The Moment Keeper (13 page)

It was after lunch and I came back to my locker to get the books I needed for my afternoon classes.

When I walked past Tracey Carmichael’s huddle, I heard the usual whispers and felt their eyes follow me. When I reached my locker, I saw why.

Taped to my locker was a poster of me with letters cut out of a magazine that said: Fat Slut.

I turned toward Tracey’s group. They were all laughing. I tore off the poster and ran to the bathroom. A few minutes later, Tracey and two of her friends walked in. I think the others guarded the door in case a teacher came.

Tracey banged on the stall. “Just remember, Goodwill Girl, you’re a nobody. Not only are you fat, you’re also ugly.”

The other girls laughed.

“Real ugly. In fact, you’re so ugly that your mama diapered your face, thinking it was your ass.”

The girls laughed even louder.

“Oh, that’s right. You don’t have a mama. I forgot.”

“Leave me alone,” I cried.

“Sure, bitch. But stay out of my way.”

I hated Tracey and her friends. I hated Rachel for moving and leaving me alone. And I hated myself for not punching that bitch in the face as I wanted to.

When the French teacher paid me that compliment, it was as if she taped a bull’s-eye to my back. I was Tracey’s personal target.

“Did you decide what you’re going to wear on the first day?” Olivia asks Emma.

“I was going to wear the mini jean skirt and the pink tie-dyed shirt I bought last week but I
kind of like the new dress I got today.”

“Tough decision,” Olivia says. “You look great in both.”

“I can’t believe we’re starting high school,” Emma says.

“Me neither.”

“Do you think the older guys will be hot?”

Olivia rolls her eyes. “Totally.”

“Think they’ll look at us?”

“Maybe. But Mom and Dad said I can’t date anyone who’s older,” Olivia says.

“They have to be in our grade?” Emma asks.

“Yeah.”

“That’s so lame.”

“Tell me about it.”

“If an older guy does ask you out,” Emma says, “you could just lie and tell your parents he’s your age.”

Olivia doesn’t say anything. She’s never lied to her parents and she’s not sure she ever would.

I used to tell Grandma little white lies all the time, mostly because I didn’t want to make her feel bad or hurt her feelings. Like I’d tell her I was happy when I wasn’t. That sort of thing.

“You need to smile more often,” Grandma told me one Sunday after church. “People are always asking me if you’re all right. ‘Why doesn’t that Sarah smile more?’ they ask.”

I shrugged my boney shoulders.

“Sarah,” Grandma said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it something I did? Something I didn’t do?”

“No, Gram. You do everything right. I’m fine. Honest.”

I wanted to tell Grandma how alone I felt, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I knew that she loved me and wanted me, but I was getting older and wanted someone else to love me and want me. A boy, perhaps. Only no boys ever looked my way. And if they did, they looked past me for whoever was behind me. Until. Well, that’s a moment for later.

“Gretchen at church told me that girls should never go out with someone younger,” Olivia tells Emma. “She says it’s uncool.”

“You mean like a senior girl dating a freshman guy?” Emma asks.

“Yeah. But it’s totally cool and acceptable for a senior guy to date a freshman girl.”

Emma scratches her head. “So it’s OK for guys to date younger girls but it’s not OK for girls to date younger guys.”

“You got it,” Olivia says. “According to Gretchen, who seems to know everything there is to know about guys.”

“What about dating someone in your own grade?” Emma asks.

“Gretchen didn’t say anything about that, so I guess it’s OK.”

As I listen to Olivia and Emma discuss the dos and don’ts of high school, I notice that some things haven’t changed. The caste system is pretty much the same, with cheerleaders — like Emma — and jocks at the top and honor students — like Olivia — if they’re cool and not nerdy; band geeks and drama and choir types in the middle; and the rejects at the bottom.

“Did you hear about Will Meade’s dad?” Emma asks Olivia.

Olivia shakes her head.

“He was having an affair with the nanny and Will’s mom caught them. Naked. In bed. At least that’s what I heard.”

Olivia’s mouth drops. “Wow! They go to our church. They’ve always seemed like the perfect family.”

“Just goes to show you that perfect isn’t always perfect. You don’t always know what goes on behind closed doors. At least that’s what my mom always says.”

Chapter 22

Olivia waits for Emma outside the front cafeteria door. Lucky for them, they ended up with the same lunch period.

Emma spots Olivia from down the hall and rushes to her. She whispers: He smiled at me.

Olivia looks around. “Who?”

“That hot guy with the great teeth in my earth science class.”

“Oh, the one who knows his rocks.”

“Yeah, him. We were passing around a piece of marble and I had to hand it to him. When I did…” she smiles “…our hands touched.”

“He’s a sophomore, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So why’s he in earth science and not bio?”

“He took bio last year so that’s why he’s taking earth science this year,” Emma explains.

“That’s backward.”

“Whatever. Can’t you just be happy that he touched me?”

“I’m happy. I’m happy. I’m also hungry.”

Olivia and Emma go to the à la carte line and pick up ham and cheese sandwiches and fruit salads.

On their way to a table, several of the girls on Emma’s cheerleading squad wave her over.

A tall girl with big silver hoop earrings moves over. “Sit here, Emma. We cheerleaders stick together – on and off the field.”

Emma looks at Olivia, then back at the girls. “That’s OK. I’m sitting with Libby.”

“But she’s not one of us,” says the petite girl whose breasts are so big you’d think she’d have trouble staying upright.

“It’s OK,” Olivia whispers to Emma. “If you want to sit with them.”

Emma whispers back, “No. I’m sitting with you.”

Emma looks at her teammates. “Maybe another time.” She follows Olivia to a table on the other side of the cafeteria.

After Rachel moved, I ate lunch alone. My only companion was whatever book I was reading. Mostly they were romances that I picked up at the used bookstore really cheap. I’d read the books and imagine I was the heroine. The lives I read about in books always seemed to be better than my life. At least the girl always seemed to have someone who loved her.
Me? There was Gram and that was it. Not that I wasn’t grateful for Gram’s love, but it wasn’t the same as a boy’s.

One day, a guy I had never seen before approached my lunch table. He was blistering hot. He had dark eyes and dark hair that fell to his shoulders. He wore a gray T-shirt that was tight around his bulging biceps. A barbed-wire tattoo wrapped his left arm.

“Mind if I sit here?” he asked.

“Help yourself. There’s plenty of room. It’s not like there’s a crowd fighting to sit with me.”

I returned to reading my book and flipped the page.

“That book good?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Chase, by the way. Just moved here.”

“Hi. I’m Sarah. Where’d you move from?”

“California.”

“So what made you come to the east coast?”

“My dad’s job.”

Just then Tracey Carmichael and one of her minions strutted over, swinging their hips and sticking out their chests.

“Hi, Chase,” said Tracey, throwing back her long black silky hair. “Why don’t you sit at our table? You’ll be more, uh—” she glared at me and then smiled at him “—comfortable there.”

Chase looked at me. “Mind if I move? Since you’re reading your book and all.”

“Suit yourself.”

Chase picked up his tray and followed Tracey to her table where the girls slid down the bench to make room for him. I should have known that Tracey would have her claws into a guy so smokin’ hot. Well, at least I had the guys in my books. Fiction for me was definitely better than real life.

“I haven’t seen much of Emma lately,” Elizabeth tells Olivia. They’re on their way to Olivia’s dance class.

“Me neither. We’re both always busy. I’m usually at dance and now that she’s on the cheerleading squad she’s either at practice or at games.”

“Still, you used to see her more. Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. Everything’s great. We’re supposed to go to the movies Saturday.”

It hasn’t been great. Ever since the cafeteria incident, the girls on Emma’s squad have tried to alienate Olivia, pulling Emma away every chance they get. Olivia might be at the top of the school food chain, but she’s not a cheerleader so it doesn’t count.

Olivia’s phone rings.

“This is Emma now.”

Olivia answers the phone.

“Yeah. (pause) OK. (pause) No, I’m not mad. (double pause) Go to the party. We can go to the movies another time. (pause) I’m sure.(pause) OK. Bye.”

“What was that all about?” Elizabeth asks.

“Emma got invited to a party Saturday and wants to go to the party instead of to the movies with me.”

“Who’s having the party? Can’t you go, too?”

“Are you kidding, Mom? One of the cheerleaders is having the party and only cheerleaders are allowed to go. Well, cheerleaders and football players. No one else.”

“I see,” Elizabeth says. “And how do you feel about that?”

“How do you think I feel? Crummy. My best friend just ditched me to hang with her cheerleader friends. So, yeah, Mom. I don’t feel so great. Everything in Emma’s life revolves around cheerleading. There’s no room for me anymore.”

Elizabeth pulls into the parking lot. “Sorry you’re going through this, Lib. I hate to see you hurting. I wish I could make it all better.”

“Well, you can’t, Mom. I’m not a little girl anymore. You just can’t kiss my boo-boos and make them all better.”

“You’re at dance now. Try not to think about it. Concentrate on what you love most of all.”

Olivia grabs her dance bag from the back seat, opens the door and gets out. “See you in a couple hours, Mom. And don’t worry. I never let anything get in the way of dance. I’d die before I let that happen.”

Chase never sat at my lunch table again. It wasn’t long after he started sitting at Tracey’s table that they became an item. One day, Chase stopped to talk to me in the hallway. It was just small talk. I think he asked me what book I was reading. Tracey came around the corner and saw us.

She threw back her long black mane and strutted up to us and kissed Chase, taking a little longer than usual for added emphasis. She gave me the death stare, and I knew she would get me back somehow, some day.

It ended up being that day.

I hated gym class. I was the most uncoordinated girl in the entire ninth grade. I couldn’t dribble a basketball, hit a softball, kick a soccer ball or get anywhere close to being graceful on the balance beam or uneven bars.

Our gym teacher, Mrs. Montgomery, a middle-aged round woman whose claim to fame was that she won the county tennis championship thirty years ago, made us take showers. She’d herd us into that blue and while tile shower lined with showerheads and we’d get sprinkled and run back out.

I was embarrassed by my body. My right breast was noticeably larger than my left and I always felt the girls’ stares and heard their giggles.

When I dashed out of the shower that day, my stuff was gone. I was naked. Dripping wet with no towel, no clothes, no backpack, nothing.

Tracey’s locker was a few feet down from mine. She wiggled on her designer jeans. “Missing something?” She laughed.

I covered my privates with my arms and hands the best I could and flashed the meanest look I could muster. My nose flared and my eyes narrowed in on her blemish-free face.

“Look, girls,” Tracey said. “Little Miss Goodwill can’t dry off or get dressed. Her stuff is missing.”

“Where’d you put it, you bitch?”

“Me?” She pulls her silk shirt over her black-widow-spider head. “You couldn’t pay me to touch your icky, stinky, second-hand clothes.”

The other girls laughed.

The bell rang and they left, laughing, and I was stuck naked in the locker room. I sat down and cried.

“Is someone in here?” Mrs. Montgomery called.

I buried my mouth into my upper arm to muffle my noise. I heard her walk down the center aisle of the locker room. She apparently turned around because the next thing I knew the lights went off and I was alone, huddled in the corner. Naked.

Chapter 23

“So are you going to the homecoming?” Lexie asks Olivia on the bus ride home.

Lexie is Olivia’s neighbor. She’s a year older. She moved into the ivy-covered stone home down the street. The one with the circular driveway and the three-tier granite fountain with scallop edges in the front.

“Mom asked me the same thing this morning,” Olivia says. “No one’s asked me yet.”

“Me neither. But at my old school, you didn’t have to be asked. Last year, I went with a bunch of girls. I mean, who needs guys to have a good time, right?”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Totally. My dad rented us a limo. It was the coolest limo I had ever been in. Actually, it was more like a bus that had been totally tricked out. Black leather lounges and chairs and a huge flat screen on the wall. Dad had it stocked with soda and snacks. The driver drove around for an hour and then we had dinner at the country club before going to the dance. After the dance, the limo driver picked us up and Dad had him stop for ice-cream sundaes on the way home. It was so much fun.”

“I’ve never been in a limo before.”

“Well, it’s way fun. I’m sure my dad would rent a limo for us if I asked him. We could go together. Anyone else you’d want to ask? What about your friend Emma?”

“I heard that she’s going with one of the football players.”

“I didn’t realize you two weren’t talking,” Lexie said. “I mean, I knew things weren’t great, but I didn’t know it had gotten to that point.”

Olivia had filled Lexie in on the entire saga soon after they met. She liked Lexie. They had a lot in common, including that they were both adopted. Lexie was born in China, though.