Please, Please, Please (13 page)

“Are you OK?” I asked her.

She lifted her head. There was dirt from the tip of her nose down to the bottom of her chin. She looked awful. I felt my hand go up to my chest. “Oh, Zoe,” I said.

She spit, smiled, and said, “Sour.”

twenty-one

W
e sat on top of a haystack,
drinking lemonades. The four of us had decided we didn’t want any souvenirs, so while everyone else was scrambling around the gift shop in the last few minutes before getting back on the bus, we sat up high on the otherwise unused haystacks, sipping our lemonades and just feeling happy.

Same seats on the ride back, so I stared out the window with Zoe beside me. I crossed my legs. It felt weird but sort of ladylike. I watched the trees and telephone poles go by and didn’t think about anything, my forehead pressed against the cold window. At one point Zoe offered me an apple. I said, “Oof.” She smiled and I smiled.

The bus groaned as it made the turn onto the driveway of school. We were tired and dirty and full, but all, I think, pretty happy. Nobody had hay-stacked, but if the whole point is doing something to unite the seventh grade at the beginning of the year, well, it had.

Mrs. Johnson was waiting in the circle, her normally friendly face wrinkled and harsh. And, worse, right behind her were Mom and Dad, with their hands on their hips. I closed my eyes.

Kids were standing before the bus made its
tst
sound and stopped completely. Bags of apples were dragged out from under seats, and the aisle was filled, though some kids were looking out the windows to see if their parents were here yet or late. I sat, eyes closed.
One more minute
, I wished for.

Mrs. Johnson pushed against the tide of tired seventh graders, up onto the bus. “CJ?”

I lifted my head and met her eyes.

“You march your pretty little self down the aisle. This instant,” Mrs. Johnson said. Then she turned to the teachers. “I tried to call you on the cell phone. You never answered.”

Ms. Cress said, “I never heard . . .” She dug it out of her bag and looked at it, saying, “Oops.”

“Is something wrong?” I heard Mrs. Shepard whisper.

I was starting to pull my bag of apples out from under my seat, but Zoe whispered, “I’ll get ’em for you.” She stood beside our seats to let me out, tucking her hair behind her ears. I could tell she wanted to say something helpful. I took a deep breath and she took one, too. When I looked over at Olivia and Morgan, they were staring back, worried about me. That felt good, at least. I lowered my head and squeezed down the aisle toward Mrs. Johnson, thinking as my arms brushed other kids’ arms,
Well, this is it
. As I walked, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail in my scrunchie, because I didn’t need my parents seeing me looking quite so wild. I stepped over Lou’s bag of apples at the front of the bus and could smell Mrs. Johnson’s perfume, clean as white sheets.

She grabbed me by the elbow and growled, “I’m appalled at your behavior.” She pulled me down the bus steps. “You have some explaining to do to your parents. And I’ll see you at eight o’clock tomorrow morning in my office.” She yanked me across the black concrete up onto the sidewalk, where my parents were waiting. My mother’s face was red, my father’s was white.

Mom grabbed me out of Mrs. Johnson’s grip, hugged me hard, then stared at my face. The most frightening part was, I couldn’t tell what in the world she was thinking. Usually I can spot any thought flickering for a second across my mother’s face; I’ve spent my whole life looking into it like my own personal crystal ball. But it was cloudy as she stared into my eyes, and that even more than the yelling I was braced for made me feel like I might fall down.

Other kids were thumping out of the bus, jumping down off the bus’s step, and glancing over at me. I could feel them doing it and could hear them whispering: “What happened?” “What did she do?” Everybody was going to know. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Ms. Cress and Mrs. Shepard looking up at Mrs. Johnson, who was telling them, “I’ll fill you in later. Right now let’s send everybody home happy.” The sun had just set, so the sky was turning pink and orange behind the line of jeeps and minivans lined up waiting to take home kids and apples. Someone beeped. I looked to see who it was.

Mom cupped my chin and yanked it back toward her. “Don’t you turn away from me.” Her voice was quiet and fierce.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“What were you thinking?” Dad asked.

I didn’t answer.

He asked again. “What were you thinking? What?”

Nothing
, I thought. I had decided not to think. But there was no way to explain that, so I just looked at my shoes, my muddy grayish-brown Keds.

“I don’t even know where to start, CJ,” Mom whispered. “Tell me where we should start. With what I was thinking, waiting here for you at two forty, when you never came out? At three, when I finally went in to school looking for you and Mrs. Johnson informed me that you had never arranged independent study, that you had gone apple picking? That I had signed a permission slip? I! Signed it. Did I sign that permission slip, CJ? Did I?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Who signed it? Who signed my name?”

“I did,” I said.

Dad grabbed me by both arms and shook me. “Do you know that it’s a crime to forge another person’s signature? You could go to jail. Look at me.”

I tried to lift my eyes to meet his. I got as far as his belt with the silver square buckle Paul and I had bought him for his birthday.

“Look at me!” he screamed.

I looked up into his furious face. I could tell he hated me, and I didn’t blame him. “We’ve been sitting here worried to death about you,” he yelled, shaking me. “Your mother called me, frantic. I had to run out of my meeting and stand here waiting and praying that my lying, cheating, conniving daughter really did go to pick apples and wasn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to begin to solve this.” He turned to Mom. “I’m going in to call the baby-sitter. Paul was near hysteria, last time we called.”

Mom nodded, and we watched Dad stalk toward the school. He threw open the door so hard I thought it might fly off the hinges, and my dad is not a muscle man at all. He’s very gentle, normally. And careful. He’s an architect. He always puts pen caps back on. I twitched when the door slammed shut behind him.

Mom stared at me again but didn’t say anything. I could tell she had lost all respect for me. She would be right never to trust me again, or like me, or love me. I had lied, Dad was right. I lied, and I went behind their backs, and I made them worry, just being selfish. Just because I felt like going with my friends. What a terrible person I am.

Headlights passed over me and Mom as cars pulled away. “’Bye!” kids shouted out windows to one other, and maybe to me. One car pulled into the circle and stopped beside us. When I heard the electric window buzzing down, I turned just my eyes, I couldn’t help it, and saw it was Olivia and her mother. Aunt Betsy leaned across tiny Olivia, who was buckled into the front seat beside her. “Corey,” she called to Mom. “Everything OK?”

Mom nodded. “Thanks.”

“OK,” said Aunt Betsy, closing the window and slowly pulling away.

Mom was staring at the sky when I dared look at her again. I wondered if she was trying not to cry, if she learned that looking-up trick from me or if I had learned it from her. Another car tooted pleasantly. “The entire town,” she mumbled. “Every single . . .” She took a breath and shook her head before she looked down into my eyes again. “Go wait in the car, please, CJ. I don’t want to look at you right now.”

I tried to think of anything in the world to do or say to make it better, but there was nothing. She had never before in my life not wanted to look at me. I turned to walk toward the car and noticed my head was hanging down, my shoulders were rounded, my belly was poufed out. I knew that I was ugly, knew that Mom and everybody could see how ugly I really was. It felt worse than I had even last year when I auditioned for the part of Clara in
The Nutcracker
and stood there with the other finalists with Mom watching and a number on my chest, when Yuri said, “Thank you, number seventeen. Good-bye.” And Mom had cried, a little. She denied it, but I saw a tear.
Not good enough
, I told myself then, and every time I saw Fiona in her Clara costume. Ugly, awkward, clumsy.
Practice more
, Mom had suggested to me cheerily.
Stretch harder, I’ll wake you every day at dawn, and next year we’ll show ’em at
The Nutcracker
auditions. Eat less
, I told myself,
concentrate better—or quit. Who needs this anyway? I don’t want to be Clara anyway, I’d rather be normal, hang out at the pizza place with my friends, so I don’t care
.

But this time, opening the car door and slumping into the backseat, there were no words to make me feel better. Eating less or stretching more wouldn’t solve anything. I tried deciding, so what? I don’t want Mom and Dad to love me anyway. But it’s not true. I slammed the car door shut to hide my ugly self.

twenty-two

W
hen we got home, Paul was
waiting on the porch. I got out of the silent car and trudged up to the porch, ready for Paul to tell me how dead I was. Instead he hugged me and whispered, “Don’t run away.”

“What?” I asked, but Mom and Dad had caught up and Dad said, “Straight upstairs.”

In my room, I pulled History down from my shelf, but then I decided,
No, I don’t deserve the comfort
. I slumped into the little space between my dresser and the wall, not thinking, just feeling really, really pathetic, and listening to my family eating dinner quietly below me.

I heard the sink go on, which meant they were done, and then I heard Mom’s footsteps coming up the stairs. I sunk down lower, happy she was coming but at the same time, not.

She opened my door slowly, and I could tell she was looking around for me. My feet were sticking out, so I stretched them a little, and she came over. She placed a plate of turkey and carrots and French fries on my floor between us.

“Hungry?” she asked. Even sitting cross-legged on the floor my mother looks graceful and elegant, with her pearl earrings and perfect posture.

“No,” I whispered. “Thank you.” I tried to sit up straight. I had pulled the pretty flowered scrunchie off my hair and left it up on my dresser, so my hair filled most of the space around me. I didn’t care how ugly I looked anymore.

“CJ,” Mom said. “We have to talk.”

“I know.” I closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall for a second, practicing the words I’d been preparing. “I know I was bad,” I started.

“No,” Mom said quietly. “You’re not a little child anymore, CJ. You weren’t just bad, it’s not that simple.”

I started to cry. “I know.”

“I feel just terrible, CJ, and I haven’t even begun to sort this out, but I think the first thing, the worst thing to me is, it’s clear to me that we haven’t been communicating, and that’s at least partly my fault.”

“Your fault?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted so desperately to go on this trip?”

“I tried, Mom,” I told her.

“I guess I wasn’t really hearing you.”

I covered my face with my hands. “Don’t,” I said.

“Mrs. Johnson has your name down on a list to play soccer. Were you planning to discuss that with me?”

I shrugged, my face still hidden. I wished she would just punish me, or spank me, or tell me I’m grounded until I’m forty-two. I sunk down lower into my body.

“Is that—is that instead of ballet?”

I shrugged again.

“You have to talk to me, CJ,” she said, pulling my hands down. It was dark now in my room, only the light from the lamppost outside by the sidewalk streaming in, throwing Mom’s shadow long and thin across my floor. “What do you want, CJ? I’m asking you and I want to listen. Do you want to dance?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I didn’t know what the answer should be. I only knew she wanted me to dance and my friends didn’t want me to.

“What do you want?” she asked again. “Is it hard to talk? I love you, I mean to be here for you, it should be OK to tell me anything. I’m sorry. I guess I haven’t been a very good mother to you lately.”

“No!” I hadn’t meant to yell and usually my voice is pretty quiet, so it startled us both. “No,” I said again. “You’re a great mother, but don’t do that to me, don’t turn everything around, I can’t keep up.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, tilting her head to the side and waiting, now, listening.

“I mean, I-I-I can’t, the rest of you, you can all, you’re so much more Word than I am.”

She nodded a little and waited.

“I can’t, the words just, for me, I-I get so turned around when I talk to you I don’t remember what I was trying to say, and then I just, I mean, all I know is I want to make you happy, but . . .”

“But you have to do what’s right for yourself, too,” she filled in.

I nodded.

“And what’s right for you?”

I just shrugged.

“Well, you must have something in mind.”

“Wait,” I begged. “Just . . .”

She sucked her lips into her mouth and waited.

“I know I was bad, or, not bad, but I was, what Daddy said—lying, cheating, horrible . . .”

Mom shook her head. “He didn’t say horrible. He was scared. And surprised and disappointed.”

“I know.” I rested my face in my hands.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Go ahead. So? What is right for you? Playing soccer? Do you even like soccer?”

“No!” I pulled my knees up to my chest and hid my face between them. “But it’s not soccer, or picking apples, it’s just, Mom? I’m not like you.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute, and neither did I. That had just popped out, but there it hung, between us. Finally she asked, “In what way?”

I couldn’t look up at her but now that it was there, I had to finish. I stared at the dark floor between my knees and told her, “I’m not . . . You always wanted to be special, and you are, you are a superstar, with style and special, spotlights. Everywhere you go, it’s like there’s a . . . Whether you danced at Lincoln Center or not, it’s just, you stand out from the crowd, everybody looks at you when you walk in a room. But I don’t, do that, or, want that. I want to be
in
the crowd. I just want to be regular. Don’t say no you don’t.”