poppy petals
. Still had the hair. Still had the name. Grams was my babysitter for the first six years of my life because my doctor parents worked a crap-ton of hours. There was little she didn’t know about me. Even now.

I fiddled with the curl along my cheek. “Do you think I’m self-centered?”

“You? Of course not. You rescued me from
her
evil clutches, and you’re serving me twice-baked potatoes with a side of Brad Pitt. Why would you ask?”

“Brie said I acted like the world revolved around me.”

Grams patted my cheek. “You certainly spend your time in the spotlight, but in a good way. You’re warm, kind, and funny. If Brie thinks otherwise, that’s her problem.”

My toes dug into the gravel. “No, it’s, uh, kind of my problem.”

“How’s that?”

“We’re friends. Best friends.”

“And your point?”

“People need best friends.” I waved my arms in the air. “Like oxygen. Without friends I’d die. I’d be all alone.”

Grams snorted. “Since when is being alone a bad thing?”

SUBJ: URGENT: Your JISP-Villainous Vixens

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

Ms. Chloe Camden:

I have tried repeatedly to reach you via phone over winter break. However, I’ve been unsuccessful. Your former guidance counselor (Mr. Hersbacher) has opted to take an early retirement, and I have been assigned to take over his roster of students.

In reviewing the Junior Independent Study Project (JISP) proposal you submitted on September 15
(Villainous Vixens: The Not-So-Squeaky-Clean Women of Daytime Soap Operas)
, I’ve determined this project does NOT meet the criteria outlined in sections 2, 5, and 6 of the JISP guidelines. As you are aware, unless you complete a successful JISP, you will receive a “FAIL” mark on your permanent record. DEADLINE for JISP approval is tomorrow at 7 p.m. PST.

Please come to my office (room 107) first thing in the morning to select your new JISP. I look forward to assisting you with this challenging yet ultimately rewarding project meant to change your life and those of others.

Anne Lungren

Guidance Counselor

The Del Rey School

---

You must be the change you want to see in the world
—Gandhi

“SIT.”

A. Lungren, my brand-spanking-new guidance counselor, pointed a sharp-tipped finger at the chair across her desk.

I was so not in the mood. Call me cranky, but getting called self-centered by one of my BFs left me a wee bit irritable. I still didn’t understand what happened in the street with Brie during my burrito shift. I left eight messages for her last night. She hadn’t returned my calls. When I drove to Brie’s house this morning, no one answered the door. Ditto for Merce.

DENIED!

Only A. Lungren showed any interest in me. “This is bad but not hopeless,” A. Lungren said as she leaned over her desk toward me. With her twitching nose and upturned glasses, my new counselor reminded me of a cat, the annoying kind that tangled itself around your legs and left cat hair on your 1984 turquoise suede slouch boots. “But I’m here for you, Chloe. You realize that, don’t
you? You’re not alone as we dig you out of the colossal hole you’re in with your JISP.”

“Sure.” I searched the bookcase behind her, looking for root beer barrel candy. When I visited my former counselor, Mr. Hersbacher, he always gave me a root beer barrel candy from the old Red Velvet Pipe and Tobacco tin he kept on the bookcase, and we talked about his feet. When I first met Mr. H. my freshman year, he had a midfoot joint spur, and I hooked him up with my podiatrist father. Mr. H.’s and my relationship had been delightfully pain-free ever since. My new counselor did not have a tin of root beer candy, only a cheap metal picture frame with her college diploma. I squinted. Great. Wet ink. Brand-new and still thinking she could change the world one misguided high school student at a time.

I crossed my ankles, enjoying the way the light bounced off my 1948 black patent-leather wing tips. After that conversation with Brie yesterday, I needed a pick-me-up. What I did not need was A. Lungren changing my world or interfering with my perfectly wonderful JISP.

Juniors at the Del Rey School were required to do in-depth independent study projects on subjects they felt passionate about. We had to write a twenty-page report and give a fifteen-minute oral presentation to peers and faculty. The whole JISP-y thing was pass/fail, and I had no doubt I’d pass. Failure on all things academic was not an option in the Camden universe.

“. . . do you not agree, Chloe?” A. Lungren stared at me with wide cat eyes.

“Uh, about what?”

“About the problems with your current project. Weren’t you listening?”

“There’s nothing wrong with Villainous Vixens.”

A. Lungren cleared her throat as if she were hacking up a fur ball. “Let me go over this again. First, your topic, soap opera villainesses, is unacceptable.”

“It’s a subject area I’m passionate about,” I argued. Since before I could walk, I’d been watching the soaps with Grams, who’d been the editor of the popular soap opera blog,
Soap Rants and Reviews
. “Passion is the number one criteria on the guideline worksheet. And . . .” I held my breath. Watching the soaps, I learned a good deal about dramatic delivery. There was power in a pause, in the words not yet spoken, words that hovered, like a hammer waiting to drop. I turned to the final page of my JISP notebook. “. . . and my old counselor already approved it. Here’s his signature.”

Wham! Take that, Evil Kitty Counselor
.

A. Lungren looked at me with lifted furry brows, then tore the paper from my bright blue JISP notebook. It sounded like the earth ripped in half. “Mr. Hersbacher is no longer here. I am, and I say watching soap operas does not provide a meaningful contribution to your community. Nor does it provide leadership opportunities or the potential to create positive change or action.”

“But—”

“No buts. From what I heard, Mr. Hersbacher was way too
indulgent with you these past three years. My colleagues say you were one of his favorites. You may have sweet-talked him into approving this topic, but I went to the JISP review board, and they, too, deemed it unacceptable. You must have a new topic by seven tonight.”