The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter (13 page)

And I thought about crying and telling her that it was a bummer, but I was starving. So I just grabbed my sandwich and started eating.

“Tell me about your classes!” my mom said.

But I didn’t feel like reliving my day at all. I felt like forgetting it.

“Okay,” my mom said. “Eat first and we can talk about it later.”

I nodded.

“Your grandma sent you a postcard from South Dakota!” my mom said as she poured me a second glass of milk.

I swallowed. “Why is Grandma writing me from South Dakota? I thought she was going to Minnesota.” And I thought maybe I could convince my mom that Willy really
was a maniac welder and that he’d kidnapped Grandma and we had to get her back.

“Their route takes them through South Dakota,” my mother said. “She’s having the time of her life. It almost makes me want to rent a motor home for the summer.”

I drank my milk and stared at her. I thought that sounded awful. “Motor homes are dangerous and they pollute the air.”

My mom dusted some bread crumbs off the table.

“Your first day without Sylvie had to have been tough,” she said.

I drank more of my milk and didn’t say anything. Just because I hated motor homes didn’t mean I was missing Sylvie. Which I was. “I’ve got homework.”

“Do you need any help?”

I shook my head. “I need solitude. And pencils. And my backpack.”

As I got all my stuff together, I considered telling my mom about the psycho-bullies and my difficult locker and all the other bummer things about my day. But she looked so tired. And she’d tried so hard to make me feel better. She’d even gotten off work early just to be here when I got home. I couldn’t ruin her day just because mine had been terrible.

I sat on my bed and pulled out my English book because Mr. Val wanted us to preview a unit on future-tense verbs.
As I previewed it I could tell that it was not going to be my favorite unit. Also, I had to read a poem and respond to it. It was by Emily Dickinson, and it didn’t even have a title. And I usually found titles to be very helpful. I read the poem to myself four times. Then I read it out loud. And I didn’t whisper it. I belted it right out. Because I thought that might help me understand it.

I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog.

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

Then I heard my mom call to me. “You are too somebody! You’re Bessica Lefter!”

And I thought maybe I should tell my mom that I was doing my permanent homework, which happened to be a poem without a title, but I explained it in a shorter way. “I didn’t write that!” Then I wrote my paragraph. Mr. Val said there were no wrong answers. So I took him at his word and wrote from the heart.

If you are a nobody and you are part of a pair, then you aren’t a nobody anymore. I used to be part of a pair. I liked it. Because I never felt alone. I felt like I had a friend who understood everything about me, what made me happy, what bummed me out. And she was a good listener. And now she’s one hundred percent out of my life. Because her mom is an evil eyelash painter who doesn’t understand the concept of friendship. But maybe I don’t totally understand the concept of friendship either. Because I made my friend throw away our diary when she didn’t want to. And I also made her get a drastic haircut
.

When I looked over my paragraph, I was surprised by how long it was. Also, I was surprised by its honesty. Because usually when I wrote things for school, I tried to write what I thought the teacher wanted to read. And in this case I hadn’t done that; I’d written what was on my mind.

When I finished English, I broke out my math worksheets. I had to solve eight problems and they all looked
terrible. And then I opened my nutrition notebook and reviewed the fat grams in various nuts. And then I decided I could do the rest of my homework while lying down. But that didn’t turn out so good. Because the next thing I knew, it was dark outside and I could smell baking tuna fish.

I climbed off my bed and walked into the kitchen, and the table was set and my dad was all ready to eat.

“Hey there, sunshine,” he said. “How was school?”

“Fine,” I lied. Because I was still very groggy and didn’t feel like getting into the horrible details also known as my day.

“Let’s eat!” Mom said.

And I sat down pretty quickly. Because even though I’d eaten a turkey sandwich, I still felt like I could use more nourishment.

“Bessica has been in her room working on homework,” my mom said.

My dad whistled. “Are they piling it on already?”

I nodded.

“I have permanent homework in English,” I said. “And it’s hard.”

My dad whistled again.

“It will get easier once you get a rhythm down,” my mom said.

I looked at her like she was crazy. That didn’t even make sense.

“Did you see Blake today?” my dad asked.

“I sure did,” I said. “He got stuffed into a trash can by my locker.”

My mom set down a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table and gasped. “That’s awful!”

I nodded. “But he got out okay.”

“Did you help him?” my mom asked.

“He didn’t want my help. He’s a loner. I think that’s part of why he got stuffed,” I said.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” my dad said. “That kid is sort of a dweeb.”

My mom frowned when my dad said that. “Buck, we shouldn’t judge socially awkward children.”

My dad spooned up some potatoes and said, “You’re right.”

“Do you want one or two scoops of peas?” my mom asked me.

“One,” I said, because if I had a choice, I wanted to take the smallest amount of peas possible.

My mom finished dishing everything out and she sat down. Then I realized that I was looking at a pork chop but I still smelled baking tuna fish.

“Why do I smell tuna?” I asked.

My mom smiled. “Because I’m making a casserole for one of the patients.”

This was something she did on a regular basis. My mom was not the kind of receptionist who could write down people’s information and file it away. She was the kind of person who wrote down their information and then baked things to make them feel better.

“I want more details, Bessica. What was the first thing you thought when I dropped you off today?”

I blinked. And ate some peas. And swallowed them. “I thought, I would be enjoying my day a lot more if Sylvie were here.”

My mother sighed. “Mrs. Potaski will come around. Give her time.”

I shook my head. “No. Grandma explained it to me. Sylvie’s mom is a bull chasing me through a field. And I have to wait until she gets bored and forgets about me. Or she’ll gore out my guts. It could take years.”

“Your grandma said that?” my dad asked.

I nodded.

“I’m sure those weren’t her exact words,” my mother said.

“It’s still a very interesting comparison to make with Mrs. Potaski. You know that bulls are male, right?” my dad asked me.

I threw my hands up and accidentally knocked over my glass of milk. “Of course I know that.”

My mother brought me a dishrag. “Here you go. And watch the wild arm moves.”

I cleaned up the milk while my mom and dad ate their pork chops and peas. I couldn’t believe that this conversation made them want to eat. I’d almost lost my entire appetite, because all I wanted to do was improve my life.

After I cleaned up the milk, I put the dishrag in the sink and I stared at my pork chop.

“So which is your favorite class?” my dad asked. “You’re taking geology, right?”

I shook my head. “Geography.”

“What did you talk about in geography?” he asked.

My mother took a shockingly big bite of her chop.

“Polar stuff,” I said.

“About bears?” he asked.

I shook my head again. “Bears are fun and interesting,” I said. “We’re not studying anything fun or interesting.”

“Well, I’ve got something you can tell your class,” my father said. “Ask them if they know why polar bears never eat penguins.”

“That’s a gross thing to ask a room of strangers,” I said.

“She’s right,” my mother said. “Don’t ask them that.”

“It’s because penguins and polar bears live at opposite ends of the earth. Polar bears live near the North Pole and penguins live near the South Pole.”

I did not find that very interesting. “Oh,” I said.

“Did you know that bunnies live in polar regions?” my father asked. “Arctic hares. They have a keen sense of smell. I bet we can find some on the Internet after dinner.”

“Wouldn’t you rather watch TV?” I asked. I knew I would.

And that was what dinner was like. My mom and dad tried to cheer me up and distract me from my Sylvie-less life. And sometimes it worked. But then I would remember that I was Sylvie-less. And it was hard to stay cheered up after I remembered that.

“Bessica,” my mother said, after she cleared the table, “don’t you want to read Grandma’s postcard?”

She handed it to me. On the front was a picture of the four stone faces of Mount Rushmore. Underneath the picture, in big cursive letters, was
Greetings from South Dakota
. I flipped it over. Grandma had written in very clear and small letters:

And then she signed it,
Love, your favorite grandma
.

“Pretty neat postcard,” my mom said.

“Yeah,” I said. But I would rather have had Grandma in the kitchen. A postcard was just a flat piece of almost nothing. It reminded me of that stupid collaborative diary that Sylvie had tossed into the hole. That was just a bunch of flat pieces of nothing too. Why did people think those things mattered? I put the postcard in the trash.

“Bessica!” my mother said. “You can’t throw out your grandma’s postcard.”

“I just did.”

She plucked it out of the trash and frowned at me. “You should save these. Grandma won’t be around forever. One day you’re going to be glad that you have some mementos.”

This was the saddest thing anybody had said to me in a long time. She handed me the card and I took it. And stared at it. And realized that one day Grandma Lefter was going to be as gone as Grandpa Lefter.

“I want Grandma to come home,” I said.

“She will,” my mom said. “In about six weeks.”

I dragged myself to my room and stuck the card next to my bed. Maybe tomorrow would be better, I thought. Maybe Sylvie would call. Maybe all the psycho-bullies would get expelled. Maybe I’d become great friends with Annabelle Deeter’s network. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

ylvie did not call. No psycho-bullies were expelled. And I did not become friends with Annabelle Deeter’s network. In nutrition we watched a video about how digestion works, and it made me afraid of my own stomach acid. Then in English the flute music was so loud that I missed some of what Mr. Val was saying.