Story Time (2 page)

George nodded and answered with mock gratitude, "Yes. Yes. You're right. It is very important to me, upon entering middle school, to demonstrate to everyone exactly how small I am."

"That's not my point, Uncle George."

"I know. Listen, Kate, let's not disturb the order of the universe. You be the star. I'll be backstage."

June cleared her throat and brought up another topic. "Kate, why don't you let somebody else be the lead in the play? That's a lot of rehearsal time. Your homework will suffer. Why don't you be one of the Darling children? Or an Indian?"

"An Indian?" Kate scoffed. "That's a chorus girl part. I've done my time in the chorus, two long years. No way. That lead role is mine."

June was about to say something else when the back door banged open and Kate's grandparents emerged. Her grandfather carried a portable CD player. Her grandmother's voice boomed out: "Who's ready for some clogging?"

June protested quietly, hopelessly, "Ma, Pa, not right now, please. We're discussing something imp—"

The sound of banjo and fiddle music blared from the little machine. Kate's grandmother and grandfather started to hop and shift their boots forward and back, like Russian dancers. Ma shouted over the music, "Georgie! You eat dinner with your sister tonight. We're having the Tri-County Cloggers over for some practicin'. We got that big clog-off comin' up over in Anchorsville."

George replied as loudly as he could, "Ma! Pa! This porch was built eighty-seven years ago, with substandard timbers, by striking miners. You could go crashing right through the wood!"

"Ah, Georgie, we've been cloggin' in this house since before you were born! It ain't come crashing down yet."

Kate's grandparents switched from their warm-up routine to a choreographed, noisy dance number, clapping the cleated heels of their boots down onto the trembling porch in time to the bluegrass music.

Kate and June ducked inside the house, followed by George. Kate went directly to the refrigerator, opened it, and peered in. She shouted to June, "You know, Molly's coming over."

June closed the screen door and the wooden door to muffle the clogging. "No, I didn't know that. For dinner?"

"Yes."

"I wish you had told me this before, Kate."

"Molly comes over every week. Do I have to tell you about it every week?"

"Yes. That would be nice."

"Sorry. But it would be nice if I could go to her house sometimes, too."

June opened the pantry and removed a box of spaghetti. "You can go to her house. You have gone to her house. I've driven you there."

"Twice, June. Twice in two years. Once in sixth grade; once in seventh grade. And then only until nine o'clock. First graders have better curfews than that."

June filled a pot with water. "Please, Kate, we've been over this too many times."

"I can't sleep over at anyone's house, and I'm not allowed to know why. And I'm not supposed to be the star of the play or to make a spectacle of myself in any way, but I'm not allowed to know why."

June exhaled. "Should I defrost some meatballs?"

Kate gritted her teeth and growled. Then she stomped up the kitchen stairs in rhythm with the back-porch clogging.

George answered the question. "I could go for some meatballs, June."

The kitchen stairs rose to a broad landing, where they met the front parlor stairs. Kate's computer was set up on the landing in a rickety pressboard hutch.

Kate slid into the chair and logged on. The obsolete computer struggled to download Kate's e-mail, clicking and whirring through a maddening series of pop-ups, asking her off-the-wall questions, one after another, like a brain-damaged reporter.

By the time Kate determined that she had no mail, George had appeared on the landing.

Kate snapped, "Have I mentioned that I hate this machine?"

"I don't think you've said it yet today."

"Do you want to check your mail while I have it up?"

"No. I want to get into the school district website."

"What for?"

George shrugged.

Kate stood up to let him have the chair. "I told you before, you can go to that school if you want to. Just leave me out of it."

George sat down and worked the mouse. "I just want to see the website." He quickly accessed the King's County School Districts website and clicked through it until he and Kate were staring at a very curious map.

George pointed. "Look at this, Kate. Most school districts look like little rectangles or trapezoids. Lincoln Middle School's, for example, forms a nearly perfect parallelogram from the county line to the boundary line of its neighboring school district."

Kate nodded tentatively, unsure of her geometric terminology.

"Now look at this thing." George put his finger on the screen and traced a narrow looping shape. "This is the Whittaker Magnet School District. It's not a definable shape at all. It's a mutant octopus. Look, it runs along the river and then reaches out, like a tentacle, into every other school district."

Kate followed her uncle's small finger over the screen. "Where's our house?"

His finger moved to the lower right. "Here."

"We're not in that octopus thing?"

"No. We're solidly in the Lincoln Middle School District."

"So that's it, then. For me, it's case closed."

"But what about the letter from Whittaker?"

"I'll say, 'No thanks.' I've been at Lincoln for two years, Uncle George. All of my friends are there. I've worked hard for the lead in the play. It's a
no-duh.
I am going to Lincoln."

George studied the screen for another moment. "How can this be? The lines don't run along streets, or parks, or natural boundaries. It's like this district shoots its lines out to individual houses, like it's lassoing them in with a rope."

George paused, tapping lightly against his temple. "Sorry. That's redundant. If you're lassoing something, you're already using a rope. You don't need to add 'with a rope.'"

Kate tried to change the subject. "Is dinner ready?"

"It's almost like if they find a street with a smart kid on it, it becomes part of their district. But if the next street has a dumb kid on it, it doesn't."

"Yeah, whatever." Kate's head turned at the soft
dingdong
of the doorbell. "That'll be Molly."

Kate tramped down the front stairs, through the parlor, and into the vestibule.

She opened the door to a short girl with black hair, which, although completely natural, fell in such unnaturally straight lines that it looked like a wig. The girl was accompanied by an even shorter old lady with gray hair, tied up primly in a bun. Kate said, "Hi, Molly. Hi, Mrs. Brennan."

Molly reached up to hug Kate. Then she squeezed in past Kate and turned back toward her grandmother. "Good-bye, Grandmom."

But Mrs. Brennan was not so easily dismissed. She stared Molly down. Then she redirected her gaze to Kate and asked, "How are you, dear?"

"I'm fine, Mrs. Brennan."

"Looking forward to starting school?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am. I can't wait."

"That's nice to hear." She looked past Kate's shoulder and asked, "Is your mother here?"

Kate blinked. "Yes, of course. She's making dinner."

Molly said, "Ms. Melvil will be driving me home, Grandmom."

"Who, dear?"

Molly exchanged a look with Kate. "Kate's mom."

Mrs. Brennan's cheeks flushed. "Oh. I'm sorry. I thought your mother was"—she gestured at Kate—"Peters."

Kate shook her head. "Nope. I'm the only Peters now." She tried to sound matter-of-fact. "Well, just my dad and me. The rest of them are Melvils."

"I see. I'm sorry, Kate. It's not my business to pry." She continued anyway. "But wasn't your mother named Peters, too?"

"She was. Until the divorce became final and she went back to her maiden name."

Molly said, "Anything else, Grandmom, like Kate's blood type?"

Mrs. Brennan stared her down again. "Don't be snippy, Molly. I need to know how to address Kate's mother properly when I see her."

Molly answered with practiced contrition, "Sorry."

Mrs. Brennan looked at Kate. "I'll be going now. Tell Ms. Melvil I said hello."

Kate closed the door. Molly told her, "Sorry she was so nosy."

"That's no problem, no problem at all. I really like your grandmother." Kate led the way through the parlor. The floors and walls were now shaking perceptibly. Kate added, "At least your grandmother doesn't clog."

They climbed up to the landing just as George was clicking out of the website. He asked Kate, "Do you want me to leave the map? So you can show Molly?"

Kate's face lit up with a fake, perky smile. "Molly? Do you have any interest in seeing a map of the King's County School Districts?"

"Do I look like a hopeless geek?"

"I'll take that as a no."

Yet Molly did lean forward and squint at the screen. "You're looking at the Whittaker Magnet School site." She spoke like someone familiar with the topic. "That is a very weird, ultra-geeky school. It's down in the basement of the county library." She bulged her eyeballs at Kate. "Seriously, it's in the basement, like some indoor mushroom farm. They say the kids there never see the sun."

Kate poked George. "Sounds great, eh, Uncle George?"

"I never said it sounded great."

"I haven't heard you say it sounds horrible. Which it does. It sounds like the most horrible school in the U.S.A."

"Actually, it has a reputation as one of the best schools in the U.S.A."

"See! You
do
want to go there. Admit it!" Kate grabbed him, playfully but firmly, by the earlobe.

George winced. "I'm just saying that if we had to
go
to some other school, there are worse places to go."

Kate demanded, "Name one." When George hesitated, she announced triumphantly, "Aha!" and finally let go of his ear.

Molly told Kate, "My grandmother says the Whittaker Magnet School gets written about in a lot of magazines."

"Like what?
Geek World?
"

"No. Like education magazines."

"Same thing."

George cupped one hand over his reddened earlobe. "The Whittaker School is modeled on a Japanes
juku,
an after-school program where kids go to cram for exams. Except at Whittaker, they cram all day long, too."

Kate started into her bedroom. "Like she said, it's a very geeky school."

The girls closed the door on George and his web search just as he spotted a curious hypertext link: "See also:
Haunted Buildings of the Midwest
." George scratched his chin thoughtfully. Then he looked over both shoulders, to ensure that he was alone, and clicked on it.

"We have our first band meeting scheduled already," Molly said. "Can you believe it? The first day of school? We're supposed to get the sheet music for
Peter Pan.
"

Kate flopped back on her bed. "Have you heard anything about auditions?"

"Nothing official. But Lisette told me that Derek Arroyo is definitely trying out."

Kate let her tongue drop down like she was dying of thirst. "He is
so
hot. It'd be almost worth it to play a girl so I could kiss him onstage."

"Lisette said he wants to be Captain Hook."

"Captain Hook? Does he kiss anybody? Like, Tiger Lily?"

Molly frowned. "No. I don't think Captain Hook kisses anybody. I think he's gay. At least that guy who played him on TV was gay. I think all of the pirates were gay."

"Then why would Derek try out for it?"

"You don't have to be gay to play Captain Hook. I'm just saying that the guy who played him on TV was."

"Great. The guy I love wants to play a gay pirate. Where does that leave me? Are there any straight guys in it?"

Molly scratched her head. "Well, yes and no. The boys are, like, John and Michael Darling. But what kind of last name is that? And they wear these gay pajamas all the time, you know? Like ladies' pajamas? Except they wear black top hats with them. Nice touch."

"How about Peter Pan?"

"He's not gay, although he was played by a lady on TV. But he's supposed to be a guy. Except in that scene where he's pretending to be a lady. It's all very complicated. Think about it, Kate. Let's say Derek plays Captain Hook, and you have to kiss him. You'll be a girl pretending to be a guy, dressed as a lady, kissing a guy who may be gay. It'll ruin any relationship you two could ever have." Molly fell silent. She raised her hand to the wall to feel it vibrate. "You may as well go to that geek school."

"No way. I don't care if I have to kiss Nana the dog. I'm going to Lincoln."

"Well, what about your father? Couldn't you call him? Maybe there's something he could do."

Kate's eyes drifted to a framed photo of her father in his wedding-day tuxedo. He looked tall, handsome, and confident. "He doesn't have a phone number."

"No? Well, then, maybe you could write to him?"

Kate pressed her lips together. "He doesn't have an address."

"How can he not have an address? Everybody has an address! What, is he one of those homeless guys who lives in a big cardboard box? You know, like refrigerators come in?"

Kate's eyes flashed angrily. "He doesn't live in a cardboard box. And he's not homeless. He's a teacher."

"You never told me he was a teacher."

"You never asked."

The girls fell silent until Molly explained, "I didn't want to sound like my grandmother. I knew your parents were divorced, but I didn't want to pump you for information. I figured you would tell me when you wanted to."

"And I've been waiting for you to ask. You should have asked."

Molly placed her hand on the vibrating wall for a long minute. Then she tried, "So, your father's a teacher?"

Kate answered evenly. "He is. He is a teacher."

"What's the name of his school?"

Kate pointed to a brochure wedged into the side of her mirror. "It's not a school. It's a company that runs foreign schools. The American Schools Abroad Program. I write letters to that company's address, and they forward them to him wherever he is."