“We’re not talking about the same thing, Fraser,” said Annie. “I’m talking about Michael. You dropped him. What for? And why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”
Chapman was an enormous school. It took no effort for me and Michael to avoid each other. We knew each other’s schedules and habits, so we could steer from even glimpsing each other. I would think of him when I went into fourth-period history, going into his fourth-period chemistry. I would think of him when I ate my tuna-fish sandwich at third lunch, having a hot tray at first lunch and complaining to Price about the runny gravy. When I walked past the math department, I wondered if he had rejoined Computer Club.
“It wasn’t working out,” I said dully to Annie.
“Yes, it was! It was working perfectly! Michael adored you, Fraser. And I know you. You adored him, too. It was all this selfish stuff, wasn’t it? All those silly things you said to me about Michael consuming too much time?”
And she wonders why I didn’t call her to talk about it, I thought. My explanations were nothing to her but “all those silly things.”
“Fraser, how could you do this to him?” said Annie, in a voice that had despair in it. As if I had done something truly vile and she was having to cope with it. “Michael is a wonderful person. There’s nobody at Chapman High as good as him. Not for you, at least. Not with your standards. So here he is in love with you and you walk out on him. Why?”
“I didn’t do anything to him, Annie. It was us. I couldn’t make it work, Annie. I couldn’t surrender that much.”
“It isn’t a matter of surrendering. It’s a matter of sharing,” said Annie.
I began to hurt all over, as if someone had shredded my skin, like cabbage. I swallowed at the lump Annie had put in my throat. I had wept too much over Michael and me to want to start in again. Not when I had to spend the whole evening being articulate about starting up the Kit Lipton Fund.
“You’re just hurting yourself,” said Annie, and that much, at least, was true. I hurt terribly, and I was the one who had done it. “And you’re certainly hurting Michael. Price talked with him last night. Price said he was pretty upset. And Price never talks about emotions, Fraser, so it must have been pretty bad for him even to use a word like upset.”
That’s part of it, I thought. Boys talk about electronic equipment and racing bikes and tickets to hockey games. Girls talk about children who die young. I struggled to tell Annie that, but she was disgusted with me. “Girls talk about nail-polish colors and the style of their jeans and whether to pierce their ears,” she said acidly. “Give Michael a chance. He has a little sister. He’d understand how awful it is that Kit is hurt.”
“He didn’t understand. He only cared about driving me. About being together. Don’t you see, Annie, that I’m tired of being together so much?” The last thing I wanted was a fight with Annie. I stopped myself and said, “Well, let’s not bother about all that. Look, I’m really going to need some help on raising money. I know you’re busy, but—”
“You are so selfish!” yelled Annie, so loudly that I cringed. “God knows, Michael gave up a lot for you. He went skiing half as much; he quit Computer Club; he rearranged his work time in order to take you places like the University Library or visiting Kit. You can’t claim he didn’t meet you halfway, Fraser.”
“Maybe I was wrong,” I said, “but even at halfway, it was too much. Michael—”
“You’re not starting this fund to help Kit,” said Annie in a tight vicious voice. “You’re doing it because you like to be out front showing off. You’re a loner, Fraser. You couldn’t make a go of dating Michael because you’re selfish, that’s why. I feel as if our whole friendship was under false pretenses. You didn’t need me as a friend. You just needed a co-worker in all your projects. That’s the only thing you care about right now. Not Michael’s feelings. Not mine. But showing off to the whole city of Chapman at how well you can raise money in a good cause.”
I began crying—deep weeping, like a gray sky in winter: hanging in there for weeks, never stopping, never lifting.
“Annie, that’s not fair.” I could not pull the Kleenexes out of the box fast enough to sop my tears up.
“Fair? You kick someone who loves you because he has the nerve to expect you to spend time with him and you talk about fair?”
We were quiet for a long time.
The tiny plastic wastebasket next to the phone was half-full of my used Kleenex when Annie said, “I have to go and practice, Fray. I’m in the orchestra for the Bach Magnificat the Choral Society is putting on. I didn’t mean to shriek like that. I don’t want to hang up mad. But I hope you come to your senses. If you really try, you could get Michael back and smooth things over.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I didn’t feel thankful. I did come to my senses, I thought. That’s why I broke up. I can’t be Michael’s other half. I can’t design my entire life around what he wants.
Selfish, I thought. Is that what I am, really? In the end, am I simply a selfish egocentric show-off?
I could not call Michael. What would I say? I love you, but you push me to the wall? I love you, but I can’t be a couple?
Chapter 11
“IT TURNS OUT,” SAID Robbie de Gennaro, “that there are eighty-four thousand, four hundred and eighty pennies in a mile, Fraser. That is a bunch of pennies. How are we supposed to display all these pennies people bring in?”
I adore Robbie de Gennaro. He’s short and stocky and a super basketball player and the funniest person I have ever shared a math class with. The only trouble with him is his taste in girls. Without fail he dates some whispery giggly little creature who acts like a reject from junior high. Right now he’s going around with Jodie French, who is not only whispery and giggly but also on the pompon squad. I ask you.
“Line them up along the hallways,” said Smedes. “Little tracks of pennies circling Chapman High. Little copper trains of—”
“Smedes,” said Anselm Meriweather, “don’t be absurd. Just because you’re honest doesn’t mean everybody else is. We can’t have eight hundred dollars in pennies lying on the floor.”
Anselm is president of the Boys’ Athletic Association. I’m not even sure what kind of athletics he’s in—I think track. It’s just as well. I can’t imagine the cheerleaders figuring out a rhythm to shout “Anselm Meriweather” to. Especially not when our cheerleaders are of the mentality of Jodie French.
“Good point,” said Smedes. I could tell she felt stupid. I wanted to rescue her. I said, “It would be great if we could, Smedes. Everywhere you went, you could just bend down and add a penny and feel generous and watch it grow. But I think what we’ll do is have a rain barrel outside the principal’s office. The kids in Industrial Arts can remove one stave and replace it with Plexiglas so you can look in and monitor progress.”
Smedes reminds me of Lacy Buckley. Smedes is quite horsey-looking, with long, large features and droopy hair, but somehow she manages to be elegant and interesting.
“How’s Kit, by the way?” said Anselm.
“She’s improving a little bit. She winks. She grips her mother’s hand a little. She responds to stuff like pinpricks.”
“Pinpricks?” said Smedes, horrified. “Those doctors sit around stabbing this poor little kid with pins?”
“Testing reflexes,” said Robbie de Gennaro.
We were sitting in the student center. It’s really part of the entrance foyer—a large sunny square area back behind the stairs. In winter you can hardly sit there, because icy winds come in whenever the front doors are opened, and whatever heat there is rises up the stairs. But we were moving through spring now, and the student center was comfortable. If you call ripped vinyl sofas donated by an orthodontist who turned to classier stuff comfortable.
It was Toybrary day. I felt so strange knowing that Ginny and Leigh were running it. That they had control now, and not I. They could serve apple juice or Kool-Aid or nothing at all. They laugh with th
e kids and set aside special toys for their special favorites, or they could just sit there, doing their homework, glancing up occasionally if someone came in.
Jodie French came lightly down the stairs. I knew it was Jodie because we could see her feet through the stair gaps. Slender legs, clad in white tights, wrapped in ballerina ribbons. Jodie always wears interesting things. Whenever I see her I feel stodgy and too tall, and dull to the core.
Jodie half danced behind the stairs into the student center with us. She has fairly long hair and she was wearing it in a very high pony tail, so that it bobbed and bounced with every step. It was like another pompon, stuck to her skull.
“What meeting is this, Robbie luv?” she said, and she sat in his lap. She sat down as if Robbie were just another piece of furniture and Robbie sat under her as if she weren’t there at all.
“Kit Lipton Fund,” said Robbie. He twisted to get her hair out of his eyes, but she misinterpreted his move and flounced herself so that her hair spread all over the place. Robbie sighed and shifted his whole weight to the left so he could see the rest of us.
“How do we count the pennies?” said Smedes. “You think we should put them in penny rolls every day?”
“Glad you offered,” I said. “Yes. I think you should.”
“Never get on a committee with Fraser,” said Anselm to Robbie. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Then why are you here?” said Jodie.
“Because I’m not on Fraser’s committee. I’m running my own committee. I’m doing the Road Rally myself.” Anselm looked at me and grinned. “That way I get to delegate all my work, too.”
Anselm and I laughed together. It felt so good—laughing with a boy. Maybe I just had a problem with Michael, I thought. Maybe I should just find another boy.
But I knew pretty well from past experience that finding the boy was one thing; dating him was another.
“You know,” said Robbie, “I don’t think the rain barrel should go near the principal’s office. It should be in the cafeteria just beyond the cash register. That way people will drop in all their change from buying hot lunch or milk or dessert.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea!” I said happily. I scribbled a note to myself to get the dietitian’s approval.
“Robbie, you don’t have time for this,” said Jodie. She swiveled around on his knees with a grace I envied and bent over him and adjusted his shirt to suit herself. “You’re doing the Junior Prom with me.”
“I am not doing the Junior Prom,” said Robbie. “I am going to the Junior Prom. I am not doing tickets, getting a band, helping with decorations or anything else, Jodie. You’re doing that. I’m doing the Kit Lipton Fund.”
The year I was a freshman a girl named Kathie Block was the senior in charge of the Senior Prom. She did all the work—from advertisers in the program to getting the band, from ticket sales to decoration donations. And then nobody invited her to the dance. Every time I think of that I cringe inside.
But I knew now why she didn’t just ask somebody herself—ask anybody at all, just so she could go to what was her very own dance—it hurt too much.
I was not going to be in the Road Rally. Oh, sure, I could ask one of the boys. I could invite a kid I knew from the Catholic high school. I could order all the committee heads to go in one car to give myself company. I could round up a batch of girls for my car.
But if I couldn’t go with Michael, I didn’t want to go.
Michael’s presence was very different from anyone else’s. I missed him physically. Not sexually, because we really hadn’t gone very far. But he was so very male that around him I felt essentially female. It was a good feeling. Now those feelings were gone completely.
They ached inside me—wanting his deep voice, his larger hands, his wide chest, all of him that was male and Michael.
But I couldn’t have Michael with the suffocating.
To date was to merge—like driving down the turnpike: you came in one lane, but you had to give it up. It vanished. You had to share a lane with all the other cars, and you couldn’t start up a new lane. You drove together. Or you took the next exit.
“We need a mileage chart on the barrel,” said Anselm. “To show how far up the mile we’ve come.”
“By feet,” suggested Robbie. “How many pennies in a foot?
“Then you’d need five thousand two hundred eighty divisions on the graph,” Smedes pointed out. “A bit unwieldy, don’t you think?”
“How come you’re doing all this for a kid you’ve never met?” said Jodie. She was irritable. Probably thought we were a threat to her. What a laugh. Robbie’s taste didn’t run to Smedes and Fraser.
“Because she could be my daughter,” said Smedes. “Or my sister. So I care about her.”
“You don’t have a daughter,” Jodie pointed out.
I thought, How can Robbie stand spending time in her company?
“No,” said Smedes, “and I probably never will. Marriage does not appeal to me. But Kit matters. I want her to live, and I want her mother to be able to visit her every day, and that’s that, Jodie. Now shut up unless you can contribute something meaningful.”
Robbie winked at Smedes, and he and Smedes rolled their eyes at each other. I bet he breaks up with Jodie after the Junior Prom, I thought. He’s too nice to leave her stranded the way poor Kathie Block was stranded. But he’s also too nice for Jodie.
We ended the meeting. Smedes and I set off for the office to get the list of clubs and churches that were willing to put school announcements in their newsletters, and so forth. “I’ll do that part,” said Smedes. “I did it when we were raising money to send the marching band to the governor’s inaugural parade, so I know the names.”
“Thanks,” I said.
It was wonderful the way committees had just materialized. Unlike Toybrary—which everybody found a slightly crazy undertaking that required too much work—the Kit Lipton Fund attracted people instantly. It was exhilarating in the way that a goal is always exhilarating. And it was probably good for me, having a door open to new friendships as the door closed behind me on Michael and Annie.
But not having Annie with me was like having a limb amputated. I had never done anything without sharing the details with her. Sometimes I felt only half there.
I saw her around occasionally. She smiled at me, got chatty, and sped off to join Price.
Two weeks after that phone conversation I realized what had happened. She had forgotten.
I think it was worse than remembering. Annie had forgotten my problems, forgotten my decisions. I wanted her to ache for me, miss me, but she didn’t The friendship had fallen out the bottom, like sand in an egg timer, until there were only grains of it left. The few times I phoned her, she seemed vaguely surprised, as if she thought I had gone on to college and wasn’t due home for another semester.
“You rip the lettuce,” Lynn directed me. “I’ll fry the bacon.”
“What do I do?” asked Ben.
“You chop chives and carrots. And if you find anything else interesting in the vegetable drawer, like red cabbage or cauliflower, chop that, too.” Lynn turned to me. “I loathe a boring salad,” she said confidentially.
“I know what you mean,” I said, although when it comes to salad, I think it’s all pretty boring.
We were having a huge spaghetti-and-salad-and-garlic-bread Sunday dinner. Mom had the dining room all ready, but the whole family was in the kitchen, perched on counters, or leaning against tilting antique mirrors, gabbing. They were all struggling to stay off the topic of Michael, where is he? It took an extra effort for Lynn, who was dying to know the details. I ripped a little escarole and threw it in the salad bowl with the iceberg lettuce.
“Fraser?” said my mother. I glanced up. “Your father and I have been thinking,” she said.
Oh, no. Here it comes. Some sort of interference or guidance.
“College,” said my mother. “Dad and I always told you that you’d go to State, where
all of us have always gone. The more we’ve considered it, the less fair that seems. We shouldn’t decide anything that important for you. We have extra money this year because of my job. Of course we toyed with the idea of taking a big trip, or buying a second car. But we decided we want you to look around at other colleges and go to whatever college suits you best.”
I stood there with Boston lettuce decorating my fingers and stared at her. “You mean it, Mom?”
I knew kids whose entire junior year was spent reading college catalogs. They’d start with the East Coast and work their way across the nation to California, reading every catalog from the Naval Academy to Berkeley. But I had never dipped into any of them. Choice wasn’t part of it for me—I was going to State and that was that.
I felt the country unfolding like a map in the glove compartment—college by college, state by state. I could go anywhere! I thought. Big, little, country, urban, girls, coed, science, liberal arts.
“You can get in anywhere, Fraser,” said my father. He was circling the kitchen, unable to stand still with all the pride in him. “With your grades? Your science work? Your community efforts? Why, I talked with Mrs. O’Mara and she agrees that any college you apply to will take you joyfully.”
My brother laughed. “One thing you have to say for our parents, Fray. They’ve never lacked for faith in us.”
I finally set the lettuce down. “My grades aren’t that terrific, really, Dad. And Mrs. O’Mara is known as a complete turtle, whose grasp of colleges is nonexistent.”
“That’s true,” said Ben. “She was dense as a blanket when I was there. We used to get into college in spite of her.”
The family drifted into talk about teachers who had been there when Ben was. Twenty thousand students at State, I thought. Lecture halls with five hundred. Mile-long walks between classes. I wonder if I’d like some little liberal-arts school someplace?
“Where’s Michael applying?” said Ben.
“I don’t know,” I told him. I got the salad dressing out of the refrigerator and shook it with more force than I usually do. What if I don’t have boy friends at college? I thought. I had better not choose an all-girls school. Nobody would meet me at a dance and figure I was the most romantic girl on the campus.