Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) (2 page)

The person Trix really wanted to date was Ryan McElvoy, a cute, quirky, and egregiously decent guy she’d crushed on since middle school. She’d liked him since seventh grade, when she understood nothing about boys except maybe who was nice and who wasn’t. And, though Trix probably didn’t seem the type to go for a sweet guy, she couldn’t help herself. She was drawn to the way he held doors open for people and looked everyone, even adults, in the eye when he talked to them.

Whenever she saw him at school her heart pumped hard and stupid words came out of her mouth.

Sometimes she let herself believe that he could like her back, even though she knew it was extremely unlikely. He was from a normal family that skied and cooked with cilantro and picked up litter on Earth Day.

There was no way he’d give the time of day to a girl who lived in a trailer park on Aurora.

A metallic guitar riff signaled that she’d gotten a text on her crappy old cell phone. It was the flip kind no one had anymore.

Emily
: Bord. What r u up 2
?

Trix texted,
Just hangng
, and noticed her fingernails needed attention. Her purple polish was chipping and her cuticles looked shredded. As soon as she finished her cigarette, she’d fix them.

Wnt 2 come ovr?

Trix shook her head at the phone. As a matter of fact, she didn’t. As big and nice as Emily’s house was, Trix hated being in it. Emily’s stepmother Melissa kept the place perfect—nothing askew, smelling of clean laundry, the kitchen stocked with exotic spices and expensive cutlery. And every time Trix set foot in the McMansion she felt dirty and even more disheveled than usual. She was afraid to sit on the white microfiber sofa or leave lipstick prints on the Crate and Barrel glassware.

U come here.

She knew Emily felt weird at Trix’s, too. Trix didn’t exactly live in a palace. The rooms were narrow and cluttered. The “front yard” was a makeshift patio lined with fake grass and a short wire fence. And city noise filtered in all day and all night. It was pathetic. Trix couldn’t wait to get out on her own. The second she turned 18 she was going to put down a deposit on an apartment or rent a room in a decent neighborhood. She was tired of recognizing prostitutes and living next to Butch’s Gun Shop.

Emily texted back that she needed jeans, and did Trix want to hop the bus with her to Northgate before it closed?

Shopping with Emily was brutal. She had this perfectly proportioned but crazy long body. Occasionally she’d find something she was happy with, but reaching that point took eons. Because not only did whatever pair of pants or top have to fit, but also had to pass Emily’s cool barometer. Which meant nothing the least bit interesting. No sparkles, low necklines, or short skirts. Trix itched to dress her friend more flamboyantly but her suggestions of ruching or color never went over well.

We wont make it b4 9.

Trix tapped the last bit of ash from her cigarette, then carried it into the tiny bathroom and flushed it.

She got out a shoebox she kept under her bed. Inside were wadded dollars and coins. She added a few quarters that’d been in her pocket and counted the entire stash. A hundred and thirty-two dollars plus some change. She still needed another $196 to buy the sewing machine she had her eye on, a used model at Quality Sewing and Vacuum Center.

To reach her goal, she’d need to stop buying cigarettes for a while, force her mom to pay for the groceries herself from her disability check, and maybe pick up a few more shifts at work.

Once she had the Singer, she wouldn’t be limited to lurking around the home ec room at school. She’d be able to bring her designs to life, wear them around, show off a little.

She reached for her sketchbook. There’d been a jacket, short leather, but with a crocheted bustier underneath that had been rattling around her brain for the past few days. She spent the rest of the night drawing, tweaking, filling in colors with her pastels.

She had to fill the time because, though she’d never admit this to anyone, she couldn’t go to sleep before her mom came home from one of her dates.

Finally, at one thirty, when Fiona’s keys rattled in the doorknob, Trix shoved the sketches under her pillow and closed her eyes. She hoped her mom wouldn’t invite Rodney the Octopus Guy in.

3. Crush

“
H
EY,
E
M!” CALLED
Trix, in her tall black boots and short fake-fur lined coat, catching up to Emily outside the massive, multiwinged brick building that was their school. “Was that algebra homework not impossible?”

“It sucked,” Emily said. She rose a good seven or eight inches over the top of Trix’s head. “I have to finish it first period.”

“I’m not gonna bother. Screw it. When am I ever going to need to know that stuff in real life?” Trix was lying. She always finished her homework, almost effortlessly. She’d been gifted with an amazing memory that made it all a breeze for her.

It was overcast, threatening rain. A typical Pacific Northwest fall day.

“Never. If you’re going to be a designer for Betsey Johnson,” Emily said.

“No,” Trix held up one finger. “My own design house. Remember?”

They walked through the mist into the bright school, which echoed with voices and laughter and the sounds of lockers slamming. Even though the school smelled like stale grilled cheese and moldy paper, Trix was actually glad to be there. Home was too fraught right then.

In the hallway, the girls separated.

Emily twisted her locker combination and got the books she needed for English Comp. Just as she was shoving them into her backpack, Ryan McElvoy appeared. “Hey, Lean Bean,” he said.

She pulled the zipper on her pack. Ryan came up to her eyebrows. “The name’s Emily,” she said. She wanted to call him a turnip or potato or some other stubby vegetable. But, in all honesty, he didn’t remotely resemble a turnip or a potato. He was more like a yam or an ear of corn. Kind of ropey and strong.

“I know. But I can have my own special nickname for you, right?”

His nose was long, like a carrot, Emily thought.

He took her in from head to toe.

She was glad her jeans were tucked into her boots that day. So he couldn’t see their shrinkage. Or Emily’s growthage.

“Leave me alone, McElvoy,” she said and sighed. She navigated her way around him and headed for English.

“Ryan just accosted me in the hallway again,” she murmured to Trix.

Trix blinked up at Emily, stung, though she tried to hide it. She’d never told anyone, not even Emily, how she felt about him.

Her crush had always been very cloak-and-dagger. She couldn’t risk the hurt of finding out for sure that she wasn’t his type.

And now Ryan was trailing Emily, Trix’s best friend, of all people: teasing her, grinning a lot, and watching her as she walked away.

Trix, to cover her extreme annoyance, started singing the k-i-s-s-i-n-g song under her breath.

“Oh stop,” Emily said. “It’s the opposite.”

“No, he’s like a little boy chasing you around the playground. He can’t get enough.”

Mr. Johnson jumped up from his desk then and began acting out two parts of a play neither Emily nor Trix recognized. He whispered and shrieked and tiptoed and vaulted around. And that was why they loved English Comp and Mr. Johnson. He always made it interesting.

“
Rhinoceros!
” he said triumphantly, finishing his first act. “By Eugéne Ionesco. A drama from the genre Theatre of the Absurd. Can anyone tell me about Theatre of the Absurd?”

Mr. Johnson didn’t make kids raise their hands, but no one spoke up.

“Similar to vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images,” he said. “Characters caught in hopeless situations, dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense. Those are just a few definitions of Theater of the Absurd.”

Emily whispered to Trix, “Sounds like my life.”

Mr. Johnson yanked a screen down over the whiteboard, tapped his laptop to life, and played some video of Charlie Chaplin, who, he explained, was a direct influence on Theater of the Absurd.

He told everyone to read Samuel Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot
and to write his or her own Theater of the Absurd play. Two acts. Due the first week of November.

Trix slipped glances at Ryan and saw him staring at the back of Emily’s head (not that he could really help but stare at her head, since it stuck out above everyone’s). His eyes glittered.

Trix squirmed. The imaginary ants were back. She had to resist the urge to flick them off her arms and swipe them from her legs. She scratched her back through her sweater.

Johnson jumped around like a fool, reciting something, and Trix’s thoughts drifted to the Octopus Guy. Her mom had, indeed, invited him in after their date. Trix’s bedroom was barely an alcove shielded from the rest of the trailer by thin drywall, and through it she heard noises she’d rather forget.

“Go home,” she’d whispered under her covers. But the clink of beer bottles, giggling, and groaning filtered through the skinny walls. It had been at least three thirty before she’d fallen asleep. And now here she was at eight fifteen with a pounding headache, trying to take in her homeroom teacher’s lecture and convince herself that Ryan’s interest in Emily was fleeting.

Thanks mom
, she thought.
Thanks loser Octopus Guy.

Filing from class, Emily said, “Can I just jot down everything my dad and step-mom say for my Theater of the Absurd play? That’d get me an A for sure.”

“Melissa? She’s cool.” Trix didn’t comment on Emily’s father. He was decidedly uncool.

Emily shrugged and said, “She has her moments I guess.”

“I’d love to live with Melissa. She’s young and hip—way more interesting than my old fish of a mom.”

Emily’s eyes flashed—a searchlight swooping across her irises. “At least your mom is your
real mom
.” As faulty as Trix’s mother was, Trix knew her. Lived with her for God’s sake.

Emily’s memories of her own mother were hazy at best. She’d been four when her mother left and her recollections were nothing more than decomposing mental snapshots. Riding in the car together. Picking her a fistful of buttery dandelions. Hearing her argue with Emily’s father in the next room.

Daily, Emily wondered about her, about what she looked like now, where she lived, if she had other kids. Emily had fantasies: that her mother was tall and beautiful, residing in a suburb somewhere, baking cookies for neighborhood children and chairing a garden club, that she was a fashion designer in New York dressing celebrities for premieres, or that she had been in a terrible head-on car accident and had forgotten who she was and that she had two daughters named Emily and Kristen.

Emily had no idea of the reality. She had no clue if her mom was a doting family woman or careerist or really a drug addict strung out in some other state. Or if she was even alive.

Trix and Emily walked down the hallway, talking loudly enough to hear themselves over the din of 1,500 other kids. Trix said, “My mother being real makes everything worse. Believe me, you’re the lucky one.”

“Trix. C’mon,” Emily said. She hated comparing hardships, trying to out-tough-luck each other.

“Seriously. If I could trade Fiona in for the Melissa model, I’d do it in a second.”

Maybe Trix was trying to make Emily feel better, but her method wasn’t working. Hearing anyone complain about her mom irritated Emily to no end. But when Trix, who knew how desperately Emily wished for a mother, went on about it, Emily took it as open hostility. “Can we talk about something else?” Emily pleaded.

“Jesus,” Trix said. “You just need to get over it.”

It was then that both of them felt the rumble of the tectonic plates on which their friendship was built. The shudder was brief and almost undetectable, like the ripple of seismic activity before an earthquake. But it happened, causing Emily and Trix to traipse shakily off to their individual classes as if their feet moved across tilting rock.

4. Evil X-Ray Machine

T
HE DOCTOR’S OFFICE
was stark. White paper crinkled under Emily every time she moved. In a rack on the wall were magazines, mostly for little kids:
Highlights. My Big Backyard. Cricket.
One
Seventeen
.

This doctor was a pediatric endocrinologist. Emily’s dad, who, unlike Melissa, found her staggering growth infinitely disturbing, had suggested the appointment. Melissa set it up and drove Emily downtown.

The doctor talked to Melissa about things like “bone age” and phalanges and cartilage. He was going to send Emily to the lab to have her hand X-rayed. From the X-ray, the doctor would be able to predict, to a certain extent, how tall Emily would grow.

She’d overheard a conversation between her dad and Melissa a couple weeks before, Emily standing at the top of the stairway while her dad said, “She’s going to lap me, M. Jesus Christ. My daughter’s an amazon.” There was silence then. Until he burst forth with, “We know she doesn’t have anything wrong with her pituitary gland, from what Dr. Watkins said when she was, I don’t know, nine or ten, but my God. What if she’s going to hit seven feet or something?”

Ever the optimist, Melissa said, “WNBA?”

Emily pressed her toes into the nap of the Berber carpet. It was like small, fuzzy peas under her big feet.

“Don’t joke,” he snapped.

“I’m sorry,” Melissa said. “It’s just that I don’t think it’s so bad.”

“For her it will be. She’s not athletic. She’s creative.” Emily was surprised her father even knew this.

Sitting in a flimsy gown in this pediatric endocrinologist’s office was embarrassing. And Emily was scared of what the X-ray would tell them. She thought she’d rather not know where she’d end up. Kind of like she’d rather not have any inkling of the day she’d die.

The doctor left and Emily was allowed to get dressed. Then she and Melissa took their paperwork down two floors and followed the signs to X-Ray.