Authors: Elizabeth Myles
“Where do you want me to start?” Lia pouted.
“Honestly, I wish you wouldn’t.”
Undeterred, Lia explained to me why her world was collapsing. “I just found out Yamir’s practically
engaged
to some chick that plays oboe in the orchestra.” She gathered cookie crumbs from the paper towel, leaned her head back and poured them into her mouth.
“Engaged, huh?” I opened my brown paper lunch bag and pulled out the peanut butter sandwich I’d slapped together the night before.
Lia had decided Yamir Bandi would be her senior year crush. A quiet, bespectacled transfer student from Bart, he fit Lia’s nerdy type to a tee. Unfortunately for her, that meant he was also shy as a colt and found Lia terrifying. She’d tried all week to corner him long enough to ask him out.
She nodded sadly. “Can you believe it?”
“Not really, no.” It was true. I had a hard time picturing Yamir speaking to a member of the opposite sex, much less asking her to marry him.
“Katrina told me he and Addy Chandler met at some Educational Decathlon thing and have been seeing each other since, like, the beginning of junior year. And that he lives in the Bartholomew district but transferred to Carreen just to be with her.” She sniffed at the oatmeal cream pie before taking a bite. “His parents had to put in a special request and everything. Can you believe it?” she repeated, chewing.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” I tore off a piece of sandwich crust and tossed it at her.
“You don’t even care, do you?” she whined, throwing the bread back at me.
“There are more pressing concerns on my mind,” I admitted. I turned the conversation to weekend plans and soon Lia was scowling, remembering she had an assortment of anniversary-party-related errands to run with her mother on Saturday. She’d be standing up at her parents’ vow renewal and her final dress-fitting, among other things, was set for the afternoon.
I watched her move on to the next snack cake in her pile. “If you don’t watch it, they’re gonna have to let the waist out,” I warned.
“It’d serve my mother right.” She bit angrily into a Twinkie. “You should see the thing,” she said, meaning the dress. “It’s freaking hideous. Pink. Jake gets to wear black. I have to wear pink!” It especially wasn’t fair she had to look so girly, she said, since Elyse herself wasn’t even wearing a dress to the ceremony, but a pant-suit. “And you’d think she’d want to. Wear a dress, I mean. Since the first time they got married, she was big as a house and couldn’t fit into one. You know she was already pregnant with Jake, right? My grandma almost disowned her. Well, I guess she can’t ever say anything to me if I show up on her doorstep with a bun in the oven...”
“So when are we going to practice?” I interrupted her diatribe to ask.
Saturday night, she promised.
***
M
y class schedule looked like this: Biology I, English, Art IV, and lunch, followed by study hall, Spanish II, and Government/Economics. Biology was the only class Lia and I shared this year. She’d already taken Chem I and Physics I and II and figured she’d round things out with Bio because she liked science so much. I, on the other hand, hadn’t taken any since Earth Science in ninth grade and was only taking Biology now because I needed the credit to graduate.
Of course, I’d only earn credit if I somehow managed to memorize and understand all the stages of cellular mitosis. And, judging by how many times I’d had to re-read the beginning of that chapter since sitting down in study hall after lunch, that seemed like a long shot.
Frustrated, I gave up on my Biology book and traded it for a comic I had in my backpack. I read
that
in no time and it inspired me to take out a pencil and paper and sketch out some characters of my own. I was working out the details of an accompanying narrative I thought we might be able to run in the next
Slate
, when the bell rang. I took an extra minute to shade in a drawing and before I knew it, was scrambling up the stairs to the third floor, trying to make it to Spanish before the late bell, with no time to stop at my locker for my book.
When Senorita Lopez asked the class to follow along with her as she reviewed some basic phrases, I opened my English notebook so my empty desktop wouldn’t look too conspicuous. I read up on the theme of gender conflict in Shakespeare’s
Othello
and refined doodles in the margins until I heard my name and realized Lopez was trying to get my attention.
“Hm?” I said.
“Senorita Montez?” She looked at me expectantly, making me think she must’ve asked me something.
“Sorry, could you repeat the question?” I asked. Desks squeaked and rattled as the front half of the room turned to stare at me.
Lopez sighed. She was probably only about thirty five but sometimes, like now, she looked a lot older. I guessed students like me were to blame. “I asked you to please finish this sentence,” she said and repeated her prompt.
As much as I wanted to help her out, I had no idea what she’d said. My last name and skin-color notwithstanding, I hadn’t spoken much Spanish since I was a kid. And I hadn’t gotten around to studying the week’s assignment yet.
I stared at her, pen frozen above a drawing of a sword-wielding skeleton fighting off some sort of mutant Tyrannosaurus Rex. “Si?” I tried, pausing to lick my lips. “Si...por favor?”
Of course Lopez was immediately onto me, aware I was simply reciting whatever random Spanish words I could think of. She glanced at my desk. “Where’s your text book, Veronica?” she asked, dropping the formalities.
“Uh...” My pen slipped from my hand, rolled across the aisle to my right and disappeared beneath someone else’s desk. “Sorry. I didn’t have time to get it before class,” I tried.
A crumpled sheet of paper flew at my head from across the opposite aisle. I turned and saw Eugenia Ridley’s best friend and bass player, Penny Aikman, chewing on the end of her pen and staring at me like she’d just found me on the bottom of her shoe. “What do you need a book for, anyway?” she asked me. “Shouldn’t you, like, know this stuff already?”
“What?” I snapped.
“You’re a Mexican,” she said. “Isn’t Spanish, like, your first language?”
Amid a smattering of laughter, I picked up the paper she’d thrown at me and winged it back at her, but she ducked out of the way.
“Penny, Veronica, that’s enough,” Lopez said without much conviction.
I was still glaring at Penny when a quick poke in the arm made me turn back around. “Hey, Veronica.” I turned to see Alex Kalivas holding out the pen I’d lost. “You can share my book,” he said.
I hardly knew Alex, though I’d seen him around Lynch’s and Kopy Shak, where Lia and I Xeroxed
The Blank Slate
. He worked there and had given us his employee discount a few times in exchange for free copies of the zine. I accepted my pen back from him, mumbling my thanks, and he scooted his desk closer to mine and pushed his book in my direction.
Seemingly satisfied with this resolution, Lopez turned and walked away, moving on to pick on someone else. As soon as her back was turned, Penny threw the wadded piece of paper at me again. This time when it landed on my desk I thought I recognized the handwriting on it and picked it up, flattening it out.
It was the flier, re-drawn by me and distributed by Lia over the past few days, for the upcoming 50s Housewives show at Lynch’s. Beneath the Impressionable Youth logo, Penny had heavily penciled in the words “EAT SHIT.” I folded the flier and stuffed it between two pages of my notebook.
“What is it?” Alex wanted to know.
“Nothing.”
As the rest of the class recited along with Lopez, I drew a circle in my notebook margin and filled it in with angry pen marks, pressing so hard the paper started to tear.
***
F
illing out Senorita Lopez’s daily vocabulary assignment ate up most of the remaining class period, giving Alex and me little time to talk. But I felt him watching me as I flipped through the pages of his text book glossary. When the bell rang, he repositioned his desk and then quickly caught up with me on my way out the door.
“You’ve got Government and Econ next, right?” he asked when we’d reached my locker.
“How’d you know?” I asked, spinning the dial on my combination lock.
“My sister’s in that class.”
I’d met Alex’s twin sister, Melina, a few times at Lynch’s. I didn’t know her well, but she’d always seemed sweet. The two of them shared Grecian good looks: dark, thick hair, deep brown eyes and olive skin. They both kept pretty high profiles at school, holding student council positions and participating in sports. I thought I remembered Melina being in the dance troupe and Alex being on the soccer team.
“How is she?” I asked, wondering where this conversation was heading. I’d finished trading out my text books and closed up my locker, edging down the crowded hallway in the direction of Mr. Borland’s Government classroom.
He didn’t answer, only stopped in front of me to block my path. “What are you doing this weekend?” he asked. It came out in a rush, as if he hadn’t wanted to give himself time to back out of asking.
“What?” I blinked at him. “I, uh...I’ve got band practice...”
“Oh.” He scratched uncomfortably at the back of his arm. “So you’re busy?”
“Sorta, yeah. Why?”
“The Racket’s playing at Lynch’s tomorrow. I thought you might be going.”
“Right,” I said. “The Racket.”
“So, are you gonna be there?”
I shook my head. And, as usual when I was flustered, I started to babble. “Probably not. Lia and I just started this new band...We’re playing the Lynch’s benefit...You’ve heard about the benefit, right? And well, before that we’re opening for The 50s Housewives. So we really need to practice. Only, we haven’t had a lot of time to rehearse lately...” I glanced at the clock mounted high on the wall and nervously shifted my book from one arm to the other. The bell would ring any minute. “And, uh, wow, look at the time. I have to go...” I tried slipping around him, hoping he’d get the hint.
“I know you’re in a hurry,” he said, moving aside to let me pass but falling into step beside me. “I just really...well, if your plans change, maybe I’ll see you there?”
I eyed the clock again. “Yeah, sure.” I thanked Alex again for letting me borrow his book and jogged through Borland’s door.
I felt mildly awful about ditching him like that, but it had to be done. Three late slips counted as a missed day and while a lot of teachers didn’t bother officially recording tardiness, I’d heard Borland was relentless about it. I couldn’t afford to be written up. Last year I’d been late so many times I’d come close to being sent to truancy court. Needless to say, my mother hadn’t been happy. And the school wouldn’t let a serial truant graduate.
I slid into my desk by the window as the bell rang. Across the room, I saw Melina opening her backpack. She caught me watching her and smiled pleasantly, making me feel even worse about giving her brother the brush-off.
Borland launched into his lecture without bothering to greet the class or even give us more than a cursory glance. He focused on his pull-down map of the United States, wrapped up in explaining how the Electoral College functioned. I did my best to pay attention, knowing the first Government quiz was in another week, but it was hard to concentrate. I kept seeing Alex’s face in my mind’s eye, hearing the hopeful tone in his voice when he’d asked me if I’d be at Lynch’s tomorrow night. All I could think about was getting home and calling Lia to tell her what’d happened and ask her what she thought it meant.
I picked at the skin around my thumb nail and tapped my foot, gazing out the window as
Bore
-land droned on about super delegates. When the bell finally rang, I was one of the first to sprint out the door.
***
“H
ey. I’ve got a message for your friend Lia,” Ridley barked at me in one of the first floor bathrooms. I’d ducked in there after Government and been confronted by Ridley and her henchwomen upon exiting the stall. Electric Torch had replaced Lia with a male vocalist, but the other band members were all girls, and the pack of them circled in on me as I tried to reach the sink.
“What do I look like?” I asked Ridley, faking some bravado, “Your secretary?”
“Trust me. You don’t want to know what I think you look like,” she said. She was tall and had long, bleached blonde hair with black streaks in it. Her eyes were dark and her face was okay, I guess. She’d probably have been pretty if she didn’t always look so mean.
I tried to shoulder past her but she shoved me back, commanding me to tell her just how Lia and I had “pulled it off.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, suddenly worried Katrina had finally blabbed about the Clyde interview.
She grabbed the front of my t-shirt in both fists and whirled me, backing me up against the sinks so hard the soap dispenser rattled.
“The opening slot at The 50s Housewives show,” said their drummer, a little pixie with dreadlocked hair whose name I couldn’t remember.
“Roy promised us that gig,” said Ridley. “I don’t know how you bunch of hacks stole it out from under us, but I know this: you sure as shit don’t deserve it.” She’d released me, but now she pointed at my chest, her darkly painted fingernail grazing the front of my shirt. I wondered how she played guitar with those talons.
Not very well
, Lia would’ve said.
“But you can tell Lia it’s okay,” Ridley went on, digging the nail into my chest. “’Cause we’re gonna wipe the floor with you bitches at the Lynch’s benefit.”
I was relieved to know she wasn’t talking about the interview after all. Still, I was intimidated by her words. And hurt by the fingernail. But it’d be suicide to let it show. I swallowed hard and, swatting her arm away, said “I’ll believe
that
when I see it. Back off.”
Ridley backed up a couple of steps, shaking her head as though trying to wake herself from a bad dream (a nightmare, I supposed, where people
didn’t
automatically bend to her will). Then she let out a little grunt of laughter.