The List (14 page)

t lunch, Lauren and her new friends sit at the sunniest lunch table in the cafeteria and make their own plans for the Spirit Caravan.

The first half of the period is spent excitedly debating how to diplomatically proceed with the sharing of decorating ideas. They choose going in a circle over hand raising so everyone will be given the chance to pitch an idea without anyone having the responsibility to choose who gets to speak in what order. Someone makes the point that no ideas should be shot down in this initial brainstorming, that everyone’s input is welcome and valued. No suggestions would be called stupid or dumb or retarded.

Nothing would be like it had been when Candace was around.

For the first time, Lauren wonders if Candace might be as terrible as the girls had said. They all seem to be blossoming now that they’re out of Candace’s shadow. It is a feeling Lauren completely understands. The liberation. The autonomy. She used to feel guilty about coming to school, being away from her mother, wanting her own life. But no longer. These girls, her new friends, inspire her.

And it is just so exciting to witness this new burgeoning utopia being forged. Someone produces Candace’s plans for the Spirit Caravan, and when she tears it up, all the girls cheer. It reminds her of the early revolutionaries who banded together to end Britain’s tyrannical rule.

“I can be the secretary. I’ll write down everything in my notebook,” Lauren happily volunteers. “That way, we won’t lose anyone’s good ideas.”

She has already made the decision that she will not participate in the brainstorming. It feels too early to start throwing out her opinions and thoughts about things she doesn’t really know, experiences she’s never had. She’s just so glad to be here, to be welcome at this table.

Lauren readies her pencil on a fresh page.

And waits.

But though there was so much to discuss about how things should go, the actual ideas of what to do for Spirit Caravan don’t flow nearly as freely.

After a few quiet seconds, one girl sighs and says, “I seriously don’t care what we do, so long as our idea is better than what Candace wanted us to do.”

Lauren doesn’t want the girls to get discouraged. On the back of her fresh page, the grooves of her pen marks push up, like little ridges. She flips back to what she’d written last period.

“Um, I made a few sketches during English, since I’ve read
Ethan Frome
like fifteen times.” The girls curl around her. Lauren’s sketch isn’t too detailed, so she explains it. “Mount Washington’s mascot is the Mountaineer, right? So what if we made cardboard mountains along the sides of the car? Like we’re mountain climbers?”

“Oh my god, I love it,” someone says.

“We can use my dad’s pickup truck,” another volunteers. “That way we can all fit!”

Lauren adds, “And we can wear flannel shirts and have walking sticks and rope and stuff.”

“Lauren! These are great ideas!”

“I can’t believe we were just going to use shaving cream and streamers. This is … a concept!”

“Hey, Lauren. You have to come with us after school and help us buy supplies.”

Lauren smiles until she remembers. “I get picked up right after school. But I can help you make up a list of —”

“Call your mom and tell her you need to stay late,” one girl says. “Here. Use my cell.” She glances over both her shoulders for the cafeteria monitors. “Just, like, don’t be obvious about it.”

Lauren dials the house. Luckily, she gets voice mail. “Hi, Mommy. It’s me. Don’t worry about picking me up today. I’ve got a school project I need to stay late for. I’ll walk home when I’m done. Okay? Thanks, Mommy. See you later. Love you.”

Lauren hangs up the cell phone and hands it back to its owner. That wasn’t so hard.

And then, the cell phone buzzes to life. The girl checks the screen. “Lauren, I think it’s your
mommy
.” A couple of the other girls snicker.

Lauren wrings her hands. “Um. Let her leave a message.”

“Okay.”

It is maybe a minute later that the phone buzzes again.

“I’m so sorry,” Lauren says. “She’s a little crazy since I started school.”

Someone looks up and says, “Shhh. Here comes Candace.”

Lauren watches Candace walk up to the table. None of the girls make room for her. This makes Lauren feel uncomfortable,
as if Lauren is in Candace’s seat. Lauren is about to get up, but one of the girls puts a hand on her lap underneath the table, silently telling her to stay put. Candace drops into a seat on the periphery.

“You guys working on the Spirit Caravan?”

“Yup.”

“How’s it going?”

None of the girls answer her, so Lauren turns her notebook around so Candace can see it. “Good. Do you want to see the plans?”

“No,” Candace says flatly before flipping her hair off her shoulder, but Lauren sees her eyes linger a bit on the notebook. “I can’t make the Spirit Caravan this year. I’m going to be busy setting up … which is actually why I came by.” Candace sighs a breezy, apathetic sigh. “I’m throwing a party on Saturday night, before the dance. Everyone can come over to my house and take pictures together. My mom’s getting me a couple bottles of rum, and there’ll be food and stuff.”

Lauren perks up at this, but the other girls don’t seem impressed.

“Cool,” one of them says, and pushes her food around with her fork.

“Yeah, maybe,” another girl says.

The corners of Candace’s smile sink. “Um, alright,” she says, backing up slowly. “Well, I hope you guys can make it.”

As soon as Candace is out of sight, the girls at the table bow their heads and begin a whispered conference.

“What does Candace think? That a party is going to make us like her again?”

“Please. We’re already going to Andrew’s house after the dance. It’s not like we need her to get us booze like last summer.”

“Maybe now Candace will realize that you can’t treat people like crap. There are consequences.”

“Candace has been a bitch for practically her whole life. She’s never going to change. She’s always going to think she’s better than us.”

Lauren goes back to her notebook. It is clear to her that Candace’s invitation was a peace offering to try to smooth things over. But the hurt Candace caused these girls obviously runs deep. Deeper, apparently, than a party can fix.

One of the girls presses her lips together, deep in thought. And then she says, “But … it
could
be cool to have a buzz at the dance. It might make it more fun.”

“Hey! We could go to Candace’s house for the rum, but, like, not have any fun.”

“That’s true,” another girl says, nodding.

Lauren bites her lip. She doesn’t like the idea of going to Candace’s party just for the free alcohol. But then again, maybe the girls are starting to see that Candace is sorry. Maybe they need to be in a room together to hash things out. Maybe at her party, Candace will offer up a better, more heartfelt apology.

One of the girls folds her arms decidedly. “Well, if Lauren’s not going to Candace’s party, I’m not going.”

“Me, either,” another girl chimes in. The rest nod their heads.

It amazes Lauren to see the girls, her new friends, rally around her. Candace was wrong. This isn’t only about Lauren being pretty. They like her. Really.

The girl who lent Lauren her cell phone dips her head below the cafeteria table and checks her voice mail. “Um, Lauren?” she says. “Your mom said to tell you she got the job.”

Lauren brightens. “Yay! Do you know what this means? We’re staying in Mount Washington!” She squeaks with excitement. The girls smile politely, though they seem maybe a bit embarrassed. Lauren claps her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. I’m just so happy,” she says with a nervous laugh.

The girl holding her phone looks a bit confused. “Oh. Okay,” she says. “That’s good. ’Cause your mom sounded kinda bummed.”

he sixth-period bell rings. Abby waves good-bye as Lisa bolts from their lab desk and disappears into the hallway. Lisa’s next class is on the opposite side of the school, and she has to sprint out of Earth Science to make it on time. Their arrangement is that Lisa does most of the actual lab experiments and calculations, and Abby records the results and takes care of cleaning up the work space. It’s an excellent deal, in Abby’s opinion. Abby’s next class is gym, so she takes her time rolling up their relief map and returning the rock samples to the cabinet, because she hates gym almost as much as Earth Science.

She is on her way out the classroom door when her teacher, Mr. Timmet, raises his pencil in the air.

“Abby?”

She stops just past the doorway and turns to face his desk, careful to keep her body in the hallway. “Yeah, Mr. Timmet?”

“I’m afraid we have a small problem.” After beckoning her closer, he shuffles papers around his desk and avoids eye contact. “Between your first two quiz grades and Monday’s incomplete worksheet, you’re not doing very well in my class.”

Crap. Monday’s worksheet. With all the excitement of being named on the list, Abby had forgotten to copy the answers down from Lisa.

“Abby, I know it seems like we’ve only just started back in school, but the marking period’s nearly half over,” he continues, producing a rectangle of light blue card stock. A progress
report. “Please have one of your parents sign this before the end of the week.”

Abby shoves her hands in the pockets of her jeans, down to the linty seams. “But I’m trying, Mr. Timmet. I am.” She tries to sound sweetly desperate and vulnerable. Teachers like Mr. Timmet, who think they’re still young, who think that their students might find them cute, respond to that sort of thing. “And I’m sorry about Monday’s worksheet. Something exciting happened that morning and I…” Abby pauses, hopeful that a glimmer of knowing about the list would register on Mr. Timmet’s face. Or, at the very least, sympathy. “Anyway, I seriously
meant
to do it. Really.”

Mr. Timmet sets his glasses on top of his head and rubs at his eyes. “Like I said, Abby, this is about more than Monday’s worksheet. I’m glad you’re trying, and I want you to know that it’s not too late to turn your grade around. Remember, we’ve got a big test next week, and a good score could bring your average back up to passing. But I still have to let your parents know that you’re currently failing my class.”

Abby’s bones go soft. Failing? Already?

She’d started with such high hopes. That high school would be different from eighth grade, when she’d scrambled and pleaded and made all sorts of deals with her teachers to do extra credit and make-up exams to keep her from getting left back.

This year, Abby actually tried to pay attention from the very start. She took notes, even on the first day. She wrote down everything Mr. Timmet said in her notebook as neatly as she could.

And for a while, Abby did feel like she was getting it. Under
standing the concepts of natural disasters and the craziness going on inside the Earth’s core. But then, as the days passed, his lessons changed from learning the names of rocks to hieroglyphic equations. Now she had no idea what was going on.

“If my parents see this progress report, they’re going to kill me. Please, please, pleeeease, can’t we work something out? I’ll make up any homework I’ve missed. And I’ll come every day for detention until I bring my grade up.”

Mr. Timmet sets the progress report on the very edge of his desk, just shy of teetering to the floor. “I’m obligated to do this, Abby. It’s nothing personal.”

Mr. Timmet was Fern’s favorite teacher. Abby can imagine Fern staring at Mr. Timmet from her desk in the front row, counting the tiny pinstripes on his shirt. His watch is the kind you could wear underwater. Practical. His wire-rimmed glasses, unlike the other teachers who wear them, are never smudged or dirty. He made lots of corny science jokes in class, stuff that the smart kids laughed at. She could see why Fern liked him so much. But all those reasons annoyed her.

“Mr. Timmet, I’m begging you. Could you at least wait until after next week’s test? The homecoming dance is Saturday night, and my parents will probably ground me, and …” Abby lets herself trail off as Mr. Timmet turns to his computer. Obviously he doesn’t care about her or the homecoming dance. Abby has never had the kind of relationship Fern does with teachers. They love it when Fern stops back in their classrooms, talks to them about the things going on in her real life.

When he realizes that she’s stopped pleading her case, Mr. Timmet looks back at her. Abby thinks he seems a little nervous. Or maybe just regretful that this is becoming so awkward.

“I’m afraid this is nonnegotiable,” he says.

The weight of Abby’s books increases tenfold. She squeezes them tight in her arms and her eyes fill with tears. “But I’ll do better,” she whispers. “I promise.”

“I would like nothing more than to see that, Abby. You know, you should ask your sister to tutor you. Fern had no trouble with this stuff. She’s a very smart girl.”

Abby finally snatches the progress report off of Mr. Timmet’s desk. She does it so fast, a bunch of his other papers flutter onto the floor. “Right,” she mutters on her way out.

If there is one thing Abby
does
know, it’s that.

All through the crab soccer game in gym, Abby thinks over her options. If she gives the progress report to her parents, she’ll definitely be grounded, and there’s an extremely good chance that they’d forbid her to go to the homecoming dance. If she doesn’t get it signed by Friday, Mr. Timmet will probably call home, and then she’ll also be forbidden to go to the dance. All the great attention she’d gotten from the list, the invite to Andrew’s party, will be wasted.

It is pretty much a lose/lose situation.

Abby sits on her bed. She doesn’t want to do her homework or watch the talk show flashing on the small television atop her cluttered dresser.

Across the room, Fern is hunched over her desk in the valley between mountains of books piled high on either side, the reading lamp picking up the dust in the air. Abby watches Fern’s pencil fly so fast, so confidently across her notebook.

Because both her parents needed home offices for their work, Fern and Abby have to share a bedroom. It is set up to be
a mirror image, the same furniture and accessories pinned to each wall. A bed, a desk, a dresser, a night table. But beyond the skeleton, that simple architecture and layout, each side is vastly different from the other.

The walls that cuddle Abby’s bed are taped over with photos, glossy magazine shots of models and boy actors, and fun trinkets from different adventures she’s had with her friends, like a strip of red paper tickets from the Skee-Ball machine at the pier arcade when she’d gone to visit Lisa at her family’s beach house. The floor is covered with her dirty clothes.

Fern’s side is the after shot of a cleaning demonstration. Everything is neat and arranged by right angles. Her clothes are hung up and put away. A tangle of academic ribbons hangs from the left bedpost. An inspirational poster of a beach at sunrise is taped to her ceiling. T
HERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR HARD WORK
, it says. There are only white pushpins stuck in her cork-board, pinning up a monthly calendar where assignments, tests, and debate competitions have been marked in perfect penmanship.

If Abby had a sister like Bridget, they’d be able to talk this over and figure out a plan. At the very least, Bridget would step in and try to get her parents not to make a huge deal about the progress report, find an angle to help convince their parents to let her go to the dance.

Fern would never help her that way. Never ever.

Abby feels around for her remote and inches her television volume up slowly, click by click, until the applause from the audience sounds like thunder.

Fern, scribbling away furiously, pauses a moment. “Why don’t you go watch that in the den, Abby?” she asks, not politely.

“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” Abby mumbles.

“What?”

Abby mutes the television. “I know you’re mad at me about the list.” There. She’s said it.

Fern lets go of her pencil and it falls onto her notebook. “I’m not mad at you for the list,” she says slowly, as if Abby is an idiot. “But I don’t know what you expect me to say about it.”

“Um, I don’t know. How about …
congratulations
?”

Fern spins around in her desk chair. “Are you serious?”

“Maybe,” Abby mutters, suddenly wishing she hadn’t said anything. “You shouldn’t blame me. It just happened. It wasn’t my fault.”

“Of course it’s not your fault. I know how the list works. But you don’t have to parade around school acting so proud about it.”

“You mean the way
you
act whenever you make honor roll?”

Fern snorts. “That’s different, Abby.”

“How? Even though I never get on honor roll, I’m still happy for you.”

“Because getting on honor roll is an actual accomplishment. It’s a direct reflection of the hard work and effort I’ve put in. You’re not going to put the fact that you are the prettiest girl in your freshmen class on your applications for college, are you?”

Fern starts laughing at her joke, and Abby wants to crawl inside herself. “Whatever.”

“Why don’t you concentrate on doing your homework instead of watching television? Or spending all your free time looking at stupid dresses online,” Fern says before spinning her desk chair back around to her homework. “Why don’t you work
on something that matters? Try to win a prize that can actually help you in life?”

“They aren’t stupid dresses, Fern. And maybe you think being on the list is stupid, too, but it isn’t. It’s an honor.”

Fern picks up her pencil. But instead of going back to her homework, she stares at the wall. “The list isn’t changing your life, Abby. I’m not trying to be mean, but I’m also not going to fall at your feet over something so meaningless. Now, if you ever make honor roll, I’ll be the first one to congratulate you. I’ll tie balloons to your bed.”

Abby doesn’t want to cry, but she feels like it’s inevitable. Luckily, her cell phone rings. Without saying another word to Fern, she grabs it and walks out of their bedroom. And she unmutes the television, just to be a snot.

“Hey, Lisa.” Abby presses her back up against the wall, and the frames of family photos dig into her spine. She hears Fern let out a deep sigh as she rises up from her desk chair to shut off Abby’s television.

“You sound upset,” Lisa says. “What’s wrong?”

Abby bites her lip. She wants to tell Lisa about the progress report and Mr. Timmet, but she’s too embarrassed. So instead she says, “It’s my sister,” kind of loud, and peeks inside her room. Fern is back at work, leaning over her books, and Abby shoots daggers into her. “Honestly, she’s been horrible to me ever since the list came out.”

Lisa lowers her voice. “I don’t want to start trouble or anything, but look … Fern is just jealous of you. You know that, right?”

Abby huffs. “No, she’s not.”

“Yes she is, dummy! Okay, sure. She gets better grades than you do. But guess what? I bet Fern would give up all her perfect report cards for your DNA. I mean, you’re soooo much prettier than her.”

A part of Abby thinks that herself, somewhere deep down inside. It was the last place her mind went when she fought with Fern. Abby always felt dirty about that, like it was a dark and terrible secret, and she was an awful person for ever thinking it.

Hearing Lisa say it makes her feel better.

Kind of.