Part 5 (2/2)

I opened my notebook and didn't look up when I heard their voices entering the room. I wasn't ready to look at anyone. My eyes and my heart felt thick and swollen. Paul Nepovicz was sitting in front of me, and I stared at the back of his s.h.i.+rt It was paisley, in psychedelic rainbow colors. It must have put me into some sort of a hypnotic state because suddenly Linda Sabotnik was pa.s.sing a note to my desk that said, ”Do you like Paul N.?” I considered this for a second, then looked at her as if to say. Are you nuts? She pointed to my notebook. I saw that I had copied his whole paisley s.h.i.+rt. I wrote, ”No, just his s.h.i.+rt,” on the note and pa.s.sed it back. Linda pa.s.sed another note that said, ”Where were you last period?” I wrote back, ”Nurse's office. Bad hay fever.” I looked back at my notebook page. Besides Paul Nepovicz's s.h.i.+rt, neck, and ears, there were the words cell division and superst.i.tion, but I had no idea what Mr. Zianetti had talked about. I wrote, ”Can I copy your notes?” and pa.s.sed it to Linda.

I didn't have a plan. I was just putting one foot in front of the other. I moved like the wrong end of a magnet through the iron filings of the day, repelling contact. I could feel Maureen's questioning glances. I could sense Glenna's satisfaction. She was so sure I was out of the picture that she came over and, in a voice that almost sounded friendly, asked me if I was going to lunch. As if you cared, I thought.

”I can't,” I lied. ”I have a doctor's appointment.”

”Are you sick?” she asked with fake sympathy.

Only of you, popped spitefully into my mind. But aloud I said, ”Just hay fever. Allergies.”

”I didn't know you had allergies,” she said.

”Neither did I,” I said. ”But I'm starting to think I might.”

I wanted Maureen to come to her senses and say, ”You, Debbie, are my best and truest friend. I'm so sorry, Glenna, but you will have to go back to the pond sc.u.m where you belong.”

She didn't. She didn't say anything like that.

I started to understand that she wasn't going to. Ever. I was adrift. I wondered what I had done wrong. What was wrong with me. Why my friend had left. All by herself. I wanted to ask her why. I wanted to ask. How? But something I had thought was solid was just gone. It had dissolved, and I couldn't bring myself to ask anymore.

I walked to school by myself. I was starting to get used to it when one day a voice called out to me from behind, ”Hey. Debbie. Wait up.” I turned around. It was Marie Prbyczka. I waited for her to catch up.

”Don't you hang out with Maureen no more?” she asked. ”Did you'ns have a fight or something?”

”No, we're still friends,” I said. This wasn't exactly true, but I still didn't feel like saying so.

”I thought you guys were like this.” She crossed her fingers, like for good luck or telling a fib. ”Me and Don used to say to each other, 'Oh, look, here comes the Bobbsey Twins.”

Part of me was proud, but another part was embarra.s.sed and sent blood rus.h.i.+ng to my face and ears. This must be some evolutionary survival mechanism, but I can't imagine how it worked. I also can't imagine Marie reading The Bobbsey Twins. Probably she just knew the tide. I was surprised they had even paid any attention to us.

”Where's Don?” I asked her. ”Doesn't he usually give you a ride?”

”That jagoff,” she said. ”He has some new girlfriend. Some chick from Hesmont. I told him, 'If you're calling her up, don't bother calling me up no more.” She didn't seem to be heartbroken. She didn't even seem to be concerned.

”Do you miss him?” I asked.

Marie laughed. ”I miss getting a ride to school,” she said.

Marie was all right to walk with. She talked a lot, so I didn't have to. She told me about Jerome and Anthony, the oldest of her little brothers, who were always stealing her cigarettes and then almost setting the house on fire. She told me stories about the weekend dances at the Hesarena. The stories always had cigarettes, beer, cars with a lot of people packed in, and fights. Sometimes the police. I wondered what it would be like to go there. Marie talked as if I would be doing that, any day now. I sort of hoped that I wouldn't be. I sort of hoped some other option might come along.

One day Marie told me that her dad had girlfriends besides her mother, that they both drank too much sometimes and then they had arguments where they threw things. The gold grapes flying though the air, the lamp with the figurines.

”At each other?” I asked her.

”No,” Marie said. ”Just across the room or at the wall or something. Just to make some noise.”

I looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, out from under her long bangs, out from behind her beige makeup that ended like a mask at her chin and the sides of her face. Her eyes were watery. Then she turned to me. She peered out through the mascara and said, ”I bet that don't happen at your house.'

”No,” I said. I couldn't even imagine it.

Marie sighed. ”My dad is such a jagoff,” she said. ”I can't wait till I'm eighteen.”

It turned out that Bobby Prbyczka was in Mom's cla.s.s at school in September. And in October and November, of course, until the Prbyczkas drove off into nowhere in their big, s.h.i.+ny car. A few weeks into school Bobby started showing up in clothes that didn't seem to have been washed lately. Then they were the same clothes day after day.

”I feel sorry for him,” Mom said. ”He actually smells, and the other kids don't want to be around him.”

She gave Bobby a bag, and she told him to put his dirty clothes into it and bring it over to our house. She washed them, folded them, and ironed the s.h.i.+rts and pants. Some things she even, mended. At school one day she had Bobby stay inside for recess, and she helped him to wash himself. In minutes the water in the sink was a dark gray.

”Good Lord, Bobby,” she said, ”when was the last time you took a bath?”

”I think we're out of soap,” he said. ”And anyways, my dad don't make us take baths.”

”Oh, he doesn't, does he? Well, what about your mother? What does she say about that?”

”She don't say nothing. She ain't there.”

This stopped my mom in her tracks. But not for long. ”Where is she?” she asked Bobby.

It turned out that the Prbyczkas were separated. Mr. P. said it was his d.a.m.n house and he wasn't going to move out, so Mrs. P. was staying with her sister for now, until she could find a place where there was room for the kids.

Mom started packing Bobby a lunch, and she made him eat half of it before school started. She made him brush his teeth. ”I can't feed the whole family,” she said, ”but it's hard to teach when you can hear someone's stomach growling.”

One day Mom opened Bobby's laundry bag and pulled out four or five s.h.i.+rts. Men's s.h.i.+rts. ”Well, if he thinks I'm going to do his laundry,” she said, and she stuffed them back in the bag.

When I asked Marie if it was true, she rolled her eyes casually and said, ”Yeah, her and my dad had a fight. So what else is new? They think they're Liz and Richard. She'll stay at my aunt Renees for a couple weeks. Then my dad will show up there with flowers or something, and she'll come back.”

She stopped walking, put a finger to her lips, and narrowed her eyes. Then she brightened a little and said, ”Huh. It's lasting longer than usual this time. Maybe they really will split up.”

eight.

I WROTE A STORY FOR ENGLISH CLa.s.s IN WHICH ALL THE AMIN characters died horrible deaths. At the same time I was writing an extremely optimistic story for science cla.s.s that was a lot of work because it had to use three scientific facts as plot elements, and it had to be sort of technically accurate.

By the time I got to the English one, which was supposed to have a tragic hero with a ”fatal flaw,” I had to hurry. I went for broken hearts, fatal diseases, car accidents, and poisonings. And a drowning. The fatal flaw of my heroine was forgetfulness. She kept forgetting to return phone calls, look both ways, label containers correctly, etc. She forgot to bring the life jackets. Finally, she forgot to bring food on a camping trip, and she starved, alone and forgotten (Irony. Also poetic justice) in the wilderness. I knew it wasn't a great story, I was tust trying to show that I got the point: Fatal flaw Tragedy.

It took me by surprise when Miss Epier leaned over my desk a few days later and asked me to come back to the cla.s.sroom after school. ”l.u.s.t for a few minutes,” she said ”I want to talk to you about your paper.”

”Oh. Sure,” I said. But before I could read her expression or ask any questions, she was off on the other side of the room. The bell rang, the cla.s.s swarmed up in a mob between us, and I decided I could wait to find out what she wanted. Probably I had been just too quick and sloppy. Then I had another idea: Maybe my story was good, really good. Maybe she wanted to send it off somewhere.

When I got there. Miss Epler was at her desk, reading I chose a nearby desk and waited. Miss Epler looked up and smiled her V-shaped, peach-colored smile. ”Hey, Debbie,” she said.

This seemed like a good start.

I smiled too. and said, ”Hi.”

”So, how are things going for you?” she asked casually.

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