“Hi, Apron,” she smiled, her tight curl tucked perfectly under each ear. I was almost as tall as she was now.
“Hi, Mrs. Perry.”
“Getting lunch?”
“Not really.” Except standing there smelling the green peppers and vinegar, you couldn’t help but want an Italian of your own.
“Well, we heard the good news,” she leaned into me and whispered.
“You did?”
“A teensie weensie bit of good news?”
I kept my face blank.
“Marguerite’s having a baby?”
I hadn’t told Rennie anything about M and her little whatever.
“Apron?” Mrs. Perry dropped her smile. “Oh gosh. You did know that, right?”
I nodded. She said, “Phew,” and, “For a minute there.” Then she gave me a weak hug and her big curl smooshed into my cheek and you could smell cigarettes in her hair. “Good for your dad,” she said. “Life goes on then, doesn’t it?”
When she was done hugging me, I stepped back so she couldn’t do it again. “How did you find out?”
Mrs. Perry threw an arm up and said, “Well, let’s see. Rennie’s grandmother told me, and, well, you know how those ladies can talk.”
“Does Rennie know?”
“Of course, Apron,” she said. “She’s already suggested some names to Margie. Good old-fashion American names.”
“But Rennie never called me,” I said shaking my head. She never called.
“Margie called us, honey. To tell us herself. And besides, Rennie said you’ve been too busy with school-work to come over. Sure I can’t get you something for lunch? We’re off to the boat show today, did Rennie tell you?”
My hair melted. Rennie was a traitor, all right. Just like Judas. Next, she’d probably tell M where I would be on Thursday.
19
Amantes sunt amentes.
Lovers are lunatics.
“Love,” Ms. Frane said, throwing her hands up and looking out the window. “Is in the air.”
What we were talking about was our last English assignment of the year: free verse poetry. “You can write about any kind that you want, but the topic is: Love. What does it mean to you?”
Someone burped.
“Now. There are many kinds of love,” Ms. Frane said in a big smile. With the sun hitting the blackboard behind her, it looked like it had been bleached by mistake.
Anne Potts dropped her pencil.
Monday mornings we were like caged monkeys, Ms. Frane said, scratching our ears and picking our teeth. “Love for your family, your friends, games, sports, or even romantic love.”
The boys groaned at that, and Sherman Howl said, “This stinks,” loud enough for Ms. Frane to hear. Rennie and Jenny Pratt looked at each other with their hands over their mouths. You could tell they were whispering about Seth Chambers, how much they loved him and he loved them, when, really, he didn’t know they were alive.
Ms. Frane wrote, Love: What Does It Mean To You? on the board and started writing out examples of free verse poetry.
Johnny Berman was absent; I’d worn the lace undershirt for nothing.
Sherman Howl and Mark Lippett stood and put their hands over each other’s mouth and pretended to kiss. Ms. Frane didn’t even turn around when she said, “Sherman and Mark, sit back in your seats by the time I count to three.”
They made it.
“If love means kissing another boy to you, that’s fine.”
Everyone said, “Yuck,” but I didn’t, even though it was pretty weird when you thought about it lip by lip. I tried not to imagine Mike and Chad kissing, but it was impossible not to, so I thought about Mike kissing me instead.
“Just remember,” Ms. Frane said leaning onto her desk. “I’ll be showing them to your parents at conferences next week.” The boys straightened up in their seats after that. But I slumped down. I still hadn’t given the reminder slip to my dad. It was for Thursday at 10:15, which he wasn’t going to be able to make anyway. Love didn’t mean missing work.
Jenny Pratt got called to read the example.
Love means helping someone when they get hurt.
Love means sharing your umbrella in the rain,
Or taking your grandmother’s hand,
Or having a picnic on the beach.
Love means boat rides and seashells,
And hugs from your friends.
Ms. Frane nodded. “Very nice, Jenny. Okay, everyone, remember to elaborate. It counts toward your final grades. Six lines. Due next Monday.”
Jenny Pratt sat back in her seat again and Rennie batted her eyelashes at her, like love meant waving to the person who read the example out loud.
At recess, I lay on the grass making an obstacle course for the ants. They were too fast to do much with, but every once in a while, one of them fell into the snake pit that I made out of twigs and branches. Maybe love meant falling into my trap.
Four matching pink shoelaces stopped next to me. I looked up. They were standing with their arms crossed, Rennie’s shoulder only up to Jenny Pratt’s elbow, both of them smirking at me playing with my sticks.
A full moon of trouble rose in my stomach.
“Oh, look at the cute toddler,” Jenny Pratt giggled. Her long nose was pointing straight down at me and her lips were crunched up together, like she just tasted something that didn’t have sugar on it yet. “Are you, like, playing with bugs?”
“Shut up,” I said, pushing myself onto my knees and standing as fast as I could. Rennie and I had made up the game together. But now she just sneered at me.
“We heard about your dad getting married,” Jenny Pratt said. “You must love your new mom. Everyone knows about their love child, too. Guess your dad just couldn’t keep it in his pants.”
Someone slapped me, but Jenny Pratt’s arms were still on her hips and Rennie’s were still crossed in front of her. I looked at Rennie, who forced a chuckle. I wanted to punch Jenny in the face, but she was right. And M’s baby was coming in September, right after we started eighth grade. Which meant she’d been pregnant for a lot longer than anyone knew.
“Well,” Jenny continued, “at least he’s got a shot at getting a girl this time.”
Even Rennie looked confused. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I don’t have a brother.”
Jenny lifted her hand to her mouth in mock surprise. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. All this time, I thought you were a boy,” she glanced down at my chest, and then smoothed down her own; two mounds under her shirt. “Hey,” she said slapping Rennie’s shoulder. “Maybe we should ask Apron to come bra shopping with us sometime, what do you think, Ren? She might like the one we just picked out for you.”
And then I saw it; Rennie was wearing a bra. I had never seen such big mounds on her chest before, which had to be mostly padding. We’d even touched tongues on it: that we would buy our first bras together. The moon of bad news exploded inside my flat chest and landed in between Rennie and me, burning the space between us forever. I looked at her for the last time as my best friend. Something in her face knew it, too.
“Hey, Jenny?” I turned to her. “Why don’t you ask Rennie about how she calls Seth Chambers and pretends to be you?”
Rennie dropped her arms, her face looking sorry now, all right. But I tightened my mouth and flicked my eyebrows. Even though she had only done it once, way before we stopped being friends, turns out once was one time too many.
“What?” Jenny Pratt said whipping her head back and forth between Rennie and me, stopping on Rennie. “Did you really do that?”
I turned and walked away, loving it.
20
Pactum factum
A done deal
At the end of school, I pedaled across the field where my dad hit Mr. Perry and turned left down the big hill, hoping I wouldn’t run into Mr. Solo. He was always warning me that if he saw me empty-headed one more time he was going to call my parents. It had been plenty more times, but you could al
ways tell when it was Mr. Solo biking by because of the dentist mirror taped onto his helmet for a rearview mirror.
At the bottom, I started pedaling hard, my backpack heavy again, especially with the conference reminder slip that was light as a feather unless you counted the rocks it put in your stomach if you were me.
When I reached our mailbox, I slipped my feet off the pedals and opened it. The mail was in a perfect pile with an L.L. Bean catalogue folded around it. Until a car zoomed past me so fast my hair blew into my eyes and most of the mail flew out of my hands. One of the letters had sailed onto the yellow line in the middle of the road, so I put my kickstand down and ran in to get it.
There was a picture of a seal on it. After another look, I could see it was a picture of seals. Save the Seals, it said in big black letters. Do Something. On the back it had some news about seals and a picture of a red log in the middle of a snowfield. But when you looked closer, you could see that that log was a seal. And the rock to the side of it was a baby seal, its two black eyes staring at his dead mother.
You Can Help, it said. But I just shoved it in my pocket and rode home.
I called Scent Appeal right after I stepped into the kitchen. I had called so many times in the last two days, I could dial it with my eyes closed. And still, no one answered.
In my room, I said hi to The Boss. He and his cage were hiding in my closet now. So far, my dad hadn’t mentioned him again. I did my homework and tried to decide if love meant letting your guinea pig live in your sock drawer for the rest of its life. But there was the poop to consider, so I wasn’t sure. I picked up The Long Winter. Laura had a hard life all right—like her sister going blind and her dad always off hunting and her whole family almost getting scalped—but she had a better shot of writing a poem about love than I did.
Later, my dad’s car crunched down the dirt road and the same old bangings started happening in the kitchen. Until a huge high M scream happened.
I jumped off my bed and flew down the stairs, ready to see blood or broken bones. But when I got there, M was jumping up and down next to my dad and both of them were reading a letter. M’s face was pink and smiling, but my dad’s was just kind of frozen, like he fell out of the freezer and couldn’t remember where he was.
When M saw me, she squealed. She was in her nursing clothes, looking kind of plumped up everywhere now, not just in her bump anymore.
“Aprons,” she said. “Your father’s famous!” She grabbed his arm and jumped up and down with it until my dad pulled it back. Then she stopped jumping and started some chipmunk clapping instead.
I looked at my dad to see what was going on. “Well, Apron,” he nodded. “I’m getting published.” Then he shook his head. “Exsisto curiosus quis vos opto, is may adveho verus. Look it up,” he told me, walking out the door.
M and I looked at each other, our eyebrows pulled up into a question mark. But then, in the next second, we both got busy. M started banging more pots and I walked over to the table and picked up the letter. Casco Bay Publishing was pleased to inform my dad that they were interested in acquiring his book, Maine Matters.
I knocked two times softly.
He was sitting behind his desk, grading papers like usual. But he stopped when I walked in and placed his letter on top of a pile.
“Be careful what you wish for, right?” I asked. It was just a guess. The secret to deciphering Latin, it said on the back of the dictionary, is that much of it can be inferred.
“Very good,” he nodded down to his work. “Just give me one second here.”
I watched him, trying to find that same happy freckle-faced boy that was in the picture by Grandma Bramhall’s bed. But I couldn’t find him anywhere.
“Okay,” he said ready for what I had to say.
Which was: “Aren’t you happy?” I nodded toward the letter.
He looked off to the side. “I just wish it had happened a lot earlier.” He cleared his throat.
“Are we going to move now?” I held my breath. “Or anything?”
He shook his head. “No. Nothing is going to change, all right?” He meant it to be reassuring, but staying the same was the worst thing that could happen now.
21
Sit vis nobiscum.
May the force be with you.
“Hello?” Mike answered
“Hello?” I answered back, like it was a wrong number. I had been calling since Monday. And now it was 8:31 on Thursday night.
“This is Scent Appeal, can I help you?”
“Mike?”
“That’s me.”
“It’s Apron,” I said, but carefully, in case he didn’t remember me anymore.
“Apron!” he said. “How are you?”
After three days of watching Jenny Pratt and Rennie whisper about me, one visit to the nurse’s office to get checked for lice, and three different kinds of M’s meatloaf for dinner, this was the first time anyone one had asked me that. I told him I was fine.
“Listen,” he said. “I wanted to ask you something, if it’s okay with your dad, of course. Chad was in the hospital. He’s okay now, but we have another big wedding on Saturday and he’s a little, a little tired. So I was wondering, because—you know, you were so great with all the flowers and the decorating.”
“I can help.” I jumped down from the counter. “I’d love to.”
“Really?” Mike asked sounding surprised. “You have school tomorrow, right?”
I said right, but then realized too late, that I should have said no.
“Okay, what time can I pick you up?”
“Three-thirty.”
“I’ll see you then. Make sure it’s okay with your dad, though. Unless you think I should ask him myself ?”
“No,” I said. “He’s working, I’ll ask him.”
“Thanks, Apron,” Mike paused. “You’re saving me.”
Mike hung up after that, but I stayed there with the phone still tucked into my neck thinking that he had taken those words right out of my mouth.
I walked out of the kitchen and knocked on my dad’s door. Every single night this week he had left me alone with M before dinner was finished to get back to work. He wasn’t just grading papers anymore, he told M when she put on her pouty face. He was grading finals.
“Dad?” I opened the door.
There were so many piles on his desk that all you could see was the top of his red head.
“I’m really busy here, Apron. I have six different finals to grade.”
“Sorry. Um. Can I go help Mike after school tomorrow?” I whispered.
Two of the stacks parted and in between them my dad’s face appeared. “Mike?”
I nodded.
“Just a second,” he said, annoyed now, lifting one hand up in a stop sign and scribbling down a few more notes.
I stood quietly turning the doorknob back and forth.
The first night after Chad went into the hospital, my dad came into the kitchen and asked who I was calling. I told him Scent Appeal, and that Chad had gone into the hospital.
“For what,” he asked. I said I didn’t know but that Chad seemed to sweat and get tired a lot. He frowned and went back to work, but he didn’t tell me to stop calling them.
And last night while we were getting the garbage, my dad told me that he had actually met Mike before. He hadn’t met Chad, but he did remember meeting Mrs. Weller’s nephew in her garden one day. I tried to picture it: my dad, my mom, and Mike, all hanging around Mrs. Weller’s yard together, talking about flowers and drinking orange Tang.
“It wasn’t like that, Apron,” my dad said, dumping the bathroom trash into the garbage bag I was holding out for him. If you paid money, the trash truck came all the way down your dirt road, but if you didn’t, you had to go to the dump every Wednesday night like we did. We usually took Mrs. Weller’s garbage too, and you could tell which bags were hers by how bad they smelled.
“I’m sure your mother saw Mike more than I did. She saw a lot of p
eople more than I did.” My dad put the trash can back down again and leaned over to collect the small bits of toilet paper on the floor next to the sink—which I had scattered around that morning. I had pulled off some red hair from my brush and dropped that around too, until I woke up and smelled the coffee on that one.
“So how come she never told me about him?” I asked.
“She kept good secrets,” he said, walking out the door. I stopped to look in the mirror at my freckled self. Mike and my mom were friends. Mike and my mom were friends.
“Anyway,” my dad said from the hallway. “What’s with the sudden friendship? You should be making friends with people your own age. Did these guys even go to college?”
I told him I didn’t know. In the living room, the couch cushions were sticking up in all the wrong places and a vase filled with droopy dead peonies was on the table. I felt bad about it, but after I picked them the night before, I hid them in the corner of the pantry. Then later, when they were perfectly sagged, I slid them into the vase and put them on the table.
My dad scooped up some pages of M’s magazine while I held out the garbage bag and picked up a dusty picture of me sitting in a yellow car that I couldn’t remember.
I put the frame back and followed my dad upstairs. His shoes crunched a little, just like I hoped. I made sure there was no sand on the floor going into my room, only into the little whatever’s room. Finally, in the hall bathroom, he sighed. “Apron,” he said, picking up a trash can overflowing with toilet paper and old toothpaste tubes and a few of M’s empty creams. “This place—” but then he sighed again and shook his head. I coughed not to smile. M was in his bedroom watching Wheel of Fortune, you could tell by the dinging and clapping. She said she needed to watch it so she could learn English better, but even loud holiday in July for a clue was too hard for her. We didn’t say good-bye when my dad and I drove to the dump. We used to get ice cream afterward, but these days my dad needed to get home to start grading more finals and I needed to get back to calling Scent Appeal over and over again, which I did until bedtime.