Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) (15 page)

Marjorie chowed down on a head-sized chocolate chip cookie, doing an espresso shot after every few bites. She had five tiny cups lined up in front of her and went down the row, slamming them back.

Even for Trix, Marjorie’s caffeine consumption was too intense. Give Trix a strong Americano and she was good. That many espresso shots and she’d be bouncing off the walls.

A few minutes earlier, she’d seen Emily pass the window, pedaling her bike with Ryan on the seat. She and Marjorie had laughed uproariously, but Trix actually felt her stomach sink to her toes. And then the ants came marching up her arms and legs.

“What’s wrong with you?” Marjorie had barked.

“Allergies,” Trix said as she scratched.

“Isn’t there a pill for that?”

“I forget to take them,” she said. She didn’t explain she was allergic to envy. And that she freaking hated herself for it.

Marjorie downed her third shot. “I’m feelin’ the buzz!”

Trix stuffed half the egg in her mouth, then cupped the round, white over her tongue and stuck it out at her friend.

Marjorie laughed and took another shot. “What do you wanna do tonight?” Marjorie didn’t believe in homework. Her grades showed it, too. She wasn’t planning on college and said all she needed after high school was to earn enough to pay for a room in a house on Capitol Hill, cookies, coffee, and “substances.”

“I think I need to do some sketching.”

“Need?”

“Yeah. If I go too long without it I start to get the DTs. Kind of spazzy. It helps.”

“Really? Sketching?”

“My designs. It’s a hobby.” It didn’t seem like she could confide in Marjorie her future plans yet. Ambition wasn’t something Marjorie understood.

“Ah, high on life,” Marjorie said sarcastically.

“Sort of.”

That was at least something Emily understood about Trix. They both had artistic visions and would sometimes hang out for hours, Emily taking and editing photos, and Trix scheming fantastical clothes and putting them down on paper.

She pushed the thought of Emily from her mind. Shared artistic vision didn’t make up for everything else.

“Oh c’mon,” Marjorie said, drinking her fourth shot. “Go out with us. We’ll fill your tank.”

Trix knew taking her sketchbook to the park or a café would be good for her. But at the same time, she liked that Marjorie wanted her to be part of her group. The thought of what trouble they might stir up excited her, made her feel alive.

She looked up at the exposed ductwork on the ceiling. “Okay,” she said. She’d let herself, for another night, be swept into Marjorie’s brume of crazy.

34. Attention, Unwanted

E
MILY SMELLED THE
mango hair product and fresh nail polish before she looked up and noticed April lurking next to her locker. At first she thought April was waiting for another girl, Liz, whom April sometimes hung with and whose locker was a few down from Emily’s. But then she noticed April staring at her, her eyes loud and blue.

“You know that Ryan McElvoy used to go out with Jessie Turner, right?” April said.

Emily scowled. She did remember Ryan was linked to Jessie the summer before, but tried not to think about it much. “And your point would be … ?”

“My point is,” April said, adjusting the bangles on her arm. “Jessie dumped him. He still wants her, so I’ve heard. Just a friendly heads up.”

Swapping out the books in her backpack, Emily slammed her locker closed and wished Trix were standing right there, slinging her clever, cruel words back at April. Emily said, “Okay. Thanks for that. You’re selfless, April, really. Always looking out for others.”

“No worries,” April said, pivoted, and walked away, tiny butt and long hair swaying.

Emily was pretty sure she hated April.

She was also pretty sure Trix was insane. That afternoon, Trix wasn’t in English Comp and the buzz was that she and Marjorie were suspended because, the day before, they’d started their own little rainbow party in a second floor boys’ bathroom.

Emily pictured the road Trix was headed down and, instead of an interesting old brick lane that went through charming towns, past fantastic architecture, and led to her own design label, it now resembled skinny, dark alleys lined with smelly dumpsters and puddles of pee.

Emily wasn’t able to think about it for long though, because Mr. Johnson called on her.

Crap.
“Yes?”

“Your play.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like you to come up and read it, please. Aloud to the class.”

As Emily made her way to the front of the room, her heart thumping hard, everyone’s eyes on her, including Ryan’s, Mr. Johnson said, “Folks. Ms. Lucas’s was the best interpretation of this assignment I read. That I’ve read from any student. And I’ve taught for fourteen years. It encompassed all the elements I asked for and incorporated them with a flare that, frankly, I didn’t know high school juniors possessed. No offense to the rest of you.”

Please stop
, Emily thought.

When she reached him, he handed her the stapled pages and said, “Nicely done. If I gave out A-plusses, this would’ve earned one.”

Emily’s voice, when she first started reading, sounded okay. Smooth and amplified. But soon, as she stood there realizing everyone was watching and listening and wondering what on earth had garnered such praise from Johnson, her larynx began to vibrate.

She tried not to hear whispering. A snicker. Tried not to think about Trix out in the city somewhere, leaving blue lipstick marks on cigarettes and … other things. Tried not to wonder if Ryan was wishing he were still with Jessie Turner.

There was a small part of Emily that was proud of her play, yes. She’d worked hard on it and liked that Johnson recognized this. It made her feel smart. But mostly she wanted to not be in front of the class, in that moment, giving their judgmental souls her words.

By the time she finished, her breath was coming in long puffs and sweat dotted her upper lip. She took her seat, fanning herself with her paper.

“Can anyone tell me what was so astonishing about Ms. Lucas’s work?” Mr. Johnson asked.

Shut. Up
.

No one raised his or her hand or spoke up.

“Two girls are waiting for the phone to ring. Presumably for a boy to call. Their conversation, typical of a conversation between teenagers, goes nowhere,” Johnson says. A few kids chuckle. “Yet you can see them trying to figure out their place in the world, in the universe, just by reading this round and round dialogue. Good work, Ms. Lucas,” he said.

“Thank you,” Emily mumbled, relieved to be back behind her desk.

She slouched down in her seat and stuffed the paper into her notebook. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful to have gotten a good grade. She just wasn’t in the mood to have been singled out.

She was never in the mood to be singled out.

35. A Disappointment to Everyone

F
IONA’S STUBBY FINGERS
were greasy from fake popcorn butter. She wiped them on a paper towel and rubbed her forehead. “What am I gonna do with you?” she wailed.

Trix sat on the one living room chair. Rodney wasn’t there, for once. He was out applying for a job at a tire shop. “Nothing,” Trix said. “As usual.”

Her mother looked at Trix from under her still-shiny hand. “Oh, so that’s what this was about? You’re trying to get my attention?”

Trix wrapped a coppery curl around her pinky. She considered this. Had she done it to get her mother’s attention? Her father’s? Emily’s?

She didn’t think so. She’d just gotten carried away with Marjorie.

“And in the school bathroom?” her mother hissed. “Good God, Trixie. What were you thinking?”

That was the point. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been living and feeling. She shrugged. And then she did something unthinkable. She pulled out her pack of cigarettes and lit one up right in front of Fiona.

Mouth hanging open, her mother stood and sputtered. “You put that out right now. What’s wrong with you? That could kill me! And you. You know what those things have done to my lungs.”

Trix just looked at her mom and took a drag.

“You put that out or you put yourself out. You hear me? I will not have a smoker living under this roof!”

Standing, cigarette hanging from between her lips, Trix went into her bedroom and threw some clothes, makeup, and her sketchbook into a small suitcase she owned but never used. She grabbed David’s cardboard box and some dry food. He was outside, so she went to find him.

Her mother stuck her head out the door. “Where are you going?”

Around her cigarette, Trix yelled back, “I don’t know yet.” She called for David, shook his food around in the box so he’d hear it.

“Don’t get more mixed up with that awful girl who got you into this trouble.”

“How do you know it wasn’t me who got
her
into trouble?”

Her mom began to cry then. “Put out that cigarette and get back in here.”

But it was too late. Trix realized she couldn’t stay, couldn’t watch her mother continue to go through men like tissues. She didn’t want to live in a trailer on Aurora anymore. She didn’t especially want to be the girl who hosted a rainbow party in the school bathroom either. But that sort of life seemed to be her destiny for now.

She did squash the cigarette butt out under her boot. “I can’t,” she said.

Trix saw David then, sitting on the corner of someone else’s stoop and licking his front paw. She strode over and scooped him up. He purred as she stuffed him into his box.

She walked away to the sound of her mom weeping, the rush of traffic, and the mews of David, wondering where they were going.

About a half mile down Aurora, after enduring catcalls and honks, she sidelined into the parking lot of a carpet remnant store and opened her crappy cell phone to call her dad. Her phone battery, though, was dead. Damn!

Shoving the phone back into her pocket, she continued to the nearest bus stop and waited. She poked her fingers into David’s box and tried to comfort him.

She got on the first bus that showed up and calculated how to get down to Beacon Hill where her dad lived. It would take two transfers. Fine. She had nothing but time.

Earbuds in, cat box on her lap, and mind numbed, she rode through the early evening hoping that when she got to her dad’s place he wouldn’t turn her away.

36. Nonparent #2

H
E LIVED ON
one side of a ramshackle duplex. Where a lawn should be there was a patch of dirt and a sagging, three-legged carport covering his truck. Trix had been there a few times before. It always smelled like weed and mildew.

She knocked three times, worried he wouldn’t be there even though his truck was, or that he’d have passed out on the couch, and trying to decide if she’d sit on the concrete steps to wait for him or go find somewhere else to hang out. Finally, though, the door swung inward and her dad stood there wearing jeans with no shirt, his hair twist-tied back, as usual.

“Huh?” he said, clearly out of it.

“I need to stay here for a few days,” Trix said.

“Whaddya mean a few days?”

She pushed past him, set her stuff down, and opened the windows. “Mom kicked me out.” This was an exaggeration, she knew. But she needed her dad’s sympathy so he’d let her stay. “God almighty it reeks in here.”

He let the door close and followed her in. Clumsily, he pushed a stack of papers off a torn, plaid couch and offered her a place to sit.

Still standing, she crossed her arms over her chest. David meowed, wanting out of his box. She freed him and her dad chortled. “That damn cat again?”

“He’s sweet. And he does all his business outside, remember? He’s no trouble at all. Swear.”

Her dad shook his head and buried his face in his hands like he couldn’t believe his bad luck to be saddled with his teenage daughter and her fleabag pet. “Why’d your mother kick you out?” His words were slurred and his eyes glassy. She hated seeing him like this. He looked like a moron, trying to pretend he was some stoner kid, when really he was just a pathetic middle-aged man who’d never grown up.

“You really want to know?” Trix asked. She felt her determination leave, replaced by deep exhaustion. She scooped up David and sat on the cracked coffee table, sighing. “I got suspended from school.”

“For what?” Her dad took her spot on the couch.

“For being slutty.”

This made him cackle. “What do they care what you do off school grounds?”

“It was on school grounds.”

He looked at her, his eyes seeming to clear some.

“I know,” she said. “I know. Okay?” She couldn’t come right out and say how contrite she was or how cheap she felt. She had to keep the badass wall up. Because otherwise … well, she couldn’t think about what would happen otherwise.

Leaning forward and pointing at her, he said, “Don’t you go gettin’ yourself knocked up, ruin your whole life.”

She wasn’t about to let that happen and she told him so.

He glowered as if he didn’t believe her. “Like mother, like daughter,” he said.

“No!” Trix barked. But beneath her rebellious facade, she knew. She could end up just like Fiona. Sure, maybe Fiona’s clothes hadn’t been as cool and maybe her artistic talent had gone neglected after having kids, but deep down, weren’t Trix and her mother more alike than Trix wanted to admit? “I will not be her. Ever.”

“Then you need to get yourself on a different track, girly,” her dad said.

He went into the kitchen, grabbed two beers out of the fridge, and handed her one. He lay down on the couch and turned his head sideways to take long draws from his bottle. He belched, and repeated, “You need to get yourself on a different track.” Then he closed his eyes.

“I’m trying Dad. I’m working and saving, okay?”

“Saving for what? Whiskey sours at the Buckaroo?” he slurred.

“A sewing machine. So I can make my designs and get them out there. Designing clothes is all I’ve ever wanted and I thought you knew that!”