Girl, Hero

  “Uh-huh,” I said and did my stupid bottom-lip wiggle thing that makes me look like a complete idiot. Nicole once said it looks like my lip is an inchworm trying to wiggle off my face.

  Paolo Mattias is a pretty cool boy. After that whole movie thing where Nicole the jerk-off blew the whistle on me about the letters, the fact that he was talking to me was so astounding I forgot to be scared. It’s amazing I managed to even say “uh-huh.” So, I can forgive myself the lip wiggle.

  In the distance, I thought I heard a low whistle, like a bank robber gang member sending a signal to his boss in the distance. We’ve got her cornered, come on in.

  “Yeah, that’s my dad,” I said to try to be a little articulate.

  Paolo Mattias stared at my lips, nodded, and said, “It’s cool that he dropped you off. I always have to take the bus. You know, even on the first day and everything.”

  “Oh,” I said, real stupid. No movie line. You’re supposed to say movie lines to boys like Paolo Mattias and men like you, Mr. Wayne.

  I’m so bad at movie lines. They flap inside my mouth like a dying fish, moving around but never escaping out to sea.

  Paolo looked at me, up and down, and I tried not to meet his eyes because if I did I’m sure my lip would have wiggled again. He was all spiffed up for the first day of school and his jeans had creases in the middle of his legs like maybe his mother ironed them for him or something. He didn’t have the clothes of a cowboy, not with those creases, but he was standing like one, feet a little too far apart, ready to pull out the gun nestled on his hip. His sneakers had grass stains on them, though. I stared at them.

  It was so quiet, despite everyone else getting off their busses and being dropped off. It was so quiet just between the two of us, that I swear if Maine had a tumbleweed I would have heard it blowing. We don’t have those lonely tumbleweeds though. Paolo pulled his gun first.

  “Is he really gay?” he blurted.

  I gulped and Paolo’s sneakers took a step back.

  “Who?” My lip wiggled.

  “Your father.”

  Someone slapped Paolo’s shoulder. He gave them a wave and then turned back to me.

  “My father,” I said, my voice squeaking like I was a boy going through puberty, “is a truck driver.”

  I stared him down. He blushed. So did I.

  “It’s not a big deal. It’s just what people are saying.”

  My hands went to my hips. “What people?”

  “It’s not a big deal, Lily. Nobody cares.” His hand went up and rushed through his hair. He shifted his weight. His sneakers moved.

  “If nobody cares, why are you asking me about it?”

  His breath rushed out. He tried to smile, and quoted you at me: “You have a real snooty look, missy.”

  But I didn’t bite. I couldn’t bite. Instead, I just walked away from him into the dingy school cafeteria that smelled like old pickles and cheeseburgers. I found a seat with a bunch of kids I knew from eighth grade and waited for the day to begin, so we could start classes and I could hide my head behind the desk.

  I started chanting things under my breath, just one little sentence really.

  Truck drivers can’t be gay. Truck drivers can’t be gay.

  They’re like cowboys. Cowboys can’t be gay either, right?

  I was still chanting when the morning bell rang. I turned around to head to English class and I witnessed Mary Bilodeau trip over the extended foot of Travis Poppins, Nicole’s brother’s best friend and all-around evil hombre.

  That stopped my chanting.

  Mary Bilodeau’s brown paper lunch bag flopped on the floor and her tuna sandwich, apple, pickle and Cheez-Its fell out on the cracked linoleum. People started stepping on the Cheez-Its, crushing them and making a really big mess. Mary Bilodeau just stood still, looking down at her lunch. She started scrunching up her face like she was going to cry, and her hands shook. I couldn’t watch. So I pushed my way through the crowd and yelled, “Hold it!” just like you did in Stagecoach. Well, that’s what I wanted to do anyway.

  You don’t know her, but Mary Bilodeau is a big geek. She’s smart enough and everything, but she’s doughy like half-risen bread. You think you could stick your finger in her and watch the dent form where you’d poked. Once you take your finger away, the dough moves in just a bit more and holds. She’s the girl no one wants to sit with; she smells a little like chicken soup that has too much garlic in it. She stammers. She cries if she gets called on even though she knows the answer. The only person she’s really friends with is Katie Henderson.

  But I made my way over to her anyways, through the throngs of walking mall-clothes, and knelt down and started picking things up. If this were me, I’d run away and hide, or else maybe if I were feeling a little more brave, more like you, I’d have pointed my finger at Travis Poppins and said, You and me. A word.

  Poor Mary. It’s bad enough having a brown bag for lunch on the first day of high school when everybody knows if you’re a girl you’re supposed to just get a bagel or French fries in the a la carte line, but to be tripped and then to drop everything.

  I avoided feet and plucked her sandwich up off the floor. It was wrapped in plastic, so it was still edible, and her apple could be washed off. I grabbed the apple as someone’s Nike tapped it and it started to roll.

  “Here,” I said and handed her the sandwich and apple. She took them, but her eyes didn’t look at mine; instead, they watched the orange Cheez-Its being scrunched by all the feet heading to first-period classes. They were all broken to pieces, and it didn’t look right like that, so shattered. I know they get that way between your teeth when you chew, but that’s in your mouth, not on the tile floor where sneakers that may have stepped in dog poop or vomit or something are now stepping. Their orangeness just stood out and seemed to scream out how messed up everything was. How nothing was right and pure, just processed, packaged, dyed and filled with chemicals. Now I sound like one of those macrobiotic freaks. Which I’m not. I eat salami. But only if I can brush my teeth afterwards, just in case someone randomly decides to kiss me. You can’t kiss anyone with salami breath.

  “Thanks,” Mary mumbled. She clutched her sandwich, her ripped bag and her apple to her chest and turned her dewy eyes on me and I didn’t like how they looked, like she worshipped me or something.

  “Not a big deal,” I said as she shuffled off, hurrying so she wouldn’t be late.

  “You’re such a hero,” Travis Poppins snided out at me.

  “And you,” I said, still crouched on the ground, “are such an ass it’s hard to believe you can talk through your mouth instead of your butt.”

  “Oh, brilliant one …” He fake-laughed and hopped off like he’d won.

  I mumbled the next words. “He is so bosh.”

  “Bosh?” There was Paolo, cowboy-strong legs a little apart.

  “It’s cowboy slang,” I muttered. “It means nonsense.”

  He reached out his hand to help me up. I took it. His fingers touching mine made me feel more solid somehow. I smiled and took my hand away. “Thanks.”

  “He’s an idiot.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. A lot of us are idiots.”

  “Like me?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking about what he’d said about my dad. “No … I mean …”

  I smacked my forehead with my hand. He grabbed it by the wrist. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “I meant that I’m an idiot.”

  “Yeah, right.” He shook his head, smiled, and ambled away.

  We opened the boxes today.

  Mike O’Donnell’s boxes.

  Let me tell you what happened.

  My mom came home from work, slipped off her shoes and started yanking down her panty hose. “His boxes are still here
.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, wondering what she thought might happen during the day, like they might tip onto their edges and flop out the door or something, moving all clumsy like a walruses on land trying to get back to the water, the place they belonged. I wish.

  She inspected her panty hose, all loose and crinkled elephant skin in her hands. There was a big run in them. She balled them up and tossed them in the trash.

  “I suppose we should open them,” she said, taking off her coat and hanging it in the closet by the door. I never hang my coat there. Once, when I was a little kid, I had my snowsuit in there and mice came and made a nest in the hood. When I put the hood up over my head, dog food and pumpkin seed and mouse stuff all fell out into my hair. I didn’t scream or anything because I’m brave, but you can bet I didn’t forget it. Plus, it smells in that closet, like wet basement and mothballs. I always drape my coat across one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

  “Help me carry the boxes to the table,” she said.

  We hefted them up into our arms and heaved them over to the table. My mom grabbed the scissors out of the junk drawer and opened them. She stabbed one blade into the box where it was taped down and said, “I don’t feel right doing this.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “He said to open it for him.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. He wanted to make sure nothing was broken.”

  “Couldn’t he check that himself when he comes?”

  She shrugged and stabbed the knife through the masking tape and pulled apart the lid of the first box. Inside, there were picture albums and photos of him and his kids. My mom picked things up, shifted through them and said, “Nothing looks broken.”

  The moment she opened the box, a strange musky smell began to permeate the kitchen. I sniffed. It smelled like a man. We haven’t smelled that smell here for a long, hard while.

  When my mother started opening the other boxes, I took out the photo album. Inside weren’t photos, but newspaper clippings, tons of them, all about a bar fight and someone dying.

  One Man Dead in Fight at Rusty Grill

  Police Looking for Member of Devil’s Canyon

  Victim Loved by All

  Father of 8-Year-Old Girl

  Family Heartbroken

  Knife in Back Ends Promising Future

  And on and on.

  Numb and probably with my mouth hanging open, I read them all. My mom, who was sorting through photographs of Mike O’Donnell’s family, finally noticed and said, “What are you looking at?”

  I shut the photo album and put it back in the box. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t feel guilty.” She took the album out and opened it. “He told us we should look through his things.”

  “I don’t feel guilty.”

  She flipped through the pages and her face got all sad. “Oh, he told me about this.”

  “He did?”

  My mom sat down and so did I, scooting my chair closer to her. “He was there. This man was his best friend.”

  “The man who died?”

  “Mmm-hhhm.”

  “He was there?”

  “Yep, sitting right next to him.” She shut the book, put it back in a box, the wrong box, and stood up again. “Help me put these boxes in the guest room.”

  “It’s like he’s moving in,” I said as I carried the box into the guest room, which was painted brown like dark stained wood. It was my room when I was a baby. I can’t imagine how my development was stunted being in a dark brown room those formative years. I don’t want to think about it. When my sister got hitched and moved out, I got her room, which is blue.

  My mother flattened out the bedspread, which was also brown and had rusty orange in it; all these hexagons connected together. “Just until he gets on his feet.”

  “How long is that going to take?” I asked.

  “Not long,” she said, but I could tell she was lying, and that the hope making her eyes sparkle had nothing to do with him leaving soon.

  In the movies, bad men turn to good with the love of a decent woman, and good men turn bad due to a need for revenge or because they are denied the love of a decent woman. Real life works different, I think, but I don’t really know, do I? You’d probably say I’m just a damn kid, wet behind the ears. I don’t know much about anything except this ache inside me, right between my lungs, whenever I think of love and need and sex.

  It freaks me right out to think that my mother might be feeling that way, too.

  Before you were a movie star, did you have to do homework? I should get a biography about you so that I can know these things, but I’m afraid to. What if I open up the book and start reading and find out you aren’t who I think you are? I want people to be who they’re supposed to be, but nobody ever seems to want to. I’ll give it to you firsthand, Mr. Wayne: nobody in this world seems to be who they are. And my guess is that most people don’t even know who they are supposed to be. Which sucks.

  I’m not supposed to use that word. My mother acts like it’s worse than the f-word or something. You would probably say the same thing.

  My homework was easy: just some geometry problems and some reading for English. I covered all my textbooks—cut up some grocery bags from Sully’s Superette with my mom’s nail scissors because I couldn’t find the real scissors. All the edges were jagged because it’s hard to cut with nail scissors, but I folded the corners under anyways so no one can really tell.

  I doubt high school teachers inspect the book covers. They just want to make sure the books are protected from rain and stuff.

  After the books were covered, I wrote some quotes on some, and song lyrics on others. Clean book covers are lame. If I were in love with someone, I would write: Lily loves ______.

  You can fill in the blank.

  And if I were a really big greenhorn, I would encircle that with a heart and write: True Love Always. And then I’d draw five-petaled daisies and scribble his name all over the place in big loopy letters and I would write my name with his last name, my name with my last name hyphenated next to his, or I’d just write his name with “Mrs.” in front of it.

  I haven’t drawn a heart in a long time.

  I hate when my mom gets mail like that, mail that is addressed to Mrs. James Gonzalves. Like she doesn’t have a first name, like her whole identity is Mrs. To make it worse, she isn’t Mrs. James Gonzalves anymore because my stepfather is dead.

  When I was done with writing inspiring things on my book covers, I thought about cleaning. But I didn’t want to.

  I don’t know why I have to clean for this guy from Oregon who isn’t even coming for another week. He’s not my guest. Instead of wiping down the heaters, I called Nicole to talk about school.

  Nicole talks, and when she talks? She talks a lot. Like one of those TV talk show people or those radio guys who do the announcing for the Red Sox games. Sometimes it’s a little annoying when she doesn’t let me say anything. Sometimes it’s so bad that I keep trying to interrupt and interrupt and she doesn’t even notice. I’ve said whole sentences while she’s talked, without her hearing. My mom says that if I use a louder voice people will hear me better and pay attention. I have to have authority and confidence in my voice, my mother says, but then I just imagine sounding like my father and I can’t do it.

  I can’t believe Paolo Mattias thought he was gay.

  What’s the point of having authority and confidence in your voice if you break down crying in a dinky beige car outside of high school?

  “Tell me about the red pants guy,” Nicole said. Nicole always lets me talk when I have information that she doesn’t. The red pants guy was in the cafeteria buying Certs from the vending machine at the same time she was. Nicole is “not in love” with him.

 
“Mr. Fire Engine Pants?”

  “They do look like fireman pants.”

  “Uh-huh. Like fire hydrants—”

  “No they don’t. They’re a calm pair of red pants, a nice shade.”

  “Like something a dog pees on,” I finished.

  “Let’s call him Mr. Fire Engine Pants until I find out his name,” Nicole said. I could hear her chewing. She told me she’s eating Chef Boyardee Beefaroni. She already had three bowls of Corn Flakes. She can eat anything and stay ridiculously skinny. She was probably chomping on a Certs in between ravioli bites. She’s addicted to Certs.

  “Isn’t that too long? Mister Fire Engine Pants.”

  “Okay, it does take too long. Let’s call him the Fire Man.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “It makes me think of emergencies.”

  “Like the emergency of love. I’m in love. Hear the sirens of my heart? Whooo. Whoo. He is so cute, isn’t he?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “That siren of love stuff is too corny.”

  “Love is not corny.”

  “Sure. Did you get a topic for your New England History paper?” I asked her this while she was quiet and thinking of the Fire Man. Mr. Johnson has given us our topics for our quote-unquote term paper for New England History. It’s supposed to be fifteen pages long and is due right after Thanksgiving weekend.

  “Oh. My. God.” Nicole paused to slurp whatever she was drinking. She drinks everything with a straw, even milk, and I could hear that she was at the bottom of the glass. I knew that pretty soon she’d excuse herself for a minute to go refill the glass. “Oh my God, you will never believe what that idiot assigned me. It’s the worst topic in the universe. It’s horrible. And fifteen pages. I don’t know how I’ll ever write fifteen pages on anything, let alone on what he gave me.”

  “I bet you could write fifteen pages on the masculine attributes of Fire Man,” I said.

  “Masculine attributes? You sound like a Cosmopolitan article.”

  “Not Seventeen?” I said.

  “No, they aren’t intelligent enough to use the word attributes. They’d think we wouldn’t understand it. I hate Seventeen.”