The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet (23 page)

I crossed the kitchen and went in.

At first I couldn’t see what the problem was. The wooden Globe, the one made out of the house shingles, sat on the dining room table on its plywood base. As I got closer, though, it became obvious: The walls were askew. The stage slanted. Globs of glue dotted the seat cushions. Either the Globe had been the only casualty in the earthquake I’d been wishing for off and on for months, or it’d been dropped and repaired poorly. Dad must have been brokenhearted.

“I haven’t seen it since the day Ty and I were downstairs late last month,” I said honestly. Ty had taken our theater home to finish working on it. I hadn’t even been back in the basement since that day. Iago squirmed in my arms and I put him down.

“Did your friends do something to it? Did it fall?” From behind me, my dad’s voice sounded quiet and even, but when I turned around I saw that he was chewing his cheek like it was the biggest piece of bubble gum on the Eastern seaboard.

“No one touched it,” I said, annoyed that they would be quick to accuse my friend. “And it didn’t fall—it couldn’t. It was on the table down there. What happened to it?”

“That is what we are trying to find
out
,” my mother snapped, finally getting involved with the conversation again. “Obviously, nothing could happen to it by itself, and clearly Desdemona would not have touched it.”

Desdemona would not have touched it???
That
stung
. Of course Dezzie would never do anything wrong, never mess up someone’s project. It was like since she was smart, she
had
to be good too. Such things were beneath her intellect. Even though I knew it was a bad idea, I couldn’t stop my brain from saying what came next. All of James’s “strategies” for talking to my parents were buried under the rubble of anger and unfairness.

“She’s not perfect, you know. Even though you act like she is.”

“This is not about your sister,” my father said. “It is about the theater.”

“But it
is
about her—because you automatically assumed it was
me
who wrecked it!” I wrestled with the anger that bubbled up inside me.

“You were using it last,” my father pointed out.

That magician’s shallow rabbit appeared on the table in my mind.

“But I wasn’t. Saber and Mauri came over after school. Dezzie took them to the basement when she showed them the house,” I said.

“I have not seen them,” Mom said, eyes narrowed. “How could they come here without me knowing?”

The day came flooding back to me. “You weren’t here,” I recalled, speaking quickly. “It was the day you had a faculty meeting.” I explained the situation as I remembered it. And while I was telling them the story, I remembered something else: I’d heard Saber and Mauri go back downstairs without Dezzie when Saber’s mom came to pick them up.

“You know you are not allowed to have anyone to the house when we are not home unless it is Ty,” my mother said, sounding shocked. “It is against the rules.”

“
I
didn’t have anyone to the house,” I pointed out. “Dezzie did!”

“She would never break the rules so flagrantly,” my mother said.

“Obviously, she did,” I responded, furious. “And she didn’t tell you about it either. Why do you always think she’s so perfect? She’s
not
. And that ‘poorly executed, juvenile’ painting you saw at school was
hers
!” I yelled the last part, because I’d pushed back from the table.

Dezzie stood at the top of the stairs, frozen, and shock displayed all over her face. I hoped she heard what I said. Served her right. I was sick of trying to protect her and hurting myself in the process.

I stormed past her, into to my room, slammed the door, and threw myself across the bed.

I lay there and fumed. I couldn’t talk to my parents, because They. Just. Didn’t. Listen. The anger was back. I popped off the bed and paced across the floor, not knowing what to do with my energy.

 

A while later, when I’d somewhat calmed down, I stopped pacing and sat down on the bed again. I heard a tapping at the door.

“Go away.” I figured it was Dezzie, finally wanting to talk about everything.

“Honey, open up.” Dad’s voice came through. “We want to talk to you.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Please,” Mom said. “We want to listen.”

If she hadn’t said that, I wouldn’t have let them in.

“Fine,” I muttered into my pillow. The door swung open. Mom and Dad stood there, heads low, hands twisting.

“We owe you an apology,” Mom said. “May we come in?”

I nodded curtly. They entered and each perched on my bed. I didn’t move or make room for them.

“We do not think Desdemona is perfect, Hamlet. No one is,” Dad began. He fiddled with his glasses.

“You know what I mean. Just because she’s so smart, you let her get away with all kinds of things—or make me do things for her.” My anger sizzled.

Both Mom’s and Dad’s expressions were complete blanks. I went on. “Like skipping my classes in the afternoon that time to walk her home, or asking
her
all about
her
work and making me run around the school to take her to her classes when she knows her way, and I’m late and missing lunch and algebra—which I’m
failing
, by the way!” Tears flowed down my cheeks and dripped onto the quilt.

“Honey, we’re just trying to look out for her,” my mother said, breaking her own grammar rule for once. She reached across the bed and put a hand on mine. I snatched it away.

“Then why are you making
me
do it?”

“Because we have more confidence in you,” my father said simply. His words nearly knocked me to the floor.

“You
what
?” I asked.

“You’re older, you have better decision-making skills, and you have more experience in the world than she,” my dad said, ticking the reasons off on his fingers. “We trust you to be able to handle life in a way that she cannot.” My mother nodded.

“I can see now that we were expecting just as much out of you as we were out of your sister, but in a different way.”

I wanted a video camera to capture this conversation. I didn’t think I trusted my own ears.

“You ask me to do this stuff because you trust
me
more than
her
?” I asked, wanting to make sure I understood them properly.

They both nodded. “Hamlet, you don’t need us to point out that our family situation is a bit . . . unusual,” my dad said. His words set off an avalanche of emotion in me. Tears filled my eyes again, but hurt and anger competed with the sadness.

“No one else has parents who wear cloaks and bells, or a sister who can do calculus but isn’t tall enough to reach the bathroom sink!” I blurted. “It’s
hard
!”

They glanced back and forth at each other and Mom wrung her hands. “I had no idea you felt that way, honey,” Mom said.

“Because you don’t pay any
attention
,” I cried. I brushed the tears away angrily. “You’re so wrapped up in your Shakespearience that you don’t see anything except what you want to see. Most people don’t live and act like you. Most parents don’t come to school dressed in costume and banging
tambourines
!” My voice was screechy and I needed to blow my nose. I settled for blotting it with the edge of my sleeve and took deep, shuddery breaths.

“We made a choice to follow our passion,” Dad said, eyes soft and gentle behind his glasses, “in hopes that you and your sister would follow yours.”

Now I felt even more horrible, like I was crushing my parents’ dream by spilling my ever-twisting guts. I blotted again.

“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t. “It’s just that your passion leaks into everything in my life too, and it’s not the same passion I have. I just want to get through eighth grade.”

Dad sighed. “Believe it or not, we value that in you, Hamlet. You are the best-equipped person to help Desdemona—and, in some cases, your mother and me—navigate the world outside of our home. It’s not easy for her.”

“And we can see now that it has not been easy for you either,” Mom said.

“But you’ve done so well with your responsibility, that we truthfully hadn’t even given it a second thought,” Dad said, a rueful smile on his face. “We were wrong. And we appreciate all you’ve done for your sister and us. And we should have paid more attention to the effect it had on you.”

Warmth flooded me at his words. The tears didn’t stop, but they changed from the streams of hurt to droplets of relief.

“And we will speak with your sister about the damage done to the theater and about obeying the rules of the house,” my mother finished.

Tentative hope bloomed in my chest. Maybe they could change. Maybe
we
could change.

 

Later that evening, my parents had a strict talking-to with their second child, the genius. I tried to listen from my bedroom, but their words were muffled, so I moved to the landing. A tingle of excitement buzzed at the edges of my emotions—I’d never seen my parents upset with my sister—but guilt overrode it. Even though I hadn’t been downstairs with Saber and Mauri, while Dezzie and Saber’s mom waited, I still felt responsible for what happened to my dad’s theater.

The overwhelming feeling, however, was fury.

Saber and Mauri must have thought that the theater belonged to me and Ty and were trying to sabotage our project. How could they do that, just for a ski trip? Obviously I’d know it was them who broke it.

And why hadn’t Dezzie said anything to me about it? Why hide it? And why had she continued to be nice to Saber and Mauri after it happened? For that matter, why had she continued to be nice to the destructo twins after what they pulled with Principal Obin?

The tight hum of voices from the kitchen subsided. I scooted back to my room and tossed homework papers across my bed to make it look like I’d been busy and not eavesdropping. A light tap came at the door.

Dezzie peeked her head in when I said she could enter. Her gray eyes were cloudy and sad, and the corners of her mouth turned down like they were too heavy to hold up. She carried Iago into my room.

“I got in trouble,” she said. I nodded. She climbed onto my bed. Iago sniffed at the sheets. Satisfied this time, he flopped onto my pillow with a sigh.

“It’s the first time,” she went on. I shrugged.

“Lots of people get in trouble,” I said. “It’s no big deal. They won’t stay mad at you forever.”

“I know.” She sighed, then glanced up at me with a sparkle to her eyes. “It was kind of fun,” she said. “I didn’t know what to expect. They even grounded me.”

“You are so weird,” I said, and laughed at her surprised expression. She smiled too.

“They also were very supportive about my painting, and apologized for viciously criticizing it.”

“I’m sorry I told them. And that you heard.”

“You were angry,” Dezzie said simply. “And it’s probably better that they knew anyway.” She was quiet for a minute. “It was nice to hear that they do not expect perfection, though. It is unachievable, and sometimes I forget that.

“But I have a bigger problem than our parents,” she said. I waited. “Saber and Mauri. I thought they were my friends. I couldn’t believe that they’d do something to intentionally hurt you.” She picked at a miniscule spot on my comforter, not meeting my eyes. Iago started snoring.

“I don’t know, Dez. Maybe it
was
an accident. Or because they’re mean, or jealous, or for a hundred other reasons we don’t know about.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Why didn’t you tell me they broke the theater?”

She sighed. “Because I wanted to fix it myself,” she said. “And I didn’t want you to think that they were trying to wreck your project. Dad is so scattered, I didn’t think he’d notice. But I’m not very good with glue. Or art in general.”

She needed to know the rest of the story.

“You have to believe me, Dezzie. They’re not your friends.”

She kept her eyes on the floor. “I think I’ve known that for a while, but I wanted you to be wrong,” she said. “Even though that’s not logical.”

“It’s how you felt. And feelings don’t always make sense. That’s why they’re feelings—not thinkings,” I said, hoping she’d smile. Instead, she cocked her head and considered it.

“Wise words, Hamlet.”

I told her what I’d heard earlier that day, and what I thought Saber and Mauri had been up to. The dark clouds filled her eyes as I spoke, but these clouds were bringing a big, dangerous storm.

“So
that’s
all they wanted,” she said, scowling. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised. In my experience, many students are inherently lazy.”

“I have to know,” I said slowly, “what went on with Principal Obin.”

She looked at me, an earnest expression on her face. “I told the truth, Hamlet—that Mauri said it to you. Mauri wanted me to say that you said it to Saber, but I wouldn’t do it. I should have realized then that they were using me.”

Whew. So I guess he
had
believed us.

“I’m sorry, Dez,” I said. “I know you wanted them to be your friends.”

“And they were good at pretending they were,” she said. She became quiet and scratched at my comforter some more. Iago twitched, dreaming of his glory days as a show dog, I’m sure.

“That’s it!” I said.

“What?”

“The pretending. If they could fake being your friend, there’s no reason why you can’t fake being theirs.”

Dezzie shook her head. “But I don’t
want
to be friends with them.”

“Do you think they should get away with this with no consequences?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “But all they want from me is . . .” She trailed off, then started nodding her head.

“You’re getting it, aren’t you?” I said, and gave her a big grin.

“I think so,” she said. “And if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, this is going to be good.”