Vibes (4 page)

Tonight, though, my usual lineup doesn't feel quite distracting enough. I keep thinking about the new kid, Mallory. I like his attitude. He gets kicked out of schools but he doesn't seem to care about that. I think it's kind of cool that he smokes. Maybe I should try it. It would certainly suit my subversive persona. Plus it would kill Mom. She tells me at least once a week about some patient of hers who smokes, and how
if only he wasn't a smoker,
he might have made it out of post-op without getting pneumonia. Mom hates smoking.

Maybe tomorrow Mallory will bum me a cigarette.

Minnie sits on my lap purring contentedly, and I feel warm and snuggly with her. I run my fingers through her feathery neck hair, which puffs out the more I touch it. Minnie is the most beautiful cat I've ever seen. She has long white hair like a Persian, and her face is as slender as the face of a lioness. Her nose is black, which looks really pretty with her white fur, and her topaz yellow eyes sparkle.

I could fall asleep on the couch right here, but I don't want to be in the living room when Mom gets home. She's got a heart-to-heart in mind, and if I can avoid her long enough I might be able to squirm my way out of it. Besides, it would be fatal if she found me on the couch with Minnie.

I scoot Minnie into my room and close the door, then go back to the living room to fold up my pizza box until it's quite tiny. There's not enough garbage to hide it in the kitchen trash, so I have to take it out to the garage.

It's cold in the garage, enough that I can see my breath, even in the dark. It always smells like motor oil and cement in here, and I wrinkle my nose because the smell reminds me of Dad and I don't like being reminded. I try not to look at his workbench, but I can't help it.

The jewelry box he started making for me is still sitting on the shelf above his toolbox. He started it four years ago. I used to love watching him work. He'd get a single bead of sweat between his eyebrows when he cut the pieces with his table saw, and he had a way of sticking his tongue in the corner of his mouth when he was fitting together two pieces of wood. The box was supposed to be my birthday gift when I turned eleven, but he stopped working on it when the lid warped. It doesn't close completely. He said he needed to take the hinges off and plane it down, but Dad's planer needed sharpening, and there was only one place that could do it right, and they were never open when Dad had time off, so my jewelry box just ended up sitting there waiting to be finished. After a few months Dad seemed to forget all about it, but I never did.

I jump when the garage door whirs to life. A thin line of light appears at the bottom, and I can hear the hum of our ancient Volvo. Mom's home. I leap inside, sprint to my room, and lock the door. As I swan dive under the covers, I barely miss Minnie, who has curled up in the folds of my comforter. I bury my face in my pillow and hold my breath so I can listen.

The door to the garage opens and closes. Her keys clang in the bowl she keeps on the table in the hallway. I hear her sigh, and she calls, "Kristi! Come on, let's talk!"

I pretend to be asleep.

I hear a pleased "Oh!" and I realize that she has found the leftover Zen Palace on the coffee table and has probably begun to eat it. Little does she know that it has been thoroughly licked and chewed by a housecat. Gross. I should stop her, but what would I say? "Don't eat that"? "Because I said so"? After a while I hear her heavy footsteps coming down the hallway to my room.

She raps on my door, and Minnie tenses against my leg. I expected Mom to knock, but it still startles me. "Come on! Let's go!" Her mental vibes feel less defeated than usual. In fact, there's a weird quality to her thoughts that I can't identify, and it makes me curious.

"I'm trying to sleep!" I yell at her. "Tell me through the door!"

"I saw you running out of the garage. Get out here." I hear her thinking,
Why is it always a fight?

"Jesus, Mom. If you had regular hours like other parents..." Guilt usually works with her. She's half Jewish, half Greek Orthodox. It's a lethal mix.

Her thoughts twinge with a brief
It's not my fault I have to work so hard,
but she says firmly, "That's what I want to talk about—move it," before stomping down the hallway and into the living room.

I hate talking to my mother. I hate it more than I hate any other part of the day. We always end up fighting because she has no sense of humor at all and she never listens to me.

I tromp down the hallway as loudly as possible. Mom's parked on the couch, one thick leg resting on the glass coffee table as she roots through the Zen Palace container for the pieces of tofu Minnie so lovingly licked and gnawed moments ago. She takes big bites so that her lips have to poof out, which makes her look kind of funny. She's already taken her hair out of the bun she always wears. There's a line from her surgical cap still on her forehead and another line across her nose from her mask. She must have just come from surgery, but her scrubs are clean, so I guess she changed at the hospital, which probably means there was a lot of blood. When I sit on the chair opposite her she raises one arched eyebrow at me. Dad always said she had the eyes of Bette Davis and the lips of Sophia Loren. That was a long time ago, before she started making him feel so small. "Nice of you to put in an appearance," she says through a mouthful of brown rice.

I fold my arms over my chest. "Well? What?"

"No 'How was your day, Mom?' No 'Gee, thanks for bringing me into the world'? All I get is a 'Well? What?'"

"How was your day?"

"Miserable and bloody. How was yours?"

"Splendid. I learned oh so much at 'school.'" I make the quotation marks with my fingers.

She's quiet. This is an old argument. She makes me go to bogus Journeys because she thinks that will help me get into a decent college.

"Kristi, I got some great news yesterday, and I wanted to tell you this morning, but you ran out before I could." She registers the look of relative indifference on my face and adds: "It's great for both of us." She smiles into the Zen Palace carton as she extracts a broccoli floret and pops it into her mouth. She chews, all satisfied as she thinks,
Finally she won't have a reason to be so nasty.
With a full mouth she says, "I got promoted. I'm chief of surgery now." She beams, expecting me to make the connection to how this is great news for me.

"And?"

"Congratulations, Mom," she drones at me.

"Congratulations, Mom," I drone, but then I feel guilty about droning, so I lean over to give her an awkward pat on the shoulder. "Good job."

"This means we'll have more money and I'll have my pick of surgeries. I can arrange my schedule the way I like, so I'll be home for you more."

"For me?"

She nods, smiling with teeth that are almost too big, totally ignoring the crestfallen look on my face.

In a flash I see what this means. No more evenings on the couch with Minnie. No more pizzas. No more news-program nights. I'm going to have to spend time concealing my contempt, which takes a lot of energy because I have a lot of contempt. I sit in silence, absorbing this devastating turn of events, while Mom nibbles on a piece of tofu that has clearly, clearly been chewed thoroughly by my cat and then spit out. I'm so disturbed by what she has told me that I almost miss Mom's first Minnie-related, lung-racking sneeze.

"Ack!" she cries. "I was fine all day!" She pulls her anti-histamines out of her pocket and pops one, washing it down with a swill of all-natural root beer.

I feel bad that I let her eat Minnie's leftovers until I hear her thinking,
Chief of surgery! I finally made it.

She's acting like this promotion is about spending more time with me, but I know the truth. It's all about her ambition.

Why does she have to pretend like that?

The next Monday at school I can tell Brian has something very special for us at Morning Meeting, because he is standing in the middle of the circle of students beaming at us in a particularly maniacal way. He has on a tunic from India with a line of elephants along the bottom and loose-fitting linen pants with Birkenstocks. His thin, longish hair is pulled into a tiny ponytail at the back of his head, and his face is shiny with grease. He's holding some papers tightly in his hand and slowly turning around and around, waiting for us to focus. I'm standing with my arms folded as Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni blare the death scene of
La bohème
in my ears. I feel a tap on my shoulder. I expect Jacob Flax but smile when I see Mallory standing behind me. He has on all white again except for the green pot leaf on his T-shirt. White must be a thing with him.

"Hey," I say. I take off one of my earphones so that I can hear Pavarotti and Mallory at the same time.

"Cool outfit."

He's referring to the skirt I made out of a torn awning from a dumpster behind a lawn and garden store and the shredded office shirt that I made from one of the many pieces of clothing my wayward father left behind. "Thanks."

"Where do you shop?"

"Trash cans, mostly," I say.

I can hear him thinking,
Cool.

Brian starts clapping at all of us, pretending to applaud when really he's just trying to get our attention. Gusty Peterson starts clapping, too, and because everyone wants to be just like him, all the other students start clapping. Pretty soon the entire activity center is filled with an ear-crashing ovation. Sam Juarez starts catcalling and pumping his fist in the air, and then Jacob Flax jumps up and down for joy. I shoot a glance at Mallory, who is staring at the show with his mouth open. His eyes slide over to me. "Did everyone drop acid before I got here?"

"We're just excited because the mother ship is landing today."

"Oh good, I love a mass suicide." He grins that wicked grin that makes me a little nervous and a little happy because finally there's someone in my school as dark and twisted as I am.

Finally the room settles down and Brian smiles warmly. "Welcome to Journeys! How is everyone?" he asks, and then for some crazy reason he pauses as if expecting an answer.

Mallory shouts, "I'm a little hung-over."

Everyone laughs.

Brian raises one eyebrow, but his insane smile is undiminished. "I have a special treat for everyone. Jacob Flax's self-improvement project inspired me." Jacob, who is standing by the vending machines, swells with pride. "So I thought I'd institute a new character education unit."

Everyone groans. Jacob's face falls and he looks around the room nervously.

Brian holds up the papers in his hand. "The faculty worked hard last night on this project, and I really think that once you understand what it's about, you're really going to love it." He strolls over to the bulletin boards on the wall and tacks up the papers. "Each of you has been assigned a peer partner, and together you're going to work on building your characters."

Mallory utters a tiny groan that reminds me of Minnie Mouse complaining when her litter box is full of turds. It captures my sentiment perfectly.

"You will be given a series of questionnaires and projects to complete together throughout the term. The faculty has made suggestions, posted here, for who you should work with this year. If you want to change partners, clear your choice with someone on the faculty committee. There are a few rules, however. You must work with someone you don't know well. You cannot work with someone in your own grade. You must work with someone who's in the same free period as you. And finally, you should work with someone of a different gender."

I look around the room. All the students look as if Brian has just announced that we're being shipped off to concentration camps.

I put both my headphones on and turn up the volume of
la bohème's
final moments on earth. Mirella Freni hacks up a lung while Pavarotti wails out a gorgeously deafening lament. It's great music for watching everyone mill around like automatons, getting their assignments and finding their partners. Opera is the perfect soundtrack for the tragedy of modern life.

I manage not to talk to anyone until lunch, but of course, Jacob is the one to break my winning streak.

"Are you excited about the character education project, Kristi?" Jacob asks me in the lunch line. A tiny glob of his spit careens through the air, barely missing the Norwegian smoked salmon and cold potato wraps on my plate. His eyes fall onto my breasts and I catch a mental glimpse of me taking a bubble bath in the middle of a poppy field. "I'm working with Ebony Roosevelt," he says. "I hope she doesn't want to change partners."

"Just try not to spit on her."

"Right," he says. "Are you psyched about your partner?"

"I'm not working with anyone," I say, because I don't intend to. They can flunk me if they want to, but I consider my character ready-made.

He cocks his head sympathetically. "So Gusty Peterson didn't want to work with you, huh?"

I freeze. I had no idea I'd been assigned to Gusty. He makes me a little nervous, sure, but all beautiful people make me nervous. Their unfair power over the rest of us mere mortals is daunting, but that doesn't mean I
want
them or
lust
after them or anything. It just means that I don't trust them to use their beauty for good rather than evil. And like most beautiful people, Gusty Peterson is a mentally stunted egotistical poser.

And he's my character education partner? Jesus. What will I wear?

I'm staring in shock at Jacob until I hear, "Keep the line moving!" The spunky little freshman snarls as she doles out another cold potato wrap. Her hair is crammed into short pigtails, and she has a huge zit on her perky little nose. "I don't have all day," she says to me.

"Norwegian cuisine is awesome!" I say, and give her a super-enthusiastic thumbs-up. "Are you serving endangered whale next? Yum!"

"Wouldn't eating whale make you a cannibal?" She sneers at my big hips.

"You should really harpoon that zit on your nose," I tell her before moving on.

"Good one, Kristi," Jacob says, tripping after me. "So I joined Pumps and Rips yesterday. You should see some of the guys in there! I mean, they're like Arnold Schwarzenegger or something. I felt a little feeble when I got there last night, but then one of the guys was super nice to me and showed me how to work the nautilus machine. And did you notice my hair?" He runs his fingers clumsily through his bangs as we sit down.