Rusty Summer (5 page)

Except that it does anyway.

Once she read aloud a story I wrote (in first person, about a family of cockroaches that was going to be gassed and how one of the roaches found out, and it was all
Watership Down
-y and atmospheric, under the dank kitchen sink, etc., very dark and scary!!). Well, when it ended, after the most flattering moment of utter silence I have ever known, everyone in class turned to one of the hot, mean girls, so stupidly popular, and were all, “Oh, Carrie, did you write that?” and she just sat there, with this smug little smile and looked down and was all, “I won't say yes and I won't say no,” so they were all, “You totally did! You know you did!” and telling each other how hella kewl she was and had been their special friend since like kindergarten.

I just hunched over, stab-drawing on my notebook, seeing spots, panting, thinking I might hurl. I imagined myself exploding and then lurching along, like a savagely spewing sprinkler, projectile puking in sincere streams of acidic protest against their stupid, stuck-up, suck-up douche baggery—then proceeding, upchucking and vomit-clad, to churn through the classroom, cold-cocking my classmates, throwing random hay-makers....

I soothed myself by visualizing this madly when I noticed Ms. Spinetti at the front of the room, subtly regarding me out of the corner of one dark eye.

She didn't say anything, but her half-smile was sardonic and her eyes gleamed behind her glasses. She got up casually and sauntered over to my seat. She handed me a paper like she was giving back a graded assignment. Then she moseyed back to her desk, amid the class's harsh buzz about what a freaking national treasure Carrie was, only stopping to rap on the desks of the kids who were wearing earphones in class.

I looked and on the pristine paper she'd written: “The dogs bark, but the caravan passes on.”

I glanced at her, now back at her desk, and she raised one eyebrow and shrugged minutely, like, “whadaya gonna do?”

I get it. They're dogs and I am a caravan (which is a bunch of travelers). She's saying the “dogs” will yap, but it doesn't matter, because the caravan (me) has a mission, and I will pass beyond their temporary noise and nonsense and reach my destination. Which is exactly what I plan on!

I shall overcome, indeed.

The other thing she told me once was not to “overthink” this place (meaning Baboon High), that all the students who suck up to the popular kids have what's called Stockholm syndrome (which is when you've been hijacked and you kiss up to the terrorists, all overly respectful and adoring).

She says all the snotty little warlords (and -ladies) of high school are in for
such
a comeuppance when they graduate and find their little reign of terror is over. She says she hated high school when she attended, and anyone who doesn't is very lucky.

She's cool. And I believe she's right.

Thank you, Ms. Spinetti.

I will always remember you, even when I'm like fifty and senile.

So in my quest for my career, I thought about being a journalist but then it seems like they are always either getting fired or murdered, so then I think,
Or not.

I still haven't decided what I'll major in.

Not nursing. That is for sure. I get nauseated and horrified. Too much blood! This I know.

Even though I have no reaction to the sight of blood on the track when I'm skating. We skate, we fall down and slide and skin our arms and legs in a truly grisly manner, in spite of our pads, and I do not get the least bit distraught.

But still—not nursing.

Then I think,
Well, I love the night sky; maybe I'll be an astronomer.
I'll look out and back into deep space/time and figure out why the sun is about to explode or stop exploding or whatever crap they try to terrify us with every few weeks. Then I'll predict apocalypses and raptures and such! I'll post them and save us all
so
much aggravation!

Seriously, there's a guy on Broadway who has a telescope and he shows people stuff like Saturn and its rings of colliding snowballs, or Mars, shining red, in “opposition,” when we can see it from Earth every two years. Once he showed me Io, one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, as it “transited” across Jupiter's face, pulling its little round shadow behind it like a wakeboard. It rocked!

When you look at the distant stars you are looking back in time. The light you see is so old that the star that made that twinkle could be dead by the time you see its light!

Check it out—that light, that is just now entering your eye, is at the end of a journey it has been making (at 186,282 miles a second—the speed of light) for billions of years/miles from when/where it began. The light left its star before our species—maybe even our star—had formed . . . then traveled all that time and space . . . to you.

I swear, it totally shivers my timbers.

However, I've heard astronomy as a profession is crazy competitive, and since I'm not likely to get into a big-name school, maybe I'll just disappear. Learn to live off the land, go off the grid. I'll vanish, never to be seen again, or only occasionally, like Bigfoot.

They'll just find wiry clumps of indefinable (not to mention unmanageable) red hairs on tree branches from time to time, and they'll know I'm still out there, gazing at stars and sewing with sticks.

Just me and ol' Bigfoot—and his family, my new crew: the Bigfeet.

I'm not getting any writing done. I shut down the computer and climb gingerly into bed.

 

When I get home from school the next day Beau's mom is in the living room.

I totally love Gina. She is really smart and she loves Beau like a mother grizzly and I think she rules. But the stuff she is doing to help us is kind of . . . well, frankly . . . it's just gawd-awful.

It's been gradual. It all started out okay: she painted Beau's room, sort of gray-blue, which is cool and he liked it. Then she painted the bathroom because she had leftover paint. So that was cool, because the walls were a little mildewed and kind of disturbing. So far so good.

But next she decides to make us curtains, which is not necessary. I mean, I sew, remember?

But, moms, right?

So we just shrugged and let 'er go.

And, oh my goodness, did she ever.

She has all these “over-orders” from her interior designing biz, so she has made us different curtains in every room, which is fine, but the different fabrics are all so ornate, it looks like we live with Aladdin. Or rented the
I Dream of Jeannie
bottle.

I tell Beau I'm Jasmine, so he can choose if he wants to be Aladdin or Jafar.

He rolls his eyes and sighs.

Today I come in and she has this really thick gold fringe that you put on sofas or something, and she's sewn it on this hunter green velvet valance that she is now hanging over one window's green velvet drapes. It's so fancy!

(Now I fear we live in Tara, the plantation in
Gone with the Wind.
... Dammit, Scarlett! I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies!)

I rotate and stand gaping. She hears me and turns on the stepladder.

“Oh, hi, honey! You're home before Beau! What do you think—do you like it?”

“Um . . . yeah?” What am I gonna say? It'd be too mean to bag on her, in her happy place.

“Yeah! I just have all these roll ends lying around, so this way you have curtains and I have more space in my house!” She giggles like a teenager. She's so tickled!

I laugh a little. Seriously, I couldn't care less. (But it
is
sort of hideous—just saying.)

The door opens and Beau rolls in. He has a bunch of crap with him for graduation.

“Hey, Mom. I thought I saw the car when I went by.” Our driveway is so tiny she parks down the block.

Beau looks around at the different curtains. There are two big ones at the end of the living room that are the same but each of the other ones are made of different fabric. He starts to say something and then stops. Then he starts to say something again, and stops.

It's very endearing. Also hilarious. I stifle my snickers.

“So . . .
wow
. . . Mom . . . you've been . . . busy.” He looks helpless. “This is certainly a
lot
of . . . stuff.”

He looks woefully around at the room of many colors. His mom nods energetically.

“It's going to be much more private, which is good.” She gestures to the windows. “I didn't like the idea of people just being able to look in here whenever you guys were home.”

“Yeah, but see, we had the blinds, so they couldn't.”

“You can see through those blinds though, Beau. It was like a shadow play. This is much better.”

Beau opens his mouth to probably comment on something about the taste level of what looks like Peewee's Psycho Playhouse but then he catches my eye and stops.

“It's beautiful, Mom, thanks for all your hard work. No one will ever know we're in here now!”

“Good . . . because now I want to talk to you about your party.” She climbs down the stepladder.

As Foghorn Leghorn might put it, Beau's suspiration is audible as I leave the room. I limp upstairs, still grinning under my breath. My sore leg hurts a little.

I get a text as I enter my room and throw my bag on the bed. It's from Bathsheba. My skate buddy, aka Bashy.

Bathsheba Goldberg. Her real name. Well, her actual first name is in Hebrew, so Bathsheba is the English version. She is my Rat Pack mentor and she is awesome.

Her text says:
Im a call u!!!
Before I'm done reading it my phone rings.

“Goo-friend! Whadaya doing?” She's doing this horrible Rosie O'Donnell impression, which she's been doing for about a week, since the coach told her she looks a little like a young Rosie O.

(If Rosie had blue hair like Marge Simpson, styled straight up like Goku from
Dragon Ball Z.
)

I laugh out loud.

“Baz, why did you text that you were going to call me, instead of just calling me?”

“Because I didn't want you to get interrupted! So listen, you got a minute? How about this: Helen A. Hand Truck. How good is that, huh?! Whadaya think?”

“Hmm . . . not bad. Not bad at all.”

“Also Ivana Blocker, but that might be taken by now.”

“That's a good one too.”

We are thinking up my league name for when I'm officially a RCRG (Rat City Roller Girl).

Bathsheba is Bashy Bayou, which rocks! It makes me laugh still, even though I've heard it announced like a thousand times by now.

She's a bumper. They're the ones who cut holes. They bust down the defense.

I'll be a blocker. They keep the bumpers from doing their thing. And defend the jammers, the little ones that must get through. It's a lot of wild screaming and echoing whistles and buzzers and speedy sprawling spills.

We scored when we started having our bouts in the Key Arena. The RCRG have The Key pretty much to ourselves now, ever since the Sonics went south. Oh, well. GO, Seahawks!

“So, Rusty, whadaya think . . . which one?”

“Dude, I think I like the Helen one best.”

“Helen A. Hand Truck! Yeah! It's awesome! I about busted a gut thinking it up.”

“From laughing?” I ask, laughing myself.

“No! From thinking so hard.”

I start to explain that probably the correct usage of “busting a gut” implies “by laughter” and one does not usually bust one's gut merely by thinking, unless it's seriously funny.

But then I don't.

I'm trying not to be such a huge know-it-all all the time. I get so I even annoy myself.

“Listen,” I say instead, “I need you to help me run interference at Beau's party, so you have to get here early. Can you
promise
to be here by like seven?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. No prob. It's fine, I'm there. But why are you guys so afraid of his mom?”

“No, see, that's the deal—we're not afraid; it's that we
like
her so much. We don't want her to get laughed at when she is here with the party peeps, by saying some random mom thing, and then seeing people getting wasted and start to worry and say more stuff . . . you know.”

“So?” Bashy's voice is leading.

“So what?” I'm not sure what she's implying.

“Exactly! So what!! Why do you care if anyone busts on her? She will still be awesome and the same, they'll go home. They're not her kids so who cares?”

“Yeah, no, see, Beau.
He
cares. A lot. He is very protective of her, even though he bags on her more than anyone.”