Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus (3 page)

“Mother,” I groaned.

She didn’t come.

“Mother,” I groaned again.

She popped her head in my bedroom.

“Did you miss the bus?” she asked.

When she said the word
bus
, I couldn’t help myself. I started to cry.

“Are you sick?” she asked, taking a few steps into my room.

When she asked me this, it made me realize that I’d eaten way too many jelly beans. I felt like I could throw up. But I held it back.

“I think I am,” I said, lifting my head up off the pillow. I had decided not to tell my mother about the bus. It was too embarrassing. Being hit by a bus was one thing, but falling underneath it was a totally different story.

“How come you’re wearing your coat?” she asked.

That was a good question.

“I tried to go to school, but it didn’t work,” I said.

My mother came and sat at the foot of my bed. She pressed her hand against my forehead.

“You’re burning up,” she said. She unzipped my coat and peeled me out of it. “Wow. These mud spots are huge.”

I nodded. “Yes. They are.”

“Did you drop your coat in a puddle?” she asked.

“No,” I said. And this wasn’t a lie. Because when I was underneath the bus, I wasn’t anywhere near a puddle. I landed on top of ice and snow and the road and maybe one of my mozzarella sticks.

She turned my coat over.

“They’re everywhere!” she said. “I’m going to have to wash it at least twice. Maybe three times. Plus, I’ll have to soak it.”

“The world is a dirty place,” I said. Then I changed the subject. “I still feel hot.”

She touched my forehead again.

“You’re very warm,” she said, frowning. “Schools are little plague factories. You might have caught something. Don’t worry. I’ll call the attendance office and square away your absence.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I probably don’t need my homework. Today was mostly math and PE and social studies and science and other things that I don’t mind missing until Monday.”

My mother frowned. “I’m going to get your homework, Camille.”

Before I could argue against this idea, she looked at her watch and jumped to her feet.

“I need to get a substitute for my class,” she said.

“Really?” I asked.

This was the first time this had ever happened. It felt very dramatic.

“What choice do I have?” She kissed my forehead. “You smell like an orange, Camille.” She tilted her head and smiled. Then the bright pink blur ran from my room.

It was not fun being in bed. I wasn’t
really
sick. I didn’t have a good book to read. I was tired of eating jelly beans. I wanted chocolate milk. And having a cat with me would have been nice. Cats are great company. They lick. They purr. I loved cats. Sadly, my last three—Checkers, Fluff, and Muffin—were no longer with me. I was a very unlucky cat owner. After Checkers vanished, Fluff used up his ninth life falling out of a very tall tree, and Muffin was hit by a mail truck, both of my parents banned cats.

When we buried Muffin in the field behind our house, my father made a cross out of two Popsicle sticks. He wrote Muffin’s name on it and stuck it in the ground.

“You’re the kind of person who should own fish,” he said.

My mother walked back into my room. She looked sad.

“I couldn’t find a substitute. The gym canceled my class,” she said.

“Forever?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Just today.”

“I could stay by myself,” I said.

“No,” my mother said. “I’m not leaving my sick child home alone.”

I thought that was probably the right decision. Even though I didn’t enjoy hearing her call me a child. Because in a year, I would turn eleven. So I basically considered myself a “young person.” I watched my mother mope out of my room. Then I closed my eyes. I guess I must have snoozed. Because the next time I saw her, she was showered and dressed and looked pretty fantastic. She was even smiling! This made me happy, because it meant canceling her kickboxing class wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

“I have some great news,” she said. Tiny silver dolphins attached to her charm bracelet swam in the air around her wrist.

“I don’t have any homework?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, that I’m picking up this afternoon.” She sat down next to me and stroked my hair. “Camille, here’s something I’ve been thinking about concerning the idea of telling the whole truth.”

“Uh-oh,” I said. Because I knew that sometimes my mother was a fibber.

“Camille, sometimes telling the whole truth can
hurt people we love. Sometimes the whole truth can be so alarming that if we told the people we loved the whole truth, they wouldn’t love us anymore.”

After saying this, my mother frowned. So did I. Because it seemed like the polite thing to do. But then her frown somehow snapped into a smile.

“I’ve decided to move forward with some essential home repairs.” Her eyes began to sparkle. “Your father would not be happy about this. Let’s face it. We both love him, but he isn’t always reasonable.”

I nodded. I thought she would talk about all the ways we didn’t find my father reasonable. He watched too much football. He had a difficult time being nice to our mail carrier. He used too much ketchup on his hash browns. He wouldn’t let me be a mother’s helper for the Bratbergs. And he refused to eat brownies if they didn’t have walnuts in them.

“Your father doesn’t understand how important it is to make essential home repairs. Therefore, because we both love your father, we’re not going to tell him.” She brushed a curl from her face and smiled at me.

I pulled my hand out from under the covers and pointed my finger at her. “I don’t want to lie.”

My mother sat down next to me and wrapped her hand around my finger. The tiny dolphins bounced against me, poking my skin with their sharp little snouts.

“Just because you’re not telling the whole truth to someone doesn’t mean that you’re lying.” She blinked at me several times, trying to look innocent.

“That’s exactly what it means to tell a lie!” I said. I pulled my finger out of her hand and reaimed it at her.

The doorbell rang. It was Jimmy. Before leaving my room, my mother looked back at me over her shoulder. “You don’t have to lie. But you don’t have to tell him either.” She blew me a kiss, but her aim was off. I think it landed on the floor.

Chapter 4
Saving the Wall

I
was really surprised in first grade when I heard the story about George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. After he chopped it down, his father asked him, “Who cut down this cherry tree?” And George Washington didn’t lie. George Washington told his father, “I cut down that cherry tree.”

But I was even more surprised in second grade, when I learned that this story was made up. George Washington never said those words. Also, he didn’t
have fake wooden teeth. His dentures were made of cows’ teeth, human teeth, and elephant tusks.

Anyway, because my mother had a habit of not telling the truth, and because she’d taught me this same habit, and because George Washington’s story wasn’t even true, I thought everybody told some lies. I didn’t understand that lying was such a bad thing. As long as I wasn’t lying to a police officer or a 911 operator, as long as I told lies that didn’t really matter (like being a mother’s helper for the Bratbergs), I thought it was okay.

“Camille, I thought you’d be in school,” Jimmy said. He set down a big saw on the living room carpet. “Look at your hair. It’s so fluffy.” As he talked, he reached toward my head, and I ducked.

When your hair has a lot of volume, this happens quite a bit. Either people love it and want to put their hands all over it. Or they make fun of you and try to shoot spit wads in it. Reactions differ depending on how they feel about big hair.

“Camille is sick today,” my mother said.

Actually, due to the day’s events, that lie was becoming more and more true.

I followed Jimmy and my mother to the kitchen table. Masking tape, paintbrushes, and sheets of plastic were crowded on one corner. That’s when I noticed the pencil marks. The wall that separated the kitchen from
the living room had big squares, almost the size of windows, penciled all over it. My mouth dropped open.

“You can’t saw down that wall,” I said.

“I didn’t want to saw it down,” my mother said. “I wanted to cut a big hole in it to open up the space. But it turns out, after consulting with Jimmy, that it’s easier to just get rid of it.”

My mother walked in front of the wall and knocked on it.

“Do you hear that, Camille? I’m all boxed in.” She kept thumping on the wall with her fists. “This kitchen is too small. It’s like a cage.”

“No, it’s not,” I said.

“Yes, it is. And I’m a bird!” she yelled. “And I’m trapped.”

My mother began to flap her arms, pretending they were wings. She flapped them very hard and ran into the living room.

“But once the wall comes down, I’ll be free!” she yelled.

“You’re a mammal, not a bird,” I said.

But she didn’t hear me. She began to punch and kick the air. This made no sense. I’d never seen a bird that could kickbox.

This was very, very bad. I looked at Jimmy. And his saw. I couldn’t let it happen. Before I even knew what I
was doing, I was standing on top of the kitchen table and protesting.

“I love that wall. And my father loves that wall.” I balled one hand up into a fist and pumped it over my head. “You’ll have to saw through me to knock it down.” I jumped into the air and yelled, “Save the wall!”

“Camille McPhee, get off the table,” my mother said.

But I didn’t get down, even though I felt very alone up there. I jumped and yelled again.

This time when I went up, my head hit the kitchen chandelier. And this time when I came down, my foot landed on a roll of masking tape. I shuffled my feet to catch my balance, but somehow I wound up on the sheets of plastic.

Both my mother’s and Jimmy’s mouths looked like perfect Os, full of surprise, as I toppled off the table and crashed to the floor. Ouch.

My mother hooked her hands under my armpits to lift me up. As she brought me to my feet, her biceps grew round and hard, like stones.

“Eventually, your father will forget the wall was ever there,” she said.

This made no sense to me. Walls were big. And this one was an important part of our house. How could a person think another person would forget a wall?

“No, he won’t,” I said.

“Sure he will,” she said.

“He will not!” I said. And a little bit of spit flew out of my mouth and hit Jimmy on the chin. It was rare that I got this foaming mad.

“Oh, Camille,” Jimmy said, ignoring my spit mark, “sooner or later, we forget most things. It’s part of being human.”

This scared me a little bit. Because in addition to being a mammal, I was also a human. So this meant they were talking about me, too. I looked at my mother. She folded her arms across her chest.

“He’s right. It takes about a year,” she said. “A person can adjust to anything in a year.”

“There have been studies,” Jimmy said.

And rather than argue, I sort of believed them. Because I was always hearing about important studies on CNN. Plus, I started thinking about stuff from a year ago, and I couldn’t remember all sorts of things. Like what flavor toothpaste I liked best at the time. Or important facts about Jupiter that I’d been taught in science. Or how I felt about pineapple served with cottage cheese. I’d had some the week before and I really liked it, but how had I felt about that combination a year ago? I couldn’t remember.

That’s when I was hit by a supersad thought. Sally was already starting to forget me, because she hadn’t written. Or sent me my kimono. She’d been gone six months—half a year. As unfair as this
sounded, it meant that I was halfway forgotten. “A year?” I asked.

Both Jimmy and my mother nodded. I looked at the doomed wall. It held all three of our shadows. I waved goodbye to it. And my shadow waved back.

“My mind is made up,” my mother said. “The wall is history.”

But something inside of me could not accept this. Because when I looked at that wall, I thought of something. We had taken a bunch of pictures in front of this wall. And we had saved them in my scrapbook. And even if my dad did forget about the wall, he’d remember it all over again when he saw those pictures. The only solution would be to burn my scrapbook. And I liked my scrapbook. So that meant I had to save the wall. “Save the wall!” I yelled again, jumping to my feet. My head felt very fuzzy, but that didn’t stop me. I grabbed Jimmy’s electric saw and darted outside. It was freezing, and I didn’t have on my coat, but sometimes being a rebel means that you have to suffer.

If my father came back from Seattle and that wall was gone, he would freak out. All year long. It would be so awful that a blood vessel might pop in his brain. Or maybe he’d have a heart attack. And if something happened to him, even though I’m human, I didn’t think I’d be able to forget about him in a year.

No. I could tell by how sad Polly looked standing in the bus line that she hadn’t forgotten her father. She looked like she wished he was still around. But that’s not how life works. After somebody dies, that person doesn’t get to be around anymore. Ever.

Chapter 5
Purpled

A
fter I ran outside, I wasn’t sure what to do. So I threw the saw into a snowbank. Then I covered it with a bunch more snow. And the broken bough of a pine tree. And even more snow. I hadn’t realized this about myself, but I was pretty good at hiding power tools. I ran back inside and slammed the door so fast that my movie-star hair slapped me right in the face. A clump of it swung into my mouth and got stuck there and I spit it out. Then I presented my two empty hands. I
thought taking the saw would slow my mother down. But I should have known better.

“Camille, it doesn’t matter if you hide Jimmy’s saw. The world is big. There’ll always be another saw.”

My mother walked outside. When she came back, she was holding the saw and shaking the slush off it. I guess I wasn’t as good at hiding power tools as I thought. She set the saw down and frowned at me. That’s when Jimmy pulled out a tool called a stud finder. He placed it flat against the wall and dragged it across the surface. Then he grunted.