He muscled out a red spot on the wall. “After you and Nat left, we had a little food fight. See that yellow by the window? That’s mustard. This is ketchup, obviously.”
“What’s the green?”
“Relish. But I don’t about the brown stuff.”
“Chocolate pudding,” I said. “From the craving Ma had at Easter, remember?”
“That’s right. I forgot.”
I took an orange soda out of the fridge. “How was the game?”
He started on a huge ketchup stain. “We got robbed. The freaking roofers paid off the umpire. What do you expect? I had a couple good hits, though. Sent one out of the park.”
“Good for you.”
I took a long drink. The only sound in the house was the wet brush on the wall. The wallpaper was coming off and the drywall was dissolving, but the stain was still there.
“TJ called,” Dad said.
“I’m not talking to him.”
“How come?”
“He stood me up last night.”
“Then who were you out with last night?”
“Moira O’Malley. At the park.”
“You got drunk at the park without your boyfriend there to protect you?” Dad stopped scrubbing and stared at me. “That was stupid, Ashley Marie. Stupid and dangerous. You coulda got in all kinds of trouble.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “I won’t do it again.”
“Better not.” He picked soggy bits of wallpaper from the brush. “And you should cut TJ some slack.”
“I’ll think about it. Where is Ma?”
“She’s, ah, spending the night at Linny’s.”
“Why?” I put down the soda. “She’s not in labor, is she?”
“No such luck.” A piece of wallpaper slid down the wall. “Damn.”
“So why is she at Aunt Linny’s?”
He tossed the scrub brush in the bowl. Water sloshed over the side and dripped on the floor. Dad pulled out a chair and sat down across from me. “She’s a little irritated, with, um . . .”
“She’s pissed because you guys totally trashed the kitchen.”
“You could say that.”
“Ma went nuclear.”
“Pretty much, yeah. She went to Linny’s to cool down. It might take a few days.”
I pushed my soda across to him. He chugged it and tossed the can in the trash.
“Sucks to be you.”
He got up, opened the utensil drawer, and pulled out all the big spoons. “I’m sorry, princess.”
“Why? It’s not my kitchen.”
He took a spatula out of the drawer and dumped the spoons back in. “Not about this, about your bedroom.”
“They trashed my room, too?”
He held up the spatula. The handle was bent. “No, your new room. Downstairs. Fixing this is going to take a while.”
“Fixing that spatula?”
“No. The kitchen.” He used the spatula to scrape off a piece of wallpaper. “When I’m done stripping this, I’m going to give it a coat of primer and then paint it. Then I’ll have to do the rest of the kitchen so it matches, or your mother will have my head on a platter. Your room ain’t gonna be done before the baby shows up. That’s what I’m sorry for.”
“Don’t worry about it. I was thinking maybe I could look for an apartment or something.”
He snorted. “That’s a good one, Ash. You, out on your own.” He pulled the trash can closer. “You feel like helping me get this paper off?”
“Not really.”
“So that means you’ll get your brothers ready for school in the morning.”
“You’re worse than Ma, you know that?” I put my hand out for the spatula. “Give me that thing.”
By the time we were done, the wall looked like it had been through a car wash. Dad said he knew a guy who knew a guy who could get him some primer for cheap. I said whatever, I needed some sleep, and it was after midnight.
61.
I woke up in the middle of an earthquake. No, wait. Not an earthquake. Natalia Shulmensky, flipped-out best friend, was shaking me like the house was on fire.
“You.” Shake. “Have.” Shake. “To.” Shake. “Get.” Shake. “Up.” Shake. “Now.”
“Go away.”
“We.” Shake. “Have.” Shake. “To.” Shake. “Go.” She shined a flashlight in my eyes.
“You’re crazy. Good night.”
“Come.” Shake. “On.” Shake. “Ow!”
I smacked her hands and sat up. “What time is it?”
“Time to go.”
I uncrossed my eyes and looked at Billy’s Spider-Man alarm clock. “It’s quarter to five! In the freakin’ morning!”
Billy moaned in his sleep.
“Be quiet,” Nat hissed. “You’ll wake him up.”
“I’ll wake him up? I’ll wake him up? Nattie, you know I love you, but I need to kill you right now.”
Billy sat up. “Ashley?”
Nat turned off the flashlight and crouched next to my bed. “Sorry I woke you, Billy-boy.” I gave Nat a little kick. “Go back to sleep, honey.”
Billy flopped back on his pillow.
Nat handed me a pair of sweatpants from the pile of almost-dirty clothes on the floor. “I’ll explain in the car,” she whispered.
I pulled on the sweats. “You’re acting like your grandmother, you know.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“She’s crazy.”
“She’s not as crazy as you think. Come on.”
62.
As soon as I buckled my seat belt, Nat handed me a cup of coffee with a lid and a funky-looking pastry that smelled like a Cinnabon, only it didn’t have any icing.
“You’re bribing me.”
“Yes.” She pumped her accelerator and started the car. The engine bucked and coughed loudly and finally turned over.
I took a bite and then I took another bite. Wow. It was amazing; butter, some kind of nuts—walnuts?—sugar, but not too much . . .
“Like it?” Nat asked.
“’S all right.” I sipped my coffee, which she had doctored up exactly the way I liked it. “You’re on a roll, aren’t you? Breaking and entering, kidnapping, and bribery all before the sun is up.”
Nat lit a cigarette, put the car in gear, and pulled away from the curb. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” She watched me take a huge bite. “There’s more in back if you want.”
I turned around. Layers of pastries separated by wax paper were stacked in two cardboard boxes on the backseat. “Where’d those come from?”
“My grandma baked them. Eat up and look in the pink notebook. I wrote out a list for you.”
63.
She started me out with an easy job: delivering bribes, I mean the pastry. First stop: the custodians.
They were hanging in their “office,” a workshop next to the loading dock. Three guys were playing poker, one was dead asleep on the couch, and the head custodian, an old black guy with a shaved head and thick glasses, was fixing a broken push broom. The radio played Sinatra.
“Yeah?” asked the guy with the biggest pile of chips.
I wanted to drop the pastry box and run. If I did, Nat would wake me up even earlier the next day.
“Yo,” I said. “I’m Ashley. I brought breakfast.”
They weren’t going to argue with that. I handed out the goodies and chatted them up the way my dad did when he wanted to put the squeeze on somebody. One of the guys remembered my family from a Beef ’n’ Beer we went to at the VFW with my uncle Danny. Turned out that he and Danny were in the Reserves together. Score another point for Team Hannigan.
The boss guy didn’t eat any pastry. The whole time I was yakking, he stood on the other side of the room, wrapping duct tape around the broom handle.
“Hey, little girl,” he finally said. “These boys got work to do. What do you want?”
Don’t screw this up. “You heard about the prom?”
“T
hey cancelled it,” said the boss. “That young Math teacher stole all the money.”
The guy who was winning the card game cracked up. “Math teacher.”
“It’s not funny,” I said.
The boss sliced through the duct tape with silver scissors. “We got nothing to do with the prom.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, you do. I hope. Let me explain.”
64.
By the time I left, we had a deal. They wanted an under-the-table cash bonus and more pastry the night of the prom, but they’d come early and stay late and wouldn’t bitch to the administration as long as they didn’t have to mop up any beer puke. Couldn’t blame them for that.
My second job on my list was scarier. “Chaperones—confirm English teachers.”
Ugh.
Why did the chaperones have to be English teachers, you ask? Nat said that English teachers believed in true romance and happy endings, plus none of them coached sports teams.
Okay, that made sense.
But would they listen to me? I had a bad reputation with the English department on account of I hated to read. They were so picky about the reading thing. I don’t know why. All the good books get made into movies. They could save themselves a lot of work if they would just show movies in class.
I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get a standing ovation when I barged into their office. On the other hand, English teachers liked to eat, just like normal people and custodians.
The English office was basically a big closet without any windows. The walls were totally covered by bulletin boards buried under four inches of tacked-up papers. Eight English teachers sat around the long table that took up most of the room. They were all reading. What a shock.
I cleared my throat, but nobody looked up. They just stared at their books or their newspapers, turned the pages, and stared some more. Was there a special Englishy-password I needed to use? Maybe they didn’t speak to students until they were on the clock.
I stood there looking like a total putz until Ms. Neary, who gave me a D+ on my Our Town poster in ninth grade, put her book down and said, “Is there something wrong, Ashley?”
“Umm, I want to talk to youse about the prom,” I said. (Bad start. These were English teachers. I should talk right.) “I mean, I would like to talk with you, all of you, you all, about the prom.”
The cute guy teacher who had played basketball at Villanova lowered his newspaper. His hair was still wet from the shower. Made me wish for a second there that I was interested in World Lit or Amer Lit Heroes, because he taught them.
“Prom’s back on?” he asked.
“We think so,” I said. “But we need your help. Want some pastry? They’re killer.”
Nat was right. Once the sugar kicked in, the English teachers were nice as could be.
65.
The third item on my list was a meeting with Vice Principal Gilroy to discuss security.
That had to wait. Now that I was a Goody Two-Shoes, I had to go to class.
66.
Our Math sub was an oldish guy with gray hair that was too long in the way that let you know his wife dumped him and he was trolling for a girlfriend. He told us he gave up his career as an insurance agent to become a teacher because he wanted to give something back.
Why he thought being a Math sub gave anything back to anybody was beyond me.
He asked us what we were studying. Twenty people gave twenty different answers. He offered to calculate how much life insurance we should have. That didn’t go down too good. Finally he said if we were quiet, we could do whatever we wanted.
Big Mike raised his hand and asked for a pass so he could go to the nurse. Said he was having ligament problems in his knee. The sub asked how he hurt himself, and Big Mike said it was a football injury. This could have been true, because Big Mike played football in middle school, but I heard he hurt his knee stealing a keg from a frat party. The sub wrote the pass.
I laid down my head on my books. I was thinking I should ask my aunt Linny to light a candle at St. Luke’s for the prom. She should light one for me, too, because I was sure I had a brain tumor. A tumor would explain why I agreed to help Nat. It might actually make life easier. If I had a brain tumor, Gilroy couldn’t make me serve all those detentions. TJ couldn’t bug out on me. It would bum out my brothers, though. Well, not Shawn, but Steven and Billy would miss me when I died. I hoped Ma would pick a coffin that looked like wood, instead of a tacky white one.
Then I realized planning my funeral was sick.
Hector Gonzalez raised his hand and asked the sub for a pass to see Mr. Kotlyar, the Physics teacher. Hector didn’t take Physics, but the sub didn’t know that, so he wrote the pass. Hector waved to us as he left the room.
One by one, the other kids raised their hands. They needed a pass to see the guidance counselor about a college essay, or to make up a test they missed last week. Dalinda said she had to see her daughter in the preschool. That was a good one, because Dalinda didn’t have any kids, and our school didn’t have a preschool. But she got her pass. The stories kept coming, the sub kept smiling and writing out passes. The door opened, closed, opened, closed, and the room got emptier and emptier until it was just me and a couple guys in the back who were dead asleep.
The sub whistled softly and pulled a newspaper out of his briefcase.
And then it hit me.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“Letting everybody go. They were all playing you.”
“Yep.” He unfolded the paper and turned to the page that had the story about Miss Crane’s felony theft.
The room was quiet. This guy didn’t look so stupid anymore.
“But really, you played them,” I said.
He just smiled.
67.
Nat and I were supposed to have a mini-meeting at lunch. Gilroy changed my plans by nabbing me as soon as I stepped into the cafeteria. I had to spend the whole lunch period listening to him blah, blah, blah about “accountability.”
If I wanted to be an accountant, I would have taken that class in tenth grade. But I didn’t say that.
He said I forced my way on the prom committee just to make him look bad, that I was kissing Banks’s butt to spite him. He said he hadn’t forgotten who my “so-called boyfriend” was, and he knew the kind of kid I really was. Gilroy was the one who caused TJ to drop out.
I had to laugh. I didn’t know the kind of kid I was anymore. This guy didn’t know me for shit.
He yelled at me when I laughed. Then he blah blahed some more, this time about “respect.” A bubble of spit foamed up in the left corner of his mouth. The rest of his mouth was dry and flaky. Didn’t he ever hear of ChapStick? Poor Mrs. Gilroy, having to kiss those alligator skin lips.
He asked if I had anything to say for myself.
I told him that I was six weeks away from graduation, and I was going to make it no matter how many illegal detentions he threw at me. I told him I had permission from the principal to help my best friend get her prom. And I asked him if I could go, because Nat had scheduled a meeting for me to attend.
That earned me lecture number two on “respect.” The bubble of spit grew into a gob. I had better show up for every detention, turn in all homework on time, and keep my nose clean, because he was giving me “no wiggle room, not a damn inch.” The gob dripped down his chin, and he wiped it away with his hand.
I promised myself I would never shake that man’s hand, not ever.
We never got around to talking about prom security issues.
68.
I missed lunch, but I showed up for all my classes and turned in all my homework that day.
Go, me.
After the last bell, I walked to detention. And who was the day’s detention monitor?
Mr. New Math Sub.
Go, me!
“You gonna be here the rest of the year?” I asked as he wrote out a pass excusing me.
>
“As long as they let me stay,” he said.
I took the pass. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Get a couple of your friends to complain about me,” he said. “That should impress the administration.”
I picked up my books. “No problem.”
69.
Nat was waiting for me in the hall. It was scary the way that girl could track me down.
“Thank God you got out,” she said. “We have so much to do.”
“Sorry I missed the lunch meeting. I was talking to Gilroy. How did it go?”
“Short, sweet, and to the point. The gym’s a lock and we have a lead on a DJ. I heard you got the English teachers confirmed.”
“And the custodians.”
“What did Mr. Gilroy say?”
“I am disrespectful and have an attitude problem.”
“What else is new? Did you guys decide on the security details? Do we have to meet with the police representative?”
“He and I will talk about it tomorrow.”
“Good.” She pulled out the pink notebook. “We have to call around about renting tables and chairs. We have enough cash for that. We can do it at my house. Grandma is at the Y today. Any chance your family has fifty extra tablecloths we can borrow?”
I held up my hands. “Hold on. I might have to work. I have to call my boss.”
“I already did. You’re not on tonight.”
“You what?”
“I called the restaurant. Two birthday parties cancelled on account of chicken pox, and the manager said he didn’t need you.”
I leaned against the locker. “You called my boss.”
“Yes, and you’re off tonight. Everyone is coming to my house to work on the flyers. They have to go up tomorrow or we’re screwed. Can we go now?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I didn’t say you could do that.”
“Look, I was just trying to help you,” she said. “You were in detention, and you don’t have a phone. How were you going to know what to do? I figured I’d be saving you time, making it easier for you. Are you mad?”