Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks

  I shift my gaze to my beat-up black Rocket Dogs without the laces.

  “Yours are cooler,” Roger says.

  “Huh?”

  “Your shoes.”

  “My shoes,” I repeat dumbly. My vision blurs.

  “Yeah. Much.”

  The eyelets on my sneakers swim in the sun.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  NOTHING IS MORE TACKY THAN BEING TACKY

  I spend the weekend wondering how Cole could look at me the way he did, and then get up and call Trista “baby” and walk away with her without a backward glance. I don’t get it. I. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

  Anna hovers about shooting plaintive looks, but I ignore her. What does she have to be plaintive about? Is her plaintiveness supposed to be on my behalf, like she feels bad for me that I’m not Cole-worthy? Given that she is Cole-worthy—maybe not Anna herself, but girls like her—her sympathy means little.

  “Do you want to watch Gilmore Girls?” she asks, slipping into my room while I’m lying lumpishly on my bed. “They’re having a marathon.”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to, um, give you a manicure?”

  Oh, sure, like having pretty pink nails is going to make Cole realize what a mistake he’s made. “Thanks for the offer, but no.”

  She sighs. She’s all sad-eyed and beseeching and I’m trying here, can’t you see? “Well . . . do you want to go to the mall?”

  “No, I don’t want to go to the mall. Thank you, but no.” I gaze at the ceiling. “Ask Hawaii, why don’t you? You two can try on clothes and be beautiful together.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” I groan. I’m persecuted by her mere presence.

  “Fine,” she says in a small voice. She lingers in my doorway (is she waiting for me to dismiss her?), then finally turns and leaves. She doesn’t call California, though. She goes to her room and closes her door, and I feel a twinge of shame. It’s not fair to be mad at Anna for being gorgeous. But it’s also not fair that she is gorgeous, and that she lives in the same house with me and reminds me every single minute that I’m not.

  If Trista got a horrible swelling-up disease, now that would be fair. And a flaky scalp—a really flaky scalp. Our Lady of Perpetual Dandruff , people would call her.

  With the whole stupidness of appearance taken out of the equation, Cole would see things differently. He would look past his frickin’ hormones and see me.

  On Monday, Cole gives Trista his leather jacket to wear, because she’s cold. She stays cold all day, even in the cafeteria and the halls, and his beat-up leather jacket looks so wrong and horrible paired with her Ann Taylor skirt and sweet white blouse that I want to puke.

  That afternoon, I sit in the sunporch and drown my sorrows in a Cherry Coke. Only my sorrows refuse to drown. After a while Anna wanders into the room, and I think, Again? Can’t she see that another pretty face is not what I need?

  Obviously not, because she takes a seat in the lime-green armchair that’s a twin to the lime-green armchair I’m in. Between the chairs is a lamp that’s turned on by pulling a gold ball on the end of a gold chain. When Anna was little, she loved pulling that ball. She thinks I don’t remember stuff like that since I’m only one year older, but I do.

  “What’s up?” she says.

  I turn my head and look at her.

  “I’m sorry Cole and Trista are still together,” she says. She hesitates. “Although I think Roger’s better for you, anyway.”

  I can’t believe her. “Did I ask if you thought Roger was better for me? I don’t think I did.”

  She pushes out her next words in a rapid stream. “And I’m sorry I told Dad about your YouTube video.”

  Uh-huh, I think. And here we have it: the real reason for all your unasked-for attention. She couldn’t care less about my pain; she just wants forgiveness for being a crap sister.

  “Didn’t see you handing over your allowance on Saturday,” I say. “Or offering to split it with me, since Dad kept mine because of you.”

  “How is it because of me? You’re the one who made the video. Not me.”

  “But you’re the one who thought it would be fun to rat me out. You wanted me to get yelled at, and I did. So be happy. You won.”

  Her voice goes little-girlie. “You said you would watch TV with me. And make popcorn.”

  “So because I forgot, you punished me? That’s pathetic.”

  She swallows. “You forget about me a lot.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “You do,” she whispers. “Ever since you started hanging out with Vonzelle.”

  I bang down my Coke. “What, you don’t like Vonzelle? What’s wrong with Vonzelle? I love Vonzelle!”

  Anna presses the back of her scalp against the upholstered chair. “There’s nothing wrong with her,” she says as if it’s so much work to get the words out. “She’s fine.”

  “She’s ‘fine’?”

  She swivels her head. “Peyton’s noticed it, too. She’s like, ‘Carly’s too good for us now. Carly just wants to hang out with her new friend.’”

  “That’s absurd,” I say. My heart pounds. “Peyton hangs out with other people. She and Lydia are, like, best buds these days. And you’ve got your own friends.”

  “We used to hang out together, though,” Anna says. “You and me and Peyton. But now it’s like . . .”

  “Like what?”

  Anna’s expression is defensive, as if she knows I’m not going to like what she’s about to say. “Vonzelle was never our friend before. Was never your friend before. But all of a sudden you’ve dumped us for her just because she’s different.” She says it bitterly. “And as everyone knows, being different is all you care about.”

  I’m sweaty all of a sudden. I feel my pulse way down low in my stomach.

  “I can’t believe you,” I say. “Oh my God, Anna, you’re a racist. You.”

  Anna’s flustered. “What?”

  “You think I’m friends with Vonzelle because she’s black? You think she’s . . . my new funky shirt or something?” My skin and cells and blood vessels are freaking out. I’m, like, shaking.

  Is Vonzelle my new funky shirt?

  Anna gapes at me. “I can’t believe you would think that.”

  “I can’t believe you would think that.”

  “I don’t.” She keeps staring at me. “God, Carly.”

  We fall into a standoff. I blink first, but force myself to keep looking at her, and say, “Then what do you mean, ‘different’? How is she different?”

  “She’s different because . . .”

  I lift my eyebrows.

  “Because she makes silly videos,” Anna says. “Because everything either one of you says is so funny, and you get each other’s jokes, and you, like, play off each other. And she’s not a Barbie doll, and she doesn’t care what people think.”

  I blink some more. My breaths come quick.

  “She’s different from me, Carly,” Anna says. “That’s what I meant.”

  My cheeks burn. There’s really no way to make this come out in my favor. “Well . . . fine.”

  She shakes her head like she’s disgusted by me. But she doesn’t get to be disgusted by me. I decide the best strategy is to turn the conversation back to her.

  “Anyway, you’re like that with your friends. You have inside jokes, too.”

  “Not really.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “I don’t because I don’t have any friends. Not the you-and-Vonzelle kind.”

  “What about Oklahoma? Don’t you do stuff with her anymore?”

  She shrugs.

  “Did y’all have a fight?”

  “I’m not mad at her, but she’s mad at me.” She bites her lip, then mumbles something that starts off, “She thinks I . . .” and ends in unintelligible syllables.

  “She thinks you what?”

  Her head lolls back to its center position. She gazes at the ceiling. “She’s j
ealous. I don’t know. It’s all awful and weird.” She’s trying not to cry . . . and the answer of why clicks in my brain.

  “Oh. Georgia’s going out with that guy Kip, right?”

  Anna nods.

  I blow out a breath of air. “And Kip thinks you’re cute, or whatever.”

  Anna doesn’t deny it. She just stares at the ceiling. I study her profile, and my gut clenches, because she gets more beautiful every day. Even with moodiness etched across her features, she’s beautiful.

  I’m jealous, and I’m her big sister, who should be above such things. Of course Idaho is jealous, too.

  “It’s not like I told him to,” Anna says defensively.

  “Duh.”

  “I don’t like him like that. I totally don’t! But apparently Kip made some comment to Georgia . . .” Her sentence trickles off. “Whatever. Who cares. It’s stupid.”

  Knowledge of the world’s suckiness presses in on me like a dense gray mist, and I feel bad for acting like such a jerk. Who’s the crap sister? I’m the crap sister.

  “I hate life,” Anna says to the room in general.

  “No you don’t.”

  “Yeah, I pretty much do.”

  I’m silent for a couple of seconds. Then I say, “All right, fine. I do, too.”

  She half laughs, and the mist lifts. Not a lot, but enough that I can breathe again. How weird to think that you can drown in all the muck inside of you. You can literally drown, unless someone pulls you out.

  “So . . . are you ever going to take it down?” Anna asks. “The video?”

  “No. Dad can fine me all he wants—that doesn’t mean I’m his puppet.”

  She changes positions, unfolding her legs from beneath her and extending one of them toward me. She puts her foot on my lap. “Who made up the lyrics?”

  “Me.”

  She nods, like that’s what she expected. “It’s funny, the parts with the actual singing. Well, the whole thing is funny, but . . .”

  I look at her sharply. She better not say, “ . . . but I feel sorry for Dad” or anything like that.

  She doesn’t. She smiles ruefully.

  We hear Mom’s heels clicking on the floor. Anna drops her foot from my leg, and we both straighten our postures.

  Mom steps into the sunporch, looking fit and stylish in gray pants and a burnt-orange cashmere sweater. “Girls, I’m off to pick up the dry cleaning,” she says. “Tracy will be here if you need anything—she’s upstairs doing the ironing. Oh, and she’ll be babysitting the two of you next weekend, so you know.”

  “Babysitting us?” Anna says, aghast.

  I’m more than aghast. I’m appalled. Why in the world does Mom think we need a babysitter? And just say there’s some legitimate reason, why in the world would she pick Tracy?

  “Your father won tickets to New York on eBay,” Mom explains. “We’ll be gone both Friday and Saturday nights, and you need a grown-up in the house.”

  “No we don’t,” Anna says.

  “And Tracy’s not a grown-up,” I say.

  “She’s twenty-one,” Mom says. “Don’t give me a hard time, girls.” She glances toward the hall and lowers her voice. “Your father is set on going. Two first-class tickets plus accommodations at the Ritz-Carlton—he says it’s too good to pass up.”

  Bleh, I think, because Tracy’s not my favorite. She smokes, for one thing, and for another, she doesn’t seem to like me. I always feel self-conscious around her, like she blames me for living in the nice house she gets paid to clean.

  Then I think, However . . .

  There are pluses to this situation, like, to name the biggest one, no Dad.

  Mom adjusts her purse. “I’ve got to run if I’m going to have dinner on the table when your father gets home. I’ll be back soon.”

  She strides out of the room, and Anna and I regard each other. Her expression suggests that she, too, is considering the weekend’s possibilities.

  “What do you think?” I ask in a low voice.

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “Well . . . I think this is a very big house, and it would be very empty with just you, me, and Tracy rattling around in it.”

  “Hmm,” Anna says.

  “Hmm,” I reply. “We’ll have to consider our options carefully, of course—”

  “Of course.”

  “—but perhaps we could figure out something to keep us from growing too lonely.”

  “A sleepover?” Anna says.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  She smiles, and her eyes brighten, the way they do when we make plans together. I smile back.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  VONZELLE IS NOT A COCKATOO

  People love the “Buckhead Hillbillies” video that Vonzelle, Roger, and I made. Well, that’s not entirely true. Some people love it. Some people hate it. More people than both these groups combined have never seen it, nor ever will. C’est la vie.

  Vonzelle and I share a computer in the media center and check out the latest posts. So far, it’s been viewed 923 times and there are sixty-nine comments. So far.

  An example of a happy comment:

  “THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES” IS MY FAVORITE SHOW OF ALL TIME!!!! BEST. THEME. SONG. EVAH!!!!

  An example of a less happy (and completely wacko) comment:

  --ARE YOU A PEDOPHILE? HAVE YOU NO CONSCIOUS. DO YOU ENJOY MIS-GUIDING THE YOUTH? THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES IS A CLASSIC AND SHOULD NOT BE DEFILED. ANYWAY, WHY IS “TED” CLAMPETT SOMETIMES A GIRL AND SOMETIMES THAT MAN? I AM EAGERLY WAITING YOUR REPLY.

  Vonzelle snorts. “She spelled conscience wrong,” she points out.

  “How do you know she’s a ‘she’?” I ask. “And why does she think we’re pedophiles? What is pedophile-ish about our video?”

  She holds her hands out, palms out. “Because of the Cozy Coupe?”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “She’s right about the double identity of Ted Clampett, though.”

  “He’s a shape-shifter,” I say, not wanting to admit that I’m a little disturbed at the overlap. I wish I’d planned it better. “Girl to man, man to girl.”

  “You better tell Angry Pedophile Woman that. She’s eagerly waiting your reply, you know.”

  “Nuh-uh, she’s eagerly waiting your reply. Maybe you guys can be pen pals.”

  “That would be so great,” Vonzelle says.

  “Maybe she can be one of your bridesmaids when you get married.”

  “Do you think? Seriously? Oh my God, that would rock.”

  I giggle. I love that she plays along with my nonsense so easily. I recall what Anna said yesterday about Vonzelle being “different,” and I blurt, “You know I’m not friends with you because you’re black, right?”

  Whoa. That puts a screaming wrench in the conversation. Vonzelle’s eyebrows go sky high, and she says, “Gee, I’m black? Wow. I hadn’t noticed.”

  Uh-oh. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t think of you as black. I just think of you as Vonzelle.”

  “Then why are you talking about it?”

  She makes a point. I wish I’d kept my mouth shut—only, part of me needs to make sure she knows there isn’t some Vonzelle-as-dashiki thing going on here. Or maybe I need to make sure I know?

  “Carly?” she says in a voice that’s frighteningly patient.

  “Um . . . yes?”

  “I assume you’re friends with me because I’m fabulous, just as I’m friends with you because you’re fabulous.”

  I nod quickly. “That is why I’m friends with you. And I do think you’re fabulous.”

  “I don’t want to be a prop.”

  “You’re not a prop. God.”

  “’Cause if I’m a prop, I’m out of here.”

  “You’re not a prop. I was just worried that you maybe thought I thought you were.”

  She shakes her head as if I have little hope of surviving till adult-hood.

  I surprise myself by taking hold of her hands. I lock
eyes with her and say, “You are fabulous. You are a fabulously fabulous you, and I am a fabulously fabulous me, and we need never talk of it again.”

  She makes an overly earnest expression to match what must be my own overly earnest expression. “Okay. But I thought we’d gotten past that black girl/honky girl foolishness the night we delivered stockings.”

  “Ah. That’s, um, because you’re so much smarter than I am.”

  “True. Can we stop holding hands now?”

  I let go of her abruptly, which makes both of us giggle, and which makes Mrs. Radisson, the media specialist, come over from her desk and shush us.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Radisson,” Vonzelle says as I quickly close out of YouTube and hit escape to bring up the screen saver.

  “The media center is for quiet studying,” Mrs. Radisson warns.

  We nod earnestly.

  “What were you looking at?” she asks, jerking her chin at the Holy Redeemer logo which is floating like dandelion fluff over the screen.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “History research,” Vonzelle says. “The English cockatoo.”

  The English cockatoo?

  Mrs. Radisson narrows her eyes, but I keep a straight face. The English cockatoo. Yes. Excellent research topic.

  “I don’t want to get the two of you in trouble,” Mrs. Radisson says, “but I will write you up if I catch you abusing the computer.”

  Don’t giggle, I tell myself. Don’t you dare.

  Vonzelle presses her thigh against mine.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  She gives us one last look, then strides away.

  “The English cockatoo?!” I whisper.

  “Shut up, computer abuser.” Vonzelle suppresses a laugh. “We are so bad.”

  “Aren’t we? But hey, could be worse. We could be boyfriend stealers like Anna.”

  “What?” she says. “Where did that come from?”

  “Uh . . .” I say, unsure of the answer. After a moment’s reflection, I realize the boyfriend-stealer comment is linked to my Vonzelle-is-black embarrassment. They both stemmed from yesterday’s talk with Anna.

  “Is she a boyfriend stealer?” Vonzelle asks.

  “No. One of her friends told her she is, though.”