“Oh,” Yaz says.
She feels it now, how the tension of her quads will hold her in place. So she does what Josie said. She lets go of the rope with her left hand, and now she’s a dangling sideways T, her arms spread wide and her strong, straight legs anchoring her to the bar.
The other kids must be holding their breath, or why else would the room be so hushed, the air crackling with anticipation? Then, wham! Everyone bursts into applause. Katie-Rose claps the hardest, cheering and whistling and being her overall spazzy self.
Momentum sends the trapeze swaying in a gentle half-circle. Yasaman’s hijab spills gracefully past her shoulders and grazes the blue gym mat. Yasaman floats through the air—or rather, flies. Her fluttering butterfly heart soars.
jittery and tense for the last few days, she feels jittery and tense today. She’s sick of it. She’s trapped in what seems like a constant current of anxiety, and only rarely does something in the outside world pull her out of it.
When that happens, she’s grateful, even if the break is only temporary. Like this afternoon in German class, when Preston produced from his gastrointestinal system a stench so foul, so vile, so … tangible, almost, in its presence, that poor Ava held her nose, covered her mouth, and staggered to Mrs. Gundeck’s desk.
“Your bucket,” she gasped.
“Heilandsack!” Mrs. Gundeck cried. “Nein, nein!”
“Your bucket, your bucket!”
Mrs. Gundeck leapt from her seat, moving faster than Violet thought her stout teacher could. She grabbed the bucket from the corner of the room, and thrust it at Ava, who promptly vomited up what she had in her stomach, which wasn’t much. Maybe she vomited up nothing, for all Violet knew, but she made the sound, for sure, and the sound of retching is almost equal in strength to the distinctive odor of barf.
“Ewww!” everyone cried, except for Preston.
Preston grinned. He repeated his act of stenchery.
“Prethton!” Natalia wailed. “You know I am very then-thitive to all thingth crath!”
“Crap?” Thomas said. “You’re sensitive to crap?”
The boys loved this, of course, and there were guffaws all around.
“Crath”, Natalia insisted. “Not crap. Crath.”
Preston feigned horror, drawing his hand to his face and widening his eyes. “You said crap, Natalia!”
“Pleathe! Crap ith crath, and I would never thay thomething tho … tho …”
Even Cyril, a ten-year-old boy version of Eeyore, moves his lips in an upward sort of twist. Violet, who feels a special affinity for Cyril because of his outcast status, caught his eye and smiled, and his lip quirk turned into a full-on smile. Cyril feels a special affinity for Violet, too, she’s pretty sure. No, she’s more than sure, and to claim otherwise would be coy. Violet doesn’t like coy. Coy is for girls like Modessa and Quin. Coy is for anyone who wants to play games with people and their emotions instead of just saying, “Yes, I like you,” or “No, I’m not having a great day, actually.” Or “It’s hard for me to relax, even in my own house. Especially in my house. It’s hard for me … it’s hard for me to be with my …”
It’s hard to put in words, the thought Violet is dancing around. Dancing around a thought isn’t the same as being coy, though. It’s not fun. It isn’t the same as playing games.
Violet closes her eyes. She’s glad she made Cyril smile, because she does like Cyril. Not in a boy-girl way. She likes him because she senses that life isn’t straightforward for him, just as life isn’t straightforward for her. They share that knowledge of each other, that’s all.
She’s also glad Katie-Rose’s crazy plan worked. Katie-Rose somehow persuaded Preston to fart on purpose—??? how do boys do that?—in order to trigger a massive gross-out fest, and it worked. Grossness abounded, creating the perfect setup for Violet to act out her role in the passion play.
“I feel a little queasy, too, Mrs. Gundeck,” she said, raising her hand and not waiting to be called on. “I’ve heard there’s a stomach bug going around. A bad one.”
“My dad said that, too,” Preston said. “He’s a doctor.” Preston’s dad isn’t a doctor. He’s a repairman. Violet has seen him drop Preston off in a van that says, “Dwight’s Home Service: Fixing Your Washing Machine So You Can Stay Clean.”
“Well, I’m not thick,” Natalia said, but everyone knew she meant “sick.” “And I refuthe to get thick, becauthe tomorrow ith the Lock-In, and I refuthe to mith the Lock-In.”
Preston frowned and tapped his chin. He probably thought it made him look doctorly. “Stomach bugs usually have an incubation period of twelve to twenty-four hours. So you’ll either be fine or it’ll hit you right when you get to The Lock-In.” He gestured to include the rest of the class. “That’s true for any of us who’ve been near Ava—no offense, Ava.”
Ava clutched her bucket. She regarded Preston as if he was the slime coating a moldy sponge, but she couldn’t find the energy to protest.
“Oh, man, wouldn’t it suck if the Lock-In turned out to be a total barforama?” Preston continued.
Quin barked out a laugh. “No. It would be awesome! Only losers are going to the Lock-In, so I would be fine with it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” Natalia said. “And you realithe you jutht called Mithith Gundeck a loother, don’t you?” She switched into teacher’s pet mode. “Becauthe Mithith Gundeck ith going to be there tomorrow night. Aren’t you, Mithith Gundeck?”
By then, Mrs. Gundeck looked like she was considering a career change. Pale faced, she pointed to Ava. “You, go to the office.” She pulled a Kleenex from the box on her desk and patted her forehead with it. “Actually, I’ll walk you there—but don’t breathe on me. I need to have a word with Ms. Westerfeld.”
“About what?” Violet asked.
Mrs. Gundeck made her way unsteadily across the room, using desks along the way for support. “It has occurred to me that I double-booked myself for tomorrow night. I have bingo with my knitting circle tomorrow night. What was I thinking?”
What was she thinking, indeed? Violet thought, because her last-minute excuse didn’t even make sense. Wouldn’t a knitting circle get together to knit? Wouldn’t a bingo group get together to play bingo?
But hey, it worked. Katie-Rose’s nutty plan worked, and when Mrs. Gundeck returned from the office and dismissed class early, Violet cruised by the music room to give her the good news.
Preston, of all people, beat her to it. When Violet saw him outside the music room, she stopped short. He did a sneaky wave to get someone’s attention, and then he grinned and gave a thumbs-up. From within the room came a high-pitched squeal.
“No way!” she heard Katie-Rose exclaim. Violet heard her from the hall, and she also heard the music teacher scold Katie-Rose. Violet hurried off. She assumes Preston did, too.
There’s a knock at Violet’s door, and Violet’s eyes fly open. Her dad’s not home yet. It must be her mom.
“Boo?” she says. “Can I come in?”
Violet sits up and straightens her hair. “Um … sure.”
Her mother enters her room, a Macy’s shopping bag in her hand. She sits down beside Violet and puts the bag on the floor.
“How was your day?” she asks.
Inwardly, Violet shrinks. She hates these “How was your day?” sessions her mom has made a habit of. Nothing of value is ever shared, and afterward, Violet is left feeling more alone rather than less so. Violet has even had the traitorous thought that she misses her mother more now than she did when her mom was at the hospital. They just can’t seem to connect.
“My day was fine,” Violet says dully. “Yours?”
“Fun. Really fun,” her mom says. She’s more animated than usual, and it piques Violet’s interest.
“How come?”
“Oh … because I went out and about, I guess. I went to that new mall, the street mall where music plays from hidden speakers and flowers bloom everywhere?”
Violet nods. “Tho
usand Oaks Village. It’s nice.”
“It is,” Violet’s mom agrees. Her skin has a sun-kissed warmth to it, and her eyes dance with amusement. “But those speakers. That piped in music. It’s a bit … Disney, don’t you think?”
“Yes!” Violet exclaims. She has thought that exact same thing. Her flower friends hear her out when she complains about it, but mainly they laugh and say, “It’s just California.” They like the artificial cheerfulness of it, maybe because it’s all they’re used to. They certainly don’t understand why it creeps her out.
“It kind of creeped me out,” her mom confides.
“Me, too!” Violet exclaims. “Because it’s so … planned! Like the owners of the mall got together and thought, ‘Now what can we do to lull these shoppers into a state of bliss, so that they will hand over all their money?’”
Her mom scoots closer to Violet. Violet scooches over to make room for her, so they can both lean against the headboard. Her mom kicks her shoes off and stretches her legs out alongside Violet’s.
“Do you know what it reminded me of?” her mom asks. “A Wrinkle in Time, when Meg and Calvin and Charles Wallace reach the place where It lives.”
Violet understands immediately. She and her mother read A Wrinkle in Time together when Violet was nine, and even though Violet was supposedly “too young” for it, she loved it. In the part her mother is referring to, the heroine of the book is trying to rescue her father, only everyone has been brainwashed into thinking the same exact way, doing things the same exact way, even bouncing balls the same exact way. The people in the town say they’re happy, but it’s clear to Meg that they no longer know what “happy” is. The only thing that matters, they think, is that everything looks clean and orderly on the outside. And if there is messiness, if a little boy bounces his ball to the wrong rhythm, for example, then he’s whisked away and “retrained” until he can pass for perfect again.
“Did you notice how all the women look alike?” Violet says.
“And how they’re all mainly women?” her mom replies.
“I think there are a lot of stay-at-home moms here,” Violet says.
“Like me,” Violet’s mom says. “For a while, anyway.”
This is the realest conversation Violet and her mom have had since her mom got home. Violet doesn’t want to jeopardize things … but there’s a question she wants to ask, and yet is nervous about asking, and yet really needs to ask. If she wants things to keep being real.
She does, so she takes a breath and comes out with it. “Did being around all those pretty ladies who look alike, and the canned music, and the perfect potted plants …”
Her mom takes Violet’s hand, but she doesn’t attempt to finish her sentence for her.
“Did it make you feel … that bad way?” Violet says in a rush. In Atlanta, it was all the perfect stay-at-home moms that made Violet’s mom have a breakdown, kind of. That’s too easy of an explanation, but it’s part of it.
“I can’t,” Violet remembers her mom saying, wilting on the kitchen floor of their old house. There was a charity ball to raise money for some cause or another, and according to Violet’s mom, her hair was all wrong, her dress was all wrong, her perfume was all wrong, her lipstick was all wrong. Everything was all wrong, and she wilted like a fallen cake on the kitchen floor. And her parents didn’t go to the charity ball, and Violet heard her dad call the babysitter, a girl named Tisha, and cancel on her.
Violet had been looking forward to hanging out with Tisha. They were going to make popcorn and watch The Princess Diaries, even though they’d both seen it tons of times already.
Violet’s mom takes her time answering Violet’s question. She traces Violet’s long, slender fingers with her own. “Yes, Boo, it brings up the bad feelings.”
Violet’s lungs constrict.
“But not in the same way,” Violet’s mom says. “Because I can see them now. I can see them for what they are, and I can say yes or no to letting them in. And you know what?”
“What?”
“I didn’t let them in. I said, ‘Hello, bad feelings. And now, good-bye, bad feelings.’” Violet’s mom smiles an open, uncomplicated smile. “And then do you know what I did? I bought my daughter a fabulous new shirt, that’s what.”
“Really?” Violet says. “Let me see!”
Violet’s mom leans over, grabs the Macy’s bag, and lifts it onto the bed. She pulls the shirt out of the bag and shakes it out. It’s white with a gothic-looking black cross on the front, but not in an emo-goth way.
Beneath the cross is a message: “Pave the path.”
“It’s beautiful,” Violet murmurs. Back in Atlanta, her mom used to do this sort of thing often—surprise Violet with a new shirt or a cute skirt. All of that ended when she stopped leaving the house, of course. Still, Violet and her mom used to do lots of things, and have lots of good moments, and it’s really nice to be reminded of that.
In Atlanta, before her mom got sick, Violet was happy. For the first time, Violet lets herself believe that happiness is possible here, in California, just as long as she’s with her mom.
Her throat tightens, and she lets the message on her shirt seep in: Pave the path.
All she can do is try.
starts the day by announcing that due to a conflict, Mrs. Gundeck will not be one of the chaperones at the Lock-In tonight. As a result, she will be taking Mrs. Gundeck’s place.
“Shhh!” Ms. Perez says, embarrassed and pleased. She glances at the door of her classroom to make sure Mrs. Gundeck isn’t randomly strolling by, even though she’s not even at school today due to her unanticipated conflict. “Kids, I’m happy I get to come, too. But we don’t want to make Mrs. Gundeck feel bad, now do we?”
“We don’t care!” Quin calls.
“You’re not even going to the Lock-In,” Katie-Rose points out, and Quin deflates a little. A shadow of regret passes over her face, and Katie-Rose thinks, See, you big too-cool-for-school-er? You should just let yourself have FUN and not be Modessa’s slave all the time.
Katie-Rose isn’t wasting her time on Quin, though. No way. She twists in her desk to check Preston’s reaction, and he’s grinning so widely (and un-meanly) that it throws her off. So she turns to Yaz, and the two girls give each other some knuckles, complete with the accompanying finger-burst explosion.
“You are so awesome,” Yaz tells Katie-Rose. “You did this, you know.”
Well, Preston did, Katie-Rose starts to say. But really, why confuse things? It was her idea after all. “Thanks. And you are even more awesome. Yesterday in trapeze class? Omigosh, you were like one of those Cirque du Soleil performers!”
Yasaman blushes.
Katie-Rose shoves her. “You were. Admit it. Out of everyone in the class, you were the only one who managed to do that ankle-dangling thing.”
Yasaman bites her lower lip, then stops trying to be modest and beams. “I did, didn’t I? And you will, too. Next time.”
During morning break, Katie-Rose and Yaz find Milla and Violet so that they can all rejoice together.
“I am sooo excited about tonight!” Milla says, bouncing on the toes of her Skechers. “Pizza, junk food, movies—”
“Max?” Katie-Rose adds. “Cute little Max-Max?” She’s still worried that her FFFs will get captured by maturity and bras and all of that, but she’s decided to take a chill pill for tonight. Plus, she’s decided that maybe (just maybe), there might be a place in the world for boys after all.
The only thing that dampens the girls’ excitement is when Violet clears her throat and looks awkward and tells them that like Mrs. Gundeck, but for different reasons, she won’t be coming to the Lock-In after all.
“Why?” Katie-Rose wails. “We need you! (a) For funness and (b) because our work is not yet done. Yes, Mr. Emerson and Ms. Perez will be jammed together AT NIGHTTIME, most likely in their NIGHTTIME ATTIRE—” She breaks off. “Do you think Ms. Perez will wear a nightie? One of those silky, sexy ones?”
“No,” Yaz says, hitting Katie-Rose. “And don’t say that word. It’s not appropriate.”
“‘Nightie’ isn’t appropriate?” Katie-Rose says.
Yasaman tilts her head and raises her eyebrows.
Katie-Rose shakes herself. “Whatever. Point is, we still have to get them to … make googly eyes at each other, or be alone in the teachers’ lounge together, or something.” She clasps her hands to her heart and gazes at the ceiling, heartbroken. “Otherwise they’re just two lonely people who happen to be in the same place at the same time.”
“Why can’t you come?” Milla asks Violet. “I thought it was a done deal.”
Violet’s eyes shift to the left. She jerks her shoulders—a very un-Violet movement, as Violet is usually the epitome of self-control—and says, “Well … she, um … my mom, I mean … she changed her mind. She said I’m not allowed.”
“Not allowed?” Yaz cries. “Why?”
Violet doesn’t have a ready answer. Katie-Rose picks up on this, just as she picks up on the way color is rising in Violet’s cheeks. Violet hardly ever blushes.
“She doesn’t want me eating junk food that late in the night,” Violet finally says.
“Bull pooty!” Katie-Rose says. Violet is hiding something. Either the real reason Violet’s mom changed her mind is so incredibly mortifying that it can’t be spoken aloud, or there is no real reason. Something fishy is going on, and Katie-Rose puts her hands on her hips.
“Isn’t there any way you can persuade her to change her mind back?” Milla says. “It won’t be nearly as fun without you, Violet.”
“She’s right,” Yaz says. “It’s supposed to be all four of us. The flower friends, all together.”
“Listen, I’m sorry,” Violet says. She won’t meet their eyes.