Gravity Brings Me Down (4 page)

I
feel the forces loosen their grip the second I hit the street. It’s too bad Miss Marple’s life is so sad, but it’s not up to me to babysit geriatric hard-luck cases, is it? I mean, if she’s so lonely, why doesn’t she get a cat or a little pocket dog or something? I’m so happy to be free, I’m actually looking forward to getting home. This feeling evaporates the second I step through the door. Peggy is practising her cheerleading moves in the living room.

If there’s a spectrum of life, Peggy and I are on opposite ends of it. Her favourite colour is pink—need I say more? She shakes her pompoms, kicking her legs in the air, her blonde ponytail bouncing around as she shouts at the top of her lungs.

“We’re gonna
F-I-G-I-T!”

“We’re gonna figit? Oh my God.”

“Shut up!” she screams, her braces flashing.

“Bite me, metal-mouth.”

“Mom!”

“Supper is cold,” Mom calls from the kitchen, like the whole world is going to collapse because I missed dinner.

I’ve never eaten a cold hot meal in my life because Mom just heats it up when I get home. Yet she keeps threatening me all the same. Unlike me, Peggy actually shows up for dinner, but she never really eats anything because she’s afraid she won’t fit into her stupid cheer-leading outfit. I don’t eat half the time either. Mostly because I don’t feel like it. And because I want to fly right past the machine, all feathers and bone. Of course, everything gets caught eventually, even birds. But if worse comes to worst and we have to move to a bigger planet with more gravity, like Jupiter, we’re all going to be a whole lot heavier, I can assure you. And then we’d look like this:

In any case, between the two of us, Peggy and I drive Mom crazy.

My mother pulls my plate from the oven (she refuses to buy a microwave because she thinks our brains will get fried by the rays) and sets it down in front of me at the table.

I poke at the grey glop with my fork. “What is it?”

“Prithee, try it.”

“Prithee, it looks like barf.”

Dad sticks his head into the dining room. He’s drying dishes in the kitchen because Mom refuses to buy a dishwasher (they’re an unnecessary extravagance).

“Hey, Alice Cooper, your mother slaved over a hot stove all day to make that barf.”

I take a small bite. It’s actually good.

“What ho, methinks she liketh it!” Mom says, mocking me.

Dad grabs Mom and they start dancing like maniacs around the kitchen. Then Peggy comes in and starts doing her stupid cheer. I live in a lunatic asylum.

After poking at my plate for half an hour, I somehow manage to convince Mom I’ve eaten enough and excuse myself to the sanctity of my room. But the weirdest thing happens when I get there: I can’t stop thinking about Miss Marple. It’s as if she’s put a spell on me. I can’t get her out of my mind. It seems so unfair that I have to think about her when I have other things I’d rather think about, like my CPP, and Darin’ and James Joyce’s book
The Dead
. But no, her gravitation is too strong, and suddenly, there she is, inside my head, sitting at her piano, all lonely and forlorn, a poster child for geriatric neglect. I try to shrug her off by surfing the Net. Maybe I can find the popcorn bag poetry and see if it really is from an Elton John song.

I put on my writing wings, the ones I keep over the back of my desk chair. I call them my “inspiration” because they help me think. They’re from an old angel
costume Mom bought me when I was a kid. Only now they’re black because I painted them that way.

As I settle in, my feline, Little Morta, jumps up to greet me. She’s the one thing on the planet I go out of my way to spend time with. She’s my benchmark for cool: selective, indifferent, fickle. I bet she doesn’t lose sleep over old ladies or unseen forces. She’s 100 percent conscience-free. Purring loudly, she curls into a ball in my lap. It always amazes me how a bird and cat can cohabit in peace like this.

Eventually I find the Elton John song, but the lyrics don’t match the poetry. It’s as if the person who typed it was drunk or dyslexic and couldn’t quite remember how the song goes. Still, the words are close enough to be creepy. I decide it wasn’t Darin’ who wrote the note after all. He’d be sure to get the lyrics right, I think. I guess it could have been Biff, trying to freak me out. Or maybe
it
was
a janitor or a teacher, like Sharon said. How sick would that be? I toss the popcorn bag back between the pages of my
Great Thinkers
text and do a little research for my CPP.

It seems that autumn is called the “suicide season” because the number of suicides increases during back-to-school time. This does not surprise me. With teachers like Chocko in the world, what more incentive do students need to cash in their chips?

After hours of surfing the Net, I’m still not tired enough to go to bed. But I don’t want to think about Miss Marple so I decide to do some actual fieldwork for my project. Turning out the lights in my room, I crawl with my inspiration into the closet and pull a blanket over my head to stimulate deep thoughts. What does it feel like to die? Can gravity affect your spirit as it leaves? I heard once that the soul weighs twenty-one grams. I wonder how that translates on Jupiter? These thoughts whirl through my mind until, eventually, I fall asleep.

The first thing I see when I climb out of the closet the next morning is Tod, sitting on his moped, gazing up at my bedroom window. Is he totally insane? The answer is a definite YES. Normal people don’t spend their Saturdays stalking people. I draw the blinds so he won’t have a show while I’m changing. I check my alarm clock. It’s 11:25. I can’t believe I slept that long. I’m supposed to meet Sharon for my photo shoot at the cemetery at 2:30.

I’m about to undress when Peggy bursts into my room, demanding to know the whereabouts of her stupid lucky cheerleading T-shirt—

“
You
know, the shirt I won at the Total Motion Summer Games last year … the pink one with the sparkly red stars on the front?”

I just ignore her until she leaves in a huff, slamming the door. If her shirt were in my room it would glow like phosphorus and spontaneously combust because all I ever wear is black … and the occasional vintage purple nylon.

I’m digging through my closet for something to wear when Miss Marple pops into my head again. A girl can’t get any peace around here. Throwing on Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” I crank the volume on my stereo until my bedroom walls vibrate and Dad bangs on the door, yelling.

“Hey, Ozzy Osbourne! Keep it to a dull roar!”

Clearly, he has no idea what it’s like to be tormented by lonely old women.

I decide to wear my medieval frock with the long sleeves and my black peasant skirt. I get dressed, then grab a bowl of cereal and write in my journal until it’s time to go.

It takes about twenty minutes to walk to the cemetery. Sharon’s waiting for me with her camera. She points to a decrepit tomb.

“Lie on that slab there.”

I lie down and she begins arranging my sleeves and skirt.

“Turn your head more to the right.” She pulls out a single red rose and places it in my hands. “Okay, that’s good. Now look dead.”

I try to clear my mind and get into the mood but it’s no use. Miss Marple won’t leave me alone. I’m starting to get seriously frustrated.

Sharon sighs. “Stop scrunching up your face.”

Okay, I’ll admit I feel guilty. Why, I don’t know. It’s not like Miss Marple’s my mother or anything. She’s got five kids of her own. Why don’t
they
go visit her? It’s sad that she has to recruit strangers on the street just to have someone to talk to. And here I am, worried she’s going to get hit by a car or die of loneliness while her own kids run around shopping at L.L. Bean.

“That’s a wrap,” Sharon says.

The word “wrap” makes me think of the chicken chunks at the Tip and suddenly I feel sick again. I’m so doomed. Sharon packs up her things.

“Where do you want to print the pictures?”

“My place.”

We’re cutting through the square when I notice Miss Marple sitting by herself on a bench in front of the bank. How is it that I never noticed her before and now I’m seeing her everywhere? It suddenly dawns on me that she might be a ghost haunting me for past offences, but then Sharon notices her too.

“Isn’t that the old lady who nearly got creamed on the road yesterday?”

I walk faster, flitting from sidewalk tree to sidewalk tree, hoping Miss Marple won’t see me.

Sharon gives me a look. “What’re you doing? You’re acting so weird.”

“Oh, uh, nothing.”

We manage to make it past, undetected. But while I may have outsmarted Miss Marple there’s no shaking Tod. He’s waiting on the corner of my street. I’ve told him a million times not to approach me in public. Despite this, he pulls a fast one, cruising up on his moped.

“Hi, Sharon,” he says, as though we’re all good friends.

Sharon sneers like she’s stepped in a fresh dog pile.

“Hey, Sioux, do you want to go to the movies tonight?” he asks me.

I walk away like I can’t hear him.

He follows, forcing my hand.

“What about tomorrow night?”

I lower my voice to a whisper. “Look, get lost, okay?”

“The night after.”

“Never, Tod. Get it?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t follow me.”

“All right.”

If I had a ray gun, Tod would be a smouldering mound of ash right now.

Sharon shakes her head. “Why do you encourage him?”

When we reach my house, we hurry upstairs to my room to avoid detection. We’re happily talking and printing off shots when Mom comes into my room, asking if Sharon would like to stay for dinner. I hide the death photos in my desk as she comes in. I don’t want her to see them because I’m afraid she’ll wig out and send me to counselling again. She did that when I was eight for cutting all the heads off my Barbies.