The Taming of the Drew (8 page)

Chapter 3

After the meeting in the Dean’s office I kept waiting for my mom to let rip. After all, it’s not every day you find out your daughter got busted breaking into the boys’ locker room to take naked-from-the-waist-up pictures to sell.
 

And then somehow walked away from the school authorities without even a stern warning.
 

But all mom did in response to my tense silence was fuss over me. She tut-tutted as she washed my face and hair in the sink, using her old cosmetology-school drape like I was four years old again. I wasn’t sure if she was tut-tutting my foolishness, or being angry at the security guards. Frankly, I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t deal with her answer, either way. I fell into bed and slept like I was under anesthesia until Mom woke me with a cup of tea, a plate of pancakes, and barely enough time to throw on my uniform and brush my teeth.
 

And then, just as I was about to rush out the door, she handed me my bag and phone, stretched up on tiptoe to kiss my forehead, and said, with narrowed eyes, “Oh, you better believe we’ll talk. Later.”
 

Gulp.

I was a wreck my whole shift. It’s hard to mess up a hotdog order (three choices: chili, sauerkraut, or naked), but I managed to do it. Several times. I watched the clock so much that my boss, Mr. Gremio, said, “Stop twitching! You’re like a caffeine addict on speed! You’re giving the customers a bad impression.” I refrained from pointing out that in order to eat at Dino-Dog, it was an absolute requirement that the customer not notice things. Like toenail-shaped chewy bits.
 

“What are you, dying to knock off early, Miss Lah-Di-Dah?”

Mr. Gremio was long and flabby and over-pink, like the hotdogs he sold. He was one of those people who could be thirty, or fifty — and you were afraid to ask. It didn’t help that he had the vocabulary of an eighty-year-old geezer (“Lah-di-dah”?).
 

Oh yeah, that’s me. Miss Lah-Di-Dah in a hotdog-shaped paper hat (even
that
can’t hide my terminal case of bed-head from going to sleep with my hair wet, then shoving the whole mess in a server’s hairnet). I wore a polyester neon-bright mustard-yellow sack-shirt with the smell of endlessly heated, swollen and bursting hotdogs seeping out my pores.
 

Gremio’s face puckered like the end of one of the stewing hotdogs. He leaned toward me and gave a small sniff. “You’re not doing
drugs
, are you?”

“Tell me you didn’t do that. Did you really just smell me?”

We stared at each other. Gremio said, “Methamphetamine will rot your teeth, young lady. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Okay, if I was addicted to meth, the prettiness of my teeth would be the least of my worries. Probably. But there was no talking to Mr. Gremio when he was like this. “I’m going to a dance tonight,” I said, hoping that would end the discussion.

“I’m warning you,” he said, “if you’re falling in with a bad crowd, I’ll start assigning you Saturday night shifts. That’ll put a stop to your shenanigans. You better watch your step, missy.”

I sighed and slapped a six-pack of chili-dogs into a Family Carrier. Like all my friends, I worked at the one place where I could find a regular Saturday morning shift available. Working on school nights made homework impossible, and even if you didn’t have a social life, working Friday and Saturday nights made you feel like a serious loser. All of my friends worked the same kind of Saturday shifts I did.

Which is why I was surprised when the Greenbacks started showing up 45 minutes before my shift was over.

Hot dog steam coalesced into the shape of Gremio at my elbow. “Don’t even think about stealing dogs for your friends,” he said. “I count them, you know.”

I pinched a broken-in-half hotdog with my tongs and raised it so that he could see the exploded end curling out like a poisonous flesh-flower. “Does this count as 0.6 or 0.7 of a dog?”

I expected him to say something like, “Get smart with me, young lady, and you’ll…you’ll…”

Instead he flicked a glance at the amputated dog and said, without hesitating, “0.67.”

Okay, now that was just scary. I took off my apron and sped out of there precisely as the second-hand nailed 5 o’clock.

***

“Don’t be angry at Tio,” said Viola.
 

We were crammed into my thin-walled bedroom, Greenbacks standing in a circle around the twin bed that took up all the space.

“I’m not angry,” I barked at Viola. Ever since I’d made the deal with Mrs. Bullard yesterday, something hard and afraid stuck inside me, a cold rock in my chest.
 

Helena said, “Kate, Tio
should
have told us. Besides, we won’t tell.”

Viola said, “Cross our hearts and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

Somehow, the graphic nature of that childhood rhyme sounded downright creepy coming out of Viola’s mouth. There was a moment of silence while we all contemplated the image.

She added, “Or, instead, maybe, you could give me a wedgie?”
 

As I laughed, that rock of fear in my chest vibrated, then crumbled, until only a smear was left. I smiled at Viola and felt like crying at the same time. “All right, you got a deal.” I looked around the room. “Anyone talks, it’s wedgie-time.”

I must have contaminated the others with my stiff, cold fear because the minute I made the wedgie-threat, everyone let out a gush of air, like they’d been holding their breath without realizing it. My bedroom erupted in chatter.

Helena clapped her hands. “People! People! There’s not much time here and we’ve got a lot to do!”

“Listen,” I said over the dwindling talk, “I appreciate the support, but you don’t
all
have to stay to help me get ready.”

Tio and Gonzo looked confused, then horror-struck, like the idea that they’d help me get ready for a school dance was appalling. Everyone else shifted in place, like I’d said something wrong, but no one wanted to explain.

Phoebe said, “We’re
all
going.”

“But…but…” If you don’t understand Legacy High School's social scene, you probably don’t understand the shock-terror effect this announcement had on me.
 

The way it works is that certain kids actually take a class, one period a day, called Leadership. They even get academic credit for it, and a grade (an A).

Leadership is
always
Uni students. But you can’t be
merely
a University student — Leadership is for the truly popular University students with enough money to bankroll major activities and moms who can devote themselves full-time to fund-raising, bulk purchasing, and decorating for those activities. If you wanted to be hated on a school-wide basis, you’d attempt to take Leadership uninvited and unqualified.
 

Leadership has a big budget and Leadership decides what it’s used for. You might justify the situation by saying these kids earn it with their fundraising activities (Crab-Feed for Parents! Get Your Tickets Now! Only $100 a Plate or $1000 a Table! Silent Auction Too!), or that their parents donate the rest of the money.
 

But the bottom line is that there are a
few
school-wide activities, like Homecoming and Prom, where a majority of students are welcome. But for the rest of the dances, only Leadership and their close friends (in University) attend. These are dances that get announced (like a spontaneous party) the Wednesday beforehand, and have cheesy themes that all boil down to an opportunity for girls with perfect waists to wear spandex and bikini tops in public — themes like the Superhero Dance, and the South Pacific Dance.
 

No one — and I mean
no one
— in his or her right mind would go to one of these dances unless you were tight with the Leadership crowd. Freshman year, there are always one or two poor souls, usually the oldest kid in their family, who cluelessly show up at a Leadership dance in September.
 

They never speak of it again, and by October, no one makes that mistake. The fact that I — one Academy geek — was attending a Leadership dance (even with the Dog, king of the untouchably popular) already violated every treaty in the Legacy High School social rulebook. But having
all
the Greenbacks go was a social nuclear explosion that threatened to wipe out life as we know it (primarily ours).

In my mind, I could imagine the Legacy gym doors swinging open. Back-lit by the parking lot street-lamps would be my dearest friends, huddled together. Deafening VJ dance music would screech to a jittering stop, leaving a wah-wah-wah ringing silence pressing against ears. Strobe lights would clunk off and a spotlight would swivel bazooka-style to hit the Greenbacks, pinning them in everyone’s sight.
 

On the gym’s webcam-projected Jumbotron screen, a University girl would press the back of her hand against her open mouth in horror and then a scream would tear through the night. Like startled cattle, University students would bump and bleat until they turned and stampeded for the doors, blood-lust driving them, pounding, trampling toward us, an unstoppable riot of destructive anger…
 

“Kate?” Tio shook my arm, hard, “Earth to Kate!

“You can’t!” I squeaked. “I mean it! I won’t let you guys!”

Looks were exchanged. The silence grew heavy. Alex said, “You don’t think we can handle it, do you?’

I swallowed. Of course they would think that.

It was that, or believe I was embarrassed by them.

“Can’t I just protect you?” I said.
 

“And what, commit social suicide
alone
? You think we’re somehow going to make what you’re doing
worse
?” Phoebe had a hand on her hip, and her voice had an edge. Rule Number One of the Greenback Survival Guide — Don’t piss off the Phoebes. Holding together a half-time factory job, taking care of her four younger brothers and sister, keeping up with her homework and taking a serious pre-college workload meant that Phoebe was tightly wound. It took a lot to set her off, but when she blew, she really blew. We had an informal rotating schedule of who was assigned to take Phoebe somewhere and help her blow off steam. The only person left out of the scheduling assignments was Phoebe. We thought it was best for everyone if she didn’t know. So far this winter — bowling, paintball, and one free-trial-offer kickboxing class at a health club.
 

“Um, Kate?” Gonzo, who was assigned Phoebe-duty last month, got my attention, “I told Phoebe that a loud, head-banging dance might be a good time.” He pronounced the words too carefully, pausing between each one, “You know what I mean?”

Great. That was code for the fact that Gonzo failed to do his rotation, meaning Phoebe had almost 6 weeks of high-pressure steam built up.
 

In the strained silence that followed, Viola said, “Has anyone ever been to a dance?”

I stood in horror as everyone looked at each other. No one had.
 

Except me.

That’s right, moi. I was one of those poor souls without an older brother or sister who naively wandered into the near-social-death experience of mistakenly attending a Leadership dance the fall of my freshman year. But who would ever want to admit to such a thing? It was like saying to a crowd who’s never done it, oh sure, I’ve gone to class with the bottom of my skirt accidentally tucked into the waistband of my undies. Hasn’t everyone?

Now, on top of everything else, I had to worry that Phoebe could end up
actually
banging heads at the dance — University heads.
 

Inspiration hit. “Helena, grab pens off my desk behind you there, and some index cards. Pass them out to everyone.”

“Oh great,” Gonzo said, “like we’re not geeky enough. Tell me we’re not going to take flashcards to the dance.”

“Sort of,” I admitted. “We’re going to have a competition. Everyone put five dollars on the bed.” People reluctantly peeled money out of wallets and tossed it on my coverlet with the picked threads. “Anyone know what a birding list is?”

Tio said, “Isn’t that a list people keep of the different types of birds you find when you go bird-watching.”

“Bingo. We’re going to have a competition tonight. Forty dollars is the prize to the person who spots all the types of predictable high school dancers.”

“What do you mean, predictable dancers?”

“For example, there’s always one girl who dances by swinging her hair around. I call her Shampoo Commercial Hair Girl. If you see her, you check a box. You write down all the ones I can think of on your card. And if no one checks them all, the cash prize’ll go to the person who gets the most.”

“Oh goodie,” Phoebe said, clapping her hands, “I love this kind of thing!”

The whole room let out an audible sigh of relief. “Oh thank God,” I heard Tio mutter beside me.
 

We set to work writing out eight individual cards as I dictated dancing stereotypes to everyone from my vast (one dance!) experience. Helena wrote out my card’s list as a favor for me because, while we did this, I took some time setting up accounts on the computer in my bedroom so I could do Mrs. Bullard’s daily text reports on the Dog’s behavior — not the least of which was paying for an upgrade to unlimited text and a data plan on my cell. The price tag hurt, and it didn’t sting any less when I got of list of extra options that went along with it — things I didn’t want or need. Officially you’re supposed to be over 18 to do this kind of thing, but Mom and I help each other stay on top of the bills, so I have access to all our accounts. But I’d never done something like this without asking before.
 

I was just thinking about how my Mom was going to kill me after she found out when Mom brought in two hot, homemade cheese pizzas on cookie-sheets. She’s a genie that way — all I have to do is touch a guilty thought and —
poof
— she appears. She merely raised one eyebrow at me as she passed around paper plates and made small talk with my friends. I’d have felt better if she’d gotten angry about me sliding in and out of the house without explaining anything, or asked me in a fake-sweet voice to meet her in the hallway or demanded to know where we thought we were going that night. She had to know we were up to something. Her new silent treatment was somehow scarier, like I was balanced on a high wire without a net underneath.