Will goes get the fuck out and I ran in to the office even though free period is over and I have to go to calculus. I’ll get a demerit for cutting out but I don’t give a shit. Missy Delaney’s already told half the school by now. At least my mom didn’t give me too much shit about leaving school. She’s all what happened? Did someone hurt you? Let’s talk blah blah blah. No way am I going to talk to her. She’d totally freak out and I’d get a life sentence and besides nothing would change. Will would still be Will and Paul would be Paul and I owe him so much money there’s no way he’d let me out of it. There’s no way out. That’s why sometimes I wish I were dead. That would solve everything. Last night, though, God, it was so weird. I had this dream that I finally got up the courage to tell Mom everything. Like everything. She hugged me like I was a little girl and then she said everything will be okay, I’ll take care of it from here, we’ll move away and you can start over something something something. Oh! I remember! She goes stay here I’ll be right back. I was all like yes! with my fist in the air like a cheerleader. And I’m waiting and waiting for her to come home and tell me what happened. I’m thinking oh, she probably went and got the police—in my dream I’m thinking this. Like she got Will and Paul and all them arrested and they didn’t know who she was so they couldn’t figure out it was me who told on them so it was perfect. But she takes forever to come home—this is in the dream—and when she did I’m still sitting cross-legged on her and Dad’s bed and I’m like well? And she says … I remember this part perfectly … she says was I supposed to do something?
When I woke up this morning I really thought it’d happened. I lay there thinking about it and even when it hit me that it was just a dream I still thought—I still think—that’s exactly what would happen if I told her for real. She’s on another planet. She doesn’t care. I mean, she asks questions but then she says I’m like this problem or whatever so what I’m going to make things worse for myself? They’re already in their own worst-case scenario the way they fight all the time even when they aren’t saying anything out loud they’re totally toxic. That’s what Monica would say. Toxic. And anyway, what happened in the dream is exactly what would happen—she’d totally forget about me and it’d be oh, was I supposed to do something?
So last week they sent letters from school saying now there’s a suggested dress code and it basically means I have nothing to wear. Everything they put in the inappropriate column is hanging in my closet. From now on, no T-shirts with any words on them, nothing ripped or torn, no black, blah blah blah. It’s like they singled me out and you know what fuck them. It’s not like they can make me. I don’t give a shit what they want me to wear. It’s so retarded: like what we wear is going to change what we are inside or what we think. Like if we wear these perfect cookie-cutter clothes we’ll lead perfect cookie-cutter lives and think perfect cookie-cutter thoughts. What a freaking joke. Mrs. Flanders from down the street is off her ass drunk every day. Mr. Murphy is an online-porn addict—Billy told us he went to use his dad’s computer because he was too lazy to go upstairs to use his own and he finds all these sites and does some digging and it turns out his father has subscriptions to like fifty porno sites. Billy says it explains why his father’s such a jerk-off. Everyone laughed but me. That’s what they want us to be, little suburban cookie cutters with pretty lawns and perfect little houses and smiles and tea parties. But everyone has freak-ass problems.
Samantha and Bob sat me down for a family forum only the boys weren’t there so they might as well have stamped THIS IS ABOUT YOU AGAIN, CAMERON on their foreheads. On the mantel is an old picture of us at Disneyland with the boys in matching Mickey Mouse-ears hats. You’d think this was the best family trip ever. Every time I look at that picture I think it’s so weird you can’t tell I just barfed after riding Space Mountain and the boys were crying they were so scared in Pirates of the Caribbean and Mom and Dad—Samantha and Bob—had just gotten into a fight about funnel cake or something. But there’s the picture in a pretty silver frame with the word family engraved on the bottom, front and center above the fireplace that only looks like a fireplace. Well, it is one but you just turn a switch to get it going, you don’t have to do any Girl Scout work with the sticks and the paper and the dry wood. It’s all fake.
Mom and Dad sat down across from me and talked about how this is actually a good thing, how this means we’ll get to go shopping for new clothes, Samantha said. She smiles so brightly at me sometimes I want to punch myself, I feel like such a jerk. I really try not to be a fuckup. At least I used to try. But I end up screwing everything up anyway. All I want is to wake up out of this stupor of a life.
I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen. Something that’ll get me away from these wide mouths opening to show teeth, twisting up like oooooh aren’t we lucky we’re alive? Mom Samantha whatever said we’ll make this a mother-daughter outing we could have lunch and go to the mall and then she’s talking about the Cheesecake Factory like I’m five and I still like that place. You used to love the beeper they give you when you’re waiting, remember? Remember how the hostess would have to trick you into giving it back to her … honey, what’d they give her? Oh, yeah, it was just a mint but you thought it was so cool to have candy before dinner. Remember? Bob goes I don’t remember that and Samantha says you were never there and Bob blew air out of his mouth and rolled his eyes like he’d heard that a million times. That’s like all he does now. He looks like he’s condemned like how the warden yells dead man walking when the guy’s going to the electric chair. We watched that movie in civics class last spring. Dead Man Walking. After that’s when they started saying “dead girl walking” whenever I walk down the hall in between classes. So retarded. Like oh, yeah I get it I have a paleface like a dead person ha ha ha you’re so original.
My punishment for not conforming to what they think I should wear is I’ve got to go to the mall with my mother. Fine but I’m not going into the fucking Gap. And you can kiss that Abercrombie shit goodbye, too.
So that’s number one. Number two is bigger and worse. I got nailed for cutting class. I can’t believe it. Mr. Keesler is practically in a coma he’s so sleepy during class. He never glances around the room so how he knows I’ve been missing is beyond me. I’ve been getting a good grade in trig anyway so what’s his friggin’ problem. I’ve got to come up with a plan, though, because I can’t let things fall apart now. I’m so close. Any day now the letter will come. I’ll find her. Zoey Nickerson from down the street is home from college because she got mono and gained like twenty pounds so she’s around during the day and I’m going over there in a little while to ask her if she can pinch-hit for me. The trouble is she tells on people. She used to babysit us when she was in high school and she was the worst of all of our babysitters. She made us go to bed exactly when our parents said to. Marly from two blocks over always let us stay up late and watch TV on school nights as long as we didn’t tell that her boyfriend came over. They made out right in front of us all the time. Anyway, if I got in a fight with the boys Zoey’d say things like “I’m going to have to separate you three” and even the boys were disgusted I think. They were pretty young but still. Then she’d tell on us when my parents got home, like that was going to get her more money or something. Once I heard them laughing at her after she left and I thought it was cool I had parents who thought the same way about the babysitter I did. That was back when I was eight or something. Maybe ten or eleven.
So now I’ve got to think of something legit that will get Zoey to stop by every day because I can’t cut out to do it anymore. Come to think of it, the mailman goes to the Nickersons’ house before ours so maybe I could work it so she wouldn’t have to come over. But the mail is a federal thing and I don’t know if they’d let her take someone else’s mail. Shit. I’ve got to think this through. I don’t understand why it’s taking them this long anyway … the letter should’ve been here by now. I could put a three-day hold on the mail and that’d buy me thr
ee days before having to go to Zoey. She’s just the kind of girl who’d blackmail me over it so I really don’t want to have to ask her.
Ricky can’t do it, which pisses me off because it was his idea to contact the adoption agency in the first place. He’s the private investigator one. I’m better at following his orders but now he’s in his own private hell because his mom made him take out his nose ring and the hole got infected and she bought him all these preppy Easter egg-colored shirts and he has to wear them because she’s best friends with one of our teachers and they’d tell on him for sure. So I guess I can’t blame him for being upset. But where does that leave me? If the letter comes and Samantha gets it I’m up the creek. It could go two ways: one, she keeps it and never says a word about it so I’m screwed and I’ll never know. Two, she and Bob get all freaked out and sad and they’ll be all don’t you love us enough and she’ll be all you’re lucky you have a mother … you can’t even imagine what it’s like to grow up without a mother. She’ll cry and talk about her mom and I’ll be the shitty daughter who makes her mother miserable. What else is new.
Samantha
At least the kids don’t know how bad things have gotten between Bob and me. You can say a lot about our marriage but we’re both good parents. I’ve always thought it’s better to keep the fights away from where the kids can pick up on them—what good does it do to have it out in front of them? So at least we’ve got that going for us.
There was this horse I rode on a family trip we took last year. The Grand Canyon. What a bust that trip was. The boys fought over Game Boy the whole time (Jamie forgot to bring his and Andrew refused to let him take turns). Cammy complained nonstop: why wasn’t there any cell service in the area (in the Grand Canyon? I asked. You’ve got to be kidding me) and why couldn’t we have gone to the Bahamas where all her other friends were going. Of course these are the friends she dropped when Monica Carter came to town, but I didn’t point that out. Bob complained about how it cost two hundred dollars for two hours on horseback along the outer ridge even though we’re a family of five and no family activity’s ever cheap. I argued it was a bargain but he moped anyway, just like the kids. My horse’s name was Lightning and I took him because if he lived up to his name I wanted to be the one with the broken back instead of one of the kids.
Turns out Lightning was anything but. He trudged along the beaten-down trail, following inches behind Flossie, Andrew’s horse, without once looking up. His air of resignation was so complete that I hated every minute of the ride and gave him extra sugar cubes the guide handed out at the end of the ride. The tickle of the weary velvet nose nibbling on the palm of my hand broke my heart. Call me crazy but I remember looking into Lightning’s eye and feeling that click, that flicker of recognition, pass between us and I looked away and said “let’s go” to everyone. Andrew beat a path to the rental car, shouting it was Jamie’s turn to sit in the middle, and Cammy sighed a disgusted sigh and not one of us thanked Bob for forking over the two hundred dollars.
I think of Lightning from time to time, when I’m standing in line at the grocery store stepping in front of the cashier where the person before had just stood. Pushing the loaded cart to my car. I think of Lightning as I inch my car forward in the line to pick up the kids from school. I imagine the car in front of me is Flossie. We’re all on this trail we’ve walked so many times there are grooves in the ground. We could do it in our sleep.
Tuesday is soccer practice and I have just enough time to get the car washed after dropping Andrew off at the lakefront. The car-wash guy motions me forward to tighten up the gap between me and the dirty Mercedes in front of me. He’s too quick with the snake-cord vacuum and I know I’ll find crunched-up leaves or crumbs on the mats. I turn off the radio. In the rearview mirror I watch the antenna fold into itself. Then I inspect my face. I’ve got to remember to pick up that cream Lynn says works on dark circles. I’m reapplying lipstick in the rearview window when the guy knocks on my window.
“Tires done this time?”
“Yes, please.”
“Wax?”
“Yes.”
The guy passes my receipt through my window like he does every Tuesday. I line my tires up to the rails and shift into Neutral. The car knows what to do from here. Like Lightning did. The plastic strips slap suds on the hood. The buffers move out along the sides of the car. The whole operation feels like one of the boys’ Transformers, the way everything moves out, does the job and tucks back into place as if nothing happened in this tunnel. The air blower pushes drops of water off. I pay at the end and drive away with the windows up so they won’t streak. I am behind two other gleaming cars at the exit. We are all moving along slowly, as if the air alone will dirty us up. One by one we follow the trail of the driveway to the road.
“Honey, kick the mud off your cleats before you get in, I just got the car washed.”
Jamie does but Andrew is incapable of getting mud off of anything and anyway it takes two seconds for the inside of the car to smell like hormonal, sweaty, preteen boy.
“Hey, Mom? Can Ryan come over for dinner?”
“It’s a school night,” I say.
“I know I know I know but we’ll do homework and his mom says she can pick him up whenever we want.”
Kerry Kendricks knocks on the window and I have to lower it after all. “They just sprung this on me, too,” she says. “We can do it another night if you’d like.”
“Oh no no, it’s okay,” I say as the boys yessss and bump fists in the backseat. “We’re getting pizza so it’s no big deal.”
At home I make Jamie sit and finish his homework which is like trying to put Scotch tape on a dam leak, he’s so fidgety, barely able to stay in his seat at the kitchen table, turning to watch Ryan toss an imaginary baseball to Andrew who swings an imaginary bat while they whine for him to just get it over with come on let’s go come on hurry up. When he erases the seven he put in the blank after “4+2+2=“ and scribbles a sloppy figure eight, he leaps up and the three of them tear out of the house so fast I practically see cartoon speed lines. I hunt for the cordless phone that’s never in its charger so I can make the phone calls I’ve put off all week. I’m always relieved to get answering machines for calls like these: a reminder to Adrina Ibrahim to bring Gatorade and pop for the class picnic; a call to Max, the stay-at-home dad, to ask where the next away game is; I’m three for three with answering machines with a message to Sally Flanders to find out the name of the gluten-free cookie company she’d raved about recently. This way I can throw out the TIME Magazine story about how too much gluten affects kids’ learning and concentration, even if they’re not allergic to it. Let’s see … what else can I get rid of? A discount flyer for a now not-so-new yoga studio I swore I’d try out—gone. Adrina’s recipe for butternut squash—let’s face it, I’ll never get around to it—gone. I’m skimming something I cut out of O Magazine when I hear Bob coming in. He closes the door hard. A slam. Like an announcement. Like I should line the kids up tallest to smallest.
“What’s for dinner?” he asks, looking in the fridge, still holding his battered multi-pocket soft leather briefcase.
“Pizza. And I’m making a salad.” I’m still sifting through my pile. “Did you ever call John back? He left a message about golf a while ago.”
“Oh, yeah, pizza Tuesday,” he says. “I’m going up to change.”
“Can I throw this note out to call John?”
“I don’t care,” he says. He scans the Sports section before tucking it under his arm.
“Well, did you call him or not?” “I called him, I called him.”
“Cammy’s going to hit you up to be able to go over to Zoey’s house, of all places,” I tell him. “What’s wrong with that?”
“She’s grounded, remember? Jesus. And when was the last time she went over to Zoey’s?” “Good to see you, too,” he says. “Nice tone.”
“Nice way to greet your husband,” he says. “Your first words were what??
?s for dinner so I wouldn’t talk. Do you want sausage on your side of the pizza?” I ask.
“I guess,” he says, glancing at the stack of mail. “Holy shit, how many more catalogs can we get?”
“You said a swear, Dad.” Andrew appears behind both of us. “Twenty-five cents. Mom, can we play Nintendo?”
Bob’s standing at the fridge, I can feel the cold air at my back. “Twelve ninety-nine for a pint of chicken salad?” “It’s organic,” I say. I make a note to follow up with Sally on those cookies before I stop at Whole Foods again tomorrow. It takes two or three calls to hear back from her. “It’s bullshit.”
“Swearword! Twenty-five cents!” Jamie calls out. “No way,” Andrew turns on him, “I hit you to show you he swore. It’s my twenty-five cents. I heard it first.” “Yeah, but you didn’t call it.”
“Boys, cool it,” I say. Oh, I have to pick up the cleaning. Another note to self.
“He didn’t call it,” Jamie pleads his case to me.
Bob’s picking up containers looking at bar codes and prices.
“Five ninety-nine for strawberries? Jesus, Sam.”
“Swearword!” they call out at the same time. Now they’re listening to every word, waiting for the next quarter.
Ryan twists his arm around so he can pick a scab on his elbow while he asks the boys, “Why do you call it when you hear swears?”