White Picket Fences (7 page)

“Sure.”

“I’ll be home a few minutes before five, and we’ll do it then. Tally, you can come with us if you want.”

Tally blinked. “Um. Okay.”

The paper returned to its normal resting height. Chase and Tally headed to the garage. They worked their way past wood projects in progress to Chase’s Toyota. Chase opened the last of the three garage doors, and they got in. He backed out, then threw the gear into first and took off.

He glanced over at his cousin. “I can come to the office with you if you want.”

She shook her head. “It’s all right.”

He shifted gears. “You’re really not nervous?”

Tally cocked her head. “I’ll be outta here in a couple weeks anyway. I’m only going because the state makes me.”

“Right.” He shifted into third. “I’ll come with you anyway. My mom would like it if I did.”

Tally exhaled heavily in silent acquiescence. “Your mom is…” She didn’t finish.

Fourth gear. He waited. “You can say whatever you want, Tally.”

“Nice. She’s very nice.”

Chase looked at his cousin. “I guess.”

“You probably don’t notice it because you’re around her all the time.”

Chase shifted his gaze back to the road. “I never said I didn’t think she was nice.”

“Does she always worry so much about people being okay?” A split second of silence hung between them. “Not always,”

Chase replied. He was glad she didn’t seem to care what he meant. “How did you like meeting all of Delcey’s little friends at the picnic?”

She glanced over at him. A slight smile rested on her mouth. “I think I’ve had more fun getting sent to the principal’s office.”

“The principal’s office! You’re a troublemaker, are you?”

She turned her head away. “No. Not really.”

“So why’d you get sent to the principal’s office?”

Tally hesitated a moment. “To be told things.”

She didn’t elaborate.

Chase pushed Coldplay into the CD player, and they rode the rest of the way blanketed by drums, bass, and guitar.

ten

T
he woman in the admissions office was tall and round, and she smelled of roses soaked in aged vanilla. Chase sneezed when she asked him if he’d like to be the one to show Tally where all her classes were.

“Uh, sure. I can do that.” He sneezed again, and she issued a benediction upon him.

“All righty, then, Tallulah. Here are your books.” The woman pointed to a stack on the counter between them. “You have till the end of the week to get covers on them, dear. And here’s your locker number and combination. And your schedule. Your records from Texas indicate you’ve already had psychology—that’s what most of our college-bound juniors take—so we’ve put you in sociology instead.”

Chase leaned over and looked at the schedule in Tally’s hand. “Hey, you’re in my class. I have sociology that hour too.” He looked up at the woman behind the counter. “Did you guys know that when you did the schedule?”

The woman smiled and shrugged. “The guidance counselors do the schedules for transfer students, hon.”

Tally let her eyes rove over the schedule. American history. Pre-calc. World lit. Sociology. Anatomy. Ceramics.

Chase shook his head. “Oh man. You’ve got Carruthers for American history. Dead people have more personality than that guy.”

The woman cleared her throat. “You have a few minutes before the first bell. So maybe you should help Tallulah find her locker?”

Chase grinned at his cousin. “By all means, Tallulah, let’s go find your locker.” He turned and headed for the double doors that led to the campus. Tally grabbed the pile of books.

The campus was awash in generous sunlight. Lilies of the Nile protruded from every patch of landscaping, shaded by mature sycamores and towering California fan palms. As they walked to her locker, Chase pointed out the buildings by department. All around them the cosmos of high school life played itself out as hundreds upon hundreds of students descended upon the open-air hallways. When they got to Tally’s locker, the first bell rang and the swell of people seemed to multiply.

“I’ll meet you in front of the library at lunchtime, okay?” Chase said. “That’s where I’m meeting Matt. And then we’ll go to the caf. We have sociology right after lunch. Matt’s in that class too. You gonna be all right?”

“Yeah.” Tally tossed the books for her afternoon classes into the locker and slammed it shut.

“Okay, so the history department’s right over there,” Chase gestured toward a stucco building across the sea of people.

“I got it.”

“All right. Well, see ya.” Chase turned and half jogged away. Tally studied the map in her hand to make sure she could find
her locker again and then headed for the history building and the teacher whose personality, Chase claimed, was easily trumped by cadavers’. The second bell rang as she stepped into the classroom.

The morning passed quickly.

Mr. Carruthers turned out to be slightly more engaging than a corpse. And at least his class wasn’t at the end of the day. Her pre-calculus teacher seemed pleasant enough, but Tally wasn’t that great in math. Her father once said that math was either art or a foreign language to you. When she had asked him what it was for him, he said art—but nothing he’d ever want to hang on a wall in his house. She was glad she wasn’t going to be at Chase’s school long enough to fail. The world lit teacher had a nervous tic but a kind smile and calming voice. When he asked the class if anyone had read
The Rubaiyat
before, Tally wanted to raise her hand, but instead, she did the same thing she always did when she transferred to a new school—blended into the existing fabric. By the time the lunch bell sounded, Tally was ready for a break.

She located the library on the map and found Chase a few minutes later, leaning against a wall covered in climbing vines. Next to him was a guy with dark hair, olive skin, and a slightly crooked smile. He wore jeans and a faded Quiksilver shirt.

“Got through it okay?” Chase asked when she reached them.

“It was all right.”

“Tally, this is Matt Santino. Matt, my cousin Tally. I mean, Ta-LOO-lah!”

Tally sneered at him and then turned her eyes to Matt. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Matt nodded to her. “Magenta’s my favorite color.”

Tally looked down at a lock of streaked hair resting on her shoulder and then raised her head. “Making fun of my hair?”

“It really is his favorite color.” Chase began to walk toward the cafeteria.

Matt smiled at her as he and Tally fell in step with Chase. “Pretty awesome first name.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Really. You’re the first Tallulah I’ve ever met.”

“I get that a lot.”

“Did your parents make it up or something?” Matt continued.

“It’s Native American. Choctaw. It means ‘leaping water,’ or something like that. I don’t know. My mom named me.”

“Cool. Is she Native American?”

“She’s… No, she wasn’t.”

“Oh.” Matt seemed to suddenly remember her mother was deceased. Tally wondered what else Chase had told him. “Sorry. Forgot.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to know.” Tally looked at Chase.

“It’s not his fault. I asked,” Matt offered.

Tally stopped walking. “You asked?”

“When he told me you were coming to live here, I asked where your parents were. He told me.”

“Told you what?”

Matt looked from Tally to Chase and back to Tally. “That your mom had passed away and your dad was in Uruguay.”

Tally looked at Chase. “You told him my dad was in Uruguay?”

“I told him your dad was in Europe. He’s playing with you.”

Tally turned back to Matt. He was grinning.

She resumed walking and the two young men followed. They arrived at the cafeteria to find the line snaking around the building.

Chase sighed audibly and turned to Matt. “What have you got today, man?”

“Turkey and avocado on sourdough.”

Chase pulled out his lunch card. “Trade?”

Matt reached into his backpack, pulled out a sack, and handed it to Chase. Chase took the bag and handed him his card.

“See you on the back forty in about a zillion years.” Chase walked away from them and disappeared into the throngs of students eating on benches, retaining walls, and concrete walkways in the midday sun.

“You can do that?” Tally said, watching him go.

Matt shrugged. “Who’s gonna know? The caf ladies don’t know our names.”

“What’s the back forty?”

“The quiet little nook where Chase likes to eat my lunches. Don’t worry. I know the place.”

Tally turned back to face him. “You gave up turkey and avocado on sourdough for school food?”

Matt smiled. “My parents own a sandwich shop. I’ve pretty much OD’d on every kind of sandwich there is.”

They moved forward a step or two in line. Someone waved to Matt from across the quad, and he waved back.

“You been friends with Chase a long time?” Tally asked.

“Just since last year. I wouldn’t call that a long time.”

“Is that when you moved here?”

“What? Oh, no. I’ve always lived here. That’s just when I met him. We were lab partners in chemistry. I was in charge of the Bunsen burner; he did all the math.”

They took a few more steps in line.

“You seem like good friends.”

“Yeah. Sure. Chase is all right. Clever dude. Did he tell you he makes movies? They’re all pretty deep and weird. He’ll probably be famous someday. His stuff is just the kind to win awards because it’s so mysterious, it has to be good, you know?”

“Amanda told me about the movies,” Tally replied. “Chase hasn’t said anything.”

“Yeah, I guess he’s kind of protective of them. I’ve only seen a couple, actually.”

They moved forward several steps. A girl walked by and said hi to Matt. He nodded to her.

“What do his other friends think about his movies?” Tally said, watching the girl walk away.

Matt hesitated a moment. “Chase kind of likes to be on his own. I think he likes being able to look at everything from the vantage point of, you know, a detached observer.”

Tally looked out over the masses in the direction Chase took off. He was nowhere in sight. “So he doesn’t have any friends besides you?”

“Well, not friends he’d show his movies to. That’s different.”

“But he showed some to you.”

Matt grinned. “Hey, you gotta have one friend you can show your weirdest ideas to.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

They took several more steps, almost inside the building now.

“How long is your dad going to be gone?” Matt asked.

Tally adjusted the weight of her backpack. “I don’t know.”

“You should see if you can join Chase and me on our sociology project for this quarter. Gimble’s going to put you with somebody no matter how long you’re here.”

“What… what kind of project is it?”

“Everybody has to do a special assignment this quarter; it has to be a video or PowerPoint thing—big yawn—or a research paper or…I can’t remember the other one. It has to be on some significant social issue that transcends its own time; you know, something that’s happened before in another time and could maybe happen again. You should do it with us. We’re going to do a documentary on the Holocaust. Your great-grandfather died at a concentration camp, right?”

They had finally reached the food. Matt grabbed a tray and handed it to her.

“How do you know that?” Tally asked.

“Chase told me a while back. He once showed me a movie he made about warring ants, and it was supposed to be some dark metaphor for how the strong oppress the weak. I thought it was kind of a cool movie, in a sad way. That’s when he told me about your great-grandfather. I think we could use that for the project. You could help me convince Chase to do an angle on your great-grandfather. I think it would be good. And we wouldn’t have to spend hours upon hours researching stuff.”

“I don’t know anything about my great-grandfather.”

“But you’ve got Chase’s mom right there. Family photos.
Documents. People save that stuff. And besides, Chase knows these two old Polish guys at some nursing home around here who lived in Poland during World War II. They were at the same concentration camp as your great-grandfather. The same one. He met them last year or something. He told me a long time ago he wanted to go back and film them. It’s the perfect setup for us. He’s going there today to help your dad deliver something, and I think he should ask them.”

“What if the teacher won’t let me do it with you?” She took the tray.

Matt made a face. “Gimble won’t care. He’s already told us we can work in teams of three as long as everyone does at least a third of the work.” He grabbed a cardboard basket of breadsticks and a container of marinara sauce and put them on his tray. Tally copied him.

“I don’t know how long I’m going to be here,” she finally said.

Matt snagged two minicartons of milk. “Well, nobody ever really knows
that.
” He offered one of the cartons to her. “Milk?”

She took it. Matt waved Chase’s lunch card in front of the scanner and smiled at the attendant nearby. “We’ll ask Gimble. Okay?”

“I guess so.”

He gestured to the tray in her hands. “Lose it.”

Tally scanned her card and grabbed the lunch items off her tray as they walked out of the lunch line and into the sunlight.

eleven

A
manda’s classroom radiated quiet. She flipped a switch, and the fluorescents above her hummed to life. She sat down at her desk, which was neatly cluttered with books, papers, colored pencils, and pads of happy-face stickers. She moved a trio of glitter markers and set down her coffee mug.

Amanda looked at the nearly empty desktop across from hers. Becky, her partner in the remedial classroom for the last six years, was on maternity leave and had taken the contents of her desk home with her at the end of the summer. Gary Shelley, Becky’s long-term substitute, hadn’t brought much with him, at least not much he cared to display on his desk. On his desktop were an open desk calendar, an NBA cup filled with mechanical pencils, a Barbie-sized wooden man, and framed photos of his two grown sons, one in a football uniform and one holding an electric guitar.