Blackbird Fly (18 page)

She wiped her face in a hurry and shoved the tissue in her pocket, probably along with some Skittles wrappers and other things.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She smiled. Tears still glistened on her cheeks. She wiped them away. “Yeah, sure.” She walked over to the mirrors and examined her face.

I didn't move from my spot. “Did you and Alyssa have a fight or something?”

“She accused me of kissing Jake. As if I would kiss that . . . that . . .
pig
.” Her voice sounded funny, probably because of all the crying.

“Why would you do that? She knows you like Lance and that Lance likes you.”

“Not anymore.” She went into a stall and got another wad of toilet paper.

“What happened?”

“He said Jake's been telling everyone we made out. I don't know why Jake would ever say that.”

“Because he's a jerk.”

Gretchen nodded. She was standing in front of the mirror that was cracked, so her face looked distorted and rearranged. She threw the tissue at her reflection.

“I hate Alyssa,” she said.

“I know how you feel.”

She looked down at the sink. Her brown hair fell off her shoulders and shielded her face.

“I hate Jake too,” she said.

“Lance should've believed you,” I said. “So he's an idiot too.”

She lifted her head. “You're right,” she said. “I guess I just hate everyone.”

She laughed lightly. I did too.

“Except you, of course,” she added.

I adjusted the guitar on my shoulder and walked toward the door.

“Call me if you need me,” I said. “We can hate everyone together.”

Just before I walked out, Gretchen said, “Apple?”

I propped open the door with my right Chuck and turned around. “Yeah?”

She didn't look up. “I'm sorry about the purse thing. I never really thought you took it.”

“I know. You just misplaced it because you're forgetful. It's one of your three IFs, remember?” I smiled. Suddenly I felt terrible for Gretchen.

“What are my other two?” she asked.

“You keep Skittles wrappers in your pockets,” I said. “And you always smell like shampoo.”

She laughed.

I let the door swing shut behind me.

Evan came over that evening to secretly pass my Yamaha through the window and have dinner with me and my mom.

“Kumusta ka?”
he asked, and my mother said she was fine. Then he tried to ask what was for dinner but he failed miserably, because my mother was never able to understand what he was really asking. Finally he sighed and said, “What's for dinner? Filipino food?”

My mother laughed. “How about pizza?”

“Pepperoni,” I said.

“Pepperoni,” Evan agreed. As my mother nodded and riffled through her purse for her phone he turned to me and said, “I bet the food is gonna be the only good thing about the field trip next week.”

“Shh,”
I said, widening my eyes.
“Shh.”

What?
Evan mouthed.

“Field trip?” asked my mother, still looking in her purse. “Is there a field trip?”

“Only for Evan's class.” I tugged his arm. “Let's go wait for the pizza outside.”

Once we were sitting on the back porch I explained that I never gave my mother the field-trip permission slip.

“I forged her signature,” I said.

“Why?”

“I knew she'd want to go as a chaperone.”

“Oh.”

We sat on the edge of the porch. Evan rubbed the heels of his sneakers into the grass and chewed on his fingernail. “Apple, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

In the span of a few seconds, I imagined every question he could ever ask, everything from
Can I kiss you?
to
How does it feel to be the third-ugliest girl in school?
but then he asked the one question I never expected:

“How come you don't like your mom?”

The question surprised me so much that a little gasp caught in my throat.

“It's not like I hate her or anything,” I said.

For once in his life, Evan didn't have anything
else to say. I didn't either. We both just sat there and watched his sneakers make a faint trail in the grass. I turned his question over and over in my head. Evan thought I hated my mother. I wondered if she thought that too.

“What was wrong with Gretchen today?” he finally asked.

“Jake Bevans told everyone they made out.”

I looked at my crappy bike and my weekend backpack, which was perched up next to it. I hadn't been anywhere with that weekend backpack for a while. Ever since the Dog Log, I'd spent most of my time in my room, listening to music, playing the guitar, planning my escape, and thinking about the Dog Log. I thought back to the day I'd gone to Alyssa's party.

“I wonder if Jake told people they made out because Gretchen was first on that list,” I said. I leaned back on my hands. “Just to make himself look good.”

Evan pulled up a handful of grass and tossed it. “Probably. He's an idiot.”

There was no arguing with that.

“Ugh,” I said. “I can't imagine making out with Jake Bevans.”

“Me neither.”

I giggled and smacked Evan's shoulder.

“I'm serious,” I said. “He's disgusting. They all are.”

“We should come up with some kind of list of our own. Something to pass around school that has all their names on it. Like, the People Who Suck List.”

“Nah. I think two lists are enough.”

“Yeah, you're probably right.” A cardinal chirped and landed in a tree nearby. Evan stared at it.

“Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” he said. “Someone else joined MAYBO.”

“Really?” I didn't mean to sound so surprised. “Who?”

“Brian Watkins. Do you know him?”

“Yeah. He's the guy who wears those bright yellow high-tops, right?”

“I don't know. I've never met him. I only know his name, because I stopped by the office to ask if anyone signed up.”

“I'll point him out to you at school.”

“Bright yellow high-tops shouldn't be hard to miss.”

My mom opened the back door with the phone in her hand.

“Apple, come talk to the pizza,” she said, waving her phone at me.

I grumbled but got up and took the phone from her.

The man on the other end of the line said, “Hello? I need someone who speaks English.
English
.” His voice was loud and irritated. There was a spattering of laughter in the background; I could hear it clearly, because the phone was turned up so loud. I looked at my mother and turned down the volume. I heard him
say, “Sometimes I forget I'm even in America. You should have to be able to at least speak the language before you come to this country. Jesus.”

“I can,” I said. “And so can she.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, I do speak English, and so does my mother.”

“Well, it wasn't clear.” Abruptly he said, “Go ahead with your order now.”

I looked at Evan and my mother. She looked down at him on the porch and said something about not having good English.

“I try, but sometimes they don't understand me.” And she smiled.

I knew that smile. It was the kind of smile that wants to run away from your face. It's the kind of smile you give when your so-called friends are making fun of you or sitting quietly while someone else is. It was the way I smiled at Alyssa's party. The way I had smiled for months.

I could see Jake Bevans in my mind. He was holding his eyes back to make slits and talking about dog-eaters and hot dogs, and now, as I looked at my mother with her runaway smile and listened to the sighs and laughter in the pizzeria, I felt my chest tighten.

“Hello? Hello?” said the pizza man.

“Maybe you weren't listening,” I said.

“What?”

My mother and Evan exchanged confused glances.

“Maybe she
was
speaking English, and you weren't listening!”

I turned off the phone before he could say anything else and handed it back to my mother.

“Mangaon ta,”
I said.

“What happened with the pizza?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

“We can eat our own good food at home. Besides, it's cheaper, right?”

My mother reached over and pinched my cheek like I was a five-year-old.

“Maybe you're not turning American after all!” she said.

After she went back into the house, Evan stood up and asked, “What does maang-aah-ohn mean?”

“It means ‘Let's eat
pancit
.'” And I motioned for him to follow me into the house for dinner.

“G
retchen Scott is a dirty troll.”

The sentence was there in big black marker on the wall of the girls' bathroom—not the old bathroom by the band room but the one in the main hall, the one that everyone used. It was written as big as ever and was so unexpected that I took a step back and read it again. I felt like I'd been socked in the gut and, what's worse, I knew Alyssa didn't write it, because it wasn't her handwriting.
The storm against Gretchen was spreading.

I worked my way through the crowd of girls by the sink, dampened a paper towel, and went back to the wall to wash it off, but all I did was wipe away bathroom grime and make the black permanent marker stand out even more. I tossed the wet paper towel in the trash and tried to scrape off the words with my fingernail, but it didn't do any good. Finally I gave up and walked to homeroom, where I found out what “dirty troll” meant.

According to Danica, who was talking to Claire, Gretchen had made out with at least twelve boys since the beginning of the school year.

“It's a
fact
too,” Danica said. She leaned over and acted like she was talking quietly, but everyone nearby could hear her. “Four of the guys told me about it themselves, and it was
very detailed
, so they couldn't have made it up.”

“That doesn't sound like something Gretchen would do,” said Claire.

“Of course not,” said Danica dismissively. “She plays this role like she's Miss Goody-Goody, but it's all fake.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes at them, but they were so involved in their conversation that they didn't see.

When Braden came in, he immediately walked over to Claire and Danica. I'd noticed that he'd made a point to talk to Claire every single morning ever since she made it on the Hot Lot.

“I was just talking to Claire about Gretchen Scott,” said Danica.

Braden sat on Claire's desk. “What, being number one on the list?” he said.

“No, not that,” Danica said. She motioned for him to come closer, and he did. She whispered in his ear.

I glared at them.

“That isn't true,” I said, from my desk. I had to speak up to make sure they heard me.

“How do you know?” Braden said. “Are you her babysitter or something?”

Danica laughed.

“Besides, no one can believe a thief. Especially one who eats Fido for supper,” he added, throwing a few barks my way as an added bonus.

I rolled my eyes again as Mr. Ted came into the room and got everyone under control.

I thought about Gretchen. I wondered if she'd seen “Gretchen Scott is a dirty troll.”

Even as Mr. Ted talked about next week's field trip and gave us reminders and used words like
excursion
and
promenade
, I kept thinking about her. I decided I'd talk to her when I met Heleena and Evan at our lockers, but I didn't see her anywhere after the bell rang.

“Did you see what was written about Gretchen in the girls' bathroom?” I asked Heleena.

“Yeah,” Heleena said. She frowned.

“Whatever it was, she deserves it. Karma,” said Evan.

“No, she doesn't,” I said.

After school I rode my bike to her house. There were no cars in the driveway, so I figured her parents were at work. I've been friends with Gretchen for a couple years, but I've never met her parents. I don't think they're home very much.

Gretchen opened the door in a T-shirt and pajama pants. She wasn't wearing any makeup.

“Apple.” She gave a runaway smile. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Are you okay?”

Her smile disappeared. She stepped aside and opened the door for me.

Her house always smelled like fresh potpourri. I'd been there only a few times, but I remembered that. Everything was neat and orderly. I followed her to the living room, where we both sat on the enormous, plush couch. I'd forgotten about that couch and how comfortable it was. I put my guitar on the carpet so I could get snug.

She lifted her feet and hugged one of the throw pillows.

“You weren't in school today,” I said. “Are you sick?”